ICE Shooting in Minnesota

[Tom Pitt]

I agree with most of this. I do think the goalposts have been moved, but moved from what to where? I mean, I think they went quite overboard with the way schools deal with transgender individuals, for example. But a lot of my right-leaning friends think that the very existence of trans individuals is moving the goal posts, not just the means of trying to integrate them into our society. You know, trans people exist, either way, it just depends on how you want to acknowledge them, or choose to fully not acknowledge them, or whatever. So the move has been from lesser acceptance to greater acceptance, which in my world view at least is a positive thing. The world is a better place when people are more accepting of each other's difference than less accepting, wouldn't you agree? Now we can debate the methods to advance that acceptance and that is where, I believe, things like schools keeping gender identity a secret from parents and encouraging kids to explore their gender identify (both of which were heavily documented in multiple news articles) is swinging the pendulum too far. But the real debate comes in the form of people like my sisters-in-law. They are coming this weekend to visit my wife, her sisters. They are died in the wool hardcore Trump supporters and deeply self-avowed "true christians" and they refuse to stay at our house, where we have ample room and my wife would be more at home considering she is recovering from serious surgery, all because our daughter is renting our basement and living with her trans partner. They said, quote "we will not stay in a house that contains such vile evil". So the existence of this person is a vile evil? Do you think these 2 women are isolated in this belief? If so I have some beach front property in Montana I would like to sell you, and you are being heavily disingenuous.

So which came first, the chicken or the egg. Or the "evil lives here" drive to suppress people who actually exist, or the moving of the goal posts way too far to the left all at once? I imagine they developed side by side.

But also, I have posted on here, at least 3 times, the article by Bourdain expressing his views about how the left elitists pushed the right regular folks too far and they pushed back, setting up the storm we have now. I believe that happened. Was is the first salvo? Again, chicken and egg. Left and Right have been at each other's throats for literal centuries at this point, where do you think the terms even come from? Why "left" and "right"? Google it.

So who started it and when? I guess everyone has to decide that for themselves.

But the question we have to answer is, how do we stop it and work for the common good more than for the power of the party? Or does no one care about that any more?

I appreciate your rather sensible post. Usually most people on here think i come in bad faith when I truly don't. Pertaining to your wife's family, i think that's a bummer. I don't personally have any issue if an adult wants to be transgender. I work with a transgender and have never treated him differently. It's not my business if someone wants to live that way. But i do believe getting involving children in this ideology is immoral. And we have seen enough children transition and then regret it later to grant merit to that argument i think.

And personally i don't believe Christianity as an ideology is the problem. If anything, the message of Jesus Christ would help imo as the two great commandments are "to love the Lord thy God and to love thy neighbor as thyself." Upon these hang all the laws and the prophets. Basically, i think Human nature is the problem. Which is where i most fundamentally diverge with a lot of leftist ideology. I just don't think you can social engineer your way to utopia. The Bolsheviks said they would create the new man and we saw how that turned out. Often times when we as a society critique America, we are doing so with an outlook that works back from utopia rather than grappling with reality and the full scope of human history. Even the scores of people who proudly proclaim their hate for America and western civilization, do not truly desire to go live in a non western country and if they do, they may come to find the cultures of western civilization are more moral.

Regarding your final question, i may not have the complete answer. Obviously i naturally lean more conservative. And i think morality and traditional values are good for young people but it should be up to parents. That said, when i hear a parent say at 4 years old, their child decided they were a different gender than that of their biological gender, knowing what we do about lifespan, human development and brain development etc, i am rather skeptical a child can make that decision at 4 years old. So i think there is some lunacy there. My cousin for example said when he was 4, he wanted to be a ballerina and marry Batman but now he is in his 30s and is just a regular guy who works as an electrician and he has 3 kids and is happily married to a woman.

The media and political parties are a huge problem. They certainly have no interest in unifying the country. Man is political animal and they'll do whatever they can to get power.

My apologies for rambling a bit

 

[Tom Pitt]

I recognize the bias of The New Republic, it’s easily recognizable, but will certainly use them if they are accurate in what they are presenting, or arguing.

As for The Atlantic, I could not disagree more with you. If I want the most in depth, most informative, I’m turning to The Atlantic. They do not muddy waters, or make it more difficult to recognize the truth. They do a much better job than most. The Atlantic is the best. I prefer it over both The NY Times and Washington Post. Smart people prefer The Atlantic, lol…

Nobody clarifies issues like The Atlantic.

“The Atlantic Monthly
was first published in 1857, in Boston, founded by writers and thinkers like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, quickly becoming a prestigious journal for literature, politics, and culture in the United States.”

I am open to the notion i am being unfair to the Atlantic to some extent. I guess i would say, i do not fully share what some call the blue pill world view that gained momentum first with the boomers and has evolved into what i now regard as neoliberalism. Now i would say, I am quite open to sensible arguments in favor of this or that... i'll try my best to be honest and take in new information and let that impact my world view. That said, i have a hard time with what i see as the inconsistencies, dogma, and what i can only discern as the authoritarianism of the modern left. Now i do acknowledge the shortcomings of Trump and some of the policies i'm not a fan of. But the Biden administration was pretty damn bad in a lot of ways but most of the issues sure seemed understated by the legacy media (excluding fox of course)

I didn't realize Emerson and Longfellow helped found the Atlantic. That's cool. You know the oldest paper in United States is the New York Post? It was founded by Alexander Hamilton. Obviously right leaning though. One of the few

 

[Tom Pitt]

He’s threatening the Insurrection Act against protestors, so, yes, absolutely he seems to be planning just that. IMO, he is hoping for this. A forever domestic war serves the interests of an authoritarian after all. And his ICE goons are out of control, and poorly trained. He has to know that ICE are untrained goon squads, and behaving the way they behave, will attract concerned citizens who are absolutely appalled at seeing people dragged from cars, thrown on the ground, seeing teenage citizens have the crap beaten out of them, and dumped off in parking lots far from where they were “abducted”(might as well call it what it is).

Does anyone think, under the circumstances that we see playing out on American streets, including killing citizens, that such scenes are not going to attract crowds of concerned citizens? Instead, Noem and others are identifying such concerned citizens as the enemy!!

To Trump, Vance, and Noem, concerned citizens, including peaceful demonstrators, are the enemies of our country. So yeah, such an attitude is not calculated to encourage discourse now, is it? So yes, if we see the insurrection Act, of course the squashing of protests will accelerate, and that squashing will be done by the US military.

Yep. The day he stood in front of a D.C. church, holding a bible upside down. That morning, he asked if protestors could be shot in the legs.



It happened on the day he wanted to pose in front of St.John’s Church. He asked if they could just shoot the protestors in the legs.

Faith leaders at St. John's Church in DC are 'outraged' at Trump's photo op with bible in front of church

"Hands that hold the Bible will never measure hearts that hold the Bible," said one of the church officials in response to Trump's visit on Monday.

www.wusa9.com

Will try and respond to this when i have a chance but i don't think it will be a short post

 

[Rubashov]

I appreciate your rather sensible post. Usually most people on here think i come in bad faith when I truly don't. Pertaining to your wife's family, i think that's a bummer. I don't personally have any issue if an adult wants to be transgender. I work with a transgender and have never treated him differently. It's not my business if someone wants to live that way. But i do believe getting involving children in this ideology is immoral. And we have seen enough children transition and then regret it later to grant merit to that argument i think.

And personally i don't believe Christianity as an ideology is the problem. If anything, the message of Jesus Christ would help imo as the two great commandments are "to love the Lord thy God and to love thy neighbor as thyself." Upon these hang all the laws and the prophets. Basically, i think Human nature is the problem. Which is where i most fundamentally diverge with a lot of leftist ideology. I just don't think you can social engineer your way to utopia. The Bolsheviks said they would create the new man and we saw how that turned out. Often times when we as a society critique America, we are doing so with an outlook that works back from utopia rather than grappling with reality and the full scope of human history. Even the scores of people who proudly proclaim their hate for America and western civilization, do not truly desire to go live in a non western country and if they do, they may come to find the cultures of western civilization are more moral.

Regarding your final question, i may not have the complete answer. Obviously i naturally lean more conservative. And i think morality and traditional values are good for young people but it should be up to parents. That said, when i hear a parent say at 4 years old, their child decided they were a different gender than that of their biological gender, knowing what we do about lifespan, human development and brain development etc, i am rather skeptical a child can make that decision at 4 years old. So i think there is some lunacy there. My cousin for example said when he was 4, he wanted to be a ballerina and marry Batman but now he is in his 30s and is just a regular guy who works as an electrician and he has 3 kids and is happily married to a woman.

The media and political parties are a huge problem. They certainly have no interest in unifying the country. Man is political animal and they'll do whatever they can to get power.

My apologies for rambling a bit

I would say that the United States is very close to falling out of what I would call the global West. Venezuela, support for Putin, Greenland, the brutality of ICE agents, attempts at criminal prosecution of the Presidents political enemies, these are not the actions of a Western democracy.

 

[Rubashov]

I agree with most of this. I do think the goalposts have been moved, but moved from what to where? I mean, I think they went quite overboard with the way schools deal with transgender individuals, for example. But a lot of my right-leaning friends think that the very existence of trans individuals is moving the goal posts, not just the means of trying to integrate them into our society. You know, trans people exist, either way, it just depends on how you want to acknowledge them, or choose to fully not acknowledge them, or whatever. So the move has been from lesser acceptance to greater acceptance, which in my world view at least is a positive thing. The world is a better place when people are more accepting of each other's difference than less accepting, wouldn't you agree? Now we can debate the methods to advance that acceptance and that is where, I believe, things like schools keeping gender identity a secret from parents and encouraging kids to explore their gender identify (both of which were heavily documented in multiple news articles) is swinging the pendulum too far. But the real debate comes in the form of people like my sisters-in-law. They are coming this weekend to visit my wife, her sisters. They are died in the wool hardcore Trump supporters and deeply self-avowed "true christians" and they refuse to stay at our house, where we have ample room and my wife would be more at home considering she is recovering from serious surgery, all because our daughter is renting our basement and living with her trans partner. They said, quote "we will not stay in a house that contains such vile evil". So the existence of this person is a vile evil? Do you think these 2 women are isolated in this belief? If so I have some beach front property in Montana I would like to sell you, and you are being heavily disingenuous.

So which came first, the chicken or the egg. Or the "evil lives here" drive to suppress people who actually exist, or the moving of the goal posts way too far to the left all at once? I imagine they developed side by side.

But also, I have posted on here, at least 3 times, the article by Bourdain expressing his views about how the left elitists pushed the right regular folks too far and they pushed back, setting up the storm we have now. I believe that happened. Was is the first salvo? Again, chicken and egg. Left and Right have been at each other's throats for literal centuries at this point, where do you think the terms even come from? Why "left" and "right"? Google it.

So who started it and when? I guess everyone has to decide that for themselves.

But the question we have to answer is, how do we stop it and work for the common good more than for the power of the party? Or does no one care about that any more?

I would say this, I think identity politics is symptomatic of a significantly bigger problem. For the last 30 years throughout most of the western world mainstream politics has had at its heart a consensus around conservative economics. This is a much bigger problem for the left than the right because they have to find a way to differentiate themselves as a product from the right wing. While there has been significant economic agreement there has also been significant corporate capture of politics, to the point where the sameness of politics left or right became problematic.

The right has weaponised race and cultural identity as a way yo stay relevant to voters whose interests economically and socially they no longer even pretend to represent. The left uses gender and identity politics to cover the same gaping hole that their abandonment of working people to the free market has created.

In the meantime the super rich experienced a growth in wealth unrivaled since the beginning of the industrial revolution, working people especially the middle class have been squeezed for the first time since the great depression. Actors on the far right have successfully seized on this, using race and foreigners as the scape goat. The problem for the left is an unwillingness to explain of advocate for a different, fairer economics, nobody on the left is articulating it in a meaningful way.