The same guy that wrote the piece in CT suggesting trump should be removed from office, that your media is telling you is news for some reason, wrote this article almost directly after the election:
What to Make of Donald Trump’s Soul | Christianity Today
Bashing/hating on Trump is nothing new for this guy, and trying to spin it into some kind of cultural religious 'turning point' is pretty dishonest, especially since it's coming from people who can't even begin to understand religion or religious people. Any uptick in their subscriber base can just as easily be credited to the avalanche of free advertising the media randomly decided to gift them with.
That he's felt this way about Trump all along doesn't change the extent to which his criticisms were (and are still) accurate.
And I'm not sure the CT piece is largely seen as a 'turning point' so much as a surprising show of dissent from a corner of Evangelical America - who supposedly make up the strongest part of Trump's base. These are the people who seem absolutely mindlessly sheep caliber loyal - like Trump could cook a human baby and eat it on live TV, and they'd assume he had a good reason and would still back him. I'm not saying all supporters are this brainless, but there are enough who are. Late night talk show correspondents don't seem to have much difficulty finding them (to have a laugh at their expense).
And it's entirely possible that a lot of the new business comes from free advertising from the media, but Galli is quoted as saying, "A stereotypical response [to the recent CT piece] is ‘thank you, thank you, thank you’ with a string of a hundred exclamation points — ‘you’ve said what I’ve been thinking but haven’t been able to articulate, I’m not crazy.'"
Insulting ideas (like 'wokeness') is not the same thing as insulting individual people based on their ideas/beliefs like a bigot- that's the step too far that history has often warned us about. Especially coming from someone I always kind of looked up to on the forum as an adult voice of logic and reason. It's fair to say that anyone who thinks Trump is a decent and moral individual might want to reconsider that opinion, anybody who thinks that is a good idea might want to reconsider that opinion as well. Defensively defaulting back to 'well, I'm clearly right and the superior race, and everyone else is an idiot' helps no one involved in any way.
I've read this a couple times now, and I don't understand why you're making this distinction (insulting ideas vs. insulting individuals - I don't understand how you interpreted what I said that you'd think this distinction was necessary) or understand how it's a response to my post. I made a distinction between the 'wokeness' where people senselessly police others primarily because they personally have some need to get on a pedestal and police others (which the right actually do too, but in different ways), and then there's actual 'wokeness' (the positive character trait 'woke' is originally based on) which is a healthy character trait that's essential to simply get along with others. I was trying to point out that not all finger pointing is the former, sometimes the behaviors of others are pointed out because the behavior is actually a problem - and I used the way you were calling out highlander as an example. The underlying motivation for the former is to knock others down a peg or two in order to feel elevated oneself (or something), and the motivation of the latter is to point out where a behavior is genuinely causing trouble.
The CT editor was presenting accurate criticism. It wasn't just 'get woke' ranting for the sake of pandering to the 'get woke' crowd (which is the implication I interpreted in your response). The CT editor, Galli, listed problem behaviors of Trump that are actually directly observable - there's no need to 'trust' reports that he does them, all one needs to do is read a couple days worth of his tweets to see the criticism is true. In my mind, that's only "hating on" Trump in the sense that once such a thing - pointing out unethical, immoral and problem behavior or how someone is unfit for the office they hold - becomes a regular occurrence, it can take on a 'venting' tone. But if the criticism is accurate, then it's as valid as the way you were calling out highlander.
There are natural consequences for compulsive spewing pejoratives when something in the external world isn't going your way. If you can see the benefit in pointing out "let's all devolve into preschoolers calling each other idiots unworthy of respect" to highlander, then it stands to reason you should also be able to see the benefit in pointing out similar (and much worse, and consistently so) issues with Trump's directly observable behavior. It's not pandering to liberal snowflakes, there's actually a purpose behind it: the behavior
is a
problem. eta: I have a relatively strong feeling of 'knowing' that Trump is not "a decent and moral individual" because of his own directly observable behavior - his reactions to obstacles, his reaction to pretty much anything but adoration towards him - I've directly observed for the past several years, consistently. That the majority of citizens in this country more or less share this negative view of him - that's
his doing, he did it to himself by not modifying his behavior. Just like highlander would stir up a bunch of hate towards himself if that isolated incident (and even worse behavior to boot) were a regular occurrence. /eta
And back to this though, because I'm really curious:
and it's fair to say that impeaching a president without direct evidence of an actual crime that exists in our laws or any bipartisan support (there is bipartisan support, ironically- but it's for NOT impeaching him)
Where do you get this? You've said yourself that you don't really pay attention to the news because you don't trust any news sources, you didn't watch the impeachment hearings, and that you only trust what you can discern directly from your own senses. Yet you must trust
some source, because you seem to have an opinion or some feeling of 'knowing' this is true.
As I've said before, they ended up only writing up impeachment articles for that which they do have direct evidence of. I have a feeling of 'knowing' there is evidence because when I look at the evidence presented during the hearings I know I'd have the same opinion of a Democrat who did the same things. He did abuse the power of his office and he did obstruct the inquiry (and the investigation into Russian interference as well, but that's not what the impeachment article is about).
I've not yet seen a single person against impeachment who can directly look at the evidence, list it and say "I do not think these are impeachable offenses." It's always just a bunch of deflections and reverting to various accusations about partisan motivations, as if there's so much certainty in
that that further investigation into whether or not there was evidence isn't even necessary.
I'm not even going to touch the thing about there being bipartisan support against the impeachment but not for it. But I do feel compelled to ask about this too: where do you get this information?
Also Merry Christmas.
But Clinton.....!
