***Official #SuperTuesday 2016 Results Discussion*** (2 Viewers)

[Steve Tasker]

That exchange on CNN that Tasker mentioned was fascinating and disturbing.  My fear is that this is what the entire election cycle will be and we as a country are going to come out the other end even more divided (especially racially) than we are today.  

I hate the fact that race plays the role it does, not because I don't think it's important but rather because we only emphasize our differences and not our similarities.  I honestly had hopes that an Obama presidency would have made race relations better overall but I'm not sure that's happened.  

We are a great country, with great people on both sides but this is going to be as divisive a race as we've ever seen.  It makes me sad.

My comments re: Van Jones' (that's his name, I looked him up) speech had nothing to do with the David Duke/KKK thing.  That seems to be what people in here latched onto and was the main takeaway.  Frankly, I haven't paid attention to the David Duke drama and figured it was all overblown.  I don't even know what happened there, to be honest.

What really resonated with me were his comments about how this election cycle has been full of such hate, such malicious language, such offensive rhetoric.  I'm a pretty thick-skinned person so I'm not personally offended, but I can see how some people would be.  He talked about how he no longer wants his kids to watch the debates or be actively political because our politicians aren't setting a good example for kids.  And I agree with all of that; I thought he hit the nail on the head on that point.

This whole campaign is starting to eerily remind me of the rise of ethnic nationalism in Europe, in a really creepy way.  Now Trump and the rest of the GOP field are far, far from those groups, don't get me wrong - but when I hear things like insinuating many Mexicans are rapists and advocating for the murder of ISIS members' wives and kids and we should ban all Muslims from entering the country....I don't know man, that's not an America I want to live in.  I want to burn down the establishment like the rest of the group, but not like this.  

(Gary Johnson 2016)

 

[IvanKaramazov]

What really resonated with me were his comments about how this election cycle has been full of such hate, such malicious language, such offensive rhetoric.  I'm a pretty thick-skinned person so I'm not personally offended, but I can see how some people would be.  He talked about how he no longer wants his kids to watch the debates or be actively political because our politicians aren't setting a good example for kids.  And I agree with all of that; I thought he hit the nail on the head on that point.

I've come around very strongly to the view that politics makes people stupid.  I'm 100% serious about the causality in that statement.  It's not that politics attracts stupid people -- it's that otherwise-intelligent people get caught up in politics and become stupid as a result.  You see it in thread after thread around here.  People latch on to their favorite party and tie themselves into knots to defend their favorite party at all costs, without serious regard to whether they're being at all consistent or even abiding by basic rules of logic.  It's all about coming up with whatever convenient argument happens to be available to show how my favorite party is great and the other party is awful.