Did anyone’s political views change in last 6 months?

After a parade of insanity, starting with impeachment and ending with Floyd-20, I feel like my views shifted significantly enough for me to notice.
1. I rethought my understanding of political structure of the US and the balance of power between states and federal government. It looks like the US presidency is even a weaker position than I thought. While very powerful to outside world, on the inside it’s the governors who have a real impact on your life, not POTUS. Both political parties seem to vastly over exaggerate the role of the president in internal matters, but democrats seem to think the president can impact them more than the republicans.
2. Racism. Accusation of racism literally turned into a tool to suppress dissent. Even if you agree with them in general, they still pick up fights and accuse you of being the R word.
3. Democrat Party. With information coming up about liberal politicians telling their cops to stand down and leave their residents unprotected, I began to develop my disgust with the party. Throw in COVID-19 + mass media hysteria and outright lying.
4. Republicans are guilty in not being clearer on certain things, like the role that Trump can play in putting down riots. They also missed on opportunity to pass legislation to abolish public sector unions. The widespread outrage and vocal communication would help them get this done and truly help with police brutality. I’m also puzzled at how panicked some republican politicians seem to be.

So, in overall, my views shifted to the right. In the past I always tried to balance out republicans and democrats on the ballot and this year I absolutely don’t feel like doing it. It’s going to be all Rs or Libertarians going forward.
How about you?

 

My morals and view of the world are set in stone as I am pushing 60. Thanks Rush!

 

I'm more and more disenchanted with both parties.
The Republican's only saving grace was that they tried to be fiscally conservative - but they've signed off on the single largest
increase in debt of any President - and that was happening even before Covid.
The Dems have become mired in public sentiment to the point they're not moving any ball forward.
And Trump is so self-absorbed that he is completely useless to broker any kind of compromise.

 

I agree on Trump - he missed a few good opportunities and didn’t stay quiet when it would serve him best.

 

Did anyone’s political views change in last 6 months?

YES, in that they have harden against both parties. The country has been sold out over the last 30+ years and we are now seeing the fruits of this treason. Over the years I have occasionally posted that both parties work out of one common whore house but with separate entrance's. Once inside you find the same whores, pimps and an occasional piano player. I was serious then and am serious now. The screwing we are now getting is payment for the screwing we got. The bill has finally come due.

Cynical, hell yes I'm cynical. I'm well past the mad as hell stage but have a profound sadness for what could have been save for greed and the thirst for political power.

 

Lets take the charges I would make separately.
The republicans are failing to work together as close as they should- and that help the opposition.
Trump would benefit from doing less commentary and tweeting. Ignore the crap, do the job, brush then off, clear but minimum response- in other words, give them less personality to attack on and force the performance and record to be the issue, as it should. This is style change, not direction change.
This is not an endorsement or claim of perfection or anything like it. It's to say that at this point in time anything else is so dramatically worse that it can't be considered.

The democrats- and I am lumping all those who are riding the same bus here, meaning democrats, liberals, progressives- basically anyone on the other side-
Have destroyed no only any respect I have had for their views and people in the past, but any trust or belief that they even think they are doing the right thing.
I believe they either knowingly or with incredible loss of comprehension and respect for their fellow man, have lost all moral fiber and self respect. Crazy is the word that applies.

They have been attempting to sabotage a duly elected president not only since the election, but before. The string of scams they have resorted to are things that would be revolting to any honorable person, any patriot, any one with self respect. It is appalling to me- literally beyond the range of what one could imagine could happen in America 10 years ago. They are embracing the most destructive ideas, the most unjust ideas, the most dangerous ideas and the dirtiest tricks that have even been given consideration by a political party.

Even the riots demonstrate what the democrats would do to America. These are primarily taking place in democratic/liberal strongholds, because the leadership there has been absolutely cowardly and failed it's citizens across the board. The aren't actually improving what remains of racism, they are promoting it. People who were always against racism are beginning to feel there is cause for it. This is a political faction that literally is willing to sell not only their own soul, but everyone's soul in order to gain political power. That is a frightening void of character that must never be allowed to gain power.

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Not really. The Dems are still crazy and the Pubs are still trying like hell to hide how much they're in league with the Dems. I'm still voting Trump because of Trump. Not because of the R, but in spite of it. Just like I did in 2016.

Beyond that, I'll still be voting for whichever candidate supports less gun control, as I have been since I could vote.

 

I think there's a lot of room to move forward together in this moment.

We have lost faith that the other side has the best interests of the country in mind. Not that the other side agrees with you, just that they have good intentions. When you lose sight of this society breaks down.

When you can't talk to each other, what are you to do except get violent? Discourse and diplomacy cease to be the dominating factor in how we structure our societies.

We are not direct democracies. Democracy is not an unquestioned good when taken to extremes, like every other ideology. Our liberal societies used to be about consensus building and incremental change. We had respect for the sacred cows of the other side, and we negotiated on good faith terms to move forward together. Concealed carry was expanded across the country for the right, discrimination in law was cut across the board for the left. There were still grievances on both sides, as there always are in a free society - we are apes after all, we had a bad starting point to work with.

But we made a decision long ago to resolve our disputes through discourse rather than violence. We put limits on government that seem like a cruel joke at this point.

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The above should all be pretty non-controversial. Reply to that alone if you like, but I feel like elaborating hehe.

I think a lot of this is out of our control and we might be in a bit of a pickle here. Government's basis for existing are externalities - when your conduct affects others intentionally or unintentionally. Air pollution is a good example. Over time technology increases exponentially and this means common people have the ability to create more externalities - we now have cars, phones, select fire rifles, etc. This necessitates a strong government response, and convergence of governments into more centralized bodies. The European Union, the UN, the collection of most powers into the Federal executive in the US, and so on.

But democracy relies on faith in your common man, and this community cohesion gets lost when you have nations of 1.4 billion people across 3000 miles.

On the private side of things convergence is also happening. The epicenter of these riots is Seattle for a reason - local business has been decimated and half the city are worker/consumers at Amazon. This is, in a way, the same issue as the above but for the left - with private business instead of government the culprit.

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So yeah, we need to find a way of coming together as the 95% of people who just want what's best. We need to converse, we need to discuss and trust the other side enough to build consensus, and this can only happen on a local level.

Otherwise we'll wake up one day and have roving bands of communist or neo-fascist revolutionaries in control and wonder what happened to our representative democracies.

 

Haven't you noticed they are already here?

These are the people demanding compromise, meaning give them what they want.
I say, give them what they deserve.

 

No, my political views haven't change at all. 6 months ago I thought we need to get rid of this childish president who throws temper tantrums, calls other names, creates needless feuds like a four year old spoiled brat and replace him with an adult. I was against impeachment, I knew that wouldn't work as it was a one party affair without the support of most Americans except Democrats. The virus hasn't changed my views and neither the George Floyd protests and riots.

Actually, I'm totally disgusted with both major parties. As are most Americans. 55% of all Americans look on the Democratic Party in the negative while 61% view the Republican Party negatively. Why, it seems to me both parties put the good of the party over the good of the country. I'm sick and tired of all the polarization and ultra high partisanship that both parties exhibited thinking about only about themselves and not the country. So skew both of them.

But I will go with an adult for president in 2020.

 

Regarding item #3, do you have a link to prove that claim that Democrats had police stand down while trying to protect citizens?

 

My views changed a few years ago when the GOP eagerly gave us a carnival barker/flim flam man for POTUS, and promptly handed him their balls on a silver platter in exchange for tax cuts for the rich and as many conservative justices as they could get.

As an independent who has never joined a political party, I have voted since 1972 for candidates of both parties, mostly liberals but not always. However, after getting Trump elected, and defending his obvious crimes at the cost of any shred of honor they ever possessed, I will never vote for another Republican, not for any office.

 

Since the police DID stand down under democrat administrations, and it would have been their duty to protect, what else would have lead them to do so?
The mayors of these cities could put both their balls and brains in the same thimble and have room left over.

 

Look into my threads in Current Events forums. 1 is about Seattle police chief saying she was ordered to leave the precinct. 2 is about 13 Chicago police officers hanging out at democrat congressman’s office for 5 hours while looting and riots were in progress just a couple off blocks away. I will never believe that 13 cops have gone off the grid at the time when they were needed the most without their superiors knowing about it and all things point to Dem mayor and the dem congressman.

 

Yep.
Despite Trump managing to tweet all kinds of stupid things and even embarrassing our entire country a few times, like with Greenland fiasco, the actions of the Dems in the last 3 years, aggrevated by their actions in the last 6 months, left me completely disgusted with that party. I don’t know if I will ever be able to bring myself to vote for them ever again.

Added: also, Democrat mayors ordering their police to stand down to me looks like they literally abandoned their duties to lead and maintain order. They threw their own residents under the bus. What kind of a politician that cares about their community will abandon their residents like that?

 

No. I have always thought BOTH parties suck donkey **** and that hasn’t changed.

 

That's a curious conclusion given that to hold that you would need to ignore the fact that Republicans have held that a President's powers are almost unlimited and not open to accusations of abuse of power. That was less than 6 months ago, wasn't it? Trump is the first President* from any party to claim this. And Republicans in Senate agreed with him. Which gives all future Presidents almost dictatorial powers.

I see from this, as well as the rest of your post, that you wanted to find excuses to try to justify a pre-fabricated and irrational position. So cherry-picking is certainly the best way for you to do that.

 

Six months ago leftists were saying every Republican is Hitler. In the eyes of the crazy left, Trump is so Hitler even Hitler would seig and heil, just ask them. Nothing's changed. They still talk rubbish and the ones marching in lockstep are not Republicans.

 

That part has nothing to do with what Trump or anyone else claimed about presidential powers.
You are still on that level where you think that a president himself can decide their own powers.
I’m talking about reality.

 

Naw, I changed my mind and am not now going to say anything.

 

I have a lot of beef with Republicans too, they just don’t outrage me as much as democrats do. Take war on drugs as an example - who has the right to tell me or anyone what they can put into their body? Why are people being sent to prison for crimes that have no real victims? Why can’t we build a society where someone can legally buy a joint, or some blow, and still have restrictions on public use like we do with alcohol? Same thing with prostitution. I never used one, but I don’t understand why government thinks it has the right to tell two consenting adults that they cannot have sex if one partner gives another some money afterwards.
While Republican stubbornness on this issue is very concerning, it is more concerning to me that if I lived in Chicago proper, the democrat mayor would literally put myself and my loved ones in real danger by telling cops to stand down and let the mob to assault people of my skin color. How the FFFF am I expected to ever support someone who comes from a party of the mayor that allowed this to happen? It’s not about stupid tweets anymore - it’s about reckless local politicians pandering to a few extremists and sacrificing law abiding citizens in the process. Screw political correctness, we are literally watching politicians allow hate crimes to happen against whites on their watch without any repercussions. That’s why I refuse to vote for a Democrat ever again.

 

So your Trump complaints are based on personality dislikes, your Dem complaints are based on performance failures.
In many ways that defines the political playing field right now.

 

Well, the republican mayor of my town did his job - he used all heavy equipment he could find to block access to major points of interest in our town and after everyone calmed down we have all our businesses intact. My mayor responds to his residents emails (including my own) in person. He was very visible and he was very public about his actions. We even had these giant concrete blocks delivered to our highway exits that would be used to block our town off from the rest of the county in case things get bad. He showed to me that he cared about our community and he did everything he could to protect it and he succeeded.
I didn’t mention it in OP to not look too partisan. But yeah, I am coming down from being very impressed by my republican mayor and being disgusted by Democrat mayors of Chicago, Seattle, Minneapolis, and quite a few other cities. There is an undeniable trend that everyone can see - in places where Democrats were in charge thugs were given a free pass to commit hate crimes against whites.

 

Actually- against anyone who disagreed or objected. A lot of black businesses were destroyed too, it was very indiscriminate in terms of race.
What is so baffling is that people who say they are complaining over Floyd George incident, which was immediately and strongly responded too, are telling us that an injustice justifies a far greater injustice, towards- anybody.
I wonder what their injustice should justify in return?

 

No. It’s sharpened my resolve that a major restructuring is required to move the country forward.

I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t put some concepts together for example, the social ills our economic structure creates with our move toward militarization of our police departments.
The notion we’ve utilized escalating force to deal with our social ill’s was a punch in the face.

It’s been my hope that economic reform would accelerate social reform though it’s quite possible I had that backward or that they go hand-in-hand.

Personally, I like the liberal/conservative dynamic of debate within our Liberal philosophical tradition. We’ve got to get back to it. These side shows from our political class are theatre, an insult to our intelligence, and a waste of our resources. Our political class leaves a lot to be desired as do our “elites”.

I’m encouraged by recent events. It’s possible we’re witnessing the last gasp, the dying breath of the Confederacy.

“It’s foundations are laid, it’s cornerstone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is the nature and normal condition. This our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

It’s past time we took out the trash.

“We hold these truths self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

This is who we are and it’s past time we began living up to it.