I'm guessing the religious people at your neighborhood churches feel pretty strongly about the value of truth. How do they make that work with support for trump? I'm not trying to do a gotcha, I seriously can't see past the dissonance.
Dividing people into "the left" and "the right" (or Republican / Democrat or whatever) as if it's over homogenous entity is very bad for any discourse. Not writing this as an answer here to address you specifically, it's done by virtually everybody.
When people say "the right did X" most likely the person they are discussing with didn't do X, but might (to some degree) identify with being part of what is meant by "the right". Same goes for "the left".
I live in Europe, so I don't have the deep knowledge and experience of people living in the US, but I have a more high level perspective instead.
To me, that partisan thinking is the biggest problem in the US, by far.
All above was originally written as an answer to Rick, but I figured here might be the better place for it, because I don't see an indication for past or present support of Trump. All he said was "I am a conservative voter" while vastly agreeing to the the critics of Trump. But because everything is "them or us" he is is one of "them" and therefore he is X and does Y and so on.
I believe if the US wants to survive, society needs to overcome that at least to some degree. Biden acknowledged that by using the term "Time to heal", at least that was my interpretation back then. Didn't work obviously, maybe he was the wrong person for the job or it wasn't time for it yet, idk.
> I don't see an indication for past or present support of Trump. All he said was "I am a conservative voter" while vastly agreeing to the the critics of Trump.
Rick is one of the most prolific pro-Trump accounts on this site. He's jumped through so many hoops to excuse or ignore or what-about Trump's actions, there is no doubt in my mind he is a Trump voter, and would likely vote for him for a third term if possible. Just look at this current thread to see how often he minimizes the rampant abuse of power by Trump because he "moves the ball forward on conservative policy".
Do not let his acknowledgement of Trump's issues fool you. He is 100% onboard with what is happening in the current admin.
That is a great question. It’s curious to me, I bet it’s positively baffling to many on the left.
I see things Trump does that are not in alignment with my values, that’s true.
He does move the ball forward on some conservative positions, so there is reason to approve of him. But does one outweigh the other?
I think he is a good showman. ( Remember, before he was a Republican he hung out with Don King and hosted Saturday Night Live— twice! ) The man knows how to reach people through a camera. He obviously shows enough appeal that he won the popular vote.
It is curious, and I bet will be an interesting study for future generations of political science students.
Mueller correctly stated there was an orchestrated disinformation campaign by Russia. That's different than Russians under voting tables stuffing ballots in their pockets. some like to conflate the two so that they can call it all the 'russia hoax'
"Loss of privilege feels like oppression". I see the numbers showing hiring shifts, but i don't see any numbers backing up the claim that there was once an pure and fair "American meritocracy" that has now been "gutted". and this [1] seems to show that the privilege has not actually been lost
> The after-action responses – 50 pages in all – were located by current FBI Director Kash Patel’s team and recently turned over to the House Judiciary Committee and its special subcommittee investigating security failures and weaponization of law enforcement during the Jan. 6 riot.
> The document has proven a bombshell to lawmakers, revealing for the first time that the FBI had a total of 274 agents deployed to the Capitol in plainclothes and with guns after the violence started but with no clear safety gear of way to be recognized by other law enforcement agencies working in the chaos of the riot.
The claim from the post above was "why were there so many FBI agents at the Jan 6 debacle" and the response asked for a source.
If you consider the response to the violence part of "the Jan 6 debacle", then yes, FBI agents were present.
The documents would NOT specify they were in "plainclothes" because the FBI doesn't wear uniforms, therefore everything would be "plainclothes" by definition. This is both common knowledge but I can personally confirm from my time there. You can dislike the characterization but it is correct.
The more interesting questions:
- Since the FBI primarily an investigative body (in the name) and these were NOT tacteams providing armed support, what was their purpose?
- Further, why did it take almost 5 years for the FBI to identify the man placing the pipebombs? According to reports, no new evidence came to light.
The context of this thread is essentially false flags, or at least some kind of entrapment to make the agency look useful by putting a stop to an attack they had instigated. So when someone asks "what were all the FBI agents doing there", it makes a great deal of difference whether agents were embedded in the crowd as the riot got started or if they arrived later to disperse the crowd.
The intial claim/skepticism is that there were agents there at all. Proven.
Moving on to the implication and my question:
> Since the FBI primarily an investigative body (in the name) and these were NOT tacteams providing armed support, what was their purpose?
We DO deserve an explanation to that one and unfortunately, "they showed up to address the violence" doesn't resolve this because - as noted - they are NOT uniformed. Therefore, a Special Agent drawing their weapon looks like a random civilian which would only increase the chaos and danger for everyone.
They're not even particularly useful for crowd control because a) they're not uniformed and b) as an Executive agency, they don't have authority in the Capital unless US Capital Police authorizes it.. though that may take the Sergeant at Arms or the Speaker specifically, I haven't reviewed that in quite a while.
Finally, since the FBI has a multi-decade history of instigating issues to be able to stop them, we SHOULD be skeptical until we get a complete and documented explanation.
Gosh this article is such a nothingburger. It's an endless litany to hammer that there was "political bias" in the deployment of the FBI.
It's mostly hearsay the only facts are that there were FBI agents deployed and that they were unprepared for riot control. But is riot control their role ? Weren't they supposed to be witnesses to see what was happening and inform other police ?
It was probably messy and you can probably find mismanagement everywhere if you look hard enough (and people to complain about it) but how do you handle a riot organized with the purpose of gaining more time to overturn the result of an election anyways ? (Check out the fake great electors scheme) This is the elephant in the room. To come and whine about political bias after that should be laughed at.
maybe i'm doing a No True Scotsman, but i can't see where the Left has ever been against the poors. I thought the the origin of the terms Left and Right was For Democracy (the poors have a voice), and For the King (the wealthies) from the French Revolution. How is 'wealthies vs poors' different from left vs right'?
I appreciate the acknowledgement ofthe 'No True Scotsman' trap. It is easy to define a side by its ideals (e.g., 'The Left is for the poor'), but the reality is that both sides muck it up the moment they take control.
Neither side actually supports the poor because both are funded by and literally are the wealthy masters. The evidence is in the trends/facts that for almost 50 years the wealth gap has only widened, regardless of who is in charge. At some point, we have to accept that the 'which side is right' argument is false.
Neither of the two major parties in US politics supports the poor.
Elsewhere there are broader choices in national politics.
eg: the current Prime Minister of Australia grew up with a single mother on a disability pension in council housing. His actions and politics are at least informed by real life experience as one of "the poor".
I think police may not mind Waze, they may care more about drivers that are truly dangerous and are fine with filtering out hose that are signalling that they are paying attention and showing respect by slowing down when police are present
