Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Campaign 2016

In this case the label was used solely to identify a group that shares one or other provable trait and decide whether they had been targeted or not. It doesn't ascribe anything other than that to this group.
Example: you may say that a group of people is comprised of folks of Northern European descent. You can even get more specific and say that they hail from the UK. However, what doesn't make sense is to attribute any monolithic trait or behavior to a diverse group of people, even when they share some common provable characteristic.
My comments are based on the latter and not the former. Labeling for the purpose of identifying some factual and provable trait, i.e., born in the UK, is not the issue. The issue is the extrapolation of that fact into a trait that generalizes ways of thinking, ways of behavior, etc.
I believe my comments were quite clear on that point.

Anti-Trump Republican Evan McMullin to launch independent bid for presidency


Politico

Not sure how much effect this would have for the Dems (many people on the conservative train might have just stayed home) but it might have the effect of further taking votes from the Drumpf.

And adding votes to the down ballot Republicans...

But can he actually get onto the ballots in time for the elections?

Good question...


Link

Yes, it's all valid. Let's see Donald's every little medical condition in the past seven years.

Conservatives Are Desperate to Pretend Donald Trump Never Happened
They want him to drop out not just to protect the country, but to sweep him under the rug.


New Republic

I did not lump "all of them" into one bin, I said that those on the very extreme regressive left often have more in common with those on the very extreme oppressive right.
That's why the linear scale of Left-to-Right in politics is more aptly depicted as a kind of "horseshoe" because there seems to be evidence that once one ventures too far toward the extremes of both Left and Right, strange similarities begin to appear.


It often attempts to correct itself with disastrous results.
You see, once again, I am focusing on the extremes in both groups and one behavior they have in common is devotion to a very fundamentalist code of conduct that lashes out at the moderate centers IN both Left and Right.
Both extremes are overly fond of tagging the moderate centers as sellouts, imperialists, stooges, toadies for the elites and criminals who must be silenced at all costs, even at the cost of democracy itself. The other glaring similarity is that ALL of the above tags prove to be pure projection and blame shifting.

Psychological projection is a psychological theory which says such humans defend themselves against their own unconscious impulses or qualities by denying their existence in themselves while simultaneously attributing them to their targets.

Eventually a schism occurs in the minds of most extreme regressive leftists because their would-be liberal values find themselves in conflict with their inner fascist, and the inner fascist wins.
It can be a moment where the bubble fails and they are exposed to the harsh realities of life, it can be a personal trauma where key figures in their small circle hurt them, it can be almost any trauma which causes a shift in the magnetic poles of their psyche.
Or it can be as simple a reality as being forced to live by the very values they seek to impose on others.
In any case, at that point they often experience an identity crisis so unsettling that they seek the shelter of whatever will provide cover for that inner fascist, because their conduct is that of the average schoolyard bully. The bully needs protection, and it finds refuge in the codes and values of the extreme right.
That is when the jump across the ends of the horseshoe occurs.

It explains why almost all of the key figures in the Reagan era neoconservative movement are former ultra leftists.

The bullying tactics remain, the projection tendencies are nurtured, the fundamentalism legitimized and the intolerance is justified.
All that is required is that small sacrifice in personal values, a switch from Left to Right.
Since democracy and tolerance aren't important to them and never have been, and since intellectual laziness is a key component to preserving the bubble, it's almost unnoticeable for them, especially once they are nurtured enough to regain their confidence.

A scientific theory must be a well substantiated explanation of a phenomenon or set of phenomena. In order for horseshoe
theory to be valid, it needs to be able to accurately describe a phenomenon, and has to be backed up by a significant
amount of evidence. Aside from that, exceptions must be be explained as not inherently violating the theory,
otherwise the theory itself is false.
What exactly does horseshoe theory state? Quoting Wikipedia:
"The horseshoe theory in political science asserts that rather than the far left and the far right being at opposite
and opposing ends of a linear political continuum, they in fact closely resemble one another,
much like the ends of a horseshoe."
So, in order for this to be considered a valid theory, one must have a good body of evidence suggesting that
far left always ends up being more similar to the far right than to the political center. Does that exist?
No, not at all. Anarchism, usually considered even farther to the left of most communist ideologies (note here that
there is not just one),is the polar opposite of fascism in almost every way, and is far more similar to liberal democracy
than it is to fascism. If horseshoe theory were valid, then anarchism must closely resemble fascism, or there should be
an explanation for why it doesn't, yet, horseshoe theory doesn't provide such an explanation, and it clearly breaks down
whenever we expand the far left and far right to include more than just Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Nor does it actually provide an explanation for anything. It's just a claim of coarsely and selectively observed evidence.
It just says "x will lead to y" and tries to pass this off as a theory. In reality, it doesn't predict or
explain evidence, it just claims observed evidence (which is quite thin and limited, and carefully selected to support its own tenets)
and then says "yeah that's what always happens because ????? (no underlying reason)."
This is just bad science, plain and simple.
Another problem arises when one realizes that there is no single left-right spectrum. Assuming all ideologies are
just more left or more right wing versions of each other is bad politics in and of itself, because it ignores the
many things that make each ideology different.
When even the basic assumption of your theory is flawed, your theory itself is flawed.
It also confounds political radicalism with political extremism. Just being dogmatic and using violence to
advocate your opinion doesn't automatically make your opinion extremely radical, yet horseshoe theory assumes it does.
It is possible to be a social democrat who advocates violence or an anarchist who advocates pacifism.

When far left "liberalism" exerts fascist characteristics:
Stein’s VP Pick Called Support For Charlie Hebdo Victims ‘White Supremacy’

I am liberal, but I'm not an extremist.
Stein's VP really IS the kind of "bomb throwing leftist radical" that Republicans claim Obama was. Now, when the whole world gets to see and hear Ajamu Baraka speak his mind, Republicans should be ashamed and should immediately apologize to Sanders, Hillary and ESPECIALLY Barack Obama for character assasination they've engaged in for all these years.
Maybe conservatives NEED a reminder of what a bomb throwing leftist radical really sounds like to remind them that Sanders, Clinton and Obama represent reasoned moderate views.

This "horseshoe theory" is new to me. But my immediate takeaway is that the horseshoe is not a circle, hence the far right and far left, though they share some similarities, ostensibly bomb throwing, they will never actually meet.