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PoliGAF 2014 |OT| Kay Hagan and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad News
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thepotatoman
Unconfirmed Member
Honestly, it's hard for me to believe that most republicans are true believers also.
Jesus talks against greed and for helping the less fortunate like 80% of the time, and yet the Republican party is all about how greed is the only regulation the market needs, and that foodstamps and welfare deserves to be cut because those people should be able to fend for themselves.
The only way I can reconcile it is if you believe that religion and politics should be kept separate, but then gay rights came up and they have no problems using the government to force their own religion on everyone else. Why does 1/2 of one verse justify government involvement of one issue, but chapters and chapters of parables about charity and love doesn't.
I'm sorry but it is really, truly hard to get into a mind that truly loves God and thinks the bible is the word of God, but don't seem to act like they care to even read it. I feel like most Christians just label themselves Christians as a symbol of some sort of ethnocentric pride rather than a true belief, perhaps with a bit of pascal's wager thrown in for good measure. Are people like that really any more christian than Obama is? The only difference is that one is lying to themselves with the other is lying only to others.
Jesus talks against greed and for helping the less fortunate like 80% of the time, and yet the Republican party is all about how greed is the only regulation the market needs, and that foodstamps and welfare deserves to be cut because those people should be able to fend for themselves.
The only way I can reconcile it is if you believe that religion and politics should be kept separate, but then gay rights came up and they have no problems using the government to force their own religion on everyone else. Why does 1/2 of one verse justify government involvement of one issue, but chapters and chapters of parables about charity and love doesn't.
I'm sorry but it is really, truly hard to get into a mind that truly loves God and thinks the bible is the word of God, but don't seem to act like they care to even read it. I feel like most Christians just label themselves Christians as a symbol of some sort of ethnocentric pride rather than a true belief, perhaps with a bit of pascal's wager thrown in for good measure. Are people like that really any more christian than Obama is? The only difference is that one is lying to themselves with the other is lying only to others.
Frank the Great
Banned
They certainly are, for the most part, true believers. They want to help poor people, but they've just convinced themselves that the best way to do that is indirectly through capitalism, and not through government intervention. They honestly believe that government intervention causes more harm than good. They also really have a lot of faith in private charity.
Their beliefs are beyond idiotic but they are not intentionally disingenuous. Like most people in general, they are well-intentioned but just really stupid.
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thepotatoman
Unconfirmed Member
I guess I just straight up don't believe that anyone honestly and truly believes cutting food stamps in the situation we are in right now benefits the poor.
The vast majority of Republicans have shown no desire nor inclination to help the poor. They play to religion only as far as it earns votes. If their district turned atheist overnight, they would set fire to the local church just to prove their new devotion. The worse thing you can do is assume they're misguided instead of operating entirely under self interest.
RustyNails
Member
Frank the Great
Banned
I thought we were talking about "most Republicans," as in most Republicans in the public at large. I live in a conservative area, and talk with conservatives all the time . . . they are usually just very ignorant of the fact that the policies they advocate for are harming people, even though in many cases, they are the very same people being harmed. They really believe that their favored policies would help.
If we are talking about politicians, there are not many true believers in anything (except for the need to promote their own power). And that goes for any party, in any country, in any time.
I wonder if it's due to living in a primarily liberal area (Mass), but the conservatives I've met hate the poor, see them mainly as moochers, and themselves as hard working Americans that deserve zero taxes but all the benefits of taxes. If you try to bring up 'what would Jesus do?' they get very defensive, and come up with excuses.
"God helps those who help themselves"
DoktorEvil
Banned
What can you consider a true believer? Someone that goes to church every Sunday?
I think it's disingenuous to assume GOP just produces Christian fundamentalists. Those same fundamentalists are the outsiders looking in to the party. You really think anyone with half a brain would let those people affect policy or gain a deep footing in the party?
They're just employing a strategy that worked for a time in the 1960s-1980s and had failed to work since President Obama's election: angry white people in key electoral states.
Republicans aren't against the poor. They're against using government means to help the poor.
T
thepotatoman
Unconfirmed Member
I consider a true believer one that honestly believes in God and the bible and jesus as a savior of souls and as not someone who just goes to church for superficial reasons, I never meant to say all christians are republicans just that I question the faith of any christian that agrees with everything republicans do, and it would be fine if they were against using the government to help the poor if they weren't also for using the government to hurt gay people.
VanMardigan
has calmed down a bit.
Wait, are we still doing the "Obama is a closet atheist" thing?
It would matter to him if he thought it would damage his legacy. He wouldn't care about the people that already hate him, but he could potentially lose the goodwill of those who trusted him and found out he was lying
smokeandmirrors
Banned
I had no idea we had a bunch of war hawks on this forum. Jesus it's really something else the way people are trying to make this start another world war....
Big fan of the "Obama is weak on foreign policy" people. I always like a good laugh.
Big fan of the "Obama is weak on foreign policy" people. I always like a good laugh.
Eh....
thezerofire
Banned
Got that from a couple people at work today, along with a "The world is laughing at our foreign policy"
If only we had a Republican president in charge. Cause the last time that happened we never had any countries that were defiant towards us. Like North Korea, for example.
RustyNails
Member
holy shit, senayor dick durbin is sitting next to me. we are going to iad
Ask him if he and Al Franken (and Sherrod Brown, too, I guess) can start a Progressive Firebrand caucus.
RustyNails
Member
Dude flies economy
NYCmetsfan
Banned
His argument is crap. Ask him why he won't let there be a 'dissenting subculture' that doesn't have to comport with societies requirement that you can't discriminate on the basis of race. His argument is the same thing people tried to do in the 60s.
NYCmetsfan
Banned
Why you coming to DC? Also Durbin is my neighbor. Lives a few buildings down from me when he's in DC. At least until I move
RustyNails
Member
Business trip to Reston. He looks younger in person.
isn't durbin one of those guys that pops up on some stupid panel once every 3 months to reiterate how social security needs to get cut?
NYCmetsfan
Banned
Isn't he late 70s?
Edit: he's only 69
He's in Leadership. Not really a bleeding heart liberal but not completely part of the corporate side of the party.
RustyNails
Member
He easily looks in his 50s. Kinda short too.
social security is a program with 80+% support. cutting it is about as popular with the American people as instituting a Marxist-leninist regime. on top of that, the program is highly effective at keeping people out of poverty and even if you're stupid enough to buy into deficit-hysteria: the program doesn't have a meaningful effect on it.
it's kind of insane that someone who supports that policy isn't getting primaried, and instead is considered to be in the middle among democrats.
zero shift
Banned
Is this true?
speculawyer
Member
Yes, we can.
Too good to be true.Is this true?
speculawyer
Member
Oh I think they are true believers. They are just not very good Christians, IMHO. They have amazing powers to rationalize what they want to believe. They are not gay, so they are good Christians right? . . . so they get to go to Heaven. Never mind that Jesus didn't say a word about gays but he really condemned divorce and was very much for helping the poor & sick.
These are people who can say that the 97% of climate scientists are wrong but see massive voter fraud that requires voter ID systems. So the prince of peace has been transformed into a gun-toting libertarian.
Is this true?
Hard to say. This image is probably assuming that no churches will shutter as a result of paying taxes.
Come to Seattle. We have a 5.3% unemployment rate and lots of tech (IT, biotech, engineering) firms looking for workers.
/smug
I would, but I have no money nor means of moving across country.
zero shift
Banned
Get any job around the area, save up a few thousand by living with your parents for a few months, then move.
I am looking for a job here to save up to go back to graduate school in a couple of years to take another stab at my Ph.D. Move back in with my parents?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH. The reason why I am broke now is because I moved out of my abusive grandfather's house a few years ago.
zero shift
Banned
Sorry for that. Didn't know. But yeah just try to save some cash. Maybe find some roommates?
People have responded, but yea, that's not true at all. They demonize poor people and think they're whiny lazy pieces of shit.
While they think their policies would help poor people, that's just a side effect of "More Freedom" (Unregulated private sector and flat tax policies). Whether poor people get helped or get fucked is irrelevant, what's relevant is achieving the (only) two cornerstones of Conservative fiscal/economic policy that matter.
RustyNails
Member
This Russia stuff is getting out of hand. Looking through the lens of US domestics politics, how is this going to impact the midterms? Obama approvals?
Can Kay Hagan finally expect good news?
Can Kay Hagan finally expect good news?
smokeandmirrors
Banned
Good luck. What field?
Baraka in the White House
2-Terms of Kombat
Only Obama could turn conservatives into Putin ball washers.
WTF is wrong with John McCain and the rest of the republican morons like him. The shit he pulls would be called treasonous if it was a republican president. He's constant antics that Obama is bluffing Putin and how he's weak on foreign policy. How fucking hard is it to support the president and say you would support the presidents punishments for Russia instead of running around and basically phoning Putin saying don't worry Obama is a joke do whatever you want.
It's pretty hilarious to see. Blitzer had on the balanced views of Stephen Cohen and Newt Gingrich earlier to take turns blaming the US for the Ukraine invasion.
I think it's a lot more complicated than that. You can't just ask whether or not someone "believes" something like this. Doing that puts way too much weight on what they'd consciously affirm while ignoring the real reasons that they believe what they believe. People are really, really good at fooling themselves.
Let me bring up two examples of uncontroversial evil. I'm using these examples to illustrate a point and I'm not implying a moral equivalence with a modern mainstream political movement. First, consider Nazis. Nazis are easy to spot - they'll consciously wish bad things on certain classes of people just because of morally irrelevant characteristics of those classes. They don't care that you think they're evil, and they acknowledge that their values are not your values. They're clearly not well-intentioned.
Now consider slave-owners in the American South before the Civil War. Many of them sincerely believed that slavery as an institution was (also) good for slaves. So were they well-intentioned in fighting for the continuation and expansion of slavery, just because they thought it was the best thing ever and would lead to a brighter future for everyone? Of course not. Clearly they did not arrive at that belief because they wanted to know what was good for black people. They arrived at that belief because they wanted what they were already doing to be morally permissible. They want to claim to share your values; they only think you disagree because of differences of opinion about the available evidence.
That's the sort of error being made by conservatives about the effects of their preferred economic policies on the poor. Basically nobody who sets out to do well by the poor ends up conservative. Lots of people who gravitate towards conservative policies for other reasons end up "discovering" that they're also great for the poor. This is very important when we're trying to sort out why people actually believe these things, and what's going on inside their heads that they might not even be aware of. Also important is that when conservatives talk about the poor they don't seem to like them very much. Little things like this are valuable clues, even if Paul Ryan can honestly write in his diary that he doesn't understand why the takers don't see how much better off they could be if they'd only listen to him.
Edit: And this sort of error is distinct from plain "stupidity". This isn't about someone attempting to figure out what's best for the poor and going badly wrong through incompetence. This is someone going badly wrong because they really, really want a particular conclusion.
RustyNails
Member
He's past senile now. Even past old man yells at cloud. What the fuck is he still doing in the senate. He has been undermining Obama on everything from Libya to Iran to Ukraine. He lives in opposite land.
Hes purposely trying to sabatoge Obamas foreign policy and he's far from the only one.
PhoenixDark
Banned
You mean like democrats during the final Bush years? Presidents being attacked on foreign policy grounds, lambasted as "weak" etc is common.
Obama, once again, threatened a foreign head of state despite having no plans to back it up. He's usually quite calculated in the way he addresses matters like this, but he undercut him again here. Granted outside of that I support the way Obama has handled this, but it's not surprising republicans would jump on Obama here. They know he isn't going to do anything, as does Putin. I'm fine with that. The only people who aren't fine with it are those who crave a return to Cold War dick waving, and want a war (Charles Krauthammer literally wants Obama to send a fleet to the Black Sea).
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