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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Rob Brown

I got an email for this post, and kind of surprised me. I can certainly understand why you don't like Biden, since I never liked him even before he became Obama's vice President, or Clinton's, and never cared for Bill Clinton either,  since he really shifted the party to the right. Not to mention incorporating 3 more countries into NATO before he left office. You like Billie Eilish, her music, but when you found out she supported Biden it turned you off to the point you didn't want to listen to her? Years ago I think that was the reason many people didn't talk politics, since it can really alienate people, but you really are sensitive on that issue. What if she had supported Trump? Not to be nosy, but have you always felt this way? I know during the Trump years people became very alienated from each other which I never understood. I didn't vote in the 2016 election, and was glad Clinton didn't win, since she is someone who is self serving, with an unhealthy need for power, and a war monger. If someone voted for her it wouldn't bother me, unless they were given to hate filled Trump rants, which many people did, and even publicly, and calling for his death. Now that is a turn off. I have lost several relationships with people because I was not a Clinton supporter, but I didn't vote for Trump. I think the hatred and lies spewed by the left, the mainstream media, just about everyone, except those so called "deplorables " was disgusting. Disgusting that the democrats made a concerted illegal effort to try and remove Trump from office. Overall they adopted a very authoritarian stance, yet no one has held them accountable, but hopefully the republicans will investigate those issues, so they are not repeated.  

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Jan 19, 2023·edited Jan 19, 2023Author

You're right that it shouldn't bother me as much as it does, but...unfortunately it does. I've never been good at separating the artist from their work. People have told me that this is going to mean I'll hardly be able to enjoy anything, and they're right, but...I don't know, for whatever reason I've often got the same mindset as the people who refused to listen to the Dixie Chicks after they denounced Bush. Those aren't the sorts of people I want to be like, but here I am not wanting to listen to certain music either for the same reason: "I hate their opinions."

Anyway, if Eilish had supported Trump I wouldn't have liked that either, but I think I might have taken it better. Maybe because anybody who endorsed Trump would at least not be in denial about how shitty Biden was. At this time, members of MAGA get on my nerves less than Blue MAGA. I'm sick of hearing about Russia, about how Trump needs to go to prison whereas both Obama and Biden are saints, about how important it is to combat "misinformation" by any means necessary with Ted Lieu actually saying on the record that he would LOVE it if he were able to control everybody's speech, and the rest of it.

At least with Trumpers, if I bring up something like the deep state they're going to agree with me that it's a real thing and that it's a problem. And I don't need to explain to them why Hillary sucks. With liberals they're going to demand how I could possibly hate the brave men and women in the CIA protecting our precious democracy, or how I could deny that America was sexist when a competent, experienced, brilliant woman like Hillary Clinton could lose to somebody like Donald Trump. Trying to explain to people like that why the CIA is bad or why Hillary is bad is a maddening exercise in futility, as I know from experience.

I guess whether or not I take somebody off of my playlists depends on how long I've been listening to them, too. I'd only heard two Billie Eilish songs ("Bad Guy" and another one I forget the title of) before that DNC appearance, so I didn't really qualify as a fan yet. Whereas I'd put up with Axl Rose saying stupid shit for longer, just because I've been a G n' R fan for like 35 years. (Also possibly because Axl being a dickhead or an idiot isn't exactly going to take me by surprise, knowing his history.)

Well, seeing this comment (thanks for subscribing by the way) reminded me that I ought to check to see what you said to me in the comments under Caitlin's article, so I'll do that a little later. Just kind of got distracted by other stuff, so sorry about that.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Rob Brown

What a headache over at Caitlin's post. I hate when people misinterpret what you say, or project their thoughts on you're comments. I don't know if you have always been sensitive on political issues, but I know the Trump years made life difficult, and relating to people even more so. I also found that anti-Trumpers were a horror to deal with and they caused a lot of division. I have never experienced anything like it. It started with a long time friend since childhood, although she was no ones dream friend, just too narcissistic. She knew I wasn't going to vote for Clinton, even though I was a registered democrat, so she sent me a hate mail that accused me of being a racist, a homophobe, and xenophobe, in other words I was all that they claimed Trump was. She knows I am none of those things, but it made no difference. That kind of interchange repeated itself several times so I called it quits. Haven't spoken to her since. A cousin supported Clinton, and the fact I didn't made a Trump win more possible which was totally unacceptable to him. The coup in Ukraine which I opposed was also a real bone of contention as was Russia's annexation of Crimea. I felt let things be, which was something that made him apoplectic, well he was a captain in the military.  One thing led to another until we were no longer talking, his choice, and shortly after that he was diagnosed with cancer and died. Now comes a brother who has such a pathological hate for Trump you could not even speak his name. Once Biden was elected you were not allowed to be critical of him, or anyone in his administration even though he engaged in four years of Trump hate. Cousins who claimed to be liberal posted a popular meme on Facebook that Trumpers were an ignorant lot, with no sense of morality. I posted on their site that no liberal makes that kind of claim since it is highly prejudicial. Even celebrities felt free to wish Trump dead. The powers that be created such a division is this country which I never experienced before. When Biden gave a speech many months ago with the backdrop of a fiery red brick wall, it's doors protected by armed guards, emphasized for me the division the democrats created. It was a message that they would never allow satanic Trump, or his demonic base back into the halls of power. Not only do the democrats try to remove an elected president from office, impeach him in the house, but during his term in office ally him with our "enemy" Russia. They can call a riot at the Capital an insurrection, even though no one came armed to overthrow the reigns of our government. They even let hundreds in through the front door. Then they institute an unconstitutional Jan 6 comm. Was the FBI involved in this, probably. It's happened before. Now we find that Schiff was instrumental in blocking the Biden laptop story from twitter. Greenwald resigned when the so called left wing site, The Intercept, refused to let him publish an article on the Biden Laptop. The mainstream media by and large supported the democrats, and the deep state gave them their full backing, so it all gets to sound very authoritarian, and on it's way to becoming more so, but I think there has been a backlash that is growing. I also think my own sense of trust, when it comes to Biden and the democrats has been greatly diminished, and they have become an alien lot to me, someone who was a registered democrat ever since I could vote. I'm now an independent.  

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I'm sorry you've had to deal with all of that. I haven't had anybody I knew too well stop speaking to me over this, but I've been involved in some nasty arguments, and the tone of those is something that I can't honestly say I've never been to blame for.

"Bush was worse than Trump and it's not even close" is something I saw non-Blue-MAGA lefties saying often on social media, and I told that to someone in my family after they started going off on Trump again.

Guess what they said in response. You'll never guess, although you might not be surprised at it even though I was shocked to hear it.

"Bush at least respected the constitution."

WHAT????

I asked "You don't remember?!" incredulously.

"No, I don't," was the answer.

"He locked people up indefinitely without trial and he had them TORTURED, which is cruel and unusual punishment if I ever heard of it! How constitutional is THAT?!"

Thankfully, this particular person conceded that I had a point, even though I guess technically the victims not being American citizens might make the constitution inapplicable from a purely legal standpoint. Morally I would say nobody should be tortured and that's why the Geneva conventions forbid it and why the Bush administration had to make up arguments for why they shouldn't be bound by the Geneva conventions. But the letter of the law can make all the difference, whether we want it to or not.

Still, I could have also pointed out how Bush was spying on Americans without a warrant before Obama took over and did the same, and that is *absolutely* unconstitutional.

I mostly ignored US politics until 2003, when I was shocked and enraged to see them invade Iraq. I never thought they would do that. If I actually lived in the States I might have been as propagandized as so many other people, but Canadian media at the time wasn't beating the drums for that particular war the way the US media was, and I don't believe in striking first, so I did react negatively.

(Canadian media would reveal itself to be capable of being extremely shitty and pro-establishment itself later on, of course, with the way they covered the Freedom Convoy.)

I HATED Bush and all of the Republicans, except for Ron Paul after I heard him gave a surprisingly reasonable speech about how hawkish US foreign policy is making people suffer and die needlessly and how that would make even more people hate America. I heard the Democrats' seemingly anti-war rhetoric and assumed they meant it. I actually thought John Kerry was as different from Bush as night and day, and I voted for him.

I also voted for Obama. And then I saw what Obama did, which was basically everything Bush had done, except now people didn't seem to object to it.

I've lost a lot of respect for Jon Stewart and Bill Maher over the years, but both of them pointed out ways in which Obama was doing Bush-like things back then. I think Jon only did that once, though. Maher, as insufferable as he can be, had what was still a good response to his live audience when they booed some criticism of Obama:

"He's not your boyfriend," Bill Maher said. And yeah, they were acting like he was their boyfriend.

Or as Jimmy Dore might say, they were acting like children of alcoholics who would say "How dare you say my mother has a problem! There's nothing wrong with her at all! So she drinks a little, that's normal! Shut up! SHUT UP!"

This is something else that makes me feel old, because I remember the Bush years and as soon as Democrats began voting the same as neocons I saw them as the enemy. To give credit to another person I can't stand anymore, back in 2012 or so it was Cenk Uygur who explained to me and the rest of his audience what a double tap drone strike was and how Obama was doing those.

Often when I would tell somebody these things, they'd want proof. So I'd need to find something to show them, and it would need to be from a source they were familiar with and trusted, of course. If I found something like that to show them, they might be surprised, but they might also say "He's definitely not perfect, but Republicans are worse."

Meanwhile I'm thinking, if not necessarily saying out loud, "Motherfucker, the Democrats are literally doing the same things as Republicans! That makes them the same as Republicans, not less bad, unless the only issues you care about are abortion and guns and whatever!"

Knowing all of that, though, I never thought I would see the day when the Democrats stopped being a very slightly less shitty alternative to Republicans and actually became WORSE.

Glenn's done a good job of pointing out how there used to be all of these positions which were considered left-wing 20 or even just 10 years ago which we now have Democrats rejecting and Republicans at least paying lip service to. Like you know, being anti-war and pro-free speech to name a couple.

And people still think that they're the good guys.

I guess some of that's because Obama is good at *seeming* to be a decent and nice person. Swear to god, even after I learned that he wouldn't do anything the left wanted him to do or even do what he promised to do, even after I learned the he protected the torturers and was blowing people up all over the planet and was renewing the PATRIOT Act while saying we needed it to fight terrorism (after ripping the PATRIOT Act on the campaign trail, no less)....even with me knowing all of that, if I walked into a room where I heard him talking, after a minute or two I'd think to myself "I've got to get out of here. This asshole is such a good speaker that I'm starting to forget how he's an asshole and a literal war criminal."

All of that wasn't enough for him to convince people to vote for Hillary, of course, but people still like him. Because they don't know.

It sucks SO much.

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When Trump ran in 2016 something went on that I never experienced before. The woman next door whispered to me, "I think I can tell you. I voted for Trump," a number of people I knew seemed uncomfortable in telling others they voted for him. Maybe they were afraid of being identified as one of those deplorables Kilary referenced. Interesting she can call out Trump as a xenophobe because he wanted to stop Muslims from a handful of Muslim countries from entering the US, not good, but it's okay for her to instigate middle eastern wars, or give a thumbs up to go to war based on lies, that have destroyed whole countries and have killed millions. These kinds of Inconsistencies are so common place in the political arena. There are people who want to repeal the second amendment, usually democrats, but they have little to say, if anything about the droner and chief who killed thousands of innocents during his reign. Political parties are like cults in that respect. Don't question, just follow the leader. Although I was always a registered democrat, and now because of their antics in the Trump years I'm a registered independent, and I will never vote for them again. They told me in those years just how authoritarian they can be. Now it's Biden's time to say goodbye, no more dreams of becoming a 2 term president. Those records that they're finding here and there and everywhere are sending a signal he's not fit to be president. Although I never liked Biden, I hope he finishes out his term since it would be terrible to have Kamala giggle us into a nuclear war.

I tried to lend my support for Caitlan on Consoritum News which I no longer read. After Robert Parry's death, mostly anti-Trump articles were posted and they were no better in many ways then CNN. I once posted in the comment section that there were elements in the BLM movement which kicked off in NY that were looting stores and some that participated in violence. Floyd's brother had referenced the same thing the previous day. They blocked me, kicked me off. That never would have happened under Robert Parry. I came to loathe those sites. They became little more then a venue for those who spewed hateful rhetoric about Trump, and failed to address the many failings of the democrats, like spewing the lie of Russia-gate. There's was a black and white world. No wonder there is substack now, and thank God for it.

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