5 ms·

Where's the outrage from all the people flying Gadsden flags (the coiled rattlesnake with the motto "Don't tread on me"?) This is governmental overreach and sh

• bb88 10mo ago
  The untrained eye at a distance can't tell the difference between the snake and the poo emoji.
  • drcongo 10mo ago
    Best not to tread on either of them.
• 1123581321 10mo ago
  The libertarians I know are upset about ICE, Gaza and Venezuela and seem to post angrily online a lot. However, they don’t seem to be joining in on the largest protests that are typically coded for Democratic-party and leftward. I don’t know what it would take to see political unification in mass protests.
  • chung8123 10mo ago
    In general the parties don't like the other party and insult each other. It is funny if you are trying to get someone to come over to your side insulting them isn't the best technique. If you are just trying to keep your base riled up insulting the other side seems to work.
    • pstuart 10mo ago
      That's a wide brush you're painting with. While I could be easily characterized as being on a particular side because of the values I hold, I abhor tribalism and hew to the truth of the values as I best understand them. I've had extremely respectful dialog with others who don't embrace my values and I find their reasoning to be specious at best. I have respect for old school conservatism that advocates for limited government but contemporary conservatives no longer seem to care about that (except if it's programs they don't like). My initial comment still stands: the governmental action of the OP is intended purely to be oppressive and it will not be wielded with any sense of propriety.
      • chung8123 10mo ago
        If we are talking about the general political parties it is going to be a wide brush. To the original point there are some that hate the tribalism and some will join the protests just based on their own personal views. My opinion was that it is not wide spread though because of the insults that the political parties throw back and fourth making joining a joint protest unwelcoming. Friendships across the political lines is rare.
        • pstuart 10mo ago
          I don't buy the "both sides" argument anymore (except for corruption by party leadership). The fact that conservative stalwarts have left the GOP shows we're in new territory. I abhor partisan politics and am more than happy to point out flaws on the Left but we've gone through the looking glass on the Right. It's literally a cult of personality and I take no pleasure in saying that. While a two party system is not a good thing (George Washington warned us about political parties), having proper debate over policies and ideas is a good thing to have and we no longer have that. I've followed American politics for half a century and can unequivocally state that the situation we have here is not normal.
• taeric 10mo ago
  Realistically, it takes ringleaders to get a circus. As such, I can only assume that the lack of show online is that the people that would be the ringleaders are largely the ones currently getting what they want. I'm cynical enough that I think this is fairly clear evidence that some political affiliations are less sincere than others, but very few people will acknowledge this.
• dc396 10mo ago
  Wrong tribe. The outrage is reserved for the D-tribe actors (e.g., imagine the reaction if this was done in the Biden or Obama administrations), not the R-tribe, at least until members of the R-tribe are personally and individually impacted.
• danudey 10mo ago
  Those people aren't being tread on; as long as the government is only treading on "others" (i.e. liberals, and minorities) then they're completely fine with throwing out the entire constitution. They've been told that these people are trying to destroy their country. and they're happy with the government burning down everything that makes America "America" if it means that the people they've been taught to hate end up suffering. I can guarantee that the people who argue that the second amendment is more important than keeping people from mass-murdering school children would happily cheer on the government if they started confiscating guns from "the enemy".
  • scarecrowbob 10mo ago
    Yeah, in general that flag is not the full sentence: "Don't tread on me, but the government sucks because it doesn't tread on you hard enough."
  • mindslight 10mo ago
    > I can guarantee that the people who argue that the second amendment is ... important ... would happily cheer on the government if they started confiscating guns from "the enemy". Something very close already happened. It wasn't confiscation, but rather with the exact scenario of night time home defense they always trot out. Kenneth Walker lawfully exercised his second amendment right to night time home defense and the government jackboots breaking down the door retaliated by using the place as a shooting gallery, resulting in the death of his partner Breonna Taylor. Rather than realizing the same thing could easily happen to them when exercising our cherished second amendment rights, most of the second amendment fundamentalist types simply rallied around the government agents who committed the murder. I think the hypocrisy and lack of reasoning ability is strong to begin with, but I think con artist Grump also has an uncanny knack for making gullible people rationalize anything.
    • scarecrowbob 10mo ago
      I have come to feel a (if not -the-) central tenet of white supremacy culture is the idea that the state is there to protect "white" folks and punish everyone else. So when I see people do math that way, I don't think those folks are hypocritical; rather, I think they are just white supremacists, regardless of how they'd protest about that understanding of their position.