DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus What Republicans Have Turned Into Numéro Trois

Why would you bury your honored dead on a "traitors" property?

That doesn't make sense to me.

There are hundreds of confederate soldiers buried in Arlington. Should we dig them up? For that matter, a lot of National Cemetery's.

I stole Clem's car and never got convicted. Guess I am not a thief.

I know you get the point of what I’m saying. You can continue to be obtuse about it.

If you can’t admit that the General of a separatist, rebel army is a traitor, then I don’t know what else to say.

bro i had to really take a step back for a bit and reevaluate everything after this pandemic and election. i wasnt talking to anybody that was the wife and kids for a long stretch. i was just reading popular mechanics and history videos and research papers and got completely sucked in. i really got sucked into neil degrasse tyson and a lot of STEM related topics. im watching people discuss for hours at a time about the first ever photo of a black hole. and obviously most of it flies by me cause i don't understand half of what they're saying.

and right when the end of the video came, the other billionaire jeff bezos comes out looking like he conquered the planet cause he got to the edge of earth.

and it ticked me off so much that everything i was digesting from reading and watching and such just came together. that was my first mega moment when i realized that this crap has been intentionally designed this way from the jump.

these guys did nothing but repeat experiments that we did back in the 60'S!!!!

what the hell? why are they being celebrated for that? we did that 60 YEARS GO!!!!

and yet now we are in a position where the US government has to jump on corporate bandwagons, NOT the other way around.

because now, we don't have to worry about countries planting flags on other planets and claiming its theirs.

we have to worry about corporations doing it.

good ole trickle down....sorry "pro growth" policies have completely screwed the entire planet over, not just the US.

its freaking sad.

if you took any politician - republican or democrat, doesn't matter - from the 50's, 60's and 70's, they wouldn't make it out the primaries because every republican and democrat would be calling them socialist commies.

even the hardcore segregationist wouldnt make it past a republican primary today. cause all them dudes were still about healthcare and education and STEM and so much more.

i was watching and reading about those times economically, and boy oh boy, the glory days of america that the boomers brag about sure was driven by government spending.

they dont like to bring up that aspect, though. they don't want to bring up the tax rates, either. they don't want to acknowledge that regardless of if it was cold war propaganda or not, the country had a mission and was organized.

even the racist politicians. if you time traveled the republicans and democrats from the 50's and 60's to this time, what would they say about our infrastructure.

or healthcare.

or income inequality.

or the lack of vision, focus, and agenda.

the lack of funding to NASA. education standards.

bro when people say they don't recognize their country anymore. they're correct.

but they have no one to blame but themselves. those people, conservatives, fell in love with reagan and reaganomics, and we've been in a spiral ever since.

and then they fell for it again in 2016, and look where we're at.

the way we teach history bro. we don't teach it to learn we teach it to check a box. we use it as propaganda. thats why we always hear these clowns talking about "we need to teach the good history"

man what? history is history. good, bad, ugly, indifferent. but when history is taught from an unbiased viewpoint, those same people who love trump because he tells it like it is? well, they're the first ones to start whining about history because it tells it like it is.

i guarantee that most of america wouldn't be able to pass a US citizenship test.

but they can tell you all about CRT and dr seuss, though.

I must thank you because you have summed up months of arguments I have made into one post in a much more distinct manner than I have been able. Very well said.

Smooth, but not criminal.
(I shouldn't have left the keys in the ignition with the doors unlocked-)

Separatist I agree.

What do you call it when those separatists form their own government and own army. Then use that army to attack the United States of America in an act of war? There's a name for it.

You've pretty much summed it up. However, to some extent I see that works in both directions. I don't think JFK would stand a chance in hell of winning the Democratic nomination for president in toady's political climate any more than I think Reagan would win the Republican nomination. Eisenhower would be labeled a RINO from the very start.

Personally, I think RINO sold stand for "Rethuglican in name only."

Real Republicans are hard to find these days.

I guess he's not a traitor in the same way Benedict Arnold isn't a traitor since he was never convicted of treason either, to the best of my knowledge.

As for Arlington ... What do you think the message was? Was that intended to be a tribute?

Nope. The confederate leaders were absolutely traitors to the US, Trump is a traitor, and the January 6th "tourists" are traitors to the man. Traitors should hang. Now common people sympathetic to a cause and duped by a leader should pay a price too, but not sure what it should be but know it should be more than a slap on the wrist. If I were in complete control of the US as an observer, Trump would have hung as a traitor after Helsinki.

IMO, much in the same way as we came out of the Civil War, I think people who stormed the Capitol shouldn't be branded as traitors. Some of their actions rise to that level, IMO, but I think we need to hold people accountable while also looking into the future. It's important to start bringing people together.

I'm also of the opinion that, at the same time, you set an example.... A head needs to be displayed on a pike, so to speak. The elected official(s) that coaxed/encouraged this attempted coup should serve this purpose pretty well. Find them, expose them, ring 'em up on charges and throw them in the clink.


That's my ideal response.

I can agree with that, with the caveat they actually go after and convict those leaders. Somebody needs to pay a price to keep this from repeating again in the near future. If they are not going to get the political leaders and militia leaders, then lock up the participants with MAX sentencing.

I understand the idea of why you don't want people branded as traitors. As you and I have both pointed out in this thread, the only reason that didn't happen is for the sake of bringing the country back together. Much the same reasoning you are using for the January 6th insurrection.

I'm not sure I actually disagree with you. But let's look at what we see. You see Peen claiming the confederates weren't "traitors", when we all know they were. And one also has to wonder, if those confederates had been charged and tried for treason as they well could have, and I think should have been, would we have the extent of the racism we've seen since that time forward? Would we be having people on this board claiming they were not traitors after being convicted?

Without penalty, without repercussions, it seems people use that as an excuse to cling onto and perpetuate things. They are never punished for their actual crimes. They never truly wear the label for the crimes they actually committed. And in both of these cases especially, it was an attack of the very nation and the values we stand for. Unless of course there are people who don't think we should have fair elections and a peaceful transfer of power.

Which I'm beginning to wonder if many people in our country really don't care about that anymore.

Or you meant to say twice the speed of sound and just goofed up.

And the republicans who want to "make America great again" want to go backwards.. but not for any of the stuff you just mentioned. Their desire to go back to the "good ole' days" is all about the emotional feelings they had about America back in the day.. and very little about WHY they felt that way.

It's a very fair question. The exact one I wrestled with when I wrote my previous post. IMO, no. I don't think the punishment (or lack) significantly contributed to America's struggle with racism. I think you're talking about something that was so widespread and ingrained in our culture that a bunch of max punishments wouldn't have made much of a difference. That's just my gut feeling... with really not much else to substantiate it.

Also, I just looked up the particulars regarding treason, and the definition is fairly limited (levying war against the USA). Treason can carry the death penalty, but the minimum is 5 years. I believe Wiki says not many people have been charged, but a majority that were convicted we're out to death.
I'm not saying they shouldn't be held accountable, but as I laid out above the T-word is big-time. The ringleaders and the elected officials, though...? Have at'em.

I’m a Parkland Shooting Survivor. QAnon Convinced My Dad It Was All a Hoax.

“I don't know how to help someone that far gone.”

Bill’s final semester at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, was already difficult enough.

He was part of the final graduating class of survivors of the 2018 shooting, and they all had just marked the third anniversary of the day 17 people were killed, nine of whom were Bill’s classmates.

But Bill also had to deal with his father’s daily accusations that the shooting was a hoax and that the shooter, Bill, and all his classmates were paid pawns in a grand conspiracy orchestrated by some shadowy force.

Bill had worked hard to get over his survivor’s guilt after the shooting, but for the past five months, his own father has been triggering it all over again.

“He'll say stuff like this straight to my face whenever he's drinking: ‘You're a real piece of work to be able to sit here and act like nothing ever happened if it wasn't a hoax. Shame on you for being part of it and putting your family through it too,” Bill said in an anonymous post on Reddit last week.’

Bill first posted his story on QAnon Casualties, a Reddit thread dedicated to helping family members and friends of QAnon believers.

VICE News spoke to the poster and confirmed the author’s claims about being a survivor of the school shooting. Bill is not the student’s real name as they only spoke to VICE News on the condition of anonymity, citing concerns about attacks from members of QAnon forums if his identity was revealed.

As is true for many who fell down the QAnon rabbit hole in recent years, Bill’s dad’s descent coincided with the pandemic.

“It started a couple months into the pandemic with the whole anti-lockdown protests,” Bill said. “His feelings were so strong it turned into facts for him. So if he didn't like having to wear masks it wouldn't matter what doctors or scientists said. Anything that contradicted his feelings was wrong. So he turned to the internet to find like-minded people which led him to QAnon.”

But until January, that was as far as it went. Then Bill’s father saw a video of Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene harassing Parkland survivor David Hogg in 2018, while he was visiting Washington to advocate for stricter gun control. Greene has repeatedly voiced support for QAnon and claimed the Parkland shooting was a hoax.

“He is a coward,” Greene told her followers.

Ever since then, Bill’s father has become convinced the shooting his son survived was a so-called “false flag” event and that the shooter was “​​a radical commie actor.”

“From there it snowballed into what he is today, believing that if the government is able to overthrow an election, then everything else is probably a lie too,” Bill added.

Bill is 18, and now that he’s graduated high school he’s looking to get out of the toxic situation he finds himself in.

“I do have options that can have me out before August, which as of now I'm planning to do,” Bill said. “I've been delaying it because I've felt stuck trying to ‘fix’ my dad.”

But Bill said that after he posted his story on Reddit, members of the QAnon Casualties community have been able to help him “push through that obligation I felt and leave before I completely lose my mind, because I'm already halfway there.”

Over the course of the last four years, but in particular since the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown, the QAnon conspiracy cult has been tearing families apart, and many family members say their loved ones have transformed into different people in front of their eyes.

“Burgundy-colored T-shirts [the color shirt worn by the shooter] make me uncomfortable and he used to be so understanding he stopped wearing it around me. That person is completely gone and I miss him so [censored] much,” Bill said in his Reddit post.

Bill says his relationship with his mother has also suffered.

“The relationship with my mom is dependent on whether my dad is there or not, ’cause then it's pretty much all about conspiracy theories,” Bill told VICE News. “[The relationship] used to be fine but deteriorating quickly, [especially] after telling her that if she doesn't start putting her foot down, I'm leaving with no interest in seeing my dad again.”

But despite the threats to leave home, Bill’s mother has not stood up to his dad.

“It's not really going anywhere because she's too naive to think he'll magically get over wanting to constantly retraumatize me and I'm not waiting around for that,” Bill told VICE News.

Bill also says he’s been unable to talk to any of his fellow survivors about what he has been going through with this father.

“I never talked about it with them,” Bill told VICE News. “As far as I know he's only held that belief—at least so strongly—since January. Our last semester was difficult enough with Feb. 14 marking 3 years since the shooting, along with emotions leading up to us being the last class of survivors to graduate.”

“It wasn't—and still isn't—easy to bottle up, but telling them my dad thinks the absolute hell we went through, where nine of the victims were in our class, is a hoax is not a pain I want to put on them. It's difficult enough knowing that belief even exists at all.”

At this point, Bill has little hope in ever seeing his father return to the person he was before he became obsessed with QAnon conspiracy theories, and even if he did, too much has happened to ever repair their relationship.

“He'll never stop on his own, because there are always new theories and goalposts being moved,” Bill said. “I don't know how to help someone that far gone. My guess is restricted access to the internet and lots of therapy. But even if there was hope he'd eventually snap out of it, it wouldn't change my mind on never wanting to see him again. So it doesn't really matter anymore.”

https://www.vice.com/en/article/epnq84/i...-was-all-a-hoax

This is what Trump Republicans have become:

https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/

Some messed up stories on there.

Yikes

While I admit I'm torn as well, that's exactly what the Civil War was. war against The United States. As for January 6th, it was a war against democracy on some level.

While I do think the death penalty would be taking things much too far, a think a few months in jail is far too little.

AP-NORC poll: Many Republicans uneasy about party's future

A new AP-NORC poll finds about 6 in 10 conservative Republicans say former President Donald Trump should have a lot of influence on the GOP, compared with about a third of moderate and liberal Republicans.


JILL COLVIN and HANNAH FINGERHUT
Tue, July 27, 2021, 11:00 AM·6 min read

WASHINGTON (AP) — Most Republicans want former President Donald Trump to have at least some influence over their party's direction even as many who side with the GOP say they are uneasy about its future.

A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research captures widespread unease among Republicans over everything from the direction of the country to the state of American democracy and, in particular, President Joe Biden. Just 15% approve of the way Biden is handling his job, and 66% continue to say the Democrat was illegitimately elected, a lie perpetuated by Trump that underscores his persistent grip on GOP voters.

Republicans have plenty of concern about their own party, too. Fewer than half of Republicans, 41%, say they are optimistic about the GOP's future. Just 13% say they are “very” optimistic. And one third, 33%, say they are pessimistic.

Just a few seats shy of majorities in the House and the Senate, Republican leaders hope they are within striking distance of retaking control of Congress in next year's midterm elections. But the findings about the party's lukewarm optimism could be an early warning sign of lagging enthusiasm among Republican voters, particularly without Trump on the ballot after he helped lift congressional candidates in 2020.

That's despite the fact history has shown the president's party almost always loses seats in the midterm elections and despite the general enthusiasm about the party's long list of potential 2024 candidates.

Some Republicans in especially competitive states said they are increasingly disillusioned with the political process.

“It’s frustrating," said Dennis Herzog, 36, a contractor who lives in Reedsville, Wisconsin, of the constant bickering between the parties. While he describes himself as a staunch Republican, he said he's disenchanted by “the whole system in general.”

“It’s nonstop,” he said. “I don’t care who is in office. Just do what’s right for the people and stop picking certain sides."

Republican leaders have spent much of this year trying to rile up voters, pointing to concerns about inflation and stoking culture wars over issues including immigration, election conspiracy theories and critical race theory, an academic framework that examines history through the lens of racism.

That's doing little to appeal to people like 28-year-old Nicholas Blethrow, a Republican who lives in Orange County, California, and described the state of his party as “pretty much a disaster.”

Blethrow, who did not vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020, said he was frustrated by his party’s ongoing efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which he calls “ridiculous,” along with some of its members’ opposition to COVID-19 vaccinations and continued embrace of the former president.

“Clearly there’s a lot of people that enjoy him. But I don’t think it’s good,” he said.

Other Republicans disagree. The poll shows that Trump remains a commanding figure in the party. While most former presidents tend to cede the spotlight after leaving office, Trump has continued to assert his power, holding rallies, making endorsements and teasing a 2024 comeback run.

While 60% of the public overall has an unfavorable view of Trump, 76% of Republicans view him favorably. And most would like to see him maintain at least some degree of influence over the GOP going forward.

Nearly half of Republicans, 47%, say that Trump should exert “a lot” of influence over the future of the party, and another 34% say he should have “a little” influence. Just 18% say Trump should have none at all.

“I think he did a lot of good for the party,” said George Hunter, 61, who lives in Washington state outside Seattle and runs an online store. Hunter was among the minority of Republicans who said he felt optimistic about the party’s future given what he sees as Democrats’ failures on crime, foreign policy and the economy and his expectation that Republicans will sweep contests next November.

“After the next election, I think things will be better. I think the Democrats will lose their majorities. That way Biden will get less done than he wants,” he said.

For Herzog, who describes the current political situation as “quite the mess,” pessimism is driven, in part, by concerns about the economy, especially inflation, and the rising cost of his supplies. He said he knows of businesses that are talking about closing their doors because they can’t find workers and he doesn't understand why the government keeps sending out additional relief payments.

But he'd also like to see his party embark on a new direction.

“I think there needs to be a switch in the Republican Party,” he said. “There’s got to be a happy medium between the old schoolers,” he said, and a new generation. “You have to find some middle ground.”

As for the 2020 election, the poll shows that 62% of Republicans say it’s “extremely” or “very” important that investigations into the election continue, even though no substantiated evidence has emerged to support Trump's claims of mass election fraud, which have been dismissed by numerous judges, including some he appointed, state election officials and his own attorney general.

Just 38%, in contrast, say it’s “extremely” or “very” important to continue investigations into the events of Jan. 6, when a group of Trump's supporters violently stormed the Capitol building, trying to halt the transition of power.

Like Democrats, few Republicans, only 10%, say democracy is working “extremely” or “very” well in the country today. But Republicans are more negative than Democrats; 63% of Republicans say democracy is not working well.

Just 17% say they think the nation is headed in the right direction.

As for other Republican leaders, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell faces mixed reviews from his party, viewed favorably by only about 4 in 10 Republicans; roughly as many dislike him. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is more popular than not with Republicans, though about half say they don’t know enough about him to form an opinion.

Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., who voted for Trump's second impeachment and has since emerged as one of his top Republican critics, has the inauspicious distinction of being rated favorably by more Democrats than Republicans, 47% versus 21%.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who has drawn headlines with her incendiary comments and conspiracy peddling, remains largely an unknown, even within her own party. While 29% of Republicans have a favorable opinion, 48% say they don’t know enough about her to say.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/ap-norc-poll-many-republicans-150005025.html

I think it's a bit of a stretch to say Jan6 was war vs democracy. More to your point, though... I'm still wrestling with this.

I don't know man. Not saying you're wrong, but listening to these Capital Police officers testimony, those people were at war with somebody or something.

I'm not wresting with it at all.. It seemed pretty clear to me what had happened, who started it and who fanned the flames of hate further that day.

Then,, today, listening to the testimony of 4 officers, it cemented what I believed to be true.

Not wresting with it at all..

Isn't there a penalty set forth somewhere that needs to be the standard?

I'm going to watch that (probably tonight after work/family/etc is done for the day). I'm not expecting any Earth-shattering info to be revealed at this point, though. I think we know pretty much everything that is going to be made available to us.

I wonder what the democrats have turned in to? Just something for you guys to think about.

Carry on.

I'd be glad to talk about that in another thread.

Agreed.

If 'Peen or anyone else wants to talk about what democrats have turned in to then start a What democrats have turned in to thread.

Dems definitely have their issues but trying to change this thread to a focus on the Dems is just a feeble attempt to move the spotlight.

Just like comparisons of Jan 6th to the riots associated with the protests over the summer.
While both are wrong, they are in no way related nor comparable. Attempts to compare are really nothing but attempts to obfuscate the role of prominent republicans in the attempted coup of Jan 6th.

I could've sworn one of those threads had been created in the last couple months.

Doubtful. There's several threads about democrats/biden. Those threads all turned into "what about trump"

There was the "WTH Democrats" thread...I don't think it got started on the right foot if you read the initial post, and pretty much went downhill from there.

I'd be glad to see a thread get started on the right foot. Perhaps I'll do it myself if nobody else does.

Squires - I agree there is a whataboutism that focuses back on Trump, but as we've seen with the Jan 6 thread, there's abundant whataboutism that works both ways. I'd be fine trying to slog through the inevitable, at least for a while.

Oh, I'm certainly not thrilled with that either. But as of now the same guy who has kept the big lie alive that caused Jan. 6th, the guy that was willing to try to overturn an election, the same guy trying to become a fascist dictator, the same guy who who has broken every norm expected by a president still leads your party.

So as of now it's the lesser of the two evils. And it's not even close.

https://www.businessinsider.com/47-percent-gop-voters-patriots-take-law-own-hands-poll-2021-7

Nearly half of Republicans say 'a time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands,' new poll shows


A new poll offers an alarming picture of GOP beliefs about democracy.

Almost half of Republicans said a time might come where they have to take the law into their own hands.

A majority of Republicans endorsed potentially using force to uphold the "traditional" America.

Less than a year after a pro-Trump mob stormed the US Capitol, nearly half of Republican voters (47%) say that "a time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands," per a new nationwide survey by George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs.

Only about 29% of Americans agreed with this statement on some level, the poll found, including just 9% of Democrats. And 49% said they disagree or strongly disagree.

The poll also found that a majority of Republicans (55%) say "the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast we may have to use force to save it." About 15% of Democrats agreed with this statement, but more Americans disagreed (46%) than agreed (34%).

More Republicans (27%) than Democrats (18%) said that "strong leaders sometimes have to bend the rules in order to get things done."


The poll also found extremely low levels of trust among Republicans when it comes to elections — 82% said it's "hard to trust the results of elections when so many people will vote for anyone who offers a handout." Only 15% of Democrats were on the same page.

Echoing other recent polls on the 2020 election, the survey found that just 20% of Republicans were confident in the 2020 election results as compared to over 90% of Democrats.

The survey of of 1,753 registered US voters was conducted by YouGov from June 4 to 23.

Over the course of the Trump era, experts on democracy repeatedly raised concerns about the GOP's slide into authoritarianism. Democracy scholars have continued to raise alarm as the GOP-led legislatures in states across the country push for restrictive voter laws, employing similar justifications to President Donald Trump's baseless claims of mass voter fraud after he fairly lost the 2020 election. Along these lines, an ex-Trump administration official recently referred to the Republican party as the top national security threat to the US.


More than one quarter of Americans qualify as having right-wing authoritarian political beliefs, according to polling from Morning Consult released in late June.

Though Trump provoked an insurrection at the Capitol and stands as the only commander-in-chief in history to be impeached twice, he continues to be the leader of the Republican party. GOP leaders in Congress have also railed against a House investigation into the January 6 insurrection.

During a hearing on Tuesday held by the House select committee running the probe, four police officers testified about the violence they were subjected to by Trump's supporters at the Capitol. One officer referred to the insurrections as "terrorists," and another said the Capitol riot amounted to an "attempted coup."

Someone please define "Traditional" America!

They must mean Native Americans.

Damn, I wish I'd have said that... It's s truth bomb... Trumpians don't like that kinda stuff

https://www.businessinsider.com/mike-lin...election-2021-7

I cannot begin to describe how excited I am to witness a 'Cyber Symposium' put on by the pillow guy.