Forum Replies Created
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I have a clear conscience, though. It felt good to cast a vote for Jill Stein and against both major party candidates.
I have clear conscience too. I voted for Clinton.
I don’t have to spell out the reasons, and more than obviously, neither do you.
In no way did I mean to imply that my choice could be universalized. Folks can legitimately say their own “conscience is clear” regardless of whom they voted for. Was just talking about my personal thought process and look inward, etc. etc.
I don’t know guy’s , it really bothers me when you describe Obama or Clinton as Left or even center Left . The Right wing owns all of the media and both Democratic and Republican parties as well as the Libertarians . It’s all just corporate branding
Unless I missed it, no one here has done that, Eternal.
I’ve been saying Obama has governed from the center-right going back to the beginning. I also see the Democratic Party power structure as center-right, and too much of its agenda as “conservative.” HRC may even be more to the right on most issues than Obama. We’ll see.
A possible source of confusion: I did say Democrats run the gamut from center-left to center-right, and I think they do. But I’m talking primarily about citizens, not politicians — not people running the party, etc. In my view, there aren’t that many elected Dems who one could legitimately call “liberal,” and I don’t think the Dems could be accurately called center-left overall since (perhaps) the early 1970s. They’ve been drifting rightward for forty years, and they’ve never, ever been “radical.”
Right-wingers, when I say the above, typically react with some degree of shock. Cuz they have it in their minds the Dems have always been “far left” and are worse now than they were forty years ago. To me, their view is absurd and just doesn’t sync up with historical reality. Though, with the emergence of Sanders (the Indy), I’m hopeful the right-ward slide might be at its end.
Here, on this site, I fear I’ve fallen back into some bad old habits, and I need to take my own advice:
Be a leftist who doesn’t waste any time with endless wingnut bullshit. Gotta stop posting about that aspect of politics, and the end of this crazed election will make that a hell of a lot easier for me.
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I actually have intense negative Italian hot-headed emotions about all the rightwing tactics and stuff, like the Fox crap and Rush Limbaugh/O’Reilly/Hannity/etc crappolla-fest.My own approach, which has changed over the years, is to use such interactions and experiences as…oh…’tests’ of my ability to stay..’centered’ for lack of a better word.
I mean I HAVE all the same emotions you do, but i ‘try’ to find a way to stay tranquil in the midst of rightwing-fuck-the-poor crap.Call it ‘political meditation’ :>) I dunno. It just doesn’t seem healthy for ‘me’ to get all crazed by things i cant change. Ya know. It is VERY difficult for me. You have no idea. But i get better every year.
w
v;>)
WV,
It may sounds weird, but that makes me feel better. Knowing you also have struggles with this stuff.
Most of the time when I read your posts, I’m amazed at their “grounded” aspect. Off the top of my head, it’s like you’re a comedic Yoda and you’ve internalized that old saying our wiser high-school buddies would always write in our yearbooks.
;>)
Anyway, it’s going to be a tremendous relief when this lunacy is over with. Gotta get back to my writing and step up reading as well. Currently reading Alice Kaplan’s Looking for The Stranger. It’s kinda like a biography of a novel. On a bit of a Camus kick at the moment.
I’ve seen this for decades now, and it’s beyond tiresome. The right throws so much absolute shit out there, distortions, outright lies, hair’s on fire hysterics, twisting nothing into something, it’s really impossible to keep up with.
It’s a smart strategy, though. Despicable in every way. But smart. Why? Because the overwhelming amount of pure D bullshit spewed by the right takes time to debunk. All of it is easily debunked, but it takes time. And that time would be far better spent developing structures and policy and communications to get out the left’s message.
The center-left, to generalize like crazy, often falls for this, and the right knows it. That means it’s basically up to leftists to mobilize, concentrate on better policies, vision and methods to express all of that. The Dems, who run the gamut, typically, from center-left to center-right, with the party power being center-right, seem lost in this battle against the far more aggressive and scruples-free right.
Here, on this site, I fear I’ve fallen back into some bad old habits, and I need to take my own advice:
Be a leftist who doesn’t waste any time with endless wingnut bullshit. Gotta stop posting about that aspect of politics, and the end of this crazed election will make that a hell of a lot easier for me.
;>)
Vox has a more generous interpretation of Trump’s comments, saying he didn’t really mean to tell them to vote twice — or more.
When it comes to interpretive matters, people tend to go tribal. Like “bad calls” in the NFL.
More important, let’s remember this, from ZN’s article — a stat I’ve posted as well:
Less than two years ago a comprehensive investigation of over a billion votes cast since 2000 in every primary, general, special, recall and municipal election in the entire nation revealed that there were only 31 documented cases of voter fraud over the course of thirteen years and who knows how many state, federal, and regional elections.
For the vote I don’t know. For the rule of law all pretense of fairness is trashed. Respect has been replaced with contempt. No big deal for democrat voters but for republicans it is new and the consequences of a stolen election we can only wait and see.
I know Trump and his supporters feel that way. As usual, the right chooses the wrong thing to get hysterical about. In reality, in this particular case, there is no evidence that Clinton broke any laws in existence when she was at State. No Federal, state or local laws were broken by Clinton that we know of. Comey knows this. The next thing needed to indict her would have been to prove she intentionally sought to expose “state secrets.” Intention is paramount.
Again, Comey, after endless investigation, egged on by GOP witch-hunters, determined no intent was found. Nor would it make any sense for it to exist.
So, Comey did the right thing in his first public statement, but went waaay too far. He should have just said there is zero evidence she broke the law. Instead, he helped Trump and the GOP by editorializing about her carelessness and negligence. And, yes, she was all of that. And more. Stupid about IT, arrogant, careless, etc. etc. But those aren’t crimes, and it’s not the job of the FBI director to editorialize about any of it.
He then aided Trump and the GOP again by defying his boss and decades of protocol to go public about newly found emails, none of which they had actually read yet. This gave a slumping Trump, who was down by double-digits in the polls, a chance to close that gap.
This past Sunday Comey made it self-evident that he was wrong to go public the second time. But the damage was done. He had already helped your candidate tremendously, without merit, and by going against decades of protocol. Contrary to Trump’s whining, no one is rigging anything against him, except himself.
