Sure there is. He's a shock jock. You don't have to be a bad person to spew filth for attention or social signalling. It helps, but it's not required.
That sure sounds a lot like "courting bigots". That he's a bad person is, I think, far in the past at this point.
It's not. A "shock jock" is somebody who says outrageous things because they're outrageous. You don't have to be a bad person to enjoy them- in fact, being offended by them is literally a primary reason
to enjoy them.
More relevantly in this case, it's a great way to get attention and suggest a lack of social restraint or conformity. The former is useful for obvious reasons, while the latter is an excellent quality to display when the usual rules are terrible, as in the case of lying shills who never do what they say they will, don't actually care about their constituents, and other mean things people say about "normal" politicians.
To the whole thing: Alright, gimme some numbers.
Sure, send me the mindreading laser satellite and I'll get right on that.
So you have no idea. Could be five of them in a remote cabin in Alaska, could be everyone south of Jersey. But you're
utterly convinced that they compose
vast hordes causing
massive damage to... something. "Us," I suppose.
You know who else thinks and talks like that? Literally everyone, but most notably the people concerned about, you know, Mexican rapists and such. The ones convinced there's
enemies out there, and Trump is going to make everyone safe by
fixing that little problem. The issue being that they're too far into their ideology and related bullshit to care overmuch about reality.
I mean, do you not think Imported Rape is a problem? You're probably not a fan of rape or letting it continue unabated. But you're probably also pretty sure the numbers on that are pretty negligible, and that anyone trying to push it as a major problem is a jackass. And if I asked one of them what the numbers were, what do you think they'd say? "Sure, here's the latest figures"? Or "Geez, I dunno, I don't have a mind reading laser, but it's a serious problem!"?
Because this really just sounds like the same tribal shield-thumping you see with every political zealot, talking about The Other whose crimes and influence have grown so great that they Can No Longer Be Ignored.
Why do I even bother? I spend all of my actual strategist time talking about how the left needs unity and understanding, and then I get this.
Right, the left. Your People. You spend all your time talking about how your group needs to unite and stand strong against the enemy group, then you're surprised when I call you partisan? Why would that be surprising?
The middle paragraph especially disturbs me, because it really just feels like a blanket condemnation of anyone who disagrees with you. What, if you disagree with illegal immigration, would you feel is within the "paradigm of acceptable angles" to do about it? Or is the problem simply that anyone who gets to the disagreeing part is already hideously wrong to begin with?
If you think we should try to round Hispanic people up and throw them over the border, imprison women exercising their reproductive rights, or refuse to address police executions so we can be all tough on crime, then yes, you are a bad person. If we think that believing things can make you a bad person, that is. I suppose one could take the view that you can believe America should ethnically cleanse the streets in a hail of gunfire and beat gay children until they decide to be normal without acting on it and so you're absolutely neutral because you don't do anything.
I'd argue believing this makes you a far worse person than someone who's pro-life. I'd argue something else, in fact, but I suspect it'd enrage you well beyond the utility it'd provide.
Which is exactly the kind of concession I have in mind when I say this makes you a bad person. If you have questionable beliefs, you can still, in theory, productively work with others. On the most basic level this means just not causing a scene with people you don't like, but it ramps up to all sorts of fun things. Including, at the very best case, exchanging information productively enough to shift those beliefs.
The most problematic beliefs, then, are those that drown out those possibilities. If you want all Mexicans hurled back to Mexico, you can still, in theory, have productive conversations and come to compromises with those that want something different. If you believe everyone who doesn't want all Mexicans hurled back over the wall is a traitor hippie, that potential
rapidly vanishes.
You can potentially come back from anything if your mechanisms are still working. If they're not, you start gumming up and shrinking down. The end result is a literal, not-a-euphemism-for-racist bigot- someone who's vehemently stuck in their ways and will entertain no notions to the contrary, because they decided long ago that all notions to the contrary were the product of imbeciles and crooks.
So yes, I'll absolutely take someone who wants more police authority but is willing to understand why some might not over someone who wants to clean up the police and feels anyone who feels differently is an animal.
There is plenty of room to be reasonable about illegal immigration without agreeing with me. I'm not even absolutely certain what we should do about it. Donald Trump's expressed views are not within that range.
Also, the paradigm of angles is not about what should or should not be tolerated, it's about how politics has worked in the past vs. what Trump did. Some of the GOP advocated for deportation, but they did so from say, the idea that we have to have a fair immigration process and support our own laws. Compare to Trump's rather direct version of the underlying idea: Mexicans are rapists, BUILD WALL.
So name some. Or are you saying it's the underlying tone that matters? In which case, same question for tone. What tones are acceptable yet differ from yours?
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Topic: Doc Helgoland's Asylum for the Politically American: T+0 (Read 1420096 times)