Drill Baby Drill...the US Politics Thread (Part 3)

Brilliant!

A couple of funny placards :0)

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Just edited or put down a few posts.

Remember: tackle the ideas, not the one putting them forward. This distinction is very important in order to have a proper discussion in here.

Going forward, all insults and personal attacks will be deleted.

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https://x.com/sentdefender/status/1933467125932286138

With protests coming precisely because these immigration actions are nothing at all to do with removing people here illegally, and certainly not the violent criminal element of that population.

It was only a couple of days ago I made the point that the main thing stopping the bottom falling out the support for what is happening is the complete disconnection between what is happening and what the administration is saying they are doing, and boot lickers just accepting the administration’s narratives on face value despite them having zero credibility on anything and the evidence falsifying their narratives on full display. Here now we see that in the flesh.

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That was primarily due to a change in how asylum cases were handled so it reduced the burden on the actual physical border and turned it into more of a paperwork issue.

But the bigger point is that border encounters as a metric is entirely an issue of flow of people and says nothing about an administration’s policy. It is as useful a metric for determining how many “illegals” are here as answering “I drive a Toyota” when someone asks you what you had for dinner and it puts in context the arguments being made by someone when they present those data in that way.

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basically working for Israel

The comments by two posters are not in good faith. Personally I think promoters and apologists for MAGA fascist murder plans do not deserve ‘debate’ but denigration or banning.

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I disagree with a lot of what Toro writes, but his (?) assertion that the Democrats are out of tune with the electorate is worth discussing at least.

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Yet the issue is being raised by someone who simply makes up what Dems support and whatever value there is in having that conversation is eliminated by that.

Is there a conversation ot be had about why there is a common sentiment opposing a dem policy that doesnt exist? Maybe, but the person in question would be a subject of that conversation not a participant in it

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No. This is the problem. If we can’t have civil discourse with people who have opposing viewpoints and different opinions to our own, then democracy will truly die. You disagree with what’s happening and blame the other party, but if you also forgo the ability to talk to someone with a differing opinion than your own how will the country ever heal and unite?

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Only if you don’t give a flying fuck about rule of law.
This is where principles count and hence being out of sync with the public is worth it.
No rule of law no justice, no constitution, no Congress, no senate, no law.
You can not ask the Democrats to forsake all that for popularity.
This isn’t about immigration it’s about values, decency and future. Let social media win and we’ve all had it.

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There’s no way to have discourse with that type of idiocy!
It’s not opposing views it’s down right lies against some semblance of truth.

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I think it is a fair point. The Democrats have work to do to get in tune with the electorate. Obviously a bad faith media hinders the process - online, TV, Trump’s incessant and unchecked lying, etc. It’s a real conundrum to work out where the platform is for the Dems to even get a message across. There are a few smallish outlets but Trump has them in his sights. He has won lawsuits and been paid handsomely by fearful media outlets, even when Trump was on the wrong side of it, such is the fear he now holds over many.

Still, it is a legitimate point that there is lots of work to do for the Dems. One might argue Bernie Sanders and AOC have been doing that, talking to people at numerous rally’s and so on, and that has gained traction. But there is much more to do.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle…

Let’s ask if the Republicans are in tune with the people.

As far as I am aware, the Republicans are so out of tune with the people that mass protests on the streets have been taking place because people do not like the authoritarian and illegal actions of the Republicans. That is the people, speaking clearly, to me. They don’t want it.

But Trump and MAGA largely control the messaging. Hence that lying hound, the dog-killer from Dakota, Kristi Noem, can do a press conference in LA about saving LA, and as the California Senator identifies himself and stands up to ask a question, he is man-handled out of there and cuffed.

The irony is enormous. Republicans are trampling over States rights!

There is some legitimacy to talking about the faults of the Democrats, but whatever they are, the much bigger faults of the Republican Party are on display, out in the open, and they are violently dismantling the country, on a number of levels.

Judges. Courts. Media. Colleges. Rule of law. Branches of government. Due process. Amendment rights. Regulatory bodies. Science. Etc. Etc.

All of it is being bent to the will of a despot.

And while it happens, it seems a little odd and disproportionate, to me, for someone to want to talk about the faults of the Democrats.

Imagine Rome is burning to the ground. Imagine Nero is playing his violin. Toro wants us to talk about whether or not one of the strings is a little out of tune :joy:

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It’s not really a lie to say the democratic party is out of touch with the American public. We just had an election that unfortunately shows the truth of that statement. I think it’s fascinating how different people who are all seemingly intelligent individuals can come to such a differing view of what is going on.

Has his opinion on the republican party changed in the past 6 months? Are the people that voted for Trump still all aboard the Trump express? Is there a bit of worry that things are starting to go off the rails? Are they satisfied and happy with the actions he’s taken? Instead of outrage and shaming let’s try and figure out why and where our opinions differ. And if your answer to why is to start name calling, that’s not really helpful. The self-righteousness that your opinions and beliefs are superior to others aren’t really beneficial and needs to be overcome for the sake of discussion.

He stated he doesn’t post much because he get’s attacked for offering opinions outside of the democratic party echo chamber and it appears he’s right.

Civil discourse. Never a bad thing. If we can’t accept criticism and try and do better as a whole (for both parties) how do we grow?

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That is not at all why he gets the reception he does. He gets the reception because he lies and refuses to engage with any of the responses put to him. the fact he would position it that way is in itself a perfect illustration of the way he conducts himself in these debates.

Throughout the campaign, Trump and Vance removed all commonly understood meaning from the concept of what it means to be here illegally to the point it became just a catch all term for people they don’t want to be here. This is the perspective this poster has aired through all of his participation in this conversation. He positions himself as simply someone who respects the popular sentiment on illegal immigration being bad and supports actions taken to address that, yet like Vance he completely disregards what legal status actually means. he not only has no understanding at all of how our immigration laws work he shown active lack of interest in understanding them. He argues that his positions come from just it it being common sense to pursue an aggressive policy against illegal immigration yet then as part of that defends actions taken against people who have legal status to be here. At least to me, I find that respectful debate is by definition not occurring when people employ these Motte and Bailey tactics and similar bad faith approaches.

This whole situation is not about not being able to respect and engage with difference of opinion or there being no room to air opinions outside of the Democratic mainstream. Its about someone with a very well developed track record for debating in bad faith. Someone who says things that are internally incoherent, refuses to engage with anything put to him addressing the limitations of his arguments, and then mocks people who do try to engage him and does so with strawman arguments. And then he acts like he is being treated unfairly when called out for it. People have given the respectful discussion and he has refused to engage with it and people are just tired of it.

Taking a step back, the above seems like a lot of effort to put into discrediting an individual poster, but I think the more important point is how representative it is to the entire MAGA movement. What is happening is happening because of a world view that has been created that is immune to reality and can continue to be spoken about by its adherents even when it is being directly refuted. Fuck, the fuckers will use falsification of their arguments as evidence of them.

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Precisely. And why they should be given no air, no respect, no oxygen. They need to be removed from the body politic

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There was a story last week where Trump claimed he told Newsome he was sending in the National Guard in a conversation the night before. Newsome denied that not only did Trump not tell him that but that there had been no conversation between them on that night. Trump then released a screen shot of his call log showing that he had indeed called Newsome. But it was from 2 days prior to when he said the call in question happened, and that was a call Newsome had been talking about publicly.

Trump had been caught in what was either a lie or a brain addled instance of confusion. He shared proof that he was right but that actually said no such thing, and MAGA world jumped on board all claiming Newsome had been shown to be a liar.

Me: “Ok guys, today is 10JUN. What is one day before 10JUN and how many days are there between that and this call log from 07JUN?”
MAGA: “Why do you support open borders?”

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Ironically Newsom until recently tried out that reaching out, having civil discourse with far-right figures. Hasn’t helped him much it seems.
To quote a contemporary german artist: ‘You don’t discuss with fascists, history taught us that’

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Precisely.