Have you ever discussed a non-Republican American politician without deflecting to blaming Republicans?
Trump ordered to pay $350 million for fraudulent business practices in New York
- Thread starter Piscian
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Yes. You might have noted, for instance, not that many months ago that it was me that first mentioned Senator Bob Menendez being hauled up for corruption, without mentioning the Republicans at all. There's no need to: he's a corrupt politician irrespective of anyone else. Lots of users in this forum including me have quite freely criticised Democratic politicians - you might have noticed that the Democratic Party isn't actually that popular and much-loved round here, even by many who will end up voting for it.
I am aware that the Democratic Party isn't that popular here, but you don't get to take credit for things other people have said. Other users who disagree with me in much more fundamental ways have no issue saying Lyndon Johnson was a sack of crap. They don't have to bring up Trump and Nixon, they don't have to claim that his faults were actually an act to get Congress to pass legislation, they can just say "yes".
Your actual quote about Bob Menendez:
I suppose technically that is not deflecting to blaming Republicans, so you got that, but you couldn't even get that sentence out without sneaking in a reminder of how corrupt Republicans are. And beyond that, if I had told you about Bob Menendez instead of hearing it from The Guardian, would you have taken that position?
I know its early but Trump losing and then bankrupting the RNC would be the best Christmas gift ever
If you want to criticise all sorts of aspects of LBJ, fine. Sure, he was crude, self-aggrandising, and he played politics hard and dirty. However, your characterisation of him then disappears into caricature. It provides no credible reason for him to have worked so hard for the civil rights movement. The simplest answer is that he really did believe in alleviating poverty, providing opportunities, bettering the lot of the poor, because he also had some strongly-held and admirable virtues.
Comparisons may then have some validity. People can't help but notice that your hold-no-prisoners attitude to LBJ is inconsistent with your tolerance for Trump, who is at least as equivalently odious and venal as LBJ ever was, if not significantly more so.
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LBJ got shit done, trump has to cheat at golf to even get that done. The only victories trump can claim were handed to him by other republicans (like the supreme court and a bunch of judges), even something like tax cuts, which republicans love, only barely made it.
Especially since bankrupting the RNC means they have no money to help down ballot candidates with. because the trump vacuum cleaner loves sucking up any loose cash to spend on gold toliets, legal bills and more diapers.
As he mentions in the video, it's sort of an awkward circle of life issue. Even if the RNC, which has already paid some of his legal fees, backs out of the rest, Trump will be forced to reach out to their Donors directly and it's likely his MAGA base will want the RNC to support him. It's lose lose for those clowns.
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No, the simplest answer is that he was smart enough to see where the world was heading and wanted the credit for himself.
To my knowledge, Trump doesn't flash his penis at people in the White House. Johnson was substantially more odious.
To be completely honest, I might offer a little more positive interpretation of LBJ if he wasn't being treated as one of the best presidents in history after breaking politics for decades. Historians continue to rank him as like a top 10 (sometimes top 5) president, and the opposite should be true. If you want to put him near the bottom of that list but higher than Trump as a president, I could agree with that. Johnson was a worse human being, that's certain, but perhaps a better president, in as much as his level of competence was further above Trump than his character was below.
What I want is for people to look back and properly recognize how much he sucked, cause if we can't do that, we can't ever fix the things he broke. How can we avoid having a Trump if we idolize Johnson?
The subject of that thread was on the Mar-a-Lago raid; without having some sort of connection to the subject at hand he'd be venturing of topic. And the connection wasn't even by necessity to Republicans, just to "deeply corrupt politicians".
Put another way: that message I could see written by a Republican voter who wants to point out that "Hey-hey, there are also corrupt people among the Democrats".
Why are you arguing about this?
Edit to be more helpful: you just made two contradicting arguments. You argue both that he has to connect it to Republicans or its off topic and that it wasn't necessarily about Republicans. It seems like you are less arguing the point and more defending the person, and that person hasn't even expressed interest in defending on that point himself.
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My first post was confusion over your statement. My second was an explanation over why I thought your interpretation was faulty, since I had already brought the subject up.
Do you actually think my interpretation was faulty? Do you not see that comment as condemnation of Republicans?
No, I argue that he had to connect it to the subject of the thread. Which he did by using the generalized topic of corrupt politicians to point to Menendez.
Yes, and it feels a bit silly to do this for that reason.
Republicans were not mentioned; I saw it as a condemnation of corrupt politicians. So yes.
@Agema, in that comment to the best of your memory, were the corrupt politicians you referred entirely non-specific, or was that in reference to Trump, who you were talking about a few posts before?
Trump is a lot of things. "Republican" is just one of multiple attributes applicable to him.
Maybe not. But he does sexually assault people, and whilst I can't account for your opinion, in my mind that's significantly worse than indecent exposure.
We hold in our mind what should not be a particularly difficult idea that people are complicated and multifaceted: that people have both virtues and vices, that people with terrible character flaws can do also do beautiful and amazing things and brilliant, inspiring people can wreck stuff. To have sinned does not necessarily outweigh a life of virtue, and to have done good does not necessarily outweigh a life of sin.
The idea of whiter-than-white heroes and blacker-than-black villains is the mindset of children. Albeit a mindset that many people seem to have problems growing out of.
To admire LBJ for his determination to better the lives of the poor does not demand we excuse him for his crudeness. Why should it? But in terms of historical appreciation, we might argue when assessing the president of the USA, whose job it is to make the USA a better place, the record rests more on what he did for the USA in policy than whether he waved his willy at White House visitors.