Presidential Debate

[olstyn]

His credentials as a Christian may be questionable

How is this relevant? The only thing that says the US president needs to be a Christian is historical inertia.

unlike the Democrats, he allows me to be one.

How do Democrats prevent you from being Christian? I've known some VERY blue voters, and whatever other faults they may have had, they were generally very religiously tolerant.

[Baldanders]

I thought fear, ridicule and sarcasm were the chief teaching techniques.

Well, duh!

(In my defense, the only students I have used "fear" on deliberately were two young men who used an anti-Semitic slur on separate occasions. One told me later was that was when he began to respect me. I have a good relationship with the other one too. And repeatedly putting the wise ass kid who annoys his peers over the coals in front of them does wonders for classroom management. And I have learned I have to explain self-deprecating humor, because kids out here just aren't familiar with it, and assume I'm trying to ridicule them. "No, I was calling myself ignorant. Do you really think I think I know everything? I'm stuck here teaching y'all! Obviously, I don't! Go out there and make something of yourself and give me a reason to feel good about myself. Yup, my self-esteem is tied to your success. Pathetic, right?")



But I still have to teach 'em to give a decent speech by the classical techniques. 😀

[RoyGBiv]

How is this relevant? The only thing that says the US president needs to be a Christian is historical inertia.

How do Democrats prevent you from being Christian? I've known some VERY blue voters, and whatever other faults they may have had, they were generally very religiously tolerant.

Maybe we should ask Amy Coney Barrett?

[RoyGBiv]

Attachment 61137

If you come, please bring amendments. There are several we could use although obviously the 2nd is our most glaring deficiency.

It's beautiful up there, especially out West. But, almost all of your country is north of the Dakotas.

Brrrrr.

[olstyn]

Maybe we should ask Amy Coney Barrett?

Last I looked, nobody was trying to prevent her from being Catholic - the Democrats are trying (futilely, from my view) to prevent her from becoming a SCOTUS justice because she's conservative and Trump chose her. Politics is pretty much guaranteed to be mean-spirited, and the Democrats are grasping at straws in regard to reasons to block her appointment. The Catholic angle is just a part of that, as far as I can tell. Do you have some other information? Something which indicates Democrats are actually trying to prevent her from practicing her faith?

[RoyGBiv]

Last I looked, nobody was trying to prevent her from being Catholic - the Democrats are trying (futilely, from my view) to prevent her from becoming a SCOTUS justice because she's conservative and Trump chose her. Politics is pretty much guaranteed to be mean-spirited, and the Democrats are grasping at straws in regard to reasons to block her appointment. The Catholic angle is just a part of that, as far as I can tell. Do you have some other information? Something which indicates Democrats are actually trying to prevent her from practicing her faith?

You don't think what the Dems are doing has a chilling effect on people feeling free to practice their religion of choice?

It's similar to what Antifa and BLM (with Democrat support) are doing to people's willingness to express their political opinions publicly.

[OlongJohnson]

I do know that the right massively impairs its ability to pull people off the fence and into its big tent every time it explicitly binds religiosity together with conservatism. There are a ton of people who think the left has lost its kitten but just can't get on board with religion. Their position is something like, as Jordan Peterson said near the beginning of his Biblical lecture series, (something close to this, I don't remember the exact words) "It's not obvious that if the goal is to help everybody speak truth, requiring everybody to say they believe something that nobody actually believes is a good way to start."

IME, religiosity is mostly orthogonal to politics. The pope is darn near a socialist. Some of the most left-leaning people I am close with view their faith as fundamental to who they are and bound up with their view of the world. But what they don't do is make people feel like sharing that faith is a condition for being welcome in their political tent.

[Xhado]

You don't think what the Dems are doing has a chilling effect on people feeling free to practice their religion of choice?

Absolutely not.

People who think that way are just looking for an excuse to be a victim.

[Borderland]

You don't think what the Dems are doing has a chilling effect on people feeling free to practice their religion of choice?

It's similar to what Antifa and BLM (with Democrat support) are doing to people's willingness to express their political opinions publicly.

That stretches the imagination a fair amount. Honestly, I don't pay any attention to a persons religion or their politics for that matter unless they start preaching those to my face and try to convert me. Then it's adios amigo and don't try to block my exit.

[the Schwartz]

In fairness, I think a common usage of “sure” would mean “yes” or “yes I will”. But it’s not the same thing as condemning.
If someone asks you if you’ll walk through that door, and you say “sure”, you’ve indicated a willingness to do so, but you haven’t walked through that door yet. They would not be unreasonable then say “well... go ahead then.”

I’m willing to believe that President Trump was agreeing to condemn white supremacist groups. But he badly flubbed the actual condemnation. A clever speaker would have also segued into condemning and ANTIFA and violent BLM rioters, and then asked Biden to do the same. But he didn’t. And from the perspective of this watcher, I thought he had an easy score and failed at it. He failed to clearly state an obviously mainstream position, and to refute accusations that have been made by the Left for years.

There is no doubt that Trump missed an opportunity to elucidate further on his prior condemnations of racists and their racist behavior; the point being that it seems that now more than ever, that opponents are even more predisposed to assign meaning to that which does not exist or was never said. However, I do realize that making such assignations—sans a clear statement—is human nature.

I'd have also preferred that Trump shift the focus during that exchange to the violence and destruction being perpetrated by AntiFa and BLM and the failure of the (mostly) Democrat-run cities that have permitted and often encouraged it by refusing prosecution of those committing the idiocy. Perhaps a less ''interruption-focused'' approach would have made that possible giving him the time to formulate such an argument ''in the fly''. As has been said before, the best way to ''blow up'' Joe Biden's game is to let Joe Biden talk. I suspect that given a little more time to speak after being given a question, Biden would have provided enough rope to wrap 'round his neck three times...maybe more.

I suspect that Trump's handlers are probably working on getting him to reduce the tempo of his interjection into Biden's responses. If they're able to do, we'll see it on the 15th of October. If the debate's tempo can be made to ''slow down'' I am sure that Trump can take the time to think and respond more deliberately. I am not sure that a lesser tempo will allow Biden a similar advantage given his clear cognitive decline. Perhaps Trump can avail himself of Biden's tendency to ''gaffe'' unexpectedly with plenty of fertile material for the taking.

There's a lot of living to do between now and November 3rd...so almost anything can happen. This ain't over.