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DC and The Culture of Payback

Lord Tammerlain

Lord Tammerlain

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It seems to me that DC has devolved into a system of payback. Truly starting from the Clinton admin with the endless probes into Clinton, eventually leading to impeachment over the equivalent of a BJ. Bush II for the first few years was clear of it due primarily to 9/11 and did not see the same as what Clinton did. Obama saw endless lawsuits over where he was born. Hillary endless inquiries on a variety of issues that never went anywhere.

Now we see a mass number of assaults on the Trump admin (justified or not). Many of the issues I expect would have seen as being minor in the past but are being hyped up as a form of payback for past deeds (yes some of them by Trump's birtherism)

Question outside of a war, will both sides ever come back to say a more normal behavior or is DC only going to get worse?
 
Lord Tammerlain said:
It seems to me that DC has devolved into a system of payback. Truly starting from the Clinton admin with the endless probes into Clinton, eventually leading to impeachment over the equivalent of a BJ. Bush II for the first few years was clear of it due primarily to 9/11 and did not see the same as what Clinton did. Obama saw endless lawsuits over where he was born. Hillary endless inquiries on a variety of issues that never went anywhere.

Now we see a mass number of assaults on the Trump admin (justified or not). Many of the issues I expect would have seen as being minor in the past but are being hyped up as a form of payback for past deeds (yes some of them by Trump's birtherism)

Question outside of a war, will both sides ever come back to say a more normal behavior or is DC only going to get worse?
Click to expand...

Great question! My sense this will continue (sadly in my view) because it has worked. The only way to stop this will be for it to no longer work. That will happen IMO when independents are no longer swayed by the attack.

I do think that this past election cycle could have seen this had the democrats not overplayed their hand by 1) putting up a lousy candidate and 2) basing their reason to exist on identity politics.

So we will need a election cycle where this trash does not work and then the political parties will look for a new game plan.
 
Lord Tammerlain said:
It seems to me that DC has devolved into a system of payback. Truly starting from the Clinton admin with the endless probes into Clinton, eventually leading to impeachment over the equivalent of a BJ. Bush II for the first few years was clear of it due primarily to 9/11 and did not see the same as what Clinton did. Obama saw endless lawsuits over where he was born. Hillary endless inquiries on a variety of issues that never went anywhere.

Now we see a mass number of assaults on the Trump admin (justified or not). Many of the issues I expect would have seen as being minor in the past but are being hyped up as a form of payback for past deeds (yes some of them by Trump's birtherism)

Question outside of a war, will both sides ever come back to say a more normal behavior or is DC only going to get worse?
Click to expand...

I think and hope that the Democratic Party is going to implode. I think the public is sick and tired of being sick and tired. Those on the fence, possible voters for Democrats in 2018, are not being convinced. They are being further driven away.
 
Lord Tammerlain said:
It seems to me that DC has devolved into a system of payback. Truly starting from the Clinton admin with the endless probes into Clinton, eventually leading to impeachment over the equivalent of a BJ. Bush II for the first few years was clear of it due primarily to 9/11 and did not see the same as what Clinton did. Obama saw endless lawsuits over where he was born. Hillary endless inquiries on a variety of issues that never went anywhere.

Now we see a mass number of assaults on the Trump admin (justified or not). Many of the issues I expect would have seen as being minor in the past but are being hyped up as a form of payback for past deeds (yes some of them by Trump's birtherism)

Question outside of a war, will both sides ever come back to say a more normal behavior or is DC only going to get worse?
Click to expand...

I don't think the left will be satisfied until every outrage group has it's own political party along the lines of Italy. It was never very effective before, because sharing ideas was clumsy. But now, with social media and a press owned by a few corporations, political dissolution is easier to achieve now.
 
MaggieD said:
I think and hope that the Democratic Party is going to implode. I think the public is sick and tired of being sick and tired. Those on the fence, possible voters for Democrats in 2018, are not being convinced. They are being further driven away.
Click to expand...

Exactly the "partisan" one-dimensional mindset that is at the very core of the current dysfunction in Washington.

Lets just discount the millions of Democratic voters as though they are some "sub-human" element.

I have a news flash for you: The "general" non political public is very sick and tired of your brand of politics as well.

Conrats: You managed to lower your parties bar even lower than it already was. Bravo..............:)
 
Lord Tammerlain said:
It seems to me that DC has devolved into a system of payback. Truly starting from the Clinton admin with the endless probes into Clinton, eventually leading to impeachment over the equivalent of a BJ. Bush II for the first few years was clear of it due primarily to 9/11 and did not see the same as what Clinton did. Obama saw endless lawsuits over where he was born. Hillary endless inquiries on a variety of issues that never went anywhere.

Now we see a mass number of assaults on the Trump admin (justified or not). Many of the issues I expect would have seen as being minor in the past but are being hyped up as a form of payback for past deeds (yes some of them by Trump's birtherism)

Question outside of a war, will both sides ever come back to say a more normal behavior or is DC only going to get worse?
Click to expand...

This tit for tat thing is old. But I guess that is politics. The challenge we face as a nation is the left is forcing their socialist agenda down the throats of the American people, and we’re tired of it. The left has been chased from 1200+ seats nationwide over the last for years. The American people have spoken. But the left is like a reoccurring cancerous growth, they will not take no for an answer.

They’ve whipped themselves into an angry frenzy and are trying to overthrow a duly elected president. Globalist funded OFA, headed up by BO, have sent his operatives are out for their pound of American flesh. They are filled with hatred not only for the country, but for the American people for electing DJT who is interrupting their quest for total socialist control. How long will decent normal Americans tolerate this?
 
Vetplus40 said:
Exactly the "partisan" one-dimensional mindset that is at the very core of the current dysfunction in Washington.

Lets just discount the millions of Democratic voters as though they are some "sub-human" element.

I have a news flash for you: The "general" non political public is very sick and tired of your brand of politics as well.

Conrats: You managed to lower your parties bar even lower than it already was. Bravo..............:)
Click to expand...

I have no idea what you're talking about. If you can't make a coherent responsive post, why do you bother?
 
It is going to get worse. People have memories about past transgressions and too many want payback. Unfortunately the most evil special interest groups are the Democrat and Republican parties and things are decided based on that identity more than any individual rationale.

But I have to call you on the BJ part. France has the right idea when they consider any consensual sexual relations between an employer and employee to be felony rape. There is a clear difference of power that impedes proper consent. Either the person agrees perhaps in hopes of getting unfair advancement or out of fear of getting fired or lack any further advancement. This doesn't have to be stated. The people will read into it. Clearly one can get a BJ from whomever they want and that would be a private matter. But not when it involves a power relationship. Women's lib ended then. One can not have armed police or secret service escort people up to your office, have you drop your pants and not be committing something. Even Zimbabwe had the sense to terminate the guy who tried to do that stuff at the same time.
 
chuckiechan said:
I don't think the left will be satisfied until every outrage group has it's own political party along the lines of Italy. It was never very effective before, because sharing ideas was clumsy. But now, with social media and a press owned by a few corporations, political dissolution is easier to achieve now.
Click to expand...

The US political system would not support that number of political parties. You could get some regional parties that are effective in Congress, but not the senate or Presidential race. Which of course means, it would not likely to occur.

But yes through the use of the internet, so many special interest groups will be able to find biased info that supports their viewpoint, against "reality" and this is not limited to one side. The right has/had the tea party section, the strict christian conservatives, the Montana style leave me alone conservatives and a larger number of middle of the road moderates. The left has/had Occupy, Bernie Supporters etc and a larger number of middle of the road moderates.

But the moderates do not make noise, the extremists do, so the parties move further towards the extremes to support the loudest noisemakers only for the worse to occur for the nation as a whole
 
Lord Tammerlain said:
The US political system would not support that number of political parties. You could get some regional parties that are effective in Congress, but not the senate or Presidential race. Which of course means, it would not likely to occur.

But yes through the use of the internet, so many special interest groups will be able to find biased info that supports their viewpoint, against "reality" and this is not limited to one side. The right has/had the tea party section, the strict christian conservatives, the Montana style leave me alone conservatives and a larger number of middle of the road moderates. The left has/had Occupy, Bernie Supporters etc and a larger number of middle of the road moderates.

But the moderates do not make noise, the extremists do, so the parties move further towards the extremes to support the loudest noisemakers only for the worse to occur for the nation as a whole
Click to expand...

You make an excellent and well reasoned point. One can argue that Trump ignored the loudest voices and spoke to the quiet ones.
 
washunut said:
Great question! My sense this will continue (sadly in my view) because it has worked. The only way to stop this will be for it to no longer work. That will happen IMO when independents are no longer swayed by the attack.

I do think that this past election cycle could have seen this had the democrats not overplayed their hand by 1) putting up a lousy candidate and 2) basing their reason to exist on identity politics.

So we will need a election cycle where this trash does not work and then the political parties will look for a new game plan.
Click to expand...

You made some really great points. As long as anything is politically beneficial it will continue to exist.
 
Lord Tammerlain said:
It seems to me that DC has devolved into a system of payback. Truly starting from the Clinton admin with the endless probes into Clinton, eventually leading to impeachment over the equivalent of a BJ. Bush II for the first few years was clear of it due primarily to 9/11 and did not see the same as what Clinton did. Obama saw endless lawsuits over where he was born. Hillary endless inquiries on a variety of issues that never went anywhere.

Now we see a mass number of assaults on the Trump admin (justified or not). Many of the issues I expect would have seen as being minor in the past but are being hyped up as a form of payback for past deeds (yes some of them by Trump's birtherism)

Question outside of a war, will both sides ever come back to say a more normal behavior or is DC only going to get worse?
Click to expand...

i recall Daniel Ellsberg releasing The Pentagon Papers for the nation/world to see how deceptive the government was about the war in viet nam
some might see that as payback. others would view it as a patriotic effort to open the curtains for the public to observe governmental wrongdoing
that information likely accelerated our nation's withdrawal from a senseless military conflict

this is why the fourth estate is so essential to the maintenance of democracy

only wish it had done its job in this instance; the lives that could have been saved:
Questions about the Gulf of Tonkin incidents have persisted for more than 40 years. But once-classified documents and tapes released in the past several years, combined with previously uncovered facts, make clear that high government officials distorted facts and deceived the American public about events that led to full U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.
Click to expand...
https://www.usni.org/magazines/navalhistory/2008-02/truth-about-tonkin

sometimes the government gets it wrong
often without design
but sometimes with malice
the public needs to know so it can determine the motivations behind the wrongdoing

if the media had been more effective in broadcasting the lies of the dicknbush regime, which lies got us involved in the war in iraq, would that have prevented the boondoggle that cost vast amounts of America lives and treasure

call it payback, if you will, but whatever we call it we should defend the media's outing of government mistakes
 
Lord Tammerlain said:
It seems to me that DC has devolved into a system of payback. Truly starting from the Clinton admin with the endless probes into Clinton, eventually leading to impeachment over the equivalent of a BJ. Bush II for the first few years was clear of it due primarily to 9/11 and did not see the same as what Clinton did. Obama saw endless lawsuits over where he was born. Hillary endless inquiries on a variety of issues that never went anywhere.

Now we see a mass number of assaults on the Trump admin (justified or not). Many of the issues I expect would have seen as being minor in the past but are being hyped up as a form of payback for past deeds (yes some of them by Trump's birtherism)

Question outside of a war, will both sides ever come back to say a more normal behavior or is DC only going to get worse?
Click to expand...

How about payback for the way the Republicans treated Obama?

That's OK, I feel I've paid them back just by having Donald Trump as President so now he can go and have a successful administration.

**** is really going to hit the fan come the big payback; 2020-2026 Convergence.
 
chuckiechan said:
I don't think the left will be satisfied until every outrage group has it's own political party along the lines of Italy. It was never very effective before, because sharing ideas was clumsy. But now, with social media and a press owned by a few corporations, political dissolution is easier to achieve now.
Click to expand...

Lord Tammerlain said:
The US political system would not support that number of political parties. You could get some regional parties that are effective in Congress, but not the senate or Presidential race. Which of course means, it would not likely to occur.

But yes through the use of the internet, so many special interest groups will be able to find biased info that supports their viewpoint, against "reality" and this is not limited to one side. The right has/had the tea party section, the strict christian conservatives, the Montana style leave me alone conservatives and a larger number of middle of the road moderates. The left has/had Occupy, Bernie Supporters etc and a larger number of middle of the road moderates.

But the moderates do not make noise, the extremists do, so the parties move further towards the extremes to support the loudest noisemakers only for the worse to occur for the nation as a whole
Click to expand...
Correct in the bolded.

To get the European style of an effective multiple party (>2) governance, would require a parliamentarian form of government or something similar.
 
washunut said:
Great question! My sense this will continue (sadly in my view) because it has worked. The only way to stop this will be for it to no longer work. That will happen IMO when independents are no longer swayed by the attack.

I do think that this past election cycle could have seen this had the democrats not overplayed their hand by 1) putting up a lousy candidate and 2) basing their reason to exist on identity politics.

So we will need a election cycle where this trash does not work and then the political parties will look for a new game plan.
Click to expand...
Accurate analysis, I believe.

Unfortunately several decades ago it was found that fear and negativity were more effective in political ads and rhetoric, than an uplifting message. This is why today attack ads far outnumber non-attack ads (though attack ads are also the result of not having positive solutions to offer, as well).

Concurrent with the above, it was found that alternate facts and reality could be fostered upon some voters and accepted by them, leading to the rise of Rush Limbaugh, Fox news, Breitbart, and things like Donald Trump's Birtherism campaign.

The above are the phenomena that laid the foundation for a charismatic lying huckster to ascend to the Presidency!
 
Lord Tammerlain said:
It seems to me that DC has devolved into a system of payback. Truly starting from the Clinton admin with the endless probes into Clinton, eventually leading to impeachment over the equivalent of a BJ. Bush II for the first few years was clear of it due primarily to 9/11 and did not see the same as what Clinton did. Obama saw endless lawsuits over where he was born. Hillary endless inquiries on a variety of issues that never went anywhere.

Now we see a mass number of assaults on the Trump admin (justified or not). Many of the issues I expect would have seen as being minor in the past but are being hyped up as a form of payback for past deeds (yes some of them by Trump's birtherism)

Question outside of a war, will both sides ever come back to say a more normal behavior or is DC only going to get worse?
Click to expand...

I think the main problem is gerrymandering which has caused congress to become more and more extreme. Government won't change until that's fixed. Next is the influence of infotainment silos that the 2 sides live in where they are constantly being told that they are right and the other side is evil/stupid.

I read a book that seemed to pretty fairly track the evolution of "news" into entertainment/propaganda. I'll post more on that topic once I've digested the content and made up my mind on its merits.
 
What he was rying to say is that if you are a person that in politics you make it them and us, which you seem to do, then it will never change. Reading your posts the problem is always the Dems or libs, never the GOP or the cons. In real life it is never that simple. Usually it is a little of both sides. I think in reality the worst of this tit for tat began with Carl Rove. And now Ttump is making a living on it. Attack and when the other side fights back, come back harder and then blame it all on them. And now we have the GOP complaiining about the Dems obstructing them when that is all the GOP did for eight years against Obama. As I say, tit for tat.
 
Eric7216 said:
It is going to get worse. People have memories about past transgressions and too many want payback. Unfortunately the most evil special interest groups are the Democrat and Republican parties and things are decided based on that identity more than any individual rationale.

But I have to call you on the BJ part. France has the right idea when they consider any consensual sexual relations between an employer and employee to be felony rape. There is a clear difference of power that impedes proper consent. Either the person agrees perhaps in hopes of getting unfair advancement or out of fear of getting fired or lack any further advancement. This doesn't have to be stated. The people will read into it. Clearly one can get a BJ from whomever they want and that would be a private matter. But not when it involves a power relationship. Women's lib ended then. One can not have armed police or secret service escort people up to your office, have you drop your pants and not be committing something. Even Zimbabwe had the sense to terminate the guy who tried to do that stuff at the same time.
Click to expand...

That would never work in America, work is where we tend to find our sex partners.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
That would never work in America, work is where we tend to find our sex partners.
Click to expand...
Nothing wrong with that when it involved equals or people not in a chain of command. And it works in the military which punishes officers who have relations with subordinates. Or at least has rules against that type of thing.
 
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