Conservative gay, Andrew Sullivan, writes a bizarre article. Real stuff and some nonsense.

[deanrd]

Conservative Gay, Andrew Sullivan writes a long meandering article that is a very interesting read. Skittering from facts to fluff to the just plain bizarre.

There is a great paragraph that spells out the state of the world:

Part of this, I’d guess, is because so many other indicators in the world are remarkably good right now. Economic growth is now ubiquitous in the developed world (including even Japan) for the first time in quite a while. In America, we are in a record eighth year of economic growth, bringing peak employment and finally a bump in earnings. Median household income is now the highest in history. The Dow is at 25,000. Medicine has effectively abolished most of the diseases which used to kill us in mass numbers. Illegal border crossings to the U.S. have fallen to record lows. More Americans have health insurance than at any point in history, and Trump has failed to kill Obamacare. Crime rates are at historic lows and keep declining in ways that simply baffle criminologists. Solar energy is finally competitive with fossil fuels. Global conflict continues its long centuries-old decline. ISIS has been destroyed in its own heartland. Anyone with a phone has access to more learning and knowledge than at any point in human history. More people live in democracies today than a dozen years ago. When natural disasters happen, they kill fewer people in a far more populous world. The last decade has seen the biggest decline in global poverty ever. And on and on. All this renders the collapse of the American presidency more tolerable.

Trump’s First Year Has Been a Disaster. Here’s Why I Have Hope.

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For the first 6 years of the Bush Administration, Andrew was so in love with George it was sickening. But the last two saw a total rejection. I never could understand how someone could turn so quickly since the facts were public all along.

I think the comparison of Trump or the GOP to a drunk driver is way off base. They aren't accidents waiting to happen. They have a focused agenda. We saw it with the Trump tax/wealth redistribution to the top 1%.

Even though his article plays pinball with the facts and ideas, bouncing from one to the other, it's still a good read.

 

[AsianTrumpSupporter]

 

[deanrd]

Gay Republicans are always confusing to me. Considering Republicans want gays dead.

Donald Trump reportedly joked about VP Mike Pence wanting to "hang" gays

Trump’s joke about Mike Pence affirms the long-held concerns of many in the LGBT community

Hint: It wasn't a joke.

 

[AsianTrumpSupporter]

Gay Republicans are always confusing to me. Considering Republicans want gays dead.

Donald Trump reportedly joked about VP Mike Pence wanting to "hang" gays

Trump’s joke about Mike Pence affirms the long-held concerns of many in the LGBT community

Hint: It wasn't a joke.

 

[Mac1958]

 

[CrusaderFrank]

What's happened to Rderp?

 

[martybegan]

What's happened to Rderp?

His last functioning neuron finally left the reservation.

 

[depotoo]

Republicans want gays dead? Really? Show us.

Gay Republicans are always confusing to me. Considering Republicans want gays dead.

Donald Trump reportedly joked about VP Mike Pence wanting to "hang" gays

Trump’s joke about Mike Pence affirms the long-held concerns of many in the LGBT community

Hint: It wasn't a joke.

 

[AsianTrumpSupporter]

Republicans want gays dead? Really? Show us.

Gay Republicans are always confusing to me. Considering Republicans want gays dead.

Donald Trump reportedly joked about VP Mike Pence wanting to "hang" gays

Trump’s joke about Mike Pence affirms the long-held concerns of many in the LGBT community

Hint: It wasn't a joke.

I think fags are funny. It doesn't mean I want them dead. Well, the commie fags can go die in a fire for all I care.

 

[usmbguest5318]

Skittering from facts to fluff to the just plain bizarre.

What exactly did you find in the article that constituted "skittering from facts to fluff?" Do you consider a writer's offering their reflective analysis fluff?

Conservative Gay, Andrew Sullivan writes a long meandering article

OT:

• I've read the essay and I found nothing in it that gives rise to your mentioning Sullivan's sexual orientation.
• Long? Sullivan's article is just over 2600 words, or four pages in a standard MS Word document . Me thinks you may be falling victim to affliction that has beset so much of modern discourse, "Twitter induced ADD" of a sort. For a publication like New York, Sullivan's essay is about normal in length. Even in the abstract, it's not long. I should think most folks back in school wrote exam essays of similar length. Many a professional in myriad disciplines routinely write documents of similar length.
• Sullivan didn't meander either, but whatever...I have no interest in pursuing a discussion about the qualitative nature of the composition's structure. I'm fine with our merely disagreeing on that.

Conservative Gay, Andrew Sullivan writes a long meandering article that is a very interesting read. Skittering from facts to fluff to the just plain bizarre.

There is a great paragraph that spells out the state of the world:

Part of this, I’d guess, is because so many other indicators in the world are remarkably good right now. Economic growth is now ubiquitous in the developed world (including even Japan) for the first time in quite a while. In America, we are in a record eighth year of economic growth, bringing peak employment and finally a bump in earnings. Median household income is now the highest in history. The Dow is at 25,000. Medicine has effectively abolished most of the diseases which used to kill us in mass numbers. Illegal border crossings to the U.S. have fallen to record lows. More Americans have health insurance than at any point in history, and Trump has failed to kill Obamacare. Crime rates are at historic lows and keep declining in ways that simply baffle criminologists. Solar energy is finally competitive with fossil fuels. Global conflict continues its long centuries-old decline. ISIS has been destroyed in its own heartland. Anyone with a phone has access to more learning and knowledge than at any point in human history. More people live in democracies today than a dozen years ago. When natural disasters happen, they kill fewer people in a far more populous world. The last decade has seen the biggest decline in global poverty ever. And on and on. All this renders the collapse of the American presidency more tolerable.

Trump’s First Year Has Been a Disaster. Here’s Why I Have Hope.

-----------

For the first 6 years of the Bush Administration, Andrew was so in love with George it was sickening. But the last two saw a total rejection. I never could understand how someone could turn so quickly since the facts were public all along.

I think the comparison of Trump or the GOP to a drunk driver is way off base. They aren't accidents waiting to happen. They have a focused agenda. We saw it with the Trump tax/wealth redistribution to the top 1%.

Even though his article plays pinball with the facts and ideas, bouncing from one to the other, it's still a good read.

From the article:

What I love about this nugget is how it exposes our right-left divide as constantly in flux over the decades, and how it reveals the eternal fact of all legislation: that unintended consequences are often as salient as intended ones. In 1965, Senator Ted Kennedy endorsed the bill by claiming that “the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset.” Interesting to see an iconic liberal extol the merits of a more racially homogeneous nation, isn’t it?

Having read the proceedings record in which Kennedy made his "ethic mix" remark, it's clear that "extolling the merits of a more racially homogenous nation" is not at all a theme or rhetorical objective of Kennedy's remarks. Indeed, Kennedy made his point using purely neutral language and he followed that remark with objective support. In typical editorialist fashion, Sullivan has misrepresented the character Kenney's statements.

It is not an illegitimate thing to worry about huge shifts in the ethnic and racial demography of a country. Iconic liberals once did so.

What?

• Whether iconic "anyone" did or did not has no bearing on whether such worry is justified, let alone sage.
• Such worries are legitimate only to political ends, not to moral ones, not to culturally productive ones, and certainly not to business' ends.

If the point of a democracy is to allow all merit to be rewarded regardless of class, race, gender or other factors, then allowing immigration entirely on family, and thereby purely genetic and racial grounds, is actually anti-democratic.

An eloquent enough yet characteristically binary Republican way of considering things.

• Democracy has more than one "point," yet Sullivan does not accord that as so.
• Apparently Sullivan has not yet figured out that a process, person or group that does not support a given idea need not necessarily be in opposition to that idea.

The argument for putting the interests of American workers first also used to be a liberal idea.

It never stopped being so; however, equivocating "Trumplicans" have managed to co-opt that notion and bastardize it into a rhetorical weapon of hate.

In Thailand, for example, there is a huge whitening industry, with the latest fad being the whitening of, yes, dicks.

OT:

Oh, dear. That has made it's way into the the national conversation.​