Hillary says that MAGAs are extreme and are programmed by Trump. Trump supporters need deprogramming. She says it is a cult. But completely backwards for me anyways. I will vote for him because he is the alternative to them. Full stop. I am not doing anything he tells me to do. I do what I think is right for me, my family and my communities. And if he can be the best one to stop the other side in the best way for what I agree with then he gets the vote. If not then we keep looking. She simply does not understand us deplorables or refuses to acknowledge what she knows about us or most likely just gaslighting to get and keep power.
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I don’t listen much to what Hillary has to say about anything and I find I don’t agree with MAGA’s much either. I’m in this nether realm where I feel like Trump is just a troll with selfish ambitions, the GOP doesn’t know how to handle the “mob” of angry folks, Biden is clearly diminished, the DNC won’t stop fixing their elections because they don’t know how to otherwise handle their “mob”, and the overwhelming majority of moderates are ignored because everyone is politicking to the extremes.
I think most people are rational and largely agree on common sense principles but there’s money and power gained in division by making everyone you disagree with your enemy.
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I would not call conservatives an angry mob and do not think we need handling. We really want to be left alone and all I really expect from my repub representatives or president or school board members is to protect us from left wing ideologies. That’s it. The only new problems that need to be solved are of their own making. Close the border, respect life, respect bill of right, stop crime, create cheap energy, teach kids… all of this was and can be done with known formulas. But they create change for other reasons. Trump is a battery ram to this end. No one otherwise seems effective to be able to stop policies that are not surging left. I am not sure you know what the initials MAGA stand for. I think the 70+million who voted for him do. And we are all just looking for normalcy - leave us alone and stop creating illegal immigration, inflation, high cost housing, high cost interest rates, more and more regulations etc. Really not that hard. And if you vote moderate or democrat then you stoke the fire of more govt control and more govt spending. Pure and simple.
I do not expect Biden to handle their mob. 2020 is evidence that the D’s allow their real mob to exist. I live 60 miles from Portland. 500 days of rioting - what kind of government allows this? Not protests - riots. We measure 114 designed ostensibly to stop gun violence. Why? Guess what, Oregon does not have a gun violence problem. So why do they do this - to tie it back - power against freedom. Sorry for such. long rant.
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I think it’s presumptuous to assume all conservatives are Republicans and all left leaning people are apart of Democratic Party. I find that such characterizations are largely a tool of MSM to dumb down how complex the issues can be and where intersections may lie.
As for MAGA… yes I understand what the acronym means and I vehemently oppose the rhetoric. I think America is great and I’m not trying to hear from a draft dodging coward in Trump about how to make it great again personally. He has a heart that ONLY serves himself and any benefits that others possibly gain are merely collateral. Spitting out the numbers that 70 million people or about 1/7th of the country voted for him gives me about as warm of a feeling as stating that about 80 million people voted for Biden at a minimum against Trump despite how terrible Biden obviously was as a candidate. I don’t care for either.
It’s not about making a country for liberals, conservatives, etc. for me. It’s about promoting true statesmen to the forefront that care about preserving freedom for all, being able to be respectful in our disagreements, and still being able to co-exist with others because I won’t tell someone how they should live provided they don’t do the same towards me.
Honestly (IMO) the last President that we’ve had as a true statesman was well before my lifetime in Eisenhower. Everyone since then has been either power hungry, controlled by corporate interest, flat out corrupt, or they didn’t have the heart to be in the position for one reason or another.
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Eisenhower is gone. Lived in a world without TV or internet. 74M is not 1/7 of anything. We have about 168M registered voters. So 74M is 46% of that.
You will have 3 choices next year like it or not:
Biden, Trump or don’t vote. Likely a no vote is a vote for Biden as the incumbent.
Hate Trump all you want. Don’t betray your values. All modern presidents are narcissists. But seriously if you say Biden is better for your personal freedoms and the good of this country then I would disagree in the strongest terms. Can you imagine a lame duck Biden and what the left agenda will push through him without
caring about poles or approval ratings?
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There was TV and radio during Eisenhower days and arguably people were better informed.
My math was off I meant to say 1/5 and I was talking total population versus registered voters. In any case I’m exhausted by everyone acting like EVERY election is for the soul of America and an existential crisis due to the other person running. The reality is corporate interests and lobbyist are what runs the country… even Trump. He’s not the battering ram people make him out to be… he has people that he ingratiates himself to and they have interests in him returning to office as well even if they don’t actually like him. They see him in a strategic place of being an “useful idiot” and if we are being honest this goes for ALL politicians.
So maybe I’m a bit jaded and apathetic that this is the “best” that we get. I still hold hope that true statespeople will re-emerge after we acknowledge that maybe the two party is no longer the best system for where the country is. Many national agendas are simply more effectively tackled by state or regional politics.
I wish we could change it. It seems impossible. I write by email my congress persons regularly with a response of thank you for writing to us. I guess I should use a real letter because now I get bombarded for fund raising and some platitudes. Seriously I only want to be left alone. Live the rest my life like I want too. And as a 2A person the dems will not allow that to happen. If I am honest - the 2A means more to me for what I can own and enjoy and have because it is what I like to own and have. Never say never but I live in a place where crime and self defense are way down the list of my concerns. I would say more of my concern for my wife than for me. I have a concealed carry permit. Never do except it protects me from the police when I have a pistol in my truck. It is supremely ironic to think I have a CWP to protect me from the police more than from baddies.
Maybe and this is where I say we largely don’t disagree in principle on the things we value. I also don’t subscribe to the democrats will take your guns but republicans won’t. History has taught us that is wholly untrue… to the point that it’s arguable that while democrats talk more about taking guns - republicans have actually done it in states like California (Reagan) or on a national level again with Reagan.
I also happen to have grown up in Texas and everyone owns guns despite where they may vote because regionally the sensibilities aren’t determined by political party… and Texas Democrats (speaking historically and not for some of the newer types like Beto) generally never had an issue with guns because they owned them too. I say this to contrast California and New York republicans that do restrict gun laws… or the reality of a congress that could’ve passed a National hearing act and failed to… it’s the same with Biden. I don’t believe that Democrats will get together and organize long enough to actually get anything major passed. He had 2 years of a majority in Congress and couldn’t get any of his major agenda items through.
So that why I say I have little fear of a Biden in office. He will just be ineffective and the democrats spend far too much time (for better or worse) trying to make everyone feel good that they don’t legislate effectively in reality. The republicans let the extremes (IMO) have too loud of a voice because they’re younger and trying to establish their power and celebrity like MTG, Gaetz, and Jordan about a decade ago. I think there are pretty measured Republicans that I liked that keep their heads down and do the work but a few just wanna gonna for their donors. I get it but society has dumbed itself down to a point where I just don’t take much of these clowns seriously… unfortunately some wield real influence and power because of their effect on national conversations.
We have another option now with RFK jr. Not a real friend of 2A but with congress might not be an issue?
Where to wade into this conversation? I’ve been busy at work and not able to check in the last few days. I think I’ll start here. Today’s Republican party is hardly the ideal defender of the ideals of liberty upon which our nation was founded, however, they are not ideologically opposed. The Democrats are. Almost all of them and they are actively opposed to the right of the people to keep and bear arms. I can think of very few Democrats who, with their votes have opposed the party. The party is completely ideologically captured by the cultural Marxist. While a sizeable minority, they have captured many institutions in the country including academia, media, and entertainment. They wield tremendous influence politically. I call them Marxists because they are exactly that. The classical Marxist believed the competitive exploitation of capitalism would cause its eventual collapse and the exploited proletariat would rise up and a world wide workers revolution would ensue. The believed that collective production was morally and practically superior. The only problem is, over the course of the 20th Century, their predictions failed. What I prefer to call free market economies outcompeted the collectivist economies.
The middle class and working class never rose up because actually, the free market was working better than the alternative. By the 1950s there was a crisis in socialism and instead of abandoning the enterprise, they shifted their focus. To quote Stephen Hicks from his book Explaining Postmodernism, “Since the worker seemed to be doing well enough under capitalism, the focus had to shift to different capitalist pathologies - the many inequalities across various social dimensions.” The arguments of class gave way to arguments of identity. I posit that many Democrats, even if they are not explicitly aware of this and do not consider themselves “woke”, are de facto adherents by voting Democrat. There are a few Democrats elected to national office that may not be in this camp. There are many who aren’t as strident about it as say the Squad, however, I see no evidence that they are ideologically opposed to the direction of the party.
As stated earlier, the modern Republican party is hardly the ideal defender of freedom, but I think the modern Democrat party is a much greater threat. Perhaps it is because living in California my entire life, I have seen a little farther down the road where their policies lead. It may not appear they are legislating effectively and are just trying to make everyone feel good. There is some truth to that, but I can tell you from experience, little by little they chip away. I do not want to vote for Trump and I hope it does not come down to a repeat of Trump v. Biden, but if it does, I will vote for Trump. To bring it full circle and return to the 2nd Amendment, the Republicans may not protect it as I would like, but the Democrats will absolutely attempt to destroy it.
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I remember the simple whole reason to vote Trump.
SCOTUS.
CA mag bans at 9th circuit. This is the domino. So swallow hard your hatred of Trump. You like 11 rd or larger mags? And if they can make it 10, why not five next time? Oregon, Washington, fall and on and on. If you vote any other way kiss it good bye. End of story.
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Well 9th circuit ignores Bruen analysis and remand and puts a stay on larger size magazine. Now the only hope is if SCOTUS will take this up.
Anyone watch the Mayorkas hearings? What is up with that guy? Why can’t he give straight answers?