Dems Will Never Have A Potus In The Next Presidential Elections

Truly, see this as a valid point, and I think that most of us here DO want to hear both sides of any conversation; but once it degrades down to name-calling and slamming the other side, then the possibility of intelligent discussion just goes right on out the door, no matter who starts it.

I think that both viewpoints should be able to present their opinions, and do it gracefully, and then everyone could discuss the topic, and not get lost in the “noise” of disagreement.
I know that this is how @Ken Anderson wants the forum to handle political, religious, conspiracies, and any other controversial subjects. As a moderator, it is hard to make that determination what to allow and what goes just over the line, but not far enough to be deleted.

 

Maybe my choice of words was confusing, @Nancy Hart . What I meant to say was that often, we get off-topic of discussing the facts (or opinions) of an issue, and I think that all of us tend to generalize , at least occasionally, which is not right.
There is always two sides (at least) to every discussion, and valid points to be made for every opinion, but certainly it is not right to disrespect a whole group of people.
Added to that is the issue that some people do seem to think that a whole group of people are bad, as in saying that all Muslims are bad because some of them are terrorists, like the facebook post I mentioned the other day. the person writing the post was showing a picture of the terrible flooding in Iran, and was saying that he hoped that there was a lot more devastation there, since they were all Muslims.

When we are discussing politicians, we need to try to stick to the topic, and not ridicule people, and I think that we would all be able to see things more clearly.
I try to watch what I post, but I know that sometimes, I probably say things that generalize people or groups of people; so I am certainly not absolving myself from this , either.

 

The Nazis tore down statues, banned free speech, blamed economic hardships on one group of people, instituted gun control, nationalized health care and euthanasia, imposed strict government regulation on industry, advocated for socialism, and put the state before God. Which US political party does this sound like?

 

I disagree with the idea that there are two equally valid sides to every issue, as that would deny the existence of facts. Some things are true, while other things are false, and denying these facts leads to the craziness that we're seeing around the world today. When one side denies a fact, there can be no productive discussion. For the sake of entertainment, it might still be fun to carry on a discussion, particularly when someone can put on a good argument against the truth. Often, both sides believe their versions of the truth but that doesn't make them equally valid. I know that I have believed things to be fact that I later learned were not true, so there can be a basis for discussion if both sides truly believe what they are saying. But the fact remains that are such things as facts and falsehoods.

On the other hand, when the topic is an ethical or moral issue, there can be equally valid arguments that are in opposition to one another, because morality and ethics are based on a standard, and we don't all hold to the same standard. On questions of right or wrong, as opposed to true or false, we're arguing from a standard that not everyone will share.

Someone who grows up in a religion or culture that teaches that it is right and noble to require your wife to walk around wearing a shroud, and to cut her head off if she refuses to do so, will believe that this behavior is right. I might consider such behavior to be wrong, and I suppose it could be argued that we are both right because we are living according to the standards that we adhere to. Nevertheless, to me, such behavior is still wrong and will feel obligated to do whatever I can to ensure that this behavior doesn't become legal or commonplace in any place that I have anything to say about.

To give a less extreme example, diets are often a combination of health and ethical concerns. While I eat meat, I wouldn't be comfortable killing an animal. You might consider that to be hypocritical since I know that animals are being killed in order to supply the meat, but I don't believe that it is wrong to kill an animal. Whether I like it or not, the inclusion of meat in our diet is the natural order of things and, for most people, it is the exclusion of meat from the diet that is unnatural. This gets even more complicated when you consider that there are people who believe that it is wrong to kill and eat deer, or moose, or pigs, or cows, but that it's okay to eat chicken and fish. Others are okay with fish but believe that it's wrong to eat anything with a face. Much of this has more to do with identification and empathy than diet, I think.

Some people can only empathize with people who look like them, which is why they can treat people with other skin tones or facial configurations in hateful ways. Others will agree that it's wrong to kill other people or to treat them hatefully, but they make exceptions to the rule, particularly when the killing takes place somewhere where they don't have to watch. Since we can't yet see or hold babies who are still in the womb, a lot of people believe that it's okay to kill them. Others don't identify with the very young or the very old so, because they tend to be dependent upon others, will argue that it's okay to kill them too. Thus, we have arguments in favor of infanticide and euthanasia.

When it comes to animals, those who look the most like us are among the least likely to be killed and eaten, along with others that we may have come to identify as family, such as dogs and cats. Still, there are plenty of people who wouldn't think twice about drowning a sack of kittens or shooting a dog.

Skipping over a few steps, we even have people who will go through all sorts of contortions to avoid killing any living thing, even to the point of sweeping the ground in front of them to avoid stepping on an insect. There are even people who believe that it is wrong to kill plants.

As a race, we have all sorts of standards, and these are the basis of our consideration of questions of right or wrong. Throughout history, people have come together, in tribes, religions, and nations, to form common standards of right and wrong, many of which have become encoded within our laws or religious practices. Even so, there are disagreements. I was a teenager in the 60s, and there were plenty of people who believed that stealing from another person was wrong but it was okay to shoplift from a store, and the larger the store the more right it was. The larger society didn't accept that, and shoplifting remained illegal. Today, we're seeing things that have long been considered wrong being made acceptable, such as destroying monuments or even the lives of living people who dared to say the wrong thing or to stand up for the wrong person.

We are also facing a threat to one of the founding principles of our country, here in the United States, in the idea that the majority has the right to trample the rights of a minority. What that means, quite simply, is that whoever can afford the best campaign rules, and that's a threat to anyone who might one day find themselves in the minority. Democracies put the elite in charge because they are the ones who control the media. This idea of a democracy has gained traction through a concerted campaign, that has included people from both major political parties, to persuade people that the United States is a democracy. For decades, we have learned that we are promoting democracy in the world, and every bad thing has been said to be a threat to our democracy, to the point where even people who should know better have to be reminded that our government has never been a democracy, and that democracy was a governmental system that was considered and soundly rejected by our founders.

To the point of the OP of this thread, I believe that if the American voter was made up of thinking people, there is no one in the Democrat Party who would stand a chance of being elected. However, we are no longer thinking people. We have been trained to let others do our thinking for us. Students today take pride in their unwillingness to think for themselves, or even to listen to anyone who might offer a different point of view. Rarely, will someone read anything written by anyone on another team, in large part because we view disagreement as something to whine about - or to put a stop to - rather than as a challenge to our perspective.

In this forum, there are people from several political perspectives who manage to take part in discussions. It's questionable as to whether these discussions are productive, but that has much to do with whatever it is that we hope to produce. As a forum administrator, I believe that the discussion itself is the product. Rarely does anyone change their mind on a political issue due to arguments made in a forum thread, although it has been known to occur. Most often, we reject any opinions that are not our own and we refuse to read anything that is likely to challenge the opinions that we consider to be our own, although they probably came from someone else. One side will refuse to read supporting information because it was published in the Washington Times or Breitbart, while the other side will refuse to accept anything from the Washinton Post or the Huffington Post. In reality, all four of these publications include about the same amount of facts in their news articles or opinion columns, the bias being in what they exclude or in the interpretation.

Nevertheless, there are people here who avoid the political forums, and that's fine. There are others who will take part in such discussions, occasionally getting angry about one thing or another, and just as often saying something that someone else is going to get angry about, and that's okay too. But there are others, the minority, who will employ a number of tactics in order to derail any discussion that isn't going their way. Often, this takes the form of interpreting every disagreement as a personal attack. They might also try to steer the discussion off onto a rabbit trail that has little or nothing to do with the central discussion.

Another common tactic is a version of the rabbit trail, in which they will ask for a citation and then dismiss the citation as irrelevant, generally without having even read it. Please don't misunderstand. It's perfectly okay to ask for a citation and even to acknowledge whatever perceived bias there might be in that citation. But it's wrong to dismiss the words of someone who may not feel like spending two hours annotating a five-minute post, particularly when those who are interested in the citation should maybe take the time to look it up for themselves if they needed it.

This is also a product of our acceptance that our own minds are worth nothing unless we can find an expert who agrees with us. This puts the experts in charge, and that is precisely why we have been trained to accept this over the past several decades. Who are the experts? Who do they work for? My argument is not invalid because the Washington Post hasn't published an article agreeing with it, and yours is not invalid because I can't find it in the Washington Times. The Washington Post is reluctant to report facts that contradict the progressive Democrat narrative and when they do, it is generally with a spin that is intended to blunt the facts. The Washington Times has a similar conservative bias. I haven't read much in Breitbart that is untrue as far as facts go, but Breitbart focuses on conservative opinion, so they are not looking for the perspective of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Huffington Post is basically a liberal blog, although it sometimes publishes columns by conservatives. Each of these publications is more likely to ignore facts than to publish falsities. The lie is generally in the exclusion. Nevertheless, all of these will include more fact than fiction, although sometimes you have to read between the lines or, more productively, seek alternative or supplementary news sources. When the Washington Post publishes something that doesn't advance the progressive Democrat agenda, it's generally because they were backed into a corner, but they do sometimes and I will link to these articles if they are on-topic with something I am talking about. But facts are facts, whether or not they are reported in the Washington Post or the New York Times.

Rejecting someone's words because your favorite newspaper hasn't said the same thing is wrong, from the perspective of a forum administrator, and I think it should be considered wrong by anyone who wants to carry on a conversation. Have you never carried on a conversation with someone in a restaurant or in a park? Do you carry dictionaries and libraries of supporting documentation with you just in case someone wants to ask you a question?

Asking for a citation when your real goal is to derail the conversation is both wrong and disruptive, particularly when you know full well that you're going to dismiss the citation without having even read it. Feigning offense is also disruptive.