Republicans are quite simply un-American

[Stephen_Coyle]

True.



False.

Can you say "false equivalence," kids?

I knew you couldn't!

While Fox "news" Channel is extremely right-wing, promotes right-wing candidates, pushes right-wing legislation and constantly throws right-wing talking points and right-wing conspiracy theories out there as "news", there is no left-wing equivalent.

And Fox "news" isn't alone either. Rush Limbaugh, Bryan Fischer and hundreds of other right-wing trolls are out there, monopolizing the radio broadcasts with right-wing propaganda and right-wing conspiracy theories.

My favorite news sources (like NPR, the Guardian, the Independent and the BBC) never promote political talking points or endorse political candidates. They quite simply do their research, and present the results of their research. If you want to draw political conclusions based on the facts presented, that's up to you.

 

[someoneyouknow]

Another veteran and Republican comes out and says don't vote for Republicans because they lack anything resembling leadership.

http://www.realclearlife.com/uncategorized/pilot-sully-sullenberger-slams-trump-republicans-ahead-of-midterms/

 

[gunthernehmen]

Another veteran and Republican comes out and says don't vote for Republicans because they lack anything resembling leadership.

http://www.realclearlife.com/uncategorized/pilot-sully-sullenberger-slams-trump-republicans-ahead-of-midterms/

If I were ever in a plane that was having engine trouble, I'd want him in the cockpit.

Likewise, I want Alyssa Milano on the small screen in a sitcom. (or porn! Jaimee Foxworth later did a couple flicks. Alyssa could too!)

But their political opinion is worth exactly as much as mine or yours is: nothing.

Here's an entire movement of Democrats urging D's to #walkaway from the Dem party:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/wa...sgruntled-democrats-to-leave-the-party-behind

I apologize, but I was unable to find any major media outlet that covers news about #walkaway other than Fox. As far as CNN or MSNBC is concerned, there's no such thing (based on a superficial google for a #walkaway news story)

The (former) Democrats comprising the movement make some good points. You should check them out instead of relying on celebrities to provide your news bits.

 

[gunthernehmen]

We've already had that one before True Liberals: Join Me and Walk Away

There's nothing to walk to; what's the alternative? Nothing is perfect, but hardly anything as bad as the Republicans at the moment.

Honestly, they're both train wrecks. It's just that more people (hopefully) will survive the R train wreck than the D train wreck.

 

[Stephen_Coyle]

The entire "Walkaway" movement is a fraud.

The people who claim that this movement exists have claimed that large numbers of former Democrats who are walking away from the party, however, in the REAL WORLD nothing like this is happening.

#WalkAway has also now been connected to Kremlin-linked Russian bots, and it is now the seventh most popular Russia-influenced hashtag as of this writing, according to the website Hamilton 68, which tracks Russian influence on Twitter as part of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, an initiative of the nonpartisan German Marshall Fund. The purpose of this now-astroturf campaign is to manipulate public opinion by creating the illusion that this is a popular movement. In reality, #WalkAway has become pure propaganda, a psychological operation.


https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/17/opinions/russian-bots-2018-midterm-elections-opinion-love/index.html

 

[gunthernehmen]

The entire "Walkaway" movement is a fraud.

The people who claim that this movement exists have claimed that large numbers of former Democrats who are walking away from the party, however, in the REAL WORLD nothing like this is happening.

Totally uninterested in yet more "Russian Bogeymen". Get a new shtick.

So you can "say" #walkaway doesn't exist all you want, but there really ARE members of the Dem party that don't like they way their leadership is handling things. It's crystal clear that Hillary would be president today if the Dems were as unified as you suggest.

Unless you think the 5k or so people in one of the recent rallies were all videoshopped...

https://canadafreepress.com/article/walkaway-from-democrats-d.c.-march-a-yuge-success

Hey, as somebody pointed out above there are Repubs that aren't too happy with their own leadership, either. Find me a political party that every member has precisely the same beliefs and desires (it will have just one member) and I'll show you a unicorn. They don't exist. And shouldn't. Well, unicorns should. They're cool. But absolutely unified political parties should not.

 

[gunthernehmen]

Keith owes an apology to the lima beans.

"I've heard that before, so I can ignore it now.

Evidence? I ca-han't hear you!"



I guess it sounds like a joke, but how do you distinguish a 'converted' Democrat from a long-time Republican looking for some fun and trying to make their gang look cool?




No, there are some Republicans that start to find out that the whole Republican party is off the rails; run and supported by deplorables. Some people no longer want to be part of that. That's not happening with the Democrats. Don't pretend it's on the same level.

He lives in Peru. What's the difference?

Still not interested in the bogeyman. Ooga booga!

The next point, the sentence was so convoluted as to be unreadable.

As for the only part of your post that made ANY sense, if you're suggesting that the Repubs are jumping ship but all Dems are steadfastly at their posts... you might want to lay off the koolaid.

Both parties have issues. It's your view that the R's have more problems. It's my view that the D's have more problems. That's ok. The world is big enough for both viewpoints. Even for the Peruvian guy.

 

[Stephen_Coyle]

Totally uninterested in yet more "Russian Bogeymen". Get a new shtick.

Interesting.

The #Walkaway movement was suspicious from the very start. It took a matter of hours to discover that these memes showing photos of "discouraged Democrats" were actually stock photos and not real disaffected Democrats. The whole thing smelled of dishonesty and desperation from day one.

Then, when it's revealed that the whole thing was financed, planned and perpetrated by the Russians, you act like Russians aren't real. You call them the "Russian bogeymen".

How do we know, YOU aren't being paid by the Russians to spread propaganda?

That would make FAR more sense than believing that you're as willfully-ignorant as you pretend to be.

 

[gunthernehmen]

Interesting.

The #Walkaway movement was suspicious from the very start. It took a matter of hours to discover that these memes showing photos of "discouraged Democrats" were actually stock photos and not real disaffected Democrats. The whole thing smelled of dishonesty and desperation from day one.

Then, when it's revealed that the whole thing was financed, planned and perpetrated by the Russians, you act like Russians aren't real. You call them the "Russian bogeymen".

How do we know, YOU aren't being paid by the Russians to spread propaganda?

That would make FAR more sense than believing that you're as willfully-ignorant as you pretend to be.

I WISH I were being paid for that! I gots bills to pay.

 

[Kirkrapine]

Here's an entire movement of Democrats urging D's to #walkaway from the Dem party:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/wa...sgruntled-democrats-to-leave-the-party-behind

"Some said the Democratic Party has become hate-filled and hostile to opposing points of view while moving further to the left. Others say they were tired of the party’s "politically correct" culture."

Then, they're delusional idiots.

The (former) Democrats comprising the movement make some good points.

Apparently not.

 

[gunthernehmen]

"Some said the Democratic Party has become hate-filled and hostile to opposing points of view while moving further to the left. Others say they were tired of the party’s "politically correct" culture."

Then, they're delusional idiots.



Apparently not.

I don't think you can speak for all Dems. I haven't any doubt that many, maybe most are satisfied with, for instance, choosing Hillary as your presidential nominee last time around. (Please do again. It'll be a landslide for Trump!) There are plenty that aren't.

Go surf youtube for videos of Maxine Waters working her followers up into a frenzy. And the harassment of Mitch McConnell or other republicans in restaurants is hardly an expression of love and understanding.

We're coming up to that time of the year when clerks are required to say "Happy Holidays!" and I have to correct them with "No, but Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!"

The two parties are mirror images of each other. Deplorables on one side and despicables on the other. The difference is, while neither side seems to especially LIKE the other, ONE side is pretty much willing to leave the other alone. And that isn't the Dems... You need look no further than the despicable behavior of Keith, Dan or several others that have contributed nothing but insults and hate filled venom to the discussion.

Disagree, but disagree with a little class...

 

[gunthernehmen]

At some point you should stop being calm and friendly, when your country is thorn apart by a selfish, dishonorable, despicable, lying person that remains supported by a party either too afraid to react, or thinking it's all acceptable. At some point you have to make clear it's been enough.

Exactly my point. Thank you. That's why Hillary lost the presidency and Trump won. We're sick of it. Also a little sick of a traitor (speaking of Hillary, not you) blaming the bogeyman for her loss.

 

[spankednaked]

The Constitution was originally written to say,

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

If the Republicans had their way, it would be re-written to say,

"Congress shall make many laws establishing Christianity as the official religion of the United States of America and prohibiting the free exercise of Hinduism, Wicca, Islam and other heretical religions. Freedom of speech, or of the press shall be limited to prohibit the American people from taking the Lords name in vain or engaging in blasphemy. The right of people to assemble peacefully will also be limited to keep the people from engaging in anti-Christian activities or encouraging others to do so."

This is just one of the MANY, MANY reasons that we need to get the Republicans OUT of Congress!

 

[spankednaked]

If you come up with bullshit (using words of one of the others with little class), and reply with "uninterested in yet more "Russian Bogeymen". Get a new shtick." after being pointed out that it is bullshit, then it is getting really hard to do so.

I agree.

Russian troll farms and Russian cyberattacks have been documented by American intelligence agencies. They're not funny. They're not something for Gunther to be joking about.

Russia is actually the source of this #walkaway movement. WE KNOW THIS!

He's some proof:

This campaign highlighting alleged discord among the left, got a boost from accounts linked to Russian influence operations. The first use of the #walkaway hashtag from accounts monitored on Hamilton 68 was noted in early June (a few weeks after the grassroots campaign began), but engagement remained relatively low throughout the month. Activity spiked on July 2, when Hamilton 68 noted 73 unique tweets using #walkaway, and roughly another 50 using related campaign hashtags (e.g. #walkawaymovement). The late engagement suggests Kremlin-oriented accounts are trailers rather than leaders of the campaign, but the high-level of current engagement indicates an effort to astroturf support for the movement and hijack the narrative. This includes several monitored accounts that have changed their handles to include the hashtag, or that have shared their own supposed walkaway moments. The campaign also received a direct boost from Russian propaganda outlets RT and Sputnik, both of which ran stories on the movement. The movement, and I can’t express enough how this is not supposed to be a joke, is supposed to represent actual human people who have left the Democratic party because of its intolerance and lack of civility. Let that sink in for a minute. Go ahead, take all the time that you need. And again, there are memes made by the Russian trolls to try to create discord and further fracture democrats. How do we know they’re fake? Because a reverse image search of the models brings up the photos on Shutterstock.

Read more at: https://ascienceenthusiast.com/russian-trolls-twitter-pretend-ex-democrats-trick-people/

 

[gunthernehmen]

Conservatives (not just deplorable Republicans) are the only reason we still have a Constitution that is recognizable.

Without the Constitution, nothing holds back the government from doing exactly what they feel like, which seems an awful lot like dictatorship.

Constitutions SHOULD be hard to change/amend. Conservatives understand that.

Welcome to the fold, Spanked!

 

[Kirkrapine]

So you can "say" #walkaway doesn't exist all you want, but there really ARE members of the Dem party that don't like they way their leadership is handling things.

Don't mean they're gonna vote Pub on Tuesday.

 

[Kirkrapine]

Conservatives (not just deplorable Republicans) are the only reason we still have a Constitution that is recognizable.

Without the Constitution, nothing holds back the government from doing exactly what they feel like, which seems an awful lot like dictatorship.

Constitutions SHOULD be hard to change/amend. Conservatives understand that.

Welcome to the fold, Spanked!

I have sometimes at SF cons seen a message-button that says, "The United States Constitution has its faults, but it's a hell of a lot better than what we've got now." Which is clever, and amusing, and a lie. The United States Constitution is patently worse than what we've got now. It was designed for an agrarian society; no modern industrialized state could get by with a government of such limited powers.

 

[gunthernehmen]

I have sometimes at SF cons seen a message-button that says, "The United States Constitution has its faults, but it's a hell of a lot better than what we've got now." Which is clever, and amusing, and a lie. The United States Constitution is patently worse than what we've got now. It was designed for an agrarian society; no modern industrialized state could get by with a government of such limited powers.

And yet we manage to "get by".

The government that governs least, governs best. There is very little the federal government ought to be involved in. Virtually everything they have their fingers in are truly for the state or local government to deal with, or not at all.

 

[dan_c00000]

The government that governs least, governs best.

What's your proof? Your hero the Orange Nazi? Your hero Bush II? One is trying to use the federal government to crack down on anything who even remotely criticizes him and the other oversaw the biggest expansion of government authority since the Second World War.

That's the problem with racists like you. In addition to being racists you know nothing remotely about history. Just whatever bullshit lines the National Review fed you.

 

[gunthernehmen]

What's your proof? Your hero the Orange Nazi? Your hero Bush II? One is trying to use the federal government to crack down on anything who even remotely criticizes him and the other oversaw the biggest expansion of government authority since the Second World War.

That's the problem with racists like you. In addition to being racists you know nothing remotely about history. Just whatever bullshit lines the National Review fed you.

I finally figured you out.

You are a Republican working your ASS off, undercover as a Dem, to make the Democrats look like blithering idiots LOL

Stellar job at it, too!

 

[Kirkrapine]

I don't think you can speak for all Dems. I haven't any doubt that many, maybe most are satisfied with, for instance, choosing Hillary as your presidential nominee last time around. (Please do again. It'll be a landslide for Trump!) There are plenty that aren't.

Yeah, but those that aren't went for Sanders. They are not concerned about the party going "too far to the left." The party really has no significant right wing, any more, no more than the GOP has a significant left wing any more.

 

[Kirkrapine]

The government that governs least, governs best.

No one has any good reason to believe that.

 

[gunthernehmen]

No one has any good reason to believe that.

Nor to disbelieve it.

However, it is consistent with lowercase conservative values.

 

[gunthernehmen]

Yeah, but those that aren't went for Sanders. They are not concerned about the party going "too far to the left." The party really has no significant right wing, any more, no more than the GOP has a significant left wing any more.

So, basically, both parties represent opposite ends of the bell curve. The lunatic fringe, if you will.

 

[Stephen_Coyle]

The GOP has become the lunatic fringe of American politics. They hate compromise. They hate investigative journalists. They hate fact-checkers. They hate scientists. They hate Freedom of the Press. They hate Freedom of Speech and they hate Freedom of Assembly.

Nowadays the GOP seems less like a political party, and more like a patriarchal, fear-based religious cult that tells their adherents to be afraid of dark-skinned people, reporters, Constitutional scholars, gays, lesbians and women who speak up about being sexually assaulted.

I first started comparing the Republican Party to a religious cult back in 2003. Back then, people mostly ignored what I said, and few (if any) people agreed with me that the Republicans were acting in a very cult-like manner.

I thought that the evidence of cult-like behavior was quite clear. Back then, Republicans were rejecting the evidence that they could see with their own two eyes, and instead they fervently embracing the words of their dear, infallible leaders.

Here’s an example of the sort of irrational, cult-like behavior I’m talking about. Back in 2002, Saddam Hussein allowed United Nations weapons inspectors into Iraq to search for any signs of nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, long-range missiles, or anything else that the Iraqi regime was forbidden to have.

Bush complained endlessly about the U.N. weapons inspectors. He referred to their inspections as a game of “hide-and-seek” and strongly hinted that the inspectors should be arresting Iraqi scientists and torturing them to force them to give up all their secrets about weapons of mass destruction.

That was in 2002, and millions of Republicans all seemed to agree with Bush’s assessments of the U.N. weapons inspectors. They mercilessly ridiculed the U.N. inspectors, and peppered Hans Blix with endless insults for not finding the ostensible weapons of mass destruction.

Then in 2003, George W. Bush claimed that he was FORCED to invade Iraq because Saddam Hussein refused to allow the U.N. weapons inspectors into Iraq. Thus, Bush and Cheney had NO CHOICE, but to invade to protect America’s national security.

Republicans had absolutely no problem agreeing with Bush when he said this.

For four months, Bush’s followers in the Republican Party had no problem insulting and ridiculing the work that the U.N. weapons inspectors were doing in Iraq. Then, in 2003, Bush claimed that the U.N. weapons inspectors WERE NEVER IN IRAQ, and Bush’s supporters had no problem agreeing with that either.

Even when Bush’s lies directly contradicted what he had said a few months earlier, his supporters had no trouble immediately accepting this lie. This is EXACTLY the sort of thing that goes on in religious cults! It doesn’t matter how nonsensical and obvious the lie, it will STILL BE BELIEVED if it comes from a high-ranking leader of the cult.

Well, that was back in 2003. It’s now 2018, and things haven’t gotten any better.

Nowadays, we have millions of Republicans with an unquestioning devotion to Trump and whatever his ideas may be at any given moment. Even when his ideas are blatantly irrational and puerile nonsense.

Consider the most recent example. Trump has whipped up his supporters into a frenzy of irrational fear and hatred by repeatedly engaging in hysterics about a small group of Central Americans, fleeing poverty and violence, who are hoping to come to the U.S. border and apply for asylum.

Refusing to allow these poor, frightened, hungry, huddled asylum-seekers into the country would be bad enough, however, Trump and his accomplices have concocted bizarre fear-mongering propaganda out of thin air and invented conspiracies about who is behind this group of impoverished migrants.

Pete Hegseth, Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Newt Gingrich, Greg Jarrett, Tomi Lahren and other leaders of the Republican cult have been over at Fox “news” Channel referring to this group of frightened migrants (mostly women and children) as “an invasion” and “an act of attacking the United States' sovereignty”, planning to “storm our border” and “a threatening invading force.”

These migrants, many of whom are women and children escaping grinding poverty and violence in Central America, are tired, frightened and hungry. They are refugees, seeking asylum.

Trump refers to these asylum seekers as "very bad people" and "an invasion of our Country" and warns that "our Military is waiting for you!"

These are frightened women and children.

And Trump is basically saying that American soldiers will gun them down if they attempt to enter this country and apply for asylum.

This is like a doctor calling it "an invasion" if wounded people try to enter a hospital to seek medical attention, and warning that sheriffs and armed security guards will form a barrier around the hospital to stop them from entering.

Congressman Matt Gaetz (another leader of the Republican cult) joined in on the fear-mongering and propaganda and publicly asked if Democratic donor George Soros was funding the Central-American migrants.

The question is pure childishness and propaganda, however, childish propaganda spreads like wildfire in the Republican cult, and other members of the Republican leadership have taken the absurd notion and run with it. The notion that Soros is the dark mastermind behind all kinds of movements is now deeply embedded in the Republican cult. He’s become an all-purpose boogeyman. Republican cult leader Steve King has taken it a step further and has accused Soros of backing a grand scheme to systematically introduce foreigners to replace “Americans” (in other words, whites) with “somebody else’s babies.”

These paranoid fantasies about impoverished, tired, frightened women and children being a threatening, invading force make no sense, however, millions of Republicans have embraced these fantasies and are cheering the notion that U.S. soldiers may gun them down if they attempt to cross the border and apply for asylum.


This is not rational behavior. Embracing paranoid fantasies, embracing irrational hatreds, embracing irrational fears and rejecting the evidence of your own eyes is demented and cult-like behavior. And yet, this is exactly what we see with MILLIONS of Republicans in America today.

Are the American people starting to see it now? Are they starting to see what I mean when I say the Republican Party is acting more and more like a cult and less and less like a legitimate political party?