MAGA rioters storm the Senate

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

We aren't judging the entire movement by Some Nutters, and "nutters" is a pretty wishy-washy term for an armed force moving to kidnap and kill American legislators.

But the mob? We aren't judging people who have nothing to do with it. We are judging the President, who initiated the mob. We are judging the members of congress who funded their trips, who showed them strategic weak points in the capital on private tours, who promoted the lie that they used as a fig-leaf to cover their naked power grab. Most of all, we are judging every single person who enabled him, who supported him, who fell in line behind him, which is pretty damn near every elected official in the Republican party. We are judging them for helping him accrue power, helping him override the norms and rules of our Democracy, for refusing to impeach him when it was beyond clear what he had done, and now? For hemming and hawing and saying "yes what he did was wrong, but he's learned his lesson", again, just like they have every time before. We are blaming them for calling anyone who expressed fears about this EXACT THING happening hysterical and overreacting and crybabies.

Romney is a marginally decent man with a soul that he still has legal ownership of and a spine in his back. The rest of the Republican senate can go piss on an electric fence, and for any Republican at any level of power who doesn't deserve to fuck themselves with a hot-sauce-lubed cactus, there are a dozen others who do.

[GreyICE]

Riedquat, I get that you're trying to be the voice of reason pointing out how the polarization of both sides hurts us all, but on this matter... no.

A key cornerstone of the American Republic, the peaceful transfer of power, has been assaulted, all from one man's delusion spreading to his followers out of his fragile, manchild ego being unable to handle losing. ...

Yes, they completely and utterly crossed the line. But dismissing and demonsing an entire position because it's attracted some nutters is, well, history's full of it, quite honestly. It's burying your head in the sand to what brought about that situation in the first place, a very rigid, unforgiving, intolerant (whatever they claim, which is why they're such hypocrites) norm. Even if it's general stance is the less obnoxious (if you've got to over-simplify into a them versus us position) it needs to accept its responsibility in what it's created. Why had the situation deteriorated so much that enough people were prepared to start considering what looks quite extreme?

It's happened time and time again throughout history. Mainstream shuts out a group, group gets more extreme due to being shut out, and that extremism is used to further demonise that group. People retreat more and more to brainlessly over-simplified black and white positions, saying the other's scum, and conflict ensues. That's exactly what's going on here. It doesn't really matter if the general position of one side has the overall moral high ground on what they stand for, if they become so bigoted and rigid and willing to demonise anyone who disagrees with them this is the result, or worse.

Imgaine the result of the Holier-Than-Thou aren't we perfect, thank goodness we're no longer those disgusting savages Series 1 TNG crew were in charge. You'd get exactly this sort of situation.

If they could please articulate some of those in a way that wasn't simply demonstrably untrue, I'd engage. Most of the time, what I find is that the people committed to this sort of rhetoric don't have any coherent, true points that actually affect them. They attack me for not listening, and then when offered a platform to air actual points, they complain that others aren't listening.

In truth, I've heard the concerns of the hardcore right wing, and the fact is they sound a lot like the complaints of the left wing

- Large corporations are edging out small businesses and individuals
- Investment firms and bankers are using their money to turn the middle class into renters and impoverish them
- Giant corporations have an undue hold over American culture and American lives
- Our government doesn't serve us, it serves those with wealth and power

I am sympathetic to those concerns. I have been sympathetic to those concerns for over twenty years, because those are very real, awful, and terrible concerns. Here's what won't solve them:

Cutting taxes to the wealthy: Duh
Overturning Net Neutrality: Duh
Allowing giant corporate mergers: Duh
Fighting unions and empowering Wal-Mart and Amazon: Duh
Deregulating giant corporations and allowing them to claim larger market shares: Duh
Offering wealthy more control of our government: Duh

Is it not listening to the concerns if I agree with the concerns and think the proposed "solutions" are fucking insane?

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Riedquat, I get that you're trying to be the voice of reason pointing out how the polarization of both sides hurts us all, but on this matter... no.

A key cornerstone of the American Republic, the peaceful transfer of power, has been assaulted, all from one man's delusion spreading to his followers out of his fragile, manchild ego being unable to handle losing. ...

Yes, they completely and utterly crossed the line. But dismissing and demonsing an entire position because it's attracted some nutters is, well, history's full of it, quite honestly. It's burying your head in the sand to what brought about that situation in the first place, a very rigid, unforgiving, intolerant (whatever they claim, which is why they're such hypocrites) norm. Even if it's general stance is the less obnoxious (if you've got to over-simplify into a them versus us position) it needs to accept its responsibility in what it's created. Why had the situation deteriorated so much that enough people were prepared to start considering what looks quite extreme?

It's happened time and time again throughout history. Mainstream shuts out a group, group gets more extreme due to being shut out, and that extremism is used to further demonise that group. People retreat more and more to brainlessly over-simplified black and white positions, saying the other's scum, and conflict ensues. That's exactly what's going on here. It doesn't really matter if the general position of one side has the overall moral high ground on what they stand for, if they become so bigoted and rigid and willing to demonise anyone who disagrees with them this is the result, or worse.

Imgaine the result of the Holier-Than-Thou aren't we perfect, thank goodness we're no longer those disgusting savages Series 1 TNG crew were in charge. You'd get exactly this sort of situation.

It's kind of late so to speak to blame the general activist left for the radicalized right. The people storming the capitol is the same paranoia swamp that the Republicans have embraced for years about the Democrats; that their fears of drunken authoritarian power is correct and that reactionary representation and tribalized political tactics are the only things stopping socialism from overtaking America. That's not because of SJWs in the social media age.

[Draco Dracul]

Riedquat, I get that you're trying to be the voice of reason pointing out how the polarization of both sides hurts us all, but on this matter... no.

A key cornerstone of the American Republic, the peaceful transfer of power, has been assaulted, all from one man's delusion spreading to his followers out of his fragile, manchild ego being unable to handle losing. ...

Yes, they completely and utterly crossed the line. But dismissing and demonsing an entire position because it's attracted some nutters is, well, history's full of it, quite honestly. It's burying your head in the sand to what brought about that situation in the first place, a very rigid, unforgiving, intolerant (whatever they claim, which is why they're such hypocrites) norm. Even if it's general stance is the less obnoxious (if you've got to over-simplify into a them versus us position) it needs to accept its responsibility in what it's created. Why had the situation deteriorated so much that enough people were prepared to start considering what looks quite extreme?

Except the main perpetrator of the US vs them mentality has been the Republican party. Clinton didn't just try to reach across the aisle, but actually ran on being significantly to the right of every democratic president in the 50 years before him and the republican party responded not by trying to meet him in the middle, but by moving to the right. Barack Obama despite winning the largest congressional majority in decades attempted to run his administration in a bipartisan manner, including using a republican proposed healthcare plan, the republican party responded by moving to the right.

Not only that, but when under a republican president the nation found itself the most united it had been in over a decade, rather than use that political power for the good of the people George Bush used it to get us involved in a pointless unrelated war in Iraq.

It's happened time and time again throughout history. Mainstream shuts out a group, group gets more extreme due to being shut out, and that extremism is used to further demonise that group. People retreat more and more to brainlessly over-simplified black and white positions, saying the other's scum, and conflict ensues. That's exactly what's going on here. It doesn't really matter if the general position of one side has the overall moral high ground on what they stand for, if they become so bigoted and rigid and willing to demonise anyone who disagrees with them this is the result, or worse.

The right has been treated with fucking kids gloves for decades despite the near constant right wing terrorist attacks that have been launched over the last 30 years. The mainstream media has gone out of it's way to try to sympathize with these people even as they make it clear time and time again that it's not about their economic situation or their lack of voice in the government (due to both gerrymandering and the population distribution of the states they are actually over represented), but the fact that their bigotry isn't the law of the lands as much as it once was.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Here here.

"Meet me in the middle," says the dishonest man. You step forward, he steps back. "Meet me in the middle", says the dishonest man.

[Captain Crimson]

Mr. Trump should should share a lot of the responsibility, but in the end, the system was heading this way for a long time, so I can't in good conscience act like he kickstarted something that was inevitable anyway.

[Captain Crimson]

Riedquat, I get that you're trying to be the voice of reason pointing out how the polarization of both sides hurts us all, but on this matter... no.

A key cornerstone of the American Republic, the peaceful transfer of power, has been assaulted, all from one man's delusion spreading to his followers out of his fragile, manchild ego being unable to handle losing. ...

Yes, they completely and utterly crossed the line. But dismissing and demonsing an entire position because it's attracted some nutters is, well, history's full of it, quite honestly. It's burying your head in the sand to what brought about that situation in the first place, a very rigid, unforgiving, intolerant (whatever they claim, which is why they're such hypocrites) norm. Even if it's general stance is the less obnoxious (if you've got to over-simplify into a them versus us position) it needs to accept its responsibility in what it's created. Why had the situation deteriorated so much that enough people were prepared to start considering what looks quite extreme?

It's happened time and time again throughout history. Mainstream shuts out a group, group gets more extreme due to being shut out, and that extremism is used to further demonise that group. People retreat more and more to brainlessly over-simplified black and white positions, saying the other's scum, and conflict ensues. That's exactly what's going on here. It doesn't really matter if the general position of one side has the overall moral high ground on what they stand for, if they become so bigoted and rigid and willing to demonise anyone who disagrees with them this is the result, or worse.

Imgaine the result of the Holier-Than-Thou aren't we perfect, thank goodness we're no longer those disgusting savages Series 1 TNG crew were in charge. You'd get exactly this sort of situation.

And we see this everywhere in the cultural landscape now. H, take the entertainment industry. You literally cannot escape the politics why, and yet it's easy to admit the reason. It's because these SJW leftist types are getting angrier and angrier at the world, the "filthy GOP" and how "evil, awful, inhuman, and barbaric they are!" without actually looking in the mirror and seeing their own double standards, they are entirely without reflection, and so put that more and more into their stories and then act like it's the consumer's fault when they don't like this kind of extreme heavy-handedness.

Know what it reminds me of? That old movie with Mr. French Stewart, Love Stinks. He is a very successful millionaire TV producer/executive, and as his relationship goes into the toilet, he butchers the characters in the show as a form of venting, a coping mechanism, to the chagrin of the actors, and the ratings tank. But he's laughing it up all drunk in the hotel he's been forced to stay at. That's what's happening now. If we can't understand how people fall prey to the worst impulses of our kind and still engage in collective-shame rhetoric for those who trigger us merely to make up for our own shortcomings, then what's the point? There is no point.

[Steve]

Riedquat, something needs to be done about the decaying Rust Belt, and there are legitimate grievances here. But that doesn't mean we just sweep this under the rug, "oh let's have unity and just forgive", since all that does is encourage people to think they can do this again.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Here here.

"Meet me in the middle," says the dishonest man. You step forward, he steps back. "Meet me in the middle", says the dishonest man.

There's an old saying where I come from:

Fool me once, shame on you.

[Thebestoftherest]

Exactly.