Negatory

Just want to point out that folks like you are why alternative viewpoints don’t engage, and why this place has gently flowed back into being the echo chamber it’s always been. Here’s a pretty comprehensive view of why people believe that Israel is still oppressing Palestine, although I know this will be dismissed for no logical reason: https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/MDE1551412022ENGLISH.pdf Want to be clear, I don’t support Hamas or anyone who does. You seem to be getting your parties in a wad, but you don’t even understand why.

There are extreme leftists that are supporting small scale demonstrations that conservative media are significantly overblowing to play on YOUR (specifically) feelings and keep up the narrative that we are mortal enemies and diametrically opposed. Even Ocasio-Cortez condemned the demonstrations supporting Palestine. My point was that he wasn’t going to find someone on this forum that is pro Hamas’s actions. Because it’s a very rare viewpoint right now, including democrats or liberals. Everyone I know is fucking sickened.

I think it’s dumb to apply viewpoints hyperbolically both directions. I think you’ll find that the views you’re so riled up about are not as well held as you think. Even Ocasio-Cortez condemned the Palestinian support protests - one of the most “leftist” people you irrationally despise. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna119687 I think that Rep. Tlaib and Bush are morons and wrong. They are capitalizing on human loss to get political points. Honestly, they’re sickening. Simultaneously, I think the Harvard students who released a letter are technically correct, albeit still wrong about when to talk about this - Israel has contributed to Israel-Palestine instability via effectively running an apartheid state. But it doesn’t excuse terrorist acts. I honestly see how f’d politics is from a Palestinian perspective, and I think you can too. US, EU, and Israel all deciding to admire the problem that Palestinians were effectively living in a penal colony for the last few decades contributed to this occurring. I also see how Palestine are morons and didn’t accept multiple potential compromises over the last 40 years.

Hi, so called “leftist” Ron Burgundy here. If you think that anyone who is slightly liberal supports Hamas, I think you’re confused. As CH said, kill them all. Painfully, preferably. (I’d also like to take this moment to reiterate that no one on this forum is a leftist, your views and biases are so skewed though that I’ll be your huckleberry) Let’s pretend you were looking for nuanced viewpoints. A total war against Palestine is gonna be counterproductive. You’re gonna create more terrorists and Arab nations that are united against Israel - not less. We saw this with the resurgence of Al Qaeda and ISIS. I’m sure you learned this in your service. Getting drawn into the total war trap will be analogous to how the US overcommitted into the Middle East in 2001/2003, resulting in basically the degradation of our own empire and supremacy over the last 20 years for basically nothing! Hamas/Iran WANT this response. Now ask “why?” History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. It wouldn’t be the first time civilized nations with very capable militaries are defeated because they didn’t understand the enemy’s centers of gravity (spoiler: it’s not in the people of Palestine). Israel must avoid being emotional, just like we should have in the early 2000s. Now, can they conduct a surgical campaign to kill a bunch of terrorists and save their folks, while simultaneously backing out quickly enough to maintain foreign relations and not destroy their economy? Time will tell. What is not tenable? Another united Arab states war that drives Israel to be a lone island reliant on the U.S. Or, alternatively, I guess you could argue Islam and Judaism/Christianity aren’t compatible. Crusades circa 2024? Glass em all!

If your metric for whether or not things are good is “are they better than the 80s, 90s, or 2000s,” I’ve got bad news for you. America’s extremely rare 60-year global unipolar dominance and being able to benefit from the rest of the world blowing its infrastructure up during WWII is over. There are actually a lot of arguments that being an American in 2019 or 2007 represents the best average life circumstances humans will experience for a long time. Good evidence that being a boomer or a gen x in America = best life humans have ever had, and will maintain that status for the next few generations. See Principles of a Changing World Order by Ray Dalio. Quantitative easing by both parties, immense overspending by both parties, collosal defense and policy failures in the Middle East wars, a lack of focus on infrastructure or investment, and real great power competition equals worse times for the foreseeable future. There is no easy way out, and no political agenda that will just magically fix it.

Dumb and distorted. We have hit 1.0C, are going to hit 1.5C of warming shortly, and are well on our way to 4+. What does that mean? It means your children are gonna have much tougher lives. And the point of the quote was not that we would die in 5 years, but that there would be mass deaths in the future if fossil fuels were not significantly curtailed by 2023. But that’s standard for you, you just don’t know how to read. Sorry that a kid is trying to reduce fossil fuel usage because of actual global warming, and that the right wing media has literally convinced you to hate her. It’s sad to look at. And I’m sure it’s hard for you to always be so mad about everything. Also, it’s a typical pattern to have a fallacy on here, but it’s always worthwhile to point out: No one said we needed to disproportionally affect industrializing societies over already industrialized. In fact, the VAST majority of emissions are due to first world consumption and production (US, China, EU). So we could just cut YOUR (and people like your) emissions, and that would be the 90% solution. But you can throw out a totally unrelated point that we should all be able to roll coal in F350s because if we can’t it would hurt Africa. Bro, you (and your base) don’t give a fuck about Africa or the developing world.

From “da libruls”: Trans rights becoming this important is too much emphasis, agreed. I don’t care to overcompensate, and I don’t think the majority of folks actually care. I personally agree that the woke-ness of some of the messaging is terribly annoying and not focused. And we should stop. Also, I agree that the family unit is important, who said it wasn’t? But wealth inequality is an actual problem that needs to be solved. History also shows that the higher wealth inequality goes the worse society gets. And if you look at society from an average 25 year olds eyes, you’d see that American capitalism as is hasnt made much progress since the 1970s when real wages stopped increasing. Wouldn’t recommend you throw totally separate ideals into one set of issues, because it’s harder to find common ground.

Not surprised Brabus. During some of this discourse through the years I actually, at one point, mistakenly thought you were smart.

No one else wants to engage? We doing the echo chamber thing again where we get really mad at a fallacious argument? Gotta love the analysis capabilities of retired military officers. Let’s look at this. The specific issue with your argument is that you say a couple of facts, but you entirely discount very important tenets to why Americans a a whole did what they did, and then you say something wildly out there that does not logically follow: “the shot should NEVER have been MANDATED.” Very Tucker Carlson approach. The purpose of the shot was to stop transmission so that old people, who had a MORTALITY rate above the single percentages (and a similarly high severe disease rate requiring hospitalization) wouldn’t die in droves and entirely inundate the healthcare system. Everyone understood it wouldn’t kill young people, yes, even early on. The purpose was to maintain the healthcare system. https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1327 Republicans may not have liked doing something to try and protect the population, but the country as a whole was supportive of efforts to not have every one of their grandparents have a real chance of death. Here are the facts: Side effects of the vaccine were NOT well understood until it was made and distributed to a significant portion of the population, and the negative heart effects are not typical of other vaccine efforts. Those are real, and they are unfortunate. If you say otherwise, provide proof. The fact that it does not significantly limit spread was NOT understood - it initially was believed to significantly cut spread, up to 90%. It didn’t, and that is unfortunate. If you argue otherwise, provide proof. As a side note, many of you strongly pushed for ivermectin just because conservative propaganda wanted you to go against the grain, which has still been shown to have almost no efficacy and multiple bad side effects. Don’t see that addressed very often on here. The vaccine has a very high efficacy rate of reducing mortality and severe illness in those over a certain age. It reduces death rates in populations over 60 by up to 90% in many excess death analyses. Also, republican areas that refused the vaccine had significantly more excess deaths than areas that did not. You entirely discount this point. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna50883 You’ll note that many on this forum - me included - advocated for the vaccine when these things were believed: that it would limit spread, have no significant side effects (like most other vaccines), and limit mortality in vulnerable populations. It only accomplished limiting mortality (which you entirely scoff), and that’s when liberals as a population began not pushing for vaccination as the solution anymore. Especially not for young people, as they were a transmission vector whether or not they got the shots. You’ll also note that, as facts came out that showed the vaccine was not going to be effective from a transmission perspective, they were acknowledged and the push for vaccines decreased. Reminder: Trump recommended vaccination for the first year. Your anger is unjustified. Your argument is fallacious. You have taken rational thought to protect a portion of society - which, fine, you may have disagreed with, but it’s still rooted in logic and rational - and vilified it to the point of insulting your countrymen and implying we are part of what is wrong with America. That hostility and open contempt of others who looked at a problem differently than you did is what is wrong with America. And yes, I recognize there were others on the liberal side that were contemptuous. But let’s not reframe the argument, as a few folks on here including you have done, to you were always right and everyone else was always wrong and what a FUCKIN TRAVESTY. What an absolutely asinine, non intellectual take. Oh, and, as always, I am able to provide actual sources for every single thing I said. But I am going to elect to wait for you to start. Good luck.

Oh would it read better if it said “the right” instead of “you guys?” Because it reads exactly the same.

Sure, let’s do those things. You don’t realize WE DON’T CARE about protecting people like this, that’s you guys with your false equivalencies.

It’s funny how in one breath you guys say “we aren’t advocating civil war” and then you advocate what is effectively civil war. Remember, there are more democrats in Texas than there are Republicans in most states. Vice versa for Republicans in California. Anyone who calls for state secession or a national divorce is either blindingly ignorant or willfully malicious, and you are the opposite of a patriot. Also, it’s rich coming from ”the party of Lincoln.”

Projection is a hell of a drug. Maybe some self reflection is in order.

Nah bro, says that you oversimplify things significantly into right or wrong, black or white. You have become what you criticize, and you all wonder why folks stopped commenting back. The forum turned significantly more into an echo chamber the last year, which has been nice for you guys, but doesn’t necessarily represent reality. We all, right now, have the benefit of knowledge we did not have when decisions were being made. Your debrief choice (i can’t really call it a loop) is that we all made and then executed the wrong decisions in the beginning of the pandemic, and that “we” have doubled and tripled down and screeched the entire time. But in reality we as a society had very limited SA or perception of what the actual truth of the situation was until science uncovered some of those answers. It took months to years for that. And, you seem to forget, we had to operate and make decisions in that limited SA environment. You can’t put the big arrow on a decision when your SA is super low. The ends don’t justify the means. I believed, and will continue to believe, you 100% did not have the SA in the Summer of 2020. For example, we now know mRNA vaccines are entirely ineffective at stopping transmission - we were hopeful they would be very effective. Didn’t know that. We now know that we’re looking at a significantly lower mortality variant with significantly higher spread - the first variant spread slower but had a mortality rate about 10 times higher pre-vaccine. Didn’t know when that was coming. We know that COVID is airborne. Didn’t know that, remember folks sanitizing everything? We know how to test for it, and we know generally how long folks are contagious. We understand mortality risks much more completely now (fat and old). We did not know any of these things with significant certainty for a long time. You’ll also note that many folks on here changed our minds on many policies as more data emerged. As folks got vaccinated and mortality decreased and transmission reduction efforts clearly failed, many folks like me changed our opinions. We built SA and made decisions with said SA. You can demonize that, if you want, but it’s a pretty rough take. If your point is that in the absence of proof, we should be optimistic, fine, that’s your philosophy. But it doesn’t mean those that wanted to be conservative in the face of unknowns are inherently wrong and/or evil. In fact, you literally can’t prove that those efforts didn’t save significant lives (bang your head against the wall on that one, if you want). For the record, I think that masks and vaccine requirements now should be entirely removed in society with the exception of elderly care or hospitals. We should have gotten rid of it over a year ago for the military. There is more nuance to how decisions have to be made and opinions should be formed than you give credit.

I agree, gotta treat Biden exactly the same way. Time for the political elite class, regardless of affiliation, to understand that there are rules. Prosecute and investigate them all.

The whataboutism is amazing. I, for one, find the thing most ironic in these discussions to be the title of this thread. Today, in hypocrisy, you defend someone’s actions just because they are a Republican. Also, the President can not unilaterally declassify anything. Notable exceptions include nuclear data, waived data, and intelligence agent locations, among others. Oh, and there’s a process for it, you don’t just get to say “I DECLARE UNCLASSIFIED” like Michael Scott.

Sure, I’m fine with both. But you have to look at events in vacuums. If he did what they’re saying, it will require a lot of mental gymnastics for the right to not call for harsh consequences regardless. With that being said, I entirely expect it.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/fbi-recovered-eleven-sets-of-classified-documents-in-trump-search-inventory-shows-11660324501 So, we all agree #TrumpForPrison, right?

Yes, allow the class politics to only see the world through the most distorted of lenses. Tucker Carlson would be proud of you guys 🥹I would also discount the whole of science based on a funny article about a super minority of one political side! I guess if we’re doing sweeping generalizations that have no basis, it’s those damn religious Republicans who are destroying the world and lying about it with false, untenable pretenses. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kenneth-copeland-jet-inside-edition_n_5cf822fee4b0e63eda94de4f/amp In reality, it’s rich vs poor, plain and simple. I was gonna ask why you all don’t believe climate change is a real threat to humanity, but then I realized that this forum gets their opinions straight from Rush Limbaugh reruns (RIP). By the way, it’s possible for there to be more than one ill in the world.

Any argument against the total combined will of the American people isn’t anti democratic? It is clearly anti democratic. It’s not implicitly anti republic. What does arguing honestly mean, by the way? Did my opinion based on philosophy and reasonable arguments hurt your feelings?

Cool, we’ve figured out the root cause. Now do we punish the children, when we agree they aren’t the root cause?

Yeah, actually, beyond all your other fallacies, let’s address whether government has an obligation to the American people to maintain a court that accurately represents the will of the people. Seems like there may be a moral imperative to bring the court back in line with American values in whatever way necessary, up to and including adding more moderate members to the court. Remember, any argument against this is implicitly anti democratic. Good luck.

First, it’s rich to say that the left should reconsider the meaning of democracy when a very unpopular, anti-democratic, opinion was passed. Almost all polls show 60-65% of Americans support Roe - nearly 2:1. Now if you wanna make some bullshit argument about how the Supreme Court represents our republic or something, go for it, but I’d recommend you look up what a democracy is supposed to be. Also, it’s rich to say that I don’t understand something that is clearly extraordinarily contentious and not understandable. Its an opinion. It’s also rich to say that Thomas determines what is correct in the constitution. Also, Thomas’s written opinion was a majority concurrence, not a non-majority. My point, which is 100% valid, is that a real Supreme Court justice in the majority of this case is calling for some really ridiculous things in a real Supreme Court ruling. He called for re-examining whether I as a married person can use contraceptives with my wife behind closed doors. Also, you’re lying about the dissenting opinion having no constitutional basis. They clearly used the 14th amendment, but I don’t expect you to read, as you’ve demonstrated a curious aptitude for avoiding facts over many years now. Just to be clear, Roe was upheld precedent for the last 50 years and was reaffirmed in Casey. Just because this court changed their mind doesn’t mean that this court is correct or that the previous 7-2 ruling was incorrect. This doesn’t “prove” anything other than packing the court with conservative judges gives a different result. Congratulations. At this point, it’s easy to see the court as a politicized, less neutral, branch of government. Time to pack it up! How about, say, 21 justices? We can probably get 12 more before congress turns over to the republicans, no more rules! Why not? Oh, there’s precedent for there to be just 9 Supreme Court justices? Precedent doesn’t matter anymore.

Sweet! Clarence Thomas owning the libs: "For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell." Remember when you guys said it was alarmist to say that contraception was potentially on the chopping block next after abortion. Here it is! Better stock up on birth control, because we're going full Gilead. Nevermind the fact that literally none of these policies (including abortion) are even remotely popular in our society. #democracy Gotta hand it to ya'll, the theocracy is coming together! I, for one, am non-ironically donating to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. They, along with TST, do some good work pointing out blatant hypocrisy and overstepping of religious bounds in government. May we all heal from this and ultimately come together as we are touched by his noodly appendage. R'amen.

Jesus. You think people choose to be gay. I guarantee you have literally 0 family members or close friends in the LGBT community.