Part of me wants to say the thread wasn't a brilliant insight, because it seemed obviously right to me. But clearly, understanding Trump's nature is difficult for PaRD posters in general, so I had to repost when I came across it. The disaster post-election, and the way Trump behaved, is entirely consistent with how you and I understand him and his supporters, but contrary to every person on PaRD who ever expressed support for him.



People can go search for our debates about Russiagate. They'll find your arguments and mine. I believe yours are mostly propaganda, and mine are not, but they can decide. Also, I already mentioned how you're grouping everyone against Trump as if they are Clinton-flag-waving supporters, whereas I don't do the same thing except with Jan. 6th, because those people were all Trump supporters.

I think posting the numerous ways that Trump tried to steal the 2020 election is sort of pointless, because you probably already know what happened, and like Tucker, Hannity, and Laura, you are either seriously deceived or are choosing to lie.

It's true, I guess you have enough self-worth not to adopt the substance of the "stolen election" nonsense, but you couldn't care enough to disavow it, or take it seriously. It's just another big joke, like Russiagate or Ukrainegate. Trump and/or his cronies were ready to act immorally, and in those scandals, you were ready to defend them, or at least minimize their actions.

Here, we know which path you chose. It's a lot easier to just minimize it. Rather than defending the bullshit, just pretend it didn't really matter, and Trump haters are taking it way too seriously. The fact that Trump supporters, after listening to him speak, on the day Congress ceremonially counts the votes with the Vice President presiding, invaded the Capitol to obstruct the process, committed violence against police officers in the Capitol, chanted to hang the Vice President, shit up the place, etc, is immaterial to you. It's like Russiagate and Ukrainegate, something the liberal media has blown out of proportion. You couldn't possibly blame Trump for the responsibility he has, because, that's an oxymoron to the cult. Trump has no responsibility.

And I think that's kind of despicable. It's one thing to try to polish a turd for Trump when he acts like himself, it's another to completely absolve him of responsibility for the vast lies he had put forth which resulted in so much damage to our country and our democracy. At what point do you prioritize being American before your cult allegiance?

This post was edited by IceMage on Mar 14 2023 05:47pm

Btw, I wasn't even sure if Goom still posted, this thread is more an indictment of every Trump supporter(which obviously includes Goom as the ideological head) on the forum who scoffed at the idea that he would seriously contest the results and behave like an evil scumbag, as he did.

Some more "Remember When" content, in the aftermath of Trump's loss:





And where are we at now in this country?

Trump is the front runner to win the primary, he's in the same unhinged spot on the election denialism. The most popular right-wing personalities are with him. The Speaker of the House even handed over footage from the Jan. 6th insurrection to the #1 Trump cult propagandist to help fuel this narrative.

And is there any meaningful distinction between where they are at, and where Trump supporters on PaRD from 2020 are at today? Sure, Trump supporters still here mostly won't argue in favor of the election lies, but they'll do their part to blunt the impact by minimizing them or deflecting with propagandist narratives about the Democrats. They are on the same team.

This post was edited by IceMage on Mar 14 2023 06:00pm

Its really not that hard to avoid buying into propaganda. I have no troubles parsing out whats real and what's baloney from right and left wing sources alike. You bought the whole Russiaburger storyline hook line and sinker and still haven't let go of it to this day. Seems like there wasn't a piece of agitprop against Trump you weren't willing to buy into. That's the difference. If Trump supporters run around screaming the election was stolen, or neocons and neoliberals run around saying Trump colluded with Russia, I look at the fact and point out how its a bunch of bullshit. And sometimes the conspiracy theories are actually true, and its usually extremely obvious and loaded with an orgy of evidence, like the Ilhan Omar escapade. I don't see why basic analytical skills are in such short supply.



You can post all the ways. They sum up to Trump exhausting pointless legal options, quibbling, protesting loudly, trying to exercise every last ditch legal maneuver available to him. They reeked of desperation and being a sore loser, but that's a far cry from what you want it to be, an insurrection or despotic tyrant clinging to power. Trump didn't try to imprison his political opponents or tell anyone to commit violence nor did he in any way stoke a crowd to overthrow the government, sorry, saying it a bunch of times doesn't make it true. When push came to shove (rather literally), he told everyone to go home and finally gave up. And democrats spent an entire two years trying to demonize Trump for the what was it, 90 minutes of delay that took? When they spent days riling up crowds during the George Floyd riots?

Someone filing legal nuisance cases and searching desperately for evidence that doesn't exist, doesn't really bother me. Not like people who want to use the levers of government to imprison their rivals, who use Beria-esque tactics to invent novel legal theories just to condemn them. Or you know, people who actually do fuel the fires of violent mobs and tell them to go out and burn down businesses. Heck, if Trump can be sued in a civil case for a riot where he tried to calm down the crowd, can I sue Maxine Waters for flying out to Minnesota and egging on the mob? De facto repealing the Westfall Act by executive mandate is a double edged sword





That's exactly what it is, something the liberal media has blown out of proportion. So ecstatic over a chance to demonize Republicans that they wouldn't let the facts get in their way. That's why we had absolute bullshit made up about Brian Sicknick, that's why Joe Biden and Kamala Harris mourned "five police officers murdered that day", that's why Democrats who spent years explicitly supporting rioters turned around and said that an unarmed woman climbing through a window deserved to be shot to death. That's why the Democrats cherry picked the footage released to try to make it look as violent as possible, and why they made up lies about "zip tie guy".

The facts of the riot were just to tame and mundane on their own. A crowd crush killed multiple people because police failed at riot control and let a large mob surge into a small choke point. That's the real takeaway, and how lives could have been saved. If there was ever an actually product post-mortem of the event by an unbiased review, not trying to spin it for political gain, we'd have a good lesson in why police need to use measures like shield pushes, nightsticks, tear gas, etc to push back mobs and keep them from breaking into buildings.



Is that like some kind of mantra for warmongering authoritarian neocons? The whole 'is your allegiance to america' shtick?

Funny you say that, because you completely bought into the anti-Russiagate narrative. You bought into every anti-Russiagate talking point, just as your mush-brain cult leader did.

See, I can be hyperbolic as well. What I just said isn't true, and the claim you made that I believed every Russiagate theory obviously isn't true either, and you know that. You were predisposed, as you are now, to be hyper skeptical of every story and theory that was bad for Trump. I was more open minded about the matter. The results of the investigation proved us both wrong, as they revealed significant wrongdoing(something you thought didn't exist) but showed that there was not conclusive evidence of a conspiracy(something I thought, at least towards the end of the investigation, existed).




A president waging a campaign, which started even before the election, to discredit the results and pressure his own Vice President, the Georgian Secretary of State, and others to overturn the results, is wrong. Coming out election night and claiming that you won, and the election is being stolen, when he clearly had not won and it was not being stolen, is wrong. Waging a spurious legal campaign to overturn the results of a valid election is wrong. Deploying advisors to go on television to spread lies about a stolen election is wrong. Holding meetings with lunatics like Mike Flynn who propose that you impose martial law and seize voting machines is wrong. Drawing a crowd to Washington on the day Congress counts the electoral votes, in an attempt to pressure Congress and the Vice President to overturn the results, is wrong. Asking your Secret Service agents to take you to the Capitol after the speech, which they didn't because they weren't willing to be participants in a coup, is wrong. Watching the insurrection(which it obviously was, go Google the definition) on television and not responding in any way for hours) is wrong. I'm leaving a ton out, but you get the picture.

That these facts don't bother you simply reveals you are intellectually captive to a cult devoted to an evil man.




Yes, when a violent crowd is on the other side of a door that's leading to elected officials, and they smash a window, and a woman tries to crawl through(why was she crawling through? what or who was she trying to get to?), she obviously deserved to be shot. It was clearly a justified shooting.

Your reply makes me think of the famous CNN picture of burning buildings in the background with the chyron "fiery but mostly peaceful protests". Sure, much of the crowd wasn't violent, and who cares? That's not the point.

This is why it's a cult. If this was a normal political movement, the narrative around January 6th wouldn't be so ridiculous. You could just admit it was a shameful day for the country, Trump was an idiot for drawing the crowd to Washington and speaking to it, and his supporters were clearly poisoned by the lies of Trump and his cultists in the media. There would be some righteous anger towards the people who poisoned the minds of people like Ashli Babbitt... she was so hateful towards her fellow Americans that she climbed through a broken window in an attempt to get closer to them in order to do harm. That's sad.



Lol. Yes, appealing to a sentiment of being American is a mantra for the warmongering globalists... says the Donald Trump supporter.

I'm predisposed to be skeptical of any conspiracy theory or other extraordinary claim without extraordinary evidence. You didn't wait to bite into Russiaburger, I analyzed each new fact as they came in. And it looks like at every step, I was right, you were wrong, and yet here you want to play it as if we were both somehow wrong and yet still claim that you were right. The evidence did show significant wrongdoing and foul play- by the FBI. By Clinton's campaign. But not by Trump or his campaign. After years of absurdist nonsense the worst thing that you can say is that Trump Jr got bait and switched by some lobbyists who purported to have evidence of Clinton's wrongdoing but were just trying to peddle geopolitics and got ushered right back out the door. The horrible crime of listening to someone for a couple minutes. Meanwhile we saw the FBI leaking, unmasking, fabricating evidence, lying to judges, framing someone, taking bribes, etc etc. They were corrupt at every level from top to bottom throughout the whole thing. The very department heads down to low level agents, resulting in numerous reassignments, firings and arrests. I was right about them being full of crap.




"is wrong"? So what. The world is filled with people taking actions I personally think are wrong, including the vast majority of politicians. Anyone with common sense can figure it in terms of degree and impact. Trump was a sore loser who tried to exhaust his fruitless legal remedies and cling to a baloney theory, but all he accomplished was embarrassing himself. Why should I be so bothered by that? No matter how much you want to pretend otherwise, he didn't exhort his followers into an insurrection nor did they attempt one, and he had the decency to try to calm down the mob and bring peace- and quibbling over how many minutes it took him is just jarringly myopic when the BLM riots carried on for days with Democrats egging it on


Again, and I think this addresses not just the rest of your post but the previous ones, what we're getting at is the same tired argument I've been having with you for years. Where I point out what matters is function, and you get hung up on form. Where I care about what really impacts the stability of our country, our democracy, our economy- and you get hung up on rhetoric, on appearance, on respectability. Donald Trump is a classless, blathering, thin skinned pugilist with an ego the size of mount rushmore. But he's also the president who brought peace during his term, gave real growth to the economy, passed most of his legislative and judicial agenda even to the point of scoring the victory republicans had been coveting for decades. What Donald Trump was not, was an authoritarian despot who raided the homes of his political rivals and tried to invent a reason to lock them up. He didn't lead us into the maws of nuclear annihilation, he didn't embrace a platform of censorship, he didn't blow up the economy on his own (covid, however, did).

Why should I care that Donald Trump is a graceless sore loser who went out like a wet fart? I voted against Hillary because I thought she'd drag us into another Iraq or Afghanistan, after what happened with Syria and Yemen. But jesus christ did I never in my wildest dreams think sleepy joe biden would bring us to the brink of nuclear armageddon while simultaneously blowing up the economy and unleashing a crime wave. But you cared more when Trump called Rosie O'Donnell a fat pig



Aren't you supposed to be contradicting me with that kind of glib remark? Yes, Donald Trump has been campaigning explicitly against warmongering globalists for some times now

russia didnt swing the 2016 election, and biden didnt cheat in the 2020 election. election cheating "scandals" are the plague of our time. as well as investigating things with zero intent to act to distract from the lack of legislating. congress has become a show trial for the american public rather than a legislative body, congressional investigations used to mean something, no more. and both sides are sore losers, losing the peaceful transfer of power has become a sad thing to watch. some of the most inspiring stories of US presidency are bitter enemies peacefully transitioning power, not than anyone is surprised Obama was the bigger man than Trump.

its a relative scale. George W Bush was probably the last person to leave office without throwing some kind of fit. As I pointed out all too many times, Obama used his last few months in office to try to sabotage Trump on multiple levels, a bunch of foreign and domestic policy 180s to trip him up and weaponizing the DoJ against him. The bear ears monument, alaskan oil leases, refrigerant regulations, funding for planned parenthood, the UN veto on israeli settlements, etc etc, all reversed at the last second when he clearly intended to stay the course for Hillary. But more corrosively to our democracy was Obama and Biden sitting down in the oval office with the FBI and DOJ heads to explicitly authorize the Russiaburger witch hunt against Trump.
and Obama's no fool, he knew what he was doing and that there was no 'there' there.

Still not anywhere near as embarrassing and pathetic as Trump's outgoing days, but in terms of escalating the bitter partisan strife, they're probably comparable

The consensus is that Russia conducted operations to assist Donald Trump in winning the presidency.
On my view Russia jumped in the golden age of social media era train, and used it well, managed to diminish US by alot on the eyes of the word.

it's not unprecedented, we just had a REALLY good streak pre Obama-Trump.

Adams > Jackson was rough, Hoover > FDR was rough, Buchannan to Lincoln same.

Idk why people analyze what contrarians say instead of analyzing what theyre like and what they do. Hardcore libertarians, MAGA crowd... its all more about their psychology than it is really about political philosophy. Its an unfair playground where they get to make the rules and where their subjective experience is subtly shown as more valid than that of others. Not a fruitful environment in terms of genuine political discussion.