RATIONAL RESISTANCE
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Biden is the clear choice when it comes to compassionate and decent leadership. In a battle of heart, mind, and character Joe Biden wins by a landslide. We n...
What’s The Deal With Trump Followers?
leftcall.com
Five years ago when Donald Trump road that escalator and announced his candidacy, everyone including most people who are now Trump-for-lifers, believed it was a stunt, and he was clearly unqualifie...March 23, 2017
It seems logical to blame the internet for our growing political polarization. Some blame “fake news” shared on Twitter and Facebook for the outcome of the 2016 election. And we know tens of millions of Americans get their news from social media.
March 16, 2017
With giddy pride, liberals have deservedly vilified an expansive sea of right-wing conspiracy theories. But it now appears those seditious chickens have come home to a roost of left-wing treachery. Modern liberalism has become a hospitable nesting place for paranoia in the months since President Donald Trump’s election. With vociferous oratory growing in the weeks after his inauguration, left-wing talk show hosts and liberal pundits have stoked the base to a level of conspiratorial thinking previously thought reserved for conservative talk radio.
March 11, 2017
Conservative commentators characterize sanctuary cities as legal apostates, but the principles in practice in sanctuary cities share little with that description. It’s the latest example of the Right’s inability to parse the weeds of reality, seeking to find comforting answers attuned to black and white and good vs. evil.
March 8, 2017
Fiscal conservatism defines nearly all Republicans, even if decades of failed economic promises say otherwise, but the modern Republican Party is also a collective of combative factions. There are extreme social conservatives who often vote based on social wedge issues like abortion. There are moderate social conservatives who tend to go along with many social conservative positions, but who are primarily fiscal hawks. And there are extreme fiscal hawks who lean libertarian, and in many cases reject some of the more offensive tenets of social conservatism.
March 7, 2017
In a series of reckless tweets over the weekend, President Trump accused President Obama of tapping his phone at Trump Tower. “How low has President Obama gone to tapp [sic] my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy,” said Trump via his favorite form of communication. Of course Trump offered no evidence, and worse, it seems he received the “intel” from Breitbart News and the cranial hemorrhage conservative radio host, Mark Levin.
March 1, 2017
During President Trump’s congressional address on Tuesday night, he offered a tribute to William “Ryan” Owens, the Navy SEAL killed in a raid in Yemen, a raid Trump approved at a dinner that included his son-in-law Jared Kushner. Owen’s wife Carryn, seated next to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, was seen looking up to the ceiling in tears while applause carried on for several minutes.
February 27, 2017
With President Trump’s “fake news” crusade now turned up to eleven, we are left little choice but to assume it is part of a broader de-legitimizing strategy. And strategy is the job of Steve Bannon, Trump’s White House Chief Strategist. Bannon told the New York Times in January that the “media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while.” Bannon was talking about how the media was wrong about the 2016 election, never mind that the polls were not all that far off from the popular vote tally. “The media here is the opposition party,” said Bannon in the Times interview. “They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.” If it is a blueprint, Trump’s anti-media bombast is a plan likely architected by Steve Bannon.
February 26, 2017
The Fox News and conservative talk radio war against the mainstream media seeded Donald Trump’s “fake news” paranoia. There is nothing new about politicians going after the news media, but Donald Trump takes this time-honored practice to an absurd level made possible by his uniquely narcissistic personality. When it comes to what people say about him, Trump has an uncontrollable obsession. And now he has a new tool for his bravado, anything less than flattery is “fake news.”
February 24, 2017
The shadowy figure pulling the strings within Donald Trump’s White House, Chief Strategist Stephen K. Bannon, appeared at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Thursday. He vowed the Trump administration would work toward the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” In other words, unwinding regulations that exist to protect Americans. Little things like consumer financial protection, a clean environment, and anti-discrimination, to name a few.
February 24, 2017
Reflecting on Trump voters in the midst of Donald Trump’s presidential hell-scape, my mind ping-pongs between ridicule and bewilderment. Do we risk reinforcing the notion of liberal arrogance by saying Trump voters are irredeemable? And if we already believe they are a lost cause, does it even matter? I’m not exactly sure where I’ll end up, but I’m always seeking levelheaded arguments, meaning a degree of compassion for Trump voters might yet be conceivable.