111–120 of 426 posts
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This is demonstrably false.
Feel free to demonstrate it :)
This is a powerful piece about a time in Germany where people couldn't, to paraphrase, see where things could go, and so couldn't really understand when things have started. I suspect that readers will see this piece as a reflection of their greatest fears about our own Republic. Unfortunately, the message will be lost by those who are most in need of hearing it. That includes many of the readers of this piece who th…
>Both the left and the right [...] call basic and decent democratic norms into question (free speech, elections). I only see Republicans doing this, but I am not American so perhaps my perspective is not as acute as someone "on the inside". Can you link to instances of Democrats calling free speech and elections into question?
The left is not friends of free speech, at least not the current US left.
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There's nothing in that article suggesting a false flag. At most Hina Shamsi suggests that leftist actions are being judged more harshly.
Fair enough. Why would right-wingers show up to a left-wing protest with violent intentions? There's no legitimate reason, but I apologize for extrapolating from their actions.
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After the last election there was the attempted impeachment and RussiaGate witch hunt which found no evidence that Trump conspired with Russia to influence the election. It's pretty brazen to ignore that ans say the left never disputed the election outcome.
> which found no evidence that Trump conspired with Russia to influence the election This is a straight-up lie. Mueller said explicitly they found evidence, but left it to Congress to pursue prosecution.
Instead of reading what "he said" I'd appreciate reading what the evidence is and what it shows. I'd honestly like to learn.
Edit: just checked, the linked Time's "debunking" confirms that there was no evidence of collusion: the best that they can come to is to claim:
"But the fact that the conduct did not technically amount to conspiracy does not mean that it was acceptable."
So the fact is, as I read it, there was no evidence of conspiracy. And that's it.
Edit 2: The quote in the answer doesn't say anything better:
"While none of these acts amounted to the crime of conspiracy, all could be described as “collusion.”"
Again, the fact in there is "none of these acts amounted to the crime of conspiracy." Then, claiming that it "could be described" ([by whom?] -- there would be at least such mark in a Wikipedia article) is just an attempt to rationalize that fact to these who were emotionally invested. The Democrats could have invested their energy in many other much more important problems they have among them. IMHO Hillary failed not because Trump or any foreign action but because there was awareness of Democrats rigging their party's election process and of she as a war hawk:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/magazine/how-hillary-clin...
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I'm friends with several people that participated in CHAZ and your assessment of it is incorrect. It was doomed from the start but calling the people occupying it a violent mob is not correct. I personally believe it was a mistake because the people occupying it did not have or want a monopoly on the use of force in their area, meaning that it became a site of unrelated mob and gang violence because the police were n…
The armed occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge was also “mostly peaceful.” Much more peaceful than CHAZ/CHOP, in fact. I am friends with people who lived close by and visited the CHAZ/CHOP, and I watched live-streams from the CHAZ nearly 24/7 for the entire span of its existence. It was a lawless area patrolled by gun wielding far-left activists who routinely harassed journalists, ripped phones out of streamers’…
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I broadly agree with you. That being said, I don't think it's fair at this point to equate what's going on on the left to what's going on on the right. They are leagues apart. That's not to say that the same thing couldn't happen on the left or that the people on the left in some way are superior. Quite the opposite. I think the people on the left are just as susceptible to the type of effects happening on the right.…
The left had something similar in 2016, in Bernie Sanders. The differences were that he didn't have the locker room talk (that I know of), and he didn't have the dictatorial tendencies (that I know of). But he was an insurgent from outside the party (he wasn't a Democrat, though he may have joined the party in 2016 for his run). In the same way, Trump wasn't really a Republican. (He did join the party, but somewhat r…
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I'm sorry, but there is no moral equivalence in the U.S. between the left and the right. It's certainly true that neither side is squeaky clean, but the left does not deny basic facts, and in particular, it does not attempt to dispute the outcomes of elections when the results are clear (and indeed has in the past thrown in the towel even when the results were not clear). I could go on and on, but those two things ar…
Biden also said at least once that he might not accept the result of the election if he lost. (Sorry, don't have a reference handy, but I saw it.) I believe that his point was that he would also have to look at fraud. And he said it much less often than Trump did. Still it was rather scary to have both sides saying it.
Neither side should concede until the ballots are sufficiently evident. We’ve reached that point.
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I can’t speak for the person you’re asking, but Tulsi Gabbard is representative of what I see as the rational middle.
The only way you can see Tulsi as the "middle" is because the overton window has slammed so far right. In a rational society, Biden and Obama would be considered middle and AOC/Bernie left.
This gets to a larger point. When the country was first founded, the different religious and political factions deeply distrusted each other. Religion was extremely important, and those who differed were considered wrong and/or corrupted in a way much deeper than I think modern, non religious people fully understand.
And yet despite this, they managed to cooperate with each other. It wasn’t perfect. And it didn’t always work; we did have a civil war. But it allowed for a regional plurality between peoples that were deeply different and factional, and no doubt considered the others evil or dangerous or a threat.
The only means by which I think we can escape this is a return to a respect for local autonomy. Allow people to shape the law where they live as they desire and reduce nationwide impositions. Give more authority to the states to create the world in which the people there want. If you think others would be trapped in repressive systems, give them a means by which to escape to yours.
Evil is perpetrated by violent coercion. The beliefs might be come to voluntarily, and may be more common in one framework than another. But the actual execution of evil requires coercion, which usually seems justified to the person perpetrating it.
Because the law inevitably requires coercion, coercion itself cannot be eliminated without lawlessness. But the laws people concede to can and should be varied. The social contract is only valid if the people have a choice. If we allow people that choice, people will flee the systems which coerce them unjustly, and they will wither. It will be painful to endure systems that seem obviously terrible without intervening. But there is no other way to audit your own biases then to let the people in each system decide which is better over time themselves, and no other way to avoid the inevitable violent conflict of imposing your values onto others who fundamentally disagree with them.
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How quickly we forget the heavily-armed antifa militia that occupied 3 city blocks in downtown Seattle, whose assault rifle-wielding “security team” assaulted journalists, intimidated residents, and murdered an unarmed black teenager. Residents and businesses owners are currently suing the city for abandoning the neighborhood’s police station, providing porta-potties to the armed occupiers, and ceding control of this…
How quickly people who don't live in Seattle shout nonsense about the CHAZ. Let's break down what actually happened. 1. After weeks of protests, police intimidation, beatings, and frequent gassing of the entire street (much to the delight of people living there, who were unable to breathe inside their own apartments), including a right wing chap driving a car through a crowd, and shooting someone trying to pull him o…
Driver Dawit Kelete (who is black, and not politically affiliated) was high on pills when he plowed through BLM protestors occupying a section of the freeway in the middle of the night. Tragically, one protestor died and another was seriously injured.
Most “car attacks” this summer have turned out to be simply reckless or confused drivers caught in the middle of unplanned, unannounced, often heavily-armed and aggressive street protests. Armed protestors have shot or shot at several such drivers, such as in Provo, UT and Aurora, CO.
https://www.deseret.com/utah/2020/6/30/21308526/gunman-shot-...
https://www.denverpost.com/2020/08/03/man-charged-murder-sho...
By my reckoning, the actual count of “car attacks” this summer where a politically-motivated driver rammed a BLM/antifa protest can be counted on one hand. There has been a greater number of unprovoked attacks on drivers by protestors. This is the product of extreme paranoia among armed protestors, amplified by social media.
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> Congressional representatives on the left attempted to block the counting of electoral college votes from a crucial swing state Reference?
Florida in 2000: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-jan-07-mn-9426-... Ohio in 2004: https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Boxer-delays-preside... . (It should be noted for the sake of fairness that the leaders of this attempt claimed they weren't trying to overturn the election results by blocking the count.)