https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-trump-won-in-two-dimensions-1502320256

Completely destroys the "socially liberal, economically conservative" title people give to themselves. Or at least, shows that's not representative of American voters.

Okay, so what I consider to be the Power 4 of "conservative talk radio" that cover 12 hours of the weekday are Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Mark Levin with Glenn and Mark being the "bookends". The absolute worst example of what you are referring to is Sean Hannity. The man is an absolute sell out, loves Trump, literally hates anybody that disagrees with Trump on anything. I knew he was combative but Trump exposed him as fanatical and certainly not conservative.

Rush is very pro-Trump but he's locked into parties. He very subtly implied that he endorsed Cruz but he doesn't endorse during primaries so you had to read between the lines. Anyway, Rush will pretty much always back Republicans rhetorically except when their cowardly, which is often.

Glenn is very critical of Trump period. Mark on the other hand doesn't spend most of his time criticizing Trump because he chooses to spend most of his time addressing the inaccurate and targeted attacks on Trump. That's not to say at all that any criticism of Trump is inaccurate but the blood is in the water and the politically motivated left and media are going to keep going with the false attacks and attempt to neuter the administration. BTW, none of my comments is meant to be a defense of Trump because there are plenty of valid criticisms. It's just that the real and fake criticisms already have nonstop coverage. If one host wants to spend his time dismantling the fake criticism, that's actually a very good thing. Hell, they're still trying to discredit him for presenting the case that the previous administration was surveilling (rightly or wrongly) the Trump campaign.



This is kind of how you lose me. Originalism doesn't need any "legal theories". It's just a plain, common sense understanding that the words in the constitution should be understood as they were written. And how do you get from Trump to "right wingers in government"?



Yeah, some do that. Levin doesn't. Beck doesn't. Hannity does. Limbaugh does. I have certainly gravitated further towards the ones that don't.

The Department of Justice has requested information on visitors to a website used to organize protests against President Trump, the Los Angeles-based Dreamhost said in a blog post published on Monday.

Dreamhost, a web hosting provider, said that it has been working with the Department of Justice for several months on the request, which believes goes too far under the Constitution.

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DreamHost claimed that the complying with the request from the Justice Department would amount to handing over roughly 1.3 million visitor IP addresses to the government, in addition to contact information, email content and photos of thousands of visitors to the website, which was involved in organizing protests against Trump on Inauguration Day.

“That information could be used to identify any individuals who used this site to exercise and express political speech protected under the Constitution’s First Amendment,” DreamHost wrote in the blog post on Monday. “That should be enough to set alarm bells off in anyone’s mind.”

When contacted, the Justice Department directed The Hill to the U.S. attorney's office in D.C.

The company is currently challenging the request. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for Friday in Washington.

“In essence, the Search Warrant not only aims to identify the political dissidents of the current administration, but attempts to identify and understand what content each of these dissidents viewed on the website,” the company’s general counsel, Chris Ghazarian, said in a legal argument opposing the request.

The web provider published a purported search warrant issued by the Superior Court of the District of Columbia that asks for records and information related to the website and its owner, along with information that could be used to identify subscribers of the website.

This includes “names, addresses, telephone numbers and other identifiers, e-mail addresses, business information, the length of service (including start date), means and source of payment for services (including any credit card or bank account number), and information about any domain name registration.”

The warrant, dated July 12, says that authorities will seize any information constituting violations of D.C. code governing riots that involve individuals connected to the protests on Inauguration Day.

More than 200 people were indicted on felony rioting charges in connection with the protests in Washington on Jan. 20.

Hate to say it, but both the drug war and political correctness run amok seem to me to be longterm consequences of women's suffrage. I know this is incredibly toxic to try and point out and I'd like to be disabused of it, but it seems so clearly true. Of course I would still support women's suffrage even if this were true. And we could say that slavery was probably the consequence of male only suffrage....

Hate to say it, but both the drug war and political correctness run amok seem to me to be longterm consequences of women's suffrage. I know this is incredibly toxic to try and point out and I'd like to be disabused of it, but it seems so clearly true. Of course I would still support women's suffrage even if this were true. And we could say that slavery was probably the consequence of male only suffrage....

Been reading some Peter Thiel during your self-imposed ban? :p

Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

Hate to say it, but both the drug war and political correctness run amok seem to me to be longterm consequences of women's suffrage. I know this is incredibly toxic to try and point out and I'd like to be disabused of it, but it seems so clearly true. Of course I would still support women's suffrage even if this were true. And we could say that slavery was probably the consequence of male only suffrage....

I'm going to skip the why and just go to the what

Maybe you can give a detailed account about what you think political correctness is?

Those reactions are always predictable enough that there's no real need to keep tabs. I used to do it, too.

Actually this of sort of true. I am always eager to monitor the far right on sites like 4chan to gauge the political reaction to events that should cause more reasonable people to jump ship, so perhaps I accumulated a bit too much empathy for posters showing ϵ less hatred, that I got too good at processing their point of view without batting an eye.

Karl Popper warned about this, though:


I blame the two party system for forcing me to try to empathize with voters who are rotting in the wastebasket of political parties.

"Old saying: When you dance with the devil, the devil doesn't change—the devil changes you,"

Maybe. Maybe not. Isn't it obvious? Not that I have an axe to grind here, but imagine you and I have different views on the topic. Like maybe you think it doesn't even meaningfully exist, judging by your answer, or perpaps more simply that you are wary of lazy bigotry casting too wide a net, using the term as a catch-all, just like the right does with the word "leftists".

TBQH, despite the horrors of the weekend, I am actually quite optimistic that in the aftermath, the far far right is finally being exposed, and as a result Trump's base really is shrinking down to a small enough tumor that we might be able to simply cut out (I'm looking at you, Paul Ryan).

Maybe. But it's hard to know what you're getting at if you don't tell me.

The problem isn't that Trump has a base. The problem is that political polarization is now being coupled with the view that violence is the best way to reconcile differences between groups that hold opposed beliefs. It's horrible that Trump is president, and that as president, he's validating radical, avowedly antisemitic and racist elements in society. But aside from the dysfunction of American politics right now, which has been clear for a long time, it's clear after this weekend that there are deep rifts in American civil society (i.e., among the American population), and there's no way for them to resolve their differences except through violence. There's little reason to believe that those extremist, violent right-wing elements are weaker and not stronger after this weekend.

The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security in May warned that white supremacist groups had already carried out more attacks than any other domestic extremist group over the past 16 years and were likely to carry out more attacks over the next year, according to an intelligence bulletin obtained by Foreign Policy.

Even as President Donald Trump continues to resist calling out white supremacists for violence, federal law enforcement has made clear that it sees these types of domestic extremists as a severe threat. The report, dated May 10, says the FBI and DHS believe that members of the white supremacist movement “likely will continue to pose a threat of lethal violence over the next year.”

The “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which attracted hundreds of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and other members of the so-called alt-right, sparked violent clashes over the weekend. A woman, Heather Heyer, was killed by a car that drove into a crowd of people protesting the rally.

James Alex Fields Jr., the driver of the vehicle that struck Heyer, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder.

Since the outbreak of violence over the weekend, President Trump has been heavily criticized for not condemning racist groups. “We must remember this truth: No matter our color, creed, religion or political party, we are ALL AMERICANS FIRST,” he tweeted.

The FBI, on the other hand, has already concluded that white supremacists, including neo-Nazi supporters and members of the Ku Klux Klan, are in fact responsible for the lion’s share of violent attacks among domestic extremist groups. White supremacists “were responsible for 49 homicides in 26 attacks from 2000 to 2016 … more than any other domestic extremist movement,” reads the joint intelligence bulletin.

The report, titled “White Supremacist Extremism Poses Persistent Threat of Lethal Violence,” was prepared by the FBI and DHS.

The bulletin’s numbers appear to correspond with outside estimates. An independent database compiled by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute found that between 2008 and 2016, far-right plots and attacks outnumbered Islamist incidents by almost 2 to 1.

The cases cited in the intelligence report include an 18-year-old Chinese student in Nashville, Indiana, who was attacked by a white supremacist with a hatchet; the murder of an African-American man in Fort Wayne, Indiana; and the stabbing of Klansman in East Yanceyville, North Carolina, by other KKK members, who believed the victim was Jewish and secretly working for law enforcement.

An FBI spokesperson said it was bureau policy not to comment on specific intelligence products but added that as “part of the continuous dialogue with our law enforcement partners, the FBI routinely shares information about potential threats to better enable law enforcement to protect the communities they serve.”

DHS did not respond to a request for comment on the document, but provided a general statement on recent events. “DHS personnel have been in contact with Virginia state and local law enforcement to offer any assistance necessary to deal with [Saturday’s] horrible violent incident in Charlottesville,” wrote a DHS spokesperson.

What response is appropriate for neo-Nazis who want to congregate in your area?

In response to Eversor: I may be wrong here, but I would posit that as the violent right-wing elements are emboldened, Trump's mainstream appeal shrinks, even on the right. "With friends like these, who needs enemies?"

In my experience when people complain about political correctness are subtextually saying "I want to say offensive things without consequences." I can't really parse the phrase any other way. I was wondering if you had uses for it that meant something other than that.

I completely agree. It's feasible that this could be a decisive turning point for Trump where his popularity plummets and Republicans begin to turn on him. But, again, electoral politics is important, but it's not everything. There are rifts developing in American society, among American citizens, that are foreboding, to put it mildly. And those rifts will continue even if Trump is ousted from office (in fact, they may even become more pronounced).

I imagine there is a chance we'll see counter-riots in response to the violence perpetrated by the racists, which may well turn the tide in Trump's favor. If so, it would all depend on which side escalates closest to election day, making their side look really bad in the eyes of the average voter.

I don't think there are many people who look at what happened this past weekend and say, "hey! that's exactly what I was thinking needed to be done, good job guys!"