Ok so let me see if I understand this right. You're quoting ONE person (Hillary Clinton) and attributing what she says to all the left.
You're pulling "For them it automatically follows that the persons or group of persons labeled that way automatically don't have human dignity and don't deserve to be treated like humans." out of nowhere, because she never said anything like that.
Honest question: what message should I take from your post? Strawman? Plain bullshit? Fear of change?
 

Just because I gave only one link, you can’t just ignore the rest of the phrase. Every time somebody on the left calls somebody a racist, sexist, transphobe, this happens. Do you need millions of quotes from people calling J.K. Rowling “transphobe” and ending their argument there? Thousands of quotes from students demanding somebody be not allowed to give a talk at campist because of a one-word argument like “racist”? How many stories do I need to quote about pro-palestinian protesters harrassing people simply because those people were jewish? I assume that my readers occassionally read a newspaper, or hear news on the TV or online. If you are pretending that left-wing hate doesn’t exist, it is you who is intellectually dishonest.
 

Left wing hate does exist unfortunately, but it is an order of magnitude less than the right-wing hate.
The right candidate for US president has publicly called his opponents "vermin" and his supporters applauded it.
The left candidate for US president has never used language like that, nor has any other prominent left-wing politician.
Among popular media persons, I also can't think for anyone on the left that is comparable to right-wingers like Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, Andrew Tate, etc.
But you seem to be doing exactly what you are accusing the left of doing - putting all people on the left under one label and treating all of them as "Untermenschen".
 

@Jogy How do you measure that? I would for example argue that left-wing hate is more prevalent than right-wing hate on Twitter / X.

And the point of my post is that it doesn’t matter who is calling who what. I don’t oppose calling out people for their behavior. I am saying that it isn’t sufficient reason to justify not engaging with them, not according them the full scope of human rights, and certainly not to harass them.

I think you can disagree with J.K. Rowling about whether gender is mostly biological or just a social construct. But when you harass a streamer who isn’t even involved in that argument, just for streaming Hogwart’s Legacy, that is just plain wrong.

I think you can be for an immediate ceasefire and condemn the state of Israel for their disproportionate response to the Hamas terrorist attack. But it is wrong to harass Jewish students in America because of that, or to deface Jewish religious buildings. Even the average Israeli citizen probably has very little influence on how his government wages war, just like the average Russian isn’t responsible for the war in Ukraine, or, back then, then average American for the war in Vietnam.
 

> How do you measure that?

One good way to measure is to see for what kind of politicians the people vote. And especially in the US, with their primaries, some of the choices made are pretty obvious.

For example, in the presidential primaries, the right-leaning people had choices like the devout Christian Mike Pence, and one would assume that the evangelicals who are substantial part of the Republican electorate would prefer him to represent them instead of the guy who bragged about grabbing women by the....

There were other choices as well, but Trump - the most divisive and hate-spewing politician in all of modern US history won their vote with a very substantial margin.

And that is not an outlier, as in other primaries, also, more often than not, are being won by extremist candidates like Marjorie Taylor Green, Kari Lake, etc.

While on the left, neither Obama nor Biden nor any other currently elected Democrat have used such language attacking the opposite party.

Which leads me to the conclusion that majority of the left-leaning electorate does not support public expression of hate, while a substantial part of the right-leaning people in the US either support hate speech or at the very least are not put off by it enough to try to choose more civil candidates.
 

@Jogy I fully agree on hate speech being more prominent with leading individuals on the right. The right has people who made a job and a living out of hate speech, e.g. Alex Jones. Which also has certain disadvantages, as fewer, more prominent people being easier to counterattack, including legally.

But your claim was that there was an order of magnitude more right-wing hate than left-wing hate, and I don’t see that. One possible explanation is media bias, maybe you only follow left-wing news and don’t even get to hear the stories of left-wing hate. I am following a wide spectrum of news sources, from left to right, and from different countries. And it seems to me that while the right concentrated their hate speech to come from fewer “hate speech celebrities”, left hate is carried by a far larger number of people. On platforms like Twitter/X, or YouTube, you are far more likely to encounter left-wing hate than right-wing hate. The writers usually don’t have more claim to fame than having once written two articles on Kotaku, but there seem to be a lot more of these around.

Even in mainstream US media with left leanings, these past weeks the stories of political violence were all from the left. While I do think that students are generally right to protest for a ceasefire, and demanding their universities divest from Israel, I found it frightening how easily an opposition to the state of Israel can transform into aggression against people whose only crime it is to be Jewish. And I can’t help but wonder what the general level of education is at an American elite university, if students can believe that Israelis are “white colonialist” oppressing “colored” Palestinians. If you strip Israelis and Palestinians from their outward signs of affiliation, you can’t tell them apart. Which is exactly why the keffiyeh is worn in the first place.
 

Drawing the term "illegals" into this argument is wrong. Illegal is not a subjective qualification like the other ones; you are objectively illegal if you pass the border without following the rules, or if you stay longer than your visa or status allows. It is a conscious choice of any individual to be or remain illegal and it is pushishable by law. To what extent varies per country. Now, you could argue to what extent humanitarian aid is to be provided to people who choose to be illegal from a government level. It varies from the "no human is illegal" left-wing to the Gevlon-right wing version of "shoot them when they cross the border, but that discussion does not change the fact that you either are illegal or you are not.
 

I don't believe a person can become "illegal". A person can commit a felony, and be objectively called a "convicted felon" after a legal judgement. I don't think the misdemeanors and felonies that are related to your immigration status are in any way special here. The person you call an "illegal" might be in reality a bona fide refugee and asylum claimant (agreed that the process to determine that is too slow and a mess). And I especially don't believe that this would in any way justify putting children in cages, or similar abuses that have been observed on the US border to Mexico.

Europe is currently full of "illegals", which turn out to be elderly, white, British citizens, who got confused or overwhelmed with the legal changes to their right to stay in the EU since the UK left in the Brexit. They get treated pretty politely (which doesn't stop them loudly complaining in The Sun newspaper: "I voted for Brexit and now Benidorm is kicking me out"). Nobody would think of flying them to Rwanda, or even calling them "illegals".
 

> On platforms like Twitter/X, or YouTube, you are far more likely to encounter left-wing hate than right-wing hate.

This is very hard to quantify without having full access to Twitter data, which we do not have. It may have been the case several years ago, when the previous management was much less tolerant of right-wing hate speech, but definitely not under Elon Musk, who has welcomed back and promoted Alex Jones, and many other far-right personalities like Nick Fuentes. And he himself shares or makes right-wing disinformation posts like the one accusing Democrats of importing illegal immigrants in order to illegally vote so they can win elections. A single such post by Musk that reaches his 100-150 million followers is much more impactful and dangerous than 1000 posts by someone who hates Rowling, but has just few hundred followers.

I recall the non-event of Hogwarths Legacy boycott - it demonstrates that the anti-Rowling crowd may be vocal, but not at all that influential.

That is why I am much more concerned by right-wing politicians who urge their supporters to arm themselves with Glocks when going to vote, and the whole election denialism promoted by the right - that is more likely to lead to more dangerous political violence, like it already did on Jan 6th.

 

@Jogy Thank you for thus answering my “how do you measure that” question. You measure impact, and that is totally valid, although number of people involved would of course also be valid. I would also agree that the right is more likely to “bear arms”, and follow up hate speech with actual violence. However I would think that the recipients of the Hogwart’s Legacy harassment don’t consider it a non-event, even if the boycott failed.

On how to quantify prevalence on Twitter, I can only offer a thought experiment: Somebody with a statistically significant number of followers posts “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” How many hate comments will he get from the right, and how many from the left?
 

"Happy Memorial Day to All, including the Human Scum that is working so hard to destroy our Once Great Country, & to the Radical Left, ..."

This is one of the most recent hate posts by the Republican candidate for president. No politician on the left uses such words.
 

Yes. But you seem to think that somehow disqualifies the Republican candidate from winning this election. That is not the case. Not even a felony conviction would achieve this. What would be needed is for the Democrats to field a candidate that is less unpopular than the Republican candidate, and looks more capable. It saddens and puzzles me that the Democrats don’t understand that.
 

> Yes. But you seem to think that somehow disqualifies the Republican candidate from winning this election.

For me it does. But the scary part is that apparently a lot of people on the right tolerate or even approve of such hateful speech. That is what convinces me that right-wing hate is more prominent than left-wing hate.

> What would be needed is for the Democrats to field a candidate that is less unpopular than the Republican candidate, and looks more capable. It saddens and puzzles me that the Democrats don’t understand that.

Agreed. Biden is not an inspiring candidate like some others in the past like FDR, JFK, even Obama. The sad part is also that there does not seem to be an obvious replacement.
 

If you say “hate” instead of “hate speech”, you might be right. I do think that on the right there is a *lot* of feeling of “you can’t say anything anymore”, which suppresses the hate speech, but not the underlying hate. And Trump knows that, and exploits it. People elect him, because he says what they are too afraid of saying, for fear of losing their jobs. Political correctness might be part of the problem here.
 

With regards to the “illegal” discussion: what you believe is not relevant. The official term (at least in all european countries and the US) for a person who resides in a country without having the proper status is “illegal”. Being illegal is, in most cases, a misdemeanor that carries a fine and, if caught, can lead to a request to leave (most european countries) or forced deportation (US).

“ The person you call an "illegal" might be in reality a bona fide refugee and asylum claimant (agreed that the process to determine that is too slow and a mess)”.

This is untrue - a person in the refugee or asylum process is, by definition, not an illegal. They CAN, by law, be limited to a certain degree in their freedom during this process. To what extent differs per country. I do agree that “putting children in cages” should not be one of those limits, but we often DO put people in cages if they do not follow the law and get caught.
 

> If you say “hate” instead of “hate speech”, you might be right.

Not sure I get what you mean. Trump's words that I cited look to me exactly as hate speech, as do many more of his public posts or rally speeches.
 

@Tobold: Every time somebody on the left calls somebody a racist, sexist, transphobe, this happens.
Yes and? As a matter of fact I'm happy that the left is starting to treat the right like shit, because on the right side of the spectrum this has been the norm more or less forever. "Cancel culture" is the same vigilantism that the right champions constantly, except starting to whine when they are targeted by the very same practice.
You talk about dignity, but I'd love you to provide me with some left-side politician going at the same level of France's Eric Zemmour who went on TV saying that "all immigrants are rapists", when asked "even the children?" he answered "ah, those are potential rapists".
It seems to me that you give a free pass to the right because they're not treating YOU like shit, while you feel that the left is threatening your "right" to hate speech.

Will the left win elections by being like the right? Probably no, but I understand why they do this. After a time, people get pissed whatever the position on the political spectrum.
 

Trump engages in hate speech. Many of his followers feel the same hate, but don’t dare to say anything, as making a single “off” remark can get you fired these days. So I think you might be right that right-wing hate is more prevalent, but social suppression has made right-wing hate speech less prevalent, as only very few people have the ability to get away with it.

Note that this trend might be moving left too, as their are an increasing number of stories in which university students are losing job opportunities because of anti-semitism.

I am not in favor of punishing people for speech, because it doesn’t work. They just shut up, without changing their mind. You lose the opportunity to argue with people and make them understand why what they are saying is bad.
 

It seems to me that you give a free pass to the right because they're not treating YOU like shit, while you feel that the left is threatening your "right" to hate speech.

Have you actually read my post? I’m clearly calling out both sides, and I’m not giving anyone a free pass.

What I detest about that partisan garbage is that you can’t accept somebody calling out both sides, but think that if somebody isn’t 100% on your side, he must be on the side of the enemy. In reality, and nowhere more than in the current Israel-Hamas conflict, there are no good guys. One side is using human shields, the other side fires through those human shields. We shouldn’t support either.

Where are the humanist values? If you say that your side should treat the others like shit, because “they started it”, you are participating in a race towards the bottom, and end up being not better than the people you hate.
 

It is probably a bad idea to stick my hand in this blender, but this backlash at Tobold is very confusing to me.

How in the world does an article promoting the very basic concept that "Human dignity is inviolable" receive so much derision?

"It seems to me that you give a free pass to the right because they're not treating YOU like shit, while you feel that the left is threatening your "right" to hate speech."

@helistar - What the heck are you talking about? Can you please indicate which one of his previous blogs would cause you to make such an allegation?

Can we all simply agree that the extremists on both the left and right are equally guilty of douchebaggery, and that we should always treat each other with the respect that we would like others to treat ourselves?
 

> Can we all simply agree that the extremists on both the left and right are equally guilty of douchebaggery, and that we should always treat each other with the respect that we would like others to treat ourselves?

The difference is that the extremists on the right have taken over the party, while the extremists on the left have not. That is why I don't agree with this "bothsideism" that sound like we should be criticizing both sides equally.

If one man steals $100 and another steals $10000, technically both are thieves and have broken the law, but objectively one is worse and has caused more harm than the other.

Or to give an example from World War II, which is discussed in the beginning of the original post - the Germans put people in concentration camps, but the Americans also did so - about 120000 Japanese-Americans were interned under the pretense that they may be risk for national security. Does that mean that both US and Germany were equally bad?
 

Can we all simply agree ... I think the commenters here answered that with a resounding "NO!".

That is why I don't agree with this "bothsideism" that sound like we should be criticizing both sides equally.

The problem with the "bothsideism" argument is that in 99% of the cases nobody suggested that we should criticize both sides *equally*. The *equally* is an addition of the person making the "bothsideism" argument.

Does that mean that both US and Germany were equally bad?

It means that both US and Germany were bad. Not equally. Equally is a moral pitfall, because it allows you to say "hey, the US should have gassed those 120000 Japanese-Americans, because we still wouldn't have been equally bad, as the Germans gassed millions".

Good and bad are absolutes. Being bad, but just a shiver less bad than the other side doesn't win you any moral laurels. And you will always get people to disagree which side is "less bad". I don't think there is a definitive answer in the Israel-Hamas side, which side is "less bad": One side started it, the other killed more people. Partisans on both side will claim that their side is "less bad".

The right is calling the left publicly "human scum". The left calls the right a "basket of deplorables" in a setting where they thought their words would remain private, and calls them "racists" publicly. To me that is just a difference in communication strategy. The underlying thought, that you not only want to beat the other side in an election, but actually think that they would be unfit to rule, is the same.

Human dignity is inviolable. "I'll just violate a bit less than the other side does" isn't a good argument. Nor is "I need to violate human dignity, because they started it".
 

> Can we all simply agree ... I think the commenters here answered that with a resounding "NO!".

The full question was " Can we all simply agree that the extremists on both the left and right are equally guilty of douchebaggery, and that we should always treat each other with the respect that we would like others to treat ourselves?"

So right here you have it, the "bothsideism", the suggestion that we should criticize both sides "equally", and I do not agree with this. I agree that we should strive to treat both sides with respect, with the exception of those who have clearly demonstrated that they are not worthy of it - like Trump himself. Sorry, but I have zero respect for that guy and his behavior, which is inexcusable.


> The left calls the right a "basket of deplorables"

The single comment has been taken out of context and overblown. Actually, what Hillary meant here is not that "All who support Trump are racists", but "All who are racists support Trump". And that has some justification, considering all the hate that Obama was getting just because he was black, all the lynching memes, or the "birther" conspiracy theory, for which Trump was the most vocal proponent.

 

All who are racists support Trump

That doesn’t change anything in my argument. I still think that even everybody you call “racist” has an inviolable human dignity and the constitutionally guaranteed right to vote for a president he likes. Especially since according to some voices on the left everybody who has the bad luck of being born white is already inherently “racist”. It is this chain of thought that I am attacking, that it suffices to argue that somebody is “racist”, and then imply that he is worth less as a human, or should count less in an election.

In my personal opinion, Joe Biden is “less bad” than Trump. But he isn’t a “good” candidate. Because “less bad” is a matter of perspective, I consider it possible that America will vote for Trump. I consider it possible that the left will not peacefully accept the result, and political violence will break out. And I consider that to be a “bad” outcome. Whether you argue that it is “less bad” than January 6th doesn’t change anything here.
 

> I still think that even everybody you call “racist” has an inviolable human dignity
> Especially since according to some voices on the left everybody who has the bad luck of being born white is already inherently “racist”.

But even the people on the "left" who call other people "racists" have an inviolable human dignity and should be treated with respect, right?
 

@Jogi Yes, absolutely.

Note that you can treat somebody with respect and still criticize him.
 

Another question:
It is wrong to call other people "vermin" or "scum" because that is clearly an unwarranted insult.

In most cases, calling someone "Nazi" or "racist" is also an insult and is wrong.

But what about those people who clearly demonstrate behavior that would warrant such a label - like someone intentionally waving a swastika flag in public - is it still wrong to call him a "Nazi"?
 

Have you ever watched the debate from 1968 between William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal? It is so famous that a documentary movie was made about it in 2015. To the best of my knowledge it is the first time on a mainstream media that somebody from the left (Vidal) called somebody from the right (Buckley) a "Nazi". The extreme reaction by Buckley, who had been fighting Nazis in Europe during the war, might be why the left considered the term a brilliant insult to be wielded against the right for all eternity.

The guy waving a swastika flag is a) just trying a get a violent reaction out of you, and b) most probably woefully ignorant of history. It would be fair to call him a Nazi sympathizer. It would be fair to say that what he is doing is wrong. But really, do you think this is anywhere near the level of evil which the Nazis brought over Europe from 1939 to 1945? It is just Godwin's Law that this is the ultimate insult towards which every debate moves.

I likewise find it ridiculous when a Republican calls a Democrat a "communist". The most "communist" policy the Democratic party got up to this century is Obamacare, a welfare system that barely rises to the level of Bismarck's Health Insurance Act of 1883 in Germany, and he was a conservative.

The whole mutual insult schtick is based on extreme exaggeration. All nuance is lost in the process. Your uncle, who made a single, minor, "off" remark during Thanksgiving dinner is "a racist". Samuel Bowers, a leading KKK member convicted of several murders, is "a racist" too. 7-year old Billy is told at school that he should apologize for being "a racist" to his classmates of color, although he never did anything racist in his life. The word becomes overused to the point of being absolutely useless.
 

But if someone is consistently demonstrating a behavior that can be considered racist, is it still wrong to call him that?

For example, Trump - he has not made just some minor "off" remarks, but has performed actions like refusing to let black people as renters in his properties. What should he be called?
 

The problem is not calling somebody racist. Trump is by all reasonable measures a racist. The above cited William F. Buckley was a racist. Actually being racist was the social norm in the USA before the 1960's, and not just among white people. Then this old school right-wing racism slowly receded, only to be replaced this century by a new version from the left. Affirmative action is racist. The elimination of standardized testing is racist. The idea of slavery reparations not based on genealogy is racist. The idea of racial inherited guilt is racist.

The question is what you do with the information that somebody is "racist", especially knowing that there is a huge range of racism from minor faults to actually lynching people. I think we would have gotten rid of most racism by now if we had stuck to the simple idea of calling people out when they make a racist remark and telling them in no unclear terms that this isn't okay. People react to social pressure, and societies change that way. In my life time we went from being gay being a criminal offence to a general acceptance of gay marriage in first-world countries, and we managed that improvement with mostly just social pressure.

In the USA you created a thought police that punishes every possible "racism", regardless of whether it is real or just imagined, with disproportionate punishments. That leads to stories like the guy being fired for using the word "niggardly" (look it up, it is not a racial slur). It leads to people feeling silenced, and then voting for DeSantis when he promises a war on woke.

You seem to be extremely disappointed that there is no consequence for Trump being racist. But in reality most people when they vote for a presidential candidate, they consider a whole list of positive and negative points. Whether Trump is racist or not simply ranks relatively low on that list for the large majority of Americans. If you believe that racism in America is systemic, then it can't be a selection criterion anyway. If everybody is "racist" and you lost all gradation of the term, then it stops being useful. Joe Biden has been called "racist" as well, although he obviously is much less so than Trump. But that doesn't matter to voters. The fact that Joe Biden is older than Bill Clinton, who was president 30 years ago, ranks a lot higher on their list. You can't get from "Trump is racist" to "thus he is unelectable". Especially since the people who are most likely to mind whether a candidate is racist or not weren't likely to vote for Trump in the first place. If you set the bar for calling somebody "a racist" so low that racism actually becomes systemic and more than half of the population "is racist", then by all principles of democracy it is only fair and right that these "racists" vote for somebody who represents them.
 

@Tobold: Where are the humanist values? If you say that your side should treat the others like shit, because “they started it”, you are participating in a race towards the bottom, and end up being not better than the people you hate.
It seems I'm not the only one not reading what other people say.

And I completely agree with the accusation of "bothsideism", which is exactly what you've been doing. You justified Trump's "stolen election" accusation by saying that the left would have done exactly the same. Guess what, they don't. And you say "Affirmative action is racist.": either you have no idea what racism is, or you're engaging in exactly the "bothsideism" you're being accused of.
 

@Helistar: It is you, and a lot of people on the left, who don't know what racism is. They took the word, and completely changed its meaning. Racism, by definition, and you can look that up everywhere, is discrimination and prejudice against people based on their race or ethnicity. It doesn't matter *what* race or ethnicity, it isn't a "black only" thing.

Affirmative action discriminates against people based on their race or ethnicity, because it obviously looks at people's race or ethnicity and then treats them differently in function of it. Yes, there is a positive idea behind it, a "positive" discrimination towards black people. But it has been consistently shown to result in a negative discrimination against Asian Americans. Affirmative action, together with a range of other progressive measures, has also failed in its purpose to help black people, because it just eroded the value of a college degree in America.
 

> You seem to be extremely disappointed that there is no consequence for Trump being racist.

I am extremely disappointed that there is no consequence for all of what I consider bad behavior on Trump's side - the disregard for rules and norms, the attempt to overturn the 2020 election, the hate language, etc.

I will reiterate my point - while I can agree that there may be many reasons why a lot of people would vote for Republican candidates (for example being a conservative Christian who opposes things like abortion or same-sex marriages, or dislike many of the other progressive policies), the fact is that in the primaries there was a choice between normal conservative candidates like Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, Chris Christie who would have supported conservative policies, but the people on the right choose the now convicted felon Trump over them - and that is a choice I cannot feel respect for.

And now the same people who claim they are voting for the "law and order" party are openly threating violence because they do not accept the result of a jury trial - there is nothing that the left has done, like the affirmative action or the talk about slavery reparations or telling redneck jokes, that can be an excuse for this.


 

like the affirmative action or the talk about slavery reparations or telling redneck jokes

There have been a number of polls what Americans think are the most pressing issues for the USA at the moment. None of the things you mention are on the list. The two issues topping the list are immigration and inflation, not always in the same order. "It's the economy, stupid", as Bill Clinton would say: Inflation without a corresponding wage increase leads to a real cost of living crisis, even if GDP data are positive; and low-wage workers tend to dislike immigration, as immigrants are perceived as competing for those jobs, keeping wages low, even if unemployment is low. The perceived economic situation, especially at the bottom, is a lot worse than what economic statistical numbers suggest. The redistribution of wealth from poor to rich has accelerated since the pandemic, and outpaced economic growth. The rich, and the economy in total are richer, but the poor are poorer. You'll be surprised come November how many black and latino people vote for Trump.

Now I don't believe that Joe Biden is responsible for the inflation, and I don't think he could have done a lot about immigration. But the Republicans did an excellent job of blaming him for both, on thin grounds. Which is enough if you combine it with the tendency of blaming the guy at the top for everything, like gas prices. Personally I think that Biden's student debt relief plans were a political mistake: In an environment where increasingly the Democrats are the party of the educated elite, and the Republicans represent (badly) the less educated people, student debt relief smelled like a partisan kickback to the base. And now those same students won't even vote for Biden, because they equally unjustly blame him for what Israel does to the palestinians.

In short, I believe that Trump probably getting re-elected has surprisingly little to do with Donald Trump, even with convicted felon Trump. And a lot more with a very old tradition of democracy, of blaming the current government for a bad situation and then voting against it. It is why in all real democracies there is this constant switch from left to right, which only slows down a bit when the economic situation is rather good, and speeds up when it is rather bad. The Tories in the UK managed to counter that trend by repeatedly changing the person at the top, but that works only for so long.
 

Again you miss my point. Blaming the current government for real or imagined issues could help electing any opposition leader. But that still does not explain why they chose that particular leader and not someone else. If the goal was simply electing a Republican, Nikki Haley was a better choice - with her more moderate appeal during the primaries I think there is a large chance that in the November election she would have wiped the floor with Biden.
 

> And a lot more with a very old tradition of democracy, of blaming the current government for a bad situation and then voting against it. It is why in all real democracies there is this constant switch from left to right, which only slows down a bit when the economic situation is rather good, and speeds up when it is rather bad.

The cycle is not that quick in the US. Donald Trump is the only recent president that lost re-election. Before him:

Obama - two terms
George W. Bush - two terms
Bill Clinton - two terms
George H.W. Bush - one term, but he came on the heels of
Ronald Reagan - two terms
Jimmy Karter - one term, but as far as I remember, he refused to run for a second term
Richar Nixon - two terms
John F. Kennedy/Lyndon Johnson - two terms in total, as JFK was assassinated and Lyndon took his place
Dwight Eisenhower - two terms
Franklin Roosevelt/Harry Truman - five terms in total (FDR died in office and Truman replaced him)

So, as you can see, in general Americans love re-electing their presidents.


 

There is still a left-right cycle: Bush (R) - Clinton (D) - Bush (R) - Obama (D) - Trump (R) - Biden (D), even if the length of the cycle is closer to 8 years than to 4 years.

As you are from the left, you are moving on thin ice when you criticize how the Republicans choose their presidential candidate. I totally agree that Nikki Haley would have been a better choice. But at least there was an actual election going on, with her getting a decent share of votes.

Wouldn't you say that there are better choices for presidential candidate among Democrats than Biden? Somebody like Pete Buttigieg would have wiped the floor with Trump in November. Why was there no contest at all, and Biden got a higher percentage of votes in the primaries than Putin in his fake elections in Russia?
 

Biden may have many negatives, but he is not a terrible and uncivil human being like Donald Trump. To use the title of your post, Biden has never publicly violated the human dignity of anybody, while Trump constantly does so. That is why for me choosing Biden over other similar options is much less controversial than choosing Trump over the other options.

Another difference is that Biden is the incumbent president and by tradition he is the default choice for the election.

> But at least there was an actual election going on
Thus, a better comparison would be 2020, when the Republicans in a similar situation did not hold a primary at all, even though if they did and chose somebody else, they might had a better change of not losing to Biden.
 

I think you are totally right in choosing Biden over Trump. I think you are very wrong in your disdain of the people who choose otherwise. They have their totally valid reasons.
 

> I think you are very wrong in your disdain of the people who choose otherwise. They have their totally valid reasons.

And I think I am right in my disdain for the people who chose somebody who constantly calls his opponents "scum" and "vermin" and many other insults and threats.
What are those "valid" and worthy of respect reasons for choosing Trump over Haley or Pence?

 

You listed them yourself: “in general Americans love re-electing their presidents.” and him being “the incumbent”.
 

> You listed them yourself: “in general Americans love re-electing their presidents.” and him being “the incumbent”.

No, he is not. He lost the election as an incumbent, and past history shows that candidates who lose reelection usually fade back and let somebody else to take a chance.
 

Congratulations, you just explained why Trump keeps up that ridiculous lie that he didn’t lose the 2020 election.

Aren’t you saying that a voter whose primary concerns are inflation and immigration, and who thinks that Trump is younger and more vigorous than his opponent, is an inferior human being? Then why are you surprised that this voter is fed up with being looked down upon by you and the rest of the leftist elite is saying “Fuck you, I’m voting Trump just to spite you”?

I can’t think of any US presidential election in which the deciding factor was that the public specifically wanted the more polite guy.
 

> Aren’t you saying that a voter whose primary concerns are inflation and immigration, and who thinks that Trump is younger and more vigorous than his opponent, is an inferior human being?

Well, if they chose Trump over Haley (who is objectively younger and more vigorous than both Trump and Biden), then their primary concern is not inflation, but wanting to "own the libs".

You may be willing to excuse the behavior of the Trump supporters, who are now threating with violence, with the "left elite looking down on them", I - not so much.
 

Wow, all 74 million people who voted for Trump are now threatening you personally with violence? That must be really tough for you. Or maybe you are just making stuff up, generalizing from the behavior of some extremists to the millions of Americans who just have different priorities.

I would say that both parties are dumb to not listen more what the voters of the *other* side are saying. You can’t get good policies out of an echo chamber.

But at lesst you confirmed my point of my original post that you consider roughly half of Americans as Untermenschen.
 

> generalizing from the behavior of some extremists to the millions of Americans who just have different priorities.

Just like you seem to generalize the behavior of some left extremists to the millions of Americans on the left who do not share your views?
For example: "I consider it possible that the left will not peacefully accept the result, and political violence will break out."


> But at lesst you confirmed my point of my original post that you consider roughly half of Americans as Untermenschen.

Not all. Those who chanted "Lock her up" on his rallies. Those who attacked the capitol on Jan 6. Those who are right now threating with violence and refusing to believe that their idol has been unjustly found guilty. The members of the Trump cult. Not 74 million, much less, but not and insignificant number - and more than the extremists on the left.


> Wow, all 74 million people who voted for Trump are now threatening you personally with violence? That must be really tough for you.

Wow, that is a really compelling argument you are putting out there.

Ok, you made your point. I won't speak ill of Trump and his supporters on your blog again. And don't worry, I will not send death threats to anyone, nor I will go out and break stuff if Trumps wins in November, nor will go to attack the Capitol.

 

I’m just saying that you complain about Trump calling the voters of the left human scum, and then you go and do basically the same, just using slightly different words. With the point of my original post being that both sides should treat the voters of the other side with respect.

The basic process of democracy is to persuade voters to vote for you. Not to take large groups of the voting population and insult them. We all agree that Trump is a horrible person who nobody should vote for. But if Trump is winning anyway, that is not the fault of the Trump voters. It is the fault of the Democrats to not have offered them a political program and a candidate they could have voted for. Blaming the voters is always wrong in a democracy.
 

Hi Jogy

Jimmy Carter did run against Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential election and lost.
Some on the main contributing factors that worked against his administration were:
1.) High inflation
2.) High gas prices
3.) A hostage situation in the middle east

Sounds like history may be repeating itself.

Other thoughts...
I was only an 8-year-old at the time but remember the Republicans always referring to Carter as a dumb "peanut farmer" in the 1976 election when he ran against Gerald Ford.

In 1980 he was viewed as a weak pacifist, and Reagan as being more intelligent and a strong supporter of the military.

It was later in life that I learned that Carter was an officer in the United States Navy and served under Admiral Hyman Rickover who is known as the "Father of the Nuclear Navy".
The Admiral was viewed by most as brilliant but a real S.O.B. and he personally interviewed all the officers who applied for the nuclear submarine program. The fact that Carter made the cut says a lot about his intelligence and engineering skills.

Reagan PLAYED a Naval officer in "Hellcats of the Navy" but that is as close to military service that he ever got.

I know this is irrelevant to the main topic of this thread, but it is funny how perception and reality can be at such odds sometimes.