The Many Faces of US Politics...

[LCohen]

Is this the most toxic thread on the board? I know we have a few ex pats living there and that's fine, but I fail to see the immediate interests of locals here on a country that really plays no large part in our political lives.

It is pretty toxic.

I am very definitely a liberal lefty. I can still see that some on my side of the debate go too far. I can also see that some are driven to it by Trump and his supporters who adopt the same tactics.

Some no doubt do it because they know it will get a reaction.

But genuinely I believe I can stand over my contention that the standard of debate and behaviour is infinitely worse on the right. That is the way the evidence stacks up anyhow

This board, as far as politics are concerned, is by and large dominated by the left, though. And it's still toxic. 

all name calling and personal abuse comes from the more liberal side of the argument especially on this thread.

Perhaps not all but I take your general point.

The question dodging definitely comes from the right though. Perhaps you personally could put your shoulder to the wheel in addressing that. It will have a positive impact on the quality of debate which I know concerns you deeply

[sid waddell]

Why can't we have a fair, reasonable discussion on the merits or demerits of the Glennane Gang?

Posters from both sides should be able to put their views across in a respectful manner, while also being simultaneously "unbiased", whatever that means

The intellectual case for co-operation between the British State and Loyalist freedom fighters has not been voiced on this forum and that's disappointing

All the posters seem to be biased in favour of not murdering Catholic civilians and therefore we can't take what they say seriously

And the recent "Unquiet Graves" documentary was hopelessly biased

On the question of whether the murder of Catholic civilians by the British state was necessary or unnecessary, as always the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle - as in, it probably wasn't totally necessary, but it was a bit necessary

I also don't get why anybody not personally affected would care

[sid waddell]

That was a satirical post

[sid waddell]

Is this the most toxic thread on the board? I know we have a few ex pats living there and that's fine, but I fail to see the immediate interests of locals here on a country that really plays no large part in our political lives.

It is pretty toxic.

I am very definitely a liberal lefty. I can still see that some on my side of the debate go too far. I can also see that some are driven to it by Trump and his supporters who adopt the same tactics.

Some no doubt do it because they know it will get a reaction.

But genuinely I believe I can stand over my contention that the standard of debate and behaviour is infinitely worse on the right. That is the way the evidence stacks up anyhow

This board, as far as politics are concerned, is by and large dominated by the left, though. And it's still toxic. 

Online, Trump supporters are as toxic as it gets however I have to agree - on here I still be shocked how vociferous the anti Trump supporters are.
Leads to a shitshow in the country thats for sure

I don't think anybody should be surprised that opposition to Trump is vociferous. It needs to be vociferous. It should be possible to be vociferous and still fact based. By all means call people out for being fact dodgers but not for being vociferous

One of the disappointing aspects of the the ongoing fascist demonstrations in Dublin is that it seems people can't respectfully disagree with each other and still be friends

It should be possible for fascists to respectfully bring along nooses as props and call for ethnic cleansing and mass deportations, call people paedophiles based on nothing, and use Nazi rhetoric etc., and for them and their targets to still be friends at the end of the day

Why can't fascists and their victims be friends?

Personally I blame the victims

Something like that

[sid waddell]

Are the resident  right wing Trumpites on this forum upset over the FBI foiling the terrorist plot of their fellow Trumpites in Michigan?

Thats right Ross - proving many of the last posts correct.

You dont even have to support Trump in this thread to get insulted.

If you support no one/remain neutral or even try to see someones else point of view then anti Trump supporters see you as a viable target

I've long said that Trumpism has literally nothing except imagined victimhood and "you're proving my points correct"

I do hate saying "I was proved correct" but I've been continually proved correct about this for years

And the above is a good example of why

The world is always "unfair" to Trump supporters, all because they believe in a totally crazy and hateful world of make believe which has zero basis in reality

"Respect mah hate speech"

[LCohen]

Why can't we have a fair, reasonable discussion on the merits or demerits of the Glennane Gang?

Posters from both sides should be able to put their views across in a respectful manner, while also being simultaneously "unbiased", whatever that means

The intellectual case for co-operation between the British State and Loyalist freedom fighters has not been voiced on this forum and that's disappointing

All the posters seem to be biased in favour of not murdering Catholic civilians and therefore we can't take what they say seriously

And the recent "Unquiet Graves" documentary was hopelessly biased

On the question of whether the murder of Catholic civilians by the British state was necessary or unnecessary, as always the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle - as in, it probably wasn't totally necessary, but it was a bit necessary

I also don't get why anybody not personally affected would care

That post is hilarious. Hilarious in this sense is a compliment

[LCohen]

Is this the most toxic thread on the board? I know we have a few ex pats living there and that's fine, but I fail to see the immediate interests of locals here on a country that really plays no large part in our political lives.

It is pretty toxic.

I am very definitely a liberal lefty. I can still see that some on my side of the debate go too far. I can also see that some are driven to it by Trump and his supporters who adopt the same tactics.

Some no doubt do it because they know it will get a reaction.

But genuinely I believe I can stand over my contention that the standard of debate and behaviour is infinitely worse on the right. That is the way the evidence stacks up anyhow

This board, as far as politics are concerned, is by and large dominated by the left, though. And it's still toxic. 

Online, Trump supporters are as toxic as it gets however I have to agree - on here I still be shocked how vociferous the anti Trump supporters are.
Leads to a shitshow in the country thats for sure

I don't think anybody should be surprised that opposition to Trump is vociferous. It needs to be vociferous. It should be possible to be vociferous and still fact based. By all means call people out for being fact dodgers but not for being vociferous

One of the disappointing aspects of the the ongoing fascist demonstrations in Dublin is that it seems people can't respectfully disagree with each other and still be friends

It should be possible for fascists to respectfully bring along nooses as props and call for ethnic cleansing and mass deportations, call people paedophiles based on nothing, and use Nazi rhetoric etc., and for them and their targets to still be friends at the end of the day

Why can't fascists and their victims be friends?

Personally I blame the victims

Something like that

That post is hilarious. Hilarious in this sense is not a compliment.

You are missing the point.

Everyone should stick to facts and try to avoid name calling.

The noose carriers are fascist. Call them fascists. That isn't name calling or trolling

Anybody on here defending the noose carriers is surely also a fascist. Call them that.

In carrying the battle to fascism calling them names doesn't achieve anything. Exposing the idiocy of their beliefs might though

[sid waddell]

Is this the most toxic thread on the board? I know we have a few ex pats living there and that's fine, but I fail to see the immediate interests of locals here on a country that really plays no large part in our political lives.

It is pretty toxic.

I am very definitely a liberal lefty. I can still see that some on my side of the debate go too far. I can also see that some are driven to it by Trump and his supporters who adopt the same tactics.

Some no doubt do it because they know it will get a reaction.

But genuinely I believe I can stand over my contention that the standard of debate and behaviour is infinitely worse on the right. That is the way the evidence stacks up anyhow

This board, as far as politics are concerned, is by and large dominated by the left, though. And it's still toxic. 

Online, Trump supporters are as toxic as it gets however I have to agree - on here I still be shocked how vociferous the anti Trump supporters are.
Leads to a shitshow in the country thats for sure

I don't think anybody should be surprised that opposition to Trump is vociferous. It needs to be vociferous. It should be possible to be vociferous and still fact based. By all means call people out for being fact dodgers but not for being vociferous

One of the disappointing aspects of the the ongoing fascist demonstrations in Dublin is that it seems people can't respectfully disagree with each other and still be friends

It should be possible for fascists to respectfully bring along nooses as props and call for ethnic cleansing and mass deportations, call people paedophiles based on nothing, and use Nazi rhetoric etc., and for them and their targets to still be friends at the end of the day

Why can't fascists and their victims be friends?

Personally I blame the victims

Something like that

That post is hilarious. Hilarious in this sense is not a compliment.

You are missing the point.

Everyone should stick to facts and try to avoid name calling.

The noose carriers are fascist. Call them fascists. That isn't name calling or trolling

Anybody on here defending the noose carriers is surely also a fascist. Call them that.

In carrying the battle to fascism calling them names doesn't achieve anything. Exposing the idiocy of their beliefs might though

I suppose the thing to note is that there is no difference between the fascist demonstrators outside the Dail and the Trump regime - except power

It's impossible to have a discussion with Irish fascists but it's also impossible to have a discussion with supporters of American fascism for the same reasons

They aren't there to debate, they're there to troll and cheerlead fascism

[sid waddell]

I see Kellyanne Conway has denied her 15 year old daughter treatment for Covid even though her daughter is gravely ill

And if none of the above is true, which it seems very likely not to be - who cares, that's just a particular interpretation of facts

What seems to be actually happening is that 15 year old Claudia Conway is publicly trolling her own mother and her Goebbels-esque lies via TikTok

Which is actually very funny

Kellyanne's daughter seems fairly sound

Funny how even a child of the fascists has the ability to see through the shit, and yet a hell of lot of adults don't, or don't want to

[LCohen]

Is this the most toxic thread on the board? I know we have a few ex pats living there and that's fine, but I fail to see the immediate interests of locals here on a country that really plays no large part in our political lives.

It is pretty toxic.

I am very definitely a liberal lefty. I can still see that some on my side of the debate go too far. I can also see that some are driven to it by Trump and his supporters who adopt the same tactics.

Some no doubt do it because they know it will get a reaction.

But genuinely I believe I can stand over my contention that the standard of debate and behaviour is infinitely worse on the right. That is the way the evidence stacks up anyhow

This board, as far as politics are concerned, is by and large dominated by the left, though. And it's still toxic. 

Online, Trump supporters are as toxic as it gets however I have to agree - on here I still be shocked how vociferous the anti Trump supporters are.
Leads to a shitshow in the country thats for sure

I don't think anybody should be surprised that opposition to Trump is vociferous. It needs to be vociferous. It should be possible to be vociferous and still fact based. By all means call people out for being fact dodgers but not for being vociferous

One of the disappointing aspects of the the ongoing fascist demonstrations in Dublin is that it seems people can't respectfully disagree with each other and still be friends

It should be possible for fascists to respectfully bring along nooses as props and call for ethnic cleansing and mass deportations, call people paedophiles based on nothing, and use Nazi rhetoric etc., and for them and their targets to still be friends at the end of the day

Why can't fascists and their victims be friends?

Personally I blame the victims

Something like that

That post is hilarious. Hilarious in this sense is not a compliment.

You are missing the point.

Everyone should stick to facts and try to avoid name calling.

The noose carriers are fascist. Call them fascists. That isn't name calling or trolling

Anybody on here defending the noose carriers is surely also a fascist. Call them that.

In carrying the battle to fascism calling them names doesn't achieve anything. Exposing the idiocy of their beliefs might though

I suppose the thing to note is that there is no difference between the fascist demonstrators outside the Dail and the Trump regime - except power

It's impossible to have a discussion with Irish fascists but it's also impossible to have a discussion with supporters of American fascism for the same reasons

They aren't there to debate, they're there to troll and cheerlead fascism

A fascist is a fascist and deserves to be labelled thus.

If someone dodges the facts point that out. It might not change the mind of the poster but it cuts their poison off at the knee

[LCohen]

I see Kellyanne Conway has denied her 15 year old daughter treatment for Covid even though her daughter is gravely ill

And if none of the above is true, which it seems very likely not to be - who cares, that's just a particular interpretation of facts

What seems to be actually happening is that 15 year old Claudia Conway is publicly trolling her own mother and her Goebbels-esque lies via TikTok

Which is actually very funny

Kellyanne's daughter seems fairly sound

Funny how even a child of the fascists has the ability to see through the shit, and yet a hell of lot of adults don't, or don't want to

All true. I would add sympathies to the daughter re her illness

[LCohen]

Everybody has had a breather.

So in the interests of lively but well tempered debate anybody want to defend the  POTUS against the allegation that he has used his term in office to stoke racial tension?

[J70]

So J70 you find this thread is not toxic?

Has it got good thought out debates with reasoned out posts?

Even in the soccer threads guys are laughing at the wind ups, some of stuff on here is venomous, are yous lot like that when chatting to guys in work about these issues?

Anyone can have an opinion on here, one would be America (based on this thread) is a horrible place with a more divided nation than Ireland

But hey, this isn't a slight on ex pats moving away and having a better life for themselves, I've close relatives who live there and do well. I've a cousin who's contemplating coming home for good due to the current state of play

You're right, there isn't much reasoned, thought out debate. To me, the blame goes to the fact that its hard to defend the indefensible i.e. the current Republican Party.

We have an objectively bigoted, incompetent, anti-intellectual demogogue whose primary motivation is his own self-interest and aggrandizement in the White House. Most people on this thread, having been brought up in a country with a very good education system and a moderate political consensus can see that and call it out, some more stridently than others, some maybe going a little too far. Those here who fall on the right on the US political scale generally resort to either half-baked, reactionary, conspiracy bullshit, or grievance-airing about supposed underhanded dirty tricks on the part of the Democratic Party and the supposedly biased US media. There's never really any defense of the policies of the right wing, only gloating about liberal tears or them getting their supposedly due-comeuppance. This thread very often goes into lulls until someone posts some right wing nonsense, then it picks up steam for a day, then it dies again.

[sid waddell]

So J70 you find this thread is not toxic?

Has it got good thought out debates with reasoned out posts?

Even in the soccer threads guys are laughing at the wind ups, some of stuff on here is venomous, are yous lot like that when chatting to guys in work about these issues?

Anyone can have an opinion on here, one would be America (based on this thread) is a horrible place with a more divided nation than Ireland

But hey, this isn't a slight on ex pats moving away and having a better life for themselves, I've close relatives who live there and do well. I've a cousin who's contemplating coming home for good due to the current state of play

You're right, there isn't much reasoned, thought out debate. To me, the blame goes to the fact that its hard to defend the indefensible i.e. the current Republican Party.

We have an objectively bigoted, incompetent, anti-intellectual demogogue whose primary motivation is his own self-interest and aggrandizement in the White House. Most people on this thread, having been brought up in a country with a very good education system and a moderate political consensus can see that and call it out, some more stridently than others, some maybe going a little too far. Those here who fall on the right on the US political scale generally resort to either half-baked, reactionary, conspiracy bullshit, or grievance-airing about supposed underhanded dirty tricks on the part of the Democratic Party and the supposedly biased US media. There's never really any defense of the policies of the right wing, only gloating about liberal tears or them getting their supposedly due-comeuppance. This thread very often goes into lulls until someone posts some right wing nonsense, then it picks up steam for a day, then it dies again.

To be honest I don't think anybody who is anti-Trump is going too far on this thread, I'm not sure how you could go "too far"

I mean Trump's entire modus operandi is to go too far every second of every day of every month of every year

For the last five years there has been consistent gaslighting everywhere you look in the media telling us that Trump is not what he is

He is what he is - a fascist who was prepared to do anything to first of all gain power and now to hold on to it

The "he's not really what he seems, calm down, you're being hysterical" people have been wrong every step of the way and those who were called "crazy", "paranoid conspiracy fantasists" and "hysterical" have been continually proven correct

I've said this before but there is incredible historical ignorance about what the real lessons of World War II were

The simplest, most distilled real lesson of World War II was "never again"

"Never again" means that when fascism rears its grotesque head it has to be stamped out before it can gain a foothold - because when it gains a foothold it becomes very difficult, almost impossible to stop - there is no telling exactly where it all ends - but the logical endpoint is genocide, that's what happens when an ideology goes so far that the idea behind that idelogy eclipses everything, eclipses the world, eclipses existence

Fascism is NOT one more legitimate strand of political discourse, you cannot have a pint with a fascist and say to them "oh, we have our political differences but at the end of the day we remain friends"

The lesson of World War II was NOT "we must never invoke historical comparisons to the Nazis and World War II until it has been proven that another Holocaust has already taken place"

But this is the fake "lesson" that the entirety of the international right-wing want us to believe as they try to create a world of mini-Hungarys, client states for the unholy alliance of Putin, the Saudis, the far right of Israel and the US far right, where corrupt anarcho-capitalism and white supremacism runs amok and international co-operation is destroyed

I wonder were there supporters of fascism in the 1930s who claimed fake victimhood because people who were against fascism wouldn't have a "civilised and reasonable" discussion with them

I think there were, you know

We're three and a half weeks away from Trump throwing out what remains of American democracy

And it will be "legal", when fascists take power it's always "legal"

Ignore the polls - the battle will likely be on the streets, like in Belarus

And every person in the US who is against fascism needs to be prepared to take to streets to stop it gaining total power, that means people who post here and live in the US

This is the reality

[J70]

Sid, you're clearly capable of fighting your own battles and defending your own style of debate. I absolutely agree that Trump has fascist and racist tendencies, as does much of his support and staff; however, I personally think you're a bit quick to call certain posters or their views fascist or racist. There has been once or twice on the board when I've done so myself, but only in extreme cases like, say, foxcommander. And even if you are absolutely convinced, IMO your arguments are smart enough to make your points without being inflammatory and antagonizing others who probably agree with you anyway. For whatever that is worth...