That basic idea is basically correct. Reality is more nuanced than that, but from a birds eye view republicans are actually bad, and democrats are actually good.

I'm a Republican I'll admit it.

I don't believe in God. I think people should be able to take whatever drugs they want. I think there should be a basic safety net and what we have now isn't doing it.

I believe in evolution. (I don't however believe climate change models are good enough to predict what will happen and I don't think C02 will turn out to be the predicted tragedy. I do agree humans are affecting the climate).

I believe people should be entitled to the fruits of their labor and taxation of labor or capital isn't a good idea (I'm a land and resource tax proponent). I don't think society has an innate claim on the labor or talents of anyone.

I think people should be able to defend themselves and possess deadly weapons. I don't go to church but I think people should be able to worship as they wish. I think churches should be somewhat restricted in what they can claim (for the same reasons I think peddlers of nutritional supplements should be restricted in what they can claim) but this is pretty loose and outright fraud is what I have in mind.

I think racism is stupid. I think slavery and communism are both horrible ideas for society and for the victims. I believe in representative constitutional government. I abhor monarchies, dictatorships, dynasties and anything resembling those.

Am I bad in your opinion? If you think so I feel it's not me that's the problem.

Of course I understand you may not agree with all my positions and that's fine. I don't think you are bad for disagreeing. Unless you are a slavery proponent or advocate of non representative form of dictatorship and then ya, you likely are bad. Otherwise you probably just have a different opinion.

For what it's worth, I don't think you're bad based on what you wrote above; I even agree with you on much of it, with the severity of climate change being the major exception. What I can't see is how a reasonable person could vote for Trump based on positions like those. Because to me his behavior was so egregious, divisive, and even dangerous that any reasonable person should have voted against him, with both Clinton and Biden being far better alternatives even if you don't share all their views.

He was real change in wilderness of more of the same.

Particularly involving the oversea conflicts and increased outsourcing.

Neither Biden nor Clinton were credible in my view. Both were corrupt. Both were sold out and more of the same. Both were involved in "regime change".

So I forgive a little carnival barker behavior (I, and many others don't care for it either but we understand). It helped bring in a large group of people that don't usually listen to guys in suits.

Hope that explains it.

Not sure if you'll still be checking this thread, but I wanted to respond since I really think it's valuable to try to understand people with very different views from one's own. That said, I do kind of feel like we're operating from very different origins, not just in priorities and beliefs (which might not be all that different), but in understanding of the state of the world. That said, in case you're interested I'll do my best to lay out how I see these things.

I can respect the position you laid out. I agree that minimizing wars is a laudable goal. The Iraq war in particular was catastrophic, and Trump indeed didn't start something like that. He did do things that I felt made the world more dangerous, like the 'little rocket man' taunts, and pulling out of the Iran deal, but I can understand the sentiment of supporting less foreign involvement. That said, it just doesn't seem like we're sharing the same baseline worldview in terms of what constitutes corruption, or what behavior is excusable in a public figure. I haven't seen any evidence that Clinton or Biden is corrupt; Trump has said it a lot, but has he produced actual evidence? On the other hand, there seems to be plenty of evidence of Trump profiting from the presidency, such as scheduling events at his properties. Not to mention more serious offenses, like encouraging foreign leaders to investigate his opponents.

Much of what you call carnival barker behavior I see as divisive and immoral, from birtherism to calling into question the whole electoral system without apparent evidence. It basically seems like he's willing to say literally anything if he thinks it will rile up support, even if it's entirely made up, deeply insulting, or incredibly divisive. To me the harms done by those actions and behaviors greatly outweigh the potential benefits, unless perhaps you believe that Clinton or Biden would have started another Iraq, which I don't. I guess we'll see over the next few years. But we've already seen the harms, both domestically and abroad; I can tell you for instance that the US's Canadian allies feel a lot less warmly toward not just Trump but the US as a whole after his attitude toward our country.

I actually wrote another couple paragraphs, but I really don't want to be argumentative; I'm just trying to similarly lay out my point of view (if you're even still checking this thread). I truly do want to understand the perspective of people who have a very different worldview than my own, especially when they seem reasonable and willing to engage. I realize my own guttural negative reaction toward Trump's behaviour probably biases me against his actions and supporters as well, so I do try to guard against that.

Didn't even get to climate change. To be honest, that's maybe the one issue where I would consider (although likely reject) supporting a Trump-like figure on the left, if they seemed likely to advance the goal, since the evidence I've seen really does suggest it's a catastrophe in the making. I'm curious whether your belief that it won't be that bad is more of a feeling based on past overreactions, or whether it's based on evidence or expert opinion that I haven't seen. I'd certainly be happy to be convinced it indeed won't be bad, but to be honest I can't see how that could be, given what I see as pretty concrete evidence of both the fact and trajectory of climate change. We're already seeing impacts on more frequent extreme weather events, and on shrinking habitat for polar and ocean wildlife, like polar bears and coral to name just a couple.

Anyway, I appreciate your reply, and conversations like this one do give me some hope for a less antagonistic future.

Hey no offense and no worries. I also appreciate the discussion. I understand people have different opinions or see the world different ways. I'd also like to try to understand that. I agree that's really important.

I think there is often a tendency to see the other side as somehow brainwashed or ill informed and maybe that can be fixed. But maybe it's less of that and more just different priorities.

From my perspective #1 was the removal of the neocon war machine. I don't care about stupid, nonprofessional or offensive comments that offend "nice" people (well I do but not very much). I think some people even go a step further and actually like that. I think it's a selling point to a certain crowd.

What the liberal prime minister of Canada thinks of the US, what nice people in Canada in offices engaged in upspeak and office talk think of the US is just not that important to me. Perhaps that is a personal failing but it's just not. I have other higher priorities.

What is important to me is anyone who voted for the Iraq War, anyone who was a prosecutor in our justice system, anyone that has neocon "democracy" building tendencies or agendas to change the social fabric of the country through various engineering schemes is not given the levers of government. I regard both of those efforts as harmful and doomed to fail. So that's first on my list.

There's a lot more I could say, and I will. Let me read through your post again and think. Again, appreciate the chance to express myself without the flame-baiting. I actually had to close my real HN account just after the 2016 election the hatred was so intense. It looks like one can almost admit in polite company now though :)

I'm not sure I understand the comment about prosecutors. Why does any involvement in the justice system disqualify one from public office? Surely some crimes are worth prosecuting?

Also, what are these agendas to change the social fabric of the country through engineering schemes? I don't know what that means.

How do you feel about Trump's attempts, with support from others like Lindsey Graham, to undermine confidence in US elections? ISTM that encouraging the public to doubt the foundations of democracy is pretty dangerous. (And I we can agree that this was his plan all along if he appeared to be losing, as it was in 2016, and that he doesn't actually have evidence of widespread fraud, or obviously he would have shown it by now.)

It looks like I'm going to get downvoted, and this probably isn't the right place for political conversations so I'm going to bail on the discussion. Apologies for not getting to all your points. If you leave any last words in the thread I'll read them.

Just in closing

1)In my view (to re-iterate) the other side isn't necessarily low information or brainwashed. They sometimes just have different life experiences and priorities. We usually don't just "straighten them out" with real talk. Sometimes at best we get them to reconsider things. Usually not even that.

2)We should keep an open mind, but we usually don't because we have motive. We should look at our motives. Sometimes we don't understand them as well as we should.

3)Beware the military industrial/intelligence complex.

4)Prediction: 24 months before boots on the ground in Syria. Could get much wider but hopefully not.

Re prosecutors I didn't mean legally disqualify; I was asking why you wouldn't consider voting for anyone who'd been a prosecutor. Understood now.

Some minor irregularities occur in every election, yes. Most of those are not fraud, but honest mistakes. You see this in recounts shifting votes by a few hundred one way or the other. However, I have yet to see any evidence of widespread fraud. If I recall correctly most of the issues with the 2016 election were Russia spreading misinformation to cause people to vote differently, not them actually casting fraudulent votes. There was some concern of them having changed or having had the ability to change voter lists, but not to actually change votes. People were upset with what interference did go on, but mostly people were upset that someone they (and I) saw as dangerously unqualified and ill-suited for the job had won. Most did not disbelieve the results themselves. (Not all, of course; there are always those with extreme beliefs. But you notice Hilary or others in the Democratic leadership didn't promote these lines of thinking!)

Anyway, I don't see any of what you described as suspicious. Plenty of people agree with your views on many of the issues (and so vote R down ballot), but find Trump distasteful and/or dangerous, and so voted against him personally. I mean if anything the split results are evidence against widespread fraud; if Democrats were willing and able to fraudulently alter the election results, why wouldn't they cheat on the house and senate races too?

I'm not even sure what you mean by the 11th hour timing and stop count. Trump was ahead in a number of states. Then Biden caught up as mail ballots (which favored him for obvious reasons) were counted, at which point he easily caught up in PA, barely caught up in GA, and slightly fell short in NC. This isn't suspicious; it's just how counting works. They stopped counting when all the ballots were counted. (Or in the NC they will; they don't actually have all the mail ballots yet.) The networks called PA once Biden was ahead by a sufficient margin that, given remaining ballots were expected to continue favoring him, it wasn't realistic for Trump to mount a comeback. Some of them probably called AZ prematurely, but that was a mistake, not fraud. And regardless, as Republicans keep pointing out recently, networks don't decide election results; voters do. Occasionally networks do project wrong, but once all the votes are counted, that's the result that matters. In enough states to win the election, those final results favor Biden.

But just taking a step back, let's look at the sequence of events: back in 2016 Trump was already talking about election fraud. Why? Because polls had him way down and he expected to lose, so he wanted an excuse. At that point he didn't have access to any information beyond what the general public did, so there's really no other explanation. This time, it was exactly the same thing. He was talking about mail ballot fraud before the election even happened, and didn't produce any actual evidence of widespread fraud, just assertions. If he had real evidence, wouldn't he have provided it by now? Or better yet, if he was aware of a specific mechanism for fraud before the election, why didn't he explain it? He simply talked about people in living rooms filling buckets with ballots or whatever, but that makes no sense, because it ignores all the measures states have in place to prevent such things. Each ballot is tied to a registered voter; you can't just cast a bunch of fake ballots. The much more logical explanation, looking at his behavior for the past 4 years, is the same as it was in 2016, that he expected to lose, and so he sought to invalidate the process itself.

Of course no one wants illegal votes to count. The problem is, when Trump claims there was widespread fraud or illegal voting without real evidence, and then he and his allies point to these normal events as supposedly suspicious, it sows doubt. That doubt causes people to lose faith in the democratic process itself, which is dangerous, because some then believe they have to take steps outside that process to achieve their goals.

Anyway, I understand you're not planning to respond. I'm probably done too anyway. But I hope you'll at least entertain the possibility that the election was fair, and Biden is a decent person who is going to do the best job he can for the American people and the world.

No I don’t think you’re bad. I was giving a generalization. I believe there exist good people (whatever that means) in both aisles. I think there are many deeply destructive warrior republicans. I believe there are many delusional, stupid republicans. I believe there are some thoughtful, sensitive, and smart republicans, but I don’t believe there are very many of them. I believe the republican leadership has abandoned the pursuit of compassion and dignity, and ceded power to the delusional and the warriors.

ditto but for dems. your name is wrong. you're not a philosopher. you've never considered the opposite view.

I disagree. There are more reasonable/compassionate dems, and the party has retained truth and compassion as core values. The Democratic Party is better than the Republican Party.

you're 18 right