The claim that education make people stupid. For example, regarding the SARS-CoV-2 virus, it's disease Covid-19, and the vaccines, all one needed to do was to pay attention to only virologists, immunologists, epidemiologists, go only to valid scientific and medical web sites, watch Vincent Racaniello's college virology lectures and Brianne Barker's immunology lectures on youtube, listen to Vincent Racaniello's This Week in Virology (microbe.tv/twiv) podcast, etc, in other words educate yourself!
Stupid people support Trump for a variety of selfish, ignorant, narcissistic reasons. They made this problem in their support of the GOP and its lies told during elections and its appeal to their fear and sense of entitlement. Understand that the stupid people acted against the Civil Rights Act, they are not for individual rights, they fully supported the GOP's trickle-down and laissez-faire economic policies that created this mess. But they're too stupid to understand that they are the problem. They aren't educated enough to understand the connection between their choices, based on their beliefs, and the reality that they whine about. They are the problem.
I don't have any numbers, but there are Trump voters who knew every wart and failing he possessed; they voted for him anyway as a great "fuck you" to a system which in all seriousness presented us with a Hilary Clinton, and then, a Joe Biden.
Your "they are the problem" comment needs to be expanded greatly.
He absconded with the US presidency, it was a magic trick and he did it in plain sight, all while the elite snickered at him. It was certainly the greatest electoral feat in American history. The fact of trumps ascendency is beacon of hope - he defeated everything Caitlin rails against. Democracy worked in this case, but, never again has been the elite rallying cry ever since.
Trump was an unauthorized President and Caitlin is altogether right in this article - control the narrative, control allowable speech, control what and how we think is the game - it is obsessed over by the commentariat - and Trump defeated it.
Yes he was a bloviating incompetent ignoramus but that’s besides the point, his presidency was largely a nothing. Trump’s ascendency is the point, the greatest political feat in our lifetime and the fact that his presidency was completely incompetent, loathsome and crude is and was worth it.
The great hegemony of which Caitlin speaks is polite and proper and all gussied up with the trappings of wokeness - I will take the homespun Trump voter any time.
Let's not get carried away. Trump was just an unlikely elitist, is all. In fact, that's why Clinton and the DNC got behind his candidacy to begin with. He ran as a populist outsider (as many presidents have done before) and popularized the term deep state -- which was commendable -- but then tortured Assange. Once elected, he governed as your typical shitty republican president, the details of which I don't really need to itemize here.
Again, what's needed lies far outside what a Trump can deliver, and maintaining a Them-or-Trump dichotomy only keeps the current clownshow going. Trump may have infuriated the narrative, but he certainly didn't defeat it.
Yes agreed, my little screed went off track, I meant to say Trump was heterodox stylistically but brainlessly pursued orthodox GOP political goals. His genius was a fluke. He got it, felt it, channeled it, and some how he flaunted conventional wisdom and broke every rule of electoral politics and rode that chaos to victory. I know “greatest political feat ever “ is big but it is fitting, he broke the machine and his rudeness was for me a bonus a gift from heaven, he was colon hydrotherapy for our masters.
Trump offered change in a change year election. This took no genius. On the democratic side Sanders drew enormous crowds doing the same thing, until he was kneecapped by the Obama/Clinton axis of evil. Trump -- the salesman -- knew what Americans were buying. That's all.
No, much bigger - sui generous - look at the ferocity of the counter action, the elite have gone insane. Caitlin suggests the elite are showing signs that their manipulations and machinations are in trouble, their motivation increasingly plain to see and that is cause for hope. I don’t share that conclusion but as usual she expresses herself well.
Say what you will about "typical shitty republican," at least the Republican Party was democratic enough that it was theoretically possible for him to win. The GOP is apparently somewhat capable of reform, not under complete domination by the elites. The asses are not. They'd best go the way of the Whigs. Any 3rd party candidate is better than a Dem.
Hilarious! Trump labelled the 'Elitist' by you? I'm wondering if you aren't the They yourself now... And you have the nerve to bad-mouth Trump for even trying...do you know how dangerous that was? As to Assange, Trump would have pardoned him but his 'advisors' in the Military/Brown Shirt Bureaucracies convinced him not too. The rule of law and all that... He was played, he didn't understand, like most, just how deep the DS really is. And as written by you above, well, the They's propaganda is still very much alive and well. Orange Man BAD! Just keep that front and center...
That's your answer? Sorry but that's what I said, guess you didn't read it. You seem Hell bent though on trashing Trump who was indeed an outsider to the Swamp. How about you reply to that? He had never held political office. And he used his own money in the Primary because he knew the fake Republicans would not back him..., because he was not sold out already. And he called out the no-good lying Fake News to the point they crapped their pants on live TV many times (how happy that made me, still feel the goose-bumps of truth being said), and they have not recovered to this day! But, you, take pot shots from the side lines, which is a huge Tell. I think you are a part of the whole defamation campaign yourself? Talk about a Cult... Sorry, but I'm not about to trash Trump as a cultist, he actually was after the pedo's (4th Floor Murderer's) and other assorted trash we call our elected politicians, judges, and Administrative State. They feared him and they really had no one to fear till then...
My take is that the establishment indeed threw everything they had against him; he didn't help himself by running a pretty dismal re-election campaign and surrounding himself with some pretty dismal swamp creatures.
It was all rigged, top to bottom, even the election and so much more... You believe the voting just stopped in the middle of the night? Hilarious. That all kinds of 'mail-in' voters were just found? You believe the leaked narrative one week ahead of the AZ audit canvass saying, "Biden won!" wasn't propaganda from the legacy media/CIA/as instructed by Vanguard Etc., when they knew what the canvass really found? Tell me you believe the results from all the foreign servers etc. #LMAO! Trump had to Go! He was a neophyte in the Swamp, the most honest person there in reality. He did one BIG HUGE thing however, he called them out to their smarmy faces: FAKE NEWS! He does not get near enough credit for that..., he used their own networks to do it too! How I loved that. Genius! That alone was worth his presidency! And now we have Biden as Vanguard/BlackRock's new Puppet. So much better...#LMAO sadly again! They are back in power, but they have taken a lot of incoming...and are going to get some more it looks like.
OK that’s it Jackie speaks for me. I find it amazing that people who recognize this illiberal moment for what it is )like Riff and Caitlin) can’t see past Trumps personal foibles. Mr. Trump gamed the system and stole the Oval Office. This is the system of elites that you decry and he beat it. What gives? Don’t you understand that Trump was a victory for people who want to reject global hegemonic imperial power. Trump thought the establishment were hypocrites and said it every chance he had. As Jackie says - genius. Insofar as Trump was a liar it was out of incompetence and combativeness. The elite are so much smoother and refined in there lies - I believe that is Caitlin’s enduring analysis and constant theme.
Aside from such shenanigans, Trump ran a shitty re-election campaign and during his tenure surrounded himself with some shitty swamp people, one assumes willingly (Bolton, Pompeo, Addelson come to mind). There is no "They" who are responsible for that and Trump fanboys (or gals) need to own that. Your unwillingness to see this constitutes a weakness in your arguments as glaring as those Obamaphiles who still maintain that his greatness was done in by those mean republicans.
It was a fluke, the They couldn't get ahead of it fast enough to rig it, their software and servers etc. just weren't capable of dealing with it, they made some strategic errors and the Public was no longer quite so Educated/Propagandized as before and over voted them. The They fixed it though this time didn't They? All better now...
I absolutely agree. However, all of them that I know personally ended their support when it became obvious that he is an incompetent with no concern for what they value, that he incessantly lied often with no reason to, his refusal to take responsible action in our interest, and his alignment with GOP policies that they never supported.
To clarify, I'm referring to those that now support him. They are a big problem in this country and pose an existential threat to our democracy and to the very concept of equal opportunity that we had and to every functional ecosystem that we have left.
In attempting to weigh calamities, I would call the current liberal embrace of institutions like the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA, combined with their calls for social media monopolies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google to further censor and monitor their users' content, along with the MSM silence regarding the false imprisoning of Julian Assange, their weaponization of identity politics, and their assimilation of Bush-era war criminals into their fold, to give anything Trump supporters have cooked up a real run for their money when it comes to engendering an "existential threat to our democracy."
Why would I reconsider my statement? This isn't about labels, such as your use of "liberal" that implies that I am somehow accusing "conservatives" of being Trump supporters and therefore calling "conservatives" stupid. Far from it as a lot of Trump supporters are far more liberal than I am as they are libertarian, just to the right of the most extreme liberals, anarchists.
Trump promised to drain the swamp and made it worse. His supporters ignore that and lie about it. He did nothing to reverse Bush's and Obama's policies with regards to those agencies and their anti-democratic behavior. His problem with them was that he made himself a target with his lies about his Russian contacts, his attempts at Russian deals, his desire to get Russian help with his campaign and his obstruction into the investigation that those actions brought on.
Trump and his supporters, including elected GOP officials, participated in lying and providing misleading information that resulted in this mess. While calls for censoring such statements is understandable as a democracy requires an informed electorate, I don't know who would be the fair gatekeeper. The stupid among us have shown zero interest in determining the objective reality as they have proven themselves immune from facts.
I'm not trying to imply anything, and I used the term liberal as that is the label commonly used to describe them, however far their politics have strayed from classic liberal values. Political labels are quite meaningless these days but come in handy for posts such as these. I thought my context was clear enough. I agree that this isn't about labels, and I don't buy into the democratic/republican spats that only benefit those in maintaining our rotten status quo: Bush got us Obama who got us Trump who got us Biden. The mess is uninterrupted. They're all rotten as far as I'm concerned, because the system by which they are elevated is itself corrupted.
To the point: Your post identified die-hard Trump supporters as those who pose an existential threat to our democracy (kind of an overused and misused phrase at this point; like we've got this pristine thing in danger of being ruined by this or that faction); I believe those on the democratic side along with establishment republicans who oppose Trump pose at least as big of a threat as Trump's dead-enders. It was this idea I was asking you to consider. Perhaps you already account for this, but your post didn't make that case.
Trump pulled shady deals with the Ukraine and his sycophants don't seem to care that he lies and those who opposed him spread CIA BS about him being Putin's puppet and pee tapes and don't seem to care about those lies either. I find both sides rotten and unworthy of my support.
Trump himself brought on the investigation by a) lying about his ties to Russians, (b) lied about his Russian deals, (c) sought campaign help from Russians, and (d) obstructed the investigation.
That the CIA, FBI and other agencies are not good guys isn't the issue here. What is is that Trump did act in a way that focused the investigation on him. He's a serial liar and can't seem to help it but had he told the investigators the truth about his Russian ties and deals and hadn't sought Russian help, he wouldn't have been investigated. He brought that on himself.
Re: your claim that Democratic voters are at least as big a threat as Trump supporters:
Show me where the Democratic voters have acted to suppress voting or tried to overturn an election. Look at what happened when the GOP SCOTUS stopped the vote in Florida that would have found Gore the real winner had the count gone to completion. The Democratic voters did nothing but complain about GOP behavior and SCOTUS interference.
Trump supporters acted to overturn the election because they believed a lie. They refused to evaluate reality and the objective evidence that there was no fraud, as reported by every state's election officials, including Republicans. Trump supporters are an existential threat as they operate on conspiracy theories and not reality.
I try to stick with the original definition of political terms and not the twisted ones that we hear all the time.
To the point of Caitin's post, she states that "It Takes A Lot Of Education To Keep Us This Stupid", which I reject because all one need do is perform true research and one will find objective facts. For example, with regards of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, Covid-19, masks, distancing, its vaccines, etc, all one need do is to reference valid textbooks and look at valid scientific sites and ignore all others. for example, Vincent Racaniello provides his virology lectures and Brianne Barker her immunology lectures on youtube, check them out. He also provides the This Week in Virology podcast (microbe.tv/twiv) that provides objective information.
So, education is the answer. Her allegation about an elite controlling the message goes only as far as an individual's laziness goes. How many anti-vaxxers and Covid-19 is a hoax supporters ever tried to get an education? None. The objective truth is there, just look for it, such as on scholar.google.com, not some conspiracy theory site. Stupid, lazy people are the problem.
So, the problem with the MSM is not that it's complicit in some grand game, it's that reporters and journalist aren't competent enough to report more accurately. Vincent Racaniello disusses this ad nauseum. For example, vaccines do NOT prevent infection, they help reduce the risk of more sever illness, so why does the media say things like "the vaccines fail to prevent infection"?
Hilarious, and Who are you? That you want to keep the They vs Them, Blue vs Red 5th Gen Warfare narrative going? Your science as the only Science, or whatever. All 'science' is now social science and it is controlled at the college, academic and bureaucratic levels. You don't know that? There are some dissenting voices but they risk losing their 'licenses'. And the 'Stupid People' narrative so well-done, Pal. We know now that you are the 'narcissistic' person with the right 'reasons', from the Propaganda Central Committee. This is completely off topic as well in many respects but, certainly on topic for the us vs them argument(s) subtrafuge. The Civil Rights Act? Really? #LMAO!
LOL! Blame the messenger, right? It is an "us v them" situation because of the GOP and their supporters, period. Nixon started this division with his Southern Strategy (https://www.southerncultures.org/article/southern-strategy-from-nixon-to-trump/) in an attempt to gain support of whites who opposed desegregation and equal opportunity for blacks. The Divisiveness is from the sense of white entitlement that the GOP took advantage of whereas the Democrats fought for equal rights and lost enough white support to further GOP priorities that act against the interests of the GOP base.
The 'stupid people' narrative is spot on as these people are either stupid, they refuse to educate themselves as to the scientific facts about the virus, covid-19 and the vaccines, or they know better and use the existing stupidity for GOP partisan purposes.
There is objective reality and the narrative of conspiracy theories deludes people into thinking that there isn't, that there are two sides to every fact. There is not.
Jeff Bliss writes more like someone in the Matrix, he is not alone and your own comment underlines that. Just saying...but, Caitlin is right we are still winning out here on the Outside.
The Civil Rights Act could not have passed without Republican support. Republicans voted overwhelmingly for the bill. Since the "southern strategy," its true the Republicans have welcomed many racists into their ranks, but you lie about the CRA, and the "southern strategy" has lost its charm for Republicans, who are now arguably less racist than Democrats. Note Republicans voted overwhelmingly for the bill and for cloture in the Senate. From Wikipedia:
By party
The record of the roll call vote kept by the House Clerk on final passage of the bill
I know that the majority of Republicans voted for the CRA, but those aren't the people I am talking about, those are the electorate who considered themselves "conservative", who Nixon called the "silent majority". The conservative Southern Democrats left the Democratic Party and joined the Republicans, primarily for their state's rights position, as Goldwater argued.
I was pretty excited when AOC first came in the scene. But, then between her pic of her, her mother and Pelosi on her Twitter page....and the Netflix propaganda "documentary" about her rise to power, I knew once again they tried to fool me. Now, I simply don't vote. Why? Tell me it matters.....
You should just say between Vanguard, BlackRock, and the Others it's hard to tell which has the most ass-crazy cult. But leave Trump out, he actually wasn't bought and paid for...he tried to work within the They's Swamp and the They certainly fixed his wagon, didn't They?
...and transferred a gazillion dollars to Wall Street
Facts can never win a battle against belief. Any one of these is enough to show there was no swamp-draining going on. "Draining the Swamp" is merely "Hope and Change" for the QAnon crowd.
Just to be clear, are you saying that you believe that Trump does not also have a cult of personality just as obtuse as those other politicians I mentioned?
To split lines here, Obama offered the hope of a progressive and he turned out to be no more than a moderate Republican, to the left of the GOP, but certainly no progressive. So, those that gave him a chance and came to disappointment are not stupid, they accept the reality of his failings. Those that continue to apologize for him are stupid as they fail to see those failings.
What unlawful foreclosures? OK, list the actual laws that Obama would have used to prosecute those in the financial industry for the subprime mortgage crisis.
Not good enough. Find actual information that indicates that they had evidence that they did something prosecutable and link to those stories.
The problem here is in the deregulation that was the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that repealed the Glass-Steagall Act. What was once illegal, such as a bank participating in speculation, was no longer. The problem was that there were areas that were not regulated, such as in the mortgage brokerage business. Regulated banks had rules to apply when granting loans that mortgage brokers didn't. So, while a regulated bank could grant subprime loans, it had to qualify the borrower and have more reserves to handle the additional risk of those borrowers.
Mortgage brokers didn't. They sold high risk subprime loans to everyone because those brought the highest price when the loan was sold to Wall Street because of the higher interest rates for investors. They sold subprime loans to fully qualified customers too. People defaulted on their loans. They were lawfully foreclosed, regardless of how they were sold the loan.
The claim that education make people stupid. For example, regarding the SARS-CoV-2 virus, it's disease Covid-19, and the vaccines, all one needed to do was to pay attention to only virologists, immunologists, epidemiologists, go only to valid scientific and medical web sites, watch Vincent Racaniello's college virology lectures and Brianne Barker's immunology lectures on youtube, listen to Vincent Racaniello's This Week in Virology (microbe.tv/twiv) podcast, etc, in other words educate yourself!
Stupid people support Trump for a variety of selfish, ignorant, narcissistic reasons. They made this problem in their support of the GOP and its lies told during elections and its appeal to their fear and sense of entitlement. Understand that the stupid people acted against the Civil Rights Act, they are not for individual rights, they fully supported the GOP's trickle-down and laissez-faire economic policies that created this mess. But they're too stupid to understand that they are the problem. They aren't educated enough to understand the connection between their choices, based on their beliefs, and the reality that they whine about. They are the problem.
I don't have any numbers, but there are Trump voters who knew every wart and failing he possessed; they voted for him anyway as a great "fuck you" to a system which in all seriousness presented us with a Hilary Clinton, and then, a Joe Biden.
Your "they are the problem" comment needs to be expanded greatly.
I’m a big fan of Trump.
He absconded with the US presidency, it was a magic trick and he did it in plain sight, all while the elite snickered at him. It was certainly the greatest electoral feat in American history. The fact of trumps ascendency is beacon of hope - he defeated everything Caitlin rails against. Democracy worked in this case, but, never again has been the elite rallying cry ever since.
Trump was an unauthorized President and Caitlin is altogether right in this article - control the narrative, control allowable speech, control what and how we think is the game - it is obsessed over by the commentariat - and Trump defeated it.
Yes he was a bloviating incompetent ignoramus but that’s besides the point, his presidency was largely a nothing. Trump’s ascendency is the point, the greatest political feat in our lifetime and the fact that his presidency was completely incompetent, loathsome and crude is and was worth it.
The great hegemony of which Caitlin speaks is polite and proper and all gussied up with the trappings of wokeness - I will take the homespun Trump voter any time.
Let's not get carried away. Trump was just an unlikely elitist, is all. In fact, that's why Clinton and the DNC got behind his candidacy to begin with. He ran as a populist outsider (as many presidents have done before) and popularized the term deep state -- which was commendable -- but then tortured Assange. Once elected, he governed as your typical shitty republican president, the details of which I don't really need to itemize here.
Again, what's needed lies far outside what a Trump can deliver, and maintaining a Them-or-Trump dichotomy only keeps the current clownshow going. Trump may have infuriated the narrative, but he certainly didn't defeat it.
Yes agreed, my little screed went off track, I meant to say Trump was heterodox stylistically but brainlessly pursued orthodox GOP political goals. His genius was a fluke. He got it, felt it, channeled it, and some how he flaunted conventional wisdom and broke every rule of electoral politics and rode that chaos to victory. I know “greatest political feat ever “ is big but it is fitting, he broke the machine and his rudeness was for me a bonus a gift from heaven, he was colon hydrotherapy for our masters.
Trump offered change in a change year election. This took no genius. On the democratic side Sanders drew enormous crowds doing the same thing, until he was kneecapped by the Obama/Clinton axis of evil. Trump -- the salesman -- knew what Americans were buying. That's all.
No, much bigger - sui generous - look at the ferocity of the counter action, the elite have gone insane. Caitlin suggests the elite are showing signs that their manipulations and machinations are in trouble, their motivation increasingly plain to see and that is cause for hope. I don’t share that conclusion but as usual she expresses herself well.
Say what you will about "typical shitty republican," at least the Republican Party was democratic enough that it was theoretically possible for him to win. The GOP is apparently somewhat capable of reform, not under complete domination by the elites. The asses are not. They'd best go the way of the Whigs. Any 3rd party candidate is better than a Dem.
According to polls both party's leadership is way out of step with their grassroots, the democrats believably moreso.
Hilarious! Trump labelled the 'Elitist' by you? I'm wondering if you aren't the They yourself now... And you have the nerve to bad-mouth Trump for even trying...do you know how dangerous that was? As to Assange, Trump would have pardoned him but his 'advisors' in the Military/Brown Shirt Bureaucracies convinced him not too. The rule of law and all that... He was played, he didn't understand, like most, just how deep the DS really is. And as written by you above, well, the They's propaganda is still very much alive and well. Orange Man BAD! Just keep that front and center...
Anyone who empowers someone like Pompeo is not serious about fighting the deep state, and never was. Period.
That's your answer? Sorry but that's what I said, guess you didn't read it. You seem Hell bent though on trashing Trump who was indeed an outsider to the Swamp. How about you reply to that? He had never held political office. And he used his own money in the Primary because he knew the fake Republicans would not back him..., because he was not sold out already. And he called out the no-good lying Fake News to the point they crapped their pants on live TV many times (how happy that made me, still feel the goose-bumps of truth being said), and they have not recovered to this day! But, you, take pot shots from the side lines, which is a huge Tell. I think you are a part of the whole defamation campaign yourself? Talk about a Cult... Sorry, but I'm not about to trash Trump as a cultist, he actually was after the pedo's (4th Floor Murderer's) and other assorted trash we call our elected politicians, judges, and Administrative State. They feared him and they really had no one to fear till then...
Trump was the only one not playing the 'They's' tune and so, he was taken out. If you didn't notice that then...whatever.
My take is that the establishment indeed threw everything they had against him; he didn't help himself by running a pretty dismal re-election campaign and surrounding himself with some pretty dismal swamp creatures.
It was all rigged, top to bottom, even the election and so much more... You believe the voting just stopped in the middle of the night? Hilarious. That all kinds of 'mail-in' voters were just found? You believe the leaked narrative one week ahead of the AZ audit canvass saying, "Biden won!" wasn't propaganda from the legacy media/CIA/as instructed by Vanguard Etc., when they knew what the canvass really found? Tell me you believe the results from all the foreign servers etc. #LMAO! Trump had to Go! He was a neophyte in the Swamp, the most honest person there in reality. He did one BIG HUGE thing however, he called them out to their smarmy faces: FAKE NEWS! He does not get near enough credit for that..., he used their own networks to do it too! How I loved that. Genius! That alone was worth his presidency! And now we have Biden as Vanguard/BlackRock's new Puppet. So much better...#LMAO sadly again! They are back in power, but they have taken a lot of incoming...and are going to get some more it looks like.
OK that’s it Jackie speaks for me. I find it amazing that people who recognize this illiberal moment for what it is )like Riff and Caitlin) can’t see past Trumps personal foibles. Mr. Trump gamed the system and stole the Oval Office. This is the system of elites that you decry and he beat it. What gives? Don’t you understand that Trump was a victory for people who want to reject global hegemonic imperial power. Trump thought the establishment were hypocrites and said it every chance he had. As Jackie says - genius. Insofar as Trump was a liar it was out of incompetence and combativeness. The elite are so much smoother and refined in there lies - I believe that is Caitlin’s enduring analysis and constant theme.
Aside from such shenanigans, Trump ran a shitty re-election campaign and during his tenure surrounded himself with some shitty swamp people, one assumes willingly (Bolton, Pompeo, Addelson come to mind). There is no "They" who are responsible for that and Trump fanboys (or gals) need to own that. Your unwillingness to see this constitutes a weakness in your arguments as glaring as those Obamaphiles who still maintain that his greatness was done in by those mean republicans.
His 2016 victory was a fluke based on intuition and his intuition let him down the second time.
Nah, I think Trump won. No one can convince me that 81 million people voted for a dementia patient.
It was a fluke, the They couldn't get ahead of it fast enough to rig it, their software and servers etc. just weren't capable of dealing with it, they made some strategic errors and the Public was no longer quite so Educated/Propagandized as before and over voted them. The They fixed it though this time didn't They? All better now...
Not sure what you mean by they’s tune
I absolutely agree. However, all of them that I know personally ended their support when it became obvious that he is an incompetent with no concern for what they value, that he incessantly lied often with no reason to, his refusal to take responsible action in our interest, and his alignment with GOP policies that they never supported.
To clarify, I'm referring to those that now support him. They are a big problem in this country and pose an existential threat to our democracy and to the very concept of equal opportunity that we had and to every functional ecosystem that we have left.
In attempting to weigh calamities, I would call the current liberal embrace of institutions like the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA, combined with their calls for social media monopolies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google to further censor and monitor their users' content, along with the MSM silence regarding the false imprisoning of Julian Assange, their weaponization of identity politics, and their assimilation of Bush-era war criminals into their fold, to give anything Trump supporters have cooked up a real run for their money when it comes to engendering an "existential threat to our democracy."
You may wish to reconsider your statement.
Why would I reconsider my statement? This isn't about labels, such as your use of "liberal" that implies that I am somehow accusing "conservatives" of being Trump supporters and therefore calling "conservatives" stupid. Far from it as a lot of Trump supporters are far more liberal than I am as they are libertarian, just to the right of the most extreme liberals, anarchists.
Trump promised to drain the swamp and made it worse. His supporters ignore that and lie about it. He did nothing to reverse Bush's and Obama's policies with regards to those agencies and their anti-democratic behavior. His problem with them was that he made himself a target with his lies about his Russian contacts, his attempts at Russian deals, his desire to get Russian help with his campaign and his obstruction into the investigation that those actions brought on.
Trump and his supporters, including elected GOP officials, participated in lying and providing misleading information that resulted in this mess. While calls for censoring such statements is understandable as a democracy requires an informed electorate, I don't know who would be the fair gatekeeper. The stupid among us have shown zero interest in determining the objective reality as they have proven themselves immune from facts.
I'm not trying to imply anything, and I used the term liberal as that is the label commonly used to describe them, however far their politics have strayed from classic liberal values. Political labels are quite meaningless these days but come in handy for posts such as these. I thought my context was clear enough. I agree that this isn't about labels, and I don't buy into the democratic/republican spats that only benefit those in maintaining our rotten status quo: Bush got us Obama who got us Trump who got us Biden. The mess is uninterrupted. They're all rotten as far as I'm concerned, because the system by which they are elevated is itself corrupted.
To the point: Your post identified die-hard Trump supporters as those who pose an existential threat to our democracy (kind of an overused and misused phrase at this point; like we've got this pristine thing in danger of being ruined by this or that faction); I believe those on the democratic side along with establishment republicans who oppose Trump pose at least as big of a threat as Trump's dead-enders. It was this idea I was asking you to consider. Perhaps you already account for this, but your post didn't make that case.
Trump pulled shady deals with the Ukraine and his sycophants don't seem to care that he lies and those who opposed him spread CIA BS about him being Putin's puppet and pee tapes and don't seem to care about those lies either. I find both sides rotten and unworthy of my support.
Re: your statement of Trump being Putin's puppet:
Trump himself brought on the investigation by a) lying about his ties to Russians, (b) lied about his Russian deals, (c) sought campaign help from Russians, and (d) obstructed the investigation.
That the CIA, FBI and other agencies are not good guys isn't the issue here. What is is that Trump did act in a way that focused the investigation on him. He's a serial liar and can't seem to help it but had he told the investigators the truth about his Russian ties and deals and hadn't sought Russian help, he wouldn't have been investigated. He brought that on himself.
Re: your claim that Democratic voters are at least as big a threat as Trump supporters:
Show me where the Democratic voters have acted to suppress voting or tried to overturn an election. Look at what happened when the GOP SCOTUS stopped the vote in Florida that would have found Gore the real winner had the count gone to completion. The Democratic voters did nothing but complain about GOP behavior and SCOTUS interference.
Re: the Existential threat to our democracy:
Trump supporters acted to overturn the election because they believed a lie. They refused to evaluate reality and the objective evidence that there was no fraud, as reported by every state's election officials, including Republicans. Trump supporters are an existential threat as they operate on conspiracy theories and not reality.
I try to stick with the original definition of political terms and not the twisted ones that we hear all the time.
To the point of Caitin's post, she states that "It Takes A Lot Of Education To Keep Us This Stupid", which I reject because all one need do is perform true research and one will find objective facts. For example, with regards of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, Covid-19, masks, distancing, its vaccines, etc, all one need do is to reference valid textbooks and look at valid scientific sites and ignore all others. for example, Vincent Racaniello provides his virology lectures and Brianne Barker her immunology lectures on youtube, check them out. He also provides the This Week in Virology podcast (microbe.tv/twiv) that provides objective information.
So, education is the answer. Her allegation about an elite controlling the message goes only as far as an individual's laziness goes. How many anti-vaxxers and Covid-19 is a hoax supporters ever tried to get an education? None. The objective truth is there, just look for it, such as on scholar.google.com, not some conspiracy theory site. Stupid, lazy people are the problem.
So, the problem with the MSM is not that it's complicit in some grand game, it's that reporters and journalist aren't competent enough to report more accurately. Vincent Racaniello disusses this ad nauseum. For example, vaccines do NOT prevent infection, they help reduce the risk of more sever illness, so why does the media say things like "the vaccines fail to prevent infection"?
Caitlin needs to develop her thesis more.
Hilarious, and Who are you? That you want to keep the They vs Them, Blue vs Red 5th Gen Warfare narrative going? Your science as the only Science, or whatever. All 'science' is now social science and it is controlled at the college, academic and bureaucratic levels. You don't know that? There are some dissenting voices but they risk losing their 'licenses'. And the 'Stupid People' narrative so well-done, Pal. We know now that you are the 'narcissistic' person with the right 'reasons', from the Propaganda Central Committee. This is completely off topic as well in many respects but, certainly on topic for the us vs them argument(s) subtrafuge. The Civil Rights Act? Really? #LMAO!
LOL! Blame the messenger, right? It is an "us v them" situation because of the GOP and their supporters, period. Nixon started this division with his Southern Strategy (https://www.southerncultures.org/article/southern-strategy-from-nixon-to-trump/) in an attempt to gain support of whites who opposed desegregation and equal opportunity for blacks. The Divisiveness is from the sense of white entitlement that the GOP took advantage of whereas the Democrats fought for equal rights and lost enough white support to further GOP priorities that act against the interests of the GOP base.
The 'stupid people' narrative is spot on as these people are either stupid, they refuse to educate themselves as to the scientific facts about the virus, covid-19 and the vaccines, or they know better and use the existing stupidity for GOP partisan purposes.
There is objective reality and the narrative of conspiracy theories deludes people into thinking that there isn't, that there are two sides to every fact. There is not.
Written like a true partisan Democrat.
Jeff Bliss writes more like someone in the Matrix, he is not alone and your own comment underlines that. Just saying...but, Caitlin is right we are still winning out here on the Outside.
Nope. Written by someone who understands that the GOP and its supporters are the problem, have been since the signing of the Civil Rights Act.
The Civil Rights Act could not have passed without Republican support. Republicans voted overwhelmingly for the bill. Since the "southern strategy," its true the Republicans have welcomed many racists into their ranks, but you lie about the CRA, and the "southern strategy" has lost its charm for Republicans, who are now arguably less racist than Democrats. Note Republicans voted overwhelmingly for the bill and for cloture in the Senate. From Wikipedia:
By party
The record of the roll call vote kept by the House Clerk on final passage of the bill
The original House version:[30]
Democratic Party: 152–96 (61–39%)
Republican Party: 138–34 (80–20%)
Cloture in the Senate:[31]
Democratic Party: 44–23 (66–34%)
Republican Party: 27–6 (82–18%)
The Senate version:[30]
Democratic Party: 46–21 (69–31%)
Republican Party: 27–6 (82–18%)
The Senate version, voted on by the House:[30]
Democratic Party: 153–91 (63–37%)
Republican Party: 136–35 (80–20%)
I know that the majority of Republicans voted for the CRA, but those aren't the people I am talking about, those are the electorate who considered themselves "conservative", who Nixon called the "silent majority". The conservative Southern Democrats left the Democratic Party and joined the Republicans, primarily for their state's rights position, as Goldwater argued.
Stupid people support Barack Obama too.
Between Trump, Obama, AOC, and Clinton, it's hard to tell which has the most ass-crazy cult of personality going for it.
I was pretty excited when AOC first came in the scene. But, then between her pic of her, her mother and Pelosi on her Twitter page....and the Netflix propaganda "documentary" about her rise to power, I knew once again they tried to fool me. Now, I simply don't vote. Why? Tell me it matters.....
Hey, I was excited voting for Obama the first time. Then he picked his cabinet...
You should just say between Vanguard, BlackRock, and the Others it's hard to tell which has the most ass-crazy cult. But leave Trump out, he actually wasn't bought and paid for...he tried to work within the They's Swamp and the They certainly fixed his wagon, didn't They?
Trump picked Mnuchin. That tells me everything I need to know about Trump's claim of draining the swamp.
...and picked Pompeo
...and bombed Syria
...and supported Israel
...and sanctioned Venezuela
...and locked up Assange
...and transferred a gazillion dollars to Wall Street
Facts can never win a battle against belief. Any one of these is enough to show there was no swamp-draining going on. "Draining the Swamp" is merely "Hope and Change" for the QAnon crowd.
Oh, I see. "They all have a cult of personality except my guy." Right.
That's not what I said and you know it. You are Telling on yourself, sorry to say.
Just to be clear, are you saying that you believe that Trump does not also have a cult of personality just as obtuse as those other politicians I mentioned?
To split lines here, Obama offered the hope of a progressive and he turned out to be no more than a moderate Republican, to the left of the GOP, but certainly no progressive. So, those that gave him a chance and came to disappointment are not stupid, they accept the reality of his failings. Those that continue to apologize for him are stupid as they fail to see those failings.
Anyone who continues to support Obama after watching him allow 15 mil unlawful foreclosures while allowing the crooks to escape prosecution is stupid.
What unlawful foreclosures? OK, list the actual laws that Obama would have used to prosecute those in the financial industry for the subprime mortgage crisis.
Forgery
Securities Fraud
Wire Fraud
Mail Fraud
Fraud Upon the Courts
Not good enough. Find actual information that indicates that they had evidence that they did something prosecutable and link to those stories.
The problem here is in the deregulation that was the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that repealed the Glass-Steagall Act. What was once illegal, such as a bank participating in speculation, was no longer. The problem was that there were areas that were not regulated, such as in the mortgage brokerage business. Regulated banks had rules to apply when granting loans that mortgage brokers didn't. So, while a regulated bank could grant subprime loans, it had to qualify the borrower and have more reserves to handle the additional risk of those borrowers.
Mortgage brokers didn't. They sold high risk subprime loans to everyone because those brought the highest price when the loan was sold to Wall Street because of the higher interest rates for investors. They sold subprime loans to fully qualified customers too. People defaulted on their loans. They were lawfully foreclosed, regardless of how they were sold the loan.