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@n8nrgim
I would say a half of conservatives want another pick than trump. Plus a lot who support him in the primary r prob only doing it as a strategy and not actually their first pick. Another quarter think he sucks as a person but effective at the job and they agree on the issues. Another quarter think he can do no wrong and r brainwashed. Does this sound about right to you?
Something like that. I recognize that not everyone who voted for Trump is a MAGA lunatic but as I argued before, unless you are an bigot, fascist, or just want to see the country burn there really isn't a reasonable case to be made for Trump. This is why the political right engages so heavily in misrepresenting and then demonizing the left, not to mention the false equivalences. Politics is a very complex field, you don't have to be alunatic to fall for such tactics when they are employed so fiercely and repetitively.
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@Greyparrot
And attacks everyone who is by calling them deranged...I don't personally attack you
Note the bold.
What's deranged is presenting hyperbole as reality. Trump was a weak president in 2016 and will be again a weak president.
In his first term he surrounded himself with people who would constantly reign him in. Do you seriously think he will do that again?
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@IwantRooseveltagain
You don’t hate Trump. You have never been critical of him.
And attacks everyone who is by calling them deranged...
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@n8nrgim
You have a tendency in these trump bashing threads to overlook that a lot of his supporters largely agree with him on substantive conservative issues.
And those conservatives could support plenty of other sane candidates who share their views, yet they overwhelmingly break for Trump.
I think that "I care about policy" narrative is mostly bullshit. These are largely the same people who supported impeaching Bill Clinton because he lied about a blow job and spent the past 20 years preaching to us about how character matters. Now all of a sudden character is not really important, it's all about policy? Please.
But setting that aside, this thread is about confronting a very simple fact; Trump does not have any respect for our constitution and will do everything he will be allowed to get away with to destroy our democracy. That's not hyperbole, he's already tried and history has already shown is what it looks like when someone like him is able to play out their intentions.
To be honest, I'm not sure which is worse; those who love Trump and everything he stands for or those who recognize how terrible he is and still make excuses to justify voting for him. Even if you really do care about policy, what policy is worth tanking the constitution over? At least those who love Trump have deluded themselves to the point where they might really genuinely believe he's not the political monster he is. Those who see his terribleness have no excuse at all, that to me seems even more dishonest.
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@YouFound_Lxam
To believe God is not subject to the laws of logic is to believe that God can exist and not exist at the same time in the same sense.No. He exists, but not in our natural world. He can affect our natural world, but can't exist in it, because the universe is finite, and God is infinite.
This does not address the problem.
First I didn't say he did exist and not exist, I said he could, as in it's within his capabilities.
Second, existence isn't limited to the natural world.
Third, you are contradicting yourself. You say he can't exist within the natural world because he's infinite and the natural world is finite. In other words, he can't exist in the natural world because that would be a logical contradiction.
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@ILikePie5
The answer is No.
Ok, so he's not a fascist/authoritarian.
There are so many things I could bring up here, but for the sake of simplicity let's just focus in on this one small example; the attack of Paul Pelosi.
Here was Trump bringing this up at his rally just 3 days ago; "...by the way she's obviously got a wall around her house, obviously in that case it didn't work very well [crowd bursts into laughter]"
So here are some simple questions for you
A) Do you think it's appropriate to joke about your political opponents being physically attacked by one of your supporters?
B) Do you acknowledge that this is a tactic used by nearly every fascist throughout history?
C) If not an attempt to further condition your supporters into thinking political violence is acceptable, please explain what this was.
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@n8nrgim
so would you agree with the conclusion that half the country is either stupid, ignorant, or engaging in cognitive dissonance? if there's more to that half of the population, how would you describe the rest of trump supporters?
I would say that's most Trump supporters. I would love for one to come inn here and prove that wrong but unfortunately every interaction I Jane with one only further validates this.
An alternative way to explain it would be to say it's not a matter of them being ignorant or psychologically taken advantage of but to say they just have a different value system. Maybe they really don't care about democracy and the rule of law, maybe they really do prefer something closer to Russia, maybe they really don't care about character, or leadership, or decorum, or integrity, etc. The problem is that when pressed they clearly don't think this way as those are the very things they try to attack alt the left. These aren't genuine arguments, they're cover.
i would think there are some conservatives who dont like voting for democrats, and trump is the one standing out to throw their support behind. wouldn't quite call that cognitive dissonance, as long as they are wiilling to admit trump is a terrible person. there are plenty of trumpsters who vote for him despite acknowledging that he sucks.
Yeah but I call BS on that. There isn't a single thing they can say about Biden, Clinton, or anyone else on the left that Trump isn't guilty of but worse. They attacked Obama for dividing the country, Trump's entire political career is built on dividing us. They attacked Clinton for being dishonest, Trump told over 30k lies in his 4 year term. They attacked Biden for cognitive decline, Trump thinks he ran against Obama and beat him in 2016. If they really cared about the issues they say they care about they wouldn't be voting for Trump.
I would say the other piece of this is that it's no coincidence that support for Trump grows the more rural we get. To most Trump supporters, politics is a team sport so they're just rooting for the home town. Out there in middle of nowhere America they just don't have anything else to do, so politics is their entertainment. It's a cultural thing, so I think that accounts for much of this as well.
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@Greyparrot
So you believe Russia liberating the Donbas is an actual threat to the USA? You don't think that narrative was a lie to the American people to get them to cough up hundreds of billions of dollars to pay the military elites?Not surprised. Worked for Bush in Iraq. All "Fascism 101" as you put it.
Fascism is at it's core, a set of behaviors designed to erode a representative government and replace it with a strongman leader. Bush's war in Iraq accomplished the exact opposite and included none of the recognizable behaviors. And liberating the Donbas? WTF?
You can't be this ignorant about what fascism is.
You should really take a moment and read that Politico article. It makes a very compelling case as to exactly why Trump (or anyone) can't be completely in power in America under any circumstance.
I did read it, the author is wrong.
Essentially, the argument is that Trump can't destroy or democracy or rule of law because we have many institutions that play a large role in our government and those institutions would never allow it. The problem is that our institutions are only as good as the people running them, and Trump has figured this out.
As I already explained, a first term Trump put people in high positions who believed in the constitution. People like John Kelly, Jeff Sessions, John Bolton, etc. That's because back in those days, we all used to agree on the importance of democracy and the rule of law so Trump was forced to run and subsequently act as someone who would protect them. Fast forward 5 years, and Trump has managed to shift the Overton window so far that the pressure on him to do the same has gone completely out the window.
Trump will no longer allow anyone who would dare say "you can't do that Mr. President" to keep their job. If he wants to use the justice department to jail anyone who speaks out against him and they say no, he'll just fire them and replace them with someone who will. If he wants to use the military to enforce martial law (something he has actually talked about), same thing. The constitution will go out the window, and what's our defense against that? A judge writing a strongly worded order? He'll just declare the judge illegitimate and fire anyone who disagrees with him. A republican Congress willing to impeach and convict him? Yeah, ok.
In years past including 2018 when this article was written, this would have been unthinkable. But in classic fascist form, Trump has made it very thinkable. The difference now is that he used age old tried and true tactics to radicalize a large portion of the electorate. If you want to destroy democracy how do you do it? By convincing the people it's already destroyed. Stealing an election is ok now because they stole yours. If you want to destroy the rule of law how do you do it? By convincing the people it's already destroyed. It's ok now to jail your political opponents because they jailed yours.
When Trump makes these ridiculous claims he's not doing so in food faith, the point here is to convince those who are susseptible (like yourself) that there's nothing here worth saving so they'll back you up as you carry out your heist.
Because he's been so successful in convincing so many people out there of these things, he will have the backup that someone like Nixon didn't have.
So do I think this will work? No, not really. But it absolutely could, and it will happen if we allow him. And one thing is clear, there are way more people out there ready and willing to back it up than there were in 2018.
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@n8nrgim
do you think there are reasonable trump supporters out there? can't half the country be crazy? or they are reasonable despite the fact they support trump? or maybe like nazi germany moved a whole country off the cliff, trump has led half the country off the cliff?how would you characterize all this?
I think the vast majority of Trump's support is psychological and personal. Trump is the worst kind of person in every way a politician could be, from ignorance, to petulance, to his narcissism, to bigotry, etc. And yet he has also been sold to the public for years as this successful genius businessman. So unlike any other candidate, his pre built image acted as a shield - 'he couldn't possibly be that ignorant, he's a genius!'.
So when he says something stupid like "I'm just gana bomb the shit out of Isis", or "Why is nuclear proliferation a bad thing?" not only does his shield insulate him from criticism, but more importantly he validates every stupid, bigoted, childish person out there. In him they see themselves and in so doing he gave them permission to be the childish ignoramuses they are. For that they will stand by him no matter what.
To answer your first question, I think there may be reasonable people who support Trump but I don't think they're applying their reasoning to politics. This is why I started this thread, the only way you can be reasonable and support Trump is to own the things he does and own what he is trying to accomplish. They aren't willing to do that, it's cognitive dissonance on steroids.
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@Greyparrot
Lie to the people repeatedly to convince them that they are under assault, then sell yourself as their protector.Biden sure turned a pretty penny doing that in Ukraine for the last decade, but simply doing that doesn't make him a "fascist"
You can't possibly think you just made a legitimate point.
Biden didn't lie to the people telling them they were under assault. To the extent he warned them of anything it was Russian aggression, and judging by the people sitting at home with their newborns who had missiles fired into their living rooms it appears any warnings there were well founded.
Biden also didn't sell himself to them in an attempt to gain power. He's not a Ukrainian politician, that's kind of the point of fascism.
To think that your example, even if there was anything legitimate about it is anything resembling what we're talking about when we talk about fascism and authoritarianism is either ignorant on a scale that would be impressive for a middle schooler or you're just being brazenly dishonest. I tend to think it's the latter because that's what it looks like trying to defend the indefensible.
In fact, I am pretty sure there's no such thing as an actual fascist alive today.
I'm really curious as to why you think an opinion piece written 5 years ago arguing fascism can't happen in the US is relevant to the point you're trying to make.
Regardless, whether there are any fascists in power around the world is irrelevant to whether Donald Trump meets the basic qualifications. This is yet another red herring.
Again, Trump already showed how useless he was even with a controlled Congress. Your attempt to spin fantasy tales about a Trump that never was and never will be is pure entertainment for this forum, but shouldn't be taken seriously.
First of all, I'm not arguing he will take power and accomplish everything he clearly wants to. This is yet another distraction. I'm arguing that he embodies what fascism is all about and asking the people who would even consider voting for him whether they realize that.
But to your point, Trump may be incompetent but unlike in 2017 he's not alone anymore, he's learned his lesson. In 2016 he knew nothing about government or the world so he surrounded himself with people who had experience in government (aka establishment figures). These are the people who would tell him 'no, that's not how government, the constitution, or the law works'.
What Trump has figured out is that the law, constitution, etc. are just pieces of paper. The only thing that was really stopping him were the people around him, so he won't be making that mistake again. This time he will only hire people who will pledge their loyalty not to the constitution, but to him personally. The second time around will be a completely different ballgame.
Chill with the Ad-homs bro
It wasn't an ad hom, your words that you wrote and posted heavily implied that you see Trump's actions as an attempt to protect his supporters, playing into the very narrative he pushes daily telling them they are under assault and he is their protector. That's fascism 101 and it's also complete nonsense, you couldn't have demonstrated it's effectiveness more if you tried.
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@Greyparrot
I am not a partisan hack for either party
Then why can't you answer a simple yes or no question with a simple yes or no? Again, it's not a trick question and it's not based on any set of premises. You either believe Trump is a fascist or you don't. The fact that you continue to dodge this question coupled with the fact that you repeatedly call anyone here who criticizes him of TDS while criticizing everything Biden does shows us very clearly what side you are a partisan hack for.
You said this:First is the fact that he managed to talk an entire nation out of their values..then you said this:Nothing I have said here remotely presumes thisI think that's all we need to see here.
As usual, you aren't paying attention. You're talking about the result, I'm talking about the intention.
The first quote was my assessment of what Hitler accomplished (past tense), you then applied that to Trump as if I said he accomplished (past tense) the same thing (I didn't), then took that false interpretation of my point and used that as an excuse to not answer the question (because of false premises) that my question wasn't even based on.
The comparison of Hitler to Trump is not about accomplishments, it's about intentions. Trump may yet succeed at "changing the country's values" but he hasn't done that yet. He has changed the republican party's values, but that's not the same thing.
It's one thing to use authority to destroy your personal political enemies and quite another thing to use authority to protect the people who elected you.
Fascism 101: Lie to the people repeatedly to convince them that they are under assault, then sell yourself as their protector.
You are a perfect example of why fascism works.
No, it's their fault that the country is so broken that the people will elect anyone that isn't lockstep with the status quo.
The fact that the people are so ignorant of how the world works and of history that we would elect a moron and a fascist like Trump is no one's fault but ours.
You just inserted your cutesie word "fascist" as a joke of course, since there isn't a person on the planet that can check all the hundreds of boxes that defines it.
Fascism doesn't have hundreds of check boxes nor does anyone need to check every single one of them to qualify.
This is a silly attempt to argue Trump is not a fascist by arguing there's no such thing as fascists. If that's what you are resorting to it should really make you think.
While the Eric Adams administration will get off with a warning for daring to step out of line with the status quo, but then publicly apologizing to the overlords in D.C.. Some mayor you got there.
Another predictable whataboutism.
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@SethBrown
Okay and given there is free-will in the universe, would he be evil if he made good from bad? You have a situation that happened without you & yet you try to make it better.
He's omnipresent, there is no situation that happens without him.
You miss the point yet again, the problem is that that he made good from bad, the problem is that there was bad there in the first place.
He also created a world where many great things happen a day
So what? We're not disagreeing on whether God (if he were to exist) is good at all, we're disagreeing on whether he's all good. There is a big difference between those two things.
Did you give your toddler free-will? Can you make good from your toddler doing something bad? It’s a dis analogy
It's not a disalalogy. Again, controlling someone's mind and/or decision making is not the same thing as limiting ones capabilities. Throwing someone in prison stops one from being able to carry out a terrorist attack, it does not remove their free will.
The toddler analogy is perfectly reasonable here. Imagine if I allowed my toddler to cross the street by themself in heavy traffic and they died as a result, then I tried to justify my decision on the basis that what I did was good because I have them free will. Any individual with an IQ above room temperature would instantly recognize the absurdity of that defense. Yet this is the same defense theists use to justify why God allows evil in the world. 'God loves us so much that he gave us the gift of being able to slaughter each other'. You can't possibly tell me that makes sense.
I'm curious, do you believe in heaven, and if so, do you believe we get to have free will there?I don’t think you will, the main difference is all the bad thoughts are removed, god won’t do that in this world since he wants us to have the choice to be separated from him
I'm taking this to mean there is no free will in heaven, is that what you are saying?
And where do you get the notion he chooses the universe? He created people & let the system run, he didn’t choose it, they did since there is free-will.
Let me try this again.
If he is omnipotent then nothing is beyond his choice. You cannot therefore argue under any circumstance that he is not ultimately in control of anything that happens regardless of his involvement.
If he is omnicient then he knows everything that will happen. He doesn't have the ability to find out what will happen because that by definition would l make him not omnicient.
So let's put these two things together. God is the creator of the universe. The possibilities here are endless so we'll just simplify this to Universe A and Universe B.
In Universe A, you are a theist.
In universe B, you are an atheist.
Because God is omnicient, it is not possible for him to have created the universe without knowing whether it would turn out to be Universe A or Universe B.
Because God is omnipotent, he could have chosen either.
God therefore had the choice between A and B, and he chose A.
Because God chose A (where you are a theist), God therefore made that choice for you along with every other choice you think you have made.
Therefore you do not have free will, everything that will happen was already foreseen by God and this is the universe he chose to create.
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@Greyparrot
So to simplify; No, you will not answer the question.
You argue as if you cannot answer it because the premises are wrong or should not be accepted, yet the premises have nothing to do with the question itself.
You either believe he is a fascist or you do not, this isn’t a trick question and it isn’t complicated. But you cannot answer it because you know it would make you look silly so instead you employ tired old tactics.
Step 1: Find something to paint a false equivalence
Step 2: Two wrongs make a right
This was so obvious that I pre-empted it in the OP where I specifically said to save your whataboutisms. Yet here we are.
Well you are making quite a few presumptions here,1) That American values changed because of Trump
Nothing I have said here remotely presumes this. The values of the country at large is irrelevant to whether Trump is a fascist/authoritarian.
Trump has no redeeming qualities that would elevate him above those foibles
Again, irrelevant to whether he is a fascist/authoritarian
We haven't had an equal application of the law for decades now. The age of rules for thee but not for me started LONG before Trump. When the executive branch has so much power to arbitrarily not enforce laws when convenient and enforce archaic laws when it is also convenient, the "rule of law" argument goes where it belongs: into the shitcan.
There has always been unfairness within our system of justice, that will be the case so long as we have human beings in charge of it. But a lack of perfection =/= fascism. This is a silly argument.
if you want to blame something for Trump, blame all his predecessors in both parties for failing the "rule of law"
So it's Bush and Obama's fault Trump's is a fascist. Great argument.
The current shitshow circus of jailing a political opponent makes such a question a running joke.
Trump will be convicted because he is blatantly obviously guilty of committing very serious crimes. That's how the rule of law works. This is really basic stuff.
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@Greyparrot
Wanna talk about some more big lies? we can start in Ukraine if you want.
Or you could just stick to the topic of this thread and answer the question.
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@Greyparrot
The thing about the Hitler reference is that there are two primary qualities about him that we have all learned to despise or at the very least reject;
First is the fact that he managed to talk an entire nation out of their values with his skill of public manipulation - step by step priming them to follow him off the moral and ethical cliff.
The second is his grotesque views and disregard for any flavor of human life he didn't see as worthy and what he was willing to carry out against them.
Both of these are historically notable. But anytime someone uses his name to point out the remarkable similarities regarding the first quality, it has become a thoughtless retort to reject it by pretending we're talking about the second.
The second is not what we're talking about. When it comes to the first, Trump may not be as skilled as Hitler, but he absolutely has followed his model whether it's on purpose or whether it's because they're so similar in that regard. That is absolutely notable and worthy of attention.
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@Greyparrot
Is this the new MSM narrative? that Trump is literally Hitler?
No one said Trump is literally Hitler, that's just a strawman set up to distract from the fact that people like you will not address the question honestly.
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The big headlines of the current news cycle include Trump calling his political advasaries vermin (echoing Hitler and Mussolini), and his behind the scenes plan to rid the government of all civil servants and replace them with loyalists who will do whatever he wants.
This comes in the wake of Trump mocking the brutal attack on the husband of a political rival Trump has rhetorically attacked many times before, calling for the execution of a top general over charges of not obeying his presidential will, and encouraging police to shoot shoplifters on the spot, not to mention January 6th. There is of course, so much more I could mention but I'd be here all day.
My question is to anyone who would even consider voting for Trump, regardless of whether it's for Trump or against Biden (or whoever became the democratic nominee)...
Do you believe Trump is a fascist and/or an authoritarian? Yes or No?
This is not a Trump vs Biden thread so please save your whataboutisms. This is a very simple question, you either see this, or on some level you believe Trump actually cares about things like democracy, the rule of law, the strength of US institutions, etc. Which is it? And if not, perhaps you can enlighten the rest of us as to how his words/actions are being so badly taken out of context. But if you're going to go that route, please answer the question first.
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@sadolite
There is no greater good, there is what is good for some and isn't for others.
Ok, let's try a hypothetical. Imagine I contract a disease that is 100x more contagious than COVID and had a 100% death rate. Essentially, me leaving my house would likely result in the analiation of the entire human race.
Do you believe I should be allowed to leave, or do you support violating my freedom in the name of the "greater good" you don't believe is real?
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@SethBrown
Do you think he cant bring good from someone dying from non-natural causes?
Of course he can bring good out of bad, he could have also brought that good without the bad but he chose not to. He chose the bad. Choosing bad is not good. This is really simple stuff.
How is he bad if he allows someone to do bad, yet tells them not to?
He's not a substitute teacher, he's the all powerful creator of the universe. When you are all powerful you don't just tell people not to do things and shrug your shoulders when they do. If God wanted different he would have it. Instead he chooses this. He chooses a world where tragedy occurs every single day. That's not an all loving being.
What's the point of allowing free-will then not allowing someone to do even a smidge of something bad? If god stopped us from doing all bad things, then we would all just be robots following him pretty munch
Again, if your toddler is roaming free throughout the living room and you see a knife on the table do you take it or leave it there in the name of free will?
You continue to pretend that the ability to choose one's own actions and the capability to carry out a tragedy are tied together, they're not. Taking away the kife doesn't stop the toddler from making their own choices, it just removes a threat to their safety. God could have easily created a world with that idea in mind where one person's free will wasn't a literal threat to the life and safety of everyone around them. He chose not to create that world.
I'm curious, do you believe in heaven, and if so, do you believe we get to have free will there?
Do you think god determined where people would end up? No, he created them & they end up where they end up, he didnt choose the outcome, they did.
Actually, this is sightly off the topic but if you believe God is omnipotent and omnicient, it is not logically possible for us to have free will.
If he is omnipotent then there is no outcome that would have been beyond his control. If he is omnicient then there is no outcome in which he wasn't fully aware would be the case as he made his decision. So when he created this universe he had plenty of other options, he could have chosen a universe where I would end up a theist and you the atheist or even a universe in which we would never have been born. But instead this is the universe he created and he did so knowing full well how it would turn out. He made this choice, that's not free will.
He created the possibility for good & the possibility for bad.
Exactly, which directly contradicts that he's all good.
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@SethBrown
What simple tweak could he do?
Allow everyone to die of old age.
Well you completely ignored my response, he could allow it to happen & make good out of it in his omnipotence.
The claim is that he's all loving. If he's choosing to allow bad then that definitionally refutes that claim.
As far as the charge that I'm ignoring your response, let's look at a few specific things you said...
Now similarly, I think god must allow people to make their own choices to be good, he must allow them free-will.
Free will and allowing evil are not tied together. That was the point of my toddler analogy. We can be evil all we want, being able to actualize tragedy is a power chose to give to us, which directly contradicts the idea that he's all good.
Now some of god's creatures went wrong in this exercise of freedom
For something to go wrong is a direct contradiction to the claim that he is all powerful and omnicient.
But God can still make great things from bad things
He can also just make good things, but he chooses to use the bad things to do it.
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@sadolite
How mind control works.
Do you believe, in a society with millions of other people, that there is such a thing as a "greater good"? If so, what part of pointing it out qualifies as mind control?
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@SethBrown
Now #2 isnt impossible to do, but there are some "bad" things god must allow to happen to be good, for example he must permit people to die of old age eventually.
Imagine how much evil the world would be rid of with this one simple tweak, yet God chose not to create this world. I would ask why, but the answer is irrelevant because God is all powerful so there is nothing that could have forced his hand. This was a willing choice. That alone refutes that God is all loving.
Now similarly, I think god must allow people to make their own choices to be good, he must allow them free-will.
He doesn't have to remove our free will to ensure we are protected from tragedy. If my toddler is running around the living room and I see a knife on the table, I'm not going to pretend I'm somehow interfering with their free will by removing it.
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@SethBrown
It doesn’t appear as if bad things causing good things is contradictory, for example when someone gets a shot, that shot causes pain, which is bad to cause, but it’s the means to a good, the good being the medicine that is delivered.
Except that the shot doesn't need to be painful.
There is no example of bad being necessary or even beneficial that an all powerful god could not get around. Bad leads to good because that's how we are designed to react to it, if we along with the universe were designed differently that wouldn't be the case.
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@Public-Choice
So... I am seeing a soecisl pleading case developing here. You are quick to trust the PA government as an unbiased factual authority without questioning where they get their data from, but are questioning anf distrustful to an audit that plainly lists their sources.Why does one side have to prove their claims but not the other?
It's not special pleading. The PA government isn't "making a claim", they're reporting on the vote totals. The same way that every government has reported on every vote total since the county's inception. Yet we've never needed to scrutinize every ballot before, only now because people like yourself are looking for conspiracy.
I do trust the PA government more that Verity. Because governments, just like every other kind of organization, are made up of people, and those people have real responsibilities and face actual accountability for getting things like this wrong. Verity does not have to deal with any of that. If they're wrong then they're wrong, so what?
But still, that's not even what's at issue here. Once again, the burden of proof is not the same here. Verity is alleging something inescapably nefarious. That requires them to show their work. They haven't done that, at least not to anyone who hasn't sent them their personal information. That gives me reason enough to ignore them. You continue to pretend it's host over person's claim vs another. That's not how this works.
And yet again, I've explained to you why their numbers don't even match their own claims. You have yet to explain what I'm getting wrong so it appears you don't understand it either. You find them trustworthy because they are telling you what you want to hear.
You switched one source for another without putting in any effort to justify why YOUR source has the data. This isn't "explaining" anything. It is denialism.
Clearly you haven't paid attention to a word I said here. I'm not telling you their source is wrong, I'm telling you the numbers they provided match to the PA results almost exactly, giving us reason to doubt that they're reporting what they said they reported. That's doesn't mean they're wrong, it means their claim is unclear. Again, if you are making the claim the burden is on you to back it up. Until they do that I'm really not interested in what they have to say. That's not denialism, it's basic critical thinking.
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@Public-Choice
They tell us... in the abstract..."After all counties closed the election in SURE, only 6,914,556 voters were credited with participation in the 2020 General Election. This reveals a voter deficit of 121,240."They get their data from SURE itself.
I don't care what they tell us, these are verifiable claims that they made after allegedly verifying the numbers themselves. So if they are going to allege that the numbers are so egregiously off to the point where only nefarious intentions could explain it, they have placed a very high burden of proof on themselves to show their receipts to the general public. A burden they seem to not care about taking seriously, therefore the correct response for any rational observer is to not take their claims seriously, so I don't. The question I have is; why do you?
Moreover, I've already explained why their numbers do not tell the story they are telling. Do you have anything to say about that? Is there something I am misunderstanding? Do tell.
No. That still doesn't explain the discrepancy of voters. We don't know if they removed the discarded voters with the ballots or not.
What discrepancy?
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@Public-Choice
The website linked is here:The numbers were: 4,216,030 in-person ballots + 2,637,065 mail-in ballots +126,573 provisional ballots, which totals... 6,979,668 votes.But the official number from the PA website is 76.5% of 9,090,962 ehich equals: 6,954,586 voters, or a deficit, FROM PA'S OWN FUCKING STATS ofA DEFICIT OF 25,082 VOTERS.Not 90,000 but still enough to warrant an audit.
Read your own sources:
Provisional ballots cast for the 2020 general election, as reported by counties. This figure includes those counted (97,982), partially counted (7,474) and rejected (21,117).
There's your deficit.
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@Public-Choice
if you didn't open up the report yourself, how do you know if they didn't include write-ins?
As I already explained, the number they gave as representing the total ballots cast matches up almost exactly to the total for the three candidates whose names were on the ballot (6,914,556 vs 6,915,283). So if they were including write ins and those who left the top of the ticket blank that number would have been higher, probably closer to about 6,954,485 - which is almost exactly the actual total number of ballots cast.
But as I said before, I haven't seen their report and it appears you haven't either so it seems neither of us really know where they're getting any of their information from. The difference is that I'm not the one posting their findings and implying to the rest of us that we should be concerned about what they found. I have yet to see anything that warrants taking their claims seriously.
Therefore the claim that there were more ballots cast than eligible voters is ludicrously falseWho claimed this? I didn't and neither did my source.
Here is what you said at the end of post 76:
In the 2020 election, there were 90,000 more ballots than eligible voters in PA according to the SURE system. This is a fact.
It may not have been what you meant but it is certainly what you said. The language here is not complicated. A ballot is a piece of paper. A voter is a person who turned in that piece of paper. An eligible voter would be a person who is registered. So your claim was that there were 90,000 more pieces of paper containing a vote than people who were registered, but both of these numbers is easily verifiable and it's false.
Perhaps you meant something else?
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@Greyparrot
That post seems to imply you don't really understand the difference between the SURE system and registered voters.
The SURE system itself is irrelevant to accuracy of the claim being made.
We know how many people were eligible/registered to vote in PA (9 million).
We know how many ballots were cast in PA (7 million).
9 million > 7 million. Therefore the claim that there were more ballots cast than eligible voters is ludicrously false, hence why I asked for him to clarify his statement. If you understand it feel free to enlighten me.
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@Public-Choice
In the 2020 election, there were 90,000 more ballots than eligible voters in PA according to the SURE system. This is a fact.
About 7 million people voted in PA, meanwhile over 9 million people were registered. What on earth are you talking about?
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@Athias
How can an "observable quality of existence" NOT EXIST?
Because it doesn't meet the definition of the word.
To exist is to "have being". Qualities don't have being, they are observations of things that have being.
Which came first, the "mind" or the "self"?
In this context those two words synonymous.
Is it not worth considering that God and logic are concurrent?
I suppose you could say that, but my position is that it's not God that is necessarily concurrent with logic but rather existence itself. God is therefore concurrent not because he is God but because he (allegedly) exists.
This means it is possible for something to exist without being subject to logicYes.
See my previous post (#70)
If you're going to argue that logic is "an observable quality of existence" then why is it not then not apropos to argue that logic is an observable quality of God?
Again, it is an observable quality of God because he (allegedly) exists.
You can conceptually have logic without God, you cannot conceptually have God without logic.
2+2=4 was true long before humans came along.No, it wasn't. The numbers "two" and "four" are merely abstract assignments.
You're talking about the words, I'm talking about the essence of what those words are describing. Long before life existed on earth there were two rocks on some hill and two rocks on another, those rocks still totaled 4 even if there were no humans around to recognize it.
What are the masses, weights, volumes, and densities of the numbers "two" and "four"?
They don't have weights or volumes. This is a category error, one which I know you understand full well. Why ask me such a silly question?
The silly semantic point is to argue in this context that there's a distinction between being "subject to" the laws of physics and math, and being "controlled."
There is a distinction, and it's a very big one here in this conversation. The phrase "subject to" simply means in accordance with, that can very easily be applied and is often applied to mean "along the lines of [something that has no agency]".
Meanwhile "controlled" is used to describe a state where a thinking agent is actively involved in the events of something and actively making decisions as to what happens. Because of this, the word carries with it a clear emotional connotation because of how it has always been applied. That connotation is therefore being smuggled in when used towards something with no agency.
This is a common tactic in theistic arguments, but it's obvious why. This is what one has to resort to when their position is ultimately without rational support.
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@Greyparrot
Which would also mean he would be too morally unfit to not take advantage of the existing loopholes.You wanted a reason why anyone should care? There it is.
I ignored the loopholes comment because it had nothing to do with our conversation and you never even explained what loopholes you were talking about. Please elaborate, what ballots would citizen or even a third term seeking president Trump be counting?
Also: this is the evidence you wanted about the FBI?
No, I asked for evidence that Google was operating out of fear of government retribution for not doing their biding as you insinuated.
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@Public-Choice
They're not missing voters, they're ballots that were cast without voting for one of the three major candidates.On the 2020 election, only 3 candidates were on the ballot. Trump, Biden, amd Jorgensen:So you are factually wrong on that.
You clearly didn't understand anything I pointed out.
Yes, there were only 3 main presidential candidates whose names appeared on the ballot, that's why they're the only 3 who have official vote tallies displayed. What's not displayed are the potentially thousands of candidates whose names were written in or ballots who left the presidential ticket blank.
There's plenty of true, alarming stuff the media doesn't report on
The argument was not 'if the media doesn't report on it it didn't happen'.
The argument was 'in a situation where there is much national controversy (like election conspiracy theories), and where something so easily verifiable is so blatantly off, people will want to know what's going on, which will generate interest, which will entice journalists to look into it. And if they find something noteworthy, then the media would report on it.
But just to add insult to injury, the page from Verity Vote themselves on the study states:"This includes ballots with votes for one of the three major presidential candidates, all write-in votes, all over-votes, all under-votes (as reported by the 67 counties), and the 71K late mail ballots. After all counties closed the election in SURE, only 6,914,556 voters were credited with participation in the 2020 General Election. This reveals a voter deficit of 121,240."link:So they included all write-in ballots anyways.
This is why I posted the actual numbers and gave you the links. The number they provided does not in fact account for write in ballots and undervotes. How do we know this? Because we can add them up ourselves. It's public information. I would tell you to Google it but I already put the information on your lap.
I did try to look into how exactly they came to their numbers but couldn't because they don't provide them. There is a link on their page to download their report but when you click it it just asks for your email address. No thanks, you don't need my email address to show me your work. If this were a serious report put out by people who genuinely cared about securing our elections for the good of the public they wouldn't make people jump through hoops to see what they've uncovered.
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@Greyparrot
My insinuation was that Penn election officials objectively screwed up and election protocols are inadequate, and a google search won't likely turn up results on page one due to fears of government retribution.
What kind of retribution does Google fear exactly? And why do you suppose no one from Google has came out to talk about this?
There have been stories for over 2 years about how Trump was going to exploit the same loopholes in the next election, aggressively exploiting the legal practice of the harvesting and the counting of ballots before the envelopes were verified, and yet there still is no discussion allowed on most platforms.
The discussion is allowed, the spread of dangerous and blatantly false information is what most platforms are rightly combatting.
Fears of what Trump might do is an entirely different subject from baseless claims about what happened in 2020.
For someone who seems to be viscerally anti-Trump, you are surely flippant in the consequences of tossing it all into a bin of "deplorable conspiracies..."
I believe in applying basic logic and critical thinking. If you have evidence to support your claims then provide it. If all you have are paranoia driven theories I really don't care to hear what you have to say.
And my anti-Trumpness has nothing to do with visceral hatred. Trump has demonstrated over and over again, clearer than any politician of our generation and probably in our country's history how unfit he is to be president. Recognizing this basic reality is not about emotions, it's about common sense. Anyone who cannot see it is a moron.
And since Trump is currently leading in 5 of the 6 battleground states, do you really want to take that chance just because your FBI overlords tell you to STFU about the holes in the system?
No one is 'taking any chances' here on anything and the FBI are no one's "overlords". Try again.
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@YouFound_Lxam
Let's start at the beginning. Do you believe God is subject to the laws of logic?No. He is not subject to anything.
We can stop the conversation here.
To believe God is not subject to the laws of logic is to believe that God can exist and not exist at the same time in the same sense. It is to believe he can be what he is and be what he is not. It is to say we can have God and also have no God. He can do all of these things because logic is not a limitation for him. And if you believe he can do all of those things, then logic itself is not a limitation for what you believe, because it is definitionally impossible to logically justify believing that.
If you cannot logically justify your beliefs, or worse, claim your beliefs are beyond logic then this conversation is pointless. You believe what you believe because you want to believe it. Next time, stop pretending and just start there.
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@Greyparrot
Facebook already got busted complying with FBI censorship rules about the Laptop
This is MAGA speak. In English, it means Facebook decided to work with the FBI to minimize the amount of misinformation was being spread around their platform, which was a perfectly reasonable response in the wake of 2016
And you shouldn't use the word conspiracy when referring to Jan 6 or this if there's evidence.
Not talking about January 6th nor am I talking about 2 people, I'm responding to your absurd insinuation that thousands of election workers all across the country, the country's biggest companies and multiple government institutions (including during the Trump administration) are all in on some plot to steal elections.
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@Public-Choice
You think 90,000 VERIFIED MISSING voters from the actual ballot reporting software used in PA is no big deal...
No, I already explained this. They're not missing voters, they're ballots that were cast without voting for one of the three major candidates. This is something we see in every state in every election. There is nothing at all suspicious about this unless you can explain what the rest of us are missing.
But we should ignore it because mainstream networks aren't reporting it?
I'm pointing out that if something so easily verifiable was so egregiously off it would have gained much more attention that being relegated to the dark corners of the internet.
I am not assuming Trump won. I am simply reporting the fact that the ballots are higher by 90,000 than the actual voters. This is a fact.
Let's for the sake of argument say you're correct. Now what? Why should anyone reading this thread care about that "fact"?
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@Greyparrot
Firstly, find out how it happened, why it happened, and how to keep it from happening again?
Agreed. Note that none of this had to do with the notion that Trump somehow won.
...rather than the current fashion of name calling, censorship, intimidation, and inciting violence?
The violence being incited here is overwhelmingly on the political right.
Name calling... Yeah, welcome to political discourse in 2023. Note that the worst name caller in American politics by far is Donald Trump - the very guy leading the charge on this issue.
Censorship? I believe you mean private companies deciding they don't want their platforms being used to spread misinformation, which the "free market" party somehow seems to be against.
I guarantee, considering how Google handles all searches related to the 2020 election, that Google's algorithm will bury the actual articles on around page 20 if at all due to concerns of pissing off the FBI and those who run the FBI.
Yep, it's all a grand conspiracy involving thousands of election workers all across the country, the country's biggest private for profit companies and our government institutions, including those who worked under the Trump administration. Looks like Trump's die hard base are the only people in the country not in on it.
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@Greyparrot
How is this typical Adhom troll snippet proving where the missing SURE data is?Short answer: It doesn't.
Let's just assume for the sake of argument that there is in fact data missing here. Now what? What can we conclude from this?
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@Public-Choice
Can you provide a source showing this? From what O understand all ballots in SURE, not just the big three, were counted, and among all ballots, there is a shortage of voters to votes.
Sure. First let's look at the full statement from Verity (your sources source):
For the 2020 General Election, Pennsylvania requires a count of 7,035,796 ballots to explain their election results. This includes ballots with votes for one of the three major presidential candidates, all write-in votes, all over-votes, all under-votes (as reported by the 67 counties), and the 71K late mail ballots. After all counties closed the election in SURE, only 6,914,556 voters were credited with participation in the 2020 General Election. This reveals a voter deficit of 121,240.
So the first thing to look at here is what exactly do these numbers represent?
Here are the final vote tallies credited for each of the major candidates in 2020:
Note that when you add them up it comes to a total of 6,915,283. That's less than 1,000 off from the above number, so given the timing of these totals, this easily appears to be what this number reflects.
But like I said, that's only the votes for those three candidates, so regardless this is already very misleading and a red flag.
So what does the 7,035,796 number come from? Don't know, cannot find anything on it. When reviewing the PA election summary statistics they list the total voters registered at the time of the election to be 9,090,962. It also says voter turnout was 76.5%. So some simple math gets us about 6,954,585.
Is this an error? Is there a simple explanation for the difference? Don't know, but remarkably they don't explain it and after googling it no one else seems to either. If something so easily verifiable was so deeply off, one would expect this would be everywhere, except it's only making the rounds in conspiracy circles. I think that's quite telling.
Moreover, nothing about any of this suggests a conspiracy of any kind. Even if some of the ballots were not accounted for, that could easily be human error, which is not an unheard of thing where we have humans handling things. Any errors that may have been made could also have easily gone for Trump and against Biden. So nothing about this suggests Trump won.
This is really grasping at straws.
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@Public-Choice
After all counties closed the election in SURE, only 6,914,556 voters were credited with participation in the 2020 General Election. This reveals a voter deficit of 121,240.
This is where your source is getting it's information from.
The vote total listed above represents the ballots cast for the three big candidates; Biden, Trump, and Jorgenson. But we know a relatively large number of voters either write in a candidate or leave the top of the ticket blank, so the fact that they would not have the same number of voters to ballots is not only not suspicious, it's expected. What would be remarkable is if every single voter had a vote tallied.
Can you please explain further why this is supposed to concern us?
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@Greyparrot
You can't base an entire political party's full set of values on the basis of the outcome of one individual instance
I didn't. The analysis I offered was of one example of one value.
This case isn't representative of anything but one nuanced case.
This case is entirely representative of everything we have been seeing in our politics for over a decade now. That's the point.
What you did was indeed define a purity test for your party by labeling your party "for law and order" solely on the basis of this one particular vote. A test that 30 Democrats failed under your "analysis"
The strawmanning continues.
Assessing what a political party believes isn't a purity test, it's an assessment. Moreover, if you had bothered to read and absorb anything I wrote perhaps you would have recognized that I went so far as to zoom out and focus not on the individual members of Congress but their voters, so the fact that you keep pointing to the individual members of Congress is further confirmation that you do not read.
The point was that when we zoom out and recognize a very clear partisan split in a situation where the political implications of their vote would figure to be even more of a factor than usual, that gives us a clearer window into the mindset of each constituency than most examples.
Every single critique you have offered is of an argument I never made. Pay attention.
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@Greyparrot
A macro analysis that says your party is MOSTLY for law and order? (minus 30 Democrats)
Political parties are made of people. People have all kinds of differing opinions. Therefore, no political party will be in 100% agreement.
This is basic human nature, I don't know why you need it explained to you.
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@Greyparrot
If you are going to make a purity test for your political party, then those are the consequences.
It wasn't a purity test, it was a macro analysis. Do you understand the difference between those two things?
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@Greyparrot
Ridiculous false choice.
Trump was the one who banned Muslims. Israel are the ones killing Palestine's. You can't be this stupid.
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@Greyparrot
You made the claim.... are you now implying it's a troll claim that the party stands for law and order...
No, I'm implying that it's stupid to pretend that 10-15% of house democrats voting against Santos's expulsion counters the claim that the democratic party believes in law and order, especially given that my point went beyond members of congress.
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@Greyparrot
Old racist white guys lying while killing off millions of brown people.
Right, cause the guy who tried to ban Muslims from entering the US while enjoying the full support of the KKK is much better.
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It really is amazing how, despite how much we know throughout history about how authoritarianism and fascism works, that so many still do not recognize it in it's most naked and obvious form.
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@Athias
Math doesn't "exist" in any sense of the word, nor is it a product of anything.Then how does that which does not exist interact with that which does exist without unilateral or "co-"dependency?
It doesn't "interact". It is an observable quality of existence, and is no more explainable than existence itself.
so when you argue that math comes from God you are arguing that logic also comes from God, which is incoherent.Not really.
Yes, really.
If math is an extension of logic (which you agree with) than the two are tied together by definition, so attributing one to God necessarily attributes the other.
I assume then that you are claiming it is coherent to claim logic comes from God, but it's absolutely not.
- In order for it to come from God that would mean God came first
- This means there was a point in which there was a God but no logic
- This means it is possible for something to exist without being subject to logic
- This means it is possible for something to be what it is and not be what it is at the same time in the same sense.
That's incoherent.
if we presuppose that logic does come from God, would he not be subject to it?
That's what it means, which is incoherent. See above.
Nope, humans invented it. Abstracts according to materialist standards don't "exist" in nature; "discovery" implies observation, where as abstracts, like logic and mathematics, imply conception.
2+2=4 was true long before humans came along. We didn't create that, we observed that it was true and then created words to express it. That's called discovery.
According to materialist standards, the laws of physics control the universe; and EVERY PHYSICAL LAW MUST BE MATHEMATICALLY PROVEN. In that sense, in concordance with materialist description, math does control the universe.
Words have meaning. The universe and everything in it is subject to the laws of physics and math. That is not what it means for something to be controlled. This is a silly semantic point.
Why is his being the origin of logic and being subject to logic mutually exclusive?
I think I answered this above.
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@Greyparrot
So what? Is there a point here or are you just trolling?
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