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[Frumple]

It felt like they were more in the wierd limbo between territory and a state.

Anyways, Trump keeps dissing PR and the mayor of San Juan. Not surprised, but I don't get the point of it, there's no political advantage to doing so or anything base wise (the mayor is white and the only thing hispanic about her is her last name), only benefit would be defending his ego.

Step one: Assume his base doesn't know the mayor is white, or doesn't care when they're presiding over a bunch of american citizens what might as well be foreigners. The advantage, such as it is, becomes more visible at that point. There's certainly a segment of folks that have an opinion of PR lodged somewhere between apathy and antipathy hard enough standard trumpian pettiness is either a plus or ignorable, and PR's far enough off the coast the shit resonates with the nativists a bit. Risky to assume trump's core base knows or cares about stupid junk like who or what the president is taking a dump on that day actually is.

The second step, mind you, is to note that as you say it's attempting to defend his ego, which is about where the guy's ability to substantively consider other human beings as matters of import stops. Keeping himself from attacking whatever when he's been pricked by something or another is pretty close to beyond his ability to manage at this point, regardless of the way it looks.

[Descan]

The problem with trying to ignore Puerto Rico in favour of all this other crap is that this other crap will, more or less, go away with time. With PR, "with time" just makes it worse, if he ignores it. It's a scandal that, at best, would simmer for a year or two and then erupt as WaPo or AP publish a story about Puerto Ricans suffering in darkness and filth for a year since the hurricane(s), just in time for mid-terms.

[smjjames]

Puerto Rico won't have that much affect on midterms, if any, but you can bet the Democrats will bring it up three years from now. If not in debates, then definetly in ads which target Puerto Ricans.

[EnigmaticHat]

It wouldn't be a Republican presidency without failing to resolve a domestic humanitarian crisis.

[Starver]

He's flooding Twitter with PR messages now. If only I weren't so jaded (nothing new, but yet moreso!)... He remains divisive (haters vs fanboys) and I don't know if there's any way to mitigate the total incomprehension betwixt the mainstream extremes.

(i.e. it's not just outlying minority extreme opinions... There's just too little ability for 'reasonably centrist' people to credibly call out outstanding problems and highlight actual solutions, and way too much "My President, Right Or Wrong"/"Resist!" dichotomy. I consider myself reasonably centrist (perhaps erroneously), but I fear I can't make any serious in-roads into rationalising the 'other side'. Am I utterly correct and they're all unbalanced, or am I actually equally, but oppositely, as unreasonable as 'them'? It's a philosophical conundrum. If the objectivity I think I'm applying isn't actually objective, then where can I find the real authoritative objectivity to properly calibrate my attitude against?)

[smjjames]

It is true that the center in politics has all but absolutely collapsed, you don't get to the hyperpartianship without the center collapsing. Both parties are finding themselves pulled towards the extremes, moderate Republican politicians are rarer and rarer, Democrats still have a whole bunch of moderates, but even they are finding themselves pulled away from the center.

[Trekkin]

He's flooding Twitter with PR messages now. If only I weren't so jaded (nothing new, but yet moreso!)... He remains divisive (haters vs fanboys) and I don't know if there's any way to mitigate the total incomprehension betwixt the mainstream extremes.

(i.e. it's not just outlying minority extreme opinions... There's just too little ability for 'reasonably centrist' people to credibly call out outstanding problems and highlight actual solutions, and way too much "My President, Right Or Wrong"/"Resist!" dichotomy. I consider myself reasonably centrist (perhaps erroneously), but I fear I can't make any serious in-roads into rationalising the 'other side'. Am I utterly correct and they're all unbalanced, or am I actually equally, but oppositely, as unreasonable as 'them'? It's a philosophical conundrum. If the objectivity I think I'm applying isn't actually objective, then where can I find the real authoritative objectivity to properly calibrate my attitude against?)

Authoritative objectivity is not politically possible, and that's part of the problem: everyone wants theirs to be the only right answer more than they want to be effective. It is not enough for me to determine why I disagree with someone's position on a given issue; I must prove why they are wrong about it and everything else, and therefore why I never need listen to them again. We "consider the source" and "identify bias" with the utmost selectivity, because we're all biased toward finding an excuse not to change our minds. This is one of the roots of our massive societal addiction to Bulverism: of course our detractors are wrong, we say. They can't help it, you see, because they're unlike us in some specific way. Feminists take it as read that men can never understand women; MRAs make much the same assumption about females. The poor can't handle money, say the rich; the rich can't know hunger, say the poor. See all the old people claiming that Trump protesters were millennials pissed they didn't get a trophy for participating in the election: our entire discourse is based on finding a reason to force everyone else to either agree with us or shut up.

[Dunamisdeos]

We "consider the source" and "identify bias" with the utmost selectivity, because we're all biased toward finding an excuse not to change our minds.

Americans have it ingrained in our culture that we are already perfect at any given moment, and that somehow to admit the possibility of wrongdoing means we lose by default and tarnishes us beyond all repair. It fuels all kind of wrongness of varying degrees.

If someone confronts us about this, our response is "I know I'm not perfect, you're just wrong. I would never say that. Obviously you're the problem" and then we strut about like phrasing it differently changes anything.

[Frumple]

He's flooding Twitter with PR messages now. If only I weren't so jaded (nothing new, but yet moreso!)... He remains divisive (haters vs fanboys) and I don't know if there's any way to mitigate the total incomprehension betwixt the mainstream extremes.

... why in the world would you think there's total incomprehension between what you're calling mainstream extremes, whatever it is you're considering those to be? Comprehension troubles aren't particularly what's causing friction in regards to trump's actions.

[Descan]

He's flooding Twitter with PR messages now. If only I weren't so jaded (nothing new, but yet moreso!)... He remains divisive (haters vs fanboys) and I don't know if there's any way to mitigate the total incomprehension betwixt the mainstream extremes.

(i.e. it's not just outlying minority extreme opinions... There's just too little ability for 'reasonably centrist' people to credibly call out outstanding problems and highlight actual solutions, and way too much "My President, Right Or Wrong"/"Resist!" dichotomy. I consider myself reasonably centrist (perhaps erroneously), but I fear I can't make any serious in-roads into rationalising the 'other side'. Am I utterly correct and they're all unbalanced, or am I actually equally, but oppositely, as unreasonable as 'them'? It's a philosophical conundrum. If the objectivity I think I'm applying isn't actually objective, then where can I find the real authoritative objectivity to properly calibrate my attitude against?)

Centrism is fallacious because, as much as the American political system rests on a false dichotomy, just going in the middle of that is still working with that dichotomy. Also think calling it "reasonable centrist" is implying anyone not calling themselves a centrist is, implicitly, unreasonable. Especially because a lot of what is considered "extreme" or "radical" in American politics is really *not* anywhere else in the world. The quintessential example would be publicly-paid healthcare; a radical socialist plot to kill grandma! Or... Not so much, according to around 7 billion people, minus 300 million.

Like, one side can be objectively wrong and the other side objectively right, but 'pure' centrism would be saying "well why not be *half* right? COMPROMISE!" Or, worse, when they're *both* objectively wrong, and somehow mixing two wrongs becomes a right?

That's mostly a critique of centrism, especially in news reporting, than anything explicit on the forums. Especially coming to mind is the false equivalence by centrists between BLM "please stop shooting us" and Antifa "anti-fascist is literally our name" on one side, and literal, actual "Blut und Boden" Nazis on the other, and saying "these are *both* wrong!" Or, worse, "Well have you tried *talking* to these people [who want to murder you and anyone like you]? Maybe they have some good points!"

[sluissa]

They are both wrong, but have you tried talking to them?

[EnigmaticHat]

Have you?  Seems a little harsh to be calling someone "wrong" when you haven't even heard their side of the story, amirite?

[sluissa]

Depends. Have I gone out to nazi, antifa or BLM marches and tried discourse there? No, lots of people have though and most have had little luck in getting anything intelligible from them.

Have I talked to people who seem to generally support their movement in more controlled settings? Yes. I have, in fact. This forum is a solid example of a place where at least a few on one side or another congregate.

All sides are wrong, all sides have their empathetic stories of why they feel that way. But in each case they fall back on emotional reasons rather than logic. They all fail to realize they're hurting their cause more than helping and while some might have good intentions the overall effect is one of anger and violence. None of them seem to realize that even when they manage to make an impact they're still targeting the wrong groups as enemies and fail to realize their efforts could in fact more likely get them what they actually want if redirected from violent and hateful groups and into more reasonable avenues.

But it feels good to yell and scream and break things. Proper avenues take too long. Violence and anger feels good now.

Every side has real problems, real reasons they feel the way they do and real issues that need to be dealt with. Hating ethnic groups is not a solution. Hating police is not a solution. Hating government and free speech is not a solution. But just because they've come to the wrong conclusions doesn't mean the problems they mean to solve are necessarily wrong to want to solve.

I feel like I'm digging myself into a hole here I don't necessarily want to deal with... But whatever, we'll see how it turns out.

[nenjin]

I remember maniac was a big proponent of "Fuck them, their views are horrific and we shouldn't even include them in the conversation because that gives them some sort of validity."

And yet "they" are still here and their president was elected. IMO it's not that you have to honor their shitty misbegotten politics or opinions. You have to however allow them their place on the stage. They can speak to their base and convince some who want to be convinced of something that their view is right. But by and large they still have to exist in the same sphere as everyone else. They need societal acceptance just like everyone else if they want their politics to triumph, or even exist. Letting them have their place and have their say, terrible as it is, is the opportunity they have to change people's mind against them as much as for them. That can't even happen when you shut them out of the conversation entirely. They get to be the silent, unspoken, unknown minority/majority and because this is America, their lack of representation gives them a strength greater than any correctness or righteousness their views might hold. That "centrist" bit of either informed but balanced people, or uninformed people who haven't/can't pick a side, are both waiting for the first extreme side to reveal themselves to be an asshole so they can be against them, because they can't grapple with actually taking a stance and alienating either side, so they dive all over anything they can categorically say they find unacceptable because it's "safe" to do so.

TLDR: "You" (generic you) become the asshole when you try to deny them a right to participate, not them. You have to not be the asshole so you give them the opportunity to show themselves to be assholes. You have to let them spew their poison out in the open where it can correctly sicken people, instead of giving it the blessing of First Amendment martyrdom.

I feel like I'm digging myself into a hole here I don't necessarily want to deal with... But whatever, we'll see how it turns out.

I've been staring at my post for about 10 minutes trying to decide if I want to say it or not. Fuck eeeetttttttttttttttttt.

[Trekkin]

Depends. Have I gone out to nazi, antifa or BLM marches and tried discourse there? No, lots of people have though and most have had little luck in getting anything intelligible from them.

Have I talked to people who seem to generally support their movement in more controlled settings? Yes. I have, in fact. This forum is a solid example of a place where at least a few on one side or another congregate.

All sides are wrong, all sides have their empathetic stories of why they feel that way. But in each case they fall back on emotional reasons rather than logic.

So many people have been telling you there is blame on both sides, sluissa?

Do both sides have some very fine people, too?

(Just to be clear, sluissa, I'm not saying you're like Trump. I'm saying that you've reached by presumably careful consideration the same position that a deranged Cheeto reached through sheer inanity.)