***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[Nike Jordan]

 

[DADDYFATSACKS]

We need one of these for Trump supporters. Too bad too many of them can’t read or have low reading comprehension skills.

 

[harlemtothebronx]

I can't believe some of you are wishing cancer on these people. Disgusting.

Let's instead support the man who has made fun of handicapped people, sexually assualted women, called countries ****holes, Banned muslims, kidnapped children, called black people the n word, refused to rent to black people, called mexicans rapists, sexually assaulted his own wife.

Have some morals.

Logic.

 

[Belgium]

This thread is an echo chamber because it consists of people with mostly-shared beliefs. I take no issue with that. But, I think that diversity of ideas/viewpoints is important. Instead of name-calling, personal attacks, and wishing cancer on people that I disagree with, I think it is more beneficial to have legitimate discussions.

Do you agree with the other poster's conclusion that ICE workers should get cancer? Since you have been pretty fair throughout my time here, I would assume that you don't.

To answer your question first, no. It would be pretty ridiculous for someone like me who has a chronic disease to wish any serious illness on anyone. I wouldn't wish mine on my worst enemy, let alone something far worse like cancer. While I'm not sitting here hoping certain people get serious illnesses, at the same time that doesn't necessarily mean I'll care if someone happens to get afflicted by one.

I know what you meant by the echo chamber remarks, it's pretty easy to infer that from how and when those remarks were made and obviously the simple reality that most posters in this thread, myself included, would identify somewhere on the left side of the political spectrum. A reasonable conclusion that didn't really require any clarification on your part.

Likewise, I believe Trump doesn't necessarily need to elaborately clarify or speak in literal terms either in order to be able to reasonablyy figure out what he might mean by certain remarks.
Roughly 70% of NFL players are black. The NFL protests started around September 2016 by Colin Kaepernick of course and were cited as a peaceful manner of protesting against general racial injustice, specifically police brutality. Kaepernick's kneeling initially went unnoticed for at least a week until Kaepernick was asked about it by the media. Initially it was Kaepernick and fellow 49ers teammate Eric Reid who kneeled and numerous players have followed since then. No white players participated in the kneeling for a long time.

It wasn't until August 2017 that a white NFL player kneeled during the anthem. Trump had already been attacking the protests prior to that, including personally attacking Kaepernick and suggesting he finds a different country that works better for him and other comments such as the one below.
“There was an article today…that NFL owners don’t want to pick him up because they don’t want to get a nasty tweet from Donald Trump
You believe that? I just saw that. I said, ‘If I remember that one, I’m gonna report it to the people of Kentucky because they like it when people actually stand for the American flag.'"

The number of players kneeling during the anthem substantially rose as president Trump ramped up his attacks against the NFL protests throughout 2017 and 2018, though the demographics of participants remained almost exclusively non-white and primarily black. Trump's attacks included disparaging the kneeling as a great disrespect to the country, "get that son of a ***** off the field", remarking that players who kneel "maybe shouldn't be in the country", ...

In May 2018 the NFL approved a policy change that required players and staff to stand on the sideline or stay in the locker room during the anthem. Kneeling would result in a fine and potential team discipline under the collective bargaining agreement.
Later that month as part of Kaepernick's collusion lawsuit, the WSJ released Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones' sworn deposition where he made the following comments about Trump's influence on the NFL protests.
“This is a very winning, strong issue for me,” Mr. Trump said in a phone call, according to a sworn deposition given by Mr. Jones and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. “Tell everybody, you can’t win this one. This one lifts me.”
The deposition was taken prior to the NFL rule change.

Trump's comments were brought up during a league meeting and a different NFL team owner testified in a sworn deposition that Trump changed his view on the kneeling from supportive to against it.
“I was totally supportive of [the players] until Trump made his statement,” Stephen Ross, the Miami Dolphins’ owner and creator of programs advocating for social justice, said in his deposition. Noting that owners’ conversations with Mr. Trump were relayed during a league meeting, he said: “I thought he changed the dialogue.”

After the rule change Trump also took credit for "bringing out the issue" in a Fox & Friends interview and added that he thinks the people moved it forward.

Towards the end of July, the NFL put its anthem policy on hold and would not enforce it. The National Football League Players Association filed a grievance against the rule.
Trump ramped up his attacks again just a day later and called for suspensions of players who kneel during the anthem; a match ban for one kneeling and a season suspension without pay for a second kneeling.

On August 9 the kneeling protests were resumed by a couple players. Both Kenny Still and Albert Wilson of the Miami Dolphins are black and were the only players to kneel during the anthem that day.
2 other players raised their fists, both were also black.
This prompted Trump shortly after to once again attack the NFL players who kneel during the anthem.

The overwhelming majority of NFL players who kneeled during the anthem throughout the protests are non-white, primarily black.
On August 9, once again all participants were black and the president proceeded to attack them via twitter.

The president has a long history of at best racially inflammatory comments and outright racist actions such as the birtherism conspiracy he championed for years in order to disparage the first black president. He also took out an ad calling for the death penalty for the Central Park 5, a group of African-Americans, and refused to apologize when they were exhonerated by DNA evidence. Trump added that they could still be guilty.
Even some top Republicans like Paul Ryan have accused the president of textbook racism, though they went back to licking his boots almost immediately after. Paul Ryan's textbook racism condemnation came after Trump suggested that a judge from Indiana could not be impartial about the Trump University case because he was Mexican.




It was easy to figure out what the echo chamber remarks meant through simple common sense, the timing of those remarks, the context in which they were made (which posts came before them, if they were replies, ...) and the vast majority of posters in this thread identifying somewhere on the left side of the political spectrum. In case you didn't notice in the previous post, I largely copied the first sentence in the quote of your post below in order to make my point.

When trump says that he has an issue with only black players kneeling, but that he is ok with the white players kneeling then I will understand your position.

That would be disgusting and inexcusable.

Given your previous remarks above and below, one would think it is damn near impossible to infer what someone means, what kind of message he is trying to get across and who/what he is targeting or referring to unless that person literally states that he approves of X and disapproves of Y.
Politicians generally aren't known for speaking in absolute literal terms to say the least. The art of dog whistling for example is to allude to something enough to get a certain message across to a particular target audience but without actually saying it literally.
I think Republican strategist, former Reagan H.W. Bush campaign manager and Reagan adviser Lee Atwater explained the concept of dogwhisting in pretty simple terms. I put the quote in a spoiler to save some room.

Spoiler: Lee Atwater 1981 quote

(The censored word speaks for itself)
You start out in 1954 by saying, "******, ******, ******." By 1968 you can't say "******" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "******, ******."

When it comes to Trump, trying to infer meaning is often necessary due to his hyperbolic way of speaking, (often incoherent) rambling at times and general impulsive remarks.
Perhaps the best example of this is reading a transcript of any given Trump rally. Trump administration officials and the president himself have had their hands full needing to clarify and elaborate on remarks Trump made. While not to a similar extent, all politicians require such clarifications. As mentioned earlier, politicians tend to shy away from the kind of literal remarks you describe in the quote below. There are many different ways to describe or allude to something and to get a message across without describing it in such literal terms. Using language in that manner doesn't necessarily have anything to do with race or specific topics, race just happens to be a common factor (see dogwhistling for example).

What exactly makes Trump's NFL attacks so immune to the same kind of inference that you don't appear to take issue with when it came to the echo chamber remarks? I don't think any regular poster in this thread with some common sense required any further clarification. But there must be something different about attacks against peaceful protests conducted almost exclusively by black NFL players in a league where roughly 70% of players are black. There's the additional history of racially inflammatory and outright racist behavior and attacks that specifically singled out black NFL players. Trump's NFL attacks were initiated when zero white NFL players took part in it, which continued to be the case for a months after. Trump's most recent attacks were prompted shortly after a couple players resumed kneeling, all of them black. Etc. etc.

I believe it is at the very least reasonable to infer from Trump's attacks and additional information (see above) that he is not talking about black and white NFL athletes in equal manner. You don't have to agree with whether or not that is a reasonable inference but a blanket 'if he didn't literally say he only takes issue with (African-Americans doing this or that, in this case kneeling during the anthem)' pass is entirely disingenuous no matter who such an argument is applied to.

Did trump say that he had an issue with only the black players kneeling during the anthem? Or any players, no matter their race, kneeling. If he said the former, that is truly disgusting.

I'm not sure you saw my earlier comment, but I do not watch the NFL currently due to the Colin Kaepernick situation. And I support the players who choose to kneel.

In his comment Thursday, did he mention that if white players kneel during the anthem that is cool? Do you think that is how he feels?

You are well aware that not only black players are kneeling. And you are well aware that Trump did not say that he is ok with the white players kneeling, but not the black players.

 

[blastercombo]

We need one of these for Trump supporters. Too bad too many of them can’t read or have low reading comprehension skills.

Before someone tries to refute this there’s actually huge correlation between the two

 

[biggie62]

My friend witnessed this.

 

[dwalk31]

To answer your question first, no. It would be pretty ridiculous for someone like me who has a chronic disease to wish any serious illness on anyone. I wouldn't wish mine on my worst enemy, let alone something far worse like cancer. While I'm not sitting here hoping certain people get serious illnesses, at the same time that doesn't necessarily mean I'll care if someone happens to get afflicted by one.

I know what you meant by the echo chamber remarks, it's pretty easy to infer that from how and when those remarks were made and obviously the simple reality that most posters in this thread, myself included, would identify somewhere on the left side of the political spectrum. A reasonable conclusion that didn't really require any clarification on your part.

Likewise, I believe Trump doesn't necessarily need to elaborately clarify or speak in literal terms either in order to be able to reasonablyy figure out what he might mean by certain remarks.
Roughly 70% of NFL players are black. The NFL protests started around September 2016 by Colin Kaepernick of course and were cited as a peaceful manner of protesting against general racial injustice, specifically police brutality. Kaepernick's kneeling initially went unnoticed for at least a week until Kaepernick was asked about it by the media. Initially it was Kaepernick and fellow 49ers teammate Eric Reid who kneeled and numerous players have followed since then. No white players participated in the kneeling for a long time.

It wasn't until August 2017 that a white NFL player kneeled during the anthem. Trump had already been attacking the protests prior to that, including personally attacking Kaepernick and suggesting he finds a different country that works better for him and other comments such as the one below.
“There was an article today…that NFL owners don’t want to pick him up because they don’t want to get a nasty tweet from Donald Trump
You believe that? I just saw that. I said, ‘If I remember that one, I’m gonna report it to the people of Kentucky because they like it when people actually stand for the American flag.'"

The number of players kneeling during the anthem substantially rose as president Trump ramped up his attacks against the NFL protests throughout 2017 and 2018, though the demographics of participants remained almost exclusively non-white and primarily black. Trump's attacks included disparaging the kneeling as a great disrespect to the country, "get that son of a ***** off the field", remarking that players who kneel "maybe shouldn't be in the country", ...

In May 2018 the NFL approved a policy change that required players and staff to stand on the sideline or stay in the locker room during the anthem. Kneeling would result in a fine and potential team discipline under the collective bargaining agreement.
Later that month as part of Kaepernick's collusion lawsuit, the WSJ released Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones' sworn deposition where he made the following comments about Trump's influence on the NFL protests.
“This is a very winning, strong issue for me,” Mr. Trump said in a phone call, according to a sworn deposition given by Mr. Jones and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. “Tell everybody, you can’t win this one. This one lifts me.”
The deposition was taken prior to the NFL rule change.

Trump's comments were brought up during a league meeting and a different NFL team owner testified in a sworn deposition that Trump changed his view on the kneeling from supportive to against it.
“I was totally supportive of [the players] until Trump made his statement,” Stephen Ross, the Miami Dolphins’ owner and creator of programs advocating for social justice, said in his deposition. Noting that owners’ conversations with Mr. Trump were relayed during a league meeting, he said: “I thought he changed the dialogue.”

After the rule change Trump also took credit for "bringing out the issue" in a Fox & Friends interview and added that he thinks the people moved it forward.

Towards the end of July, the NFL put its anthem policy on hold and would not enforce it. The National Football League Players Association filed a grievance against the rule.
Trump ramped up his attacks again just a day later and called for suspensions of players who kneel during the anthem; a match ban for one kneeling and a season suspension without pay for a second kneeling.

On August 9 the kneeling protests were resumed by a couple players. Both Kenny Still and Albert Wilson of the Miami Dolphins are black and were the only players to kneel during the anthem that day.
2 other players raised their fists, both were also black.
This prompted Trump shortly after to once again attack the NFL players who kneel during the anthem.

The overwhelming majority of NFL players who kneeled during the anthem throughout the protests are non-white, primarily black.
On August 9, once again all participants were black and the president proceeded to attack them via twitter.

The president has a long history of at best racially inflammatory comments and outright racist actions such as the birtherism conspiracy he championed for years in order to disparage the first black president. He also took out an ad calling for the death penalty for the Central Park 5, a group of African-Americans, and refused to apologize when they were exhonerated by DNA evidence. Trump added that they could still be guilty.
Even some top Republicans like Paul Ryan have accused the president of textbook racism, though they went back to licking his boots almost immediately after. Paul Ryan's textbook racism condemnation came after Trump suggested that a judge from Indiana could not be impartial about the Trump University case because he was Mexican.




It was easy to figure out what the echo chamber remarks meant through simple common sense, the timing of those remarks, the context in which they were made (which posts came before them, if they were replies, ...) and the vast majority of posters in this thread identifying somewhere on the left side of the political spectrum. In case you didn't notice in the previous post, I largely copied the first sentence in the quote of your post below in order to make my point.


Given your previous remarks above and below, one would think it is damn near impossible to infer what someone means, what kind of message he is trying to get across and who/what he is targeting or referring to unless that person literally states that he approves of X and disapproves of Y.
Politicians generally aren't known for speaking in absolute literal terms to say the least. The art of dog whistling for example is to allude to something enough to get a certain message across to a particular target audience but without actually saying it literally.
I think Republican strategist, former Reagan H.W. Bush campaign manager and Reagan adviser Lee Atwater explained the concept of dogwhisting in pretty simple terms. I put the quote in a spoiler to save some room.

Spoiler: Lee Atwater 1981 quote

(The censored word speaks for itself)
You start out in 1954 by saying, "******, ******, ******." By 1968 you can't say "******" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "******, ******."

When it comes to Trump, trying to infer meaning is often necessary due to his hyperbolic way of speaking, (often incoherent) rambling at times and general impulsive remarks.
Perhaps the best example of this is reading a transcript of any given Trump rally. Trump administration officials and the president himself have had their hands full needing to clarify and elaborate on remarks Trump made. While not to a similar extent, all politicians require such clarifications. As mentioned earlier, politicians tend to shy away from the kind of literal remarks you describe in the quote below. There are many different ways to describe or allude to something and to get a message across without describing it in such literal terms. Using language in that manner doesn't necessarily have anything to do with race or specific topics, race just happens to be a common factor (see dogwhistling for example).

What exactly makes Trump's NFL attacks so immune to the same kind of inference that you don't appear to take issue with when it came to the echo chamber remarks? I don't think any regular poster in this thread with some common sense required any further clarification. But there must be something different about attacks against peaceful protests conducted almost exclusively by black NFL players in a league where roughly 70% of players are black. There's the additional history of racially inflammatory and outright racist behavior and attacks that specifically singled out black NFL players. Trump's NFL attacks were initiated when zero white NFL players took part in it, which continued to be the case for a months after. Trump's most recent attacks were prompted shortly after a couple players resumed kneeling, all of them black. Etc. etc.

I believe it is at the very least reasonable to infer from Trump's attacks and additional information (see above) that he is not talking about black and white NFL athletes in equal manner. You don't have to agree with whether or not that is a reasonable inference but a blanket 'if he didn't literally say he only takes issue with (African-Americans doing this or that, in this case kneeling during the anthem)' pass is entirely disingenuous no matter who such an argument is applied to.

I, respectfully, disagree with your interpretation. I will say that your inferences are reasonable and fair. But they are inferences, after all.

Since you use historical context for a lot of your argument, it is also true that President Trump is historically quite direct. So it is also a reasonable and fair inference that if he meant he only had an issue with black players kneeling—he would have said it.

It is good that you are not wishing cancer on others. Sadly, many others in this thread think that is ok.

 

[dacomeup]

So it is also a reasonable and fair inference that if he meant he only had an issue with black players kneeling—he would have said it.

LOL. So do you think that Trump attacking the players kneeling as thugs was directed at white players too? Thugs has been coded language that white people have used for black people for years.

 

[DADDYFATSACKS]

My homie in Northern VA told me he knows one of the jurors on the Manafort case. He said the juror had been running his mouth about the case and the juror he knows is a Trumper. Paulie is def getting of or it will be a hung jury at worst according to my homie.

 

[RustyShackleford]

No Trump supporter can take the moral high ground.

You support an odious, corrupt, vile, white nationalist, racist peice of **** that unleashes BS on ton of people.

So if you support that clown, please spare us, you have no morals. Many conservatives reject him

 

[gry60]

Well this idea violates the 6th amendment and would require a constitutional convention to change. In addition, the whole idea of a jury was to take the power away from judges who may be corrupt or paid off in some form or fashion, or under the influence of a royal. In the days of old, the king was the de facto judge with a puppet in placd, handing out the sentencing without a fair and speedy trial where common citizens will judge their own. Therefore we cannot have it both ways. We either want a democratic society where citizens judge their peers, whether they are knowlegeable about the laws or not, or how they interpret them, or we have kangoroo courts where single judges can be influenced by people with no good intentions.

You're right.

The issue at hand right now is that we have a set of people who have made their inability/refusal to believe in evidence-based policies public, and someday, they will be relied upon to determine the innocence or guilt of a defendant.

They will be asked to take part in a judicial process based on using evidence to prove things, which is something that Conservatives don't believe in, nor do they practice.

 

[Mark Antony]

I can't believe some of you are wishing cancer on these people. Disgusting.

Let's instead support the man who has made fun of handicapped people, sexually assualted women, called countries ****holes, Banned muslims, kidnapped children, called black people the n word, refused to rent to black people, called mexicans rapists, sexually assaulted his own wife.

Have some morals.

Can't believe folks still fall for that conservative fake moral outrage game.

It's a stupid, disingenuous, pointless, overwhelmingly hypocritical trap. Ignore it.


"huh hoh ha cancer? why i never"

 

[gry60]

My homie in Northern VA told me he knows one of the jurors on the Manafort case. He said the juror had been running his mouth about the case and the juror he knows is a Trumper. Paulie is def getting of or it will be a hung jury at worst according to my homie.

Case in point.

 

[frenchbreadbuilds]

How many times does it have to be stated that white supremacy in the political/social context isn’t just believing in nazi ideals. Doesn’t matter how direct trump is or isn’t. There’s no social/economic/political capital in being labeled by the white population as an outright racist. We’re all socially conditioned to not want to be labeled a racist regardless of whether you’re a racist or not. Not to mention the bar for what’s racist and what isn’t for the majority of while people is pretty high, just short of saying the N word. So you can get away with a lot of white supremacy before people even look at you twice

 

[gry60]

Flame suits can't stop this:

 

[boris]

I, respectfully, disagree with your interpretation. I will say that your inferences are reasonable and fair. But they are inferences, after all.

Since you use historical context for a lot of your argument, it is also true that President Trump is historically quite direct. So it is also a reasonable and fair inference that if he meant he only had an issue with black players kneeling—he would have said it.

It is good that you are not wishing cancer on others. Sadly, many others in this thread think that is ok.

Please define what you mean by "direct" and why you believe it describes how he behaves.

 

[dwalk31]

LOL. So do you think that Trump attacking the players kneeling as thugs was directed at white players too? Thugs has been coded language that white people have used for black people for years.

I think it was a race-neutral comment. I could be wrong. At the moment he says the issue is only with black players I will be the first to speak out against it.

Again, I support the players kneeling personally. And I have been boycotting the NFL since the CK situation.

 

[whywesteppin]

 

[nomnom]

Outrageously stupid take gets 260k likes

Breaking news: Republicans want Mitt Romney because hes Republican

Far left and progressives want Bernie because social democratic stances

The “they” in the above two are completely different ideologically

And read any CNN/Hill tweet about Bernie and its full of ppl telling him to go away

These people infuriate me

They dont want Pelosi because Dems have lost almost everything in elections

 

[RIP sleazyy]

Ehh plenty of folks don't believe women should lead or be in leadership roles though. Stupid take but stupid take based in reality tbh.

 

[aepps20]

That's how I respond to Libs and their fake news with lies.

 

[hand2handking]

 

[nomnom]

Ehh plenty of folks don't believe women should lead or be in leadership roles though. Stupid take but stupid take based in reality tbh.

In 2 yrs that twitter is gonna go berserk over ppl not voting Kamala Harris in the 2020 primary

 

[RIP sleazyy]

In 2 yrs that twitter is gonna go berserk over ppl not voting Kamala Harris in the 2020 primary

Probably. But if your reasoning for not voting for her is "she's a woman" you're a dumbass tbh.

I don't put much stock into Twitter opinions though. I just like to read the anger and faulty arguments in the threads.

 

[DADDYFATSACKS]

It gets better every day.
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5b76f685e4b0a5b1febae11a