I got an "The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel" notification for this?

"so my first order of business is to get people engage… I absolutely will use this media circus to sell/promote whatever I damn well please (many other politicians are doing the same thing, they just feed you a bunch of bullshit about it)"

Probably stridently chewing out a barista for being a sheep or something.

"Whatever, you faggot, a dozen Pepes tweeted a few seconds ago."

This is almost literally like what happened when punk bands in the '70s started wearing swastikas and the scene rapidly filled up with real, and real stupid, Nazis.

Being (almost) from Detroit, I'm biased towards the Henry Ford episode. It reveals that pretty much the only difference between Ford and a weird 12 year old boy was just a gob-smacking amount of money.

There's also the line, "Further, the alleged behavior is not representative of who Ben is…"

Part of it is that I don't think the band has actually denied any any of the allegations. My reading of it is that they've kind of just said, "yeah, all this pretty much happened."

A) "Stupid" isn't a mental illness

"Why isn't that a "thing" on the left?"

Wow… that a lot of… okay then.

In regards to your first paragraph: you're bringing a lot of baggage to this conversation.

"Around 32% of Republicans… supported Trump in the primary."

When I ask, "define 'mainstream'" and you respond with, "no, you define it. Oh, and here's an over-the-top satire of your position in order to put you on the defensive," that is the definition of deflection.

Don't deflect. Just explain how in the world it's possible that the guy who served as campaign manager to the duly-elected Republican president is outside of the mainstream of American conservative thought. Explain how the guy who has access to an astounding number of of the levers of power in civil government isn't…

What does the word "mainstream" mean to you that it doesn't include a guy appointed to the National Security Council by the President of the United States

A) Look up the definition of "counterargument". Go ahead, I'll wait.

"Hey, Hitler only considered, like, one-fourth of Russians to be subhumans" is not really a great counter-argument.

Here's a handy sampling

In a few years will all look back fondly at a time when "these go up to eleven" was a reference made by an actor about guitar amps and not a boast by a police chief about fire hoses.