Can we at least end one narrative?

[Nunatax]

@Jolly said in Can we at least end one narrative?:

I don't think you realize the disdain and disgust the Left in America feels for people on the Right. The Basket of Deplorables.

Biden will not improve this. Harris will accelerate it, when she becomes President.

Well, it's hard to get a feeling for the level of disdain that the left feels for the right from so far away. But from what Aqua has described, it seems like there is indeed a real problem there. To me this seems like the action-reaction I described earlier, given that Trump is quite a controversial man to say the least. At the same time, I also think Trump just made this speed up (I see him as a symptom, not really a root cause). Over the years I have come to realize that on many topics there hardly seems to be a middle road in the US. I wonder if this is because of the two party system. Every country has nutjobs that hold extreme views. They can usually join political parties that never really stand a chance against the more moderate ones. But when there's only two parties (and an independent option that no one really seems to care about), they don't have anywhere else to go. In elections in which literally every vote counts, neither side wants to alienate these people. That makes them feel empowered and off it goes, pretty extreme and often ridiculous ideas start to get normalized and find more and more traction.

You could be right that Biden is not going to improve things and I don't know about Harris (simply don't know her well enough). It could very well still get worse. But I really doubt that a 4 year Biden presidency would come even close to doing the damage that four more years of Trump would do. And if after these 4 years there's a need to elect a republican again, I'm sure that that is what will happen. I do hope the choice will be made for a moderate one who at least tries to bring the two sides together.

[Jolly]

@Nunatax said in Can we at least end one narrative?:

@Jolly said in Can we at least end one narrative?:

I don't think you realize the disdain and disgust the Left in America feels for people on the Right. The Basket of Deplorables.

Biden will not improve this. Harris will accelerate it, when she becomes President.

Well, it's hard to get a feeling for the level of disdain that the left feels for the right from so far away. But from what Aqua has described, it seems like there is indeed a real problem there. To me this seems like the action-reaction I described earlier, given that Trump is quite a controversial man to say the least. At the same time, I also think Trump just made this speed up (I see him as a symptom, not really a root cause). Over the years I have come to realize that on many topics there hardly seems to be a middle road in the US. I wonder if this is because of the two party system. Every country has nutjobs that hold extreme views. They can usually join political parties that never really stand a chance against the more moderate ones. But when there's only two parties (and an independent option that no one really seems to care about), they don't have anywhere else to go. In elections in which literally every vote counts, neither side wants to alienate these people. That makes them feel empowered and off it goes, pretty extreme and often ridiculous ideas start to get normalized and find more and more traction.

You could be right that Biden is not going to improve things and I don't know about Harris (simply don't know her well enough). It could very well still get worse. But I really doubt that a 4 year Biden presidency would come even close to doing the damage that four more years of Trump would do. And if after these 4 years there's a need to elect a republican again, I'm sure that that is what will happen. I do hope the choice will be made for a moderate one who at least tries to bring the two sides together.

Barring war or some similar cataclysmic event, it simply cannot be done.

[Aqua Letifer]

@Nunatax said in Can we at least end one narrative?:

But four more years of this guy are not going to improve this in my opinion.

Definitely it won't. What it does is prevent America from wading further into the possibility of becoming the next Weimar republic. It'd look very different from Germany of course, but if enough of the militant left start getting elected, that's the kind of road they'd take us down. Who knows what that looks like but no thanks.

Trump's no threat whatsoever. Look at how many people hate his guts. Pretty hard to get away with much under that much scrutiny. On the left you have a shitload of truly scary behavior (Nick Sandmann. No I don't mean the DC incident, I mean the problems with his college after he won his court cases) that's being accepted and condoned.

[Nunatax]

@Aqua-Letifer It’s been said in other threads here, but the results of the election do seem to point towards a rejection of Trump and not at all an acceptance of the (over)progressive left. In that sense, Trump may have done a great deal of damage. If a much less polarizing republican had been elected in 2016, maybe there would not have been a democrat elected now. Impossible to say for certain of course, but the fact that Trump didn’t manage to win the popular vote against Clinton (who was not very popular and one of the worst presidential candidates in the history of the US according to some...), does tell me that his victory wasn’t due to his overwhelming popularity...

Anyway, the fact that the anticipated blue wave seems to be limited to the presidential election, is hopeful, no? Based on these results, I predict a republican president is elected again 4 years from now if the issues you describe continue and perhaps get worse. It seems there is growing awareness around this, and a willingness to vote against it.

[LuFins Dad]

I would hardly call a .0116% margin a rejection.

[George K]

@Nunatax said in Can we at least end one narrative?:

a rejection of Trump

More people voted for Trump than for any other President in history. I'm more than willing to concede that he lost the popular vote, but 70,000,000 votes hardly qualifies as a "rejection."

And those 70 million were called "chumps" by the apparent winner.

Uniter, indeed.

[brenda]

@George-K said in Can we at least end one narrative?:

@Nunatax said in Can we at least end one narrative?:

a rejection of Trump

More people voted for Trump than for any other President in history. I'm more than willing to concede that he lost the popular vote, but 70,000,000 votes hardly qualifies as a "rejection."

And those 70 million were called "chumps" by the apparent winner.

Uniter, indeed.

Indeed. +1

[Mik]

Some Democrats are recognizing that. We will see how that shakes out, if they can shake loose the wacko left wing. If not the midterms will be a bloodbath. Again.

[George K]

@brenda said in Can we at least end one narrative?:

Uniter, indeed.

Indeed. +1

Never forget which candidate, during the debates, called the other one "a clown" and told him to "shut up."

I guess that counts as occasionally impolite, right?

[Catseye3]

As a people, we would make significant progress if we could find it in ourselves to acknowledge that both X-tremes, left and right, are problematical and burdensome. It isn't a matter of, oh the left is more awful or the right is more awful -- when what either of those positions boils down to is lack of understanding, lack of meeting of the minds, and disagreement with ME.

[Doctor Phibes]

@George-K said in Can we at least end one narrative?:

@brenda said in Can we at least end one narrative?:

Uniter, indeed.

Indeed. +1

Never forget which candidate, during the debates, called the other one "a clown" and told him to "shut up."

I guess that counts as occasionally impolite, right?

George, are you actually trying to claim that Donald Trump behaved with more class than Joe Biden during this election period?

[George K]

@Doctor-Phibes said in Can we at least end one narrative?:

George, are you actually trying to claim that Donald Trump behaved with more class than Joe Biden during this election period?

Of course not. I'm just disputing the civility that Biden claims, you chump.

[Doctor Phibes]

Civility is a relative construct, like an Alabama wedding.

[George K]

@Doctor-Phibes said in Can we at least end one narrative?:

Civility is a relative construct, like an Alabama wedding.

When he insulted the 70 million people who voted for Trump, he has no standing in saying "no blue or red states."

Remember when Obama said that? Good times, good times, bitter clinger.

[Doctor Phibes]

If the two candidates had 'asshole' jars, where they had to put a dollar in every time they acted like an asshole, I think I know who'd be paying for the WH Christmas party.

[George K]

@Doctor-Phibes said in Can we at least end one narrative?:

If the two candidates had 'asshole' jars, where they had to put a dollar in every time they acted like an asshole, I think I know who'd be paying for the WH Christmas party.

I agree. But they're both assholes, and for one to pretend he's not is pretty funny.

[Horace]

Trump is a jerk. I am better than him. I hate people who are inferior to me.

[Larry]

@Catseye3 said in Can we at least end one narrative?:

As a people, we would make significant progress if we could find it in ourselves to acknowledge that both X-tremes, left and right, are problematical and burdensome. It isn't a matter of, oh the left is more awful or the right is more awful -- when what either of those positions boils down to is lack of understanding, lack of meeting of the minds, and disagreement with ME.

Left and right aren't extremes. That's the whole point of a 2 party system. It's when a side goes too far to the left or right and become extremists. The center has shifted over the years to the left. I watched as the right became what used to be the center, and the left move further left. Under Obama the left moved further left, and the corruption the Clintons brought to the democrat party became weaponized by Obama. This hard left shift gave the Socialists an opening, the Republican had become a mixed bag of true conservatives, those who chose to move left so they could get the perks afforded them, and some who were quite frankly morons. We as a nation have moved the center so far to the left that anyone born after 1990 dont even see it. The left is SO far left now that they see any hint of being a conservative as being an extremist. Yet the last good president the democrat party produced was John Kennedy, and he would be rejected by today's democrat party as a far right extremist. I don't think he would even want to be a democrat today.

[Copper]

indeed +2

[Jolly]

JFK's monetary policy alone, would place him far to the right of Biden who is considered a centrist in the Demonrat party.