[Nigel Mace]

I'm not sure, Charlie, what your reference to "those of us who like pork in our hot dogs" is supposed to convey?

Trump explicitly spoke approvingly of "torture" - not that "waterboarding" isn't torture - but let's not pretend that he didn't explicitly say "torture".

Could you also direct me to where and when the US was taken hold of by "socialists", and who were or are these people? - and just when and where there has been an attempt to make Americans into cave dwellers? Or am I making the mistake of looking for facts instead of just accepting "alternative facts" - presumably offered as some sort of 'joke'.

[Charlie Southerland]

Nigel, lots of people who voted for Trump are diverse in their ideology. It has been stated by some on the left side of the political spectrum that those who voted for Trump are all the things I said and much more. The pork in the hotdog thing is my answer. There is a lot of diversity in 60 million people who voted for him. It can't be discounted or counterfeited.

If you rule out torture as a tool to save American lives, then terrorists will do anything to kill and make a mockery of our self-righteousness. I am against that more that the concept of torture. Common sense applies.

Many socialists prefer the term: Progressive. When pressed on the term, they will nearly always revert to the Socialist tenets of their beliefs.

Cave dwellers can be a derogatory or metaphorical term that is used to allude to the fact that there are people who wish to go back to all mother nature/earth uses of earth instead of modern modes of living. It can apply to nearly any regressive meme not mutually exclusive of or to progressives or nativists. It began in America in the early 1900's and became prevalent in the 1960's and to the extreme the past twenty years or so.

[Quincy Lehr]

Chuckems--

Someone needs to tell you what words mean. "Socialism," at its most reformist, can be argued to have some bleed-over into "progressivism,"but you're starting to sound LIKE THIS (as are certain Clinton supporters who don't seem to realize that the fall of the Berlin Wall is old enough to drive, vote, and buy a round of drinks).

[Nigel Mace]

Apparently, Charlie, you - as well as Trump - need to be told that "torture" doesn't work to "save lives", American or otherwise. It also happens to be a serious crime in both your domestic and in international law. Its practice at Guantanamo and in the other US 'black sites' around the world has done much to blacken the name of the US and of the West and is very much a 'part of the problem'. It is a 'solution' to precisely nothing.

I still do not understand your 'hotdog' reference which appears to target people with an objection to pork. That sounds uncomfortably like an endorsement of religious/ethnic prejudice. Whether so or not, it certainly does little to enhance understanding of your point.

[James Brancheau]

Oh, never mind (wrong link anyway).

[Charlie Southerland]

I apologize for the apparent type-casting, misuse of the term, Quincy. Would it be easier without an ad hom attack against me if I would dare compare what I actually meant to what you might espouse as an ideology?

Wouldn't that clear things up a bit? Surely you are proud of what you believe. Please, if you will, proceed to explain your ideology so that I would not make the same mistake twice in one thread.

Nigel, no one is pure-minded. My point with the pork comment is that I like to eat pork and others don't. It doesn't keep me away from being friends with them or them me. Different strokes for different folks. Conservatives get hemmed into a very small pen, defined by whatever someone who disagrees with them dictates as extreme. That's not a good way to look at things. Lots of people voted for Trump who disagree with him on several issues. Rank and file union members, gays, women, and so on. Personally, I am surprised that Trump has leaned conservative coming out of the chute. Millions of people are applauding that stance. Me too. Intolerance is just as must a detriment to the left as it is to the right. I've seen a lot from the left proving that the past few days.

[Andrew Frisardi]

Charlie, I don’t have any contact with people who still think it’s a positive thing that Trump is president, so bear with me. I'd really like to understand where you and other Trump supporters are coming from.

Let’s say for discussion sake that Trump’s view on torture is not a problem, and that his approach to fixing things economically for people who need it is going in the right direction and is going to help them financially and jobs-wise in ways they’ve been wanting for a while now.

Even apart from those things, and even if they are (in your view) things in his favor, how then do you and others live with the fact that Trump:

• cannot possibly avoid entangling his business interests with his politics
• has 8 members of his Cabinet whose combined assets equals the total assets of the bottom third (or is it half?) of the U.S. people
• befriends Putin, and compliments him in preference to his own country’s intelligence agencies
• suggests that NATO is obsolete even though his own Defense Secretary says it may be the most successful alliance in history, and one that aided the U.S. greatly after 9/11
• denies climate change and is undoing whatever progress we’ve made to wean our economy from fossil fuels and coal
• tangibly incites hatred, prejudice, and xenophobia
• suppresses opposing views
• attacks the free press, without which democratic society is impossible
• lashes out inappropriately at the slightest provocation or criticism, even though every president in history has received criticism every single day of the presidency

?

Again, even if you and other Trump supporters are in agreement with the first things I mentioned, do you feel that those positives outweigh the negatives I’ve listed and the great damage he can do to the U.S. and the world?

I assume you have squared this with your conscience, since you obviously think about these things, and I am genuinely curious to hear how you do it. I’m not being polemical here--I’m curious, and honestly, utterly bewildered how it’s possible to believe that the negatives are worth taking on board for four to eight years.

I’ll end this post by saying that I have working-class friends and family members whose job situation has sucked for a long time, and they still hate Trump--with a passion--for the reasons I stated. So there has to be something else besides jobs and money that makes it possible for other people to think that Trump’s positives outweigh the negatives. What are they, for you and others you know?

Again, what I'm trying to get is not just what's good about Trump, according to you, but how the bad things are acceptable, as though they can't cause more damage than the good things bring good.

[Michael Cantor]

Just to add to Andrew's excellent list:

- refuses to release his tax returns, although Presidents going back to Nixon all have; and indications are that he has paid little, if any taxes for many years.

- by not releasing his tax returns he gives credence to the suspicion that he is deeply in debt - and obligated - to Russian and Chinese sources.

- accepts and repeats as fact lies and conspiracy theories from sources like Alex Jones, and appoints a known conspiracy theorist - retired General Michael Flynn - as National Security Advisor.

[Andrew Szilvasy]

But but but...liberal tears taste good?

This is only partially tongue in cheek. When I've confronted some people with all the material Andrew and Michael have, their basic response has been that they won, and that he must be doing good things because liberals are upset.

[Andrew Mandelbaum]

From a human at the EPA
Shared from a friend's source.

Sharing with permission.
From an EPA staffer:
"So I work at the EPA and yeah it's as bad as you are hearing:
The entire agency is under lockdown, the website, facebook, twitter, you name it is static and can't be updated. All reports, findings, permits and studies are frozen and not to be released. No presentations or meetings with outside groups are to be scheduled.
Any Press contacting us are to be directed to the Press Office which is also silenced and will give no response.
All grants and contracts are frozen from the contractors working on Superfund sites to grad school students working on their thesis.
We are still doing our work, writing reports, doing cancer modeling for pesticides hoping that this is temporary and we will be able to serve the public soon. But many of us are worried about an ideologically-fueled purging and if you use any federal data I advise you gather what you can now.
We have been told the website is being reworked to reflect the new administration's policy.
Feel free to copy and paste, you all pay for the government and you should know what's going on. I am posting this as a fellow citizen and not in any sort of official capacity."
If you share, please do so with copy and paste.
(h/t Shirley Thompson Marshall)