Democrats losing all credibility in denial of overwhelming evidence..

[hollodero]

(03-31-2024, 01:42 PM)Dill Wrote: I wasn't heroicizing Dems. So not ill-advised since that is not what is "advised."  I just don't see why criticism of Trump, without accompanying patter of how Biden and Dems suck too, should be cast as "imbalance" or an implicit "mythologizing" of Dems. Not sure how great my memory is about the Watergate era, but I don't recall people who criticized Nixon regularly adding that Dems, "of course," have their problems too, to avoid "concealing truths." Consider me curious about, and investigating, what has changed in our media environment to make kind of balance seem necessary.     

If Trump is a danger--and you agree he is--and justifying/minimizing/relativizing his behavior is a 24/7 requirement to maintain the danger (my claim; you haven't said you agree), then countering Trump-danger is about addressing that 24/7 justifying/minimizing/relativizing, whose primary tactic is "both sides do it," especially via false equivalence/whattaboutism. (Think of all the "independents" who, when asked to choose between someone who attempted to void democracy and someone who supports it, have trouble figuring out whether that is even the choice.) Making people more conscious of this pattern, of how it is systematic, is what creates my angle of critique and target here.

OK. I get it, I just think this approach runs into problems as soon as you take the step of rather not addressing actual problems on the left side to begin with. Real, existing, non-hyperbolic, non-overblown, non-Trump-relativizing actual bad stuff. That is where the mystification begins, when Trump is deemed so awful that nothing else matters and nothing else should even be brought up, to not enable false equivaliencies or whatever. That might be where you are, and to an extent even me, but it's not where the so-called middle is. When they see Pelosi rip up a Trump speech, they think of something the Trump side would do, except MTG did not even do that. And yeah, when they then talk about the sanctity of norms and institutions and the like after this kind of irreverent actionism, it sounds hollow, and saying that is not akin to being apologetic about Trump. Case in point, I also see several problems with how the democrats and the left-leaning media handled the BLM protests, the violence, the extremes that mixed themselves into the initial objectives and just got talked out of existence. Can I still say that, or do I employ a false sense of balance that only aids Trump and hence rather shut up about it because the Capitol storm was more dangerous to democracy? These are the things where I see problems, with employing counter-doublestandards and pointing to FOX et al. to justify them for example, giving people good examples for calling BS. Not to mention actual policies, not to mention how the left imho played its part in the rise of Trump to begin with, eg. by thinly veiled accusations of racism towards anyone who didn't like Obama and then some. Which not everyone did, but is merely one example of a "smarter, better, more humane and holier than thou" approach that happened constantly and without any blowback from the own side. By behaviour like this, this party gets more and more repellent to more and more people and it's not Trump's fault. Neglecting it won't help.

(04-01-2024, 08:18 PM)Dill Wrote: 3.       You say he is “socially left,” but the only evidence for that are his CLAIMS he is pro choice and gay marriage and the like.

Well, I for one just believe him, and why wouldn't I? Say what you will, you can't say that SSF is shy to voice his own opinion, why would he lie about that?

(04-01-2024, 10:43 PM)Dill Wrote: So far, the only thing specific that you have "put up"--your one hope--is your claim I do not think Israel "should be able to exist." Horrors!  My actual words: "Israel has a right to exist as part of a two-state or one-state solution to the Palestinian problem. It doesn't have right to exist as an ethnic state which occupies territory gained in war with intent to cleanse and annex.   

I mean, without agreeing I kinda get what you're saying here, but at the very least the phrasing, imho, is quite unfortunate.