Republicans: continued

[Forty Two]

Go tell a Republican.

Oh, the Republicans are Nazis. We punch them.

Democrats are just "far right." In any civilized country, the Democratic Party would be, like, almost as far right as Geert Wilders, if not farther right on basic policy (aside from the Muslim immigration thing).

[JimC]

With regard to state influence on the market, I support the state having a good, objective look at future directions that serve the common good, and using financial tools to nudge manufacturers and others in that direction, without coercive force. For example, tax breaks for companies that cover their factory roofs with solar panels, or for companies who manufacture renewable energy infrastructure.

[Brian Peacock]

Go tell a Republican.

Oh, the Republicans are Nazis. We punch them.

Democrats are just "far right." In any civilized country, the Democratic Party would be, like, almost as far right as Geert Wilders, if not farther right on basic policy (aside from the Muslim immigration thing).

Hmmm. Hyperbole seems to be a way to wilfully miss the point. Yeah, the Democrat party has been to the right of centre by any reasonable measure for a long time, but the Republicans are a long way to the right of that. At the moment, post-Obama, the Dems seem to be swinging back towards the centre a bit. Either there's votes in it, which is how democracy works, or perhaps it's because they've recognised that people voted Trump because those who had traditionally operated the political system had broken the contract between the state and the citizen. Trump seemed to offer a brake on that tendency, when actually he's just changed up and put his foot down.

This strand of the discussion started when it was noted that US conservatives are branding the Democrats as ideological nihilists with a totalitarian bent - socialist nazis - which is, as I said, laughable, not to mention kind of ironic given what's been falling out of the president's mouth these last few years.

That kind of rhetoric can be traced back to Newt Gingrich's tirades to an empty House in the '80s. It's deliberate demonisation designed to play to and on people's fears. Fear runs close to the surface in politics, and no more so it seem than in the perpetual conflict between America's soft- and hard-right wings.

[pErvinalia]

Actually, it's the reverse, Nazis were a right wing form of socialism, but socialists are rarely nazis, if only because it takes full blown communism to reach that degree of totalitarianism.

It clearly a distraction tactic to keep the political discussion focused on the moral impoverishment of the Democratic Party. The idea that the US Democratic Party are hardliners of any strip is, frankly, quite laughable.

What? Really? And, here I've been lectured many times that the Democrats are actually "far right" when you look at proper political spectra around the world....

No you haven't. Stop making shit up.

[Joe]

The last comparison I saw only went so far as calling the US left as very centrist.

[Brian Peacock]

It's a simple matter really.

If you think a national system of universal healthcare is a good idea, then you're anti-free market, and therefore a socialist. If you oppose the teaching of creationism in science class, you're anti-religious, and therefore a communist. If you don't want to see white-supremacists prosper in your community, you're anti-free speech, and therefore a fascist. In fact, anyone who doesn't agree with the holy conservative mantras of the day is a dangerous leftie because, basically, conservatism is self-evidently right-thinky and right-speaky in all regards. Conservatism is what they call a self-authorising epistemology.

[L'Emmerdeur]

Perhaps the name David Barton is not familiar to many of the members of this site, but as somewhat of a history geek I'm well aware of what a shitweasel he is. The book referenced in the link (withdrawn by its Christian publisher when it was exposed as a ridiculous hodgepodge of half-truths and outright deceit) is only one example. Barton is obsessed with dishonestly rewriting history to 'prove' that the United States began as essentially a Christian theocracy which was later corrupted and its 'true' history hidden by the forces of evil. He's a busy guy though, and distorting history is just one of his jobs.

'Ballot Harvesting, Accountability, and David Barton’s Rampant Hypocrisy'

Last night, Religious Right pseudo-historian David Barton and his son, Tim, appeared on the Truth & Liberty Coalition’s livestream program, where they warned that unethical Democrats are using ballot harvesting to steal elections, which is something they insisted that Christians would never even dream of doing.

The Barton duo asserted that Democrats have been sending out volunteers all over the country to collect absentee ballots and are using the opportunity to both influence how uncompleted ballots are filled out and also to discard ballots that have been filled out to vote for Republican candidates. Christians, they asserted, would never do such a thing.

“As Christians, we believe in truthfulness and honesty and integrity,” Tim Barton declared. “Our agenda is to honor and glorify God in our life and therefore we want to live a godly lifestyle and have godly behavior. If your primary agenda is to win an election, you compromise truth, integrity, godliness; that doesn’t matter to you because the number one thing you care about is winning the election.”

“The godly people are constrained,” agreed host and right-wing pastor Andrew Wommak. “The ungodly don’t have those same restraints and they will play dirty.”

“As Christians, we believe in accountability,” David Barton responded. “If you don’t have a biblical viewpoint and you don’t believe in accountability and everything is right now, then the ends justifies the means … It’s hard to watch all the ways that you can cheat an election, it’s hard to watch all the ways that you can cheat ballots. We don’t think of that, that’s just not the way we’re wired with accountability, but that’s the way a lot on the other side are wired.”

This is an interesting argument coming from David Barton, as he proudly endorsed pastor Mark Harris in last year’s congressional race in North Carolina … a race that was invalidated and now has to be held again because Harris’s campaign engaged in precisely the sort of illegal ballot harvesting that Barton insisted Christians would never even contemplate.

[Brian Peacock]

Yeah, but he's only figuratively literally a Christian.

[Joe]

Yeahbut, literally a figurative shit weasel.

What's sad is there's a market for the crap he writes. I could get rich writing hit books on Hillary Clinton, if I only lacked a conscience.

[Svartalf]

Give in to the dark side, once you've got that money, you won't have time or inclination to listen to your lost conscience...

[pErvinalia]

Do it for Ratz. Shower us all with money!

[Animavore]

Betsy DeVos Wants Larger Class Sizes and Fewer Teachers

[Sean Hayden]

Who knows what people like her want. It sounds crazy. But it looks like she wants to cut funding to programs designed to help low income students.

That sounds even worse.

But are we allowed to ask how those programs are performing? How are they monitored? I ask because it can be the case that you're not even allowed to ask! I know someone who thought she might lose her job after being invited to a meeting where she brought up the idea of beginning to track who benefited most from the organizations services, so that they could develop something like a profile to help them going forward. She was approached after the meeting and told that some councilmen were worried about her and wondered if she was a good fit!

[Tero]

Simple: kill federal government. That is what they want.

[Sean Hayden]

That sounds like a mental health issue to me.