Incivility in Politics

The point of this isn't to blame one side or the other in incivility in Politics, both sides have plenty to be ashamed of. But I hate hypocrisy and lies, or bad rationalizations. Punching your sibling and then crying, "they started it" when they hit back, is a bit chickenshit to me, and should be called out. Either side can take the high road, and "lead by example". If your side is trying to do better, but is falling short, is far different than just using the other sides bad behavior to rationalize your own. So this just lists some of the history of incivility in the nations politics, to call bullshit on whoever is claiming, "they started it".

Examples

2018.06.22 The Red Hen - 2018.06.22 The Red Hen
2nd Amendment was for muskets - There’s a common argument (fallacy) that the Second Amendment didn't project changes in armament / technology, thus it couldn’t have been intended to apply to modern pistols and rifles (most of whose designs actually go back to the 1800’s or early 1900’s). This argument completely fails on the intent of the 2nd (which was about balancing power), but it even more strongly fails on understanding gun technology and history. At the founding of the country they had 8-shot revolvers, 9 shot "repeaters", 11-shot field artillery pieces, Jefferson even had a 22 shot repeating rifle. Not to mention "burst mode" automatics that fired up to 20 rounds with a single pull of the trigger. And during the remainder of their lives, not one of the founding fathers came forward to complain that technology was advancing beyond the intent of the 1st or 2nd Amendments.
Black Lives Matter - Black Lives Matter
Gun Deaths - A lot of people claim they care about gun deaths, or gun accidents, or gun murder rates. When you explore that a little deeper, you find most people are not being truthful (either with you, or themselves). How do we know? Examples like this where there are far more serious issues, and the ignore it. Either they don't know the basic facts (and should be ignored as uninformed), or they don't really care about what they claim to care about (and should be ignored as untruthful) -- but if you know about guns, and gun deaths, you can't come out on the side of what the gun controllers want.
Guns don't kill people: Democrats kill people - If gun controllers are choosing not to "get it", I'll start messing with them, and play fallacy for fallacy. I point out: "guns don't kill people, democrats kill people", just do the math ≈80%+ of murders (and crime) is by democrats -- thus whites/Asians with guns, aren't the problem, blacks/latinos/democrat voters with guns are. So, "we don't need gun control, we need Democrat control", since the rest of don't have a gun problem (white republicans have 1/4th the murder/violent crime rates than the Democrat average does). Suddenly, their inner statistician comes out. They point out (accurately), that: correlation isn't causality, so we haven't proved cause. they suddenly want to talk about how you can't assume that everyone in a dataset is responsible for the aberration (e.g. most democrats aren't the problem, it's a small subset that's dragging the average up), they cry, "Averages, don't tell the whole story" ...and I reply, "ya don't say?" They conveniently forget all those things when broad-brush blaming all gun-owners (or all of America), for the crimes/murders of a few illegal gun owners (and gang-bangers) in a few democrat controlled cities. But you narrow it down to a smaller more responsible subset (those who vote democrat), and they suddenly remember statistics 101 and recognize all the problems of the very fallacious arguments they've been using against our gun liberties all along. They just only selectively recognize those problems depending on if they are being applied to their side, on the other side. Proving they're not dumb, just dishonest.
Handgun Emoji - Emoji's mean things. But when political correctness/the left gets involved, they can't win arguments on merit/reason, so they often pervert the language, to trip people up and distract. For example, a tool (gun) was too hostile... so they had to change the language to omit it, and replace it with a squirt gun instead (🔫), even-though a squirt gun and a real gun have completely different meanings. Stalin would have been proud and that kind of revisionism. Google, Apple and Microsoft, see nothing wrong with it.
History - History
Iraq War - Iraq War
Memes-MarchForOurLives - Generation TidePod demonstrates their life's ambition is to be sock-puppets for the Police State.
Nuclear Option - Nuclear Option
Polemic Democrats - Polemic Democrats
Reasonable Gun Laws - There’s an oft repeated fallacy that “all we want it a few more ‘reasonable’ gun laws” but (insert either the NRA, evil republicans, gun-nuts), won’t be reasonable. So let's talk about "what's reasonable", and explain some of the complexities that the reasonable laws on the books already look like, to understand why some are so hesitant to ask for more. If you want to be reasonable, you first need to be informed, and get the basics right. How can you reason with an ignoramus (well meaning or not)? So the first step to reasonable gun laws, is educating the gun controllers, on what guns are, how they work, and how bad the current laws are.

Conclusion

I know it looks like I'm blaming all the bad behavior in History on the Democrats or Progressives. I'm not. I'm contrasting the popular narrative in our schools, media and by the left, that they are the saints, and the other side is always at fault. As soon as they can admit that their shit does stink, just as bad as the other side, we can make progress. Not because the conservatives/Republicans are saints, they just have an older and more mature demographic. When you're young and gullible, every cause is the most important one in the universe: you haven't yet learned to value moderation, skepticism, manners, harmony and leaving others alone. So everything is a cause, and their ability to moderate (including tone and hysterics) just isn't there yet. And more young people are Democrats and are used by the Democrats as their sock puppets.

So the right's PRIME motivation is NOT sensationalizing how bad everything is to enact change, even if they use it as a tool like the left does. Their position is towards stability and "things aren't that bad" is different than the chicken-little left that sees every crisis as an opportunity to prey on youth and gullible or disenfranchised minorities to get change -- if things stop "progressing" to the left, then it's the end of civilization and we're reverting back to slavery, Jim Crow, when women couldn't vote or get birth control or abortions, and other excuses for cater-walling to get out the vote, protests or things that draw attention (and money/votes) to their coffers. The sides motivations are different, so the behaviors are different.

One of the key points of this article is to refute the utterly inane claim that "this all started with Trump". No it didn't. There has always been a bit of incivility in politics -- what's changed is that since the 1970's the Democrats not only convinced themselves they're right on everything (especially the stuff that the History and the facts proves them wrong on)... and that they are morally superior, and thus anything they do is justified: lie, scream obscenities, punch a Nazi in the face (and all conservatives or people who don't think like them are closet-Nazi's), take away their rights. They can suppress free speech, undermine the Constitution (1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 9th, and 10th amendments), and so on, and that their side does nothing wrong -- but when you show them they have, it's OK because it was justified by the other side's far milder reposes to their prior agitations.

Written 2018.07.05