any right leaning refupeas

I also blame those who voted third party or sat out as they also knew who Trump was and did not vote for the one person who could have beaten him.
But those who voted 3rd party or not at all will come flying in here to give all the reasons they did what they did and for some reaason that is okay.

Nobody knew what a shitshow trumps would be. Most people assumed he would have real advisers who would pull him in.

Then that is WRONG.  Just as it is WRONG to assault someone for wearing a pussy hat.

Again BOTH SIDES do everything.  The question is always IN WHAT PERCENTAGES.

Then you have to question their judgement.  I’m done with this shit “ both parties need to screen their candidates better” as an excuse for voting for trump.

What this country would have gotten with a President Hillary Clinton is a slightly left moderate Democrat and a presidency without all the chaos trump has caused, even with the Republicans attacking her, which they would have done.

The economy would be pretty much the same as it is today, there wouldn’t  be all this uncertainty with people and if they will have healthcare insurance tomorrow, especially to those with pre-existing conditions. There wouldn’t be the massive debt this country now has thanks to a tax cut that did nothing except make the rich richer.  There would be no tariffs that are hurting the American people, both in purchasing goods and selling goods to foreign markets. And this country wouldn’t be the laughingstock of the world.  And while some may think that is no big deal, it is kind of is a big deal.

And you would have a president that could put complete sentences together, that even if you disagreed with what she was saying, you knew what the hell she was talking about.

And she wouldn’t have been the pathological liar that trump is.  Not only does he lie all the time, even when he’s called on it and shown proof he is lying, he keeps telling the same lie.

By very nature of the fact we are human means that we are flawed.  The trick is when assessing those flaws on someone who is running for President, one has to take the time and find if the flaws are real or imaginary.  Thanks  to those on this board always going on how bad she was, I took the time to track down her “flaws” and found that while she has done some “what were you thinking” things, the vast majority of her “flaws” were manufactured by those who don’t like her for whatever reason.  

You know the funny/sad thing about this whole mess?  When Hillary was First Lady she had high approval ratings.  When she ran for Senator the ratings went down, when she was elected Senator the ratings went way up.  First time she ran for president her approval ratings went down.  As Secretary of State, she had high approval ratings.  The people like the job she was doing, they just didn’t like it when she asks for a promotion.

4.75/5 stars. It would get the full 5 if it was a v-neck. - "A moment of instant attraction, when you see that shirt from across the room and know, somehow, it should be your own." - Lefty





Radical with reactionary. No, I did not comingle the two.

A reaction occurs after an action. Reactions may be repeated and a new pattern of behavior may emerge in a habitual form. You touch a hot burner on the stove and pull your hand away, that's a reaction. You may do that once, you may do that several times, but eventually you make a point to not touch a hot burner on the stove. That's Reactionary Behavior.

I just Googled reactionary behavior and the first thing to pop up was Merriam-Webster's definition of reactionary - "relating to, marked by, or favoring reaction --- especially: ultraconservative in politics" ------- Guess the entire "left" (same shorthand as before) is free from this charge then. <Don't look at me. I didn't add that meaning to the dictionary!>

You may mean Reactive Behavior, where you react to life's events and not try to take proactive action to direct how your life will go? That doesn't apply to my thoughts either.


To be radicalized is to have adopted radical positions on political or social issues, therefore Radicalized Behavior would be behavior that was based on a radical political or social ideal. This is exactly what I meant.

The radical idea here is that heinous behavior may be meted out to a huge population of fellow Americans "because Trump". Because Donald Trump was elected and legally seated as the President of the United States, anyone who is so much as suspected of having one iota of unity with ANY of the agenda of this administration is fair game. The old rules do not apply.

Innocent until proven guilty? - Hell to the no. You wear a hat, A MAGA HAT for God's sake!!!!, and you have proven yourself as one who could very well wear a NAZI armband at home or pick up several semi-automatic rifles and go shoot up a school.

You want border security now, as you have wanted since long before the Democrat politicians jumped on and then off the bandwagon. You are a RACIST!!!! You don't care about children. You don't care about people with brown skin. You are the scum of the earth, lower than a snake's belly.

You want a health care system that works? That is sustainable? - You want people to suffer and die! You only care about the rich. Again, you are RACIST! and probably also HOMOPHOBIC!.

You NEVER, EVER, EVER disclose who you voted for in the last presidential election. People surmise how you voted based on your general, publicly stated political views, but you NEVER publicly support one candidate and you NEVER try to defend Trump - you are personally responsible for Trump being elected and you may be called every foul name in the book without apology.

In the case of the school, in that public school, it is A-OK acceptable to deride the POTUS. It is absolutely fine to denigrate anyone you suspect may remotely be inclined to want any single part of this administration to succeed.

How anyone attending that meeting of school personnel knew that the parents of the student they were discussing had come to be at a Trump rally is anyone's guess. If you let your mind wander, you can veer off into some pretty creepy territory all too easily, so best just to stipulate that the knowledge came by innocent means. The conclusion that this is what was creating the problem with the student is chilling.

For all the talk that I have been subjected to of how comparative I (because Trump...) am to a NAZI under Hitler, the true comparison would be better found in a mirror.

If you substituted the fact that the parents had sat at the front row of a Trump rally with "and the parents are Jewish," this is how that conversation would have sounded: "We are here to discuss the problems we are seeing with little Johnny in the classroom." "His parents are Jewish." Nods of agreement all around the table that this is the problem, or at least part of the problem.

That most certainly is a radical position to the left. It is the very definition of one. Moreover, it is the reality of the denigration a great many of us must face if we reveal that we are conservative politically.

Go back to November 8-10, 2016 and reread any social media, any news media, any correspondence with friends and acquaintances. And then read any from today. Listen to any late night talk show,  any awards show.... really, the list is endless.

And I am telling you, personally, as well as you, generally - It is not OK.



I'm going to also assume here that you did not specifically include me in "Wow, those Democrats, right? They're getting so radical. Such radical, extreme, rude perspectives. Such unfathomable interpretations. Such radical, disordered listening?" even though this was part of your response to my explanation that specifically stated that if I interpreted or heard things the same way, I may come to the same conclusions.

But, I do not hear or interpret things the same way.

I don't know why. I do know that ever since I was a child, I, by nature, tend to hear or see both sides of a problem or argument. I'm the child grown into adult who throws the monkeywrench into set group beliefs. It's why nether the Catholic nor LDS Church would not want me to wish to convert, nor why any political party would be entirely happy with me. I agree with this, this, this, this, and this, but think they are entirely wrong about that.

And so maybe you can begin to see how really shallow I see the reasoning is behind the application of such despise (because Trump...). The application of the denigration is done with hate. These are hate acts, and they are wildly popular.

Do not even try to counter (general you here) with ... "How do you explain what the "right" (shorthand again)  whatever it is," or any other comparison, for the simple reason that that is not being addressed in my posts.

My posts have been focused in response to the question that you asked; "What characterizes the 'radical left'?"



"Rainbow's big Neener-Neener-Walkaway campaign" - you have personalized a group to someone on this board whom you don't respect. That's not rational. Of course there are people who stopped being on board with the Democratic Party. Some of them took to social media and used the same hash tag. Big F'n deal. So.much.drama over other people's beliefs. To quote a present day poet, "I ain't got time for that, yo."




"Call me rude, extreme, frothing, unwielding, hyperbolic, reactionary, unhinged, myopic, tone deaf." -- Not sure why you would want me to do that, and so I won't.

"... don't tell me I've become a radical leftist or a socialist or that the Democratic Pary () has moved dangerously Left." - OK. Never have, never planned to, so this is a pretty easy concession for me to make.      



"Anger does not equal socialism." - Another easy concession. Although I really would prefer to wear a t-shirt with Born Braless on it. (A shirt I may in reality actually create, FWIW)



Do not hate on mom26 . I have not read the vast majority of threads. I have bypassed the great give and takes. I've seen enough to have read the utter frustration she has tried to express in her posts only to have them torn apart without regard for her frustration. And now, you are naming her in your post?

Frankly, I had more respect for you than that. First Rainbow and now Mom26. I am now squirming in my chair. I feel a bit sleazy, like you have crossed a line of polite and civil discourse that makes me very uncomfortable.

I think this is a good place to end.

i do think they were ignored in favor of party platform. The GOP should have never let him get the nomination.
But I suppose if Russia interfered with the national election, perhaps they did in the primary as well.

I just want to say that switching from one political party to another isn't a matter of just pulling a different lever. Politics for many people is as ingrained as religion. TherRe is an evolution of thought that must take place to move from one side to another. And things chip away one issue at a time, at least that's how it worked and continues to work in my case. Gay marriage was really my tipping point. And yes I voted in the Republican primary...for Kasich. And then I voted third party in the general election because all polls seemed to indicate Hillary would win. My thought was that surely a buffoon like Trump would never get elected. But I was wrong. And I have learned from my mistake here and will not do the same thing again.

In looking back, I can definitely see that Obama came with a message of Hope and change. And people wanted that. He was a candidate that people felt like they wanted to vote for. Hillary was not that type of candidate and if Democrats want to win in 2020 then they have to examine that. Denying it and placing blame isn't going to move our country forward.

You (general) need to ask yourself is more advantageous to be right or is it more advantageous to change minds. Because I want to change minds. The far right is a throwaway group. They are just way too deep in it to ever change their stance. The people in the middle are fair game. Use your arguments to win them over. Give them facts to think about. But don't blame and shame them. They just need information to make a better choice. You (general) need their support to win the next election.

Could it be that the people that voted for Trump did so because (in part) in their opinion the Democratic candidate was so terribly flawed? Both parties need to screen their candidate better than the last time, or more and more people will be voting third party--or choose not to vote at all.

I just want to say that switching from one political party to another isn't a matter of just pulling a different lever. Politics for many people is as ingrained as religion. TherRe is an evolution of thought that must take place to move from one side to another. And things chip away one issue at a time, at least that's how it worked and continues to work in my case. Gay marriage was really my tipping point. And yes I voted in the Republican primary...for Kasich. And then I voted third party in the general election because all polls seemed to indicate Hillary would win. My thought was that surely a buffoon like Trump would never get elected. But I was wrong. And I have learned from my mistake here and will not do the same thing again.

In looking back, I can definitely see that Obama came with a message of Hope and change. And people wanted that. He was a candidate that people felt like they wanted to vote for. Hillary was not that type of candidate and if Democrats want to win in 2020 then they have to examine that. Denying it and placing blame isn't going to move our country forward.

You (general) need to ask yourself is more advantageous to be right or is it more advantageous to change minds. Because I want to change minds. The far right is a throwaway group. They are just way too deep in it to ever change their stance. The people in the middle are fair game. Use your arguments to win them over. Give them facts to think about. But don't blame and shame them. They just need information to make a better choice. You (general) need their support to win the next election.

There are enough here on this board that do, that it affects the number of right leaning participants.   

IMO, the reasons people say that Hillary was “so terribly flawed” are based on bias and/or misinformation from Fox News and Russian interference.

I would be interested in knowing what positions held by left-leaning Refupeas here are considered over-the-top and reactionary. I'm not saying that to be snarky; I just would be interested in knowing where some consider the line. I don't mean particular individual people or posts, I mean actual policy positions.

Yes that has been said on the Trump threads. Don't come in and mess up our hand wringing over Trump, this is our place to do so and anything you have to offer that isn't in line with that is just not welcome there. 

My apologies if you only wanted to know Kristen's take on that in particular, just thought you might be interested in that actuality.