I have a gun in the house. If an intruder waits long enough for me to get the gun and to root around finding the bullets, they will die laughing when they see it (antique WWI army rifle). That’s my defense.
Americans Perceive Their Political Opposites As Ready For Violence, Poll Shows | Talking Points Memo
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Well, touche (sob).
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And keep in mind the studies showing that the conservative brain operates on fear far more than the liberal brain. It’s hardly suprising that people feeding their amygdala a steady daily diet of Faux News agit-prop about scary black people overrunning the country with violence, black people the conservatives’ lizard brains ARE ALREADY AFRAID OF BECAUSE OF DEMOGRAPHICH SHIFTS, would by more likely to reach the conclusion that their “opponents” are going to commit violence.
In fact, it is the deliberate preying upon that propensity for white-fright lizard brain replacement-fear that Faux News, et al., specifically target and encourage and exacerbate so that it creates a feedback loop, becoming the justification in those peoples’ minds for their need to resort to violence…a widespread perception that they need to act FIRST in “self defense”…and “acting first” isn’t just acting violently, it’s also acting to oppress and subjugate and rig elections and abuse power to maintain power, despite becoming a minority of the electorate.
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Low info conservatives are fed a constant diet of “Antifa is coming to your town to burn down your police department.” Of course they’re scared. They’re being brainwashed.
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Surveys like this are so fucking stupid when they don’t constrain the context carefully, and these folks didn’t. Look, if you ask me whether I think violence by my side will be justified under some vague scenario, I’m likely to say “no” for a whole host of reasons. For instance, I might answer “no violence” under the assumption that what I really mean is I wouldn’t go straight to violence, but would start with peaceful protest and then escalate as the conditions demanded. But ask me about my opponent’s views, and I’m not going to be so goddamn charitable. I don’t care if they start from a position of peaceful protest; the only part that matters in “would they condone violence?” is whether they would get there in the end.
There’s another problem here with posing the word ‘justified’ in one question against the word ‘condoning’ in the other one. People might say they don’t think X is “justified” all day long, but if it’s going on all around them and they’re not lifting a finger to stop it, then I’m going to say they condone it, no matter how much they Susan Collins it on Facebook.
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I’d love to see a list of those, especially those that any public figure has called out as standing back and standing by. I really would.
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In my state there were efforts to intimidate BLM protesters in smaller cities. I saw one with my own eyes.
20 or so BLM protesters (that’s the entire protest, mostly women and children because men stayed in the parking lot protecting their cars from being damaged, all of them white few light skin Latino) were being encircled by young Republicans in trucks with flags and racial slurs, slowed down, pushed back, intimidated and hiding their kids behind their backs, while the local police was watching and yawning. The GOP nazi youth (all of them below 18) organized themselves openly on FB website for the town, promising all sorts of criminal behavior. Nobody stopped them despite reports. It was only the fact that the protesters were very scared and dispersed quickly that it didn’t end in bloodshed. And it’s a Chicago suburb. That votes Democratic.
So when I’m reading this I’m livid, really.
How dare some idiot pollster equate the feelings of the two sides? Democrats are rationally EXPECTING the GOP nazis to rebel and kill people. Republicans are suspicious of Dems so much they think the 100 million protests that will happen after the election will be violent. If they help it. Significantly. Like they did in MN and WI.
If Trump wins, we KNOW there will be casualties, victims remembered for years after as symbols of fallen Republic. There will be repression and people hurt. Badly. Most of them Democrats. We all KNOW this. And if Trump loses? There will be casualties too. Also Democrats. We all KNOW this.
Meanwhile a stupid pollster decided to equate these two situations. Apparently, it’s never too early to fall to the boots of the future tyrant and lick them. .
Only one side perceives, mostly from tea leaves. The other knows.
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Fox, yes, but don’t forget Facebook. Can’t find the link to the recent study that shows the algorithms designed to keep people on the site longer (to feed them more ads) has a more profoundly negative effect on conservatives, as they are exposed to more misinformation.
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Because real Americans are voting for the United States, not Russia.
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Exactly. This is such bullshit false equivalence. Only one candidate has said he might not accept the election results. Only one candidate has stated that if he doesn’t win, that’s ipso facto proof of fraud. Only one candidate has been on a ceaseless campaign to delegitimize voting by mail.
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That reads to me like he’s suffering from a mental illness.
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Yes, the comparison between FB and Reddit. It’s good to keep in mind that the FB algorithms are still politically neutral though. They are just more susceptible to abuse by bad actors, which, well…we know who that tends to be at this point.
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Projection rules supreme.
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Haven’t read total TL above, but put it this way:
I–and a lot of people I know–are DFH’s who’ll punch back.
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I don’t know, they worked well enough in WWI.
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I still wonder why no one rounded up a local college football team to “keep order” in the brooks brothers hallway.
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nope, however, he is a certified police safety instructor.
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Bolt action? Make that shot count.
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I would rather have an m14 over an ar15 any day. stopping power as well has the ability to hit a target at a greater distance. same with that wwi rifle, more stopping power, greater distance. fuck that 30 round magazine if you can’t hit the broad. side of a barn 30 rounds will not help you. from experience most of these fools could not hit the barn of it was 20 feet in front of them
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