Cory1848

I don’t disagree (with your second and third paragraphs), and it rubs me the wrong way when Harris and other Democrats express such concern for Trump’s safety. But I’m pretty sure they’re taking the high-road approach so as to appear (at least) civilized, in the expectation that this will help them win the election fair and square. Should Trump somehow legitimately win the election (and the possibility of that happening is rapidly vanishing), all bets are off, especially during the period of time between the election and inauguration.

On the contrary, the Electoral College system keeps it very unfair, as voters in small states like North Dakota have more voting power than those in large states like California. And while there are some small blue states (Vermont) that have outsize power, and some large red states like Florida that have less (although Florida’s looking pretty purple again), this imbalance works in Republicans’ favor. Which is why a Democratic candidate can win the popular vote by millions of votes and still lose the election; that would never happen to a Republican candidate.

OK, here’s a nonaggressive answer from someone who’s somewhere to the left of the Green Party. Negatives about the Democratic Party: they are as up to their necks in corporate donor money as the Republicans are, and thus are beholden to corporate interests. I would add, however, that Democrats generally retain some sense of civic responsibility; present-day Republicans have gone off the deep end in their fealty to corporate money. Trump is a threat to democracy because he intends to bring the Justice Department under his personal control (for purposes of prosecuting people he doesn’t like). While he can’t directly fire judges who don’t follow his orders, as he’s also threatened, he can direct Congress to impeach such judges. As he has already demonstrated, he can kill legislation by making a few phone calls to his congressional allies. And he intends to replace tens of thousands of career bureaucrats in the federal government with his own loyalists. US democracy is based on the separation of powers (executive, legislative, and judicial); Trump has no interest in this and would seek to control all three branches of government. He has expressed admiration for strongmen, leading me and (based on polling) most other Americans to believe he seeks to emulate them. And if I may be “mildly aggressive,” your original post requests, “no Russia collusion nonsense.” I would suggest that your news sources may not all be on the level, as there is broad evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election, including contacts between Russian intelligence agents and Trump campaign staffers. This in and of itself does not pose a threat to US democracy, but your mentioning it in your original post tells me that you might be starting out on the wrong foot here.

I didn’t miss any of my education but was responding to your word “savages”: they may have been behaving inappropriately, depending on your level of prudishness, but they are not “savages.” I myself have never had sex in public, but once years ago when I was drunk I urinated in public, in a small park, and unfortunately this was in Singapore so I was immediately apprehended by the police. Boy was that embarrassing.

The Euro-woman is clueless; I couldn’t get beyond two minutes into her video. There are any number of reasons why foreign men (and foreign women, too) come to Thailand and purchase “companionship” -- probably as many reasons as there are people who do it.

Given all the actual “cave-born savagery” that’s on full display the world over, criticizing a young couple for expressing intimacy seems disingenuous and silly. Make love not war.

What you're saying bears no relation whatsoever to what I was saying. None.

I’m not apologizing for what this person did. I was responding to the original poster’s comment that this incident somehow justifies Trump’s rhetoric about “migrant crime.” My point is that “migrant crime” is a myth, in the sense that it is no different from crime committed by US citizens (both are murderous), and that in fact, proportionately, migrants in the US commit fewer crimes than US citizens. Basically, I was implying that the original poster had fallen prey to Trump’s race baiting -- blaming migrants, or people of color, or gay people, or Jews, or “the Other,” for your problems is the oldest political play in the book, and it’s all that Trump has left. OK?

What tragic cases like this confirm is that people who enter the US illegally are Homo sapiens, and as such they are just as capable of murder as other Homo sapiens, say, native-born white guys with closets full of AK-47s. Statistics show that native-born Americans cause crime at a greater rate than immigrants (whether they entered the US legally or not). There’s tons of research showing this. And as for this particular immigrant, it’s a matter for law enforcement, whether they incarcerate him or eventually deport him back to the DR for incarceration there.

Then why is he saying every day that he is going to START by clearing Springfield, Ohio, of its Haitian population, regardless of the fact that those Haitians are living and working there legally. Sure, maybe Trump is just one big fat joker, jokes all day long, but the US is not immune to falling under authoritarianism. Why play with fire by voting for someone who promises to do just that?

He has said explicitly how he plans to bring a large proportion of the federal bureaucracy under his direct control (firing bureaucrats who aren’t personally loyal to him), use the Justice Department to go after personal enemies, and threaten judges with removal if they don’t follow his wishes. He’s already demonstrated how he can kill legislation in Congress by making a few phone calls. Whether such rule is a “dictatorship” or not is a matter of semantics, but I take him for his word; this is all laid out in full view. If you think it’s all a joke, or if you think that joking around is a mark of serious leadership, I can’t help you. Open your eyes.

Oh, boo hoo. Somebody stole your signs? You were taunted for wearing your hat? Don’t be a crybaby. A person who supports Trump openly favors strongman rule, which is an assault on everything the US stands for, and openly favors the roundup of (20 million?) people who aren’t white and their imprisonment in “camps,” which is barbaric. And much else besides. This is how he says he will govern; there are no secrets. So, I’m sorry, I’m sure that most Trump supporters are good people who have simply been led down an errant path, but I have no sympathy if you’re going to sob about your hat.

No, you'll just get a lot of laughing emojis.

OK, and Snopes, which is generally a very reliable fact-checking website, also said what you’re saying (I haven’t read the Snopes article). But, getting a little deeper into the weeds on Trump’s rhetoric and doublespeak, perhaps it’s not that simple: https://newrepublic.com/article/183082/nopes-trump-very-fine-people To state up front, the New Republic, which printed the above article, is (these days at least) a left-leaning publication, so you’re likely to dismiss it for that reason alone, but you should read it anyway. Drawing another analogy, of the more than 5 million German soldiers and sailors who died during World War II (and the many millions more who fought and survived), the great majority were decent men who simply thought that they were doing their duty; they were not Nazis. But that’s very different from making a conscious decision to attend a rally that is organized by white supremacists and neo-Nazis and very much promoted as such. For Trump to hem and haw on the issue in an effort to not lose voters, even the worst sort, tells me that he has no principles whatsoever.

What on earth are you talking about. The Haitians eating cats story is a laughable falsehood (Trump said he “heard it on TV”). Trump is up to his neck in Project 2025; much of what he says he wants to do is contained in the report, and it’s drafted by people he would likely pick as his advisers. And he called Nazis “fine people”; it’s on video and has been replayed ad nauseam (he also dines with Nazis at Mar-a-Lago). You’re in dire need of a reality check. If Trump is sobbing about a couple of “aggressive” debate moderators hurting his feelings, Putin, as Harris pointed out, will eat him for lunch.

A Harris aide who stood in for Trump during her debate prep, after it was over, hilariously described Trump as a “malfunctioning appliance.”

Are you a woman? As a woman, have you ever been stared at by a man in a public place? Didn’t think so. I’m not a woman either, therefore I’m willing to listen to a woman if she says she’s been made to feel uncomfortable or threatened, and I’ll take her word for it. Myself not having a clue what it’s like being a woman. Meantime, please take your indignation and faux “male privilege” elsewhere.

Exactly. I’m willing to give any Trump supporter (or anyone else) every benefit of the doubt. If they legitimately feel economically disadvantaged or marginalized, I’m all ears; the vast majority of people (not only Trump supporters but all human beings) are fundamentally decent. But at the same time, if Trump supporters wish to express political opinions, I expect them to educate themselves (and read an actual newspaper every now and then) rather than simply parrot the lies of Trump and other right-wing leaders. If they categorize all “Dems” and “liberals” as a monolithic group that is the only source of their self-perceived misery, I won’t feel much sympathy for them. And if they somehow believe Trump’s lies about stolen elections and consequently support efforts to suppress the vote, they are deplorable and, depending on how far they go, criminal.

I think what “many people say” (in your wording) is that Thailand was never directly colonized by a Western power, unlike nearly every other nation in the so-called Third World. Many Thais are justifiably quite proud of this.

I had no idea he was a Kiwi. (He was probably heartbroken when Ms. Ardern stepped down! ...)

You wrote “He’s coming for all those that tried to fit him up.” How that differs from “those who crossed him” is beyond me, but frankly I’m bored by this by now. You also said that none of this is about responsible administration and leadership and that “the Dems deserve another 4 years of Trump,” leading me to believe this all a game for you, that you are an “unserious man” (here I’m quoting Kamala Harris, not you), just like the candidate you support.

Stop being pedantic. That's why I left the words "who crossed him" outside quotation marks.

He’s “coming for those” who crossed him? “Revenge will be sweet”? This is what responsible administration and leadership is all about for you -- revenge and retribution? It will be “sweet” when this deranged, chest-beating, neanderthal sickness recedes back to the nether fringes of the political spectrum where it belongs.

I was responding to someone else, who said that a “vast majority” of Muslims living in the West want sharia law; I would say, rather, that a vast majority simply want to lead normal lives under prevailing (Western) laws, and it’s only a handful who are radicalized and commit violence, as at the recent festival in Germany. Unfortunately, it’s this radicalized handful who get all the headlines, thus causing an overreaction on the other side who are quick to blame all Muslims for the crimes of a few, and the problem spirals out of control. As for the growth of Islamic radicalism in the Middle East, I would suggest that part of the problem is economic: young men there face limited prospects in their lives and thus become susceptible. Muslim countries that are better off and provide better prospects to their citizens (Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey, perhaps Morocco, the Gulf states) seem to have fewer problems with homegrown radical Islamist movements. I have many Muslim friends also, mostly assimilated into Western societies, but I’ve never lived in any Muslim countries as you have, so you would have a much better feel for this.

Ideally, yes. There might be issues like, given that the US has a volunteer army, from a legal standpoint how can the child of a high-ranking politician be forced to serve if the child of a bus driver can choose not to. But the bus driver of course doesn’t have a say in policy (other than having one vote out of tens of millions in the next election). It’s good to look for any possible disincentives. I often wonder, especially in unjust or unnecessary wars (as most wars are), why the soldiers themselves fight, why they shoot at perfect strangers who have done them no personal harm. I’ve never been in a war (never even fired a gun), and it all seems so irrational.