When I saw Three questions about President Trump (from Doug) by 
What are
- If your affinity for Trump, in part, is because you have a wish to return the country back to what once was (the idea reflected in MAGA)… what period of time would that be/have been when you felt the most comfortable?
- In what way have you suffered personally in the past that contributes to your favoring the President?
- If by some chance Trump gets impeached from office, resigns, or loses the 2020 election, are you willing to accept that and move on.. or would you want to strike back in some way, be it peaceful or not? (Understanding your answer could be different for each condition)
Here are my responses.
Question # 1.
Slogans are hardly anything new in American politics. In various forms, MAGA has been around for awhile. Here is how a Wikipedia article begins.
“Make America Great Again” (often abbreviated as MAGA) is a campaign slogan used in American politics that was popularized by Donald Trump in his successful 2016 presidential campaign. Ronald Reagan used the similar slogan “Let’s make America great again” in his successful 1980 presidential campaign. Democratic pollster Douglas Schoen has called Trump’s use of the phrase as “probably the most resonant campaign slogan in recent history,” citing large majorities of Americans who believed the country was in decline. (continued here (en.wikipedia.org))
Before Trump was elected, did I believe America was in decline? Yes. Do I think the election of Trump solved the problem? No. Even though Trump has done better than I expected, one man all by himself cannot control the destiny of a great nation.
What does MAGA mean to me? When I was growing up, I saw America as a nation based upon the shared belief that “all men are created equal”. I was just an ordinary kid, but I was going to be an astronaut. I watched the space program, and I was awed. I wanted to be part of something GREAT!
GREAT! is an attitude. What did I see as my biggest obstacle? Me. If I wanted to accomplish my ambitions, I had to make myself do the work. Did I become an astronaut? No, but I tried. If I had not tried my life would not have been as sweet. Still, the Kingdom of Heaven is my home, not here.
I look around, and half the country thinks they are the victims of bigoted, angry, greedy white men. We have let demagogues divide the nation into innumerable identity groups. We have let jealous know-nothings pit us against each other. We have even starting hating the founders of this country because some of them owned slaves. This whole racket is just about as sick as the Nazis picking on the Jews. What kind of country listens to fools preaching the hatred of some group just so everyone else can gang up on it and destroy it? Who in his right mind wants to waste his life by being a victim? America? America is not suppose to be such a place. We are suppose to be a nation of winners, not vicious, name calling, whining victims.
Yet look at these silly articles.
- Decoding Trump’s meaningless mantra: Making America great again for the sour, mean and delusional (salon.com)
- What Does Trump Mean By ‘Make America Great Again’? (huffingtonpost.com)
Do you want to understand what MAGA means? Try reading What Does it Mean to Make America Great Again? (townhall.com). Try to understand that life is not a zero-sum game. Our success does not have to depend upon robbing and destroying someone else. Our success depends upon building each other up. If the hill is a dung-heap, what good is it to be king of the hill?
Question # 2.
Consider my answer to the last question. Then consider at Doug’s second question again.
In what way have you suffered personally in the past that contributes to your favoring the President?
What has my personal suffering got to do with supporting a politician? If we are not voting the candidate we think will do the best job for our country, we are not doing the right thing. We are just being selfish and shortsighted. If our government does not do a good job for all of us, eventually all of us will suffer.
Question # 3.
Please read the following. It is my answer.
Romans 13:1-7 New King James Version (NKJV)
Submit to Government
13 Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will [a]bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. 4 For he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. 5 Therefore you must be subject, not only because of wrath but also for conscience’ sake. 6 For because of this you also pay taxes, for they are God’s ministers attending continually to this very thing. 7 Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.
There is no such thing as a perfect government. Yet even a bad government is better than the chaos that accompanies the lack of any government at all. Therefore, the fellow who wrote The Book of Romans told Christians to submit to the Roman Empire.
How serious was the Apostle Paul? Eventually, minions of the Emperor of Rome chopped off Paul’s head with a sword. The emperor, it seems, was jealous of Paul’s obedience to God. Still, Paul understood that the Roman Empire provided as lawful a government as the people of the Roman Empire were capable of producing. So he did not call for rebellion. The circumstances that justify a violent rebellion are actually quite rare. The American Revolution succeeded because the founders of our nation thought over the matter quite carefully.
I hope we Americans can do better than the tyranny Rome produced, but we will get the government we deserve, not the one we hope for. Utopia, if there is such a thing, comes from the love that is in each man’s heart, not the delusions of our imagination. If we love our neighbor, work for each other’s good, we will have a good government.
If we try to use the government to claw what we want from each other, we will suffer tyranny. The more power we give the government to force our neighbor to bend our will, the more power our neighbor will give the government to force us to bend our his will. And the winner? He will be the king of the dung-heap.
Citizen Tom 
Doug, Re Your Post Flag “lech:
Your post explains two views, kinda same as Hillary Clinton statement of “deplorables,” vs. lech, a derivative of leech.
Ad hominem attack is a debate no, no?
King Solomon,
Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm (Proverb 13:20)
In my opinion, you should switch news media CNN and if you cannot stomach Fox, watch OAN to prevent your personal suffering and harm of your reputation,.
Regards and good will
Thought I’d drop this here:
http://thefederalist.com/2019/03/04/thought-christian-constitutionalist-yale-law-school-wrong/?fbclid=IwAR1E6QymLavDWmgBTBE-_61Oi3OsCPcWHbb_McL4_iZOkVMXtr5gasSffPw
Entitled “I Thought I Could Be A Christian And Constitutionalist At Yale Law School. I Was Wrong”
I am a third-year student at Yale Law School. Before law school, I attended the Naval Academy and the University of Cambridge, and I served in the Marine Corps. I am also a member of my school’s Federalist Society chapter. (I write in my personal capacity, not on behalf of any organization.)
Tom,
Reading through the comments, I wonder if there really was a dialogue between you and Doug according to this definition verse in Merriam Webster
: a discussion between representatives of parties to a conflict that is aimed at resolution
In other words, what resolution between you and Doug actually occurred as a result of your exchanges?
For example,
Are you now in agreement with Doug and have resolved that it is best to be a Trump hater or vis a versa?
Just messing with you to question if having a dialogue with someone who is angry ever will result in a meaningful resolution based on reality?
If interested
https://rudymartinka.com/2019/03/06/king-solomon-psychotic-congress/
Regards and good will blogging.
.
We could discuss, who’s more angry and why? Or, why is anger even a part of the debate?
@Doug
Go look at Scatterwisdom’s post. Congress is doing an awful job.
Rudy, I read your post. Always the wisdom and beauty of Ecclesiastes. I agree that anger only breeds anger. To quote Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
Not that you appear angry, but I think perhaps anger, even for an unabashed scoundrel like Trump or for a delusional Congress, is overrated. On the other hand, love and mercy may be the most underrated thing in the world.
tsalmon
I heartily agree that love is the most powerful of all drivers, but as the Bible also amplifies, it works better when coupled with wisdom, in my opinion.
My blog motto
What the world needs now in addition to love is wisdom
We are the masters of our own disasters.
Thanks for your comment. As for Trump, he is up for election in less than two years. Let the voters decide who they want to govern their Nation in the next election and quit complaining and come up with their plans what they will do other than complain.
.
Regards and good will blogging.
@Scatterwisdom
Check out => https://freedomthroughempowerment.wordpress.com/2019/03/03/intersectionality-and-radical-grace/
Tom,
Thanks for the link. I commented after reading some of the comments.
Tricia,
I heartily concur with the ending words, “inflames anger on both sides. Let us wisely choose grace instead.”
We all could use less anger and more wisdom and love in our lives, and the end result is grace
How to “get past Trump” should be the first goal of a lot of angry people who somehow forgot how he became President which was through the “grace, blessing, and good fortune” of God to allow us to live in a Republic. .
Regards and good will blogging..,
@tsalmon
Check out => https://freedomthroughempowerment.wordpress.com/2019/03/03/intersectionality-and-radical-grace/
Interesting. Who’s blog is that?
I’ll have to give it some more thought. I agree that more grace and mercy is needed BY ALL SIDES. We do need to stop worrying so much about who’s ox is gored, but before that, it would help if we all first stopped goring oxen. With that admission and repentance, perhaps truth and reconciliation together can bind the wounds we’ve inflicted upon each other, and diversity can become pluralism. E Pluribus Unum can manifest.
Tricia strikes me as a decent, polite, and proper lady. Wish I knew her better, but I can only point you to her about page. =>https://freedomthroughempowerment.wordpress.com/about/
Tricia and Julie both are like that… I would very much agree, Tom.
They probably wouldn’t believe one bit that I tend to “mellow” my political responses to them. 🙂
@Doug
The Internet is supposedly a crude and ignorant place, but I have been surprised by the number of good and friendly people I have encountered. I have found the political views of some a bit of a disappointment, but then I consider the fact that most people are just doing what they have been taught to do. We do foolish things we may know are wrong, but we are fearful of changing. In fact, because the change would force us to accept the fact our teachers were wrong, it seems terribly disloyal.
Here is an example. The South fought with fury and perseverance to maintain the institution of slavery. Years after the war had ended they refused to accept blacks as equals. Nevertheless, the people of the South were not especially evil or ignorant human beings.
What a great conversation! I’m glad it is continuing here. J.
Just copying an expert at stimulating conversations.
“I came up with these three questions in reaction to my visits to the vitriol Conservative, farther right wing, blogs that tend to hold Trumpian affection based more on a kind of white nationalism.”
Responding to Doug here Tom, but back before the election, before Trump was even in the picture, I went all over white nationalist, far right sites, that were definitely racist. I was trying to get a feel for how much anger there was in the country and what was motivating it, inspiring it, encouraging it. I learned a lot about the impact of our culture on disenfranchised men trying to deal with economic down turns,the opioid epidemic, and a general political attitude that was basically marginalizing them. Also, some foreign and domestic provocateurs trying to agitate civil unrest.
The simple answer to the root cause of racial animosity of all sorts, is marginalization, economic oppression, and eventual tribalism kicking in. Are Trump supporters racist? No. Did a whole bunch of racists breath a sigh of relief when Trump was elected? Yes. Today’s racists and white nationalists are generally not people in positions of power. They are often society’s outcasts, broken, dealing with addictions,and seeking an identity,some sense of purpose, like one might join a gang or a militia group.
Something I did find very interesting, many of those “farther right wing blogs” are hosted outside of the US, and many of the provocateurs are actually ex pats or foreigners.
@IB
Interesting.
Frankly, I don’t know any white nationalists, and I don’t want to know any. With all the commies, who needs white nationalists? Haven’t we got enough trouble?😟
I go to meetings of the Republican Party here in Prince William County. We are happy to have people any race, sex or creed join us. What matters is whether the people who join share our politics. Most Republicans want to maintain our constitutional republic. Some have fiscal values. They abhor the runaway spending and waste. Most are pro-life, and some are
adamantly pro-life..
I don’t suppose we can dump all Republicans into one political values bucket, but Republicans ain’t racists, and Trump is popular with them. Since these people are quite attentive to what Trump is doing, I doubt he could fool us that much. Bottom line. If Trump is a racist, he is not implementing any racist policies or even saying anything racist. Without the fake news media and race obsessed Democrats, we would not be wasting time discussing this. Sad!
I wish wish we had Democrats who could find real issues to run on.
I’d say you were spot on as to many of the reasons for far right wing racism… although there are others, like generational indoctrination, sometimes through homeschooling and the old nature vs. nurture thing… kids responding to what their parents do. While I know you are trying to distance the concept of right racism somehow extending to rank and file “just plain old Conservatism”, it’s really little to do with that. There’s a trend that Trumpian Conservatism, reflecting the ambivalence of Trump’s own rhetoric ranging from favoring candidates that tend to blather racial commentary, and not being totally outside his own rhetorical slurs, and not an overly assertive President on racial issues in general. This apathy Trump has on this subject just adds to the overall image of those supporting him.. right or wrong.
There’s just so much bias, manipulation, and mediated reality going on right now, Doug. Today on Twitter this quote was posted, “It’s time to fight back! It’s time to reclaim our heritage!” Hundreds of people, including a few from CNN responded with things like, “this makes me sick!” and “racist dog whistle!” and “sounds like something Hitler would say!”
The problem being, that’s actually a quote from Joe Biden in 2011. Trump never said it.
Actually.. Trump did say it… and frankly I heard it when he said it (and I saw the CNN segment… and the FOX reporting of it) but honestly I paid it no mind… more like all part of the two hour meandering blur. It’s political mumbo-jumbo. I saw nothing in any of Trump’s speech to conjure up Godwin’s Law. If some lesser and more obscure CNN talking head made a point to compare that to Hitler… that’s on her frankly. It’s not like CNN edits what goes on live TV. Biden said the same words back in 2011. Ok.. so what. There truly are far more important things going on in the news cycle than someone thinking to compare Trump yakking with Hitler. But.. I do know FOX loves reporting the insignificant issues as if they were big deals.
@Doug
Do you know who is buried in Grant’s tomb? Then perhaps you also know what kind of critter hears dog whistles.
When someone starts accusing people of thought crimes, what they are doing is accusing other people of what the imagine to be true. The cable news people fill their air time with such crap.
We are being propagandized. News is produced for the benefit of the people who pay for its production. Most of the political elites cannot stand Trump. He actually is an outsider. So most of the news organizations are constantly trying to tear him down. The bias has become so obvious at CNN it is a joke. Even you have to see that.
If we want to know what is going on, we have to filter out speculation and opinion. We also have check multiple sources. If an outfit like CNN does not want us to know something, they don’t report it. However, we still have diverse sources. So if it is important, someone is reporting it.
Trump said it in a speech at CPAC and was immediately called a racist by a CNN commentator the story was then picked up my most of the “fake news: 🙂 outlets, online blogs and newspapers.
Actually Trump did NOT say it. Trump said the word “heritage,” and somebody went and found a Biden quote, elaborated on it, and falsely attributed it to Trump. A CNN commentator then declared it made her sick and sounded like Hitler.
To be accurate… Trump said “…reclaim our national heritage.” and Biden said “..reclaim our heritage.” I don’t see “Nazi” in either. Again.. much ado about nothing.
I agree, much ado about nothing. And yet the media is screaming about Hitler and how we need to impeach this guy. So there is a lie being sold to people, a false narrative. Then we accuse Trump of being a racist and by proxy, everyone who supports him. This is a political game, not a fact rooted in truth.
Not sure I see any media “screaming” ; the Nazi accusation was on some obscure Saturday afternoon by a “weekend anchor” talk show, by a relatively obscure CNN talking head analyst. The first I heard of it at all (and that show was on in the background while I was putzing in the garage.. and I didn’t catch it nor would I have normally given it any credence anyway). I had to catch up with this “news” by searching out that Fox & Friends segment proclaiming their contrived shock & awe over the Hitler-esque accusation. Interesting thing about “lies being sold to people”… people still have the choice to “buy” into or not. CNN and Fox love to snipe at each other… and likely this is all about their little pithy posturing.
Ha! You’re simply spinning excuses for them and victim blaming now, Doug. Believe or not, I am far more interested in human psychology and the nature of propaganda, than I am about politics. No criticism here, we all do it to some degree! A good question to ask ourselves is, what is the pay off, why am I invested in this mindset? Sometimes there are even honorable reasons, it is just that they tend to cloud our vision.
I am degreed in the Applied Behavioral Sciences, although not any sort professional in that industry.. so I too have a greater than passing interest in human behavior. Which tends to explain a bit why I meander in and out of Conservative blogs. But that’s neither here nor there and no one truly cares about anyone’s resume. Regardless, I think you are trying to say is that we create our own personal prisons and we make the best wardens of those prisons.
@Doug
Unless it is the devil, I doubt anyone has any enemy more dangerous to him than his or her ability to resist the temptation to do evil.
Amen.
@Doug
You are trying to have it both ways. Not too long we had riots in Charlottesville, VA over Confederate statues. For the most part the whole thing is stupid. The civil war statues are part of our history, and the men they honor were honorable. They weren’t perfect, but they were honorable. Nonetheless, to stimulate racial conflict the Democrats have made a stink about the statues. They have called anyone who does not agree with them a racist.
Think about it. What statue would survive such inane stupidity? No matter who the subject is or what topic is, somebody is going to find an excuse to be offended.
Consider something more recent. Not to many years ago we finished building a memorial to FDR. That guy interned Japanese Americans, snubbed Jessie Owens, did nothing to rescue the Jews from the Nazis…. A racist? Perhaps, but we can only congratulate our leaders for what they accomplished. God only knows why any of us is not perfect in the eyes of all our fellows. Even Jesus fails in the eyes of some.
I’d not try and get too saintly, Tom. How many of those Civil War “heroes” killed fellow humans? Both sides. Matters not the reason. Thou shalt not kill. So.. we put up monuments to glorify that killing? These “honorable” men are to be remembered for their role in killing other humans? Then why not a monument to Vegas shooter, Stephen Paddock, or Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh? You suggesting there’s some separate level of morality that justifies killing of other humans?
As I recall, NRA-ist Charleton Heston playing Moses came down from the mountain top with the Commandments in hand.. and they contained no footnotes to point toward the Bible for further explanation. They were written as they were written. Rather like your preference for what our Founding Fathers wrote being accepted as written.
Whether you want to call the Civil War the War of the Rebellion or the War of Northern Aggression it only matters to the folks who lived in that day and time period and had the passions and emotions. The same will happen 50 years from now when future history books will explore the current absurdities of our present time.
The monuments do reflect the fight to retain a way of life that included the institution of slavery. If the current public chooses not to have them on public property, so be it, and retire them to non-public memorial sites, like cemeteries. Physically tearing them down as if a metaphor for tearing down the Confederacy just raises unnecessary emotions for a political visual.
Not sure how ANY of this relates to what I’ve posted in here thus far.
@Doug
The proper translation of that commandment is ” thou shalt not murder,” not “thou shalt not kill.” Look it up.
Consider the conundrum that arises when we interpret that commandment as you suggest. When the Israelites obeyed God’s command to kill the Canaanites and execute lawbreakers, they would have been disobeying His Law.
Should we honor soldiers who serve their country well? King David was a warrior king. God honored him.
Do Confederate soldiers deserve to be honored? That was decided long ago by people who knew them better than you or I. When they readmitted the southern states into the Union, the North forgave the South. That was long ago. The South also forgave its soldiers, even their leaders, for losing. So you just look silly when you act as if they sinned against you.
Did the South rebel? Was the war ultimately about slavery? Yes, and a large proportion of the people of the South died on battlefields. It took generations for the South to recover. The price has been paid.
Do we have the right to tear those statues down? That is not the issue. The issue is the arrogance and the intolerance required to do it. When we judge people, we should judge them as we would wish to be judged if we had stood in their place. Those men were honored because so few of us would have done as well as they did.
How does this relate to the topic? When the riots occurred over the Civil War monuments in Charlottesville, Trump Trump had the audacity to state the obvious. There are good people on both sides of the issue. For that, some tarred Trump as a racist.
For a bit of context… I came up with these three questions in reaction to my visits to the vitriol Conservative, farther right wing, blogs that tend to hold Trumpian affection based more on a kind of white nationalism. While they are not neo-Nazi far right wing blogs and may not promote outright racism or overt violence, they are much more inclined to vilify non-Trumpers… Liberals in general. These blogs are nothing like the “average” Conservative-inspired blog.. of the kind of Citizen Tom, InsanityBytes, Scatterwisdom, etc., or their followers, who tolerate opposing thought. There’s a self-promoting flavor of being the only true patriots… and they tend to love their guns more than the Second Amendment. Since I was looking for some honest replies I qualified my asking them with my promise not to be critical at all of the answers; I was not trying to bait anyone into a debate.
So you can see in my questions that I was trying to explore exactly why they were pissed off at the world. I did share the questions on IB’s blog “just because” and it seems to have taken a bit of a life. But to the more “cerebral” Conservative blogs, these are NOT the questions to ask. I had a past business where we designed questionaires, climate studies, etc. and did the data entry on responses, with subsequent tabulation. Questions were designed to encourage responses from a specific target group and these three questions were for one particular blog demographic. This is why question 3 appears to be a bit “leading”… but I was asking that toward those blogs who tended to threaten “vindication” in the event Trump is forces from office.
@Doug
H. Clinton considers at least half of Trump’s supporters racist. The news media is constantly trying to paint Republicans and Conservatives as racists. What the news media did to the Tea Party activists was sick. And for some reason you had to bring up racism.
Read https://citizentom.com/2018/05/10/of-twisted-words-left-wing-and-right-wing/
We create this phony left-right thing. The difference between the Nazis and the Communists doesn’t amount to anything. Both are Socialist and totalitarian. They just have different excuses to hate.
The people most attracted to Trump are fighting for our constitutional republic. If that’s intolerant, then somebody has been messing with the definition of the word.
Anyway, there isn’t anything to debate. Either people believe what they say they believe or God knows they don’t, not you or me. All we can know is what people say and do.
I have NO idea what any of what you just said relates to what I said. You fixated on my using the word “racism” as I described that as being a tendency for far right neo-Nazi blogs and you felt you had to take notice of that as some sort of knee-jerk defense of crap Hillary (again the typical echo to Clintons yet again.. and they aren’t even in this discourse) said, that is of itself out of context?
Apples and oranges buddy.
@Doug
We have two major political parties. Most people support either one candidate or the other. As you more or less indicated, different people support Trump for their own reasons. Some of those people may even be racist, but Trump has campaigned for or done anything to promote racism. Democrats are the ones stuck on race. They won’t let the issue go.
You missed my entire point, preferring to lock on to the most single insignificant word/s of my original reply. Now THAT kinda thing IS typical of Conservative rhetoric. I never indicated you or anyone else common to our set of blogs.. or regarding Conservatives in general.. as being racist. If you bothered to read for comprehension rather than skimming with anticipatory bias given the author, you have seen that “racism” was not the least of my reply.
@Doug
I did not say you accused anyone of racism. Think about that.
🙂
The technique is guilt by association. I tie you to people who are screaming racist and you assume I am accusing you of doing the same. That is what the news media has done to Trump. Trump has not advocated racism, there are still a few white nationalists, and some support Trump. So we are supposed to believe Trump is a racist?
Look again at your first comment. White nationalists are racists.
Again… I said this…
“I came up with these three questions in reaction to my visits to the vitriol Conservative, farther right wing, blogs that tend to hold Trumpian affection based more on a kind of white nationalism. While they are not neo-Nazi far right wing blogs and may not promote outright racism or overt violence, they are much more inclined to vilify non-Trumpers… Liberals in general.”
To which you are saying….
“Look again at your first comment. White nationalists are racists.”
And there rests the reason for the national divide, Tom. Please explain where exactly did I indicate anything to what you are claiming? BUT.. I will say this with all certainty… those neo-Nazi, skin-head, Tiki torchers (like in Charlottesville) far right groups DO tend to promote some level of racism. You can quote me on that one for sure. You can also quote me as saying that Trump EXHIBITS an apathy and ambivalence regarding racism… and “How?” you may ask? Shall we re-run the last two years?
But the rest of your fake news nonsense is simply just that.
@Doug
There is a kind of white nationalist that is not a racist? If that is so, then why do you have to call them “white” nationalists? You don’t suppose the way you described those blogs had anything to do with their reaction to you?
Frankly, I tire of being accused of bigotry and selfishness just because I want merit based immigration and a gradual elimination of the welfare state.
You want me to explain?
Could you be a bit more specific? Given what you just said, what could I add to this?
Before you get resentful of anything I said about you, consider how you are participating in sullying Trump’s reputation. Since I support Trump, by implication you are also attacking my reputation and the reputation of anyone who supports him. Is there some reason I should ignore such behavior and let you get away with it?
Doug: “not an overly assertive President on racial issues in general.”
That’s one of the reasons I like him. He doesn’t make virtue signaling empty statements about race designed to polarize society.** The media of course, turns his words around and does just that. The media’s enablers disseminate.
More people self-identify as vampires than are members of white supremacist organizations. But it’s in the media’s interest to make them look like some large and powerful force. And of course about half the population is happy to comply (perusing the bowels of the internet for confirmation bias, I assure you, will result in confirmation bias).
**examples available upon request
Interesting how both sides… BOTH sides… love to accuse the other of being misled and misguided and it’s so obvious as the nose on their face that they are being manipulated and coerced by some Pied Piper luring them over the edge as if they were a bunch of mindless lemmings. The idea of course is that those who make these accusations have this secret knowledge that they are correct and hence “un-lemming like”. Overall, it doesn’t say much for the electorate, does it? It’s a nifty silent way to declare the other side is a bunch of “deplorables” without having to take the public Hillary-heat.
Tom, Doug,
I enjoy reading Doug’s comments because as you said, he does not blow his stack.
But an even better reason is that it is hard for me to even comprehend the thoughts and reasoning of why Never Trumpers are Never Trampers when they are benefiting from his policies.
We all have and are entitled to our personal political opinions, but they should be based on a better reason than personal dislike, in my opinion.
Especially when a Never Trump offers no suggestions of what they would do to solve the mired of known existing problems in the USA.
Regards and good will blogging.
@Scatterwisdom
Hard to know what is going on in another person’s head. I have enough trouble understanding my own motives, but I guess propaganda is effective.
We should never be so naive that we think we have escaped the effects of propaganda. Prayer is a good time for self examination.
Well done,Tom! I really like how you spoke of defining what “maga” means. A country, or even a family, needs a healthy amount of idealism and optimism in order to thrive. The space program is a good example of that. I also remember tearing down the Berlin wall.
The second question was good too, “In what way have you suffered personally..” I’m going to disagree slightly, simply because often the things that are impacting us personally are usually impacting others,too. Fines for not having health insurance, for example. But you’re right, often we need to try to set aside our personal feelings and to vote for who is going to do a good job for the country overall. Or we should do that anyway.
@IB
Look at your own answer to number 2. It is personal because you care about the people those bad government policies affect.
Very well said.
Thanks.
Thank you!
@Michael
I hope folks who read my post read your latest, https://quotesthoughtsrandom.wordpress.com/2019/03/03/for-just-as-the-body-without-the-spirit-is-dead-so-also-faith-without-works-is-dead-james/. I like the way you describe Goodness. Without Goodness, we cannot have good government.