It could be and It's really important that you get rid of him.

That's not the end of it though. You have to tackle the underlying political problems or it's back to dodging bullets. Sadly it's always dodging bullets but we can at least try to significantly reduce the probability of being hit.

You seemed to be.

If you are just arguing that extreme partisanship is but one of the contributing factors to COVID politicization, I think that’s fair. However I wouldn’t call it the primary factor, I would reserve that for the Right’s general rejection of science.

You don't have serious politics, chez. You have tone policing and never taking a stand on anything.

"Trusting his vaunted political instincts, President Trump had been downplaying concerns about the virus and spreading misinformation about it—efforts that were soon amplified by Republican elected officials and right-wing media figures. Worried about the stock market and his reelection prospects..."

Did your eyes glaze over while reading this passage?

He got it wrong, very wrong.

Competent leadership that listened to experts, followed the playbook that was already in place and acted with even a shred of integrity - putting the welfare of the populace over his chances for reelection would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, millions of jobs and prevented the largest constriction of the economy in the history of the country.

This, chez. And the word "unctuous" suits you to a tee. Thanks for the compliment.

I get that. I think similarly about the likes of you but I don't want to marginalise you because that's really silly.

I don't matter but there will only be one sort of beneficiary from marginalising huge swathes of the population in a cycle of hatred and partisanship. As bad political ideas go, you're supporting a doozy

That's a straight lie

I hope that's allowed mods but it's a clearly and obviously a straight lie.

serious politics can be agnostic. or do you have to stand for sumthin', or fall for anything?!

this is well written, inspired

There is a line where the time for tactful discourse is over. We crossed that line 4 years ago. Some people are just objectively smarter than others, and if the dumbasses (who are greater in number in the US) are allowed to rule supreme, there will be dire consequences for the human race as a whole.

You can argue that the reason that there are so many dumbasses is because of educational policies that took hold within large swathes of the population in the last half-century, and I wouldn't disagree. But, we are where we are. Sometimes, you have to make a stand for what's right.

People like you just sit on the fence till you get righteously impaled by the fencepost.

I am not so naive as to believe China is blameless in the whole fiasco.

tRUmp is just so utterly transparent in his need to blame someone for his horrific failings here at home that it makes them his perfect scapegoat by allowing him to tap into the existing xenophobia that defines his base.

Lol at trying to get obvious opinion about you personally ruled upon as though it were a matter of fact. If you were important enough to make page 25 of the papers, you'd probably have been classed a vexatious litigant by now.

I think there are plenty of political nihilist types these days (not talking about chez) who just criticize both sides and choose not to participate in the political process, which I think contributes to the problem. You can find both sides undesirable and still choose to support the lesser of two evils.

Ya same as me.

Same as me in an absolute sense.
True but kind of a meaningless thing to say.

The dead are past tense, not future. Someone is already dead. There is a body bag. SO if it is NOT the driver it IS an innocent person. You have no other option C.

No. In the case of these covid deniers, them being the one in the body bag can in FACT save innocents lives. See the Senator who just got it, was forcing his staff to all show up to work and not wear masks and even went into his office with his staff once he was confirmed as having it.

If in a week from now or later we see many people in his office are sick and soon there after we hear someone in that office died, I will have my fingers crossed it is him and not his staffers or any one else he had contact with.


I wish many of these covid deniers only had one bullet, but sadly they have the power and the weapon to do much more damage. And many of them are wielding it with reckless abandon.

I'm not. It's small factor and I wouldn't say it justifies the behavior at all. But it's one of the few things we can do much about, so it should get disproportionate attention.

What the cycle of hatred and partisanship does is enable and support the worst elements of populism and extremism. That is an appalling mistake.

When one side is extremist, yes. You have to make a stand.

but how do you reconcile 'scapegoating' with his itemized aggrandizement of Xi in post 18348?

The extremism is already here, and your empathy, or at best, apathy, is what is ****ing supporting it.

I think political polarization leads down the road to demands for ideological purity, which is the direction we are headed. I agree that demands for ideological purity are dangerous in that they lead easily to extremism.

I don't know, however, that intense partisanship always breeds intense polarization? I might have to go on a Google binge to look into that one.

that's fair.

but there are others noncommittal for humility, perhaps. it's honestly so wonderfully complex - this human experience - that to endeavor to distill it to a bunch of bite-sized rules, is a bit pretentious.

ok. good


There can be another body bag and the deaths from the crash may not all be in the past. But I'd accept it's getting a bit off point

I except that point. I hope no-one dies or get's seriously ill but I am far more concerned about those being forced into dangerous situations.

It's why I wouldn't allow restaurants to reopen in the UK or people to go on foreign holidays. I'd be okay with people choosing to take the risk but many people will be exposed who have no choice.

My point was that they're not going away by dying off selectively. The more of them who die the more bullets will have been sprayed at everybody else.

The blame CHina, blame the WHO narrative just rings hollow at this point.

Yes both deserve blame for the origins, but Trump does not avoid that blame. As cited already he had his own direct communication and Intelligence about CHina. So if the WHO was fooled and is guilty, Trump was fooled way worse and way longer as long after the WHO was sounding China warnings, Trump was still singing China's praises.

And Texas, Florida, Arizona getting caught unprepared has zero to do with China. They had the benefit of seeing what happened in Italy and other areas of Europe and then in NYS. If they were caught because they will still listening to CHina or the WHO then they get 100% of that blame.

But we know they were not. They were listening to one of the only remaining world leaders still in denial and that was Trump. In good company with Brazil's president and few other nutters.

cocksure or full of doubt?

pick your descriptor, d2_e4

His lionization of Xi is steeped in his adoration of all leaders authoritarian and his need to take claim for the trade deal he had been using as a tool for reelection.

Those statements were also all made before Covid had spun out of control domestically. His stance on China turned once the cases in the US began to climb and the death count skyrocketed where he felt the need to shift accountability elsewhere. There was no way in hell he was going to take any responsibility for anything.

do not say somewhere in the middle, whatever you do!