I was liking this discussion, so I hope you are not being put off.
No, this is great. Way better than Facebook.
I was speaking in broader terms, when I used the Laffer Curve as a “text.” The New Testament account of Jesus is entirely about a pacifist who preaches forgiveness and good works. These are good things, the basis of much of secular political ideas. Large majorities of Christians, however, who like war and believe in retribution, simply ignore it, pretending it says what it doesn’t say.
Well, let’s freeze right there for a second, and talk about war.
I’m a conscientious objector to war, being raised a Quaker, and that belief has always stuck. Still does. And after I had a son, I started really unpacking “why war,” mostly out of worry he might get drafted to kill some other kid who was drafted to kill him. The thought disgusts me. But knowing math, and spending a little time setting up a culture war analysis framework, I’ve come to the conclusion that war is a Nash Equilibrium from game theory, and we are dead stuck with it. There’s no way out. Analysis here:
Also from that article, we can model “follow Jesus except for that war thing” as a nested layer of overall societal indoctrinations, that have evolved because they have Darwinistic efficacy greater than “follow Jesus to the letter including nation scale pacifism.” And while the folks who adopt Jesus+War may not be thinking about the deal in those terms consciously, I think they at least have a subconscious understanding of them. So while I don’t personally adopt the position, I do think its defensible.
If we want to jump further down this rabbit hole, please go there and read that so at least we have a good shared lexicon for going further down that road. And truthfully, I find that rabbit hole way more interesting than the “who voted for who and why” rabbit hole. Although I can share my personal thoughts on voting trends, I think they’re probably much more likely to be tainted by my own indoctrinations, and less likely to be critically accurate.
Right, but that is one example in unique circumstances. Ossoff got 49% of the vote, there, and no one called him a leftist. He got that vote due to a phenomenon much talked about in the latest election. Educated suburbanites have turned on the Republicans due to Trump. Republicans had counted on these suburbanites in their redistricting 8 years ago, but Trump has foiled that plan. This has been happening across the country.
Everyone called him a leftist. I play soccer with some D party operatives, folks who work in messaging and such for the Ds, one of which was on Ossoff’s team. After Handel won, I told him folks out in suburban Cobb didn’t line up in the rain to vote for Handel, and they didn’t line up to vote against Ossoff, they lined up to vote against Pelosi.
But, I thought we were talking about, intersectional nuts. I don’t think gun control even falls into the radar of intersectional idiocy. There is lots of mainstream support for gun control across the board, even among gun owners. I’m talking about Ocasio-Cortez types, those I would more associate with gender and race leftism. It just doesn’t jibe that in this election, Democrats have suffered because of SJWs, because they are seen as largely separate.
I think the Ds definitely suffered in 2016 from an association with SJ. I don’t think SJ was on the minds of many voters down here for 2018, but I can’t say whether that read is accurate or not elsewhere.
This is a popular headline, but one not even slightly supported by electoral history. George McGovern, 1972: 49 state loss . Jimmy Carter, 1980: 44 state loss. Mondale, 1984: 49 state loss. Dukakis: 40 state loss. Her final vote total was 48% to Trump’s 46%.
Mondale would have wiped the floor with Trump. Pretty much anyone would have wiped the floor with Trump. All anyone had to do to beat Trump was not be horrible. The Hillary team pulled pretty tremendous strings behind the scenes with the Blue media to make sure Trump got the most airtime, and that, combined with a highly granular field, was what gave Trump the Republican primary win. She polled better against him thans he did against any other Republican primary candidate, and still lost to him. The reason we have Trump now is the Podesta Pied Piper Plan backfired. Had they not worked diligently behind the scenes to push Trump, the Reds probably would have run Kasich or Rand Paul, and the popular vote wouldn’t have been nearly as close.
Well, we know that SJWs are assholes, and pure poison, but the right wing violence is the most deadly problem we face. The guy who mailed bombs to Trump’s enemies, the guy who shot up a synagogue, who believed Trump was not right wing enough. This is a growing problem.
I think it’s silly to bicker about which tribe is the bigger problem, when both are clear problems. Lots of folks seem to forget the Bernie Bro who shot up the congressional baseball practice. And just inside the midterms, we also had several ricin mailers to reds from a blue triber, and another blue triber shoot up a red campaign headquarters.
It’s still isolated. The T3R for these things is still 1:1, so that doesn’t indicate an active hot culture war, but the animus is growing, according to the numbers. Here’s a snapshot of some numbers I find alarming, and some quotes/links to why I think the numbers are doing that:
