https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...ies-divide-us/
It is going to be a long hot summer.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...ies-divide-us/
It is going to be a long hot summer.
This isn't a crazy liberal saying these things...
"Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us"
"Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that 'The Nazi slogan for destroying us … was 'Divide and Conquer, Our American answer is 'In Union there is Strength.' We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics."
I was just called a clown for trying to emphasize the importance of what has happened recently, that it was just a "failed" "PR stunt", just a big nothing. Well, it's hardly that.
I just hope that Mattis' words influences just one person to open their eyes what's going on, instead of just mocking liberals. I have faith that his words will influence plenty.
No, you didn't "emphasize the importance" of the incident. You said it was worse than murder.
It was a PR stunt, even the most liberal media called it one. It did fail and blew up in his face b/c of how it was executed. I never said it "was a big nothing".
No doubt Trump has handled this poorly IMO, b/c his first reaction to anything is to be tough and bully. He's missed lots of opportunities do do better.
that doesn't make him a fascist bordering on taking over the country. That's my only problem with criticism of him. It doesn't stop with valid critique, it quickly runs to completely unsubstantiated and unsupported hyperbole driven by emotions.
He needed to address the nation, call for support of those upset over these incidents, also defend the police by saying that so many are serving to try to help the public, and say that those who try to use this time of national grief for terrorism and theft will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
he could have easily covered all the bases, and didn't. I'm not surprised, it's not his style, but neither did Obama cover all the basis during the cop shooting in Houston when he didn't really voice much support for the police either. Of course with the media treatement of him it came off much better, whereas Trump could pretty much say anything and be ripped for it.
Trump is his own worst enemy, and that's been obvious since he ran for the office.
But no, clearing a park of protestors won't go down in history as some American turning point. Acting like it's worse than the deaths and destruction of the last week is just hyperbole. History will make that a footnote in the chapter or book on this period.
Last edited by CitizenBBN; 06-03-2020 at 07:56 PM.
People keep asking if I'm back and I haven't really had an answer. But now, yeah, I'm thinkin' I'm back.
Originally Posted by CitizenBBN
No I did not. I didn't say anything close to that.
YOU said that I said that. I never even made a comparison. I have no idea why you are mischaracterizing my words.
I will give you the benefit of doubt that you may have read posts out of order or too quickly.
So let me clear things up for you. I am pissed off what is happening to our country right now. I fully support the protests. Things must change. Things WILL change.
Most Americans are outraged by the repetitive senseless murder of black people by cops and are capable of separating what the protests are about and the few that for their own purposes decide to riot and destroy. I feel for those victims, but they have their lives, they are insured, they will recover. My heart breaks for the reporters that were beaten by cops, the innocent protesters beaten, the BBQ man in Louisville shot by police after having fed them for free over years, and all the victims of generations systematic racism.
I also replied to a comment that "Many more Americans Are outraged by the thugs stealing everything in sight", that I vehemently disagree with, and countered that MORE Americans are actually more upset that a President chose to attack American citizens with violence for the sole purpose of a photo op. I vehemently disagree with ANY implication that the "thugs" ARE the protest.
I then went on to quote Mattis himself that this thread highlights to emphasize that we have a real problem. Our Democracy is at risk unless we do the right thing and vote this horrible human being out of office. Mattis couldn't have said it better.
I don't know where you are getting your nonsense. Please stop.
Why don't you comment on the topic instead.
I want to key in on this statement because it is applicable to the topic in this thread.
Do you think that Mattis' statements are 'completely unsubstantiated and unsupported hyperbole driven by emotions'? Or, perhaps a warning for someone that worked for the man. He is drawing comparisons to Nazi tactics. He is the one raising the risk about Trump being a threat to our democracy.
When are people going to listen to those that worked for him, spent years around him, the good Republicans that know who he is and wake up and realize what it is that we are dealing with, instead of brushing it off as invalid criticism or driven by emotions?
What will it take to say that Trump has to go?
U really think players are going to duke without being paid over Kentucky?--Gilbert Arenas, 9/12/19
I'll play, just for this.
I read the piece. Did you?
Nowhere did he say Trump was a threat to democracy, was a fascist, was trying to take over the country. He drew no comparison to nazi tactics.
I listened to him. Did you, or were you just now summarizing with even more emotional hyperbole?
BTW, if you want to study Nazi tactics, take the time to read Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich". It's a long read, but at least get to the burning of the Reichstag if you want to study true Nazi tactics.
If you do, you'll find they are FAR more borrowed right now by the extreme Left such as Antifa. This last week of anarchist/Antifa/BLM actions have been more similar to Kristallnacht than anything you'll find from a Trump rally.
No doubt Trump is into the whole "rally" imagery, which Hitler used to great effect, but every politician loves the stage and the well crafted use of adoring masses and was used long before Hitler as well. Of course Trump's rallys are not really crafted at all b/c Trump has no script and can't keep to one if he wanted, so he's a poor student of that technique at best.
Trump isn't the existential threat to this nation he's been claimed to be for 3 years. He's been there a while and nothing substantive has changed in our system at all. Meanwhile people like yourself call for government regulation of what we can say as "hate speech", call for limits on virtual assembly and association, etc.
Trump isn't the problem. He's an asshat, but he's not a threat.
And Mattis never said he was. he said he was a poor POTUS, and in this aspect of things he's definitely not good, bu that's a long way from any of the claims you just made. And that's the absurd hyperbole.
People keep asking if I'm back and I haven't really had an answer. But now, yeah, I'm thinkin' I'm back.
Chuck versus Stu is the equivalent of a 1 seed versus a 16
Darryl
You should probably go back and read again what he said. It is significantly more than 'he was a poor POTUS'. Actually, those words were never said.
“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us,”
"The Nazi slogan for destroying us...was 'Divide and Conquer.' Our American answer is 'In Union there is Strength.' We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics"
"We must reject any thinking of our cities as a 'battlespace' that our uniformed military is called upon to 'dominate,'" Mattis said. "At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict—a false conflict—between the military and civilian society."
“When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.”
“I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled,” Mattis writes. “The words ‘Equal Justice Under Law’ are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand—one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values—our values as people and our values as a nation.” He goes on, “We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution.”
If you read that as simply, 'he was a poor POTUS', that is beyond absurd hyperbole.
As far as your claim about me and absurd hyperbole, what was his intent of talking about Nazi's? What was his intent to say 'make a mockery of our Constitution'? You don't think these words imply a threat to Democracy? How else can this be interpreted, because it DEFINITELY can't be as simple as 'he's a poor POTUS'.
George Bush was a poor POTUS, nobody with the stature of Mattis said anything about him like this.
I go back to my question, though. When is enough going to be enough to say that he needs to go?
Right, and I'm up by 30 points in the first half.Chuck versus Stu is the equivalent of a 1 seed versus a 16
Darryl
So far, he's butchered what I said, has deflected every question that I've asked, thrown Antifa around, and has contributed absolutely nothing to the conversation.
No, you're not.
I haven't butchered your comments, and I haven't deflected any questions.
Maybe you haven't noticed, but every politician for a long time claims the opposition is "destroying the Constitution". It's a cheap move, but it works. Just like how every Democrat was called a socialist since the 1940s, and every Republican is called a fascist.
Sure there was a thinly veiled reference to Hitler and "dividing us", and those claims were made against Obama, and in fact many Americans felt he divided us as well. That is usually what people perceive when someone who disagrees with them is in power and pushing their agenda. Same with Trump.
AFAIK "The military" has not in any way been used as Mattis described, as the park was cleared under orders of the DOJ and was Park police and others, but not from the DoD.
Of course Mattis has no problem keeping American troops in Iraq indefinitely and happily enforcing our will on them and repressing their choices, but even the notion of using that military at home to protect American citizens from anarchy is somehow contrary to American values. I love a General with a long history of what much of the rest of the world would call American Imperialism thinks our POTUS, who made him remove some of that American Imperialism, is being Imperial.
LIke I said, 3 years of this "Trump is an existential threat to democracy" has become tired in the face of a mountain of now empirical evidence that it is completely untrue. He has yet to defy any judicial order or Congressional order to any degree greater than that of Obama or any other POTUS. He has yet to go after "leakers" or "Whistleblowers" with the fervor of the Obama administration, or try to do any more than any other POTUS with executive orders.
There's simply no "there" there, and with just a few months to go I doubt it shows up. Trump is far from alone in Presidents who have called for law and order, or even used the direct military to assist in quelling anarchy. the first such instance was by President Washington, and it has continued throughout our history in times of strife.
So Mattis is factually wrong on many points, and, as I said, never made the case beyond the normal "this is contrary to our constitution". Hell, everything is contrary to our Constitution depending on who you ask, few seem to have read it.
People keep asking if I'm back and I haven't really had an answer. But now, yeah, I'm thinkin' I'm back.
So why did the BBQ man that fed the cops for three years shoot at the cops?
Was that an ok action?
FWIW, Mattis is wrong that use of the military to quell anarchy, insurrection, etc. is in any way "unconstitutional" or even historically unusual. It's certainly not contrary to the will of the Founders.
Alexander Hamilton. “The army,” he wrote inFederalist No. 8, “...may usefully aid the magistrate to suppress a small faction, or an occasional mob, or insurrection, [but] will be utterly incom-petent to the purpose of enforcing encroachments against the united efforts of a great body of people.”8 Simply stated, the Army would never grow so large or become so powerful that it would menace the Republic; yet, it could be used to enforce the laws.
Hamilton elaborated on this idea in Federalist No. 28:That there may happen cases in which the National Government may be under the necessity of resorting to force, cannot be denied. Our own experience has corrobo-rated the lessons taught by the examples of other nations; that seditions and insurrections are, unhappily, maladies as inseparable from the body politic, as tumors and erup-tions from the natural body. . . . Should such emergencies at any time happen under the National Government, there could be no remedy but force. The means to be employed must be proportioned to the extent of the mischief.
The Posse Commitatus Act didn't come about until after Reconstruction, and was in fact passed by racist Democrats to try to limit the Union Army's power in the South, where it had been used to put Republican governments in place and repress the KKK and other terror groups repressing the black vote. Prior to that there are myriad examples of laws and statements showing the Founders had all along thought the military may be needed in times of crisis for domestic law enforcement.
It's ironic that now it is seen as somehow unAmerican and a threat to the constitution to use the military in times of extreme crisis, when the only law against it wasn't passed until the 1870s, and was often ignored (in the way we think of it today) for decades afterward as we formed a new nation in the West. That's not even to mention that it didn't apply to work in the Territories, which was a big part of America for a long time.
FWIW, I sourced this on purpose from a military source I have on the subject, https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Port...s/matthews.pdf, b/c of it being General Mattis we're discussing. Perhaps he should have paid attention this day at the War College.
And, as if that wasn't enough to show this is a gross overreaction to say democracy is at stake, the law itself was updated in 2006 to give the POTUS explicit authority to use the military in such situations. Interestingly it specifically mentioned epidemic. It was then in 2008 reversed, but clearly a move to do such a thing shows it was not some far out in left field (or right field) notion. And of course at request of states, the military has been used in more recent times.
The difference here is Trump threatening to use the military versus it being requested, but that's not really a problem within the Constitution. In fact the Constitution requires the Federal authority to maintain order in the states.
so the question really isn't "constitutional" at all, it's political. You know, kinda like letting our generals keep our troops in foreign countries for decades without a Resolution of War from the Congress. Now that is almost certainly unconstitutional, but Mattis has no problem with that b/c he happens to like putting our troops in foreign countries for decades.
People keep asking if I'm back and I haven't really had an answer. But now, yeah, I'm thinkin' I'm back.
They were peaceful protesters. There was no mob.
Well, many say that it was to protect his family that was being fired upon, but we will never really know because the cops didn't have their body cams on and the police chief was fired.
Agreed. There was also no military there used against them. It was ordered by Barr to extend the security perimeter, a civilian authority using civilian police. So once again, no threat to the constitution.
A political question, not a constitutional one, as I've said from the start. Maybe Mattis is better at troop movements than constitutional law. I hope so.
People keep asking if I'm back and I haven't really had an answer. But now, yeah, I'm thinkin' I'm back.
SMH...
It's not even worth it. I got more important things to do.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/ag-b...ry?id=71026258
Just to back that up, Barr ordered the move. Supposedly a bottle was thrown at him at a prior visit and he had expected the perimeter to be pushed back prior to his ordering it done.
I won't debate if it was really done for Trump's walk or not, again a political question, but there was no military used, none has been used, etc.
Mattis is referring to Trump's threat to use the military to restore order, and has claimed it somehow is unconstitutional and even Un-American. It is actually neither historically.
People keep asking if I'm back and I haven't really had an answer. But now, yeah, I'm thinkin' I'm back.
I'm busy too, but needed a break. Let's address your comments I supposedly "butchered".
Your reaction to news a police officer was killed:
I would suspect not too. No need for there to be. It was a tragic situation where the suspects were immediately arrested. He didn't deserve to die, but he will get his justice. The national outrage is about the repetitive injustices that predominantly affect people of color.
I'm trying to figure out how you can be more dismissive of the loss of innocent human life, but I'm not coming up with anything. Perhaps you think since he's a cop he's not innocent?
You continue, in a thread discussing a murder:
I tell you what a majority of Americans are MOST pissed about is a coward President that uses military force against law abiding citizens practicing their rights for a photo op. THAT has been the most disgraceful thing that has happened during all of this.
That is clearly saying that clearing that park is MORE disgraceful than the murder of a police officer. Maybe cops aren't people?
When I call that out, you respond:
Those that suffered from the damage will recover. Those businesses are insured. Having a President attack the citizens of this country, you don't just come back from that. That was pure evil, the likes of the fascist leaders he so idolizes.
You ignore that people who are dead cannot recover, the subject of that thread, and again double down calling the clearing of the park "pure evil", contrasted with the most complete dismissal of a death I have seen in a while in your initial post above.
I took nothing out of context. Your lack of concern for the death and destruction of this week, contrasted with your outrage over an incident where no one was hurt and arguably the POTUS you hate just shot himself in the political foot, is obvious to everyone but yourself, at least I hope so.
I didn't "butcher" anything. You doubled down repeatedly on your initial utter dismissal of the murder of a police officer and changed the focus to a political incident where no one was hurt, calling that "pure evil".
People keep asking if I'm back and I haven't really had an answer. But now, yeah, I'm thinkin' I'm back.
There has been plenty of video to show, not sure the group running in his place would be family.
The video clearly shows him pulling a gun and shooting not only that but the guy right behind him was holding a gun in his hand.
Just an added note I am a business man 53 years old and it’s past a curfew why put yourself in that position? Not to mention on the video the group around him appear to be in their 20’s, just an odd situation but it seems your mind is made up which is sad.
Perfect summation, and further attempts at debate are really unnecessary.Trump isn't the problem. He's an asshat, but he's not a threat.
seeya
dan
I'm just one stomach flu away from my goal weight.
Quintuplets from multiple mating partners, all working for dear old dad?Not to mention on the video the group around him appear to be in their 20’s, just an odd situation but it seems your mind is made up which is sad.
seeya
dan
I'm just one stomach flu away from my goal weight.
Maybe you should have asked the questions instead of assumed.
What else do I have to say other than the loss of life was tragic? I emphasize that the policeman will (and others always do) get their justice. I am focused on the people that are murdered BY the ones sworn to protect that DO NOT GET justice. Since I didn't offer my thoughts and prayers, does that make me dismissive? All of your assumptions that I think a policeman aren't people, or less, that's all on you. I never said any of that. THAT is you butchering my words.
You then went on to assume I was making a comparison between Trump's attack on law abiding American citizens vs a police officer losing his life in the line of duty. That is FALSE. I never made a comparison. I responded directly to a statement that most Americans are pissed at the destruction caused by rioting. That is you butchering my words.
There was no doubling down. I made one statement about the situation and moved on. You continue to portray a POV that is not mine, that you have completely taken out of context and spun a little narrative for your own purposes and refuse to listen to anything I am saying. Misunderstandings happen, I get that, which is why I tried to clarify, but you don't even have the decency to listen. That trait is an underlying root cause of what is going on in the country today.
Again, what is wrong about having a gun in your own home for protection? You are making an assumption that he was aware that he was shooting at cops, knowingly, with intent. Eyewitnesses claim his intentions were to protect his family in his home (which also happens to be his business).
Again, I have to point out that we would have more details if the cops had done their jobs.
That was not his home, yes you can have a gun but I would never walk to my door and shoot at people.
Your mind is very jaded.
Watch the videos as the actions of the group speak for themselves.
I totally disagree cops were approaching and the group ran inside, body cams would help but not tell the story of this man going to the door and shooting at them.
The cops were correct in returning fire.
He totally knew it was cops.
Donald Trump has not been the one trying to divide us..that prize since 1970 goes to the Democratic Party who knows nothing but representation of "ists" and "isms".
I'm not seeing any actions that unite us. If you can show me some, I'd be interested to see them. His language and actions has always been divisive...
Enemy of the people
Radical Left
Which hunt
Democratic hoax
Good people on both sides
I can go on and on.
Trump isn't the cause, that is systematic evolving ideologies over generations, but he is a symptom and plays a proud part to further stoke the fire and fan the flames.
Chuck versus Stu is the equivalent of a 1 seed versus a 16
Darryl
Chuck isn’t a 2018 UVA #1 seed. He’s more like a Kentucky 1996 #1 seed.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks