timschochet
Footballguy
I tend to agree with this point of view but I think it’s being stretched right now and the extremism being tolerated currently by the Republican Party is making me seriously concerned about where we’re heading as a nation.
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Tribalism and bof sidez and trying to be objective and fair (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Joe Bryant
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Andy Dufresne
Footballguy
I don't watch enough news (none, really) to know if this is true either way. From what I do hear, the right is just catching up to the left on the Kooky Meter. Not that that's a good thing but we ARE a reactionary society.
I have a dream (okay, it's a fantasy) that we some day hold special elections where the left get to vote OUT of power the top three or so Republicans they choose and vice versa on the right. I mean, wouldn't we get some more breathing room if people like Pelosi/Schumer and McConnell/Trump were out of power and never to return?
timschochet
Footballguy
No they’re not catching up. The Democrats have never allowed extremists to run their party. They’ve never had anyone close to Donald Trump be their nominee. They’ve never pursued any conspiracy theory like the Republicans have pursued “stop the steal.” It’s not comparable at all.
Andy Dufresne
Footballguy
timschochet
Footballguy
I’m dead serious. I wish it wasn’t true but it is. This is not a “both sides” thing. It’s true that both sides have extremists and kooks, but only one side has allowed them to reign supreme.
Andy Dufresne
Footballguy
Summer Wheat
Footballguy
Just read the title of this. Bof sidz? PSF getting hipper?
timschochet
Footballguy
Not really. I offered two examples to you: the selection of Donald Trump as the Republican Party’s nominee in 2016, and the acceptance in 2020 of the “stop the steal” theory by most Republicans. I could cite a lot more examples but these two will do. There is no equivalent actions by Democrats.
MAC_32
Footballguy
My politics are homeless, so I am confident that I don't do it and the content I provide is on point when people from boff sides are mad at me.
GordonGekko
Footballguy
Nathan Bedford Forrest
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Bedford_Forrest
****
Forrest spoke at the 1868 Democratic National Convention. He pushed for one of his cronies to get the VP ticket that year. The KKK basically walked in and took over the Convention. During the war, Forrest is known for slaughtering Union soldiers who had surrendered after their Fort was taken. Two thirds of those men executed were black. His body count also includes various hits and lynchings he ordered done, as the KKK's first Grand Wizard, to fight the progressive changes after the end of slavery. Much of the voter suppression he created had lasting effects long after he died. When he could no longer use slaves, he rounded up prison convicts and used them as basically cattle to run his failing businesses.
To his credit, he was an excellent tactical commander on the battlefield, but to the dismay of black people everywhere, he represented much of the worst that the Democratic Party had to offer.
In contrast, Donald J Trump, after being accused relentlessly of being a white supremacist and supporting such organizations, gave Historic Black Colleges & Universities more federal aid than any other President in American history. He also pushed the Platinum Plan to allow more blacks to have more educational/work/rehabilitation opportunities. He pushed for and had a white supremacist, who drowned an 8 year old girl, after murdering her parents in front of her, to help fund his larger white supremacist organization, executed despite protests by the liberal anti-death penalty crowd. He got more votes from blacks in this last cycle than any other Republican in over 60 years. The rate of return for black male voters for Trump was unlike anything ever seen before in American political history for a Republican. As of last year, he was also on record, and noted by Kayleigh McEnany in response to another public accusation, to denounce white supremacy ( via video, audio, print, etc, all verifiable sources) more than any other President in American history.
Nathan Bedford Forrest was a Democrat.
Granted Trump is a 4th rate failed reality TV star, a stone cold narcissist, a grifter high level troll and acts like a total **** most of the time. But if he's what you'd classify as an "extremist", then where exactly would you categorize Nathan Bedford Forrest? I'm sure the tens of thousands of families who had their loved ones executed, beaten, maimed, suppressed, silenced, demonetized and lynched would also like to know how you'd label NBF if Trump is the litmus test of " supreme extremism"
So yes, it is very much a "both sides" thing.
renesauz
IBL Representative
Seriously? You pull out an example of a Democrat from immediate post civil war??????? As if the parties today are anything REMOTELY as they were then?
sho nuff
Footballguy
GordonGekko
Footballguy
Let me know the statute of limitations on the word "Never"
[ Brett Kavanaugh enters the chat]
"Hey, rene, do you think you could work it out so that the statute of limitations is less than 35 years or so? That would be a huge help to me. Also, when I'm in town next, I'll take you out for cheese steaks to say Thank You. And also to console you for losing that game of Connect Four to Emmitt Smith."
[ Brett Kavanaugh selects the Animal Friends Perk, finds the Charisma Bobblehead and puts 15 points in Speech and leaves the chat]
timschochet
Footballguy
I take it back. I should have written that the Democrats have not, since the Civil War era...
But there have been plenty of extremists and racists in the Democratic Party throughout the 20th century: Theodore Bilbo, Strom Thurmond. George Wallace was mostly a Democrat. In recent years Maxine Waters has been as extreme and as hateful as any modern American politician on either side. But none of the people I mentioned were ever in charge of the Democratic Party. None of them was ever chosen by the Democrats to be the Presidential candidate. Woodrow Wilson was certainly a full blown racist 100 years ago, but even he wasn’t extremist on the level of Donald Trump. The Democrats have never had a Presidential candidate like Trump amd they can be proud of that fact.
But there have been plenty of extremists and racists in the Democratic Party throughout the 20th century: Theodore Bilbo, Strom Thurmond. George Wallace was mostly a Democrat. In recent years Maxine Waters has been as extreme and as hateful as any modern American politician on either side. But none of the people I mentioned were ever in charge of the Democratic Party. None of them was ever chosen by the Democrats to be the Presidential candidate. Woodrow Wilson was certainly a full blown racist 100 years ago, but even he wasn’t extremist on the level of Donald Trump. The Democrats have never had a Presidential candidate like Trump amd they can be proud of that fact.
quick-hands
Footballguy
Who is in power? Perhaps you are correct.. I'm seriously concerned with the lefts pull of the country.
The left has been dragging the country towards your vision from 1992 till 2016. And u are worried about the Republicans.
It's concerning
quick-hands
Footballguy
Compare Woodrow Wilson to Donald Trump. Who was the racist?
Hint. Wilson. He hated Blacks. Why else re segregate.?
rockaction
Footballguy
Wilson was worse than Trump. He championed eugenics and said that every hyphenated ethnicity was like a "dagger through the heart of America."
Almost all the Southern Democrats in the sixties were worse than Trump, who despite all protestations to the contrary, has never been publicly caught using epithets or condoning racialist policies. You can arguably say that his immigration policies were, but that has to go to motive since no actual evidence exists of his racism.
In fact, he got over ten percent of the black vote, if I'm not mistaken, a number Republicans haven't sniffed in years. Unless you're saying those ten percent are stupid, you really have no idea what you're talking about.
Donald Trump, the guy everyone thinks is racist, but really might not be. Wilson has ample documented evidence against him.
Alex P Keaton
Footballguy
Yep. No doubt that if you go back 50-100 years, the entire country was more racist, including a large number of Democratic politicians. And Woodrow Wilson was flat out racist. And anti-Semitic.
Not sure why we are using 100 years ago (or 50) as our benchmark suddenly.
timschochet
Footballguy
Personally I regard Wilson as a worse racist (that’s easy) but slightly a better President than Trump. However it’s not enough of a distinction to argue about. If you want to say that Trump is the worst President we’ve had since Woodrow, fine by me.
rockaction
Footballguy
Because there's just such an obvious answer to "Who is the most racist president in modern history?" that it begs answering with that one. Trump may indeed be really racist. In fact, his constant chances to prove he wasn't racist followed by his subsequent omissions and non-condemnations add evidence and weight to this theory. I personally am usually more than willing to side with somebody when accused of such things, but he had plenty of chances to disavow racist groups, and he chose not to. That is telling, but I think there's still the possibility that he was scared of losing closet racists and votes. Nobody has really proven otherwise, besides the guys from Entertainment Tonight that claimed he used epithets during The Apprentice. So who knows?
And I guess that's all I'll say or defend him about regarding that. It's a weak, weak defense and not one I'm particularly invested in. He did prove himself anti-democratic enough for my own condemnation and I'm really happy he's no longer in a position to do what I think is damage to our country and its institutions. (Some of which need reform, just not the way he did it.)
IvanKaramazov
Footballguy
I'm parachuting into this kind of late, but it seems to me like this "Trump vs. Wilson" thing is kind of a good example of tribalism in action. We should all be able to agree that Trump and Wilson were both terrible presidents and also pretty lousy people. I don't personally see much controversy there. Where this discussion goes off the rails is when people get invested in whether the Blue Tribe Bad President was worse than the Red Tribe Bad President, or vice versa. I mean, they were both awful and we should be glad that neither is currently office. Who cares which is worse?
For me personally, the badness of Woodrow Wilson is purely hypothetical because he was long dead before I was ever born. Trump is a lot more immediate. If you had asked me 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago, if a person like Donald Trump would ever be elected president, I would have confidently said no and obviously I would have been totally wrong. So Trump stings in a way that Wilson doesn't. But that's just an emotional response to experiencing something directly as opposed to reading about it in a history book. That feeling doesn't mean anything otherwise.
For me personally, the badness of Woodrow Wilson is purely hypothetical because he was long dead before I was ever born. Trump is a lot more immediate. If you had asked me 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago, if a person like Donald Trump would ever be elected president, I would have confidently said no and obviously I would have been totally wrong. So Trump stings in a way that Wilson doesn't. But that's just an emotional response to experiencing something directly as opposed to reading about it in a history book. That feeling doesn't mean anything otherwise.
rockaction
Footballguy
I honestly do. Wilson oversaw and fomented both the removal of the election of Senators from the state houses and the beginning of the more than somewhat odious U.N. (at least as far as their human rights division goes) in concept of the League of Nations.
He oversaw and altered a well-intentioned and important structural aspect of the Constitution and was a disaster that still lingers today, living and breathing, apart from the history books. I gently disagree about that.
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timschochet
Footballguy
I do disagree with you about the League of Nations (and the UN for that matter.)
But you failed to mention many of Wilson’s other terrible actions, such as his infringement of civil liberties (the arrest and imprisonment of Eugene Debs and many others) and his invasions of Mexico and several Latin American countries which we are still paying the price for a century later.
rockaction
Footballguy
Of course. Where else would we go for official sanction of Arabian national complaints about Israel? Where would we have gone for Israel, if you want to bring it to that level? The U.N. causes as many problems as it does because it lets weak, unstable, and (this is the real problem) illegitimate nations that should have no say in the course of human history a diplomatic and equal voice in its march toward the inevitable.
rockaction
Footballguy
timschochet
Footballguy
There would be no Israel without the United Nations. Whatever it’s become in recent years it was a worthy and noble concept. And in terms of what it ultimately represents it remains so.
IvanKaramazov
Footballguy
I still find it amazing that people can look at nations like Russia and China -- to say nothing of Saudi Arabia, Syria, etc. -- and think to themselves "I wish there was a way to give these countries institutionalized access to world governance."
timschochet
Footballguy
I find it amazing that someone as smart as you would believe that the point of the United Nations (and the League before it) is world governance.
rockaction
Footballguy
That's what I was getting at with the second statement. It's awfully tough territory to tread here, but you likely wouldn't have had a solution to an admitted problem if no United Nations or United Nations weight. Israel -- and I am a Zionist -- is massive trouble in a part of the world where theocracy is the seemingly only -cracy that exists. Now the U.N. is a clearing house for complaints about its own original solution to the diaspora problem that Jewish people in the world face and have faced.
That's above my pay grade, but you can at least see where not only the establishment of but response to Israel is a truly unique thing the U.N. has done. Otherwise, after WWII, the victorious countries would have allocated the land and granted primacy to the Jews. It never would have come under question if but for the relinquishing of the boot that the Allied Countries had in those lands. Might may have actually been better than an international clearing house of complaints.
But again, we're getting way off track here and Israel and the Middle East is something nobody but Jared Kushner could solve, so...
quick-hands
Footballguy
timschochet
Footballguy
Hardly. He was leftist by 1972 standards, not by today’s. A decorated fighter pilot. Neither he nor Barry Goldwater deserve the description of “nut” which they both received when they ran.
rockaction
Footballguy
Leftist by 1972 standards is pretty leftist. Rightist by 1964 standards is quite right. But I agree that neither of those guys deserved the "nut" or "extremist" reputation that they got, especially my man Goldwater. Goldwater was considered an extremist right away, and questions followed to help shape the narrative, tough ones that nobody could answer apporpriately.
"Would you ever use nuclear weapons?"
"Well, I wouldn't rule it out."
EXTREMIST!
What else was he supposed to say? "No. Never. Let's let Russia build up their nuclear arsenal with no threat of reprisal."
But the left has been doing this since that 1964 playbook opened and hasn't stopped. Nor has the right stopped with the left/anti-patriot thing since '72. They saw each tactic work, and have stuck with it until now, when both are used so much it's farcical, even though admittedly true on occasion.
quick-hands
Footballguy
timschochet
Footballguy
Goldwater was one of our greatest statesmen of the 20th century. He would have been a fine President and I personally believe he would have kept us out of the Vietnam War. He lost primarily for two reasons:
1. After the assassination of JFK nobody was going to defeat the Democratic candidate.
2. Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He was no racist; he opposed it out of deep libertarian conviction. But to me his opposition represents a flaw in his thinking, and in libertarian thinking: sometimes there are problems that are simply too big to solve except through government intervention. Though capitalism and the free market are still the best way to solve problems, there are times that you have to go further and the government has to get involved, and you can’t be restricted by rigid thinking no matter how principled. This flaw is the main reason I no longer consider myself a libertarian.
rockaction
Footballguy
His opposition to the CRA in '64 wasn't so radical then, though. I don't think that's why he lost. It wasn't exactly the most popular proposal back then. It took a lot of hard-earned political capital to get it done, and LBJ had his detractors for it.
He lost because he was viewed as extremist. An extremely rightist candidate for the times. Probably largely isolationist and anti-tax, two things that at the time were enough to disqualify one from "serious" thought. And it's to be expected. The isolationists around WWII were seen as utter cranks, and were indeed that. Guys that didn't believe in progressive taxation ran afoul of the still communist-sympathizing stalwarts of academia. It wasn't until the Gulag Archipelago that Soviet Russia, its methods, and its economics was considered a non-starter in the human rights and serious social science world.
timschochet
Footballguy
I’m not sure he was isolationist in the same sense of the world war 2 isolationists. I’m guessing he supported Truman and Ike’s Cold War containment policy. He was certainly opposed to the interventionism of JFK and LBJ, particularly in the Far East, and I wish we had listened to him.
Alex P Keaton
Footballguy
Maybe, just maybe.......this playbook continuing to work.....simply means the core problem is that the average citizen is a moron.
rockaction
Footballguy
I did some digging. He wasn't an isolationist in the sense of WWII isolationists like the charges leveled at Dewey and other Republicans circa 1948 -- he had distinct differences, actually. He did oppose financial aid to developing countries that were not considered "friendly" to democratic aims. He did not support the Marshall Plan from 1960 onward, and foreign aid to developing countries without promise of payback was a non-starter in his book. For example, he did not agree with financial support of Poland or India. He did not support Pacific invasions or help unless France and other colonizing countries respected the newly-democratic nations as "free" ones. He largely did not support Kennedy's Pacific interventionism, nor his internationalism. He, of course, was not a big fan of the United Nations and argued for a United States-first foreign policy.
But he was a hawk in most respects. He believed in military build-up, including nuclear arms and testing, and was not opposed to military intervention when communism/democracy was at stake for the country at hand. He advocated direct resistance to communist expansion, and the Cuban Missile Crisis showed how much he was dedicated to that. His espousal of U.S. military aid to help any Cuban rebels dethrone Castro led to his status as a warmonger, as did his fiery and emotional rhetoric about communism and his stated belief that the struggle between communism and democracy was a life and death struggle. "I would rather follow us to Kingdom Come" than to turn the world over to communism, said he. He also said that NATO commanders should have authority to authorize limited nuclear attacks if the Soviets rolled into Western Europe. When confronted with the Vietnam conundrum, he said we should either "win or go home," with more emphasis on the winning, and he maintained that the present 1963 status in Vietnam was untenable. He promised to wage an aggressive campaign in Vietnam if nominated for president, up to and including using low-grade nuclear weaponry to clear foliage, which leads me to this. It was in the struggle for the soul of the Republican Party from 1960-1964 that Goldwater made these claims, in order to separate himself from previous presidents and from Nelson Rockefeller, his main rival for the soul of the Republican Party. The struggle at the 1964 convention and the charges leveled against him during his campaign by other Republicans doomed him, and Lyndon Johnson destroyed him regarding these issues.
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