Etiquette



DP Etiquette

First rule: Don't be a jackass.

Other rules: Do not attack or insult people you disagree with. Engage with facts, logic and beliefs. Out of respect for others, please provide some sources for the facts and truths you rely on if you are asked for that. If emotion is getting out of hand, get it back in hand. To limit dehumanizing people, don't call people or whole groups of people disrespectful names, e.g., stupid, dumb or liar. Insulting people is counterproductive to rational discussion. Insult makes people angry and defensive. All points of view are welcome, right, center, left and elsewhere. Just disagree, but don't be belligerent or reject inconvenient facts, truths or defensible reasoning.

Tuesday, November 5, 2024

Election day

Poll closings, Eastern time:

I thought I knew what we were dealing with. When Donald Trump began his rise to power in 2015, he struck me as a dangerous but recognizable demagogue.

Then he proved me wrong. His concerted efforts to overthrow the November 2020 election very nearly succeeded — tangible proof that he is in fact willing to follow through on the authoritarian threats he so freely makes. I now see him as a genuine aberration in our history — a man whose contempt for constitutional democracy makes him a unique threat to the nation.

[Historical] analogies come naturally to me. Yet more and more, I fear that trying to find historical precedents for Mr. Trump presents dangers of its own. No similar figure in American history has ever had such a strong grip on so many. To suggest otherwise diminishes the sense of urgency the moment requires. I wish I were overstating the case. But I am not.  
That his attempted coup failed should not be grounds for dismissing the threat he poses; rather, that it was attempted at all should persuade us not to endanger the constitutional order again. And to dismiss his own radical words as well as the concerns of those who worked with him that he harbors dictatorial ambitions is to put faith in a man who has already shown himself to be more interested in himself than in the nation, more devoted to his aggrandizement than to the Constitution.
As I read that, I listened to NPR interviewing a Republican and other opinionators. The Repub says says DJT loves the US has has no authoritarian intent. An non-Repub opinionator says that DJT has too short an attention span to seriously contest the constitution. Too short an attention span? 

NPR and most other MSM sources continue to treat DJT as just a normal politician doing normal things, not an abnormal monster doing monstrous things. To those news sources I award a fair, balanced and well-deserved grade of F since Trump's 1/6/21 coup attempt for abysmal reporting about politics and DJT in particular. They still call him a conservative, not an authoritarian which he clearly is.  I've written to them and made this complaint, so I did what I could do.

I don't know what else to say.

Any thoughts?

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