Man Of Jackistan: Reason and Truth's Time and Place

This Black Conservative Didn't Own Anything But A Poor Argument Rant #21 ( Opinion ) April 1, 2020 This video just bugged me as soon as it began: https://www.facebook.com/thehodgetwins/videos/813591575818557/ Wow, the one Black Trump supporter in that state soo "owned" the liberal there... K, first off, the KKK may've been originally founded by somebody who was a Democrat. Ok. And? Lincoln was a Republican. The parties had a different alignment back then. By no means do the party divisions of the Reconstruction era some 150 years ago have much to do with where they stand today on most issues. As a rough generalization, the GOP came about as a party which supported urbanization and manufacturing (the legacy of Hamiltonian ideology), eventually giving way to representing big business. But before that, the Republicans--beginning with Lincoln--did things to encourage education, by establishing public colleges; fostering railroads so that it could connect t...

Trump Approval Rating Rises Amid Coronavirus Crisis Rant #19 ( Opinion ) Originally March 24, 2020 Donald Trump ignored intelligence reports from multiple agencies in the months of January and February that warned of the coronavirus imminently infecting America, doing great damage to the economy and public health. The president publicly refuted the severity of the virus, famously called it a "Democratic hoax," and to this day despite having declared a national emergency continues to give bad advice about the illness, for example by claiming that chloroquine is a viable cure for COVID-19. And now, the president has begun flirting with the idea of reeling back the emergency measures meant to flatten the curve of the rapidly spreading coronavirus. It doesn't stop there, either. Here's a link to a video which very effectively displays some more examples of how he has totally mismanaged the crisis thus far. And yet, the president's approval rating has r...

The Fate of "Trumpism" Rant #18  ( Opinion ) March 23, 2020 The future of what reluctantly gets the label of 'Trumpism' has increasingly represented a topic of much speculation among those who spend their time thinking about politics. I have a few tentative thoughts on that, based mostly on sheer guesswork. Many have argued that after leaving office, the Republican Party will 'snap out' of its Trump-induced spell; politicians will write off their former support for him in one way or another to avoid association with that trainwreck. While that sounds like an appetizing outcome to me, that is very unlikely, in my opinion. The man has amassed too much popularity for him to just step off the stage and fade into the background. The vicious and aggressive tweeting he does will in and of itself continue to effect the public discourse and news cycles long after leaving office. If Trump loses in November, after a lengthy dispute about the integrity of the...

On China; Also, Venting About Misconceptions From The Right Rant #16 ( Opinion ) Originally March 20,2020; Posted March 23, 2020 A Trump supporter recently criticized me for what he perceived to be my stance on relations with China. Initially, the man mentioned how if Biden wins the upcoming presidential election, despite the coronavirus revealing the weakness of over-relying on China for goods, the US will not move its supply chains away from there. Whereas under Trump, our country will apparently relocate its source of manufacturing. The man boasted about how Trump has already accomplished so much with that country, and then proceeded to attack my rejection of that assessment by saying that my view (or what he believed to be my view) was some "hippy Green Party crap, opposed to the 'evil corporations,' and naive like the last 50 years of presidents."  First off, I never said anything about business owners being evil or Green Party bullshit. I am saying...

Right Wing Hypocrisy #101: Immigration and Laissez-Faire Rant #15 ( Opinion ) Originally March 1, 2020; Posted March 20, 2020 While conservatism has many strains and sub-strains, a common right wing standpoint goes something like this: the market will decide for itself the best things for a society, and regulations only hinder the arrival at equilibrium, which ultimately suits us all best. Free markets and only free markets make our country free, taxes are bad, businesses can do what they want and it will in the end benefit workers as well when they are allowed to operate this way (providing more benefits than government-run programs which require higher taxes ever could). Another extremely common conservative stance, having only gained credence with the election of Donald Trump: we need strong borders. This is America, everything inside of it belongs to Americans; other people from other places come here and take jobs away from hardworking Americans, leach off of our coun...

Insulting CNN To Shift The Center Rant #9 ( Opinion ) Originally March 8, 2020; Posted March 10, 2020 Why is CNN the scapegoat of the right, rather than MSNBC, which has more clearly liberal commentators? I'll tell you why: by attacking a fairly neutral news station as "liberal," it makes right wing nutjobs who oppose basic facts and Democrats look a little less crazy to people who pay less attention to politics. The public starts to believe this bullshit narrative about CNN marking the epitome of the far left. First of all, let's clarify some semantics here. Terms like "media," "mainstream media" and "the liberal media" get tossed around a lot, often interchangeably. Media is really just any medium of communication: TV, newspapers, even this website all technically comprise the media. CNN and Fox News both equally fall under the label of 'media.' Those two would also make up the "mainstream media," ...

Trump's Faithful Evangelical Flock Rant #8 ( Opinion ) Originally March 1, 2020; Posted March 10, 2020 It will shock no one to hear that White evangelical Christians in the United States overwhelmingly back Donald Trump's presidency; victory without them would have simply not occurred. Somewhere between 25%  and 41%  of Americans identify as evangelical or "born again" Christians, meaning that they consider Jesus Christ their lord and personal savior. They constitute a bloc of voters worth roughly 1/4 of the American electorate; in 2016, a full 26% of voters in an exit poll identified as evangelical. This article tries to downplay this group's intense attachment with Trump--if I considered myself evangelical, I would too! The author makes the argument that not every single White evangelical showed up to vote,  that statistic doesn't differentiate between White and minority evangelicals, not all of those who consider themselves evangelical go to ch...

"Good People On Both Sides?" Rant #7 ( Opinion ) Originally March 8, 2020 To whom it may concern, I get where you're coming from with this chart. It makes me cringe to say it like this, but "there are good people on both sides" who want the same endgame, that being a surviving and thriving America--their road maps just differ. At one point in time, I was a staunchly conservative person--a position which has since largely flipped. I was never a racist in my heart and soul when I felt that way, back in the Bush era. The vast majority of those who disagree with you have good intentions, just misaligned ideas on how things do and should work. Give those people the benefit of the doubt, until they say something that reveals any purely hateful sentiment (e.g. genuine racism). There do exist a large number of simply awful others, yet they make up the minority. Ignorance abounds in the rest. Remembering that is vital to maintaining the see...