I don't buy the 'both sides' POV except in the longest historical view. Right now it's just not true.
One team is a feckless collection of timid hesitators who is trying to defend a social welfare policy from 70 years ago, and the other team believes their volatile leader is infallible and will direct revenge at whatever they are pointed to by the latest 3am tweet.
It's just not the same.
>One team is a feckless collection of timid hesitators who is trying to defend a social welfare policy from 70 years ago
What is this referring to?
>and the other team believes their volatile leader is infallible and will direct revenge at whatever they are pointed to by the latest 3am tweet.
>It's just not the same.
What does this have to do with gp's claim about cycle of reprisals by both parties? It can be simultaneously possible to admit that the leader of one party is more sane than the other, and to observe that both parties are engaging in cycles of retaliation when they get in power, and that egging on even more retaliation is going to make the situation worse.
I was responding the effort to paint the two sides as equal.
The cycle-of-reprisals is a separate point. In a two-party system, transfer of power means change. The minority party will always paint that as reprisal, so if you judge by who-complains-the-loudest, they will look the same. The churn of claims and counter-claims by politicians in the media has become a game with very predictable behaviors.
But if you look at actions, IMO they behave very differently.
> What does this have to do with gp's claim about cycle of reprisals by both parties? It can be simultaneously possible to admit that the leader of one party is more sane than the other, and to observe that both parties are engaging in cycles of retaliation when they get in power, and that egging on even more retaliation is going to make the situation worse.
I think the reason we are in the situation we are in now is that the last administration wasn't nearly retaliatory _enough_ after J6
>I think the reason we are in the situation we are in now is that the last administration wasn't nearly retaliatory _enough_ after J6
Jailing Hitler sure stopped his movement in its tracks! Or maybe we should have gone even further and set a precedent for to jail people for decades for having "dangerous" political opinions?
While I agree that the question of "are we jailing this person for their political opinions" gets into skeevy areas, if we refuse to enforce laws just because elections and politics are involved we might as well not have any laws that involve elections and politics (and I don't think "lawlessness starts at the top" is a recipe for a healthy society).
It did! They let him go!
Jailing Hitler did stop the movement. It was only that he was given a light sentence and was released that he was able to complete his evil.
Trump would have lost in 2024 if he was running from prison for his crimes against the country.
"Retaliation" is the wrong framing. We have laws, we should follow them. When we don't is when we have these issues.
> It can be simultaneously possible to admit that the leader of one party is more sane than the other, and to observe that both parties are engaging in cycles of retaliation when they get in power, and that egging on even more retaliation is going to make the situation worse.
Then I suppose the situation will get worse? I don't understand the point of your analysis. This isn't a situation where people are swatting away olive branches - the Trump administration works hard to ensure that their political opponents are furious at them. They repeatedly state, in a variety of contexts, that they have no interest in finding common ground with the other party: it's good that you're miserable if you don't agree with their political objectives, and if you get in their way you deserve to be shot.