Split Conservatives Feel Attacked (was Special Counsel 2)

[laughing dog]

My motto when I was running for office was, “I don’t need to convince them that I’m right. I only need to convince them that I’m human.” Because we had common ground on so much of the actual policy, but they wouldn’t know until they could think of me as human.

That was me, finding common ground, long before this thread accusing me of being unwilling to see something from another’s point of view.
I sure as shit know how and why to do it. And I believe in it.

Which is EXACTLY my point when I respond that accusing us of “oozing contempt” is, indeed, NOT finding common ground, and why I object to that caricature, and why I posted everything that I did saying that the common ground is that we do NOT ”ooze contempt.” We have common ground. We are no more ”oozing contempt” than anyone else. Common ground. That’s your “full position.”

I believe the common usage of terms such "liberals" or "conservatives" is a generalization that is not meant to refer to all liberals or all conservatives. From my reading of many threads, I would find it extremely surprising if Toni was not using the term as a generalization not an indictment of every single member of the group.

Edited to add - I am frequently called a liberal or a progressive, I did not feel that Toni's comment included me (even if it was meant to!!!)

 

[Elixir]

They were accusations against liberals. It accused liberals of being condescending assholes.
It was not “we have common ground.” It was conservatives feel attacked and here’s how they’ve been attacked.

I feel attacked. All I wanted to do was raise an alarm about right wing nut jobs trying to overthrow the government.
I am not attacking every right wing nut job.
Only the ones trying to overthrow the government.
Do I need a permission slip to oppose them, or some kind of guideline to make sure that no non-insurrectionist right wing nut job gets butthurt? I think that’s a ridiculous demand.

I think @Toni is reticent to concede that addressing RW extremist terrorism/insurrection is a more urgent concern than LW terrorism/insurrection. Why? I have no idea.

 

[pood]

It is more urgent today than ever before that we look for common ground. There is a lot there. We just need to pay more attention to it.

LIke what?

I can only think of really fundamental stuff like Maslowe's hierarchy of needs.

Can you think of any policies that would appeal to people based on this common ground?

As far as I can tell people who live in different environs and have different social and economic priorities usually benefit from different government policies, and therefore fall into different political interest groups to be carved out and won over. Politics inevitabilty pits such interest groups against each other.

I don't even know what people in country towns need to make their lives significantly and immediately better but I'm pretty sure it's quite different than what I need in the suburbs/city.

Good jobs
Good education
Good healthcare
Good roads
Access to goods and services needed by families, from north through old age
Good internet access
Respect

If they want those things, maybe they should stop voting for Trump in particular and Republicans in general. Trump in particular and Republicans in general look down on “the rubes” far more than the liberal/left does. Trump once expressed his aversion to shaking hands with his supporters at some rally or other, describing them to aides as “disgusting people.”

Republicans don’t give a shit about rural America or their red state supporters. They feed them culture-war crap to win their votes, in order to put into practice their true political mission: comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted.

Possibly someone has already made these rather obvious points; I just started reading this thread.

.

 

[pood]

I will leave you with this, from Lincoln’s first inaugural address:

“The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely, they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Beautiful piece of poetry by Lincoln.

What followed shortly thereafter was a brutal civil war that killed more than half a million people.

Guess Lincoln was wrong about the “better angels,” alas.

 

[pood]

In this thread or another I wrote about a family member’s farm that was taken by imminent domain to put in a necessary stretch of interstate, for which they were compensated but it destroyed a multigenerational farmstead—and forced a retirement of someone who wasn’t ready.
Now, if this were an urban black neighborhood, there would be a plot of sympathy for the loss of homes, and more importantly, neighborhood.

If it were an urban neighbourhood, it would affect hundreds or even thousands of families, and not just one.

Land doesn't vote; The reason that there is an outcry when an urban area is bulldozed is because of the number of people impacted, not their colour.

It DID affect more than one family! I’m just related to that one particular family. It changed the nature of that part of our county completely. And every other area over the hundred of miles that comprise its route.

Sounds like a rather rural attitude.
The people I know affected are friends and relatives.
The zillions of people who use the road I do not know. Who cares about them?
Tom

My point is exactly that: if it’s farms and small towns who are being disrupted, the ‘liberal’ attitude is: who cares? Bunch of rural folks—probably ignorant republicans so who cares? And zillions use the interstate.

And you know this is the “liberal attitude” how, exactly?

 

[pood]

My point is exactly that: if it’s farms and small towns who are being disrupted, the ‘liberal’ attitude is: who cares? Bunch of rural folks—probably ignorant republicans so who cares? And zillions use the interstate.

We could start at the beginning.
I despise the socialist transportation system known as the "interstate freeways". If they weren't funded at gunpoint, with tax money, because they're "good for business", we could get along the way Japanese people do. Reliance on efficient and available light rail for long distance travel.

However, to get to your point about ruralites getting paid for land, then complaining about it. How about this?

When an urban dweller has their neighborhood destroyed by pushing through a socialist freeway, do they get a big check from the government, like your family did? Nope.

Their landlords probably did, but the people who had their lives disrupted by yet an another highway got nothing. You know that as well as I do. Who got the big checks when I-65 and I-70 got pushed through Indianapolis? The little people?

Nah, you know better than that. Your family got a bunch of money when they lost their home, urban folks who lost their homes got squat.

Don't give me this "rural people are victims of the system" bullshit because I know better.
Tom

Yes, they DO get checks. They just aren’t enough. And btw, why don’t you know and understand that there are urban people, including black people in urban areas who OWN their own homes???? WTF!

Why do you understand that it is difficult fir urban people to loose their homes and neighborhoods but not that it’s hard for farmers and just plain renters and small town home owners and business people to lose their homes and neighborhoods , proximity to family and friends and relationships decades old and sometimes much longer.

It’s the SAME issue!!!!

But liberals often only care about one of those groups.

You keep saying this about liberals. Do you know what the liberal New Deal did for the South?

My family member losing their farm came close to destroying him the very same as it could for any other business owner whose entire life, maybe for generations, was wrapped up in their business. It isn’t so easy to shift gears in your 60’s and have the business/farm you still wanted to run and leave to your kid, as you got it from your dad. People’s dreams are taken when they lose their home, their land/business/neighborhood.

My family member was fortunate that they got a decent payout and could keep their actual home—with a lovely view of a roaring interstate. They still lost lots that was very important to them. If they had a choice, they would never have sold. Lots of other people were not so fortunate as that family member was.

My point was not about imminent domaine per se so much as it was that some people seem worth caring about and others don’t.

If you want people to be on your side, to vote the way you want/need them to vote, you need to really look at things from their side.

I am not talking about the repugnant racism and phobias about other people’s sex lives. For most people, those ‘issues’ really only get inflamed when their basic needs are being ignored. When people are scared, they latch on to some boogie man or another. Race, LGBTQIA+, whatever.

Honestly, if you want a complacent, content enough population, make sure they have access to good jobs, affordable housing abd health care and day care and good educational opportunities for their families. And roads in decent shape, clean air and water. In other words, security, with hope for the future.

Yeah, then ask your friends in rural America not to vote for Trump and the Rethuiglicans, who will give then NONE of those things and indeed try to take away what little they have to give to their wealthy pals.

 

[Toni]

I will leave you with this, from Lincoln’s first inaugural address:

“The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely, they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Beautiful piece of poetry by Lincoln.

What followed shortly thereafter was a brutal civil war that killed more than half a million people.

Guess Lincoln was wrong about the “better angels,” alas.

No. He was not wrong. Those who refused to listen to their better angels were wrong and the nation paid dearly for it, but it was a debt that was owed—and then some! for the compromises that allowed slavery to exist.

When will we learn to not go to war because we refuse to see our fellow human beings as fellow human beings?

 

[Toni]

It is more urgent today than ever before that we look for common ground. There is a lot there. We just need to pay more attention to it.

LIke what?

I can only think of really fundamental stuff like Maslowe's hierarchy of needs.

Can you think of any policies that would appeal to people based on this common ground?

As far as I can tell people who live in different environs and have different social and economic priorities usually benefit from different government policies, and therefore fall into different political interest groups to be carved out and won over. Politics inevitabilty pits such interest groups against each other.

I don't even know what people in country towns need to make their lives significantly and immediately better but I'm pretty sure it's quite different than what I need in the suburbs/city.

Good jobs
Good education
Good healthcare
Good roads
Access to goods and services needed by families, from north through old age
Good internet access
Respect

If they want those things, maybe they should stop voting for Trump in particular and Republicans in general. Trump in particular and Republicans in general look down on “the rubes” far more than the liberal/left does. Trump once expressed his aversion to shaking hands with his supporters at some rally or other, describing them to aides as “disgusting people.”

Republicans don’t give a shit about rural America or their red state supporters. They feed them culture-war crap to win their votes, in order to put into practice their true political mission: comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted.

Possibly someone has already made these rather obvious points; I just started reading this thread.

.

Do you think I disagree????? Certainly Donald Trump is incapable of caring about anything other than himself.

 

[jab]

I haven't attacked you.

If it walk like an attack duck and talks like an attack duck, it's an attack duck.

 

[Toni]

My point is exactly that: if it’s farms and small towns who are being disrupted, the ‘liberal’ attitude is: who cares? Bunch of rural folks—probably ignorant republicans so who cares? And zillions use the interstate.

We could start at the beginning.
I despise the socialist transportation system known as the "interstate freeways". If they weren't funded at gunpoint, with tax money, because they're "good for business", we could get along the way Japanese people do. Reliance on efficient and available light rail for long distance travel.

However, to get to your point about ruralites getting paid for land, then complaining about it. How about this?

When an urban dweller has their neighborhood destroyed by pushing through a socialist freeway, do they get a big check from the government, like your family did? Nope.

Their landlords probably did, but the people who had their lives disrupted by yet an another highway got nothing. You know that as well as I do. Who got the big checks when I-65 and I-70 got pushed through Indianapolis? The little people?

Nah, you know better than that. Your family got a bunch of money when they lost their home, urban folks who lost their homes got squat.

Don't give me this "rural people are victims of the system" bullshit because I know better.
Tom

Yes, they DO get checks. They just aren’t enough. And btw, why don’t you know and understand that there are urban people, including black people in urban areas who OWN their own homes???? WTF!

Why do you understand that it is difficult fir urban people to loose their homes and neighborhoods but not that it’s hard for farmers and just plain renters and small town home owners and business people to lose their homes and neighborhoods , proximity to family and friends and relationships decades old and sometimes much longer.

It’s the SAME issue!!!!

But liberals often only care about one of those groups.

You keep saying this about liberals. Do you know what the liberal New Deal did for the South?

My family member losing their farm came close to destroying him the very same as it could for any other business owner whose entire life, maybe for generations, was wrapped up in their business. It isn’t so easy to shift gears in your 60’s and have the business/farm you still wanted to run and leave to your kid, as you got it from your dad. People’s dreams are taken when they lose their home, their land/business/neighborhood.

My family member was fortunate that they got a decent payout and could keep their actual home—with a lovely view of a roaring interstate. They still lost lots that was very important to them. If they had a choice, they would never have sold. Lots of other people were not so fortunate as that family member was.

My point was not about imminent domaine per se so much as it was that some people seem worth caring about and others don’t.

If you want people to be on your side, to vote the way you want/need them to vote, you need to really look at things from their side.

I am not talking about the repugnant racism and phobias about other people’s sex lives. For most people, those ‘issues’ really only get inflamed when their basic needs are being ignored. When people are scared, they latch on to some boogie man or another. Race, LGBTQIA+, whatever.

Honestly, if you want a complacent, content enough population, make sure they have access to good jobs, affordable housing abd health care and day care and good educational opportunities for their families. And roads in decent shape, clean air and water. In other words, security, with hope for the future.

Yeah, then ask your friends in rural America not to vote for Trump and the Rethuiglicans, who will give then NONE of those things and indeed try to take away what little they have to give to their wealthy pals.

Reakly? How do you think that will go when I cannot even convince people here that conservatives are actually human beings with very similar ( but not identical) wishes, hopes and dreams.

One cannot change anyone’s mind in your favor by treating them with contempt. I see nothing but contempt for those who have a different perspective than the majority of those posting here—and I share the same liberal perspective. However, I insist that the only way to win people over is by treating them with respect and understanding.

You’re responding to my posts as if I were supporting the GOP party or Trump himself!

 

[Elixir]

Few if any people voted for Trump because they thought electing him would benefit anyone but themselves.

You’re responding to my posts as if I were supporting the GOP party or Trump himself!

Anything that serves to excuse behavior that includes voting for Trump, is supporting Trump and HIS GOP.

 

[jab]

I will leave you with this, from Lincoln’s first inaugural address:

“The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely, they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Beautiful piece of poetry by Lincoln.

What followed shortly thereafter was a brutal civil war that killed more than half a million people.

Guess Lincoln was wrong about the “better angels,” alas.

No. He was not wrong. Those who refused to listen to their better angels were wrong and the nation paid dearly for it, but it was a debt that was owed—and then some! for the compromises that allowed slavery to exist.

When will we learn to not go to war because we refuse to see our fellow human beings as fellow human beings?

An odd rhetorical question to ask coming out of a discussion of the American Civil War, where no American before the war was not, no never, under no circumstances, seen by other Americans as a not fellow human being.

 

[jab]

Anyone remember HRC and “deplorables”? Rightly or wrongly, that still sticks in their craw. It personified the perception that liberals/“the elite” attack them.

And? Whatever the center and left are guilty of, the right is guilty of far worse.

snowflakes
not "real Americans"
groomers
pedophiles
baby killers
infanticide
cannibals
drink the blood of children
satanic
demonic
beta males
low-T
soy boys
gay liberal agenda
pro-crime
they're replacing whites with poor dirty brown people
white genocide
racist against white people

What is the point of this exercise? Can liberals be mean? Sure. Right-wingers are meaner. Where does that leave us?

IMO this goes deeper than the media. Diversity, transgender issues, and gay marriage are but three issues where many conservatives feel their way of life is attacked.

Well, if we follow the right's lead, the appropriate response to this is "suck it up, buttercup" and "fuck your feelings".

You left out "Jews will not replace us" and "fake news"

 

[ZiprHead]

I think this short clip works here.

 

[Toni]

I will leave you with this, from Lincoln’s first inaugural address:

“The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely, they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Beautiful piece of poetry by Lincoln.

What followed shortly thereafter was a brutal civil war that killed more than half a million people.

Guess Lincoln was wrong about the “better angels,” alas.

No. He was not wrong. Those who refused to listen to their better angels were wrong and the nation paid dearly for it, but it was a debt that was owed—and then some! for the compromises that allowed slavery to exist.

When will we learn to not go to war because we refuse to see our fellow human beings as fellow human beings?

An odd rhetorical question to ask coming out of a discussion of the American Civil War, where no American before the war was not, no never, under no circumstances, seen by other Americans as a not fellow human being.

Really? Do you think that slaveholders regarded the people they enslaved as fully human? I don’t.

Of course there are orders of magnitude in difference but I see each side dehumanizing the other. I think that this is part of deliberate strategies to manufacture and end lane outrage—against anything/everything.

Who benefits from discord?

 

[jab]

I will leave you with this, from Lincoln’s first inaugural address:

“The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely, they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Beautiful piece of poetry by Lincoln.

What followed shortly thereafter was a brutal civil war that killed more than half a million people.

Guess Lincoln was wrong about the “better angels,” alas.

No. He was not wrong. Those who refused to listen to their better angels were wrong and the nation paid dearly for it, but it was a debt that was owed—and then some! for the compromises that allowed slavery to exist.

When will we learn to not go to war because we refuse to see our fellow human beings as fellow human beings?

An odd rhetorical question to ask coming out of a discussion of the American Civil War, where no American before the war was not, no never, under no circumstances, seen by other Americans as a not fellow human being.

Really? Do you think that slaveholders regarded the people they enslaved as fully human? I don’t.

Of course there are orders of magnitude in difference but I see each side dehumanizing the other. I think that this is part of deliberate strategies to manufacture and end lane outrage—against anything/everything.

Who benefits from discord?

You misread my sentence.

As to your stand: Should the Union side have not gone to war even though African Americans were not seen as fellow human beings and were being treated accordingly? What would you have had Lincoln et al do instead do instead?

 

[CosmicJellyfish]

When will we learn to not go to war because we refuse to see our fellow human beings as fellow human beings?

It's possible that we may have eventually outgrow war thousands of years into the future, but we probably won't be around long enough to achieve that since right-wingers oppose any and all efforts to deal with global warming.

 

[CosmicJellyfish]

I cannot even convince people here that conservatives are actually human beings

You don't need to do that here because none of the people you're arguing with see conservatives as subhuman. Seeing others as subhuman, inferior, or unworthy is a feature of right-wing politics. Left-wing politics are by definition egalitarian. Right-wing politics are all about establishing and perpetuating social and economic hierarchies, e.g. men above women, white above black, one religion above other religions, straight above gay & trans, and so on.

The people who need convincing regarding the humanity of others are the people who voted for the guy who said Mexico sends rapists and murderers, AOC and Ilhan Omar should go back to their countries, and refugees at the southern border should be shot.

 

[Shadowy Man]

One cannot change anyone’s mind in your favor by treating them with contempt. I see nothing but contempt for those who have a different perspective than the majority of those posting here—and I share the same liberal perspective. However, I insist that the only way to win people over is by treating them with respect and understanding.

In all these posts you have seen *nothing* but contempt? Really? I do understand your overall point but it won’t be bolstered by hyperbole.

 

[Rhea]

when I cannot even convince people here that conservatives are actually human beings with very similar ( but not identical) wishes, hopes and dreams.

Please say the names of the people HERE wjo you think “cannot be convinced that conservatives are actual human beings.”

Just so that I can be crystal clear on exactly who you are talking about so I can go read what they wrote.

I see nothing but contempt for those who have a different perspective than the majority of those posting here

Really? You see NOTHING but contempt? Nothing?

I cannot even convince people here that conservatives are actually human beings

You don't need to do that here because none of the people you're arguing with see conservatives as subhuman.

And if you think they are, Toni, please provide quotes on what made you think that.


I’m feeling quite surprised and not a little attacked by this claim that I don’t think conservatives are even human and I have nothing but contempt for them…. The people who are my neighbors.

Do you really mean these sentences? Do you REALLY mean this?