On audits, elections and public trust

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Chap
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Re: On audits, elections and public trust

Post by Chap »

Maybe i'm not following. But it seems to me that Gunnar and DrC basically agree that:

The evening before there had been some violent disorder.

But when Trump did his tough-guy Bible brandishing act the next day, the people round the church that he had tear-gassed and chased away were a bunch of peaceful protestors.

However, he knew that his base would still think he was braving a violent mob (like they had seen on TV the preceding evening) as he strode out to the church with a general at his side, so he just went ahead and treated the peaceful crowd as if they were a dangerous mob - of course, had they really been that, he would never have so much as showed his nose on the street.
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Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: On audits, elections and public trust

Post by Doctor CamNC4Me »

Kind of, Chap. I just felt he was downplaying the gravity of the situation with regard to what the protesters were doing to the church. It got so bad they had to erect a security fence and board up the windows:

https://www.christianpost.com/news/hist ... sters.html
While we hate both the fencing and the boarded-up windows, one of our main responsibilities as rector and wardens is to protect the buildings. Our hope is to remove both the fencing and plywood as soon as practicable.
They stayed up for eight months.

Whatever the case may be, I’m in total agreement that Trump’s gassing people for an offensive photo op was reason #13452 to send that human bologna roll to prison. I don’t even have words for how much disdain I have for him.

- Doc
Hugh Nibley claimed he bumped into Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Gertrude Stein, and the Grand Duke Vladimir Romanoff. Dishonesty is baked into Mormonism.
jpatterson
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Re: On audits, elections and public trust

Post by jpatterson »

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Wed Jun 02, 2021 2:38 pm
I was just pointing out the misinformation Gunnar posted about the church.

- Doc
It's not misinformation.

As I said, the protest that Trump broke up was peaceful. The protest that occurred the night before was not. Therefore it's not misinformation to say that Trump broke up a peaceful protest.
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Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: On audits, elections and public trust

Post by Doctor CamNC4Me »

jpatterson wrote:
Wed Jun 02, 2021 5:05 pm
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Wed Jun 02, 2021 2:38 pm
I was just pointing out the misinformation Gunnar posted about the church.

- Doc
It's not misinformation.

As I said, the protest that Trump broke up was peaceful. The protest that occurred the night before was not. Therefore it's not misinformation to say that Trump broke up a peaceful protest.
k
Hugh Nibley claimed he bumped into Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Gertrude Stein, and the Grand Duke Vladimir Romanoff. Dishonesty is baked into Mormonism.
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Re: On audits, elections and public trust

Post by Gunnar »

I think that whatever is true about the demonstration that Trump broke up, it is almost certainly true that it served Trump's narrative and agenda to characterize it as violent or, at least, exaggerate whatever violent tendencies might have been present. As Chap pointed out, Trump wanted to be perceived as heroically standing up to a dangerous, unruly mob. Had they actually been that, it is unlikely that he would have ". . . so much as showed his nose on the street."
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Some Schmo
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Re: On audits, elections and public trust

Post by Some Schmo »

My main takeaway from this thread is that some of you may be missing the silver lining here.

Mayan said he voted for Trump once, and that he won't be voting again till he's confident in the process. I see that as a positive outcome.
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Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: On audits, elections and public trust

Post by Doctor CamNC4Me »

Some Schmo wrote:
Thu Jun 03, 2021 5:07 pm
My main takeaway from this thread is that some of you may be missing the silver lining here.

Mayan said he voted for Trump once, and that he won't be voting again till he's confident in the process. I see that as a positive outcome.
That’s too funny.

Image

Welp. Too bad Mayan Elephant rage quit the board because jpatterson doxxed him.

- Doc
Hugh Nibley claimed he bumped into Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Gertrude Stein, and the Grand Duke Vladimir Romanoff. Dishonesty is baked into Mormonism.
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Gadianton
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Re: On audits, elections and public trust

Post by Gadianton »

I haven't read this thread for several pages. I would appreciate it if no uncivil comments about ME are made as a response to this one last post I'm going to make on this topic. ME sent me a nice PM. I hesitated on my response because I wanted to let things cool down, but I see now that he's had his account deleted.

I won't reveal any details about the PM, but I will explain something about the right-wing friends that I have, which in its course will help ME understand where I'm coming from, should ME grow weak and peek at this thread one more time. ;)

My background is free-market economics and I'd never feel comfortable describing myself as a "liberal". Nor am I registered democrat. Trump didn't invent the Republican misinformation platform, he exploited what was already there. What was already there is a decades-long reaction to "democrats" and "liberals" of their own fictional invention. If there is any one thing that has turned me off to my conservative background, it's the phenomena of the right-wing email chain. Going back to the 90s, when I first got an email account, I began receiving conservative sound-bytes in email from various people. At first, I thought some were kinda true and funny, but it got annoying really fast.

There have been some multi-year gaps, but since the 90s, I've had many periods where one or more right-wing friends try to send me this junk and I have to tell them repeatedly I'm not interested. The worst offender is this present neighbor of mine who I consider a friend. Even though I've told him ten times not to send the junk, he lets one slide because he thinks it's so good it might be the one that breaks me.

I could waste hours and hours of my life debunking them, and in a few cases I have, and they are all 99% garbage. He doesn't need to spend 10 minutes in research, it's all on me. He doesn't even care if they're true, because they're true in spirit if not literally. Today, 25 years after the fact, he and his buddies are still trading emails poking fun at Bill Clinton. When I approach him and this other right-wing guy on my walk in the morning, they'll be in a rage about Pelosi or Obama. Many of these emails specifically tie whatever bad thing as the subject to Obama. There is no equivalent behavior from my left-wing friends. I've never received a political email a single time, or memes about republicans.

These guys are living in an alternate reality. As an example, this second guy on my walk is an older guy who is really big into these emails and meme texts, and Fox news, although he'd never send the junk to me. And, in every other way, I have a lot of respect for this guy. He got the vaccine, but he got junk from relatives questioning the vaccine. Don't his jack-ass nephews realize that the crap they're trading in this instance could have real-world implications for their older relative? They don't. And neither does he. So here's the specific example. He was freaked out one day, he had forwarded this meme to both the other right-wing guy and a right-wing lady from the walk as well. He told me about it, saying this doctor discovered this horrible side-effect from the vaccine, and the text was from a nephew he trusts. He'd got the first shot already and was stressing about the second dose (possibly he'd just got the second dose). He told me the name of the doctor and I researched it for him.

The next day, I calmed him, telling him the doctor wasn't a specialist even qualified to have an opinion on the vaccine. He'd graduated from a podunk medical school (at the time) and spent most of his career in alternative medicine. He felt better about it. The part I withheld from him, was this doctor's name came up immediately in a search, and he's a huge conspiracy theorist and Trump supporter. He made the news because he paid underlings hundreds of thousands of dollars to go out and find fake Biden votes. One of these guys he paid was on the freeway one day and got into a traffic accident. He was so "in the zone" on fox news, that the guy whose van he collided with -- like an HVAC guy or something -- he began to accuse of really transporting Biden votes and not AC stuff. I think he may have pulled a gun, not sure. Anyway, the police eventually showed up and this guy just assumed the police had his back, and would affirm the "fake-vote" narrative --- didn't happen.

The point is, from this guy on the freeway, to my older friend, they are so steeped in this narrative built from junk mail they exchange of how bad democrats are; Obama and Pelosi and Bill Clinton, and the anointed liberal elites, that democrats in the real world hardly matter. And, to whatever degree Trump has been quickly judged by liberals, it's hardly comparable to the decades of trashing Obama and Bill Clinton years and years after the fact, in new ways, in recycled ways, in whatever way they can think of to keep the flame alive. Maybe there's more equal time on Facebook, I have no idea as I'm not there. But this whole invention of an enemy via junk mail and memes is exclusively a right-wing creation that occurred long before Facebook.
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Re: On audits, elections and public trust

Post by Gunnar »

Thanks, Gad. I think it is sad, though, that ME has acquired such extreme and, I sincerely feel, irrational views. Perhaps he was just not very good at explaining what he really meant and his rationale for his opinions.
No precept or claim is more suspect or more likely to be false than one that can only be supported by invoking the claim of Divine authority for it--no matter who or what claims such authority.
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Jersey Girl
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Re: On audits, elections and public trust

Post by Jersey Girl »

Gadianton wrote:
Fri Jun 04, 2021 1:59 am
ME sent me a nice PM. I hesitated on my response because I wanted to let things cool down, but I see now that he's had his account deleted.
Me too. And I wish he hadn't left.
We only get stronger when we are lifting something that is heavier than what we are used to. ~ KF

Slava Ukraini!
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