Thread by @Dreamweasel

Welcome to life in 2019, where the lion’s share of what passes for political discourse consists of Explaining Extremely Obvious Things to People Who Refuse to Listen

Scarcely an hour goes by when someone, somewhere is not doggedly explaining (to no avail) that:

- It is far, far likelier that Donald Trump is lying about the mainstream media than the mainstream media is lying about him

- racist southern conservatives are no longer Democrats

- “Open Borders” is not a Democratic policy

- Gun control does not equate to confiscation

- “Innocent until proven guilty” does not render all evidence meaningless until a convinction is reached

- We’re not building a goddamned border wall

- There are ways to express racist sentiment that to not explicitly reference the N-word

- The government does not pay for abortions at Planned Parenthood

- The respect of transgender rights does not require cisgender people to be physically attracted to them

- Donald Trump ran for President to be showered with adulation, make a killing from his properties, and build a big stupid wall to keep out the Mexicans. That’s really it. Do not be fooled into giving him credit for accomplishing anything else.

- “Socialism” alone does not equate to Red Communism or Venezuelan dystopia, and is actually responsible for many good things

- Voting third party in a Presidential election means you’re letting the rest of the people in your state decide something very important

- Black Lives Matter addresses the lack of police accountability when unarmed black people are killed. It does not mean other lives do not matter. “But black-on-black crime” is irrelevant.

- It is possible to be concerned about Palestinian human rights without being anti-Semitic

- Calling Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas” is an offensive racial slur, regardless of whether you believe she intentionally lied about her ethnic heritage

- Support of Israel is not a shield against accusations of anti-Semitism. (For the matter, neither is having Jewish in-laws.)

- If your gut-level response to civil-rights activism is “Those thugs need to pull up their pants and get a job; besides, they were paid by Al Sharpton and/or George Soros”, it’s time to drop any pretense that your Party represents the modern-day ideology of Martin Luther King

- Obstruction of justice is a crime, regardless of the legality of the activity you are attempting to cover up

- We can live in a republic and still favor a system where our representatives are distributed proportionally to the population, unlike our current Electoral College

- Snopes is not a political opinion site. If you wish to discredit their conclusions, it will require some counterevidence. You can’t just say “Snopes is biased!”

- An aside: one question I’ve never heard a Trump supporter answer is “Which fact-checking sites do you recommend?”

- The First Amendment means that the government cannot punish you for the things you say. It does not protect you from all consequences of the things you say.

- If you’re sick & tired of people calling you a racist, it’s not merely because you have a “different opinion”.

- The overwhelming majority of scientists who study climate have concluded that human behavior is having irreversible impact on the Earth’s climate

- The overwhelming majority of people who deny climate change is a problem are motivated by financial, not scientific, concerns.

- While the word “Nazi” is derived from “National Socialist”, it is a far-right nationalist ideology that has nothing to do with what socialists actually believe

- The white nationalists of today overwhelmingly reject socialism and overwhelmingly support Trump

h/t @FrankMArouet

- Hillary Clinton was never a Birther. Curiously, the Birthers who insist Hillary Clinton WAS a Birther all voted for Trump. (Not ONE Hillary supporter said “You know what? I’m GLAD she had the guts to say Barry Soetoro faked his birth certificate! I’m voting for Hillary!”)

- There is no epidemic of transgender women harassing cis women in public restrooms, nor are they transitioning to gain a competitive edge in the money-generating machine that is professional women’s sports

- Nobody is proposing punitive action for using the wrong pronouns

- The tactic of “Whataboutism” presupposes that a successful accusation of hypocrisy is sufficient to discredit your opponent’s views. But hypocrisy is the lowest-hanging fruit in any political discussion; it is not the alpha & omega of political debate.

- I do not know if Bill Clinton had sex with underage girls. I do not know if Donald Trump had sex with underage girls. Nevertheless: If one is true, it does not mean the other gets a pass.

- Just because it gets cold outside does not mean global warming is a myth.

- Islam is not a race. However, Islamophobia resembles racism so very, very closely that this distinction feels like hair-splitting.

- There are private contracts where all parties respect Sharia Law. Our existing laws prevent anyone from being forced into it against their will.

- A true narcissist, Trump will lunge at any excuse to pat himself on the back, regardless of how successful his efforts actually were.

- Trump is also incapable of accepting criticism. He is eager to dismiss any reporting as “FAKE NEWS” if it does not flatter his self-image.

- “Both Sides Do It” is a close relative of Whataboutism. It is intended to be fatalistic. The argument is rarely a proposition to fix the problem on both sides; far more often, it is simply to conclude “Nothing can be done.”

- Most news outlets predicted Clinton would win the 2016 election. That is not an example of “Fake News”. That is a prediction they got wrong.

- “Fake News” would be if they reported “Donald Trump lost the election” the next day.

- In the ‘80s & ‘90s, Donald Trump was known mainly as a wealthy & successful real-estate entrepeneur. His views on race & politics were not widely known at the time.

- To say that black people admired him back then is hardly a refutation of the offensive things he says today.

- Debate is not a gladiatorial contest. You can’t “win” when no minds are willing to be changed.

- Online debates are better sourced & more thorough than debates in real time. Anyone who demands “Debate me in public!” knows this, because he is a dogmatist & not an intellectual.

- Expecting armed citizens to spring into action at a moment’s notice has not proven to be a terribly effective means of deterring public mass shootings.

- As long as we have private property and privately-owned businesses, there will always be “gun-free zones”.

- “Focus on mental illness” is not, and has never been, a serious proposal for prevention of gun violence. Mass shooters are not necessarily mentally ill; only a small percentage of the ones we know about had previously been diagnosed as such.

- Furthermore, focusing on mental illness would only have an effect on gun violence if we were to make mental illness evaluation compulsory for all American citizens. Such a policy would be more deleterious to civil rights than any restrictions on firearms we could imagine.

- There is virtually no forensic evidence that can distinguish between criminal sexual assault and consensual sexual activity.

- Even if sexual assault cannot be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, it does not automatically mean the victim was making the whole thing up.

- There is no “War on Christmas”; nobody is trying to make Christmas illegal

- Any secular liberals sincerely outraged by people wishing them a “Merry Christmas” are likely outnumbered by cultural conservatives sincerely outraged by people wishing them “Happy Holidays”

- George Soros was 13 years old when the Nazis occupied Hungary. Like most Jewish children, he did what he needed to do to survive. It is hardly reasonable to conclude that Soros was a bloodthirsty apprentice of the Nazis eager to inflict fascism on the rest of Western society.

- The Electoral College, as it stands, assigns priority to states disproportionate to their populations.

- A “republic” simply means that votes are cast by elected representatives. It does not require the disproportionate distribution that we currently have.

- Democrats won the popular vote in 6 of our last 7 Presidential elections. That suggests more people favor their policies.

- To contend that we need the EC to give the GOP a fairer shot is a very skewed perception of “fairness”. It’s like affirmative action for unpopular ideas.

- Trump supporters genuinely do not care whether Trump is a liar, and they genuinely do not care whether he is a racist.

- It is tempting to engage them when they insist otherwise, but there is no endgame in which they’ll acknowledge Trump’s culpability over that of MSM reports.

- Similarly, Trump supporters genuinely do not care whether Trump requested assistance from the Kremlin in 2016, whether he requested assistance from the Ukraine just this year, or whether he broke any U.S. laws when he did either of these things.

- They just want to win.

- It has been almost one thousand days since the Trump inauguration. We know Trump has lied over ten thousand times since then.

- For any other President to match that pace, he would have to have lied ten times per day, every day, for the entire duration of his Presidency.

- The Washington Post reports Trump has lied over 12,000 times since becoming President.

- If you respond: “You can’t trust the MSM; they’re only making it up because they hate Trump”, that says a lot more about you than it says about the Washington Post.
washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/…

- Trump’s base greets every revelation about his behavior with “FAKE NEWS!”, then eventually “There’s nothing wrong with it.”

- It is an amusing but empty exercise to ask them what they’d do if it turned out to be true. They are only awaiting their marching orders from the top.

- “All Lives Matter” is a reactionary backlash to Black Lives Matter.

- “Men’s Rights Activism” is a reactionary backlash to feminism.

- “Straight Pride” is a reactionary backlash to LGBT Pride.

All of these movements co-opt the language of liberation to deny it to others.

- “Democrats are only hurting themselves when they pursue impeachment” is a GOP talking point whose sole purpose is to scare Democrats into backing off.

- If pursuit of impeachment truly helped Trump, the GOP would be encouraging it. But Trump is clearly TERRIFIED right now.

- It’s not gonna make a difference if newspaper headlines say “TRUMP LIED.” The media coverage of Trump isn’t really the problem here.

- No matter what the MSM reports about Trump, approximately 35% of the country will ignore it because they only listen to sources they trust.

- Trump supporters are no more anti-war than they are pro-Putin. They’re just following orders, trying to score some cheap “HYPOCRISY!” points to help Dear Leader win. It’s all a game to them.

- There is no logical basis for the argument that Democrats are only prosecuting Trump because they’re trying to overturn the 2016 election. As with many things Trump says, that is a ham-fisted attempt to smear the motives of those who try to hold him accountable for his actions.

- “Virtue signaling” became an epithet against liberals at the precise moment the GOP fell in line to defend the single least virtuous President in modern American history

- Any story preceded by a claim that “the media doesn’t WANT you to know” it is surely high-octane bullshit

- Far more often than not, “Intellectual diversity” and “Diversity of opinion” are expressions that exploit the language of tolerance to advance intolerant ideas.

- “Triggered” is a psychological term that has been perverted to mean “U Mad, Bro?” by modern conservatives.

- Contrary to what many will suggest, making your opponent angry does not mean that you have logically outmaneuvered him or her. It does not mean you “won” the argument.

Reasons Democrats Believe Trump Is Unfit for Office:

- extortion of Ukraine
- secret deals with Russia
- attempted to obstruct investigation
- smug, petty, lies about everything

Reasons Democrats Do Not Believe Trump Is Unfit for Office:

- They’re mad Hillary Clinton lost

- Donald Trump is hated for many legitimate reasons: he is deceitful, arrogant, cruel, and utterly unwilling to accept any real responsibility.

- But despite what the GOP will tell you, “Democrats hate Trump” does not automatically mean their criticisms of him are invalid.

- To most Republicans, Trump’s actions are irrelevant.

- “Trump is blameless, and the media is lying when they say otherwise” is their only acceptable conclusion.

- Their perception of reality will contort however it needs to in order to arrive at this predetermined outcome.

- Much of conservative media feeds on outraged reactions of liberals, often divorced from context. This implies conservatives are calm & rational by comparison.

- “Trump Derangement Syndrome” further blurs cause & effect by blaming others for being angry about things Trump does.