Supposedly, I am a human, who does very human things.
bud this is all tldr.
There are 2 sides that you can vote for in American politics.
That’s not being unable to see nuance, that’s being able to see facts.
You seem stuck on making a point that is irrelevant and increasingly more incorrect.
I can’t care to engage with someone who isn’t reading what I’m saying. It would just be talking past each other.
Ok, at this point I’ve explained the hell out of my point and can only conclude you are a troll. You’ve made 0 effort to figure out what I am saying, so clearly the strawman you started with is the hill you want to go to die on.
The fact you call this conversation “on par with brainless maga trolls” is more evidence you just intended to rile me up while completely knowing exactly what threat I am talking about as people are being disappeared off of streets and hate crimes are being covered up. Clearly people should wait for the historians to have a perspective on this as the regime increasingly cancels studies on societal problems.
I don’t have the energy for that.
You’ve absolutely built a strawman. You obviously understand the new risks we’re talking about given the subject of the article and the context, but yet you continue to imply this is about traditional gun statistics and not the ever increasing and looming threat of violence from neighbors who support the regime.
Your post starts with a sloganeering, hyper-reductive take of what I wrote.
This is such a hopelessly lazy dismissal of that criticism I’m just going to ignore it and hope you have anything better to offer.
Nope. Skimmed through it and you’re still making the same strawman argument. I guess there is nothing more to say here if you don’t recognize it.
This is Politics, it’s not 1D or 2D, it’s N-Dimensional
This is the point I made and that your comment ignored.
it’s not just possible but pretty much a Mathematical certainty than in a country were there are only 2 parties they will match perfectly on some dimensions, even whilst not at all matching in others.
This is a strawman. No person is claiming they don’t have any aligning opinions.
Trying to dismiss away that aspect of Reality (which is incoveninent for tribalists) with sloganeering like “bothsiderism” is just parroting propaganda meant for simpletons who see reality as having just one dimension where there is nothing more than 2 sides.
This is you continuing to argue against the strawman.
The rest is also that.
You are seemingly purposefully misconstruing my argument and that is annoying.
Clearly the point is a new danger exists, why you keep insisting on the strawman argument against the position that gun stats arent real, something I’ve never indicated, I do not know.
I can only think its in bad faith because you don’t have arguments against the actual opinions I’ve shared.
Did you not at all read my comment?
I knew the stats before you mentioned them, I’m pointing out there are clear differences to society right now that make this data far less relevant.
Your actually implies you’re arguing against an argument I’ve made but you aren’t at all.
That’s nice, but those statistics are from a different time with a different threat profile.
We are long done with pretending we’re living in a reasonable society.
They are fine with this trade
This bothsiderism is pretty thoughtless.
It is true that both contribute to a surveillance state but to equate both is to just ignore all policy differences, actions and more to pretend to be nuanced while painting everything as the same shade of grey, which is a downgrade to even black and white thinking.
They’re pretty incompetent, but also, it does present significant deterrence to ICE especially if people aren’t charged for legal self defence.
I still think this is mostly about defending yourself from emboldened neighbors though.
A gun does not defend you from a drone. It defends you from other people who are emboldened to commit crimes against you.
The point later in the comment is about what happens if the government fully turns in the citizens. Protecting yourself is midway to that.
You basically can’t let it get that far or you’re just cooked.
We’re clearly at a unproductive point in this conversation where you are slinging accusations and we clearly are at an impasse. I think your position ignores the valid perspective of others, you think it outweighs every other position even from people who try to do better just as you claim to.
That seems to be it. I can’t convince you, and you certainly haven’t convinced me.
You can see me as braindead, as a troll, as engaging in “double speak”, as being condescending, as being ignorant, and so forth.
Sure can, and thus far you arent beating the charges. Also kinda funny you decided to purposefully twist words there to portray my criticisms of your argument as insults against you. Typical bad faith behaviour. Troll is accurate though, because I don’t believe you even believe what you are arguing.
this conversation has quickly devolved into shit-slinging
You having incoherent responses and this accurately being pointed out doesnt give you a license to pretend that this is errant shit slinging as opposed to you being unable to come up with cogent backing for your stated opinions.
It seems like you are in an incredibly bad headspace - maybe I’m off-base, but I’m not looking down on you by pointing this out and asking you to consider untangling yourself from narratives strung by our media.
The obvious projection here is incredible. I’m supposedly shit slinging while you pretend that not buying your insane opinions with no reasoning to them must mean I am clueless. Most obvious bad faith participation there has ever been.
focusing on the likelihood of a civil war or mass violence perpetrated by MAGA.
You focused on the first rather than the latter because the latter is pretty obviously a likely occurrence. You’ve indicated multiple times in the previous comment you can’t even deny that ICE ramping up isnt disastrous.
There are already plenty of people calling these secret police on their neighbors.
You’re just playing with semantics if you continue to pretend this isnt a real concern.
We are both just as aware of what’s going on as the other one, but I’m attempting to have a cooler head about it.
No. You are attempting to downplay the seriousness of the situation because it makes you feel comfortable or you support it. Not sure which one, but neither is a good faith or objective view.
I live in an area that is overwhelmingly occupied by MAGA voters and I’m not seeing the overflowing hate and violence here as an openly gay person.
The ol “If I don’t see it, it doesnt exist” after the “As a [minority] things are fine”. Your demographic literally is not one of the ones currently on the chopping block yet, but you can clearly see them ramping up for that too with the supreme court rumoured to be looking at what constitutes marriage next. You’re up right after interracial marriage.
More than that, as a white man, who passes social norms, you wouldn’t be seeing this as someone who clearly does not know many if any marginalized people given your responses here.
Further, given that its a very vanishingly small amount of high density areas that are not blue, it likely means you aren’t living where the troubles are happening. Somehow this makes you believe they wont spread.
Trump wouldn’t have been able to run for the highest office in the country and assume office if they did do something concrete.
This isn’t a point that is being debated. Its just something you’ve thrown up as if its at all relevant to the current discussion of whether future violence is likely.
A large portion of these 77 million people are Christians, likely.
The Nazis also ran with a tuned version of Christianity. This is literally not a point of worth in any respect. The fact they have choosen a religion to band around politically is actually a huge red flag.
I’m attempting to point out here are over 250 million people who are not radicalized.
By lying through omission, which I pointed out, and which you still have not addressed in any capacity whatsoever.
Being propagandized is not exactly the same thing as being hateful.
Propaganda is the mechanism, hate is the outcome. You arent making a point here.
Christians are indeed manipulated into hate, but would quickly be shown the light if people assuaged their fears.
No, no they would not. The democratic party tried to do that. They went with racism instead.
That is, unless you mean somehow minorities need to prove to the hateful that they deserve life, which would be an absurd take.
Most Democrats are not as squeaky clean as we are led to believe. Our last president was a Zionist who committed a genocide, even Kamala wrestled with that reality - as detailed in her book.
Literally no one is arguing that they are squeaky clean. Not a single person doesnt advocate for them as the significantly less evil of 2 evils.
This is reality.
This point right here to me is the think that has really stuck out. This makes me think you are a closeted conservative. That you are currently pretending to have liberal/leftist viewpoints, because not a single democrat I have ever talked to has ever believed this, and no one would even believe someone would honestly feel the need to make such an argument given that no one believes it.
Everybody would benefit from calming down.
This is the same ol rhetoric of “meet in the middle” where non maga takes one step forward, and maga takes 2 steps back, and then says “meet in the middle” again.
People have mostly wizened up to this nonsense. There is no “calm” middle ground between fascism and not fascism.
but rather just calm down and stop seeing violence as inevitable.
“Hey people just ignore reality because if you point out the obvious heading, that means you support it!” - Your logic right now.
Given the point above with me being convinced you aren’t honest with your views, Im sure youll have some long reply, but I doubt its in good faith, and I don’t think anyone is reading down this far, so it probably won’t be worth spending this much time on responding to.
I would say I hope you become a better person, but anyone willing to be this deceitful isnt the type of person who even internally believes that they are doing what is right.
know the kind of people you’re actually talking about. There is still value in electing the lesser evil, and pushing to get better and more progressive Dems in office (that are usually better at pushing back against fascism anyways)
This is exactly my point. The democrats have huge AIPAC backing and support some awful things, but they are fucking saints compared to the only other options in this political system.
They are the only potential vehicles for long term change and stability exactly the way you described.
Progressive candidates have to be winning primaries despite swimming upstream, and democrats have to continue winning federally despite the bad taste (chemo) they put in your mouth.
There was no substance in this reply. You haven’t shown knowledge of anything, and havent addressed any criticisms levied.
The crazy thing is that so many issues matter all at once.
The fact any significant amount blame democrats really shows you just how powerful republican propoganda and mindshare is right now.