I understand completely, and think we do deserve better. And have to believe and hope that we will get better. Could hardly get worse, eh? :P

I think of “we” as all of us, all Americans. Even people who voted in ways that I disagree with. You can decide that perspective is “bad,” I guess, but maybe it’s just different.

See my reply to Hamlet Goes Safari. I think it’s just a perspective shift.

I’m sorry. I live in Trump’s home county; we know him better than anyone, and we went 90-10 for Hillary and can’t believe orange conman bamboozled so many people, so there’s a certain amount of free-floating bitterness.

Well, I suspect we’re not terribly far from agreement, but my take is more like “We were SO FUCKING LUCKY to have him be the face of our country for eight years,” given the general batshittery that has overcome the American political scene that has reached its apotheosis in the election of Cheeto Mussolini.

I think by “we didn’t deserve him” what some of us are referring to, at least, is the level of disrespect and vitriol that was poured his way. Has a sitting congressman ever screamed “YOU LIE!” at a president in the 240-year history of our republic while he was delivering the State of the Union? Nope. Traditional…

If you’ve never read Dreams from My Father, highly recommended.

I agree that we didn’t deserve him. We were very lucky for eight years, luckier than we know.

Though I suspect we all feel like this

We do deserve it.

Feeling the same way.

I’m glad my correction landed. This thread has been so heavily pruned that, coming back to it a day later it’s hard to read now. I did misspeak, originally and hashed stuff out nicely, after a lot of back-and-forth. A lot of these discussions just aren’t showing up in normal view. Kinja is goddamn annoying.

I can hold enough conflicting ideas in my head at once to think that both you and Jane have good points to make. There is something vital to our democracy to celebrate the fact that we have little revolutions here every four or eight years, with no tanks or blood in the streets, and power passes coolly and calmly from…

That GIF pretty much says it all.

I would even go farther and simply call it the most singular evil event in the 5000+ year history of humanity. There is no comparison to the machinery of a modern 20th century industrial state being turned towards genocide. I have read the Wannsee Protocols. They knew what they were doing.

Well, you’re right there. I spoke generally, and was not really expecting a scholarly level of scrutiny on a Jez comment. My fault.

“Constructive”?

No one was trying to fool you. And nobody’s being fake, I hope. There’s nothing “dishonorable” about trying to find common ground once a conversation has run off the rails. Quite the contrary, really.

Friend, people have problems communicating on the internet. It’s a truism. My original comment was meant as a sad little comment about common humanity and the identifying with individuals rather than numbers. DonnaL had an ax to grind about my chosen stats. I’ll still stand by those stats, and I think most honest…

Good. We are on the same side on this, even if we quibble about details in ways that may be less than productive.