I mean, John Cornyn:

Ban choice, prohibit minors to cross state lines for abortion
wants to ban flag desacration
wants to ban same-sex marriage
bans pot and other drugs
doesn't want democracy for the city of Washington DC
extended wire tap authority of the Patriot Act
No on requiring FISA warrant to monitor out of country phone calls
No on preserving habeus corpus for guantanamo detainees
No on requiring reports from CIA on interrogation methods
Yes on reauthorizing patriot act
Immigration hawk including **** like voting to make English the official language

etc.

Chymey,

Can you see why it's hard for people to get that he's putting himself on the side of people who like individual freedom?

Ponied by microbet but I'll post anyway ...

We have ample evidence of Cornyn's view on a wide variety of topics (both policy and non-policy issues). There is no doubt who and what Cornyn is. None.

If he wants to go around quoting historical figures for some reason, go ahead. Just don't think that anybody's view on Cornyn will be changed.

Perhaps I and others (including AOC) didn't fully grasp what Cornyn was trying to say. But I have a ready response. **** Cornyn.

That is all.

guys I know you revere her, and that's cool. I get why a lot of people are drawn to her. but she whiffed on this one. it happens, it's no big deal. (on the dopey tweet scoreboard, she's got a cushion of a couple hundred or so before she's in trump territory.)

and the defense/deflection of, "well ok maybe aoc missed the point here but that's only because republican = fascist" is, as the kids say, cringey.

This. I understood what he was trying to say first time I saw the tweet but only because I have been exposed to more than the safe lifetime level of conservative thought. Most leftists see that quote and their mind goes to, e.g., people at the border. Or mass incarceration.

chyme,

You are are dreadful poster.

You should not post in this thread.

Signed,
Everybody

Like apart from anything else, to understand that he's trying to indict leftism with a Mussolini quote, you have to be aware of this weird religious belief on the right that fascism is a form of leftism, which is an article of faith even as the American right is in the midst of a flirtatious dance with fascism.

I'm not certain but I have the impression that AOC doesn't care what the tweet means.

Who cares about this tweet about Cornyn?

What's really cringey is that people who supposedly support individual freedom would ever vote for anyone like Cornyn.

Good to know you pick important battles to fight.

Like, OK, Cornyn intended this to be a statement against fascism and in favor of freedom. He openly supports a president with overt aspirations to himself be a fascist dictator, and he votes for numerous violations of individual freedom. Why on earth does he deserve all the benefit of the doubt that he's pro freedom instead of the fact that he votes like he's on Mussolini's side for restrictions on freedom? Did he vote to block Trump's fascist payments to farmers? At the end of the day, why are you in here arguing that a bad faith quote wasn't understood as the doubleapeaker intended instead of against the dreadful voting record and outright hypocrisy of Cornyn?

but she didn't whiff.. you have, again. like usual.

Coincidentally Dan Carlin did an "Addendum" podcast with another podcaster destroying the idea that Nazis were socialists (along with some other interesting stuff). Check it out if you're interested:

https://dchhaddendum.libsyn.com/ep7-...istory-on-fire

He did the show with Danielle Bolelli (sp?) who is the host of History on Fire, another long-form (though not as long as Dan's) history podcast. Deplorables gave them a lot of heat for that discussion.

we can tell when your heart isn't into it

Hundreds no. She would need thousands of bad tweets to be in trumps shoes.

I'm kind of mind blown by people arguing that the typical GOP politician is acting in good faith. It's like they want to ignore every aspect of these people's track record.

Just consider their line on budget deficits. That one issue alone kind of proves they are completely full of ****.

Huy guys watch out for socialism. Take it from this guy Mussolini, he was right about so much that we should definitely consider his words on the relationship of societal governance to individual freedoms. Unfortunately, there aren't really any non-dictators worthy of quoting on the topic.

Imagine defending this position. wp chy nh

really bad. what she's saying barely makes sense, and to the extent that it makes sense it ****ing sucks and is basically signing off on a psychotic neocon coup. bernie has also been terrible on this.

I'm not understanding right now. Are leftists actually trying to defend Venezuela instead of fleeing from it like the giant-trash-fire-with-troubling-implications-for-their-ideology that it is? I actually think AOC's line on Venezuela is the only one you can take and stay socialist.

I'm sorry but if you're defending Maduro at this point you're a complete and utter moron and not worth even arguing with about anything. You don't have a right to an opinion at all when you have stuff that stupid in your stack lol. If you're defending Maduro it's very obvious you'd defend Mao and Stalin if they were in power today... and that's very very troubling.

There is a difference between supporting or defending Maduro and wanting the US to rush into Venezuela and back a regime change with force. You can say that Maduro is a bad hombre but let's learn lessons from Libya and Iraq and not send any Freedom Drones down there.

No, you whiffed.

You're going through mental gymnastics to justify Cornyn's bull****.

This boils down to trying to turn the word socialism into a dirty one and it's simply not. Painting a caricature of the policies AOC is pushing is all her opposition is doing. A good faith debate would honestly discuss the merits of the policies and how they can be paid for so as to preserve the capitalistic nature of America and extract the full benefit of any policy that actually comes to pass. In other words, Cornyn wouldn't be quoting Mussolini, he'd be raising concerns for the fiscal responsibility required to make AOC's proposals not only feasible, but more efficient and effective. Nobody in the R Party seems to be interested in that.

Even if Cornyn truly believes any policy would devastate our nation, he STILL wouldn't quote ****ing Mussolini. He'd state a well reasoned, fact based case for why he believes what he believes. omg guys kill all farting cows and pay people who don't want to work! C'mon...The reason you have posters saying **** off is literally because the R side of things now jumps directly to the extreme and not even logical conclusion of everything they don't like. It could be as bold and ambitious as the Bernie/AOC wing of the Ds want or something as tame as 10 to 1 spending cuts to tax increase and they **** on it every time. It's mindnumbing at this point (although I passed mindnumbing decades ago).

It's the Chomskian reflex to blame whoever is stronger in any conflict. (Since US is a superpower... it's almost always the US).

AOC is taking one of the at least partially coherent response to this and preserve socialism: reframe Maduro as an authoritarian (aka different version of Trump) and then just conflate "democracy" and "socialism" while calling Maduro a failure of democracy.

She was muddling this because she: 1. Probably doesn't care much about what is happening in Venezuela. 2. Reflexively knows many of her allies dont' want to encourage intervention so she abstracts it. 3. Knows part of the problem with Venezuela is socialism and she wanted to offer an alternative culprit (authoritarianism), essentially trying to preserve the "brand" of socialism.

And this is the valid anti intervention stance. I happen to agree with it fully. We definitely, as a country, need to stop meddling in the affairs of other countries. It's one of the things Trump ran on that really resonated with people and there's a reason for that. I mean think about how bad it is for a country to have someone from the outside come in and put their finger on the scales in a big way. I'm barely even mad at the Russians for giving us a taste of our own medicine on this. We honestly deserved it after all the elections we've influenced over the last century.

We've spent an unbelievable amount of money blowing up brown people over the last going on twenty years. I don't honestly believe we made the world a better place in any way shape or form, and there's a strong argument that we did a TON of harm. We talked about what an awful person Saddam was, but nobody has managed to rule Iraq while killing fewer people since. Maybe that's because he was the product of that countries unique political/ethnic situation to keep what has happened since 2003 from happening?

If we want to help the people of Venezuela we should do it using our economic might to break the regime down and then let what happens organically happen. The military is the wrong tool for the situation. The last thing we need is another shooting war with anyone.

This probably better for Ilhan thread.

At this point, if you aren't supporting some form of intervention (not military, just international pressure, economic sanctions, and piling up food on the borders, essentially inciting riots), you're supporting Maduro's attempts starve his own people and hold on to power while a more democratic alternative (Guaido has problems but you've gotta believe he represents the will of the people more than Maduro at this point) is available. And that means you're supporting Maduro.

But a lot of lefties apparently will take the line of saying Maduro is bad and insist the US is at fault and should do nothing.

At least this war is going to be closer to home. Easier for troops off rotation to come back home.

Funny how it's so often oil rich countries in situations where the US is compelled, for humanitarian reasons, to intervene.

The resource curse is real. Economies reliant on natural resources are more susceptible to corruption and authoritarianism.