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Post by millring on Aug 17, 2024 14:37:20 GMT -5
A FWIW, the "Short cuts to debate" section of that 2016 message does what you accuse the Democrats of doing: flattens the terms of debate into a cartoonish binary. I don't think so. Certainly not in the press where every single term used to describe a situation or issue is the term decided on by the left/progressive. Women's issues Reproductive freedom (that one is a particularly rich distortion -- describing abortion as reproducing) Hamas Oct 7th attack as terrorism ( NOW you can use the word?) instead of an act of war so that Israel's defense can be framed as overreaction. The list goes on.
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Post by Russell Letson on Aug 17, 2024 15:39:16 GMT -5
As I said, the driving force continues to be against progressively altering our country. Trump just happens to be the only way to express that at the ballot box. Additionally, Trump is the only way to express an anti-Hamas vote, a pro-life vote, a constitutionally limited government vote, a vote expressing outrage at a press that lied about Biden s condition, about covid, about riots in the streets.You don't have to like Trump to realize he's the only game in town. He's not much of a Republican, but he's the first to ever make good on supreme court appointments, on trying to confront the unelected government, and catching on that as long as there is an "R" in front of your name the press is going to treat you like an enemy of the State. This from someone living in Indiana, about as deep-red as you can get in the midwest. Now, some specifics. Exactly what lies about Biden's condition, Covid, and "riots in the streets"? Where exactly has the press treated Republicans like enemies of the state. (You do recognize the irony of turning that label against the press, given Trump's famous use of it, right?) About Biden's "condition": There's at least one unexamined assumption in that phrase--what "condition"? Or would it be "condition" in the sense of "general fitness"? Every press outlet I monitor* made much of the relentless questioning that originated from the opposition (starting, I think, with Nikki Haley and amplified by Biden's poor debate performance). Just Google "biden's physical mental condition" and look at the hits from the mainstream media. About Covid: I hardly know where to start. Science and medical reporting is always tricky, even when the reporters are doctors, but I paid very close attention to every source of information I could find even before the pandemic officially started, and within the limits imposed by what public-health and medical researchers could be certain of, the only lies or egregious misinterpretations I encountered came from fringe figures and (eventually) Trump himself. I'm glad that at the start he pushed for vaccine research, but at some point he seemed to go off the rails. I understand what it feels like to have hard-won and deeply-held views unvalued or mocked or simply ignored--secular materialists with left-of-center/libertarian-tinged sociopolitical attitudes can feel pretty isolated in the red midwest, where even university faculty are overwhelmingly churchgoing third-wave feminists. (On a good day I can be fired on from all sides.) But I don't feel like the world is against me--it just isn't exactly me, which is about what I expected anyway. Addendum, because I took a while to draft this: "Reproductive freedom" includes the freedom not to reproduce. Thus freedom to make decisions about birth control and taking a pregnancy to term. And the latter has not, to my knowledge, ever been absolute in the way that pro-life absolutists claim. Then there's the (originally Catholic) wing of the movement that asserts full human personhood from the moment of fertilization, which leads to a willingness to forbid any birth control method that prevents implantation. I grew up in that ideology and can cite chapter and verse on the theology and logic of it. And it has no place in a secular order. * I exclude Fox only because they insist on my allowing ads. Fuck that.
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Post by millring on Aug 17, 2024 16:42:14 GMT -5
(You do recognize the irony of turning that label against the press, given Trump's famous use of it, right?) The only way he "used" the press was in recognizing that their negative coverage of him redounded to his favor. That's pretty perverse to imply that the press favored him. The only way they favored him was in doing what they could to make sure he defeated Republican primary challengers that the press feared were bigger challenges for their Democrat candidate to beat.
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Post by billhammond on Aug 17, 2024 16:55:13 GMT -5
(You do recognize the irony of turning that label against the press, given Trump's famous use of it, right?) The only way he "used" the press was in recognizing that their negative coverage of him redounded to his favor. That's pretty perverse to imply that the press favored him. The only way they favored him was in doing what they could to make sure he defeated Republican primary challengers that the press feared were bigger challenges for their Democrat candidate to beat. I think Russ was referring to Trump's use of the "enemy of the people" label of the press.
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