[jonottawa]

 billw55, on 2016-November-14, 14:22, said:

For what its worth, I saw jonottowa's post with the videos before it was removed. He quite thoroughly showed himself for what he is, and earned a permanent spot on my ignore list.

To the best of my knowledge I have had NONE of my posts removed from this thread (or from this forum in the last 5+ years.) If there was one, this is certainly the first I'm hearing of it. Is this just a random smear or ?

[Kaitlyn S]

 jonottawa, on 2016-November-13, 11:09, said:

The essence of it is that the regressive Left hates America (the constitution, rule of law, checks & balances, ethical journalism, morality, patriotism, liberty, meritocracy, freedom of speech, right to bear arms, don't tread on me.) And many Americans still love America. And so the regressive Left has decided in its infinite wisdom to replace Americans who love America with foreigners who hate America as much as they do.

I'm sorry that I may disagree with one of only two people supporting me in this thread. A few months ago, before having chatted with some intelligent liberals, I would have thought everything you said here is true. However, they are seeing the world through different colored glasses and I think I'm finally seeing why they see things differently.

The Constitution. To us it seems like liberals want to rape the constitution with two Obama and two Clinton justices ruling in such a way that would make our Founding Fathers roll over in their graves. However, in a discussion about the Constitution, most liberals honestly believe that Obama supports the Constitution and abides by it (rather than thinking that Obama is flouting the Constitution much to the liberals' delight.) This take by liberal chatters surprised me but it makes sense. It sounds like most liberal posters like the existence of the Constitution as long as it is amended to keep up with the times. LIberal posters: you are in a much better position than I am to know whether I am reading your ideas correctly. If I am making assumptions that are incorrect, feel free to correct me.

Rule of law. Outward appearances are that liberals always favor a black against a policeman. However, most people, liberal and conservative alike, think that it's okay for the policemen to protect themselves in a truly dangerous situation, and where we differ is in the shooting of unarmed suspects and the more frequent stopping of minorities.

Checks and balances: Where we might see Obama overreaching, most liberal posters honestly believe that Obama stayed within the bounds of checks and balances, and if he didn't, they would be against it.

Ethical journalism: Some liberal posters agree that the mainstream media is slightly biased in their favor. Most liberals agreed with me when I stated that journalists kowtowed to CAIR instead of reporting their honest findings for fear of being sued or fired by their employer who feared being sued.

Morality: This is an interesting one. I believe there is a high correlation between religious people and conservatives. However, the Left believes they are the moral ones while we are being the immoral (racist, bigoted, deplorable) ones.

Patriotism: I think you've got a strong point there. The left-wing posters tend to agree that they are more in favor of "what's good for the world" as opposed to "what's good for the United States".

Meritocracy. I presume you are talking about Affirmative Action initiatives and unions rewarding seniority causing government positions to be held by less qualified people than possible. I agree and while I haven't discussed this topic with many left-leaning people, you are probably right on this one too; I'm pretty sure they would have a different agenda.

However, I voted or someone who I guessed would be less qualified for the job of POTUS. I think that probably less than half the people that voted for him thought he was less qualified than Ms. Clinton. However, ilke me, they either thought that corruption would be worse under her, or favored him over her selecting Supreme Court justices. So TBH I did not choose the top position based on merit alone so I have to admit that there are things other than merit that matter.

Freedom of speech. Both sides have issues there. The right wants to limit free speech in mosques that they feel will lead to terrorism, or least monitor the speech and shut down the mosques if they fear the speech might lead to terrorist plots. While I am undecided whether this is a good idea or not, it definitely flies in the face of free speech. The left wants to curb speech that they feel might be hurtful to snowflakes, and in some cases curb speech that espouses conservative ideas because it might make people who were brought up with liberal ideas uncomfortable. In the former, they have gone too far in some cases but their rationale is that they are trying to stop people from just being jerks who want to belittle others. To us that seems laughable because they are belittling us calling us bigots and stupid and backward and deplorable but they honestly believe that their motives are good. And if you need a law to keep someone from saying something to a known autistic person that the one saying it knows is going to cause a fit, so be it. Yes, it's curbing free speech, but if you need to curb free speech to stop someone from being a hurtful jackass, I guess I have to agree with the Left on that one. However, the Left will take it much too far and curb some free speech that has no business being curbed just to make sure all the cases where people are being hurtful are included.

Right to bear arms. Again this one you have a good point on. Many liberals have argued for only police having guns, which means that only police and criminals have guns. However, there are other liberals (apparently including Bernie Sanders) who want to uphold the Second Amendment, and say that they don't want to stop me from having a gun unless I am deemed to be mentally incompetent or at least incompetent enough that I might do something crazy with it. Yes, I've heard the conservative argument that if government gets to decide who's competent, all of a sudden a liberal government will decide that conservatives are incompetent. I'd like to think Americans are above that, but after Lois Lerner...

However, overall, I don't think that most liberals hate America. When conservatives argue that America was better before progressiveism started, the liberals correctly point out that those were the days of Jim Crow laws and women not voting. Many of them are idealists and see a country that they love that can be improved. In every generation, the youth were idealists who pictured an improved America and the older people, many of who were idealists in their youth, have come to realize what works and what won't work and embrace more conservative principles. Some never switch over. But they don't hate America in their own minds, which means they don't hate America.

[PassedOut]

 Kaitlyn S, on 2016-November-14, 14:42, said:

Freedom of speech. Both sides have issues there. The right wants to limit free speech in mosques that they feel will lead to terrorism, or least monitor the speech and shut down the mosques if they fear the speech might lead to terrorist plots. While I am undecided whether this is a good idea or not, it definitely flies in the face of free speech. The left wants to curb speech that they feel might be hurtful to snowflakes, and in some cases curb speech that espouses conservative ideas because it might make people who were brought up with liberal ideas uncomfortable.

Hmm. Sorry not to understand here, but is there a special meaning for "snowflakes" in this context?

[Kaitlyn S]

 barmar, on 2016-November-14, 09:42, said:

This week's "This American Life" interviewed a number of people with different post-election views, from both sides of the political spectrum. One of the Trump supporters kept on referring to themselves as "deplorables". They can defuse the word by adopting it as their own. It's kind of the same way that blacks can use the N-word to refer to each other, but we can't use it to refer to them.

I disagree. In a recent meeting with conservative friends, I asked how many of us thought we were one of Hillary's deplorables. 10 for 10 - YES. In discussing it with liberal posters, they said to stop the nonsense - that if we didn't want so send all the blacks back to Africa and the Muslims back to the Middle East and the Hispanics back to Mexico then we weren't deplorable. So by that definition, none of us were deplorable, but we all proudly wore the Deplorables badge of honor.

None of us are offended at being called deplorable by a liberal because we think it's a joke. It's almost a joke to call us a bigot, a racist, or just a stupid uninformed voter. We've heard it so often that it just sounds like "Hello" now. Sometimes we try to argue the point, but sometimes we realize there's just no use. There are many that think there can be no other possible reason to vote for Trump than being a stupid uninformed bigoted racist misogynist and trying to convince them otherwise is a waste of breath (or typing.)

[Kaitlyn S]

 PassedOut, on 2016-November-14, 14:51, said:

Hmm. Sorry not to understand here, but is there a special meaning for "snowflakes" in this context?

OK, I have to admit that the Left wants to stop speech that is hurtful to people that should actually feel hurt by such speech, but what I mean by snowflakes is people that are going to be offended or pretend to be offended by something that should never offend them unless they are too sensitive to be allowed to interact with other human beings.

[PassedOut]

 Kaitlyn S, on 2016-November-14, 14:55, said:

OK, I have to admit that the Left wants to stop speech that is hurtful to people that should actually feel hurt by such speech, but what I mean by snowflakes is people that are going to be offended or pretend to be offended by something that should never offend them unless they are too sensitive to be allowed to interact with other human beings.

Thanks. Never heard that term before, but I can see that it applies equally to right and left.

[jonottawa]

Yes Kaitlyn, we are in disagreement, but only about whether we are in disagreement or not. (Though now this is a paradox.)

Your "intelligent" liberal friends seem to agree with Humpty Dumpty. I'm with Alice.

"“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”"

...

As for snowflake, here's a definition: Generation Snowflake

[olegru]

 Kaitlyn S, on 2016-November-14, 14:42, said:

The Constitution.

As far as I understand there are 2 schools of taught about Constitution.
Conservators thinks that Constitution should be used exactly as written.
Liberals have a concept of living Constitution. Idea is that founder fathers had no ideas about our current social relationship, so Supreme Court has rights to interpretation constitution and interpretations could be very far from the original text.

I am not in the position to say what is right and what is wrong, but as an IT person, I have living Job Description. After 17 years of working on the same place there is no single thing I am doing that is mentioned in my JD. I definitely prefer HR to go through the process of renewing my JD, but they think it is too much time consuming and prefer to use interpretations.

 Kaitlyn S, on 2016-November-14, 14:42, said:

Morality: … “Left believes they are the moral ones while we are being the immoral”

All history of humankind heroes fought with monsters. And both sides of the battle had no doubts that he is a hero and his opponent is a monster. (I am sure I read it somewhere, cannot recall where.)

[Kaitlyn S]

 PassedOut, on 2016-November-14, 14:56, said:

Thanks. Never heard that term before, but I can see that it applies equally to right and left.

Megyn Kelly (FOX News talk show host, 9PM, blonde attractive to older gentemen, never has a substitute that isn't an attractive blonde, which there apparently is a never ending supply of) is trying to get us to call snowflakes "cupcakes" by continually referring to them as cupcakes. But everybody knows they are snowflakes and I wasn't very happy when my sweetie referred to them as cupcakes

[Al_U_Card]

Name-calling comes in many forms, but they are all, still, the lowest form of interaction.
Stop the childishness and address the issues and perhaps some common ground can be found.

Where are we going and what does it mean?

We are experiencing a potential paradigm shift like rarely before. (FDR comes to mind, with JFK not far behind in a good sense. Nixon and Bill Clinton take the other direction.)

I happened upon a couple of Mark Steyn speeches from 11 and 5 years ago. The more recent of the 2 describes the current situation quite remarkably. The last 10 minutes is prophetic. As a fellow Canadian (JonOttawa is as well I expect) our viewpoints are sufficiently divorced from a US-centric perspective to allow for a worthwhile analysis.

[jonottawa]

Kaitlyn, let me flesh out my answer a bit since you went to the trouble of composing such a well-reasoned post:

The Constitution.

(I think the verb 'rape' is overused fwiw. But anyway.) Yes, "liberals" are all for the Constitution as long as the Constitution enshrines whatever pet issue is popular in the CURRENT YEAR as an inviolable human right for all time. You can't say you're FOR the Constitution if that essentially means you IGNORE the plain language of the Constitution at your discretion. We used to amend the Constitution when we wanted new rights (or to give up certain rights as in the case of Prohibition.) That's our tradition. That's what being FOR the Constitution means.

Rule of law.

POTUS went on television and urged non-citizens to vote for Hillary. Soros riots are going on right now. Sanctuary cities. Come on, how many examples do you need?

Checks and balances.

Executive orders overturning US immigration law. Partisan DoJ interference in the FBI investigation of Hillary. A judiciary that's as politicized as the legislative branch. I think this administration has taken all the bad examples from Dubya and Dubyalled down on them.

Ethical journalism: "Some liberal posters agree that the mainstream media is slightly biased in their favor. Most liberals agreed with me when I stated that journalists kowtowed to CAIR instead of reporting their honest findings for fear of being sued or fired by their employer who feared being sued."

Slightly biased? Only with respect to CAIR? C'mon now. The MSM is no longer credible as a news source. It's gotten so bad that even FoxNews (with the exception of Hannity, who is too powerful to be bullied by the Murdoch boys) were shilling for Hillary this cycle!

Morality: "This is an interesting one. I believe there is a high correlation between religious people and conservatives. However, the Left believes they are the moral ones while we are being the immoral (racist, bigoted, deplorable) ones."

Here's another case of Humpty Dumpty and Alice. Bigotry means intolerance for views you disagree with. Is there anyone MORE bigoted than a typical 2016 "liberal"? Is there anything more racist than discriminating against someone because of the color of her skin (Affirmative Action)?

Patriotism

We agree.

Meritocracy.

We agree. America has always been the land of opportunity. Equality of opportunity. Not a communist-style equality of outcomes.

"However, I voted or someone who I guessed would be less qualified for the job of POTUS. I think that probably less than half the people that voted for him thought he was less qualified than Ms. Clinton. However, ilke me, they either thought that corruption would be worse under her, or favored him over her selecting Supreme Court justices. So TBH I did not choose the top position based on merit alone so I have to admit that there are things other than merit that matter."

I think you're (inadvertently) playing word games a bit here. If we agree that Hillary (who I supported in 2008 fwiw, because she was VASTLY more qualified than Obama) is theoretically more capable than President Trump, but way too corrupt to effectively serve, then HE is MORE QUALIFIED. Not being corrupt or owned/controlled by lobbyists is one of the QUALIFICATIONS for being a good president.

Freedom of speech. "Both sides have issues there. The right wants to limit free speech in mosques that they feel will lead to terrorism, or least monitor the speech and shut down the mosques if they fear the speech might lead to terrorist plots. While I am undecided whether this is a good idea or not, it definitely flies in the face of free speech. The left wants to curb speech that they feel might be hurtful to snowflakes, and in some cases curb speech that espouses conservative ideas because it might make people who were brought up with liberal ideas uncomfortable. In the former, they have gone too far in some cases but their rationale is that they are trying to stop people from just being jerks who want to belittle others. To us that seems laughable because they are belittling us calling us bigots and stupid and backward and deplorable but they honestly believe that their motives are good. And if you need a law to keep someone from saying something to a known autistic person that the one saying it knows is going to cause a fit, so be it. Yes, it's curbing free speech, but if you need to curb free speech to stop someone from being a hurtful jackass, I guess I have to agree with the Left on that one. However, the Left will take it much too far and curb some free speech that has no business being curbed just to make sure all the cases where people are being hurtful are included."

Inciting violence (or terrorist acts) has always been against the law and has never been included in the common definition of "free speech". So I see your argument as a false equivalence.

Right to bear arms.

We agree.

"However, overall, I don't think that most liberals hate America. When conservatives argue that America was better before progressiveism started, the liberals correctly point out that those were the days of Jim Crow laws and women not voting. Many of them are idealists and see a country that they love that can be improved. In every generation, the youth were idealists who pictured an improved America and the older people, many of who were idealists in their youth, have come to realize what works and what won't work and embrace more conservative principles. Some never switch over. But they don't hate America in their own minds, which means they don't hate America."

They hate what America has always represented. They want to transform it into something else, something completely foreign to its magnificent founding documents of 1776/1787. Something all of its founding fathers would have been appalled and disgusted by. So yes, they hate America. Do they hate the dirt? No. But America is not magic dirt. America is a nation based on very real & timeless ideals.

[kenberg]

Snowflakes:

An entire thread could be devoted to protecting the young and the sort of young from various upsetting things. I list a few things, fictional and otherwise, that did and didn't upset me when I was young.

I saw The Lost Weekend. It was made in 1945 when I was 6. I am guessing I saw it when I was older, mostly because I remember which theater I saw it at and it was about a mile away. We were allowed a lot of freedom, so maybe I walked there when I was 6, but I am guessing maybe I was 8. Anyway, it upset me. Ray Midland was standing on a chair or a table or something trying to retrieve a bottle of whiskey he has hidden in the chandelier. It was the degradation of his character that upset me, not a worry that he might fall.

I saw a Tarzan movie that had a man-eating plant in it. I kept my distance from shrubbery for weeks after that.

I saw a war movie where a sniper in a tree was incinerated by a flame thrower. I can still picture it.

When I was 12 or so I found a book in the school library on mythology. I read about how a man had accidentally come across the Goddess Dianna as she was bathing, and she turned him to stone. This was upsetting.

Oddly, or perhaps not oddly, most actual physical things had a lesser impact. I was out alone on a decent sized lake when a heavy storm came up. The boat was small, there was a 3.5 hp motor powering it, the storm was pretty heavy lifting the boat high enough so that the motor was well out of the water and the boat would be brought down hard as the wave crested. I was maybe 10 or 11, I handled it fine.

How much should we protect the young? It's a good question. We don't want them killed, we don't want them terrified, we want them to grow up with some practical sense, and usually that comes from experience.

I think of college age as basically adult. I can't imagine someone worrying about how I might react to Dante's Inferno. If someone does find something upsetting, then they do and I would never tell them that they should not be upset If they are upset, they are upset. But I don't think we should go around predicting people will be upset. I don't think anyone could have predicted my reaction to the scene in The Lost Weekend. As near as I can recall, I handled the shooting of Bambi's mother with no problem, and I think I was 5. It's just not that easy to say who will be upset by what.

[cherdano]

 jonottawa, on 2016-November-14, 15:54, said:

POTUS went on television and urged non-citizens to vote for Hillary.

LOL

Quote

Soros riots are going on right now.

LOL.

Quote

Partisan DoJ interference in the FBI investigation of Hillary.

LOL
I'll stop here except for one more:

Quote

They hate what America has always represented.

I take it you embrace everything the USA have ever stood for? Including pre-civil war?

[cherdano]

Ok, just one more:

 jonottawa, on 2016-November-14, 15:54, said:

Is there anything more racist than discriminating against someone because of the color of her skin (Affirmative Action)?

Yup, there is something more racist than affirmative action. Look up the history of the Klu-Klux-Klan if you aren't familiar with it. (Whose 2016 fans are ecstatically celebrating the results of the election by the way.)

[hrothgar]

 jonottawa, on 2016-November-14, 15:54, said:

Rule of law.

POTUS went on television and urged non-citizens to vote for Hillary. Soros riots are going on right now. Sanctuary cities. Come on, how many examples do you need?

I'm sure that you're able to offer some proof that this happened...

A video clip would be best.
A transcript with a date and time would be acceptable.

[jonottawa]

By popular request:

[hrothgar]

 jonottawa, on 2016-November-14, 16:18, said:

By popular request:

http://www.snopes.co...aliens-to-vote/

"Many of the outrage posts were written around a video in which the majority of the president's response was edited out to give the misleading impression that Obama was urging undocumented immigrants to vote illegally"

[Kaitlyn S]

 kenberg, on 2016-November-14, 16:02, said:

But I don't think we should go around predicting people will be upset.

I was going to reply "That's because you have some common sense."

Then I thought about it.

It may come as no surprise to anybody who has read my posts that I have upset a lot of people in my lifetime with things I have said. Other that things like negotiations, or answering questions honestly where I knew the asker would not like any honest answer, I could have rarely predicted that the person would get upset. People have strange trigger warnings - sometimes you happen to mention something that reminds them of a traumatic experience, sometimes you just hit a hot-button topic. But if I thought about whether it was possible in any way for someone to be upset about my next statement, I would never say anything. Same is true for anybody. So the cost of PC is very high - a total lack of communication.

For example, nobody could ever find their sweetie if they can't say anything that would ever upset anybody for anything the least little bit forward might offend somebody (unless you assume that the only PC way to find somebody is on a dating app or website.)

That being said, common decency means you do predict someone will get upset if you say something that would upset most people that match the type of the person you are talking to.

For example, I would expect any of the following is likely to get someone upset:

I'm going to grab your p****.
(any racial slur of the race of the person you're talking to)
Only a person incapable of thought could say what you just said.

You get the idea. So yeah, there is some predicting that the person will be upset, and clearly I try to avoid them, although here in the Water Cooler where we are exchanging differing opinions, some people are going to be offended by ideas, which is too bad. I hope there are no snowflakes in the Water Cooler as the third statement (or some facsimile) has been uttered to me, probably a few times, so it's not unlikely that others will be similarly addressed. But the Water Cooler is a special animal, out in the normal world, I would hope to try not to offend anybody on purpose.

[cherdano]

Unsurprisingly, what Obama said is not what Jon claimed he said, and the video was misleadingly edited.
Here is the full exchange:
http://www.mediaite....grants-to-vote/

As anyone who knows Jon's posting record in the watercooler going quite a while back (I think he has made the only post I ever asked a moderator to remove, ok other than obvious spam), I knew that he is a despicable person. But I didn't realise he is so gullible as well.

[PassedOut]

 hrothgar, on 2016-November-14, 16:24, said:

http://www.snopes.co...aliens-to-vote/

"Many of the outrage posts were written around a video in which the majority of the president's response was edited out to give the misleading impression that Obama was urging undocumented immigrants to vote illegally"

Watch the full interview.

https://www.youtube....h?v=oLLt-a6dI_0

This is a prime example of the unethical editing behavior of the main-stream media. Hard to believe that folks actually fall for this stuff.

Rule of the thumb: If it seems preposterous, it probably is.