Re: POTUS: 45.37: The Earth is Flat and the Babies Are Crying
I'm angry. I hope Brent and SJ and joe are angry too. I've asked them how they feel and how they reconcile their support for the regime and the party that has done this, because I am curious. I also think they have the right to tell their story (or, for that matter, to be silent and deal with their own inner voices).
This isn't a courtroom. I want to know how they feel because they aren't stupid and they aren't monsters, so I want to know how they can, in my mind, enable monsters -- not just enable them before in the abstract when it was potentiality, but now, after it's happening, when they can see it in the flesh. Imagine if Hannah Arendt had gotten to talk to Good Germans in the 1930s. She wouldn't have been doing history, then, but anthropology.
This is important way beyond this case. It's how evil works its will using a population that is for the most part not monstrous. Here we have a real life case of terrible things that are happening because not terrible people are telling themselves it's OK. I want to know how that's happening, because it could also happen to you and me.
I want to understand a sickness because I don't want to get sick.
First, I'm curious why people think I support this regime? I've certainly made it clear that I lean more conservative than a lot of posters here. But as first noted on election morn, I did not vote for Trump and never had any intention of voting for Trump. People quickly took my refusal to vote for HRC as quasi-support for Trump, and apparently that has stuck. But there has been very, very little that has been done by this administration that I support. I didn't have any objection to Gorsuch. I didn't have any objection to Trump at least meeting with the North Korean dictator since I don't think communication is ever a bad thing. But I'd be hard pressed to think of anything else they've done that I really support.
That said, I've been trying to think about why I feel so differently about the idea of listening to what everyone has to say, no matter how crazy or evil we might think they are. I'm not sure I have an answer, but this is the best that I can come up with.
I have strong confidence in my own personal ability to read something or listen to someone and decide if it's just complete b.s. Thus, I have no fear if you want to put some person on tv who is going to claim the space landing was faked, the Sandy Hook shooting never happened, or FEMA will be setting up camps at your local WalMart. Listen, I've had personal business with FEMA and they couldn't set up a camp at a KOA without help. If David Duke comes on tv and starts talking about the evil of mixing the races, my reaction is, "let him talk." Me, I'm flipping stations.
Because of that confidence in myself, I tend to extend that same confidence to everyone else. Unless demonstrated otherwise, I've just always assumed everyone here, all of my friends and work acquaintances, as well as strangers, have that same ability. Thus, I have always tended to err on the side of "let 'em speak." I like when the nuts get a chance to publicly speak. It helps me identify who the crazies are.
So now I'm sure that some of you will ask why I'm not on here railing against Trump or his administration if they've done very little with which I agree. Fair question. The answer is basically I'm not much of a "me too" poster.
I don't post here nearly as often as many of you. If six posters come to this Board and post "I'm really angry they canceled Dexter," you almost certainly won't see me come here and post "me too" or "I'm really angry they canceled Dexter." I consider that to be a waste of my time.
I tend to post in the following instances. First, when I'm asked a question directly, such as Kep's post seems to do. Second, if I
disagree with the group think on a subject. Third, if I think there is a view point on a subject that is being ignored, or is important to add. Fourth, if I think someone's point or an article or something else is being misrepresented by a poster.
Candidly, everything else bores me. It's part of the reason I like posting in the political threads, because I don't tend to think the same way about some of the issues as the group, so it gives me more of a chance to disagree.
