dajo9 said:
calbear93 said:
B.A. Bearacus said:
An important Repub voice asking for Pence to be shot to death.
The fact that you think Lin Wood is an important voice just because Trump has retweeted him when it serves his interest suggest you need some diversity in perspective in your daily life. Trump has retweeted from crazy people because he is crazy.
I think the opposite is true. You seem to be lacking in understanding the diversity of (mis)information that is reaching people and influencing our politics.
As an example, you had not heard of Epoch Times. A quick wikipedia review will tell you an April 2019 study showed they had the 11th most video views on facebook, twitter, and youtube. Higher than any conventional news source. Lin Wood is definitely a quack but I think you'd be surprised at his reach.
calbear93 is going through the stages of grief over having his party and side of the political spectrum leave him. He is in denial right now, but he will get there in the end. He still wants to believe that most of the conservative base is like him when poll after poll, backed up by media usage, demonstrates that a large majority of Republicans do consume this information and believe it.
93 - we all need to realize that the dramatic fault lines are shifting away from divisions between liberal and conservative to divisions between educated and uneducated. Of course, the Democrats have their uneducated and they have their conspiracy theorists, but you have nothing close to the level of acceptance of completely delusional theories that you have on the other side. Educated voters are flocking to the Democrats. No matter how much the scare tactic is used, it is clear that the uneducated left does not come close to controlling the Democratic Party. The uneducated right is in 100% control of the Republican Party. The Republican party is the one who is seeing a huge increase in people who are answering polls with acceptance of autocratic positions like supporting non-democratic means to their side winning.
The bottom line is, I think that you and I have a lot more in common than you and the people that are currently supporting the Republicans. As far as I'm concerned, an educated socialist, an educated capitalist who believes in government regulation, and an educated total free market capitalist can debate those issues when they are all willing to fight for what they believe but ultimately come to conclusions together for the good of the country. None of those people have anything in common with the bulk of those that are calling themselves conservatives at the moment. We can debate whether main stream media is liberal. But CNN, NPR, MSNBC, etc. are not close to the media the right wing is consuming. Fox is losing significant share to Newsmax because they finally found a line of sanity they won't cross. The fact that in our respective bubbles no one reads Epoch Times does not change the statistics of the numbers that do. I acknowledge that your type of conservative doesn't read Epoch Times. Your type of conservative has been kicked out of the Republican party
In my opinion, educated conservatives need to come to the Democratic party or at least be independents that ally with the Democratic party and the Democrats should welcome them and their views and be able to debate them within the party. We need to put aside our rivalry built over decades of being the only two games in town. The barbarians are at the door now. Your views are a lot less dangerous to me and my views are a lot less dangerous to you than what is being propagated by Trump Republicans and being accepted by at least 80% of the party.
I think you think that the conservative wing will build itself back when Trump goes. It isn't going to happen for a long time. The advent of the internet, "alternative" media, and the easy reach of con men to millions of uneducated voters is a perfect storm. George Will types no longer have an influence. You did the right thing. You voted against Trump. You have hope you will be able to go back. You won't. I welcome your views with open arms among the land of the sane. We have a bigger problem and that is 75 million people who voted for insanity. It is no longer viable to think that either side can harness the insanity to win a debate among two sane groups. Both parties have undermined norms thinking there was no cost. Both parties have used spin thinking that it can be distinguished from outright lying. What has happened the past 4 years is the ultimate result of that, but it cannot be discounted. We have to reset and that reset includes those who use facts and norms to align against those who won't even when they come to different conclusions using those facts and norms.
