The double standard

  • Thread starter Thread starter dukeman92
  • Start date Start date
  • Replies: 91
  • Views: 1K
  • Politics 
ZenMode said:
Your mob movie reference, IMO, is a attempt to pre-condemn Trump.

Here's how I look at it....

There were three groups: 1. People supporting taking the statue down, 2. People against tearing the statue down, 3. Neo-nazis/white supremacists who were also against tearing the statue down.

There are good faith arguments to be made for keeping the statue up and there are good faith arguments for taking it down. When Trump said there are "really fine people on both sides", I believe he was saying just that - you aren't inherently bad for supporting tearing it down and you are inherently bad for supporting keeping it up. He then specifically signaled out the obvious racists and condemned them "totally". Again, I'm not supporting Trump, I'm supporting honesty and accuracy.
Click to expand...
1. There really aren't any good arguments for keeping it up, and the ones usually made are not at all in good faith. Find me another country that celebrates its treasonous losers.

2. There were no people in C'ville who were merely against taking the statue down. That's the point you keep missing, probably intentionally. As another poster said, if you showed up because you were a big Robert E Lee stan, and then you found neo-Nazis chanting shit about Jews, you would leave. Staying would be a choice to stand side by side with neo-Nazis, which again as another poster pointed out, makes you at least Nazi-adjacent and thus not a very fine person.

3. Let me try to make the point for you using an example more sympathetic for you. Suppose an organization called Students For Hamas Ruling Palestine (SHRP) organizes a rally called Arabs Stand Together. You show up because you're against Israel ruling Palestine. What you find is a bunch of people talking about how they need to have more O7s, how they need to kill more Jews to achieve their ends. Wouldn't you leave? I would leave. I would never stand next to them. If I stayed, I would be complicit.

This wouldn't be true for much larger protests. There, the protest can and usually does take on a life of its own, superseding the organizers' intent (if they had one). Farrakhan organized the Million Man March, but the majority of the people who attended were not NOI nor even NOI sympathizers. Mostly they were black men who were attracted to the non-ideological part of the rally's appeal -- think of them as analogous to the pure hearted Robert E Lee stans you posit. Glenn Beck organized a bunch of Tea Party events and then a big rally for weirdos on the mall. While Beck himself is a racist (or at least cosplays one as his media personality), it's not necessarily the case that everyone at the rally was. You could attend the rally without really thinking about Beck.

But for events like C'Ville or the Hamas example I posted, it's not a question. If you're there, you're not a fine person.
 
ZenMode said:
The election is close because a) fear of Democrats and b) there are no standards for Trump. People have come to accept him for the rambling, lying, delusional person he is.

In 2016, when he was starting to garner serious attention, I remember watching CNN as they tried to cover all of the ridiculous and crazy things he said. The problem was, they couldn't focus on one thing he said because he had already said a half dozen more things in the meantime.

If Trump was only 25% as bad as he is, I think he would actually seem worse. He would seem like a reasonable, honest person who was lying vs a person who just says anything that comes to mind, with no concern about accuracy, honesty or making sense.

I'm not voting for Trump and have never voted for Trump. I also doubt I'll vote for Kamala, but I watched the entire debate with my wife. Despite ALL of Trump's ridiculous hyperbole and lies, the thing that truly stood out as dishonest was Kamala going back to the Charlottesville lie about Trump referring to the white supremacists as "good people". Why did that bug me? Because I actually expect honesty from Kamala.
Click to expand...
lol
 
It's like these BSC right-wingers spouting nonsense know they have to change names often or else there just shouting down an empty alley that has all the doors closed.
 
superrific said:
1. There really aren't any good arguments for keeping it up, and the ones usually made are not at all in good faith. Find me another country that celebrates its treasonous losers.

2. There were no people in C'ville who were merely against taking the statue down. That's the point you keep missing, probably intentionally. As another poster said, if you showed up because you were a big Robert E Lee stan, and then you found neo-Nazis chanting shit about Jews, you would leave. Staying would be a choice to stand side by side with neo-Nazis, which again as another poster pointed out, makes you at least Nazi-adjacent and thus not a very fine person.

3. Let me try to make the point for you using an example more sympathetic for you. Suppose an organization called Students For Hamas Ruling Palestine (SHRP) organizes a rally called Arabs Stand Together. You show up because you're against Israel ruling Palestine. What you find is a bunch of people talking about how they need to have more O7s, how they need to kill more Jews to achieve their ends. Wouldn't you leave? I would leave. I would never stand next to them. If I stayed, I would be complicit.

This wouldn't be true for much larger protests. There, the protest can and usually does take on a life of its own, superseding the organizers' intent (if they had one). Farrakhan organized the Million Man March, but the majority of the people who attended were not NOI nor even NOI sympathizers. Mostly they were black men who were attracted to the non-ideological part of the rally's appeal -- think of them as analogous to the pure hearted Robert E Lee stans you posit. Glenn Beck organized a bunch of Tea Party events and then a big rally for weirdos on the mall. While Beck himself is a racist (or at least cosplays one as his media personality), it's not necessarily the case that everyone at the rally was. You could attend the rally without really thinking about Beck.

But for events like C'Ville or the Hamas example I posted, it's not a question. If you're there, you're not a fine person.
Click to expand...
So, I agree with the point you're making and, yes, I would likely leave, especially if it was regarding something as unimportant as statue removal. In all honesty, I don't see a situation where I would care enough either way to protest, but that's a separate topic. I can't speak for others, particularly in the current hyper-polarized political environment where it seems like everything is life and death. There may have been people who were very passionate about not removing the statue, to the point that they stood with repulsive people.

However, even if he was misguided in his beliefs about the composition of the groups, it seems pretty clear that he believed there were non neo-nazis who were there to protest against the removal of the statue, right, and those people, even if they were a small number, were the "fine people" along with the people who wanted to remove the statue.

Again.... I'm not defending Trump. I'm trying to be as fair as possible to a truly terrible person and it certainly seems like his words were intentionally cropped to make it appear that he was calling NN and WS "fine people".
 
ZenMode said:
The election is close because a) fear of Democrats and b) there are no standards for Trump. People have come to accept him for the rambling, lying, delusional person he is.

In 2016, when he was starting to garner serious attention, I remember watching CNN as they tried to cover all of the ridiculous and crazy things he said. The problem was, they couldn't focus on one thing he said because he had already said a half dozen more things in the meantime.

If Trump was only 25% as bad as he is, I think he would actually seem worse. He would seem like a reasonable, honest person who was lying vs a person who just says anything that comes to mind, with no concern about accuracy, honesty or making sense.

I'm not voting for Trump and have never voted for Trump. I also doubt I'll vote for Kamala, but I watched the entire debate with my wife. Despite ALL of Trump's ridiculous hyperbole and lies, the thing that truly stood out as dishonest was Kamala going back to the Charlottesville lie about Trump referring to the white supremacists as "good people". Why did that bug me? Because I actually expect honesty from Kamala.
Click to expand...
Trump said there were good people on both sides. The racists and bigots support Trump. Why would they support him if they didn't think he would bring them the country they want so bad only for white, straight Christian extremists? And not voting for Harris might as well be a vote for Trump.
 
ZenMode said:
So, I agree with the point you're making and, yes, I would likely leave, especially if it was regarding something as unimportant as statue removal. In all honesty, I don't see a situation where I would care enough either way to protest, but that's a separate topic. I can't speak for others, particularly in the current hyper-polarized political environment where it seems like everything is life and death. There may have been people who were very passionate about not removing the statue, to the point that they stood with repulsive people.

However, even if he was misguided in his beliefs about the composition of the groups, it seems pretty clear that he believed there were non neo-nazis who were there to protest against the removal of the statue, right, and those people, even if they were a small number, were the "fine people" along with the people who wanted to remove the statue.

Again.... I'm not defending Trump. I'm trying to be as fair as possible to a truly terrible person and it certainly seems like his words were intentionally cropped to make it appear that he was calling NN and WS "fine people".
Click to expand...
For someone who says they are not defending Trump...you sure are carrying a lot of water for Trump.
 
ZenMode said:
it seems pretty clear that he believed there were non neo-nazis who were there to protest against the removal of the statue, right, and those people, even if they were a small number, were the "fine people" along with the people who wanted to remove the statue.
Click to expand...
It is only "pretty clear" if you take his word for it, which is pretty fucking stupid considering that the vast majority of the shit he spews is completely false. Seriously, what % of his statements are true or even possibly true? 10? 20?

You also have to ignore everything that transpired subsequently. You have to ignore "stand down and stand by." You have to ignore his meetings with folks like Nick Fuentes (who he then denied meeting because of course). You have to ignore his courting of white nationalists.

I think it's pretty clear that Trump was referring to the neo-Nazis as fine people. Watch what they do, not what they say -- and that's especially true for Trump. Maybe more than any other person in the history of American politics. Certainly the modern history.
 
TarHeelGrad said:
For someone who says they are not defending Trump...you sure are carrying a lot of water for Trump.
Click to expand...
That's the way nearly all Trumpers are - they'll say they don't support him, but then spend 95% of their time defending him and basically agreeing with most of his policies. It's probably the main reason he consistently seems to do better than his polling averages suggest, at least until this year.
 
"I don't like Trump and I won't vote for Trump...did you hear me, I don't like Trump and I think he sucks and I won't vote for him and I think he's manifestly unfit to the president, and I won't vote for him...but I'm going to contort myself into knots to defend him on a political message board even when a whole lot of people smarter than I am are blowing holes in my hypocrisy and making me look ridiculous for happily scrubbing the balls of the guy who I pinky promise I can't stand and won't vote for!!!!! Believe me!"
 
Literally nobody with two functioning brain cells and a microshred of intellectual integrity thinks that Kamala Harris unfairly impugned Donald Trump for using his very own words that there were "very fine people" protesting alongside virulent anti-Semites and Nazis, against him. Literally nobody. This is very clearly all a bit.
 
superrific said:
It is only "pretty clear" if you take his word for it, which is pretty fucking stupid considering that the vast majority of the shit he spews is completely false. Seriously, what % of his statements are true or even possibly true? 10? 20?

You also have to ignore everything that transpired subsequently. You have to ignore "stand down and stand by." You have to ignore his meetings with folks like Nick Fuentes (who he then denied meeting because of course). You have to ignore his courting of white nationalists.

I think it's pretty clear that Trump was referring to the neo-Nazis as fine people. Watch what they do, not what they say -- and that's especially true for Trump. Maybe more than any other person in the history of American politics. Certainly the modern history.
Click to expand...
He made a point to specifically condemn them "totally" less than a minute later. If we are going to take all the dumb things he says at face value and as what he truly means, then we should take everything else he says at face value. Either words have meaning and matter or they don't. You can't believe, absolutely, only the things he says that reinforce what you want to believe about him. Based on what he said, it seems obvious that he thought there were 3 different groups there and he condemned one of those groups.
 
Look, how can any of you blue-pilled libs expect to be taken seriously when you think that the same guy who told the Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by" was also calling the Proud Boys-adjacent who marched in Charlottesville chanting anti-Semitic tropes "very fine people."
 
ZenMode said:
Your mob movie reference, IMO, is a attempt to pre-condemn Trump.

Here's how I look at it....

There were three groups: 1. People supporting taking the statue down, 2. People against tearing the statue down, 3. Neo-nazis/white supremacists who were also against tearing the statue down.

There are good faith arguments to be made for keeping the statue up and there are good faith arguments for taking it down. When Trump said there are "really fine people on both sides", I believe he was saying just that - you aren't inherently bad for supporting tearing it down and you are inherently bad for supporting keeping it up. He then specifically signaled out the obvious racists and condemned them "totally". Again, I'm not supporting Trump, I'm supporting honesty and accuracy.
Click to expand...
Didn't follow the statue issue at all. Part of that is that I have a double standard. If it was erected within 10 or so years after the war, I figure it was a proper tribute and don't much care. Otoh, if it was one of the many erected at or around the 50th anniversary of the war, it was a middle finger to Americans and especially black Americans and they can tear every one down.

As an aside, Lee was charged with violating the rights of slaves by a Virginia court during the war. His reputation as a pure gentleman might not be totally deserved.
 
Last edited:
ZenMode said:
You can't believe, absolutely, only the things he says that reinforce what you want to believe about him.
Click to expand...
In this you are wrong.

Trump is first and foremost a Bullshit Artist.

What a bullshit artist does is says whatever advances his agenda regardless of the truth content of what he's saying. Truths, half truths, out of context truths, exaggerations, out and out fabrications, all of these are fair game and come tumbling out of the bullshit artist's mouth the moment the neurons fire in their head that saying whatever it is might advance their agenda.

I'd go so far as to say that the only possible way is to understand Trump is to disregard the truth value of his statements completely, because that truth value of his statements are fundamentally meaningless.

The lens to view every Trump statement is not it's truth content. It's how he intends it to advantage himself by saying it.
 
I think we are witnessing a prime example of what this topic is about…the double standard.
Can’t support Trump because he lies every time he opens his mouth.
Can’t support Kamala because she called Trump a racist for one event when we one could argue that one event doesn’t make Trump a racist, even though a hundred other things do.
So, thousands of lies on one side, one possible mistake on the other.
Can’t vote for either!
 
ZenMode said:
He made a point to specifically condemn them "totally" less than a minute later. If we are going to take all the dumb things he says at face value and as what he truly means, then we should take everything else he says at face value. Either words have meaning and matter or they don't. You can't believe, absolutely, only the things he says that reinforce what you want to believe about him. Based on what he said, it seems obvious that he thought there were 3 different groups there and he condemned one of those groups.
Click to expand...
1. You're making a category mistake. I'm not taking Trump's "fine people" comment at face value. I have no idea whether he believed that or not. The point is that he said it. Saying it is horrible. It's like calling a black person a n*. It doesn't matter what you actually think of black people. Maybe you're a tolerant person who loves all people equally (or maybe hates them all equally). Doesn't matter. The minute that n-word ventures forth from your lips, you've fucked up badly and in a way that should be disqualifying for public office unless perhaps there is TREMENDOUS contrition. If you call someone a n*, it doesn't do any good to say in the next breath, "oh, I didn't mean it that way," or "I love black people" or anything else. What you said was unacceptable, full stop.

2. I'm not only relying on his words. I'm relying on his actions. Why did he meet with Nick Fuentes? Because Nick Fuentes was an asshole who Trump totallh doesn't support but he took the time to meet with him? Or because he thought Nick Fuentes was a fine person? It's clearly the latter. The reason, I think, that he thinks Fuentes is a fine person is simple: because Fuentes loves him. And that's probably what he meant about C'Ville too. But that's just the point. He's a POS narcissist and you should stop apologizing for him.
 
And it's precisely in this way that he can complement the Neo-Nazis as "fine people" in one breath and unequivocally condemn neo-Nazis in the very next breath. He doesn't have to square the circle because he DGAF about squaring the circle.

Trumps main superpower is the fact that we (persistently, insanely) try to filter his words in the "truth as meaningfully differentiable from falsehood" context that the rest of us all collectively share. He does not.

You have to understand your trying to play a game by rules he's not bound to. And you will lose every time till you adapt to the rules he's playing by (succinctly, he'll say whatever the **** he thinks will advantage him regardless of truth value).
 
This is akin to not voting for Kamala because she said “three thousand people died on 9/11.”
Nope, it was 2,996. Can’t vote for a liar!

Note: Kamala didn’t actually say the above, this is a hypothetical. Don’t want to give anyone another reason not to vote for her.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top