Jeffrey Epstein Arrest

[Dill]

(08-15-2019, 12:54 PM)PhilHos Wrote: Please, spare me. I see the same thing from both Democrats and Republicans. Why you refuse to acknowledge this, I don't know.

You know very well why I don't acknowledge "both sides do it." 

You KNOW that no currently living Democratic leader spouts the extreme misogynistic, racist, and xenophonic rhetoric that Trump does--daily and publicly. You would have to go back to Wilson, Andrew Johnson, or Andrew Jackson for a minimal comparison. 

And you KNOW that Trump supporters/defenders deny that his behavior is the reason people "hate" him. They make the effect the cause by claiming Trump hate drives criticism of his bad behavior, not his bad behavior the criticism.  And Dem voters will not continue to support a candidate, even if he shoots someone in broad daylight on 5th Ave.

So asserting "both sides do it" is a false equivalence based on no evidence, and asserting that Trump's behavior is not the real cause of Trump hate just denies the public evidence of his behavior--in part minimizing or normalizing it.  (Not all THAT bad to call women "dogs" or mock disabilities.)

As I've said before, all efforts to normalize Trump's behavior, to pretend others are just as bad and otherwise deny what the evidence shows, must undermine norms of evidence-based rationality just as his daily nasty tweets undermine norms of public decency.  Such efforts must go around rational argument to rely on false equivalence, on rejection of logical consistency, and on ad hominem. They must gaslight and deflect, flip the script by claiming the other side is really doing all that.

The claim both sides do it--fair enough 25 years ago-- is now just part of this fog, to be always claimed but never demonstrated.

I am not going to "spare you" or anyone from this conclusion.

PS I am not saying no one can make a case for Trump; one certainly can argue that he cut taxes for his donors and appointed the judges conservatives wanted.  I'm just saying no Democratic leader exhibits the same level of degraded behavior; and if one did, Democrat voters would not accept that level of degraded behavior.  Counter examples would disprove this.  But there are none.