• Sarah Sanders ejected from Virginia restaurant
    216 replies, posted
Alright, so I listened to the podcast audio you sent, and I'm not quite seeing the distinction that you're making. His differentiation didn't seem to be between "deeply held religious beliefs" and some other category of liberal ideology. It seems to be between refusing to participate in an event that you disagree with and totally refusing to serve anyone you disagree with. He uses Chick-Fil-A as an example of an organization that might have strongly held religious differences with people, but who still serves them equally. He very clearly states that he would serve anyone who came into a business he owned and that it is right to do so, but that associating with a specific event that you disagree with is something different. I very much doubt that Shapiro would critique a left wing business owner for refusing to cater some event they don't agree with. I would prefer that public harassment of people and their families not become a normalized tactic. There are lots of groups who feel similarly to what you feel about Trump. Those who think abortion constitutes murder, for example. I guess they should all start publicly harassing every pro-choice politician they see. The world that comes from those tactics is one of greater tribalism, mob mentalities, acceptable violence (the line between public harassment of people's families at their home and violence isn't a big one), and a whole lot of other things I don't want. I simply don't think those tactics are ever acceptable as long as the rule of law is still standing. I think you ought to have the right to smoke marijuana. I also don't think it's a good thing to do. Thinking people ought to be able to do or believe things that you disagree with is the fundamental idea behind tolerance.
Should they not morally support the right to do so? It doesn't seem they do support that right outside of when it applies to them
Hes also the dude that started the whole 69k immigrant murders a year nonsense that had no statistical backing.
Bill O'Reilly publicly harassed George Tiller for years before he was murdered. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/bill-oreillys-dangerous-war-against-dr-tiller-w477824
I believe he's saying something along the lines of "Just because you should be able to, doesn't mean you should". Ironically, this line of reasoning equally applies, and gives validity, to condemnations raised against the earlier mentioned bakery's conduct.
As I've said multiple times now, people are free to critique the bakery. That's fine. The problem is that they don't just want to critique it, they want to make it illegal. I'd say that's more of a public attack, but it's not a super relevant difference. I'm not in support of any such personal attacks. O'Reilly should have used Tiller as an example of how we need to change the law, not that he would like to commit violence against him.
if the trump administration and the Gop writ large keep continuing to act in such an obviously undemocratic fashion, that's probably a certainty.
Desperation leads to marginalized groups to turn to mass protest, doxxing, harassment, and rioting. All these things are signs of a failing system that isn't representing the people who are angry. And trust me, trumpian supporters or the altright are the minority in this nation.
How about we wait for the election before claiming that the democracy isn't working? Believe it or not, the country has gone through hard times before, and the democracy has endured, and it wasn't because people started to endorse mob harassment.
You know, I agree with you. Except for one little tidbit. The Russians played a role in the 2016 elections. The security of the elections is currently under Republican authority. They are actively failing, in every way, shape, or form, to safeguard the elections from election meddling. Aside from this, yeah democracy is in pretty good shape, all things considered.
if your president is only representing 30% of the population at best and actively attacking the press and the constitution I don't think he's so hot for democracy.
We live under an authoritarian administration that openly attacks free speech and freedom of the press, and until a massive outcry were separating children from their families in an extremely cruel policy that put immigrant children in fucking concentration camps. Those 3,000 kids aren't being reunited with their families, and Sessions is still ruthlessly pursuing a "zero-tolerance" policy of persecuting people for the heinous crime of fleeing from gang violence and trying to make a better life for themselves. Sarah Sanders may as well be the modern equivalent of Joseph Goebbels. Her entire career is to misdirect, obfuscate, and lie on behalf of a fascist, yet she has the nerve to clutch her pearls and cry victim when she's politely asked to leave a restaurant? Give me a break. Where are we allowed to draw the line?
But our democracy has already fallen. We already witnessed democracy completely fail in 2016. It buckled under attacks from a hostile foreign nation, assisted by the man who now sits in the Oval Office. At the same time, this president's campaign illegally worked with an extranational "data analytics" company that utilized mass amounts of stolen data to launch hyper-targeted propaganda campaigns. At the same time, the GOP its practice of mass disenfranchisement of voters through gerrymandering, voter registration purges, voter ID laws, etc. The office of the presidency was stolen, and even as we speak it is happening again. It has been repeatedly warned that Russia's attacks are still ongoing, and that their objective is to undermine our midterms. Worse, the current administration is doing absolutely nothing whatsoever to defend our democracy. In fact, they seem to be actively welcoming it. We're not waiting to see if democracy fails. Our democracy has already failed. Now, it's a fight to resuscitate it.
Neither party does anything to safeguard from the influence of private campaign financing, which has a firm hold on our government and has for decades now. Much more impactful than anything Russia's ever done.
That has literally nothing to do with what I said Yes, the influences of neo-liberalism are something we'll have to watch carefully for the duration of our time on this earth. Expecting anything less is naive. The problem comes when you say "more impactful" than having meddled in an election in a hitherto unprecedented way. It genuinely is a threat to the concept of democracy itself, where as neo-liberalism and it's excesses are also a genuine threat, they're one we're able to control from inside the nation, relatively.
Well you seem to be implying (and please correct me if I'm wrong) that we had a functioning democracy prior to the 2016 election, which is what I disagree with. Democracy was shattered way the fuck back in the 70s when it was ruled that you could spend an unlimited amount of money on campaign contributions through PACs, virtually putting up our politicians up for auction overnight. Forty years of bought and paid for governments by multinational corporations and billionaires? Yeah, I'd say that's more impactful and a more direct threat to democracy than Russian propaganda, which is a blip in the radar in comparison.
PACs have been around since the 40s, I don't think they're that bad. It's Super PACs you need to watch out for.
Factually untrue. They aren't bought and paid for, they aren't virtually unlimited until the passage of Citizens United in 2007(IIRC) and if this was just a conspiracy that "The rich are taking all the goods" then it's a fucking empty and hollow conspiracy as the poor of the world are considerably richer than ever before. Read Enlightment Now by Steven Pinker, your view point needs to be defused by reality.
Maybe it's different in Canada. Here, our politicians receive huge amounts of money from both wealthy individuals and corporations, and then by sheer coincidence end up pushing for policy that benefits their donors. What else do you call that? I misspoke a little; two court cases in the 70s (Boston v. Belloti and Buckley v. Valeo) established that corporations have first amendment rights to make political donations, and candidates themselves are allowed unlimited expenditure in their campaigns. And since 9 out of 10 times the better financed candidate wins... Citizen's United was shooting a dead horse, by that point. Uh, there's no conspiracy that the rich own more than they ever have. That's a fact. The gap between the rich and the poor has been growing steadily since the recession. Just because the poor are doing better on average doesn't mean it's all sunshine and roses for the lower classes. Inequality is still a huge problem, and in America specifically as a first world nation we still can't even provide fucking healthcare to everybody, because of the for-profit health insurance lobby.
I didn't say it wasn't an issue. I'm just viewing this all from a different less hopeless perspective. I strongly encourage you to read that book. Any argument I make here as to why you're right it's not sunshine and roses, but that it's better than it ever was will be based on that so I wouldn't want to be giving you that second hand. It's a fact the rich are richer than ever. But it's also a fact there's more people now, than ever, and the percentage of poor globally is less than ever before. That's a pretty staggering fact when you take into account all that comes with that.
I'm not trying to go for the "everything sucks and we're all fucked" doomsaying, I just think it's important for these things to be known because otherwise we'll never fix them. Things are better but we still have a long way to go, and our democracy was broken long before Russia entered the picture. That's all I really wanted to say. I'll look into that book, though, I've heard a little of Pinker.
Just because the Washington Post says that ''Democracy died in darkness'' doesn't mean that it is true. Maybe for those DNC staffers they hired after the election it is, but I believe they were the same people accusing the other side of not ever getting over it if they were to lose the election and how that would damage America's democracy, as it would be impossible to hack the presidential elections. I agree with you with one thing though, and that is about voter ID laws. They should be enacted for every single state, it's an absolute joke that you can vote in certain states without having any sort of ID on you.
I don't think anyone really thinks this. I don't think it'd be that hard to actually hack key districts using the digital vote machines that are tamperable after all.
Update: someone threw poo at the restaurant https://twitter.com/AJFriedenberger/status/1011732832123785222
I hope Sanders is proud of herself. Her 'tranquil tantrum' started this chain reaction, getting the Fatass in Chief to blow his cheeto load on Twitter and cause his radical fanatics to antagonize an innocent woman, her employees and her livelihood. This is the true face of the administration: Bullies and cowards that repay any perceive unkindness with utter annihilation of someone's life. Fuck you, Sanders, fuck your president, and fuck your insane mob of deplorables.
"Just because The Washington Post says that 'Democracy Died in Darkness' doesn't mean that it is true." It says, "Democracy DIES in Darkness," not died. The message is that a free press is necessary for the survival of a democracy, not that democracy is dead because Trump won. If you're going for stupid quips, at least make sure you know what the hell you're talking about. "[...]I believe they were the same people accusing the other side of not ever getting over it if they were to lose the election and how that would damage America's democracy, as it would be , impossible to hack the presidential elections." I cannot make sense of what you're saying here, but it seems like you've boiled this massive threat to our democracy and national security into some half-assed, uninformed bullshit about how the left just needs to "get over it you lost," and in so doing completely ignored the INDISPUTABLE FACT that Russia attacked our election on every front. They hacked into voting registries and databases of every single state in the country, they hacked the leadership of Trump's political opponents and selectively leaked damaging materials to massive effect, they created massive botnets and "troll farms" to spread hyperfocused propaganda designed to undermine our national security, social stability, and economic strength, they communicated with Trump campaign officials to negotiate policy and sanctions in exchange for their attacks, Trump's campaign worked with Cambridge Analytica utilizing stolen data to lie and cheat and divide, and so on. "[...]it's an absolute joke that you can vote in certain states without having any sort of ID on you. If you care about fighting voting fraud or fighting a lack of proper democracy, I don't see why you should oppose voter ID laws." This demonstrates both a severe misunderstanding of how our voting process works AND a severe ignorance of the actual impact of Voter ID laws. First: you DO verify your identity when you go to vote, as all voters are registered in a voter registration database. You cannot vote without giving your name and address or other identifying information, and your vote is not counted if you are not a registered voter. Likewise, if there is more than one vote to that, it can be tracked and discarded as necessary. It's a simple system, but it works, as there is NO PATTERN OF VOTER FRAUD. Even Donald Trump's own bullshit "election integrity commission," which was created for the specific purpose of trying to prove that widescale voter fraud is the only reason why Clinton won the election, disbanded after finding exactly no evidence that any such thing had occurred. SO, Voter ID laws are a "solution" to a problem that doesn't exist. If that were it, we could shrug and call it unnecessary but harmless, but that's not the case. Voter ID laws have disenfranchise thousands of people in each state with the policy -- particularly poor minorities who have limited access to licensing facilities and/or cannot afford the fees involved. So, it's a "solution" to a problem that doesn't exist, which has the specific side effect of disenfranchising tens of thousands of poor black voters (who overwhelmingly support Democrats [both because Democratic policy actually gives a shit about them, and because Democrats aren't intentionally disenfranchising them]) You also completely failed to address rampant Republican gerrymandering and last minute voter registration purges that often go unannounced and directly disenfranchise voters.
The argument that it's only a vocal few is fair, less so when one of the vocal few is the president No, the vast majority of right wingers aren't defaming the restaurant. But they do approve of electing a president that will
Predictable, but this was exactly the goal of the Cheetoh and the Huckabeast. Ruin this woman's life to ensure that no other venue will do anything similar to them. Intimidation tactics.
Governor of Virginia just commented on the incident. I'll transcribe his comments here: One of the things I have tried to do since the day I was inaugurated was really try to promote civility in the Commonwealth of Virginia, to make sure that people know that we are welcoming, that we are inclusive. And what we're seeing, I believe, is a reaction to some very uh, policies in washington that are immoral. So things like the travel ban, things like pulling away from the Paris accord, things like the recent separation of children from their families, these things are policies that Americans are very very uncomfortable, they really give us a terrible response and so people are standing up and saying, "you know what? this is not what this country is about; this is not what Virginia is about" and so president Trump: please listen to the people of Virginia; please be inclusive and welcome people rather than continuing to promote this fear mongering. So I will continue to promote civility, I will continue to look for ways to work with our current president, but when there are policies like this that are so detrimental, that are so un-American, people are gonna stand up and say "enough is enough" and I think that's what you're seeing happening across Virginia and across this country Interviewer: "But will you use your power to discourage Virginians from shouting down elected leaders and ridiculing them when they make public appearances and go to restaurants." Julie, I will continue to make my voice known, and again, I will really remind people across this country and in this case in Virginia, that we live in a diverse society, that we need to be tolerant, and that we need to be inclusive, and I preach that message every day
If you cast a vote for Trump, still stand by that vote, and would vote for him again in 2020, then you have no grounds to claim that you're not part of the problem. "I only support SOME of his policy" is a bullshit excuse when the REST of his work in office has been based upon stripping constitutional rights from minorities, creating torturous prison camps for stolen children, shattering our rule of law, undermining our democratic process in collusion with hostile foreign nations, and intentionally breaking down the checks and balances that prevent him from seizing absolute power. As you say, "the vocal minority," are the people in power right now. Every word Trump says is tailored for Cult45. Supporting Trump and supporting the brutality that his rhetoric inspires is the same thing.
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