What you say here has some substantial amount of truth in it. It makes people on my side uncomfortable, but that's all the more reason to read it and think about it.
Your point about 6 January is exactly right. "We did something stupid, but, we didn't do it voluntarily! Some mean people told us to do it!" Oi, vey ... well, okay. Got to say something.
But ... what you are describing is the behavior of ordinary people, unfortunately. Those who didn't go to college, who don't read a lot, but who know something is wrong with their country. Here's a thoughful analysis of this situation from a conservative:
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Liberals Read, Conservatives Watch TV]
When Bush (with the support of Hillary, etc.) sent their children to Iraq and Afghanistan, they waved the flag and chanted USA! USA!
When the Republicans convinced the Democrats to support 'Free Trade', and the refrigerator assembly plants in Indiana went off to Mexico and China ... and they lost their jobs ... and their sons started coming home in body bags, year after year after year ... they became dis-satisfied with the Republicans ... some of them even voted for Obama (who, unlike Hillary, had opposed the Iraq adventure), enough so that he won ... but really had no place to turn to. They intuitively knew something was wrong. But had no focus for their discontent.
They stopped trusting the "experts", and mass media that, for decades, had been seen as objective. Silly them. Why when we were told that "overwhelming evidence", backed by all scientists, proved that the Corona virus came from a bat, not a Chinese bio-warfare lab ... these silly people didn't believe it. What rubes!
So they were not represented, really, by either Republicans or Democrats. They had no one who could articulate their concerns.
Until Mr Trump appeared. (How I wish History had given us another Lincoln, or Churchill, or FDR, or JFK ... or even a Nixon, or a Reagan. But I think she's tired of us being so nice to us.)
They're a big market. So a whole swarm of conscience-less grifters jumped in, and set up websites appealing to their worst prejudices, peddling no-brain-needed sensationalist crap.
(There is a demographic on your side which is similar: the people who support Al Sharpton.)
Note also: America, and especially America over the last few decades, is unique among advanced countries.
In most countries, and historically, the bottom half of society supports the Left, and the top half, the Right. (Unless the country is blessed with that wondeful diversity, in which case the fracture lines tend to be tribal.) And educational attainment tended to be concentrated in the top half. We have inverted that (which maybe justifies the 'Red' and 'Blue' signals of political affilation, which so puzzles foreigners.)
That's where we're at. It's unfortunate. And one of the unfortunate things about it, is that it makes thoughtful people on the Left just dismiss anything we on the Right might have to say, without examing it. We're all a bunch of yahoo's, so why bother?
I could also go into your side's failings, your deference to the worst of the Left ... your side's destruction of the universities .. but that's for another thread.
I said this situation is unique to our times, but ... maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's always been that way. I'll match your Truman quote with one from Adlai Stevenson, a few years after Mr Truman.
After a typically brilliant campaign speech by him, a woman came up to him and gushed, "Oh, Mr Stevenson .. that was wonderful! I'm sure every thinking American will vote for you!" And Stevenson replied, "Yes ma'am .... but I need a majority!"
A well reasoned and eloquent response. Iām not used to that these days. I was pleased to read it.
I may surprise you, but I honestly think the biggest problem facing this nation is not the Right, nor the Left, but is the internet. Let me explain, and I beg your indulgence here.
The Internet is wonderful. It allows you to find information you never would have access to otherwise. I look at pictures from NASA that I wouldnāt see without working for them, or attending a University where Astrophysics or Astronomy is taught. I am exposed to authors and writers who are true Gems. I found one of the best books Iāve ever read thanks to the Internet, the Martian. I can use it to view Art, rare wildlife, incredible vistas in locations that Iāll never be able to visit. I can research questions, and find people with like interests.
That last part is the worst of the internet. When I was a boy, people who had radical beliefs, or insane conspiracy theories, were limited to CT newsletters. The subscribers were few, and essentially harmless. The radical Left and Right were limited in who they could express their ideals to, because most people were just not aware of them.
Times changed. Today, you can get all your news from the Radical Right, or Left sources. People are radicalized by their news sources. They believe the insane, even without proof. Because they want it to be true.
Iām going to take a favorite of the Left and Right as an example. Iām going to say the buzzword that will set off everyone. Benghazi.
The Right was outraged that an Ambassador had been killed at a Consulate. The Left was pounding the table and screaming that the Right was capitalizing on the death of a Public Servant. And the Truth, didnāt have anything to do with either.
Benghazi was used by the CIA to funnel weapons to Syrian Rebels.
www.businessinsider.com
Thatās why the Contractors were there, to guard and help transport the weapons from the collection point to the next step in the chain that got the weapons to Syria. And if you wonder, this is a big reason why I didnāt vote for Hillary in 2016, her bungling of both Libya and Syria.
As an aside, I have said for years that Hillary is just that hair short of being clever enough to actually pull off her plots successfully.
So the Ambassador was there to check on that program. A program the Ambassador should have been hands off of. Why else would an Ambassador go to a Consulate. The Ambassador is there to represent the country to the Host Nation. The Country of Libya political leadership is in Tripoli, not Benghazi.
Yes, the Obama administration lied, but they did it to cover up the CIA operations in Libya and the Middle East. Operations that later were exposed anyway. Including the fact that the Jordanian CIA was diverting weapons to the Jihadists. Selling the weapons we had bought and paid them to deliver to the Syrian Rebels.
en.wikipedia.org
But thankfully the Republicans played into the plot of Obama and the left. Trent Gowdy couldnāt have done a better job of distracting people from the truth if he had been on script.
Now, to be fair, Administrations have lied about covert actions since the first Spy was ever used. Woodrow Wilson passed the Espionage Act to cover up the fact that he had the State Department deliver the message telling the German Ambassador to plot against America with the Mexicans.
Covert actions have been lied about since time began. Iām not angry that Obama lied. Iām not angry that they thought this was a clever plan. Iām disgusted by it, because it was obviously a stupid plan. Syria was not going to fall. Russia would back them to the hilt, and it was all about a Naval Base.
Russia canāt get their Navy through the Bosporus Straight which is owned by a NATO Ally, sort of ally, Turkey. So the ships they have in the Mediterranean all come from the Northern Fleet. They have to sail all the way around Europe to get there. In the Med, the Russians have one Naval Base. One. We have half a dozen or more. So any threat to that one Naval Base, the Russians would pull out all the stops to defend it. Hell we would too. If someone threatened our base in Rota Spain, we would uncork the dogs of war.
The Rebels would never be able to defeat Russia. Nor Russian backed Syrian Government forces. It was just stupid.
The Right fixated on the obvious. The death of the Contractors and the death of the Ambassador. None of them ever asked the obvious question. What the hell were the CIA contractors doing there in the first place? Why was the Ambassador at a Consulate. Consulates is where you go get import or export documents. Perhaps a travel visa could be applied for, but that would be issued by the Embassy. Consulates are satellite offices. Where minor functionaries do the minor work of the Embassy. If the Ambassador wanted to talk to someone, they would come see him, he wouldnāt go to them.
This allowed the Left to pound the table and call the Right Unpatriotic.
Both sides were dumb. And it showed me that both sides were going to run to stupid the first chance they got. The CT nonsense started. Obama and Hillary wanted the Ambassador dead because he knew something he shouldnāt know. They were paralyzed by indecision and refused to send the Marines in to protect the Consulate.
The Marines have plans in place, that is true. but it is to defend the Embassy, not the Consulate. The plan for the Consulates is to abandon them and escape. Nothing secret is supposed to be there. It is more aligned with commercial interests.
But Hillary being clever, but just a hair short of clever enough thought the Consulate could support and assist the CIA effort to get weapons from Libya to Syria.
By the time the truth started to come out, everyone was already set in their ideals. The Right still pounds the table and screams that Obama let the Ambassador Die. They even ordered the Contractors not to go. Well yes. The Contractors were supposed to guard and protect the weapons at the collection point and through to the next step in the chain to get them to Syria. If the Contractors went to the Consulate, who would be guarding the weapons we didnāt want falling into anyone elseās hands?
It would be like asking the Marines guarding Nuclear Weapons to respond to an attack on the base commanders house. You guard the weapons, first and foremost. Lock them down, and donāt let the attackers, whatever their motivations, get more firepower than they already have.
Yes, the death of the Ambassador was tragic. But it was just one card on the table, and even today, is the distraction that most people focus on.
I could go on, and on, and on. Pizza places used to sexually abuse children. An armed idiot charged in determined to rescue those abused children. Leftist idiots like George Lakoff deciding the Oil Spill in the Gulf needs to be called the Gulf Death Gusher because he imagines he has decoded RW Speech.
Morons whose ideas are reinforced by radical websites which promote only CT nonsense. For the Love of God the Flat Earth Society has reformed.
And Politicians are busy trying to stay ahead of the flock of insane Lemmings who are running this way and that. Reinforcing the insanity for political power. The nuttier that the idiot from New York gets demanding Socialist insanity, the more the RW screams that sheās crazy and we have to stop all Democrats from ever having power because of her. The dumber the comments from Boebert or my own embarrassment MTG in Georgia, the more the Republicans look stupid.
We canāt compromise, because of the worst of the internet. Compromise for centuries is how we have managed to do business in this nation. But now, compromise is a dirty word.
Letās say you are buying a house. The seller is offering it for a million dollars. You offer eight hundred grand. You negotiate for a couple weeks and settle on nine million with shared fees. That is a compromise. Neither side is happy. The Seller wanted to get asking price, but can live with the deal. You arenāt happy, you are spending another hundred grand, but you can live with the deal. Thatās the mechanism which makes everything work.
Finding a deal both sides can live with. Now, compromise is viewed as a total surrender and must never be undertaken. Honestly, If I was President, Iād just veto the first budget bill that arrived, and go home to sit out the rest of the administration. Congress could never work out a deal where they had a 2/3 majority to override the veto. If they did, then the art of the Compromise would be back.
Because of the radicalization of idealism, there is no way we can reach a compromise, and without a compromise we canāt govern effectively. We can only blame and point fingers and come up with increasingly insane theories to justify our situation.
www.reuters.com
www.reuters.com
www.reuters.com
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