Once again, a well-meaning conservative tries to convince us that both sides are at fault. Give it up. Your party has abandoned you. Whatever was going on two decades ago, only one party is trying to govern today. That is the bottom line no matter how many big words you try to use.
Well said as always, Shaun. I'm politically adjacent to you, former Republican. The party hates me more than Democrats. In fact, MAGA hates every GOP candidate of my adulthood, back to and including Reagan. Doesn't that make MAGA the RINO?
I respectfully disagree with Der below. A campaign to get Haley voters to sit out the election would be devastating to the GOP. MAGA wants them out. Take them up on the offer. Far easier than coaxing a Biden vote in these polarized times.
Appreciate the thoughtful response, Paul. For myself, I feel zero compunction to fall in line after being told off, knowing that nothing I care about as a conservative will actually be enacted as policy.
Be sure you understand that a non-vote for Democrats (MAGA vote, no vote, third party vote) = a MAGA vote. Frankly, The Former Guy & That Woman from GA scare me. Want to see US troops dying in the Baltics? Then let’s elect Putin enablers.
Did the Supreme Court protesters take an oath to protect and defend the constitution? Were they led by Biden, Obama, Clinton? Very different from J6 in a big way!
Were they inside the Supreme Court chambers physically threatening Justices? Perhaps I missed something. And now the thread moves to a stout defense and justification of the J6 people?
Unless there's to be discussion of my original point, viz peace transition. Biden or Trump, I'm done with the thread. You want the last word, and you have it.
As the Nelson's have noted, it is weird to watch the rationalizations roll out so regularly that everyone does it. If it helps you and others deny us the horror of a 2nd Trump term though, I'll take it. Though I realize it's just as likely for it to be used by someone such as yourself to vote for him as against him. We'll see.
I can see why the Bard is your muse though, trying to find a solid point in your columns reminds me of translating 500 y/o English.
Still, it is interesting. If Haley had gotten the Republican nomination, I still likely would not have voted for her. But I would have considered her. And really not minded a bit if she won. In that I do not and did not see her as a baseline threat to democracy or rule of law.
But after close to a decade of Trump showing "conservatives" such as yourself how hollow your ideology is (life begins at conception, unless of course - it impedes Republicans getting the vote in the fall, in which case it is negotiable, etc.), the fact that you still have to use those rationalizations is telling.
You really cannot tell the difference between Kavanaugh's hearings, and January 6th?
Well if it makes you feel any better, reading your comments makes me feel a bit like Spock. In that I find your interpretation of someone noting how unusual they find your views as only being capable of happening if it is due to an emotional response like hate, rather than just confusion, or fascination...I find Mendelbrot sets fascinating, too, but that doesn't mean I hate them.
In your case, fascinating to see the lengths of rationalization you will go to in order to accommodate your party allegiance with your party's reality.
And how, after reading it, the squirms, the twists, the subjectivity - realizing that it is just as likely to mean that in the end, you will in fact, vote for Trump because you have found a means of rationalizing it (ie, they are all the same) as it does that you wont.
I do think the written record you provide will be of use to sociologists for years to come as they try to determine how otherwise normal, ethical, and decent people can be led in such a manner; both as a group and as individuals. I would never have believed it, if you would have asked me in 2015 - when there were so many better men and women representing the Republican party. But again, at this point, I no longer find it surprising and certainly not evoking of emotion - positive or negative. Just....fascinating.
Though I do admire your omniscient belief that you know the emotional states of people whom you've never met, merely by their posts on a smalltown message board, at the same time we are demanded to not make judgements about the sanity of your party's chosen representative unless we are board certified psychologists/psychiatrists AND we have personally examined him......
Though you are correct that it is disgust, distaste, and many other negative feelings as one sees the things you (Republicans) have brought us in the last few years.
Death, loss, debt, immorality, etc. Things that you, as a group and personally, claim is in fact DEMOCRATIC ideals, and yet you vote for it, time after time. Talk about transference.
You state it is all due your martyrdom for the "crime of disagreement" - without bothering to mention WHAT is being disagreed about.
Whether you justify your support as a group by saying you are "protecting children", making us great, or what ever mantra is the chant du jour; (though again, you as a group seem pretty selective in that protection to when it inconveniences anyone other than yourselves); you've given us unnecessary deaths, welfare for billionaires, an inflationary debt explosion, torture as a matter of policy, and the attempted overthrow of the Constitution and civil liberties - a threat which is ongoing, I might add (I will only be a Dictator on Day 1...), as you attempt, yet again, to bring someone found to have committed fraud, to have molested women, and is actively charged with dozens of felonies for other frauds, security threats, and that attempt to overthrow the government back to power again.
So yeah, when you wail about "the crime of disagreement", you might want to mention what that disagreement is about. It's not the Quakers who are bringing him back for the sequel. It's you. The Republican Party. You know, Glen Youngkin, Tara Durant, St Rob Wittman? You guys. The one you carry the standard for. You. If he gets in there again, it will be by your party's votes. Certainly not mine.
Again.
Rationalize it all you want.
If you hand a man a gun so he can kill all of your neighbors, and then find out they don't approve - not exactly sure you're the victim here. If you put him in the pilot's seat of a plane when he says he wants to crash it, again....
Though the fact you believe so is again, both fascinating and telling. But less so every time you say it.
Bless your heart.
PS If you need to go to your safe place for another 30 days, I understand.
Or if you and/or Mr Davis would rather I not call out your words - just refund my money and I won't mind that either. I'm a free will type of Baptist. So do what's right for you.
Though I will miss Ms Uphaus's work.
MIght be a bit more mature than ghosting someone who's paying for a service. Or did you not write anything for the last 30 days prior to this one? If that was the case, seems odd.
Right-thinking people will not accept attempts to equate THIS: the well-documented relatively major violent actions of a host of lawbreakers (one candidate calls them hostages he will pardon on Day 1) with help of "lawmakers" inside the Capitol and in collusion with a failed 2020 candidate's deliberate, hidden, orchestrated misdeeds, broke into the U.S. Capitol in Joint Session for purpose of formally finalizing the 2020 electoral vote count) ...with THAT: the well-documented relatively minor violent actions of protesters who exceeded their First Amendment rights and got themselves arrested. Nor will they accept a binary view that one either accepts or rejects violence when humans are grayscale. Absolutes don't exist in real world. Nor will they accept an attempt to substitute Democrats writ large for Biden, and implicate him. My original comment was re Biden and Trump, not Democrats and Republicans, neither of which exist anymore as you asserted in your original commentary which spoke of conservative principle and objectivity regarding 2024 candidates. But your subsequent comments reveal your "excuse Trump and MAGA" slip is showing. Pretty badly, I might add.
Wow. Public protest being compared to a violent insurrection. Whataboutism at its most strident. A candidate to the highest court in the land is not supposed to be questioned about alleged misconduct? The FBI investigation of such misconduct curtailed by the chief executive in the march to overturn Roe v. Wade? And since when is a turnover of judges considered a transfer of power akin to a presidential election? Choice of words is revealing. The sense of conservative grievance appears to be proportional to the outrage at having their sense of privilege questioned.
We aren't off point at all. There are three branches of government -- Democrats attempted to prevent the peaceful transition in the judiciary.
Those are clear and openly available facts. That people believe preventing the Kavanaugh hearings was politically acceptable but preventing the Electoral College was an insurrection should raise questions in the minds of right-thinking people.
brilliantly thought out. My primary dissent is perhaps neither Donald Trump nor Joe Biden deserves your vote, but your country does. Please do what is best for America, and the future of us all, by not abdicating and allowing what you believe is worse.
Once again, a well-meaning conservative tries to convince us that both sides are at fault. Give it up. Your party has abandoned you. Whatever was going on two decades ago, only one party is trying to govern today. That is the bottom line no matter how many big words you try to use.
Oh not both sides.
Just one.
Well said as always, Shaun. I'm politically adjacent to you, former Republican. The party hates me more than Democrats. In fact, MAGA hates every GOP candidate of my adulthood, back to and including Reagan. Doesn't that make MAGA the RINO?
I respectfully disagree with Der below. A campaign to get Haley voters to sit out the election would be devastating to the GOP. MAGA wants them out. Take them up on the offer. Far easier than coaxing a Biden vote in these polarized times.
Appreciate the thoughtful response, Paul. For myself, I feel zero compunction to fall in line after being told off, knowing that nothing I care about as a conservative will actually be enacted as policy.
Here’s hoping for better times.
Be sure you understand that a non-vote for Democrats (MAGA vote, no vote, third party vote) = a MAGA vote. Frankly, The Former Guy & That Woman from GA scare me. Want to see US troops dying in the Baltics? Then let’s elect Putin enablers.
Did the Supreme Court protesters take an oath to protect and defend the constitution? Were they led by Biden, Obama, Clinton? Very different from J6 in a big way!
Were they inside the Supreme Court chambers physically threatening Justices? Perhaps I missed something. And now the thread moves to a stout defense and justification of the J6 people?
Unless there's to be discussion of my original point, viz peace transition. Biden or Trump, I'm done with the thread. You want the last word, and you have it.
Does that part matter? They were trying to interfere with the peaceful transference of power.
It sounds like you wanted them to succeed. How very J6 of you.
As the Nelson's have noted, it is weird to watch the rationalizations roll out so regularly that everyone does it. If it helps you and others deny us the horror of a 2nd Trump term though, I'll take it. Though I realize it's just as likely for it to be used by someone such as yourself to vote for him as against him. We'll see.
I can see why the Bard is your muse though, trying to find a solid point in your columns reminds me of translating 500 y/o English.
Still, it is interesting. If Haley had gotten the Republican nomination, I still likely would not have voted for her. But I would have considered her. And really not minded a bit if she won. In that I do not and did not see her as a baseline threat to democracy or rule of law.
But after close to a decade of Trump showing "conservatives" such as yourself how hollow your ideology is (life begins at conception, unless of course - it impedes Republicans getting the vote in the fall, in which case it is negotiable, etc.), the fact that you still have to use those rationalizations is telling.
You really cannot tell the difference between Kavanaugh's hearings, and January 6th?
Weird.
No longer surprising, but telling.
That's because you (and your friends) really do hate us... to the point that you cannot fathom considering the opinions of others.
Appreciate the comparison to Shakespeare. Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity brings to genius, etc.
Well if it makes you feel any better, reading your comments makes me feel a bit like Spock. In that I find your interpretation of someone noting how unusual they find your views as only being capable of happening if it is due to an emotional response like hate, rather than just confusion, or fascination...I find Mendelbrot sets fascinating, too, but that doesn't mean I hate them.
In your case, fascinating to see the lengths of rationalization you will go to in order to accommodate your party allegiance with your party's reality.
And how, after reading it, the squirms, the twists, the subjectivity - realizing that it is just as likely to mean that in the end, you will in fact, vote for Trump because you have found a means of rationalizing it (ie, they are all the same) as it does that you wont.
I do think the written record you provide will be of use to sociologists for years to come as they try to determine how otherwise normal, ethical, and decent people can be led in such a manner; both as a group and as individuals. I would never have believed it, if you would have asked me in 2015 - when there were so many better men and women representing the Republican party. But again, at this point, I no longer find it surprising and certainly not evoking of emotion - positive or negative. Just....fascinating.
TTFN.
I don’t understand how a person can hate someone so deeply for the crime of disagreement.
Odd.
Again, it is not hate.
Though I do admire your omniscient belief that you know the emotional states of people whom you've never met, merely by their posts on a smalltown message board, at the same time we are demanded to not make judgements about the sanity of your party's chosen representative unless we are board certified psychologists/psychiatrists AND we have personally examined him......
Though you are correct that it is disgust, distaste, and many other negative feelings as one sees the things you (Republicans) have brought us in the last few years.
Death, loss, debt, immorality, etc. Things that you, as a group and personally, claim is in fact DEMOCRATIC ideals, and yet you vote for it, time after time. Talk about transference.
You state it is all due your martyrdom for the "crime of disagreement" - without bothering to mention WHAT is being disagreed about.
Whether you justify your support as a group by saying you are "protecting children", making us great, or what ever mantra is the chant du jour; (though again, you as a group seem pretty selective in that protection to when it inconveniences anyone other than yourselves); you've given us unnecessary deaths, welfare for billionaires, an inflationary debt explosion, torture as a matter of policy, and the attempted overthrow of the Constitution and civil liberties - a threat which is ongoing, I might add (I will only be a Dictator on Day 1...), as you attempt, yet again, to bring someone found to have committed fraud, to have molested women, and is actively charged with dozens of felonies for other frauds, security threats, and that attempt to overthrow the government back to power again.
So yeah, when you wail about "the crime of disagreement", you might want to mention what that disagreement is about. It's not the Quakers who are bringing him back for the sequel. It's you. The Republican Party. You know, Glen Youngkin, Tara Durant, St Rob Wittman? You guys. The one you carry the standard for. You. If he gets in there again, it will be by your party's votes. Certainly not mine.
Again.
Rationalize it all you want.
If you hand a man a gun so he can kill all of your neighbors, and then find out they don't approve - not exactly sure you're the victim here. If you put him in the pilot's seat of a plane when he says he wants to crash it, again....
Though the fact you believe so is again, both fascinating and telling. But less so every time you say it.
Bless your heart.
PS If you need to go to your safe place for another 30 days, I understand.
Or if you and/or Mr Davis would rather I not call out your words - just refund my money and I won't mind that either. I'm a free will type of Baptist. So do what's right for you.
Though I will miss Ms Uphaus's work.
MIght be a bit more mature than ghosting someone who's paying for a service. Or did you not write anything for the last 30 days prior to this one? If that was the case, seems odd.
Anyway, moving on.
Kavanaugh confirmation not in same universe with Jan 6.
Only because the (Democratic) mob wasn't able to disrupt the transfer of power -- that time.
Guess fascism is cool when we call it democracy or something like that?
Ask yourself which candidate supports peaceful transition of power...
Ask Brett Kavanaugh.
My Republican friends are terrified of Trump because he is crazy.
Right-thinking people will not accept attempts to equate THIS: the well-documented relatively major violent actions of a host of lawbreakers (one candidate calls them hostages he will pardon on Day 1) with help of "lawmakers" inside the Capitol and in collusion with a failed 2020 candidate's deliberate, hidden, orchestrated misdeeds, broke into the U.S. Capitol in Joint Session for purpose of formally finalizing the 2020 electoral vote count) ...with THAT: the well-documented relatively minor violent actions of protesters who exceeded their First Amendment rights and got themselves arrested. Nor will they accept a binary view that one either accepts or rejects violence when humans are grayscale. Absolutes don't exist in real world. Nor will they accept an attempt to substitute Democrats writ large for Biden, and implicate him. My original comment was re Biden and Trump, not Democrats and Republicans, neither of which exist anymore as you asserted in your original commentary which spoke of conservative principle and objectivity regarding 2024 candidates. But your subsequent comments reveal your "excuse Trump and MAGA" slip is showing. Pretty badly, I might add.
That sounds like not just equivocation, but an attempt to justify a narrow, violent, and partisan effort to undermine the peaceful transfer of power.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna917351
No wonder the J6 folks left justified. All they have to do is repeat your argument on their behalf.
Wow. Public protest being compared to a violent insurrection. Whataboutism at its most strident. A candidate to the highest court in the land is not supposed to be questioned about alleged misconduct? The FBI investigation of such misconduct curtailed by the chief executive in the march to overturn Roe v. Wade? And since when is a turnover of judges considered a transfer of power akin to a presidential election? Choice of words is revealing. The sense of conservative grievance appears to be proportional to the outrage at having their sense of privilege questioned.
They attempted to storm the Senate hearings, Mary. Over 300 people were arrested.
How could you ignore this?
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna917351
We're way off point. Peaceful transition of Presidential power: which candidate?.
We aren't off point at all. There are three branches of government -- Democrats attempted to prevent the peaceful transition in the judiciary.
Those are clear and openly available facts. That people believe preventing the Kavanaugh hearings was politically acceptable but preventing the Electoral College was an insurrection should raise questions in the minds of right-thinking people.
Kavanaugh confirmation not violent, Jan 6 was.
The Kavanaugh confirmation protests most certainly were violent and sought to disrupt the Senate Judiciary hearings.
One cannot pick and choose re: violence. Either reject it in toto... or simply admit that you're okay with violence provided it helps your side out.
brilliantly thought out. My primary dissent is perhaps neither Donald Trump nor Joe Biden deserves your vote, but your country does. Please do what is best for America, and the future of us all, by not abdicating and allowing what you believe is worse.
Good point but offpoint. imo
How?