bastion what's really amazing is President Trump was always a Democrat, until he got mad and became president. He spent about 5 years showing the world the deceit of the media and most U.S. politicians. Some of us already knew so we didn't fall for anything. Been a good show though, the next season will really get people going.

Hello MilesPurdue. I have a question. When did American society become so overly polarised? How it is divided looks absurd from the outside. Or is it just on social media where people are just acting out? Do you live in a peaceful neighbourhood where you and your neighbours get on well despite different political orientations?

@Naomi you ask a wonderful question. Being in Southern California most of my life and watch what people do when they don't know anything about you, most look for something in common, food you like or music, sports, movies, even clothing. If they see similar they will open and accept you. If nothing in common they may listen to gossiping and judge you, or ignore you completely. Most of the division and prejudice is in the media, so many enjoy the gossip and believe, like squabbling about sports. But in truth, if something happens, everyone will jump in to help you. Most racism is the media, most political arguments are the media. With the years of the news talking of racism, the rich against the poor, even about the clothes you wear and car you drive causes issues in the news. There are some who still are bothered by race or wealth, but when the politicians repeat it over and over, it's just to cause separation to keep control. Some believe cause they hear it all the time, but most are to busy to worry about it. Some may get upset, but your question is needed to get people to look at the truth because it's not as bad here as the news claims.

What a hypocrite... Antifa, Burn, loot and Murder riots for the best part of a year... Lies for many years and never once accepting Trump as a legitimate President.
Democrats and their supporters like you live in cloud cuckoo land.

@Lightman people didn't accept Trump? Hillary conceded. Legal avenues such as impeachment and investigations were used when it appeared that Trump was engaging in corruption. Armed terrorists never stormed the Capitol to try to steal the election and implement authoritarianism.

@JacksonNought Oh now you are just in deep dark denial... honestly Clinton conceding doesn't explain the behaviour of the democrats and their obstructionism and plotting and planning for Impeachment on false charges.
Oh and what you claim just happened is total rubbish.
Perhaps a straight jacket and a padded room would suite you better.

@Lightman which is why the Republicans engaged in obstruction in blocking the Mueller investigation and blocking impeachment witnesses, even going as far as having Roger Stone threaten witnesses.

You might want to stick to Australian politics, you know nothing about the US.

@JacksonNought don't waste my time with your idiocy.

@Lightman you're the one engaging on a site. We've been through this before, you are perfectly capable of ignoring me and moving on, you choose to waste your time. Guess you're the idiot.

@JacksonNought I'm happy to engage here... but you are an idiot.

@JacksonNought

And what was the outcome of the 2 year Mueller report on Russian Collusion? There was NONE - yet there was $millions wasted on this sham investigation - $millions!

And impeachment - for what? More wasted $millions & trumped up fake witnesses.

Obviously you're also ignorant to the fact that USA politics unfortunately has a ripple effect on other nations!

@w0tn0t how many millions on sham Benghazi investigations? And attempts to repeal the ACA? And Clinton impeachment?

You left off the word Democrats...
DEMOCRATS - AMERICA'S SHAME.

@Lightman Nope. My sentence was complete. In your imaginary world you just make stuff up. Go play with your toys.

@maxmaccc Not really.... you are biased... I'm looking at this and the facts I have no skin in the game.

@Lightman You always think you know other peoples motives in spite of the obvious being, well, obvious.

@maxmaccc I just stick to the facts... you should try it.
I never claim to be a mind reader or espouse anything to suggest I am.

@Lightman You stated "you are biased", that would mean you think you know what i think. How do you know that is a fact?
Also, in your other post you stated "You left off the word Democrats..." again, thinking you know what i think. You do it all the time.
Post anther example in your reply because i'm pretty sure you're unaware you're doing it.

@maxmaccc Your words speak for themselves... or do you deny them now? Where did you acknowledge the hypocrisy and past bad behaviour of the Democrats and their supporters? hmmmm
No where.

@Lightman naw, c’mon. You aren’t allowed to have an opinion dontchaknow? Lol

@parsifal Oh you are allowed an opinion as long as its the correct one... the politically correct one.

@Lightman Thank you for your permission.

@maxmaccc lol I didn't give you permission or disallow you from doing anything now lets not have you lying like the rest of the democrats now.

@Lightman Your post is right there. Talk about turning a blind eye, sheesh.

@Lightman What words of mine do you refer to? Also, asking a question then answering it yourself is a little odd.

@Lightman Nowhere*

@maxmaccc quote it....

@Lightman Hmm...yes?

@maxmaccc got nothing eh?

@Lightman I was responding to your "Your words speak for themselves... or do you deny them now?" statement. I replied with "What words of mine do you refer to?" then you posted "Quote it".
What are you referring to?

@maxmaccc I was asking you to quote me dummy.

Or, how about anti-fa/BLM or Biden supporters??? They would have the most to gain if THEY could given TRUMP supporters a black eye!!!!

@Serg97 executed by them certainly but, it was stupid easy to get into a place that's supposed to be absolutely secure. And the police had a really easy time moving thousands of people away from the building after the sun started going down. I smell a set up.

@MichelleD YA, I found it interesting that the "curfew" was enough to stop the "RIOT"!!!
To bad something so simple did not work in Portland!!!!!!!!

@Serg97 right!

@Serg97 now they get to to reconvene under darkness and secrecy

@MichelleD THEY seem to prefer the hours of darkness!!! Isn't that when the winning votes ALWAYS come in?????? They did last night!!!

@Serg97 yup

@WilyRickWiles That’s reliable?
Here is another fake news story for you.
I saw Antifa there, I identified a person with an Antifa T Shirt.
You can say I saw it!

@Rick-A Those are your guys!

@WilyRickWiles Your girlfriend keeps giving you humps up, sorry that was meant to be thumbs.

@farmerguy56 During the second GW Bush administration our highways and vital infrastructure were falling apart because of the enormous expense of the war. At the end, all the excesses of his administration brought about the economic crash. The first Obama term was concentrating on saving the economy from what would have been the second great depression. At the beginning of his second term you started seeing highways and bridges being repaired. By the end of it there was a boom in commercial construction and he handed Trump a nicely robust economy. Trump did not spearhead it, it was a gift handed to him.

Thanks to Donald J(erk) Trump who enabled the dictators of the world to overtake and firmly put us on the path of becoming a third world country.

@Pand0ro you forgot the many before him, there's many you should thank.

@MilesPurdue Yes. I thank the Republicans who have been working tirelessly for nearly thirty years to demonize the opposition, encouraging their constituents to fear and hate them by feeding them BS just so those in power can stay permanently in power. It has gotten beyond their control and evolved into a functional anarchy. This could very well be the end of the dream of our founding fathers.

@Pand0ro as most others, you forget Mr. Trump was always a Democrat until he got mad and became president. If you think democrats in the White House again will make things good for everybody, you are a fool. They will quietly change the amendments in the Constitution without citizens vote, many may learn the truth of slavery.

@MilesPurdue It doesn't make any difference what Trump was. It is what he is now. Besides there are plenty of Democrats who are scum as there are in all groups. The Democrats on the far left are delusional in their political beliefs as are those on the far right. The mainstream Democratic party now is to the right of where the Republican party was during the Eisenhower administration. I stand by my above statement.

Do you want the shooting to start?

Now!

@MichelleD Trump said it! I thought he was a man of his word. Or does he only advocate police violence against protesters when they aren't on his side?

@JacksonNought I'm not aware of him saying this. What is the context and subject of these words?

@MichelleD

[twitter.com]

Back in May he Tweeted "when the looting starts, the shooting starts" in reference to BLM protests in Minneapolis, saying if the mayor didn't handle it he would send in the National Guard to "get the job done right".

So he advocated for shooting protesters who were looting or rioting. So here we have protesters looting and rioting. So I assume they'll start shooting?

@JacksonNought oh right, I remember that. From what I was able to see, the relatively small group (compared to thousands) were arrested and shooting did happen. Did you see the woman shot in the chest?

@MichelleD I did, very unfortunate. I have only heard of 13 people being arrested, yet the footage shows hundreds of people. When there were BLM protests, the cops literally shot people sitting on their porches and looking out their apartment windows. Cops ripped people out of cars and tased and beat them. An old man was shoved to the ground and his head cracked open, and when the offending officer was suspended for the action, his whole department quit in solidarity. People were kidnapped off the street and held without charge. Tanks drove down the street. Cops hit protesters with their cars. A cop ran over a man's head with his bike.

Seems like the response to today's actions doesn't even compare.

@JacksonNought I didn't see any of that at all. But we probably get our news from different sources

@MichelleD

Cops shooting at people on their porch: [usatoday.com]

Cops shooting at a person looking out their window:
[twitter.com]

Cops ripping people out of their cars:
[forbes.com]

Cops shoving old man to the ground:
[democratandchronicle.com]

And the police resigning in solidarity with disciplinary action:
[buffalonews.com]

Police kidnapping people:
[salon.com]

[theguardian.com]

Police mistreating detainees, including sexual abuse:
[abc7.com]

Police run over protesters with cars:
[newsweek.com]

[radio.com]

Police run over protesters with a bike:
[the-sun.com]

@JacksonNought yup, there's the problem. You're watching commentary, not news

@JacksonNought but, I genuinely appreciate the amount of effort that would have taken

@MichelleD if you actually look at them, though, they have first-hand accounts of events, as well as footage showing the events taking place. Took me 5 mins to find those links for you to see now, but I watched them happen in real-time through several news outlets.

@JacksonNought I will look at them tomorrow. I think all those "news" agencies are agents of propaganda.

I used to be a liberal and I used to think all those same companies were real news. But, back then, I was always researching academic stuff and noticed certain subjects would have the narrative flip flop from time to time and the spin on "the truth" wasn'tfact or even based on fact. Some time later I noticed the liberal line had moved so far away from me that I could no longer see rational thought behind any of their arguments and individual people were throwing tantrums every other second. I also noticed things that dems once found to be true were getting attacked, censored and deleted. The meaning of words were being changed. History was being edited. Reality was being manipulated. And I could see it clearly and objectively. The arrival of antifa and blm made me actually run to the Republican side because I saw it for what it was, for the first time. It was Marxism. We had been infiltrated: our schools, our media, our economic systems, and our politics. So you see, I left the left and I'm not going back.

@MichelleD White supremacism and patriarchy aren't a Marxist hoax. But if it's not clear after today it never will be. There's more than two sides--every source of information will have some bias. One has to think critically. Best to start with mainstream assumptions and then test them as you learn more from trusted sources.

@WilyRickWiles what in the hell are you talking about? Is this a response to the post I made above? If so, did you read the whole thing?

@MichelleD
Unfortunately JN, WRW, TMW are all pretty mentally deficient.
Not to mention try to offer anything like logic and information to them is literally “A Battle of the Wits with Unarmed People”.
When you manage to chew through all their verbiage and responses, there’s literally nothing there.

From what I’ve seen, They subscribe to the philosophy of; “If You Can’t Blind Them with Brilliance, Baffle Them with Bullshit.”

@Bay0Wulf hmm, ok. Well, I try to give people a chance to question not only their own beliefs but also have mine challenged as well. But I can only handle the mantras for so long before the idea of putting my head in a blender seems more appealing.

@MichelleD I did... the KKK thought civil rights for Black people was a Marxist conspiracy. Positions change over time when there is positive social change from a starting point of injustice. Not to say that Democrats are right on everything. They are neoliberals who are opportunists on social issues and don't care about ordinary people. Meanwhile the Republicans are open white supremacists. That's why I'm a leftist--like the original Republicans.

[reason.com]

@Bay0Wulf is just a hater.

@MichelleD And as I said recently in another conversation:

"Always be a critical media consumer. E.g., NYT is biased in favor of the foreign policy establishment, The Atlantic is propaganda for neoliberal elites (not unlike The Economist), Politico is access journalism (e.g. they may get scoops but may be beholden to their sources), teleSUR is biased in favor of the Venezuelan and Cuban governments, Al Jazeera is biased in favor of the Qatari government, Vox represents the center-left establishment, Jacobin leans toward class-reductionist Marxism, and The Marshall Project advocates for criminal justice reform on behalf of its funders.

My media diet:
The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Intercept, Financial Times, The Guardian, AP, Reuters, AFP, NPR, Axios, Politico, BBC News, teleSUR, Al Jazeera, The New Republic, The American Prospect, Vox, Boston Review, The New Yorker, ProPublica, BuzzFeed News, Democracy Now!, New York Magazine, The Nation, Dissent, Jacobin, The Baffler, In These Times, Current Affairs, The Atlantic, Sludge, The Marshall Project, FiveThirtyEight, CIR, PRI, Type Investigations, ICIJ, The Center for Public Integrity, Chicago Sun-Times, WBEZ, Chicago Reader, Block Club Chicago, The Chicago Reporter, South Side Weekly, Crain's Chicago, Injustice Watch"

@WilyRickWiles there is racism on both sides, left and right. There is racism in white culture and racism in black culture. Black and white thinking, from the psychological term, is not the best way to view the world. Pitting whole groups as all of them are this or that is illogical. Small groups of right leaning people are racist but blm and antifa are no less racist.

I don't know why I'm discussing racism. Nobody in this thread was talking about racism, unless blm automatically denotes the subject. Absolutely absurd.

@MichelleD I'm not about demonizing individuals over personal racism. The issue is systemic racism--i.e. a racist power dynamic. Like you said, people with power use racism to divide ordinary people. That is what the Republican Party is the manifestation of. You had alluded to things like racism being a Marxist hoax. The violence at the Capitol today and how Republicans and law enforcement enabled it is an example of systemic racism.

@WilyRickWiles that's bullshit. Ever try talking to a Republican with the mind to understand their perspective. Fucking critical race theory is a sham.

@MichelleD As I commented here: [slug.com]

@MichelleD And yes, neoliberals are agents of systemic racism as well, but not in the same sort of "hood off" manner. They're not the terrorists we saw today.

@MichelleD Hell, I was a Republican.

@MichelleD Read some history. At least if you identify with white supremacy, you will be able to do it consciously and affirmatively.

@MichelleD But tell me more about intellectual Trumpism.

@MichelleD I'll concede that they've duped a lot of ordinary people. I understand that perspective from having lived it. I don't need to engage it intellectually. Many, though, are little tyrants who want to lord over their wives, employees, neighbors, and marginalized people. Fuck those people.

@WilyRickWiles omg, I don't identify with supremacy of any kind. I also don't follow the crowd or the rules. Republicans think I'm a commie and libs think I'm a supremacist. I think that proves I think independently. I don't think I'm always right but until I witness racism in the way you've proposed it, in my mind, it isn't that way.

@MichelleD How do you explain what happened today? What motivated those people? Any parallels in history?

@WilyRickWiles you gonna tell me you see race in the shit that happened today?

@MichelleD Are you going to plead ignorance? Sounds like the Know Nothings! [en.m.wikipedia.org]

About which Abe Lincoln had some words: [harpers.org]

@WilyRickWiles I actually don't know anything about this ... oddly ironic. I can't speak on something I'm ignorant of. I'll have to go do the research ...

@WilyRickWiles but ... today, imo, was pitting the people against each other in a grab for solidifying power by globalists

@MichelleD By globalists do you mean neoliberals, e.g. in the financial, technology, pharmaceutical, and entertainment industries, who back the Democrats? Or do you mean the entire capital class, including the energy, defense, property, and supply oligarchs that back the Republicans? Do you really think they have aligned interests and that they would have the Alex Joneses of the world stage this attack on Congress, but not with any intention of succeeding? Solely to divide people based on the political differences between someone like Trump and someone like AOC? With Trump, Biden, and the left in on it? Or by globalist do you just mean a Jewish or atheist cosmopolitan who supports social justice? You do know capitalism is a global system, in which the US has hegemony, no? No Marxism or Jewish people needed to explain it. Never mind that there is nothing wrong with internationalism, atheism, or being Jewish, and there is no "blood and soil" birthright to North America for white people.

@WilyRickWiles I don't actually feel comfortable saying what I really think. It's really different from the way everyone else talks, regardless of party.

@MichelleD Another way to think of this sort of thing. You think ethnic studies are a Marxist conspiracy, no? Did you know they were a demand by the Civil Rights Movement in response to a university system that Black and brown people were barred from participating in, and that studies in the social sciences were important for public sector work as we briefly began to confront the racism of Jim Crow and redlining? Then a year after the work began, Nixon shut it down. And we've had neoliberal disinvestment, privatization, and overpolicing since then. The Democrats support equality of opportunity as long as you're rich and upper middle class and the Republicans support the unadulterated interests of the rich. Their opposing interests and the different groups of people they need to coopt to hold power have to do with the industries in which they work. When you're closer to capital and financialization, you're more free to follow your ideals and try to make a better world. You're also not tied to any one national market because of how capitalism works and you have an incentive to get along with different people. But if you're into mining, you're kind of tied to one market, foreign policy, and labor dynamic. Meanwhile, if you're an ordinary person, your work makes you as atomized. You can either strive to be a professional (the neoliberal option), find a patron who will reward or punish you for your deference (the conservative option), or liberate yourself through collective power (the leftist option).

@WilyRickWiles "You think ethnic studies are a Marxist conspiracy, no?"

No. I think good things get hijacked by bad people. I also think Marxism it's is a tool, a means to an end.

I think politics is a sham too. I think there are good people who believe in the constitution, equality, freedom and genuinely believe in our government but I lost faith in politics a long time ago. I don't see two parties, I see a two headed beast. I see ideology used as a weapon. I see people's compassion and concern for each other monetized and exploited to serve the very thing a movement might have aimed at resolving. I see things that should stay within the public sphere privatized and raped. And I see communist subversion blended with actual fascism (not what antifa thinks), technocracy, oligarchy. I also believe there are other "bad actors" within the spheres of the protestant and catholic churches, secret societies, occultists, the like.

I believe there is a power struggle between two to three camps with the above mentioned groups but, they are of similar mind. They couldn't car less about the people of the world, or each other for that matter. These groups aim to seize control over resources, land, and populations, through finely tuned narratives that aim at steering perctives, emotionally orchestrated crowds/groups (i.e. engineering docility or hostility), for a start.

I'm not going to say I know who the different factions are. I'm not that smart. I just know we're all getting played

@WilyRickWiles and, I need to go to bed because I can't think anymore

no justice NOpeace..

From what I've heard, it was a policeman who shot a Trump Supporter.

@eschatologyguy
Ashli Babbit; Seems she was a 14 year / Four Tour Air Force Veteran ...
Seems to me that she actually had a stake in Supporting the US Constitution she swore to Defend.

That's exactly what I came back on to suggest. After looking at as much information as I could, it occurred to me that they had a stupid easy time breaking through barriers and a stupid easier time getting into the capital building. The people who did this was a small minority and they all looked like baboons. Then, nothing happened. Request for more troops were declined. Arrests were made and it was over. Then, I found this photo from Nov. 4th and thought, why not do the same today. [mobile.twitter.com]

Then, the news said gov. will reconvene this evening, after curfew is in place, with no one watching. No news agencies, no people, no one watching.

Dude, you don't think Alex Jones was in on it?