Eerie Parallels

[Smokin' OP]

It never fails. The doddering old fool in the W.H. says something completely outrageous and offensive and his supporters pretend they are the victims. Biden needs to bow out gracefully before he ruins what's left of the democrat party and makes a bigger fool of himself.

Sure................like Trump?

On Saturday, December 5, Donald Trump flew to Valdosta, Georgia, to speak at a rally.
It was his first rally since the election, a month earlier.

"You know we won Georgia, just so you understand," the president said, "and we won Florida and we won a lot of places. ... remember we were going to lose Florida ... I think they say that if you win Florida and if you win Ohio, in history you've never lost an election this has got to be a first time, but the truth is they were right we've never lost an election. We're winning this election.

"Very simply you will decide whether your children will grow up in a socialist country or whether they will grow up in a free country and I will tell you, this socialist is just the beginning for these people, these people want to go further than socialism they want to go into a communistic form of government and I have no doubt about it," Trump said.

"We're all victims. Everybody here. All these thousands of people here tonight. They're all victims. Every one of you."

 

[JoeB131]

I have one message for the Democratic party:

Don't make enemies of kind people. Their wrath is far more ruthless and unforgiving than the evilest man alive.

Except your movement isn't build on kindness. It's built on resentment, fear, and hatred.

This is why the Hitler comparison works better for Trump. Trump encourages hatred against Muslims and Mexicans. They're out to replace white people. They are criminals. They are terrorists. They are rapists.

 

[Coyote]

Pretty sure the DOJ going after concerned parents at school board meetings has that beat by a million miles.

https://www.justice.gov/ag/page/file/1438986/download

Pretty sure you are wrong since, like most of this stuff, there is more to it. Some of those “parents” were actively and violently disrupting meetings, stalking, harassing and threatening board members and their families…like calls along the line of “I know where your kids are, do you”? Some of them weren’t even from the district who’s meetings they were disrupting.

 

[Coyote]

Not rare. This is endorsed by the largest teacher's union in the country.

My daughter thinks she's transgender. Her public school undermined my efforts to help her.

I pleaded that my daughter's school call her by her legal name, use female pronouns. By refusing, they prevented her from getting the help she needs.

www.usatoday.com

https://www.nea.org/sites/default/files/2020-07/2018_Legal%20Guidance_Transgender%20Student%20Rights.pdf

View attachment 690930

Please have another. I have more at the ready.

So do I.

So this is a policy question, and the article appears to be from a seriously concerned parent but also seems to support “conversion therapy”, something known to be abusive.

In my opinion, the NEA’s gender affirmation policy is too broad, and in this regard the parents wishes should prevail when it comes to names and pronouns.

But there is a grey area, and this one where the rightists disregard for the welfare of the child comes out. Teachers often become trusted adults to children, especially those from troubled homes. They are people children can confide in and teachers can often provide a measure of support, safety and acceptance not found elsewhere.

Republicans are passing laws forcing teachers to disclose to parents if a child discusses anything concerning non-heterosexual sexuality. Sometimes it might be a phase, sometimes it is deeper, but the fact is the student trusts the teacher not to betray a confidence and if it is a phase it will work itself out. Where as being gay is gradually becoming more socially acceptable in this country there are many areas where it is not, and transgender is even less accepted. Many do not have supportive families.

How many youth end up abused or kicked out because of their sexual identity?

How many end up on the streets easy prey for sexual traffickers?

How many attempt or commit suicide?

What Democrats are doing is overly excluding the rights of parents.

What the Republicans are doing is over excluding the rights of children.

What most teachers are caught in is an ethical bind where they might be the only trusted person in that child’s life and now the law requires that they must report to the parents the child’s confidential disclosures regarding sexual identity?

How, specifically is this complex issue an Eerie parallel” to Hitler’s politics?

 

[surada]

This ain't no movie. This is reality; and the parallels between now and 1938 Germany are scary.

However, this is America, and we are not disarmed and can see through the propaganda.

This will not go well for the wanna-be Nazis.

By 1933 Hitler had purged the German government of socialists, communists, Jews and Democrats. He shut down most newspapers and got rid of most educated people.

 

[Coyote]

Like I told curry boy this morning, if the shoe fits, wear it.

Will you?

Also, I have defended Muslims on this very board before, so your memory is flawed, to begin with. Among other things, I strive to keep my sanity in this here political maelstrom. I will, however, not shy away from punching back, either.

But even if what you say is true, you've ignored all the demonization and hatred of Trump supporters, conservatives, Christians, gun owners, pro-lifers, and conservatives belonging to the demographic that Democrats claim to "own."

That’s kind of funny. The Republicans demonize leftist Christians because they ”own” the Evangelicalls. They demonize teachers. They demonize gun owners who want common sense gun laws, parents of children killed in school shootings (rightist Alex Jones called them crisis actors) who want some reform on our nation’s gun laws, women who become pregnant as a result of rape and don’t want the pregnancy (it’s just an “inconvenience”), Republicans who don’t support Trump (how many have quit, been primaried, smeared and labeled RINO soley for not marching lockstep in support of Trump?

I also note your lack of an opinion either way on Biden's speech last night. I'm sure you have nothing but high praise. I only see a "but you too!" card on the table. If you were a competent member of society you would be wanting to seek harmony with your fellow man, not this. But since the die is cast, we have little choice but to play the game your side started, and I will play to win.

Oh please. Typical rightist victim mentality: he started it! Own your own actions here instead of constantly the other.

And the bonded line? Look on the mirror. WHO decided compromise is a dirty word? You can’t compromise with the “enemy” because that is what the right has labeled the left when they started using the language of war in politics.

The Wayback Machine: 1979 and on…

GOPAC Republican Handout

uh.edu

When Gingrich entered Congress in 1979, the Georgia Republican rejected bipartisanship and "turned national politics and congressional politics into team sport," Coppins says.

While in Congress, Coppins says Gingrich treated politics as a "zero-sum" endeavor — and he wasn't above resorting to name-calling, conspiracy theories and strategic obstruction in order come out on top: "He was not there to work in the committee structure and deal with constituent services. He was there to foment revolution and declare war."

Though Gingrich left Congress 1999, his aggressive tactics have had a lasting impact. In his Atlantic article, "The Man Who Broke Politics," Coppins writes about how the former speaker helped pave the way for Donald Trump's election.

…If you look at the way that [Gingrich] gained power in the first place, he did it very deliberately and methodically by undermining the institution of Congress itself from within, by kind of blowing up the bipartisan coalitions that had existed for a long time in Washington and then using the kind of populist anger at the gridlock in Congress to then take power.

This set the stage for what we are seeing. And Biden? He is naively thinking compromise and negotiation in politic is still possible. And maybe, it is. He was able to chip away a little at the stone fortress Gingrich built and pass a few bills with bipartisan support.

A “competent “ citizen, to use your words values cooperation over conflict, values bipartisanship and compromise as a value if it gets things accomplished and they get at least some of what they want. A “competent” citizen respects our institutions from president on down and doesn’t seek to destroy through scorched earth politics, rhetoric and action.

Examples of how a “competent” citizen might view issues where there are conflicting rights involved:

Abortion:
Extreme right: ban all abortion from conception on unless mother’s life is in a medical emergency. (Republicans have passed laws to that effect and a minority doesn’t even want the mothers life to be a factor).

Extreme left: Abortion should be legal in all cases with no restrictions.

Where bipartisan cooperation could occur: Completely legal in all cases with no obstructions to 16 weeks ( long enough to make a decision, raise money, but before fetal viability). After that, illegal except when the mother’s health or life is at stake or severe fetal abnormalities.

What would a competent citizen do?

Another case. Transgender issues. Both the left and the right have blown this up when in reality it involves a tiny minority of largely persecuted people and some seemingly entrenched positions.

The Far Left: People AND children should be allowed to identify however they please and be accepted for it. Transgender women should be allowed to compete in women’s sports and accepted as women in that regard.

The Far Right: Transgender people should be identified solely by their sex at birth. Gender affirming treatment for adults should be banned. Gender affirming treatment for youth should be banned (even though any kind of surgical intervention is not legal 18, the Republicans are dangling it as red meat for their base).

The “competent” citizen? Medical decisions should be made between the individual, tbe parents (in cases of a minor) and their doctors based on the established medical consensus at time, NOT politicians.

The “competent“ citizen? A person who has gone through puberty as a male is physically different than a biological woman, and that can’t be fully erased. The one area where that matters is woman’s sports. No to that.

It’s not that hard to be a “competent” citizen unless you are a follower of an ideology that sees the other side as an enemy to be vanquished at all costs, rather than an opponent and you can thank Newt Gingrich for that.

The Far Right Doesn't Want to Beat the Left; It Wants to Exterminate It

Every right-wing authoritarian movement has one thing in common: a brutal clampdown on any persons or groups who promote equality.

psmag.com

Even by those standards, though, the rhetoric on the right over recent decades is disturbing. Right-wing pundits have joked about murdering people on the left for years. In the 1990s, talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh quipped, "I tell people: 'Don't kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus—living fossils—so we will never forget what these people stood for.'" His words were echoed recently by the neo-Nazi Chris Cantwell, who ranted in a Gab post that leftists should face "complete and total destruction." Memes and jokes about "free helicopter rides" for leftists like Bernie Sanders have become common on the right as well. This is a reference to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who murdered some of his left-wing opponents by throwing them from helicopters.

I have one message for the Democratic party:

Don't make enemies of kind people. Their wrath is far more ruthless and unforgiving than the evilest man alive.

Look in the mirror.

 

[TemplarKormac]

Coyote

"Nuh-uh! But you do it too!"

How tiresome. If you don't want to acknowledge the failings of your party and ideals, fine. All you need to do is say so. I already acknowledge that of mine. The GOP has no spine, no political backbone. None whatsoever. It has no political instinct and has a bad habit of focusing entirely on niche issues. I know what's wrong with my party, but you, you don't want to admit yours has any failings whatsoever.

That aside, you still haven't given me any opinion on what you think of Biden labeling people like me and my family as threats to our country, which this thread is about, and this superfluous discussion has nothing to do with. What Biden (and presumably you) seem to forget is that we're only threats if you make us threats. Otherwise, we just disagree with you politically.

 

[TemplarKormac]

I'm going to get ready for some football. See ya.

 

[Coyote]

Coyote

"Nuh-uh! But you do it too!"

Uh….dude. That is exactly what your entire thread seems to be about, with a slight variation ….

How tiresome. If you don't want to acknowledge the failings of your party and ideals, fine. All you need to do is say so. I already acknowledge that of mine. The GOP has no spine, no political backbone. None whatsoever. It has no political instinct and has a bad habit of focusing entirely on niche issues. I know what's wrong with my party, but you, you don't want to admit yours has any failings whatsoever.

I don’t have a party, but if you think I don’t criticize the left, then read some of my posts. I’ve stated they go too far with transgender issues and other niche issues and have alienated the working class that used the backbone of the Dem party. They need to focus on broader issues: economy, climate change, healthcare, reproductive rights, bringing manufacturing back, strengthening the supply chain, strengthening our public school system, gun violence.

That aside, you still haven't given me any opinion on what you think of Biden labeling people like me and my family as threats to our country.

What do I think of it? I think it was a bad choice of words, stupid and is going to come back to bite him. He has a point about the rightwing extremists that are part of Trump’s MAGA, but lumping all into a “deplorable” category insults a large swath of Americans deeply and is just going to further alienate and divide.

Now, a question for you. What did you think when Trump labeled me and my family “enemies of America”?

Fair question.

 

[Moonglow]

Think back with me, or try to imagine, the year 1919, at a beer hall in Munich, Germany. You are a young Adolf Hitler giving a speech to 111 of your fellow brownshirts, spreading malicious falsehoods and fear about the Jews to an agitated class of citizens still reeling from the country's defeat in WWI. It will lead to the failed Beer Hall Putsch, and it will also be a seminal moment in the rise of the Nazi Party. It will eventually turn an entire population against the Jewish, convincing them that Jews are their enemies. The message you give in the beer hall that day will pervade and consume the masses. It will cost 6 million Jews their lives by the end of WWII.

Now fast forward over a century to the speech by Joe last night. Replace the Hofbräukeller with Independence Hall, and replace the 111 brownshirts with anyone who took that speech in and agreed with it. What do you have? The same exact message, the same exact fear. The same exhortations that a certain segment of the population are threats to your way of life or causes of major societal ills. It was his attempt to turn the American population against those who voted for Trump or believe in any of Trump's policies. What will this lead to? A holocaust? A reckoning? Or finally a healing? Who knows?

Thanks, my dear liberal Biden voters, for setting this dangerous predicate by "electing" this man to office or electing anyone who helped him rise to power. And for your sakes, I hope that you don't get led down the same path that Hitler led Germany for two and a half decades. I don't want to be anyone's enemy, but after that heartless screed by Biden, it seems now that I have little choice. I am an enemy of my government for the ideas and opinions I hold and the people I vote for. If I am to be your enemy, then so be it. You have made one tonight.

Why don't yous MAGA communist stop trying to usurp the govt. and just accept that Trump lost and get on with your life.

 

[TemplarKormac]

Why don't yous MAGA communist stop trying to usurp the govt. and just accept that Trump lost and get on with your life.

That has little to do with the premise of this thread. I said nothing about the election.

 

[TemplarKormac]

.dude. That is exactly what your entire thread seems to be about, with a slight variation ….

Well you(he) did do it first. And we're simply playing the same game. Cornered and wounded animals don't submit, they fight back. Do or die.

Your guy was the one standing in front of an ominous background shaking his fists and referring to millions of people as threats to American society.

Spare me your moral preening. You haven't the place. You have yet to condemn the rhetoric that spewed forth from Biden's wilted, tired lips, instead choosing to opt for the tu-quoque argument. I've heard quite enough of the suggestions that we're always the predators and you are helpless prey.

I'm beginning to think you do agree with him that people like me are threats. Honey, I'm only a threat if you make me one. I treat people with the respect they deserve, not what they demand. If that makes me a threat, so be it.

 

[TemplarKormac]

Now, a question for you. What did you think when Trump labeled me and my family “enemies of America”?

I'll be flat honest with you. I will not answer that question until you either condemn or support the comments Biden made Thursday night.

But the difference here is that people like you voted for other people, either through ignorance or apathy, who became threats to our country, either through failing to prosecute crime or illegal immigration because you felt compassion was superior to just law, peace, and order.

So, then, your voting tendencies and positions you take seem to suggest you support all of those things despite your protestations to the contrary, making you (not necessarily your family) an indirect threat to the American people. Before you protest, remember, actions speak louder than words, a standard you so readily applied to Trump throughout his presidency.

My opinion of you as an indirect threat can and will change depending on how you respond to the comments he made.

 

[TemplarKormac]

When Democrats say we are threats, they are simply self-projecting at this point.

 

[Moonglow]

Well you(he) did do it first. And we're simply playing the same game. Cornered and wounded animals don't submit, they fight back. Do or die.

Your guy was the one standing in front of an ominous background shaking his fists and referring to millions of people as threats to American society.

Spare me your moral preening. You haven't the place. You have yet to condemn the rhetoric that spewed forth from Biden's wilted, tired lips, instead choosing to opt for the tu-quoque argument. I've heard quite enough of the suggestions that we're always the predators and you are helpless prey.

I'm beginning to think you do agree with him that people like me are threats. Honey, I'm only a threat if you make me one. I treat people with the respect they deserve, not what they demand. If that makes me a threat, so be it.

Then stop being a menace to society, what makes you kids act this way?

 

[TemplarKormac]

Then stop being a menace to society, what makes you kids act this way?

Me? A menace? Is this all you guys have left to throw at me? If I truly were a menace to society, don't you think I'd act like one? Sorry, I'm too busy caring for my grandmother in her remaining years to be anything remotely close to a menace to society.

 

[Coyote]

I'll be flat honest with you. I will not answer that question until you either condemn or support the comments Biden made Thursday night.

I’ll be flat out honest with you. I laid out exactly what I thought of. Sorry it doesn’t suit you but if you demand one word answers (rather than contextual, as you went on about earlier in this thread) then you will be disappointed.

Answer my question…or don’t. Not answering is in itself an answer.

But the difference here is that people like you voted for other people, either through ignorance or apathy, who became threats to our country, either through failing to prosecute crime or illegal immigration because you felt compassion was superior to just law, peace, and order.

…. really now? You voted for Trump right? ‘Nuff said. Irony abounds.

So, then, your voting tendencies and positions you take seem to suggest you support all of those things despite your protestations to the contrary, making you (not necessarily your family) an indirect threat to the American people.

And there is your answer. You truly think my family and I are enemies of America and you agree with Trump’s and statement while simultaneously outraged that Biden made a similar remark about you and your family. And not only do you not criticize that judgement, you support it.

The unreality here is beyond words. Congratulations Newt Gingrich, proof of your success in transforming American politics and political discourse is right here in this post. You and your successors have successfully rebranded a significant portion of America as “enemies of the state”.

And that is hardly a good thing.

Before you protest, remember, actions speak louder than words, a standard you so readily applied to Trump throughout his presidency.

My opinion of you as an indirect threat can and will change depending on how you respond to the comments he made.

You are not my master. Nor are you God to sit in judgement on me.

 

[Coyote]

Me? A menace? Is this all you guys have left to throw at me? If I truly were a menace to society, don't you think I'd act like one? Sorry, I'm too busy caring for my grandmother in her remaining years to be anything remotely close to a menace to society.

All of us are busy with our lives, caring for family members, friends, pets, communities, causes and concerns. Yet you have no problem labeling us enemies of our country because we don’t agree with your political vision.

 

[Coyote]

Well you(he) did do it first. And we're simply playing the same game. Cornered and wounded animals don't submit, they fight back. Do or die.

You are neither cornered nor wounded. You are deluded. You spent four years making fun of leftists, calling them snowflakes, poor losers, sour grapes…now you lost an election and instead of screaming at the sky and marching around in pink pussy hats you violently overrun the capital, try to overturn an election, whine about consequences for that behavior (calling criminals patriots and political prisoners who should be set free)…you control most of the political power in the state houses and in the courts and that still isn’t enough, you STILL portray yourselves as victims because your leader has told you you are victims and are being treated “very badly” (apologies for the ridiculously long run on sentence).

And you don’t see the irony…after years of calling leftists snowflakes?

Your guy was the one standing in front of an ominous background shaking his fists and referring to millions of people as threats to American society.

And you just don’t see the irony here…a picture is worth a thousand words…

Spare me your moral preening. You haven't the place. You have yet to condemn the rhetoric that spewed forth from Biden's wilted, tired lips, instead choosing to opt for the tu-quoque argument. I've heard quite enough of the suggestions that we're always the predators and you are helpless prey.

Oh cut the moralizing drama, I’m not not the one claiming victimhood. That’s you.

I'm beginning to think you do agree with him that people like me are threats. Honey, I'm only a threat if you make me one. I treat people with the respect they deserve, not what they demand. If that makes me a threat, so be it.

Sweetheart, you are no threat to me and if you treat me with respect, I’ll do the same. I haven’t called you an enemy. But you justified calling ME and my family, an enemy of America. That was you. On me and my family.

 

[TemplarKormac]

Oh cut the moralizing drama, I’m not not the one claiming victimhood. That’s you

Were you not just the one accusing us of "punching down" yesterday? You claimed it first. You. So I will not accept any lectures about morality from you.