Lurker > Voxwik

Another troubling thing: most conservatives I know are trained to only get their news from Fox News and far-right talk show hosts.

Now Fox News itself doesn't lick Trump's boots enough all the time. A single question for one of his lies gets the host massive hatred. So now they are making a new news network to be even more of a propaganda piece rather than a news agency.

And his thralls are trained that, somehow, everything else BUT their couple of sources are somehow the corrupt ones.

Phantom_Nook posted...

for example, take their two presidential candidates before Trump: John McCain and Mitt Romney. now they are considered traitors by Republicans because they didn't fall 100% in line behind Trump. I say 100% because they still voted with Trump on a majority of issues but made a big public show about voting against him on a few key things.

Yep, Paul Ryan was my representative for part of my life. My brother, who told me to vote for him. has nothing but bad things to say about him. My aunt, when John McCain died? She had nothing good to say. Republican thralls are trained to not just reject, but outright hate anyone even Republican that doesn't lick Trump's boots or support far-right agendas.

I never agreed with much of John McCain's policy, but he is a hero for sticking up for his beliefs and this country. He unwaveringly stood up against torture, but the Republicans are so far to the right now many seem to be PRO-torture, which is downright un-American in my opinion. To see them drag him through the mud is disgusting. To see Trump sycophants hide his name when Trump is around (Trump did not ask for that, to be fair), is terrifying.

But I suppose much like a mob boss, President Trump doesn't have to say it does he? We are heading towards a political climate in which to be anything, Republican or not, you must be a Trump sycophant. That is a dire threat to this country.

You graduated college. That is great.

Me? I had no idea where I wanted to go with my life and essentially skipped my 20s and early 30s. I lost focus in college and dropped out and became a hermit relatives somehow tolerated for a long time. Eventually I got help, and I have a full time job at a place that loves me now. It's nothing like what a college education would have brought me, but I'm content now, and the only shame I have is that I wasted a decade; not where I ended up. I'm dangerously close to my 40s now, but I'm content and grateful for everything I have and that is all that matters to me.

I can't tell you what you should want, but the point? Wolfy42 there summed up anything anyone could say, but what I will say is be grateful for what you do have too!

I'm reminded of a conservative telling me a story about what supposedly doomed Michael Dukakis when he ran. What they told me was that he was asked if he'd stick by his principles if his wife was murdered, or something along those lines. Apparently him sticking to his beliefs and not immaturely raging was somehow a negative factor. This conservative friend could not understand how his story gave me the opposite opinion he intended.

If only the center could rise vs. ideologues. I don't want a president for their "conviction" to whatever flavor polarized people are addicted to that day.

I don't know much about Bloomberg. I just know the more I hear the Democratic candidates talk that most of them could never hope to win a general election. Sometimes they sound loony even to me, and I'm definitely left of center. I fear if Trump-style authoritarians win much longer, freedom is over in this country.

This just makes me happy the 1980s and early 1990s are over, when the looming threat of de facto theocracy was around the corner and companies bowed in terror to theocrats and would never release a game like this.

Mead posted...

they kick anyone out of the party as soon as they dont fall in line

To the point of public schoolyard bully insults, even during serious issues. They are normalizing behaving like a total jerk being somehow something to praise.

We have an offensive immature buffoon as president, and the Democrats seem to be in a fairy tale land where half the country isn't already heavily indoctrinated to despise all of their ideas. Do I think we should have national health care? Yes actually, but that's a fantasy in the short term and sticking to rhetoric that sounds exactly like what conservatives are trained to incessantly smugly ramble against isn't how to win an election.

I don't think Bloomberg is perfect, and I don't agree with his stupid soda nanny thing, but the last thing this country needs is a fairly far left candidate running against a raging far right candidate with most of the country left without representation.

These idiots, all of them, need to stop with their stupid hyperpartisan nonsense and govern sensibly.

You know what needs to happen? The center needs to rise. Bring on ranked choice voting please. That should give all the extremely polarized candidates something to be afraid of.

Political freedom in this country is in very real threat from Hungarian-style authoritarianism. President Donald Trump needs to have one term, and the more freedom-hating indoctrinated elements of the Republican party need to lose, and the Republicans that still have some principles need to stop bowing in terror to them.

If Bloomberg is the best shot to save this country's freedom and separation of powers, then bring him I say.

Hexen is one of my favorites of that era. I love how they added scripting and cobbled together moving walls. (Random trivia you don't need to know: all the moving doors and walls in Hexen start out in rooms outside the map boundary and get teleported in place in game. If you use the no clipping cheat to walk through walls, you will see these empty rooms, which younger me thought were super creepy for some reason.)

Republicans are trying to destroy the separation of powers at every chance.

Lose an election? Change the position to remove power. Have a minority of votes? District so that you're in power anyway, with a supermajority if possible. Separation of powers? What's that, doesn't everyone know the House, Senate, and courts should be subordinate to the president, and that open witness intimidation and personal insults by the president are now appropriate, mid trial even, on all matters?