No truer word was ever writ.
They are the worst of you, distilled and refined. America is better than that though, and he will fail.
? what, you think we ask for permission from America before we report on things from there?. You think we don’t have our own reporters working there, in one of the most important, influential countries in the world?. ( guess what, i’m writing this while our third most popular TV news is playing in the background, cuts to one of its reporters, talking live from Washington ) That the single most extensive International news organisation is American, maybe?. it isn’t. They pool their reporting, of course, so as to be efficient.
And we have Sky TV, so we have BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, Faux News, and half a dozen others.
and you know what?. the only biased news programme we have, proven time again by their reporting running counter to observable , objective fact, is Fox News. the least biased, quite truthfully, is Al Jazeera.
So, you don’t like her tone? Seriously?
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Bull-fucking-shit.
One word for you.
Iraq.
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Most of the coverage we get here of US political news is BBC-esque. Either a serious toned report about somewhere being bombed, or a “look-at-the-crazy-foreigners” report of a particularly juicy scandal.
Headline reporting, not much analysis, no particular editorial bias beyond the usual corporate media framing. Certainly not the conspiracy-against-conservatives suggested upthread.
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The false equivalency and mealy mouthed bullshit in this thread makes me sick.
Like, it’s liberals fault that US politics is polarised, and by angrily rejecting Trump and his supporters, liberals are aggravating that polarisation.
There’s no equivalency here. US politics has been marked for years by a deliberately obstructive and destructively negligent populist Republican party culminating in the nomination of an objectively vile, racist demagogue as candidate, who by any reasonable measure would be an unmitigated disaster as president of the most powerful country on Earth.
There’s no room here for the apparently monolithic blob called liberals to mind their words so the poor delicate souls who want to vote for Trump can carefully consider the issues and have a change of heart.
Anyone who thinks it is reasonable to insist Trump be criticised politely can go fuck themselves, he needs to be criticised aggressively and so does anyone thinking of voting for him. Fuck them, fuck them all, damn straight.
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sigh
Have you not read my previous posts?
Right here on BB for a start.
No, no it’s not. I’m not American, so I don’t get to vote. Is that exactly what they want?[quote=“Donald_Petersen, post:175, topic:85956”]
less “Republican-bashing” as such, and more just "dipshit-bashing
[/quote]
That may be so, but it’s bashing nonetheless, and it comes from both sides, that’s all I’m saying.
They vote Democrat (generally). In a two-horse race there’s not a lot of maneuvering room for nuance. Hence the duality.[quote=“awfulhorrid, post:179, topic:85956”]
the only other alternative available to you is a deep pit.
[/quote]
Well now that’s true.[quote=“awfulhorrid, post:179, topic:85956”]
I can’t honestly think of anything Republicans have done that deserves to be shown in a positive light
[/quote]
Aaaaand there’s the problem right there. Maybe meet some actual Republican people and have a BBQ. I’m sure they’re not all 100% bad.
Absolutely true. No-one can claim those ideals for their side only. However, those you listed, “freedom, striving for equality, better economic and social outcomes, and the opportunity to better ourselves, friends, and families” are pretty much what all humans want the world over. Yes, even Republicans.
@tigkiwi
I think the point was not that the world has to licence its news from the US, but was a question of how US-based and owned news companies are picked, chosen or licenced elsewhere. i.e. You’d have to pay a licence fee to CNN to show it here, same as any other TV show.
And as they would say, “Fuck you too”. Really advances the conversation doesn’t it?
What conversation? Let’s start. You give me something that the Republican nominee stands for that you think is worth defending, something that merits thoughtful consideration.
You know, the guy who suggested his opponent should be gunned down. Twice.
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How about reading the conversation upthread.
I have no intention of defending the Republican nominee. What makes you think I’m a Trump supporter? I’m talking about people conversing with and respecting eachother. I’ll bet that just about every American here has a family member who votes Republican, and they’re really nice people.
Don’t judge a group of people by their worst, and don’t lump them all together.
Saying all Republicans are shitheads is akin to saying all Muslims are terrorists. It’s lazy and dishonest and only reflects badly on those who’d say it.
I didn’t say you were a Trump supporter, I asked you to provide an example of a Trump policy that a reasonable person could have a reasonable discussion about, and you dodged.
If your point is that liberals should adopt a sort of calm hostage negotiation style technique when they try to talk their Trump voting loved ones back down from the ledge then fine, because we can be screaming fuck you at them quietly on the inside the whole time.
Edit: I cut a paragraph here that wasn’t to the point
I never said that. I said anyone who votes for Trump is a shithead, and I stand by it.
I don’t think John McCain will be voting for him. I think plenty of Republicans are right behind me.
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Seriously? Does Ginsberg’s “Howl” make you want to vote Eisenhower, then?
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Still not getting it? I’m not interested in Trump’s policies, nor intend to discuss with you any of his policies I could back. I’m not sure I even could back any of his policies. I’m not talking about bringing anyone back from the ‘ledge’ either. Let them vote for who they want. I’m sure they all say that anyone voting for Hillary is a shithead too and they’d stand by that, and I’d say exactly the same thing to them. All I’m advocating is to be reasonable to eachother without resorting to insulting others. It doesn’t make you right, nor big, It’s getting tired and all it does is entrench positions and lets you feel a little better about yourself by venting.
No, I never said you did. Keep up. But you lumped everyone together in a group, sans individuality and passed your personal judgement on that group, just like prejudiced people do. Hence why I said “is akin to”.
If it walks like a duck, and it talks like a duck…
No, it isn’t. Not even close.
“All Muslims” is a very large, very diverse group of people, who happen to a share a faith that is no more objectionable than any of the other monotheistic traditions.
“All Trump voters” (which is what this thread is about) are people who have taken an active decision to publicly support a candidate who has loudly proclaimed his intentions to inflict unconstitutional oppression upon a large segment of the American public and enthusiastically perform war crimes abroad.
There is a difference between those two things. “Being a Muslim” is a morally neutral act. “Supporting Donald Trump” is not.
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“All Trump voters” is a very large, very diverse group of people, who happen to have a variety of faiths, cultures, traditions and sexual orientations.
Neither being a Muslim nor being a Trump supporter are morally neutral acts. Very few things are. There are sides to both that could be considered moral and immoral. Both are active choices. Judge people individually, not as a group. It’s not that difficult. Just drop the preconceived prejudices, that’s all.
I decided to make this to explain about how confused most Europeans are about Trump:
(with apologies to Private Eye)
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Oh I’m getting it. You’re completely committed to this bulllshit false equivalency.
So you concede you couldn’t back anything Trump says, but none the less you want me to adopt a concillatory tone when discussing him and those who support his overtly racist misogynistic ideas. If I’m angry about that, I’m just venting and trying to make myself feel important.
This is a thread about Trump and his supporters, his policies are germane.
OK so when you said…
You weren’t characterising what I was saying that way, you were just introducing a new, random idea to the discussion in a direct reply to me.
You have to admit, that makes it a little challenging to keep up, right?
OK, so no doubt I’m reading this wrong, but I think you just called me racist for lumping all Trump’s supporters together? You understand the defining, glittering centrepiece of Trump’s appeal is naked, unashamed racism and fear, right? So presumably the people who support him are all for that. It’s not a baseless prejudice to ascribe these characeristics to them.
The people who voted for Brexit all wanted to leave the UK EU, that’s not a prejudiced comment.
The only Trump supporters with nuanced views are the poor bastards from the GOP tasked with pretending they are on board with him. Their views are incredibly fucking nuanced.
What you are arguing here would make perfect sense if US politics was the same this year as any other year in history. But it’s just not.
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Notice I used the phrase ‘U.S.-based media outlets news’. I’m aware of other media outlets, I read them—especially Al Jazeera.
ETA: D’oh! I could have been more precise and said ‘media outlets’. That’s what I meant to convey. Never mind, I understand why you responded the way you did. Chalk that one up to my miscommunication.
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While the people who we see showing up at his rallies and shouting HANG THE BITCH and waving guns around and talking about shooting Muslims are the loudest, most visible Trump voters, I also know other sorts:
• gay theater professionals in New York who think he’s entertaining and are ignorant about his policies
• otherwise-liberal ex-military family members who hate his racist, bigoted policies but still support him because they think Hillary will ruin the US military
• moderate Republicans who are single-issue voters, supporting him because they think he’ll lower taxes a lot more than Hillary
• conservatives who support him because they’re convinced Hillary wants to revoke the 2nd Amendment, but don’t want to talk about it, because they hate his other policies
per #1, I genuinely believe that a sizable hunk of his poll numbers come from people who are jaded after the past 8 years of Congress not letting anything get done and think that whoever’s elected will have no effect anyway, but think Trump would be a lot more fun to watch on TV and for talk shows to make jokes about.
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Three words for you.
Which Hillary supported.
