Real World Event Discussions

A thread for Democrats Only

POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
VIEWED: 755368
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Wednesday, April 23, 2025 6:14 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
The Trolley Problem is bullshit made up by college fart sniffers.

Ezra Klein is a douche bag.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

Trumptards and Confederates are/were absolutely evil but they feel/felt that their behavior is normal and necessary for their happiness and they won't stop until dead. Lincoln chose killing Confederates rather than endless talking to them in vain about ameliorating their atrocious behavior. Democrats are facing the same choice with Trumptards.

Was the Civil War Inevitable?

Before Lincoln turned the idea of “the Union” into a cause worth dying for, he tried other means of ending slavery in America. What we feel when we study Lincoln’s life through the war is not so much the force of fixed convictions imposed on others as a sense of his discovery, in real time, of what he believed.

By Adam Gopnik | April 21, 2025

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/28/lincolns-peace-michael-v
orenberg-book-review-1861-jay-winik


Out of guilt or amnesia, we tend to treat wars, in retrospect, as natural disasters: terrible but somehow inevitable, beyond anyone’s control. Shaking your fist at the fools who started the First World War and condemned millions to a meaningless death seems jejune; historians teach us to say that the generals did their best under impossible conditions. Mournful fatalism is the requisite emotion, even when mad fury would be more apt. Efforts at de-escalation are cast as weakness or cowardice, while those who lead nations into catastrophe are praised for their “strength of character,” or for stoically accepting what was supposedly unavoidable. We rarely honor those who turn back at the brink. John F. Kennedy’s compromise during the Cuban missile crisis is an exception, though only because prudence and caution—our removal of nuclear missiles from Turkey—were neatly covered up and presented as pugnacity and courage: we had made the Russians “blink.”

The habit of describing war with metaphors drawn from natural disasters is as old as war writing. Homer himself uses natural metaphors to ennoble violent human actors: Achilles is a wildfire sweeping across the Trojan plain. Given what Greek warfare actually entailed—pitched battles of close combat, where victory meant cutting others to death with edged weapons—the figure feels less like a metaphor than a mask.

So it is with us. The Civil War lingers in memory as brutal and heartbreaking, but also as heroic and tragic, accompanied by an Appalachian campfire fiddle. It is the altar of American existence—a sublime sacrifice and a perpetually contested example—so thoroughly sanctified that to ask if it might have been avoided by pragmatic compromise feels almost obscene. No war, no Lincoln, no Emancipation Proclamation, no Gettysburg—neither the battle nor the address—to inspire and instruct us? And yet three-quarters of a million people died, and the enslaved people in whose name the war was fought emerged still trapped in an apartheid terrorist state. Was it worth it?

In “1861: The Lost Peace” (Grand Central), Jay Winik—the author of several fine works about American history—takes up that question of whether the Civil War might have been avoided. The title overpromises a little. Nowhere in the book do we encounter a truly plausible compromise that might have averted the conflict. What Winik offers instead is a portrait of two sides talking past each other, rather than with each other. Still, he traces the efforts of those who genuinely wanted to prevent war and the trauma of secession—and shows how Abraham Lincoln tried at first to listen and then at last refused. Download Jay Winik’s books at https://libgen.rs/search.php?&req=Jay+Winik

The early chapters are given over to what will be, for many, a familiar story. We hear again how an underrated, grotesque-looking backwoods lawyer with scant experience (one term in Congress and two failed Senate runs

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Wednesday, April 23, 2025 11:32 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
The Trolley Problem is bullshit made up by college fart sniffers.

Ezra Klein is a douche bag.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

Trumptards and Confederates are/were absolutely evil but they feel/felt that their behavior is normal and necessary for their happiness and they won't stop until dead. Lincoln chose killing Confederates rather than endless talking to them in vain about ameliorating their atrocious behavior. Democrats are facing the same choice with Trumptards.



Do it tough guy. You keep talking about it every day, but you're a dirty little pussy and you have no stones.

Stop being a whiny little faggot and go start your Civil War.

Give me one good reason to put you into the fucking ground for good.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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THG
Wednesday, April 30, 2025 12:51 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by THGRRI:

If you meet the requirements ( slightly to the right, middle and liberal ) and you have an interest in starting a discussion say so.






Comrade signym, check it out. Thousands of posts by Jack and SECOND in one of my threads. Thousands of them. Guess you're wrong again when you posted nobody but me posts in my threads. And where were you when you posted that, in one of my threads of course; dummy.

T

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Wednesday, April 30, 2025 2:37 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by THG:
Quote:

Originally posted by THGRRI:

If you meet the requirements ( slightly to the right, middle and liberal ) and you have an interest in starting a discussion say so.






Comrade signym, check it out. Thousands of posts by Jack and SECOND in one of my threads. Thousands of them. Guess you're wrong again when you posted nobody but me posts in my threads. And where were you when you posted that, in one of my threads of course; dummy.

T




OH PICK ME!!!! PICK ME!!!!!


We come here to laugh at you every day, Ted.

We're only responding to you bumping all your threads which show a hilarious timeline of all the things you thought were true but turned out to be lies. All of your failures. You're the only one adding anything new to your threads and keeping them alive. Nobody would pull them up from the 12th page where they belong if you didn't do it every other day.

These threads are a timeline of your failure of a life, because THIS is all you are. Politics is all you are. The Democratic Party is all you are.

And your Party is Dead, and your time is almost up as well.

It's really sad how you choose to use what is left of it.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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THG
Wednesday, April 30, 2025 8:32 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:

Originally posted by THG:
Quote:

Originally posted by THGRRI:

If you meet the requirements ( slightly to the right, middle and liberal ) and you have an interest in starting a discussion say so.






Comrade signym, check it out. Thousands of posts by Jack and SECOND in one of my threads. Thousands of them. Guess you're wrong again when you posted nobody but me posts in my threads. And where were you when you posted that, in one of my threads of course; dummy.

T




OH PICK ME!!!! PICK ME!!!!!


We come here to laugh at you every day, Ted.

We're only responding to you bumping all your threads which show a hilarious timeline of all the things you thought were true but turned out to be lies. All of your failures. You're the only one adding anything new to your threads and keeping them alive. Nobody would pull them up from the 12th page where they belong if you didn't do it every other day.

These threads are a timeline of your failure of a life, because THIS is all you are. Politics is all you are. The Democratic Party is all you are.

And your Party is Dead, and your time is almost up as well.

It's really sad how you choose to use what is left of it.






I’m independent Gilligan. It means I don’t blindly follow any political party. I’ve told you this many times. Yet you still cannot grasp the concept of someone being their own person. Not just another follower. You are MAGA. This means you are a follower. And, influenced by stories created by others who avoid the truth.

The trillions lost in the stock market crash is just the beginning. It is MAGA that’s dying. It is destroying itself. Which is why the whole world is laughing at Trumps’ intellect, well, lack thereof.

And Gilligan, there is something else that I am. I am a truth teller. As you post bullshit, conspiracy theories and lies because you hate, I post the truth.

OH yeah, as for me posting in threads I’ve created, don’t you? I've been to a few of your threads over the years. I'm pretty sure I've seen you posting there. You're a funny guy Gilligan.

T

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Thursday, May 1, 2025 12:12 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by THG:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:

Originally posted by THG:
Quote:

Originally posted by THGRRI:

If you meet the requirements ( slightly to the right, middle and liberal ) and you have an interest in starting a discussion say so.






Comrade signym, check it out. Thousands of posts by Jack and SECOND in one of my threads. Thousands of them. Guess you're wrong again when you posted nobody but me posts in my threads. And where were you when you posted that, in one of my threads of course; dummy.

T




OH PICK ME!!!! PICK ME!!!!!


We come here to laugh at you every day, Ted.

We're only responding to you bumping all your threads which show a hilarious timeline of all the things you thought were true but turned out to be lies. All of your failures. You're the only one adding anything new to your threads and keeping them alive. Nobody would pull them up from the 12th page where they belong if you didn't do it every other day.

These threads are a timeline of your failure of a life, because THIS is all you are. Politics is all you are. The Democratic Party is all you are.

And your Party is Dead, and your time is almost up as well.

It's really sad how you choose to use what is left of it.






I’m independent Gilligan. It means I don’t blindly follow any political party. I’ve told you this many times.



And it's been a lie every time you've made that claim.

You don't have any thoughts of your own. You speak in headlines and political cartoons.

You are 100% Democrat through and through and you are the stupidest person I have ever known.

And your bit about being a "truth teller" is beyond hilarious. Everything you ever posted here turns out not to be true in retrospect. You should stop cataloging all of your failures to figure out when you're being lied to in all these threads.

Your dead party is all the evidence anyone needs to see this.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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THG
Thursday, May 1, 2025 1:30 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:

Originally posted by THG:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:

Originally posted by THG:
Quote:

Originally posted by THGRRI:

If you meet the requirements ( slightly to the right, middle and liberal ) and you have an interest in starting a discussion say so.






Comrade signym, check it out. Thousands of posts by Jack and SECOND in one of my threads. Thousands of them. Guess you're wrong again when you posted nobody but me posts in my threads. And where were you when you posted that, in one of my threads of course; dummy.

T




OH PICK ME!!!! PICK ME!!!!!


We come here to laugh at you every day, Ted.

We're only responding to you bumping all your threads which show a hilarious timeline of all the things you thought were true but turned out to be lies. All of your failures. You're the only one adding anything new to your threads and keeping them alive. Nobody would pull them up from the 12th page where they belong if you didn't do it every other day.

These threads are a timeline of your failure of a life, because THIS is all you are. Politics is all you are. The Democratic Party is all you are.

And your Party is Dead, and your time is almost up as well.

It's really sad how you choose to use what is left of it.






I’m independent Gilligan. It means I don’t blindly follow any political party. I’ve told you this many times. Yet you still cannot grasp the concept of someone being their own person. Not just another follower. You are MAGA. This means you are a follower. And, influenced by stories created by others who avoid the truth.

The trillions lost in the stock market crash is just the beginning. It is MAGA that’s dying. It is destroying itself. Which is why the whole world is laughing at Trumps’ intellect, well, lack thereof.

And Gilligan, there is something else that I am. I am a truth teller. As you post bullshit, conspiracy theories and lies because you hate, I post the truth.

OH yeah, as for me posting in threads I’ve created, don’t you? I've been to a few of your threads over the years. I'm pretty sure I've seen you posting there. You're a funny guy Gilligan.
T






And it's been a lie every time you've made that claim.

You don't have any thoughts of your own. You speak in headlines and political cartoons.

You are 100% Democrat through and through and you are the stupidest person I have ever known.

And your bit about being a "truth teller" is beyond hilarious. Everything you ever posted here turns out not to be true in retrospect. You should stop cataloging all of your failures to figure out when you're being lied to in all these threads.

Your dead party is all the evidence anyone needs to see this.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon




Nothing else to say

T

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Thursday, May 1, 2025 1:57 AM

So shut the fuck up for once then.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Thursday, May 1, 2025 1:58 AM

You still didn't tell us what you were doing when you went into hiding for 3 weeks after the election, Ted.

You weren't cutting yourself, were you?

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Thursday, May 8, 2025 9:45 PM

Forced Amnesia

By Fintan O’Toole

The metamorphosis of J. D. Vance from economic realist to champion of Trump’s grievance-fueled politics reveals how little Democrats have done to connect with working-class Americans.

May 29, 2025 issue

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2025/05/29/forced-amnesia-fintan-otoo
le
/

In Hillbilly Elegy, his best-selling 2016 memoir of “a family and a culture in crisis,” J.D. Vance, now vice-president of the United States, gives an evocative account of the relationship between his hometown and the heroic age of American industrial capitalism.1 The beating heart of Middletown, Ohio, was its steel plant, then called Armco. Vance encapsulates the self-respect and sense of purpose that came from working there:

My grandfather loved the company and knew every make and model of car built from Armco steel. Even after most American car companies transitioned away from steel-bodied cars, Papaw would stop at used-car dealerships whenever he saw an old Ford or Chevy. “Armco made this steel,” he’d tell me. It was one of the few times that he ever betrayed a sense of genuine pride.

Yet the Vance of Hillbilly Elegy, coming to consciousness toward the end of the twentieth century, knows very well that the world of Papaw’s pride is gone. Indeed, Papaw himself knows it. He has no interest in seeing his grandson follow him into the steel plant:

“Your generation will make its living with their minds, not their hands,” he once told me. The only acceptable career at Armco was as an engineer, not as a laborer in the weld shop. A lot of other Middletown parents and grandparents must have felt similarly: To them, the American Dream required forward momentum. Manual labor was honorable work, but it was their generation’s work—we had to do something different. To move up was to move on.

What both Vance and his grandfather understood back then was the ruthlessly dynamic nature of capitalism. Vance was born into Ronald Reagan’s America, when neoliberalism—the belief that market forces must be liberated from regulation, high taxes, overactive government, and any real sense of social obligation—was reshaping the “commonsense” understanding of the economy and society. In the 1980s this ideology was pulling off the great trick of credibly presenting itself as a set not of ideas or value judgments but of undeniable facts that everyone had to accept. As Gary Gerstle writes in The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order (2022), “A key attribute of a political order is the ability of its ideologically dominant party to bend the opposition party to its will.” Neoliberalism became a political order in exactly that sense. Both Republicans and Democrats effectively told the industrial working class that its life of manual labor was over. Market forces had to be obeyed, and what they demanded was precisely what Papaw told J.D.: America had to do something different.

Papaw’s wisdom is most potently dramatized in a pivotal scene in the 1998 movie Primary Colors. The film, based on Joe Klein’s roman à clef, is a thinly disguised account of Bill Clinton’s dramatic campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1992. John Travolta’s Jack Stanton is an obvious proxy for Clinton in his Comeback Kid phase, when he overcame lurid revelations about his sexual promiscuity to open a path to the presidency.

The critical moment in the movie comes when the embattled Stanton addresses a meeting of workers in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It is based on a speech Clinton gave in the city in February 1992, but in the movie the location is the cavernous shop floor of a factory that has already closed. As Travolta speaks, the camera cuts away frequently to men in hard hats and women with hard faces, most of them white—anxious representatives of the declining American working class. The candidate lays on his good old boy southern charm. But then he becomes deeply serious:

I’m gonna do something really outrageous. I’m gonna tell the truth…. No politician can reopen this factory or bring back the shipyard j

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