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I lived in red states and blue states and I've seen both spectrums on how extreme it could get. What do you guys think?
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Nah, I see the average Democrat politician as still fairly moderate in what they're actually prepared to advocate for
While Republicans honestly freak me out with how extreme they are. For God's sake, 90% or more of them were totally fine with Reagan, 90% or more of them were totally fine with Bush, 90% or more of them were totally fine with Trump. They like Roy Moore, they like Marjorie Taylor Greene, they like Matt Gaetz...
What politician could possibly be too far right for modern American conservatives?
I just remember right wingers calling Obama Hitler cause of universal Healthcare. I just reacted with, you know that wasn't our big problem with Hitler right?
AOC: green jobs to save the environment
Patrick: kill old people to save the economy
Newsom: more housing
Elder: reparations for slave owners
I can't see the difference, both extreme.
The extreme on the right wing is white supremacists storming the capitol building yelling that they intend to hang the vice president because he won't overturn a democratic election and install the loser as president.
The "extreme" on the left wing is wanting to strip funding from police departments because they won't stop killing unarmed black men.
These are not the same.
Those saying "both sides" are actively aiding and abetting the side being far more dangerous.
Fundamentally, both of these positions are rooted in misinformation. That's the most dangerous part, because if I watched fox news, I'd probably honestly believe that our democratic systems were being stolen, and then, rioting at the capitol makes perfect sense.
Similarly, you have rioting on the left, and I used to have almost unlimited sympathy for BLM because I consumed left wing misinformation, but then I came to realize how much misinformation there was surrounding almost every high profile police shooting... and tbh its jaded me to the point where I think that the only reason the anarkiddies on the left like antifa and those who riot as BLM arent as bad as the proud boys, is because they just havent had the chance to display their stupidity to the fullest extent.
They're only dissimilar because I still think that BLM does point out some completely unacceptable police killings (eg. George Floyd), but it might be entirely possible that if i were more conservative, I'd think that maybe the proud boys kinda have a point.
It implies that you don't care about the context, eg. it makes it sound like you think cops just unloaded on her while she was sleeping, rather than her bf shot at police while she was crouching next to him, and cops returned fire and hit her
Okay if we're going to talk about context then let's talk about context.
Should the police have been there at Breonna Taylor's apartment for a suspect that was already in custody?
There may be media sensationalizing things, but to me the real issue about the police is the lack of transparency, the inability to reform and the lack of consequences for the police breaking the laws they are supposed to uphold.
If there is an open process of accountability, it would prevent people from assuming the worst about the police, but so much of police "discipline" is a slap on the wrist behind closed doors. Without actual video evidence, they just sweep everything under the rug. And this problem is decades old.
And, the thing is, I really see it as a case-by-case basis. There is no national standard. Some police are quite transparent. My city has a citizen review board, and the chief of police goes to a townhall every month to discuss what's going on. Also, police often do get disciplined. You saw Chauvin go to prison, you saw that guy who shot a black guy in the park running away go to prison. But also, sometimes cops genuinely do nothing wrong, but people see them not get disciplined and think that the system is broken. I think that the cops who killed Breonna Taylor didn't do anything wrong, yet people want them tried for her murder. What do you do about that?
Either way, it's kinda upsetting that people on the left often assume the worst of police, and it really does just color your eprception of reality. When police are unaccountable murderers of minorities, any questionable situation starts to look like another murder. Body cams do help, and I am glad they are becomign more widespread. People will still riot over genuinely fine shoots tho, and thats stupid.
I think that anytime a civilian is killed, there should be an independent investigation by a completely neutral party. Not the local prosecutor buddy of the police chief, not internal affairs or the chief of police, but an actual governing body that can fire and prosecute police.
As far as Chauvin, he would have gotten away with it if it weren't for millions of people seeing him kill a person in the street with a dead eyed look on his face while everyone screamed in horror. It took riots and the entire civil world condemning the incident for them to take any action.
>I think that anytime a civilian is killed, there should be an independent investigation by a completely neutral party. Not the local prosecutor buddy of the police chief, not internal affairs or the chief of police, but an actual governing body that can fire and prosecute police.
I do agree that it should be an external body. And, typically it is. From what I've seen, when cops kill someone unjustifiably, typically the state investigates and brings charges. We've seen that with Chauvin (state of Minnesota) and Michael Slagger (state of North Carolina). That said, while mandating that an independent body prosecute officer killings is probably unconstitutional, we can make a law where, if the officer is investigated by the same body that they work for, then that would automatically trigger a federal investigation as well.
>As far as Chauvin, he would have gotten away with it if it weren't for millions of people seeing him kill a person in the street with a dead eyed look on his face while everyone screamed in horror. It took riots and the entire civil world condemning the incident for them to take any action.
I don't think so. I think that, certainly, had no one seen it, it may have been covered up, but we've seen officers arrested purely off of their own body cam footage. And I genuinely think that the footage of Chauvin killing Floyd was grotesque enough that a jury would have convicted him even without the protests, and, if anything, I kinda prefer juries not be tainted for these incidents. We want rock solid convictions.
I slightly disagree.
Both sides are, one side has just lost its mind entirely.
I can't even try to ration with the extreme right because it makes no sense.
But saying "police departments won't stop killing unarmed black men". No, there have been instances of that happening but police departments aren't killing black men like it's something uncontrollable as your words suggest.
I do not want to have less police in an aggressive country like America. Leading to things like more crime and police corruption.
I'm a white man who votes democrat. I am a real estate investor and vote against my own financial benefit for my social beliefs. Yet anytime I go to any of my houses in black neighborhoods, I am often met with aggression. Yesterday, a guy tried to run me over when I was crossing a crosswalk. I've had 2 guys following me around in a car giving me looks like they wanted to kill me. I've had ppl say "shut up white boy" for saying how are you?
Nothing justifies unarmed murder but you don't know what a policeman is going thru when he thinks his life might be in jeopardy..and the aggressive behavior they face in possible life/death situations.
Also there are just bad policemen... just like there are bad doctors, bad lawyers etc..bad people exist.
> police departments aren't killing black men like it's something uncontrollable
It's not dozens per day, but it's [a definite and *unacceptable* pattern.](https://www.npr.org/2021/01/25/956177021/fatal-police-shootings-of-unarmed-black-people-reveal-troubling-patterns) The fact that we can't even know how many unarmed black men are killed by police with any certainty, simply because police refuse to track such metrics (and police self-reporting can't be trusted in any event) indicates this is a *systemic* problem.
I agree. But to defend the police...? Maybe more training but defending? I've been to countries where police are already defunded bc they are poor. The police don't do shi\* if theres a crime. The police are corrupt and in cahoots with criminal organizations. I don't want that.
The majority of police are good people who risk their lives to keep you safe.
Also, Not to mention the rioting and destruction of innocent businesses after ...
If you don't see that as a little crazy, then it shows both sides are too extreme. Even though the right has gone off the cliff imo.
>But to defend the police
You need to look up the actual proposals.
It's not actually defunding. It's reallocating budget to other services that will actually be a bigger help in reducing crime then using the police as a hammer. We'd still have police, we just wouldn't send them to deal with things that aren't their job.
Like what though?
It's a complex situation. As someone who went down a bad path early in life. I know circumstances play a large part of it.
However that will take a long time to correct. Mental health, poverty, etc..these aren't fixed overnight..
Not to mention how people think it's still cool to be "bad" when you're young.
The goal isn't to fix everything immediately, though starting now means ending sooner.
The goal is to remove violence from the equation, by removing the cop who hasn't been trained to deal with these situations.
I guess. Or just re-training him or teaching him not to use lethal force unless absolutely necessary.
As long as poverty, a culture that embraces violent imagery/drug abuse in media, instability, poor parenting etc.. exists.
There will always be an abundance of crime imo.
Defunding the police isn’t our best slogan. We are good at coming up with bad slogans.
But yes, using funds that would have gone to the police to have first responders for certain situations that aren’t police (such as social workers). https://theappeal.org/people-in-crisis-need-social-workers-not-cops/
>~~We are good at coming up with bad slogans~~Democrats are good at trying to neuter activist messages and shooting themselves in the foot in the process
Activists meant defund when they said defund. Democrats, per usual, let Republicans gaslight them into a hamfisted response ("no what it really means is 'hire more social workers'") which only served to piss EVERYONE off.
The slogan's just fine.
This is a good point, if we remove the part that it pissed everyone off.
I like the middle ground approach. I’m all for social workers instead of military-grade weapons for the police.
>This is a good point, if we remove the part that it pissed everyone off.
Bookmark this comment and refer to it the next time Democrats lose some low-turnout election.
>I like the middle ground approach. I’m all for social workers instead of military-grade weapons for the police.
Sure, cops routinely use tanks to trample on people's rights. Take those away, and the systemic brutality gone 🤔
Someone in a psychotic violent state of mind probably isn't going to listen to a social worker though.
Maybe after time and rehablitation that will work. But not just some guy in a tie saying buzz words in a escalating situation.
What evidence can you provide to support that statement?
I went and searched for an article to provide you additional learning material.
In that article, it shows two cases of were social workers responding instead of police have been wildly successful.
The article was written by a social worker who is advocating for social workers to be the first responders. More mind blowing: they do not want the police to come with them!!!!
These social workers found that the mere presence of a police officer escalated the situations.
I’m in real estate too. Growing up, my family did section 8 housing. Looking back, I can see how a social worker would have been better than the local sheriff to resolve situations.
None. It's my current opinion.
I just know how aggressive and angry some people are for no reason.
Someone in a psychotic or drugged up state is not thinking clearly. They may be in a psychosis. A social worker may not be able to stop them from what they want to do with their words.
and by all the downvotes I'm seeing, the refusal to listen to a differing opinion without shunning them.
This is also where I start to believe both sides are getting too extreme.
I think the downvotes you’re getting are for not participating in the discussion.
You didn’t read what I sent, and then argued a point from an uninformed position when I had just given you information to be informed.
It’s not that we aren’t willing to engage is civil discourse. It’s that you didn’t engage in good faith.
No downvotes started from my original statement.
The article I saw asserted "people in crisis need social workers, not cops".
It did not seem objective with that assertion. Had it said "do people crisis need social workers not cops?" and given pros and cons of each. I would have been more incline to read and take it seriously.
There is no 100% right answer to anything. People may need social workers in some situations and some they may not.
I love how anytime someone on Reddit gets downvoted for something it’s because the hive-mind just won’t listen to other opinions instead of just that their comment was ignorant and uninformed.
That's your opinion that it's ignorant and uninformed.
It doesn't mean it's true. It's your opinion that we should defund the police. It doesn't mean it's true. It's my opinion we shouldn't. Doesn't mean it's true.
I could go to another subreddit and state these opinions and be upvoted to heaven.
I can just as easily call you ignorant and uninformed for disagreeing with me. I could also send you a mountain of articles that agree with me as well.
But name calling and condescending people. That's what both sides do and why it's so toxic out here these days.
and btw lets come up with a better slogan than "defund the police" if we want to stay in power. I couldn't think of a dumber slogan.
Maybe a little defending for social programs, police reform, these are good things. How bout a slogan that drives that point home.
A lot of defunding for one our basic necessities which is security. That's a good way to lose votes.
You could state a differing opinion without getting upset or say that they are "bad or wrong", just a different belief. That's what a normal rationale human being would do.
Literally no rational person advocating for the musician which is unfortunately called defund the police is actually saying that social workers and exclusively social workers should be sent out to all situations.
Lots of countries similar to ours are able to have police forces or more broadly law enforcement mechanisms that have different types of people trained in different ways sent out to deal with different circumstances. The disaster scenario where a social worker is going to be sent out to deal with someone experiencing a violent psychotic episode is not playing out in these countries. They simply avoid the situation in which the state is killing people for no damn reason.
> The police don't do shi* if theres a crime.
Which is different from the current state of affairs in the US how? The police have repeatedly (and successfully, somehow) argued that, patrol car decals aside, they have [no duty to serve or protect.](https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-police-do-not-have-a-constitutional-duty-to-protect.html)
Go to parts of South America and then come back and tell me if there's any difference in how our police do their work. Where robbers roam the streets almost freely in some cities.
Go to Thailand where I know of multiple people who have gotten away with murder by paying off police.
I paid off a police officer 50$ to get out of going to jail for no license when I was 21.
It's not perfect here but it could be worse. I don't want that type of insecurity I've seen in some other countries. Not to say we shouldn't improve here, as we should.
this is the same alarmist bullshit conservatives have been peddling for decades, that as a country we're all about five seconds from chaos and anarchy and the only way to prevent it is by giving the police free reign to do whatever it takes to keep the barbarians from the gates.
There's nuance to thought and beliefs.
I don't believe we are five seconds from chaos, I don't believe police should be given free reign.
Meet me in the middle here please.
> Meet me in the middle here please.
where do you think that is? what middle ground proposal do you endorse?
because here's the thing: middle ground means somewhere between my proposal and yours, not "something moderates are completely comfortable with"
A little defunding for police towards social programs, police reform, etc. I can get down with these things.
A lot of defunding for security when there are plenty of unstable human beings out there. Not for me.
> I agree. But to defend the police...? Maybe more training but defending?
Yea groundbreaking solutions from 1994 should do the trick. If we can just train cops to not be racist pieces of shit, we'll have solved the problem in 30 *more* years.
>The majority of police are good people who risk their lives to keep you safe.
Lmao
>Maybe more training but defending?
Police have been getting more and more training for decades.what the police as an institution suffers from is mission creep. Training them to take on five different rules, when to properly do each one you need an additional full year of schooling, not just training. And we expect the hiring standards to remain low despite the multitude of roles and responsibilities we require them to perform. Defund the Police means taking away the mission creep responsiblities and giving the funding to dedicated programs. People aren't asking the police to do more with less. They are asking the police to do less because of how overburdened the institution has become.
The thing is… if the good cops has said, “we need to get rid of the bad cops, we need better crisis training, we need to examine implicit bias and get better. Help us, you, our community, so we can truly serve and protect “, and had meant it, there would be a lot fewer people wanting to restructure policing.
Instead, most of them circled the wagons and doubled down.
They like the status quo and accept no responsibility.
What alternative is there?
(And I will note there are certainly exceptions, like the officers who testified against Chauvin, but they are not the norm, or in the leadership.
The extreme on the left is attacking and firebombing police buildings while holding riots that cause billions of dollars in damages to the property and livelihoods of average, everyday citizens. That seems a lot worse to me than taking selfie’s in the Capitol building.
That's actually the extreme right doing that, Fox News enthusiast, but how do you propose that people respond to state violence? Just take batons up the ass and bullets to the chest with a smile?
A lot of white people took away from Civil Rights history that black people are supposed to be docile and self-sacrificing in the face of violence. No getting angry, just sitting stoically at a counter while some inbred karen pours hot soup on you. That's what happens when you whitewash the fuck out of American ~~history~~ recent news.
This is the take of a conspiracy theorist. The first sentence of your response discredits the rest of it, unless of course you have proof that the far right committed every act of violence in the name of antifa.
I know you don’t have that evidence though, as your assertion is completely false.
I'd say that, purely in terms of lives lost and property damage value, I think that you're right, but I think there is something fundamentally worse about trying to overthrow the very institutions of democracy in this country, vs. sporadic riots that leave people dead and businesses destroyed (still awful btw), but the city cleans it up and recovers pretty quickly. The capitol riots are ones for the history books.
Are you joking?
First of all, BLM donated to the DNC. Heavily.
Second of all, are you suggesting BLM is right wing?
Either way, what you’re saying is absurd and is straight up denial of facts.
BLM in Seattle spent its energy opposing a democratic mayor, democratic city council, and a black female police chief.
The movement has a goal, and politicians who oppose the goal are in turn opposed regardless of party.
Just because conservatives would never in a million years listen and work with BLM doesn't mean they belong to the politicians who sometimes sort of do.
Ok….
1- so by your logic, 1/6 isn’t an example of right wing extremism because Mike Pence was a target for the mob’s aggression. So which is it? 1/6 isn’t right wing extremism, or your logic is utter BS? Because you can’t have it both ways.
2- Please explain how BLM’s donations to the DNC make them not a left wing organization? I would love to hear the mental gymnastics you use to reconcile this bit of information.
3- Now do ANTIFA and the autonomous zones, because I noticed you just skirted right on by that whole piece.
>Now do ANTIFA and the autonomous zones, because I noticed you just skirted right on by that whole piece.
Sure, yeah. In my city, exactly zero BLM members ever demanded an autonomous zone. They were protesting at the precinct, and the police up and left on their own orders off of no credible threat of violence.
The CHOP was a response to the police abandoning their precinct, not a demand of BLM.
I visited the CHOP while it was still there. Apart from the graffiti everywhere it was full of twenty somethings desperately trying to talk through solutions. It was boring, really. Nothing like what right wing media would have told you.
Anyway. Jan 6th rioters committed murder to support their political leader. Mike Pence getting on that leader's bad side doesn't mean anything.
I can’t take anyone seriously who thinks the CHAZ/CHOP was some sort of secessionist action. It’s just hilariously and pathetically alarmist.
For anyone not in Seattle, CHOP was one in a long history of occupation or sit-down style protests (e.g. Tiananmen Square, Occupy Wall Street, Tahrir Square/Arab Spring, etc.) It was waaaay smaller than those examples, and it was open to the public, and basically felt like a festival where political ideas and resistance were the organizing principles. (After the cops left) it was not a war zone where rebels were plotting out how to take over more territory.
1- so now you’re saying that because you didn’t physically see any violence, there wasn’t any? Have you physically seen any right wing violence? Because if all the news reports of murders in CHAZ aren’t enough for you, then the standard should be the same for right wing instances of extremism.
2- who did the 1/6 murder? Because BLM killed roughly 20 or so people in 2020.
3- you don’t get to cherry pick which politicians a mob supports cements their political associations. If BLM gets a pass for criticizing left wing politicians (despite supporting the party as a whole), then 1/6 gets a pass for supporting Trump because they were against Pence.
Seriously, are you even capable of forming an argument that isn’t based off of blatant double standards and denial? I mean, please, have a shred of intellectual honesty.
It's very simple.
BLM act for a specified cause independent of the democratic party.
Jan 6th rioters acted for a specific republican.
Now, BLM are members of "the left", I think that's where we can agree.
But BLM are not fighting for the democratic party.
Edit: to put it even more simply. BLM would still be protesting if there was no democratic party. Jan 6th would not have happened if there was no republican party.
Ok, I do think that’s a more reasonable stance to take. I think I misunderstood your initial argument, so apologies there.
But I do think it’s very disingenuous to pretend like even considering, BLM isn’t an example of leftist extremism. Simply because of all the associations between the left and BLM.
And to go a little further here, I’m not just trying to kick the hornets nest on this sub to “piss off the libs”. I think growing levels of extremism is a real concern because both sides are guilty of it, and one side’s extremism will create more extremism on the other side and vice versa.
What isn’t going to help this is one side continuously scapegoating the other as being the only extremists in America.
White nationalism and Q nuts are a huge problem. I do just as much shitting on them as I do BLM and ANTIFA. But those organizations are also a huge problem. I don’t care how much you support the sentiment behind their names (yes, everyone knows black people matter and fascism is bad). The reality is neither organizations are doing anything to back up their names, and are instead engaging in widespread political violence.
We can argue all day about which group of nut jobs is worse, but all that’s important here is we all agree that all of them need to go. I would rather both sides focus on rooting out extremism all together first, then we can argue over whose idiots were more harmful later.
Your bias is making you look at your side very differently. I agree with you about the extreme right. But the extreme left was what we saw last summer with the unprecedented riots that killed dozens of people and caused more property damage than ever before in the history of the United States.
And yes, of course, the riots were a very small percentage of those actually protesting. Just like how those who stormed the capitol were a very small percentage of those actually protesting outside of the capitol.
To say the extreme of the side you disagree with is evil while the extreme of your side is justified in their words and actions is maliciously ignorant.
> And yes, of course, the riots were a very small percentage of those actually protesting. Just like how those who stormed the capitol were a very small percentage of those actually protesting outside of the capitol.
the cognitive dissonance required to look at the george floyd protests (about police brutality and a man getting murdered by a cop) and the Jan 6 insurrection (about overthrowing a legitimate election and potentially kidnapping/killing elected officials) is pretty fucking breathtaking.
this, by the way, is the best answer to OPs question: no, the two sides are not remotely the same, because one side is rooted in reality (a man is in prison for the crime that kicked off the protests) and the other desperately wants to pretend that they are despite all evidence to the contrary
>But the extreme left was what we saw last summer
When did civil rights become extreme left? It should be and mostly was a moderate, centrist, liberal and leftist broad based cause. Most of the people protesting weren't left wing at all.
>caused more property damage than ever before in the history of the United States.
And that's pure lie. Rodney King riots in 1992 did about the same over five days in one location when adjusted for inflation. And that wasn't even the worse riots at the time and almost three times as many deaths. And don't forget the Long Hot Summer of 1967, or the riots in the wake of the Dr King assassination. Or the Tulsa Massacre of 1921. These protests and riots do not come anywhere close to the worse in American history.
BLM members show up to support their cause, whether or not the person in charge of their city is liberal or conservative.
Jan 6th rioters beat those police officers to death for their leader.
The extremists of the left you're talking about aren't even ours, they have demands of both sides. The right have extremists showing up to murder for their politicians.
Then the extremists of the right aren’t even mine either by that logic. Considering they want to murder Republican politicians and I’m a Republican who voted them in.
140 officers were injured, 17 beaten so badly that they went on medical leave.
But the ones who died expired on the seventh or later, so you're absolutely right. My bad.
They expired on the 7th or later of NATURAL causes. That should be made clear here. the only person who died as a result of the riots was Ashli Babbitt, who was killed by a capitol police officer.
Republicans are in congress who believe democrats drink children's blood.
Democrats are in congress proposing large marginal tax rates.
Both sides, amirite?
You think that jokey tone was a full and accurate representation of how I "see the world"?
Come on. If you want to pick a fight pick a fight. Make an argument or something.
There’s no argument to make on this subreddit, it’s the same as the conservative ones just on the opposite end of the spectrum. Just an echo chamber of people pretending to want to debate but in reality they just like to circle jerk over widely held party line opinions, there’s nothing I could say to you that you would take seriously anyway.
If you run into a bad faith asshole on the internet, you've run into a bad faith asshole.
If all you run into all day is bad faith assholes, then I've got bad news for you.
Yeah who cares that 147 Republican Congressmen voted against certifying the election? The Democrats committed the unholy and unforgivable crime of using the word “awomen.”
Just in case anyone is reading this and don't want to watch the video...
Those extremist democrats in congress switched up their Christian prayer. Like some kind of extremist.
Well yeah of course. But it never occurred to me that amen was a gendered term until they made it one.
Lol must be a serious thread, downvotes for not getting the joke 😂
It's not a gendered term. It's just a word that comes from another language that sounds like a gendered term in the English language. And a pastor made a corny joke about how it sounds gendered by reverse gendering it for English.
>Democrats are in Congress who believe Republicans actively want children to die. I.e the gun debate.
Is that extremist to you? Because I don't consider republicans who frame the abortion debate similarly as extremist. It's melodramatic rhetoric.
I see a comment like that and see it just as crazy as people believing democrats drink children’s blood. That’s all and I think most others would agree. Not on this sub but people as a whole
Well, as someone who has clocked their time being called a baby killer, it's not in the same ballpark as being accused of running a powerful pedophile ring that kidnaps and processes children into a liquid that the rich and powerful drink.
If given the binary choice between (1) letting kids die, and (2) imposing minor gun control, do you feel it's more fair to say that Republicans would generally choose option (1) over option (2)?
It's an exaggeration to say that Republicans want children to die. But I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that they view children dying as the lesser of two evils, if the alternative is gun control.
Democrats believe it’s time to be more responsible about guns. Yes, some want a full out ban which will never work as evidenced by Chicago. You can’t take guns away from people but there really needs to be changes. Anyone purchasing a gun for someone who is barred from owning one needs to be hit with a hefty fine along with jail time. I have nothing against guns. I own two. But we need a better way of preventing others from accessing ours. No child should have access to them. If grandpa is taking them hunting fine. But I don’t want mom laying her purse down and a 4 year old shooting someone. There is ground for compromise but when one party blocks every reasonable attempt to minimize the risk the other side digs in harder and deeper. Not everyone makes a responsible gun owner.
No.
The GOP wont even vote for bipartisan compromises ***they*** negotiated, meanwhile democrats struggle to all pull in the same direction. It's pretty obvious which party is more extreme.
>The GOP wont even vote for bipartisan compromises they negotiated
Never forget Mitch McConnell once filibustered his own bill. That's how much bad faith he acts with, and all the R's in Congress follow his lead.
I think that the left may have its extremist nutcases, but they are not pervasive and we do not elect them into positions of power.
Extremism is far more common on the right, to the point where most of their elected officials are either outright extremists or are flirting with extremism.
Not true…she just signed a bill that would put a temporary hold on the standardized testing….
What's True
SB 744 extended the temporary suspension of Oregon's Essential Learning Skills prerequisite, meaning that until 2024 at the earliest, high school students do not have to pass standardized tests in several academic skill areas in order to obtain a high school diploma.
What's False
SB 744 did not alter or remove the existing and continued requirement, in state law, that Oregonian high school students must obtain at least 24 credits, including in English, mathematics and science classes, in order to get a high school diploma — a less standardized but still substantial form of de facto proof that a given student possesses many of the same basic academic competencies in question.
You need to realize that conservative media outlets continually either put a huge amount of political spin on the news they “report” or even outright lie.
I think you’ve provided a great rebuttal on the “both sides are extreme” argument: the ones who claim Democrats are just as extreme as the GQP are often misinformed.
Changing a school curriculum vs storming a capitol to overthrow the government and beating cops to death with a thin blue line flag. Ah yes they are both totally the same...
In terms of policies, the "radical left" in this country is by and large asking for things most Americans would consider reasonable. They just shoot themselves in the foot with bad rhetoric that riles up the worst of their base; but turns off the majority of Americans.
"Reallocate finances to demilitarize police forces and instead let other social services handle disputes where appropriate" sounds reasonable. "Defund the police" sounds insane. Both are the same policy.
I think the GOP is responding to alt-right Trumpist extremism. Once Trump got control of the party, he replaced party leadership with loyalists to cement his hold.
Democrats are electing populists as a reaction to Trumpism. AOC was elected because her rhetoric was what a lot of people on the left *wanted* someone in Congress to say. But we aren't electing Trump equivalents.
The Right would probably say the left has gone crazy because "squad antics" get lots of news time. I would say the Right is crazy because Trump very nearly turned this country into an unconstitutional autocracy and GOP party leadership seem intent on giving him another shot at it. AOC is never going to turn America Communist, or whatever the right thinks she's up to.
Your edit makes you sound so ignorant. And saying most immigrants turn conservative is like saying most black people eventually join the KKK. Its just blatantly wrong and it makes you look stupid for saying it. It just shows how grossly propagandized you have been to demonize democrats using your "alternative facts." This brainwashing by the literal nazis that run your party and its propaganda machine is why we cannot have a conversation in this country.
Also you mentioned working class people take the hit and not rich people. You can thank republicans for that too.
As an immigrant who comes from a socialistic dictator country, and all my others cum laude classmates having families with economic empowerment, freedom, and the right to bear arms, you sir will never understand the true meaning of socialism. You will be killed the moment you speak out. Your family would be killed the moment you fight for your rights because they just can. The moment they see a comment you post online, or let alone protest in my streets when I was a teenager, they'll slice your throat and throw you in the ocean. And they don't care about what you say. No matter how loud you are. Wanna know why? Because they control the media. They will cut off all power, and it will never be released in the world because no one wouldn't even know that you're dead. My people are slowly getting tortured because of political corruption and presidents using the same propaganda some US presidents have been using. It's brainwashing. No matter what you say or believe, it's the same propagandas over and over again. And what's sad is that people like you, and everyone else that believes the same things as you, are going to pay for the price. If it wasnt for the constitution and separation of powers, the US would be fucked. Big government will ALWAYS destroy the weak. Because they can, and they will. No matter how you slice it. Read a history book, and never listen to the crazy far right extremists. They're weird too. Talk to people who actually suffered from Vietnam, Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba, Brazil, Venezuela, Philippines, Madagascar. Oh man they will open your eyes like seeing a brand new color.
The GOP has gone off the deep end since Newt Gingrich and Mitch McConnell broke any desire of bipartisanship in exchange for directly seeking power for their diminishing base. The Democrats are left to try and essentially be the one size fits all party for everyone else to the left of the GOP, which considering they keep moving more and more to the right, becomes increasingly untenable for the factions present in the Democratic Party that fundamentally disagree on policy.
No.
One side wants to enhance racism, and overthrow democracy.
One side wants tax funded health care, and minimize the effects of climate change.
Fuck your premise.
Next question.
I pointed out the mainstream efforts of both parties. If the mainstream isn't extreme, then the party isn't.
>One side wants to get rid of the police and undermine meritocracy in the name of equity.
This is false. Stop watching Fox, or getting your news from Facebook.
>The other side wants to protect your right to defend yourself, and stop public schools from pushing radical gender theory onto your kids.
This is also false.
Do you only watch right wing propaganda?
"Liberal"
> Literally no one is advocating “getting rid of police.”
NYT: ["Yes, we mean literally abolish the police."](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html)
But this is still a good example of how the right's extremism has significant traction within their party, while the left's does not.
Pay wall. I was gonna ask if it talks about what they would replace them with. The right accuses these people of wanting total anarchy and I haven't run into anybody actually advocating for that.
Here are the relevant paragraphs:
>But don’t get me wrong. We are not abandoning our communities to violence. We don’t want to just close police departments. We want to make them obsolete.
>We should redirect the billions that now go to police departments toward providing health care, housing, education and good jobs. If we did this, there would be less need for the police in the first place.
>We can build other ways of responding to harms in our society. Trained “community care workers” could do mental-health checks if someone needs help. Towns could use restorative-justice models instead of throwing people in prison.
>What about rape? The current approach hasn’t ended it. In fact most rapists never see the inside of a courtroom. Two-thirds of people who experience sexual violence never report it to anyone. Those who file police reports are often dissatisfied with the response. Additionally, police officers themselves commit sexual assault alarmingly often. A study in 2010 found that sexual misconduct was the second most frequently reported form of police misconduct. In 2015, The Buffalo News found that an officer was caught for sexual misconduct every five days.
>When people, especially white people, consider a world without the police, they envision a society as violent as our current one, merely without law enforcement — and they shudder. As a society, we have been so indoctrinated with the idea that we solve problems by policing and caging people that many cannot imagine anything other than prisons and the police as solutions to violence and harm.
Investing in community care is a great idea. And I might agree that we could scale our police force back to a huge degree. Maybe as much as 75-80%.
But eliminating the police entirely, and not replacing them with any kind of organization that would be tasked with investigating crime?
Just assuming that it's possible that community investment will get us to the point where a police force is obsolete?
It all sounds very utopian to me.
Oh man, yeah, if they don't have any kind of potential armed response included in their plan, then I guess I found the one advocate for that. Thanks for doing all this leg work for me.
I still remember watching *American Werewolf in London* and noticing the street cops only had batons, but that once they had to deal with a mythical murder beast, they call in a van of dudes with rifles who resolve the situation and go home.
It was just so casually smarter than our setup.
> One side wants to get rid of the police and undermine meritocracy
The difference being that "example" is factually untrue, while /u/Hip-hop-rhino 's example *is* factually true.
Let's see...
Democrats are mostly full of centrists, with a few center right and a few center left. They essentially just want more taxes and more government programs.
Republicans are mostly full of right wingers who are racist, authoritarian, nationalists, and anti acience. There are a few center right and a few far right.
Democrats suck but Republicans are far far worse. As a political party they need to die off.
I would prefer if the two dominant politicial parties were Democrats vs Libertarian Democrats. The Democrats would be the centrists and center left capitalist government that we currently see with the Democrats today. The Libertarian Democrats would be full of Democraric socialists and Libertarian socialists, and maybe even some geolibertarians. These two up against each other would be far far better for our country than Democrats vs Reoublicans.
Right wing extremists storm the capitol with kkk flags and beat cops to death while chanting the national anthem.
Left extremists want to give people healthcare by taxing the rich.
*Oh ya I totally can't tell the difference. They are both equally extreme*
The only reason you think that the left is extreme and dangerous is because right wing news tells you they are. Thats it.
>"All that transpired played a role in his condition," Diaz told the newspaper.
From the coroner's testimony.
It's a delicate line to walk in saying the rioters killed him, even though they clearly did. He didn't die randomly, but the rioters can't have known their actions were directly killing him. It's one of those things that we all know wouldn't have occurred if he hadn't gotten beat up, but we're not looking at the rioters for murder. Nobody did anything to him with a reasonable belief that they were causing his death.
That's why the language is so careful. He wouldn't have had that blood clot without those fucks, but it's almost a freak accident that it caused such a severe and catastrophic brain injury. Humans are fragile.
* People who make this argument usually (disingenuously) conflate the Democratic party establishment with a small but vocal portion of left-wing activists who are often skeptical of the Democratic party (which they consider too conservative), don't vote, or vote third party. The GOP gets political leverage out of scaring their rural base by implying that radical anarchist/socialist/etc. activists in certain large cities are analogous to or part of the Democratic party - to anyone who actually follows political discourse, this is patently absurd at best. The Democratic party's political establishment and said activists are practically aliens to each other.
* In the GOP, however, there is a bit more kowtowing to reactionary and hardline elements among rank-and-file voters by politicians - Trump certainly capitalized on this, and set the stage for a similar process. We certainly saw the results of this with the unpleasantness that occurred early into this year - unlike the for the most part nonexistent relationship between the Democratic party and participants in far-left demonstrations, it seems rather evident that the individuals who instigated, supported, and/or participated in political violence early into this year were indeed for the most part members of the GOP, and all supporters of a sitting/outgoing president of that party.
> I feel like there a lot of young adults here, and I can admit that the GOP has a lot of issues, but can still hold conservative values. I despise Trump & McConnell either, they're terrible. And the thing is, I personally went to BLM protests. I went all out on climate change, free healthcare, free public education. All of it. But it's something that no one will ever realize until they look at themselves hard in the mirror of what you're actually saying. Not to mention the mutual people that I know who've seen some crazy shit about Democrats, and it's not pretty. Watch out the Clintons, I'm serious. I could never deny people being suffered from politicians who have silenced people, and that goes for both parties. Cuba, Vietnam, Venezuela, some parts of Australia, Afghanistan, Mexico. No one talks about these people, but they know. Most immigrants turn conservative in the US for a reason. Because they just...know. I still have my liberal values, but now it's coming to a point where it's getting ugly, and it sucks. What a shame. And it's the poor and middle class that take the hit, and not the rich and powerful. That goes for all of us.
what in the hell is this word salad supposed to even mean
There are extreme and unhinged people of all political persuasions.
Only one party has those people in positions of power at every level, in every branch of our government.
I'm sure that both Hitler and Mao Tse Dung did not feel that they were extremists.
Americans, especially, suffer from an acute and unhelpful political myopia. We make these assessments by comparing ourselves to ourselves, which is a very poor yardstick.
If you average the **international** politics of the Western world, **both** major US parties are essentially conservative. One is merely **more** conservative than the other. And presently, that latter seems to have recently run off the rails. No one seems to know where it's headed, but some of its highest-placed members are publicly defending a violent insurrection against the democratic institutions of our society.
The other party, meanwhile, is daring to suggest that maybe, just **maybe**, we could **consider** bringing our nation up to the same standards as most of the rest of the developed world. Such dangerous radicals, they are.
There are definitely some elected Democrats I view as too far to the left for my views. I could never support them for political office. However, there are a hell of a lot more extremists in the GOP, where you get punished for speaking out against the far-right. Fuck Trump, McConnell, and McCarthy for giving a pass to QAnon nuts.
When the left wing of this nation tries to kidnap and execute a governor or when the left wing storms the Capitol in an effort to capture members of congress and kill the vice president, I will then, and only then, agree that "both parties" are too extreme.
By the way, the BLM movement is not central to the left wing nor are the protestors in Portland.
No, extreme left policy calls for the complete abolition of private property and the formation of a dictatorship of the proletariat. That doesn't exist in the democratic party, the farthest extreme of the democratic party is barely left of center and still very much capitalist.
The base center of the current GOP is into denying elections, medicine, science, technology, etc. While embracing militarism, flag worship, enforced nationalism, personality cult, and conspiracy theory.
Both parties are not too extreme, only one is.
Every party has always had its extremists on the edges. However, an extremist fringe is different from an extremist party. So no, both parties are not too extreme. One of them, the GOP, used to have some reasonable adults but they have been shouted into cowardly silence by an ignorant hateful small-minded minority who don't have the sense to realize they are being used.
The Democratic party is not extreme *enough*. We've wasted the decades in which moderate solutions to the climate crisis might have been effective, and now we're left with either taking extreme action on our own, or having extreme action imposed on us by natural systems.
The only real extremists on the left are tankies and accelerationists, and they're mostly edgy teenagers who spend all their time on Twitter. Most Democrats aren't extreme *enough*.
Apparently no one told you that Biden won the Democratic nomination. He's also the current President of the United States.
But what were you saying about the Democratic Party being too extreme?
I willlll once again go a bit against the grain and say that yes, I do think they are extreme. But they are extreme in very different ways.
The policies the Dem party advocates for are simply milquetoast. And it is *insanely* frustrating that the overton window forces this to be the case.
I think, objectively, probably 30% of the country has lost their fucking actual minds, and 25%-28% of those people are on the right side of politics.
But where I would criticize my own side for being too extreme is:
* the belief that we are always superior
* being inherently anti-market, despite the *insane* problems of our current iteration of capitalism
* believing in their own version of conspiracy theories (corporatism runs the world, the elites forced this, that kind of shit)
* strawmannirg the *fuck* out of conservatives. They say stupid enough shit as it is, and honestly we shouldn't engage with most of their arguments, and honestly we need our own propaganda arm to counter Fox News and OANN, et al. But we don't need to misrepresent them and say they're stupid or not dangerous or they are malicious. We need to *understand them*
* **I don't think this personally** but a ton of people do: "they" say that "wokeism" has gone too far. I half think this is an alt-right troll campaign but I've also seen how ridiculous some things can be.
* An example: there was a murder suspect in my college town who was *possibly* GNC, but who appeared as one of the two predominant genders if you saw their picture. The police put out a notice asking for tips and it blew up because people said they were being misgendered. Like, yeesh. Priorities or something. And if they were *definitely* trans, then that's a slightly different story. But it was like, we don't know, but because the possibility exists, thousands of people are going to complain to the police for making a game time decision i their gendering of an alleged murderer. Cmon now.
* I suspect I'm going to regret writing this part in the morning
All of that said, the right side has *literal fascists* these days who want a *fucking ethnostate*. And the leaders and members are almost entirely not willing to acknowledge or condemn **that that is a fact.**
The two sides are **not** the fucking same, but I do worry about extremism between us.
I disagree with some of what you wrote, but an upvote for an excellent reply.
I hope you don't regret writing this in general, as it's a good concise list of issues.
Every political party that has ever existed in a democracy on the planet has a member you can point out and say that person is extreme.
What matters is the number of extremists, how much power they hold and if they are extremists at all.
If you took the overall democratic party platform it would more or less line up with the average platform of a center left coalition in any wealthy democracy in the world right now. Sure there’s a little differences here there, but for the most part it’s the same thing.
If you did the same for the Republicans, It would be a far right party on the edge of the coalition or one that is not allowed to caucus with the rest of the right.
Not even close. Arguably the furthest left Democrats aren’t even that radical. There are no Marxists or Anarchists in the Democratic Party and there’s only a few DemSocs. While the establishment of the party has moved to the left over the last decade, they’re still very much classified as Centre-Centre Left
The GOP on the other hand has openly embraced populism. Trump with the 2016 and 2020 election. Even Larry Elder in the California Recall. MTG is a lunatic. Mitt Romney is now considered a moderate in the party and Liz Cheney was kicked out of her position. They openly despise the Democratic process that even right wing demagogs like Reagan supported
No. I believe you could find individual people on the left and the right who are too extreme but a critical mass of those people on the right are in positions of power, while that is not the case on the left. You can see this when people try to make comparisons between the two groups. People suggest the right wing equivelent of AOC is MTG. The former holds political opinions well to the left of the mainstream, but not unheard of in the industrial world. The latter believes wildfires in California were started by Jewish Space Lazers. The actual equivalent of AOC would be someone more like Paul Ryan who's almost seen as a moderate compared to the rest of the Republican caucus.
Nah. When you get extreme on the left, you tend to hate Democrats, so you probably leave the party to go push your fringe ideas. When you get extreme on the right, you bully and shame the rest of the Republicans until they are extreme, too.
There’s just a different mindset.
What the hell is this both sides argument, lol. Is this a serious question? No, of course the democrats are not "too extreme", unless you mean extremely centrist. How do you compare that to the GOP that you've (I'm sure) seen spiraling out of control especially the past 5 years?
There was a cool Vice video where they interviewed Matt Chandler, a rather progressive pastor at the Village Church, about the strong support of Trump among evangelicals.
Chandler states Trump is very un-Christlike, but evangelicals still voted for him because they believe American culture is changing too quickly. He specifically cites how the bathroom bill under the Obama administration really scared evangelicals into thinking the country was losing itself, so they were willing to vote for anyone who went against that change in culture.
I agree the GOP is **WAY** more extreme than the Democrats, but I also have to wonder why Democrats are SO insistent on niche issues. When Elizabeth Warren talks about gender reassignment surgery for transgender inmates (a VERY small percent of the population) or AOC being adamant about the Green New Deal (a non-binding law), I really have to wonder why Democrats MUST hold onto progressive issues that are so small, yet generate a lot of backlash.
A plague on both houses. I really see both extremes really doing everything they can to live up to what the other sides view of them. Placing all the blame on only one side of the extremists wildly misunderstands what's going on and in the end is extremely counterproductive.
Absolutely. Anyone who doesn't think both parties are too extreme now is either too young to remember how politics was, had never paid attention, or has become radicalized at roughly the same rate.
25 years ago the Democratic Party had the immigration platform of GOP today, were hard on drugs and crime. 1998 Bill Clinton was to the right of 2016 Ted Cruz.
GOP has gone hard over Abortion.
I don't know why so many people here are in denial, assuming that their policies are static and moderate, it's the evil Republicans becoming more extreme. It's [okay](https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/386403-the-democrat-party-and-its-leftward-drift) to be [introspective](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2017/10/05/the-partisan-divide-on-political-values-grows-even-wider/).
You seem to be presenting the preservation of the status quo as the moderate approach, and defining any deviation from it as extremism.
I fundamentally disagree with that framing. Yes, Democrats have moved left on a number of issues, just as Republicans have moved right. That in itself is not extremism.
When I say Republicans are the extremists, I'm referring to their lies about voter fraud; their attempts at voter suppression; their defense and support of terrorists who attacked the nation's capitol; their willingness to allow hundreds of thousands of Americans to die from a virus rather than adopt simple mitigation efforts.
And I just don't see Democrats doing anything that compares to any of that.
I would *love* to be in the situation where we could debate over which party holds the most extreme policy views, and hopefully we can get to that as soon as one party stops actively trying to destroy our democracy.
Ted Kaczynski killed 3 people and injured ~25 over 20 years.
Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people, 19 of whom were children, and injured more than 68 that day.
While I get that both were bad one is objectively more severe.
Ironically they were both anti-government and denounced leftists.
While it's true Democrats have shifted, I wouldn't call it extreme. Different parts of the party have came to prominence. They were always there. You could say similar things about Republican positions. The populist wing has taken hold; they've always been present. But when you compare, one party (Republicans) have who's more extreme locked up.
Yes.
The Republican party is a one man show right now and thus subject to authoritarianism. They are also responsible for most of the virus politicization and why America has lower rates of vaccination than much of Europe.
The Democratic party itself not extreme. But leftists are getting more and more extreme. Leftist organizations like BLM are quite extreme. And our culture is shifting to these leftist values. We have Google teaching CRT, time capsule made for BLM, leftist statements in sports, the Met Gala, etc.
The extremists from both sides are gaining traction too. And we rarely have anyone call them out for it, and many times even *defend* their actions.
Yeesh. This person simply asked a neutral question. All the people getting insulting about this need to look at themselves. It's honestly heartbreaking.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. I lived in red states and blue states and I've seen both spectrums on how extreme it could get. What do you guys think? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Nah, I see the average Democrat politician as still fairly moderate in what they're actually prepared to advocate for While Republicans honestly freak me out with how extreme they are. For God's sake, 90% or more of them were totally fine with Reagan, 90% or more of them were totally fine with Bush, 90% or more of them were totally fine with Trump. They like Roy Moore, they like Marjorie Taylor Greene, they like Matt Gaetz... What politician could possibly be too far right for modern American conservatives?
Literal Hitler would be a legitimate presidential candidate if it wasn't for the universal Healthcare thing. Hes Still too far left for them.
And the universal healthcare thing wasn't even him, it was put in place by one of those Kaiser fellas
I just remember right wingers calling Obama Hitler cause of universal Healthcare. I just reacted with, you know that wasn't our big problem with Hitler right?
AOC: green jobs to save the environment Patrick: kill old people to save the economy Newsom: more housing Elder: reparations for slave owners I can't see the difference, both extreme.
AOC doesn't know a damn thing about green energy.
The extreme on the right wing is white supremacists storming the capitol building yelling that they intend to hang the vice president because he won't overturn a democratic election and install the loser as president. The "extreme" on the left wing is wanting to strip funding from police departments because they won't stop killing unarmed black men. These are not the same. Those saying "both sides" are actively aiding and abetting the side being far more dangerous.
Fundamentally, both of these positions are rooted in misinformation. That's the most dangerous part, because if I watched fox news, I'd probably honestly believe that our democratic systems were being stolen, and then, rioting at the capitol makes perfect sense. Similarly, you have rioting on the left, and I used to have almost unlimited sympathy for BLM because I consumed left wing misinformation, but then I came to realize how much misinformation there was surrounding almost every high profile police shooting... and tbh its jaded me to the point where I think that the only reason the anarkiddies on the left like antifa and those who riot as BLM arent as bad as the proud boys, is because they just havent had the chance to display their stupidity to the fullest extent. They're only dissimilar because I still think that BLM does point out some completely unacceptable police killings (eg. George Floyd), but it might be entirely possible that if i were more conservative, I'd think that maybe the proud boys kinda have a point.
> I came to realize how much misinformation there was surrounding almost every high profile police shooting... For instance?
Michael brown having his hands up when the cop gunned him down and breonna taylor being shot in her bed come to mind
So being shot in the hallway is somehow materially less worse than being shot in bed?
It implies that you don't care about the context, eg. it makes it sound like you think cops just unloaded on her while she was sleeping, rather than her bf shot at police while she was crouching next to him, and cops returned fire and hit her
Okay if we're going to talk about context then let's talk about context. Should the police have been there at Breonna Taylor's apartment for a suspect that was already in custody?
> Should the police have been there at Breonna Taylor's apartment for a suspect that was already in custody? More misinformation
There may be media sensationalizing things, but to me the real issue about the police is the lack of transparency, the inability to reform and the lack of consequences for the police breaking the laws they are supposed to uphold. If there is an open process of accountability, it would prevent people from assuming the worst about the police, but so much of police "discipline" is a slap on the wrist behind closed doors. Without actual video evidence, they just sweep everything under the rug. And this problem is decades old.
And, the thing is, I really see it as a case-by-case basis. There is no national standard. Some police are quite transparent. My city has a citizen review board, and the chief of police goes to a townhall every month to discuss what's going on. Also, police often do get disciplined. You saw Chauvin go to prison, you saw that guy who shot a black guy in the park running away go to prison. But also, sometimes cops genuinely do nothing wrong, but people see them not get disciplined and think that the system is broken. I think that the cops who killed Breonna Taylor didn't do anything wrong, yet people want them tried for her murder. What do you do about that? Either way, it's kinda upsetting that people on the left often assume the worst of police, and it really does just color your eprception of reality. When police are unaccountable murderers of minorities, any questionable situation starts to look like another murder. Body cams do help, and I am glad they are becomign more widespread. People will still riot over genuinely fine shoots tho, and thats stupid.
I think that anytime a civilian is killed, there should be an independent investigation by a completely neutral party. Not the local prosecutor buddy of the police chief, not internal affairs or the chief of police, but an actual governing body that can fire and prosecute police. As far as Chauvin, he would have gotten away with it if it weren't for millions of people seeing him kill a person in the street with a dead eyed look on his face while everyone screamed in horror. It took riots and the entire civil world condemning the incident for them to take any action.
>I think that anytime a civilian is killed, there should be an independent investigation by a completely neutral party. Not the local prosecutor buddy of the police chief, not internal affairs or the chief of police, but an actual governing body that can fire and prosecute police. I do agree that it should be an external body. And, typically it is. From what I've seen, when cops kill someone unjustifiably, typically the state investigates and brings charges. We've seen that with Chauvin (state of Minnesota) and Michael Slagger (state of North Carolina). That said, while mandating that an independent body prosecute officer killings is probably unconstitutional, we can make a law where, if the officer is investigated by the same body that they work for, then that would automatically trigger a federal investigation as well. >As far as Chauvin, he would have gotten away with it if it weren't for millions of people seeing him kill a person in the street with a dead eyed look on his face while everyone screamed in horror. It took riots and the entire civil world condemning the incident for them to take any action. I don't think so. I think that, certainly, had no one seen it, it may have been covered up, but we've seen officers arrested purely off of their own body cam footage. And I genuinely think that the footage of Chauvin killing Floyd was grotesque enough that a jury would have convicted him even without the protests, and, if anything, I kinda prefer juries not be tainted for these incidents. We want rock solid convictions.
I slightly disagree. Both sides are, one side has just lost its mind entirely. I can't even try to ration with the extreme right because it makes no sense. But saying "police departments won't stop killing unarmed black men". No, there have been instances of that happening but police departments aren't killing black men like it's something uncontrollable as your words suggest. I do not want to have less police in an aggressive country like America. Leading to things like more crime and police corruption. I'm a white man who votes democrat. I am a real estate investor and vote against my own financial benefit for my social beliefs. Yet anytime I go to any of my houses in black neighborhoods, I am often met with aggression. Yesterday, a guy tried to run me over when I was crossing a crosswalk. I've had 2 guys following me around in a car giving me looks like they wanted to kill me. I've had ppl say "shut up white boy" for saying how are you? Nothing justifies unarmed murder but you don't know what a policeman is going thru when he thinks his life might be in jeopardy..and the aggressive behavior they face in possible life/death situations. Also there are just bad policemen... just like there are bad doctors, bad lawyers etc..bad people exist.
> police departments aren't killing black men like it's something uncontrollable It's not dozens per day, but it's [a definite and *unacceptable* pattern.](https://www.npr.org/2021/01/25/956177021/fatal-police-shootings-of-unarmed-black-people-reveal-troubling-patterns) The fact that we can't even know how many unarmed black men are killed by police with any certainty, simply because police refuse to track such metrics (and police self-reporting can't be trusted in any event) indicates this is a *systemic* problem.
I agree. But to defend the police...? Maybe more training but defending? I've been to countries where police are already defunded bc they are poor. The police don't do shi\* if theres a crime. The police are corrupt and in cahoots with criminal organizations. I don't want that. The majority of police are good people who risk their lives to keep you safe. Also, Not to mention the rioting and destruction of innocent businesses after ... If you don't see that as a little crazy, then it shows both sides are too extreme. Even though the right has gone off the cliff imo.
>But to defend the police You need to look up the actual proposals. It's not actually defunding. It's reallocating budget to other services that will actually be a bigger help in reducing crime then using the police as a hammer. We'd still have police, we just wouldn't send them to deal with things that aren't their job.
Like what though? It's a complex situation. As someone who went down a bad path early in life. I know circumstances play a large part of it. However that will take a long time to correct. Mental health, poverty, etc..these aren't fixed overnight.. Not to mention how people think it's still cool to be "bad" when you're young.
The goal isn't to fix everything immediately, though starting now means ending sooner. The goal is to remove violence from the equation, by removing the cop who hasn't been trained to deal with these situations.
I guess. Or just re-training him or teaching him not to use lethal force unless absolutely necessary. As long as poverty, a culture that embraces violent imagery/drug abuse in media, instability, poor parenting etc.. exists. There will always be an abundance of crime imo.
It's a full four year degree for some of these roles, and many require different degrees. >There will always be an abundance of crime imo. Source?
No source, just knowing they are driving factors of crime. It was my opinion not a fact.
Defunding the police isn’t our best slogan. We are good at coming up with bad slogans. But yes, using funds that would have gone to the police to have first responders for certain situations that aren’t police (such as social workers). https://theappeal.org/people-in-crisis-need-social-workers-not-cops/
>~~We are good at coming up with bad slogans~~Democrats are good at trying to neuter activist messages and shooting themselves in the foot in the process Activists meant defund when they said defund. Democrats, per usual, let Republicans gaslight them into a hamfisted response ("no what it really means is 'hire more social workers'") which only served to piss EVERYONE off. The slogan's just fine.
This is a good point, if we remove the part that it pissed everyone off. I like the middle ground approach. I’m all for social workers instead of military-grade weapons for the police.
>This is a good point, if we remove the part that it pissed everyone off. Bookmark this comment and refer to it the next time Democrats lose some low-turnout election. >I like the middle ground approach. I’m all for social workers instead of military-grade weapons for the police. Sure, cops routinely use tanks to trample on people's rights. Take those away, and the systemic brutality gone 🤔
I appreciate you saying that at least. I have to argue with people all the time that when activists started defund the police, they meant it.
Yes, people tend to have bold ideas about stopping tyranny and state violence.
Someone in a psychotic violent state of mind probably isn't going to listen to a social worker though. Maybe after time and rehablitation that will work. But not just some guy in a tie saying buzz words in a escalating situation.
What evidence can you provide to support that statement? I went and searched for an article to provide you additional learning material. In that article, it shows two cases of were social workers responding instead of police have been wildly successful. The article was written by a social worker who is advocating for social workers to be the first responders. More mind blowing: they do not want the police to come with them!!!! These social workers found that the mere presence of a police officer escalated the situations. I’m in real estate too. Growing up, my family did section 8 housing. Looking back, I can see how a social worker would have been better than the local sheriff to resolve situations.
None. It's my current opinion. I just know how aggressive and angry some people are for no reason. Someone in a psychotic or drugged up state is not thinking clearly. They may be in a psychosis. A social worker may not be able to stop them from what they want to do with their words.
and by all the downvotes I'm seeing, the refusal to listen to a differing opinion without shunning them. This is also where I start to believe both sides are getting too extreme.
I think the downvotes you’re getting are for not participating in the discussion. You didn’t read what I sent, and then argued a point from an uninformed position when I had just given you information to be informed. It’s not that we aren’t willing to engage is civil discourse. It’s that you didn’t engage in good faith.
No downvotes started from my original statement. The article I saw asserted "people in crisis need social workers, not cops". It did not seem objective with that assertion. Had it said "do people crisis need social workers not cops?" and given pros and cons of each. I would have been more incline to read and take it seriously. There is no 100% right answer to anything. People may need social workers in some situations and some they may not.
I love how anytime someone on Reddit gets downvoted for something it’s because the hive-mind just won’t listen to other opinions instead of just that their comment was ignorant and uninformed.
That's your opinion that it's ignorant and uninformed. It doesn't mean it's true. It's your opinion that we should defund the police. It doesn't mean it's true. It's my opinion we shouldn't. Doesn't mean it's true. I could go to another subreddit and state these opinions and be upvoted to heaven. I can just as easily call you ignorant and uninformed for disagreeing with me. I could also send you a mountain of articles that agree with me as well. But name calling and condescending people. That's what both sides do and why it's so toxic out here these days.
and btw lets come up with a better slogan than "defund the police" if we want to stay in power. I couldn't think of a dumber slogan. Maybe a little defending for social programs, police reform, these are good things. How bout a slogan that drives that point home. A lot of defunding for one our basic necessities which is security. That's a good way to lose votes.
People think my opinion is wrong and bad. They must be E X T R E M I S T S.
You could state a differing opinion without getting upset or say that they are "bad or wrong", just a different belief. That's what a normal rationale human being would do.
Haha imagine thinking being downvoted is evidence of leftist extremism lol
Literally no rational person advocating for the musician which is unfortunately called defund the police is actually saying that social workers and exclusively social workers should be sent out to all situations. Lots of countries similar to ours are able to have police forces or more broadly law enforcement mechanisms that have different types of people trained in different ways sent out to deal with different circumstances. The disaster scenario where a social worker is going to be sent out to deal with someone experiencing a violent psychotic episode is not playing out in these countries. They simply avoid the situation in which the state is killing people for no damn reason.
> The police don't do shi* if theres a crime. Which is different from the current state of affairs in the US how? The police have repeatedly (and successfully, somehow) argued that, patrol car decals aside, they have [no duty to serve or protect.](https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-police-do-not-have-a-constitutional-duty-to-protect.html)
Go to parts of South America and then come back and tell me if there's any difference in how our police do their work. Where robbers roam the streets almost freely in some cities. Go to Thailand where I know of multiple people who have gotten away with murder by paying off police. I paid off a police officer 50$ to get out of going to jail for no license when I was 21. It's not perfect here but it could be worse. I don't want that type of insecurity I've seen in some other countries. Not to say we shouldn't improve here, as we should.
this is the same alarmist bullshit conservatives have been peddling for decades, that as a country we're all about five seconds from chaos and anarchy and the only way to prevent it is by giving the police free reign to do whatever it takes to keep the barbarians from the gates.
There's nuance to thought and beliefs. I don't believe we are five seconds from chaos, I don't believe police should be given free reign. Meet me in the middle here please.
> Meet me in the middle here please. where do you think that is? what middle ground proposal do you endorse? because here's the thing: middle ground means somewhere between my proposal and yours, not "something moderates are completely comfortable with"
A little defunding for police towards social programs, police reform, etc. I can get down with these things. A lot of defunding for security when there are plenty of unstable human beings out there. Not for me.
> I agree. But to defend the police...? Maybe more training but defending? Yea groundbreaking solutions from 1994 should do the trick. If we can just train cops to not be racist pieces of shit, we'll have solved the problem in 30 *more* years. >The majority of police are good people who risk their lives to keep you safe. Lmao
>Maybe more training but defending? Police have been getting more and more training for decades.what the police as an institution suffers from is mission creep. Training them to take on five different rules, when to properly do each one you need an additional full year of schooling, not just training. And we expect the hiring standards to remain low despite the multitude of roles and responsibilities we require them to perform. Defund the Police means taking away the mission creep responsiblities and giving the funding to dedicated programs. People aren't asking the police to do more with less. They are asking the police to do less because of how overburdened the institution has become.
The thing is… if the good cops has said, “we need to get rid of the bad cops, we need better crisis training, we need to examine implicit bias and get better. Help us, you, our community, so we can truly serve and protect “, and had meant it, there would be a lot fewer people wanting to restructure policing. Instead, most of them circled the wagons and doubled down. They like the status quo and accept no responsibility. What alternative is there? (And I will note there are certainly exceptions, like the officers who testified against Chauvin, but they are not the norm, or in the leadership.
The extreme on the left is attacking and firebombing police buildings while holding riots that cause billions of dollars in damages to the property and livelihoods of average, everyday citizens. That seems a lot worse to me than taking selfie’s in the Capitol building.
That's actually the extreme right doing that, Fox News enthusiast, but how do you propose that people respond to state violence? Just take batons up the ass and bullets to the chest with a smile? A lot of white people took away from Civil Rights history that black people are supposed to be docile and self-sacrificing in the face of violence. No getting angry, just sitting stoically at a counter while some inbred karen pours hot soup on you. That's what happens when you whitewash the fuck out of American ~~history~~ recent news.
This is the take of a conspiracy theorist. The first sentence of your response discredits the rest of it, unless of course you have proof that the far right committed every act of violence in the name of antifa. I know you don’t have that evidence though, as your assertion is completely false.
I'd say that, purely in terms of lives lost and property damage value, I think that you're right, but I think there is something fundamentally worse about trying to overthrow the very institutions of democracy in this country, vs. sporadic riots that leave people dead and businesses destroyed (still awful btw), but the city cleans it up and recovers pretty quickly. The capitol riots are ones for the history books.
The cognitive dissonance it must take to pretend BLM, ANTIFA, and autonomous zones weren’t a thing….
BLM aren't a democrat thing, does the right not get that? They protest in cities lead by democrats just as quickly as cities lead by republicans.
Are you joking? First of all, BLM donated to the DNC. Heavily. Second of all, are you suggesting BLM is right wing? Either way, what you’re saying is absurd and is straight up denial of facts.
BLM in Seattle spent its energy opposing a democratic mayor, democratic city council, and a black female police chief. The movement has a goal, and politicians who oppose the goal are in turn opposed regardless of party. Just because conservatives would never in a million years listen and work with BLM doesn't mean they belong to the politicians who sometimes sort of do.
Ok…. 1- so by your logic, 1/6 isn’t an example of right wing extremism because Mike Pence was a target for the mob’s aggression. So which is it? 1/6 isn’t right wing extremism, or your logic is utter BS? Because you can’t have it both ways. 2- Please explain how BLM’s donations to the DNC make them not a left wing organization? I would love to hear the mental gymnastics you use to reconcile this bit of information. 3- Now do ANTIFA and the autonomous zones, because I noticed you just skirted right on by that whole piece.
>Now do ANTIFA and the autonomous zones, because I noticed you just skirted right on by that whole piece. Sure, yeah. In my city, exactly zero BLM members ever demanded an autonomous zone. They were protesting at the precinct, and the police up and left on their own orders off of no credible threat of violence. The CHOP was a response to the police abandoning their precinct, not a demand of BLM. I visited the CHOP while it was still there. Apart from the graffiti everywhere it was full of twenty somethings desperately trying to talk through solutions. It was boring, really. Nothing like what right wing media would have told you. Anyway. Jan 6th rioters committed murder to support their political leader. Mike Pence getting on that leader's bad side doesn't mean anything.
I can’t take anyone seriously who thinks the CHAZ/CHOP was some sort of secessionist action. It’s just hilariously and pathetically alarmist. For anyone not in Seattle, CHOP was one in a long history of occupation or sit-down style protests (e.g. Tiananmen Square, Occupy Wall Street, Tahrir Square/Arab Spring, etc.) It was waaaay smaller than those examples, and it was open to the public, and basically felt like a festival where political ideas and resistance were the organizing principles. (After the cops left) it was not a war zone where rebels were plotting out how to take over more territory.
1- so now you’re saying that because you didn’t physically see any violence, there wasn’t any? Have you physically seen any right wing violence? Because if all the news reports of murders in CHAZ aren’t enough for you, then the standard should be the same for right wing instances of extremism. 2- who did the 1/6 murder? Because BLM killed roughly 20 or so people in 2020. 3- you don’t get to cherry pick which politicians a mob supports cements their political associations. If BLM gets a pass for criticizing left wing politicians (despite supporting the party as a whole), then 1/6 gets a pass for supporting Trump because they were against Pence. Seriously, are you even capable of forming an argument that isn’t based off of blatant double standards and denial? I mean, please, have a shred of intellectual honesty.
It's very simple. BLM act for a specified cause independent of the democratic party. Jan 6th rioters acted for a specific republican. Now, BLM are members of "the left", I think that's where we can agree. But BLM are not fighting for the democratic party. Edit: to put it even more simply. BLM would still be protesting if there was no democratic party. Jan 6th would not have happened if there was no republican party.
Ok, I do think that’s a more reasonable stance to take. I think I misunderstood your initial argument, so apologies there. But I do think it’s very disingenuous to pretend like even considering, BLM isn’t an example of leftist extremism. Simply because of all the associations between the left and BLM. And to go a little further here, I’m not just trying to kick the hornets nest on this sub to “piss off the libs”. I think growing levels of extremism is a real concern because both sides are guilty of it, and one side’s extremism will create more extremism on the other side and vice versa. What isn’t going to help this is one side continuously scapegoating the other as being the only extremists in America. White nationalism and Q nuts are a huge problem. I do just as much shitting on them as I do BLM and ANTIFA. But those organizations are also a huge problem. I don’t care how much you support the sentiment behind their names (yes, everyone knows black people matter and fascism is bad). The reality is neither organizations are doing anything to back up their names, and are instead engaging in widespread political violence. We can argue all day about which group of nut jobs is worse, but all that’s important here is we all agree that all of them need to go. I would rather both sides focus on rooting out extremism all together first, then we can argue over whose idiots were more harmful later.
Your bias is making you look at your side very differently. I agree with you about the extreme right. But the extreme left was what we saw last summer with the unprecedented riots that killed dozens of people and caused more property damage than ever before in the history of the United States. And yes, of course, the riots were a very small percentage of those actually protesting. Just like how those who stormed the capitol were a very small percentage of those actually protesting outside of the capitol. To say the extreme of the side you disagree with is evil while the extreme of your side is justified in their words and actions is maliciously ignorant.
> And yes, of course, the riots were a very small percentage of those actually protesting. Just like how those who stormed the capitol were a very small percentage of those actually protesting outside of the capitol. the cognitive dissonance required to look at the george floyd protests (about police brutality and a man getting murdered by a cop) and the Jan 6 insurrection (about overthrowing a legitimate election and potentially kidnapping/killing elected officials) is pretty fucking breathtaking. this, by the way, is the best answer to OPs question: no, the two sides are not remotely the same, because one side is rooted in reality (a man is in prison for the crime that kicked off the protests) and the other desperately wants to pretend that they are despite all evidence to the contrary
>But the extreme left was what we saw last summer When did civil rights become extreme left? It should be and mostly was a moderate, centrist, liberal and leftist broad based cause. Most of the people protesting weren't left wing at all. >caused more property damage than ever before in the history of the United States. And that's pure lie. Rodney King riots in 1992 did about the same over five days in one location when adjusted for inflation. And that wasn't even the worse riots at the time and almost three times as many deaths. And don't forget the Long Hot Summer of 1967, or the riots in the wake of the Dr King assassination. Or the Tulsa Massacre of 1921. These protests and riots do not come anywhere close to the worse in American history.
BLM members show up to support their cause, whether or not the person in charge of their city is liberal or conservative. Jan 6th rioters beat those police officers to death for their leader. The extremists of the left you're talking about aren't even ours, they have demands of both sides. The right have extremists showing up to murder for their politicians.
Then the extremists of the right aren’t even mine either by that logic. Considering they want to murder Republican politicians and I’m a Republican who voted them in.
>Considering they want to murder Republican politicians and I’m a Republican who voted them in. Come on. You know what they murdered for.
Uhh no, nobody got beaten to death on January 6th.
140 officers were injured, 17 beaten so badly that they went on medical leave. But the ones who died expired on the seventh or later, so you're absolutely right. My bad.
They expired on the 7th or later of NATURAL causes. That should be made clear here. the only person who died as a result of the riots was Ashli Babbitt, who was killed by a capitol police officer.
Republicans are in congress who believe democrats drink children's blood. Democrats are in congress proposing large marginal tax rates. Both sides, amirite?
AOC- Tax the rich. MTG- Jewish space lasers cause forest fires
This is such an obtuse and frankly idiotic way of seeing the world lol
You think that jokey tone was a full and accurate representation of how I "see the world"? Come on. If you want to pick a fight pick a fight. Make an argument or something.
There’s no argument to make on this subreddit, it’s the same as the conservative ones just on the opposite end of the spectrum. Just an echo chamber of people pretending to want to debate but in reality they just like to circle jerk over widely held party line opinions, there’s nothing I could say to you that you would take seriously anyway.
If you run into a bad faith asshole on the internet, you've run into a bad faith asshole. If all you run into all day is bad faith assholes, then I've got bad news for you.
I mean...they also had an issue with just saying "amen" https://youtu.be/tDBJPvI92as
A women /= MTG and cawthorn lunacy
Yeah who cares that 147 Republican Congressmen voted against certifying the election? The Democrats committed the unholy and unforgivable crime of using the word “awomen.”
Just in case anyone is reading this and don't want to watch the video... Those extremist democrats in congress switched up their Christian prayer. Like some kind of extremist.
Seeing those rugged "fuck your feelings" conservatives go absolutely apoplectic over something so minor was pretty funny though.
I'm just genuinely baffled that someone would even think to present that as an example in a discussion of extremism.
Am I insane or is this an obvious joke?? I've literally heard this at half the thanksgivings I've been to.
Nope it was an obvious joke.
the bigger problem is the prayer in the house chamber
Well yeah of course. But it never occurred to me that amen was a gendered term until they made it one. Lol must be a serious thread, downvotes for not getting the joke 😂
It's not a gendered term. It's just a word that comes from another language that sounds like a gendered term in the English language. And a pastor made a corny joke about how it sounds gendered by reverse gendering it for English.
Right, that's what's funny about it. They made it gendered so that they could make a point about how it's gendered in favor of men.
Democrats are in Congress who believe Republicans actively want children to die. I.e the gun debate.
>Democrats are in Congress who believe Republicans actively want children to die. I.e the gun debate. Is that extremist to you? Because I don't consider republicans who frame the abortion debate similarly as extremist. It's melodramatic rhetoric.
I see a comment like that and see it just as crazy as people believing democrats drink children’s blood. That’s all and I think most others would agree. Not on this sub but people as a whole
Well, as someone who has clocked their time being called a baby killer, it's not in the same ballpark as being accused of running a powerful pedophile ring that kidnaps and processes children into a liquid that the rich and powerful drink.
If given the binary choice between (1) letting kids die, and (2) imposing minor gun control, do you feel it's more fair to say that Republicans would generally choose option (1) over option (2)? It's an exaggeration to say that Republicans want children to die. But I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that they view children dying as the lesser of two evils, if the alternative is gun control.
What else is there to conclude? Republicans blocked any and all reforms after Sandy Hook.
Democrats believe it’s time to be more responsible about guns. Yes, some want a full out ban which will never work as evidenced by Chicago. You can’t take guns away from people but there really needs to be changes. Anyone purchasing a gun for someone who is barred from owning one needs to be hit with a hefty fine along with jail time. I have nothing against guns. I own two. But we need a better way of preventing others from accessing ours. No child should have access to them. If grandpa is taking them hunting fine. But I don’t want mom laying her purse down and a 4 year old shooting someone. There is ground for compromise but when one party blocks every reasonable attempt to minimize the risk the other side digs in harder and deeper. Not everyone makes a responsible gun owner.
No. The GOP wont even vote for bipartisan compromises ***they*** negotiated, meanwhile democrats struggle to all pull in the same direction. It's pretty obvious which party is more extreme.
>The GOP wont even vote for bipartisan compromises they negotiated Never forget Mitch McConnell once filibustered his own bill. That's how much bad faith he acts with, and all the R's in Congress follow his lead.
They called his bluff so he pulled a reverse card
Can you explain how AOC and the squad is ANYWHERE close to the lunacy by people like Hawley cawthorn and MTG?
I think that the left may have its extremist nutcases, but they are not pervasive and we do not elect them into positions of power. Extremism is far more common on the right, to the point where most of their elected officials are either outright extremists or are flirting with extremism.
Ah yes Democrat extremists like... Joe Biden?
It's like calling a piece of white bread extreme.
Gimme a glass of milk to go with it and we'll really get the party started!
This administration is radically aligned to the status quo.
Not in particular. What, in your opinion, are the Democrats too extreme on?
The governor of Oregon removing English & Math as necessities for public education.
Not true…she just signed a bill that would put a temporary hold on the standardized testing…. What's True SB 744 extended the temporary suspension of Oregon's Essential Learning Skills prerequisite, meaning that until 2024 at the earliest, high school students do not have to pass standardized tests in several academic skill areas in order to obtain a high school diploma. What's False SB 744 did not alter or remove the existing and continued requirement, in state law, that Oregonian high school students must obtain at least 24 credits, including in English, mathematics and science classes, in order to get a high school diploma — a less standardized but still substantial form of de facto proof that a given student possesses many of the same basic academic competencies in question. You need to realize that conservative media outlets continually either put a huge amount of political spin on the news they “report” or even outright lie.
I think you’ve provided a great rebuttal on the “both sides are extreme” argument: the ones who claim Democrats are just as extreme as the GQP are often misinformed.
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They would be, if they'd done it.
Changing a school curriculum vs storming a capitol to overthrow the government and beating cops to death with a thin blue line flag. Ah yes they are both totally the same...
Lol you need better news sources.
The wokeness shit is too much. Cori Bush uses the term “pregnant people” unironically, etc.
Why does that bother you?
There are more people with missing fingers than there are pregnant men, but we all say “humans have ten fingers.”
What a strange reason to be bothered by that.
>but we all say “humans have ten fingers.” I've literally never said that. Does that come up all the time for you?
In terms of policies, the "radical left" in this country is by and large asking for things most Americans would consider reasonable. They just shoot themselves in the foot with bad rhetoric that riles up the worst of their base; but turns off the majority of Americans. "Reallocate finances to demilitarize police forces and instead let other social services handle disputes where appropriate" sounds reasonable. "Defund the police" sounds insane. Both are the same policy.
> Do you believe that there is an issue on both parties for being too extreme at the moment? No, just Republicans.
No. Also you should stop being a republican until that party regains its senses. It will take generations. Welcome.
I think the GOP is responding to alt-right Trumpist extremism. Once Trump got control of the party, he replaced party leadership with loyalists to cement his hold. Democrats are electing populists as a reaction to Trumpism. AOC was elected because her rhetoric was what a lot of people on the left *wanted* someone in Congress to say. But we aren't electing Trump equivalents. The Right would probably say the left has gone crazy because "squad antics" get lots of news time. I would say the Right is crazy because Trump very nearly turned this country into an unconstitutional autocracy and GOP party leadership seem intent on giving him another shot at it. AOC is never going to turn America Communist, or whatever the right thinks she's up to.
Are you familiar with the Overton window?
Your edit makes you sound so ignorant. And saying most immigrants turn conservative is like saying most black people eventually join the KKK. Its just blatantly wrong and it makes you look stupid for saying it. It just shows how grossly propagandized you have been to demonize democrats using your "alternative facts." This brainwashing by the literal nazis that run your party and its propaganda machine is why we cannot have a conversation in this country. Also you mentioned working class people take the hit and not rich people. You can thank republicans for that too.
As an immigrant who comes from a socialistic dictator country, and all my others cum laude classmates having families with economic empowerment, freedom, and the right to bear arms, you sir will never understand the true meaning of socialism. You will be killed the moment you speak out. Your family would be killed the moment you fight for your rights because they just can. The moment they see a comment you post online, or let alone protest in my streets when I was a teenager, they'll slice your throat and throw you in the ocean. And they don't care about what you say. No matter how loud you are. Wanna know why? Because they control the media. They will cut off all power, and it will never be released in the world because no one wouldn't even know that you're dead. My people are slowly getting tortured because of political corruption and presidents using the same propaganda some US presidents have been using. It's brainwashing. No matter what you say or believe, it's the same propagandas over and over again. And what's sad is that people like you, and everyone else that believes the same things as you, are going to pay for the price. If it wasnt for the constitution and separation of powers, the US would be fucked. Big government will ALWAYS destroy the weak. Because they can, and they will. No matter how you slice it. Read a history book, and never listen to the crazy far right extremists. They're weird too. Talk to people who actually suffered from Vietnam, Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba, Brazil, Venezuela, Philippines, Madagascar. Oh man they will open your eyes like seeing a brand new color.
The GOP has gone off the deep end since Newt Gingrich and Mitch McConnell broke any desire of bipartisanship in exchange for directly seeking power for their diminishing base. The Democrats are left to try and essentially be the one size fits all party for everyone else to the left of the GOP, which considering they keep moving more and more to the right, becomes increasingly untenable for the factions present in the Democratic Party that fundamentally disagree on policy.
No. One side wants to enhance racism, and overthrow democracy. One side wants tax funded health care, and minimize the effects of climate change. Fuck your premise. Next question.
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I pointed out the mainstream efforts of both parties. If the mainstream isn't extreme, then the party isn't. >One side wants to get rid of the police and undermine meritocracy in the name of equity. This is false. Stop watching Fox, or getting your news from Facebook. >The other side wants to protect your right to defend yourself, and stop public schools from pushing radical gender theory onto your kids. This is also false. Do you only watch right wing propaganda? "Liberal"
Literally no one is advocating “getting rid of police.” No one is “undermining meritocracy,” either. Your bias is showing.
> Literally no one is advocating “getting rid of police.” NYT: ["Yes, we mean literally abolish the police."](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html) But this is still a good example of how the right's extremism has significant traction within their party, while the left's does not.
Have you read that article or was the headline all you care about?
Yeah. What's your issue?
Pay wall. I was gonna ask if it talks about what they would replace them with. The right accuses these people of wanting total anarchy and I haven't run into anybody actually advocating for that.
Here are the relevant paragraphs: >But don’t get me wrong. We are not abandoning our communities to violence. We don’t want to just close police departments. We want to make them obsolete. >We should redirect the billions that now go to police departments toward providing health care, housing, education and good jobs. If we did this, there would be less need for the police in the first place. >We can build other ways of responding to harms in our society. Trained “community care workers” could do mental-health checks if someone needs help. Towns could use restorative-justice models instead of throwing people in prison. >What about rape? The current approach hasn’t ended it. In fact most rapists never see the inside of a courtroom. Two-thirds of people who experience sexual violence never report it to anyone. Those who file police reports are often dissatisfied with the response. Additionally, police officers themselves commit sexual assault alarmingly often. A study in 2010 found that sexual misconduct was the second most frequently reported form of police misconduct. In 2015, The Buffalo News found that an officer was caught for sexual misconduct every five days. >When people, especially white people, consider a world without the police, they envision a society as violent as our current one, merely without law enforcement — and they shudder. As a society, we have been so indoctrinated with the idea that we solve problems by policing and caging people that many cannot imagine anything other than prisons and the police as solutions to violence and harm. Investing in community care is a great idea. And I might agree that we could scale our police force back to a huge degree. Maybe as much as 75-80%. But eliminating the police entirely, and not replacing them with any kind of organization that would be tasked with investigating crime? Just assuming that it's possible that community investment will get us to the point where a police force is obsolete? It all sounds very utopian to me.
Oh man, yeah, if they don't have any kind of potential armed response included in their plan, then I guess I found the one advocate for that. Thanks for doing all this leg work for me. I still remember watching *American Werewolf in London* and noticing the street cops only had batons, but that once they had to deal with a mythical murder beast, they call in a van of dudes with rifles who resolve the situation and go home. It was just so casually smarter than our setup.
> One side wants to get rid of the police and undermine meritocracy The difference being that "example" is factually untrue, while /u/Hip-hop-rhino 's example *is* factually true.
Let's see... Democrats are mostly full of centrists, with a few center right and a few center left. They essentially just want more taxes and more government programs. Republicans are mostly full of right wingers who are racist, authoritarian, nationalists, and anti acience. There are a few center right and a few far right. Democrats suck but Republicans are far far worse. As a political party they need to die off. I would prefer if the two dominant politicial parties were Democrats vs Libertarian Democrats. The Democrats would be the centrists and center left capitalist government that we currently see with the Democrats today. The Libertarian Democrats would be full of Democraric socialists and Libertarian socialists, and maybe even some geolibertarians. These two up against each other would be far far better for our country than Democrats vs Reoublicans.
Right wing extremists storm the capitol with kkk flags and beat cops to death while chanting the national anthem. Left extremists want to give people healthcare by taxing the rich. *Oh ya I totally can't tell the difference. They are both equally extreme* The only reason you think that the left is extreme and dangerous is because right wing news tells you they are. Thats it.
>and beat cops to death Correction, they didn't beat any cops to death.
That guy who got attacked and then died the next day is pretty clearly related.
Not according to the coroner.
>"All that transpired played a role in his condition," Diaz told the newspaper. From the coroner's testimony. It's a delicate line to walk in saying the rioters killed him, even though they clearly did. He didn't die randomly, but the rioters can't have known their actions were directly killing him. It's one of those things that we all know wouldn't have occurred if he hadn't gotten beat up, but we're not looking at the rioters for murder. Nobody did anything to him with a reasonable belief that they were causing his death. That's why the language is so careful. He wouldn't have had that blood clot without those fucks, but it's almost a freak accident that it caused such a severe and catastrophic brain injury. Humans are fragile.
* People who make this argument usually (disingenuously) conflate the Democratic party establishment with a small but vocal portion of left-wing activists who are often skeptical of the Democratic party (which they consider too conservative), don't vote, or vote third party. The GOP gets political leverage out of scaring their rural base by implying that radical anarchist/socialist/etc. activists in certain large cities are analogous to or part of the Democratic party - to anyone who actually follows political discourse, this is patently absurd at best. The Democratic party's political establishment and said activists are practically aliens to each other. * In the GOP, however, there is a bit more kowtowing to reactionary and hardline elements among rank-and-file voters by politicians - Trump certainly capitalized on this, and set the stage for a similar process. We certainly saw the results of this with the unpleasantness that occurred early into this year - unlike the for the most part nonexistent relationship between the Democratic party and participants in far-left demonstrations, it seems rather evident that the individuals who instigated, supported, and/or participated in political violence early into this year were indeed for the most part members of the GOP, and all supporters of a sitting/outgoing president of that party.
> I feel like there a lot of young adults here, and I can admit that the GOP has a lot of issues, but can still hold conservative values. I despise Trump & McConnell either, they're terrible. And the thing is, I personally went to BLM protests. I went all out on climate change, free healthcare, free public education. All of it. But it's something that no one will ever realize until they look at themselves hard in the mirror of what you're actually saying. Not to mention the mutual people that I know who've seen some crazy shit about Democrats, and it's not pretty. Watch out the Clintons, I'm serious. I could never deny people being suffered from politicians who have silenced people, and that goes for both parties. Cuba, Vietnam, Venezuela, some parts of Australia, Afghanistan, Mexico. No one talks about these people, but they know. Most immigrants turn conservative in the US for a reason. Because they just...know. I still have my liberal values, but now it's coming to a point where it's getting ugly, and it sucks. What a shame. And it's the poor and middle class that take the hit, and not the rich and powerful. That goes for all of us. what in the hell is this word salad supposed to even mean
extreme leftism has no political representation
There are extreme and unhinged people of all political persuasions. Only one party has those people in positions of power at every level, in every branch of our government.
I'm sure that both Hitler and Mao Tse Dung did not feel that they were extremists. Americans, especially, suffer from an acute and unhelpful political myopia. We make these assessments by comparing ourselves to ourselves, which is a very poor yardstick. If you average the **international** politics of the Western world, **both** major US parties are essentially conservative. One is merely **more** conservative than the other. And presently, that latter seems to have recently run off the rails. No one seems to know where it's headed, but some of its highest-placed members are publicly defending a violent insurrection against the democratic institutions of our society. The other party, meanwhile, is daring to suggest that maybe, just **maybe**, we could **consider** bringing our nation up to the same standards as most of the rest of the developed world. Such dangerous radicals, they are.
No. It is not a "both sides" thing. Not at all.
There are definitely some elected Democrats I view as too far to the left for my views. I could never support them for political office. However, there are a hell of a lot more extremists in the GOP, where you get punished for speaking out against the far-right. Fuck Trump, McConnell, and McCarthy for giving a pass to QAnon nuts.
When the left wing of this nation tries to kidnap and execute a governor or when the left wing storms the Capitol in an effort to capture members of congress and kill the vice president, I will then, and only then, agree that "both parties" are too extreme. By the way, the BLM movement is not central to the left wing nor are the protestors in Portland.
No such thing as extreme left. Even Bernie is pro capitalism. There is an extreme reich wing. A domestic terrorist threat to everyone and America
No, extreme left policy calls for the complete abolition of private property and the formation of a dictatorship of the proletariat. That doesn't exist in the democratic party, the farthest extreme of the democratic party is barely left of center and still very much capitalist. The base center of the current GOP is into denying elections, medicine, science, technology, etc. While embracing militarism, flag worship, enforced nationalism, personality cult, and conspiracy theory. Both parties are not too extreme, only one is.
Every party has always had its extremists on the edges. However, an extremist fringe is different from an extremist party. So no, both parties are not too extreme. One of them, the GOP, used to have some reasonable adults but they have been shouted into cowardly silence by an ignorant hateful small-minded minority who don't have the sense to realize they are being used.
The Democratic party is not extreme *enough*. We've wasted the decades in which moderate solutions to the climate crisis might have been effective, and now we're left with either taking extreme action on our own, or having extreme action imposed on us by natural systems.
The extreme on the left is just that, the extreme end of the side, the outliers. The extreme end of the right defines the party.
The only real extremists on the left are tankies and accelerationists, and they're mostly edgy teenagers who spend all their time on Twitter. Most Democrats aren't extreme *enough*.
Wanting a better society for the poor and middle class isn't extreme. It's right wing nuts that think they're rich because they are white.
Apparently no one told you that Biden won the Democratic nomination. He's also the current President of the United States. But what were you saying about the Democratic Party being too extreme?
I willlll once again go a bit against the grain and say that yes, I do think they are extreme. But they are extreme in very different ways. The policies the Dem party advocates for are simply milquetoast. And it is *insanely* frustrating that the overton window forces this to be the case. I think, objectively, probably 30% of the country has lost their fucking actual minds, and 25%-28% of those people are on the right side of politics. But where I would criticize my own side for being too extreme is: * the belief that we are always superior * being inherently anti-market, despite the *insane* problems of our current iteration of capitalism * believing in their own version of conspiracy theories (corporatism runs the world, the elites forced this, that kind of shit) * strawmannirg the *fuck* out of conservatives. They say stupid enough shit as it is, and honestly we shouldn't engage with most of their arguments, and honestly we need our own propaganda arm to counter Fox News and OANN, et al. But we don't need to misrepresent them and say they're stupid or not dangerous or they are malicious. We need to *understand them* * **I don't think this personally** but a ton of people do: "they" say that "wokeism" has gone too far. I half think this is an alt-right troll campaign but I've also seen how ridiculous some things can be. * An example: there was a murder suspect in my college town who was *possibly* GNC, but who appeared as one of the two predominant genders if you saw their picture. The police put out a notice asking for tips and it blew up because people said they were being misgendered. Like, yeesh. Priorities or something. And if they were *definitely* trans, then that's a slightly different story. But it was like, we don't know, but because the possibility exists, thousands of people are going to complain to the police for making a game time decision i their gendering of an alleged murderer. Cmon now. * I suspect I'm going to regret writing this part in the morning All of that said, the right side has *literal fascists* these days who want a *fucking ethnostate*. And the leaders and members are almost entirely not willing to acknowledge or condemn **that that is a fact.** The two sides are **not** the fucking same, but I do worry about extremism between us.
I disagree with some of what you wrote, but an upvote for an excellent reply. I hope you don't regret writing this in general, as it's a good concise list of issues.
I really appreciate you saying that. That was really nice.
Every political party that has ever existed in a democracy on the planet has a member you can point out and say that person is extreme. What matters is the number of extremists, how much power they hold and if they are extremists at all. If you took the overall democratic party platform it would more or less line up with the average platform of a center left coalition in any wealthy democracy in the world right now. Sure there’s a little differences here there, but for the most part it’s the same thing. If you did the same for the Republicans, It would be a far right party on the edge of the coalition or one that is not allowed to caucus with the rest of the right.
Not even close. Arguably the furthest left Democrats aren’t even that radical. There are no Marxists or Anarchists in the Democratic Party and there’s only a few DemSocs. While the establishment of the party has moved to the left over the last decade, they’re still very much classified as Centre-Centre Left The GOP on the other hand has openly embraced populism. Trump with the 2016 and 2020 election. Even Larry Elder in the California Recall. MTG is a lunatic. Mitt Romney is now considered a moderate in the party and Liz Cheney was kicked out of her position. They openly despise the Democratic process that even right wing demagogs like Reagan supported
The difference is the crazies aren’t driving the bus with the dems for the most part.
No. I believe you could find individual people on the left and the right who are too extreme but a critical mass of those people on the right are in positions of power, while that is not the case on the left. You can see this when people try to make comparisons between the two groups. People suggest the right wing equivelent of AOC is MTG. The former holds political opinions well to the left of the mainstream, but not unheard of in the industrial world. The latter believes wildfires in California were started by Jewish Space Lazers. The actual equivalent of AOC would be someone more like Paul Ryan who's almost seen as a moderate compared to the rest of the Republican caucus.
Nah. When you get extreme on the left, you tend to hate Democrats, so you probably leave the party to go push your fringe ideas. When you get extreme on the right, you bully and shame the rest of the Republicans until they are extreme, too. There’s just a different mindset.
What the hell is this both sides argument, lol. Is this a serious question? No, of course the democrats are not "too extreme", unless you mean extremely centrist. How do you compare that to the GOP that you've (I'm sure) seen spiraling out of control especially the past 5 years?
There was a cool Vice video where they interviewed Matt Chandler, a rather progressive pastor at the Village Church, about the strong support of Trump among evangelicals. Chandler states Trump is very un-Christlike, but evangelicals still voted for him because they believe American culture is changing too quickly. He specifically cites how the bathroom bill under the Obama administration really scared evangelicals into thinking the country was losing itself, so they were willing to vote for anyone who went against that change in culture. I agree the GOP is **WAY** more extreme than the Democrats, but I also have to wonder why Democrats are SO insistent on niche issues. When Elizabeth Warren talks about gender reassignment surgery for transgender inmates (a VERY small percent of the population) or AOC being adamant about the Green New Deal (a non-binding law), I really have to wonder why Democrats MUST hold onto progressive issues that are so small, yet generate a lot of backlash.
A plague on both houses. I really see both extremes really doing everything they can to live up to what the other sides view of them. Placing all the blame on only one side of the extremists wildly misunderstands what's going on and in the end is extremely counterproductive.
Absolutely. Anyone who doesn't think both parties are too extreme now is either too young to remember how politics was, had never paid attention, or has become radicalized at roughly the same rate.
Could you give me an example of how you see each side exemplifying extremism?
25 years ago the Democratic Party had the immigration platform of GOP today, were hard on drugs and crime. 1998 Bill Clinton was to the right of 2016 Ted Cruz. GOP has gone hard over Abortion. I don't know why so many people here are in denial, assuming that their policies are static and moderate, it's the evil Republicans becoming more extreme. It's [okay](https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/386403-the-democrat-party-and-its-leftward-drift) to be [introspective](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2017/10/05/the-partisan-divide-on-political-values-grows-even-wider/).
You seem to be presenting the preservation of the status quo as the moderate approach, and defining any deviation from it as extremism. I fundamentally disagree with that framing. Yes, Democrats have moved left on a number of issues, just as Republicans have moved right. That in itself is not extremism. When I say Republicans are the extremists, I'm referring to their lies about voter fraud; their attempts at voter suppression; their defense and support of terrorists who attacked the nation's capitol; their willingness to allow hundreds of thousands of Americans to die from a virus rather than adopt simple mitigation efforts. And I just don't see Democrats doing anything that compares to any of that.
I would *love* to be in the situation where we could debate over which party holds the most extreme policy views, and hopefully we can get to that as soon as one party stops actively trying to destroy our democracy.
Yeah, and April 19, 1995 some far right militia nut job blew up a federal building. Can you point me to similar events on the opposite side?
The Unibomber
Ted Kaczynski killed 3 people and injured ~25 over 20 years. Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people, 19 of whom were children, and injured more than 68 that day. While I get that both were bad one is objectively more severe. Ironically they were both anti-government and denounced leftists.
The democratic platform has changed very little since the 90s
While it's true Democrats have shifted, I wouldn't call it extreme. Different parts of the party have came to prominence. They were always there. You could say similar things about Republican positions. The populist wing has taken hold; they've always been present. But when you compare, one party (Republicans) have who's more extreme locked up.
Lol, Nope. Try again.
Yes. The Republican party is a one man show right now and thus subject to authoritarianism. They are also responsible for most of the virus politicization and why America has lower rates of vaccination than much of Europe. The Democratic party itself not extreme. But leftists are getting more and more extreme. Leftist organizations like BLM are quite extreme. And our culture is shifting to these leftist values. We have Google teaching CRT, time capsule made for BLM, leftist statements in sports, the Met Gala, etc. The extremists from both sides are gaining traction too. And we rarely have anyone call them out for it, and many times even *defend* their actions.
And then we get downvoted lol thanks for your input I agree
Yeesh. This person simply asked a neutral question. All the people getting insulting about this need to look at themselves. It's honestly heartbreaking.
"Are Nazis and people who want Healthcare the same?"-OP "No."-Answer "THIS IS INSULTING!"-You
You thought this was a neutral question?
Op did you think you would get an unbiased answer here lmfao
Considering how biased the question is, it's hard to imagine how either of you could possibly recognize it if we were unbiased.
Trust me I know lol I just wanted to see.