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posted by martyb on Friday February 09 2018, @12:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the Where-is-Waldo-county?-dept. dept.

Small town Republican thoughts on refuting the alt-right. In The Republican Journal:

I want to make one thing very clear: The Waldo County Republican Committee absolutely, unequivocally condemns Nazi and KKK ideologies and actions, as well as any other kind of bigotry, and we encourage all of our voters and the community at large to do the same.

For fellow Republicans out there, worry not, we don't like Antifa's ideology and actions either, but we need to clean our own house; we need to worry about our own responsibilities.

Such honesty, and clarity of thought!

The most dangerous part of politics today is identity politics, trolling, pathos and a severe lack of critical thinking. You cannot defeat the insidious hatred of bigoted politics with more hate. By doing so, you morph the conversation away from policy and ideology to silly label syntax, eventually devolving completely into back and forth verbal gymnastics. Make no mistake, these trolls are ready for you as you stoop to their level, and they beat you up with mountains of experience.

So what do we do? Very simple. Stay neighborly by controlling your reaction. Seek out those with whom you disagree, try to understand them first, and politely offer your counter argument.

And it looks like the Republicans in Maine, if not in Illinois, are rejecting the alt-right.

The way to defeat Mr. Kawczynski is not by attacking him, but by attacking his ideas. Here are some flaws in his thinking: His immigration ideas are antithetical to the Maine Republican party platform, a section of which states, "We support the assimilation of legal immigrants into Maine society."

Kawczynski's ideas stand in contrast to Maine history and culture; in fact, it is white folks with racist ideologies who pose the greatest threat to Maine's foundation, not other races of people.

Another brilliant tidbit:

Ultimately, all you have to do is walk outside with your eyes open in this state to see that Kawczynski's fearmongering about "white genocide" is completely laughable.

Entire guest column is well worth a read.


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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by meustrus on Friday February 09 2018, @05:26PM (7 children)

    by meustrus (4961) on Friday February 09 2018, @05:26PM (#635590)

    people who claim to be conservative, but don't have the guts to object to progressive politics.

    You are making a huge mistake assuming that other Republicans agree with you. They don't. It's not a matter of "guts". It's a matter of what their moral and rational minds have always believed to be good policy.

    Here are a few examples of policies that have been uncontroversially Republican for a good while now, but which I expect you would consider "progressive politics" anyway:

    • Free trade - still popular with Republican farmers who export a lot of their crops
    • Assimilating legal immigrants, as in let's get everybody to speak English and believe in the American Dream
    • Rule of law, in opposition to groups like the KKK and Antifa, as well as organized crime
    • Limiting the ability of the groups above to acquire military weapons (in areas where these groups are a problem)
    • Adequately funding government services like law enforcement, transportation infrastructure, public education, libraries...
    • Balancing spending and revenue, i.e. not cutting taxes without a plan to also cut spending

    Not saying that I do or don't agree with these policies. But you'd be throwing out at least half of the Republican party by asserting that true Republicans oppose them.

    --
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  • (Score: 2) by PocketSizeSUn on Friday February 09 2018, @09:37PM (6 children)

    by PocketSizeSUn (5340) on Friday February 09 2018, @09:37PM (#635731)

    Free trade - still popular with Republican farmers who export a lot of their crops

    Citation please.

    For the record there is no american farmer selling crops overseas. They only sell to a local grainery. It's companies like Cargill that make all the markup between the domestic price and the international price and get filthy rich in the process.
    An individual farmer would need something on the order of 125,000 acres in production (minimum) [25 million bushes] before any international buyer could seriously consider placing an order against a years production.

    Free trade on commodities has almost no effect on the domestic price these days. (Pretty much all the impoverished countries are now self sufficient with regard to domestic cereal production).

    There was an Alibaba direct sale of US cherry crop to China a few years ago ... China buyers apparently pay a lot more for cherries.

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday February 10 2018, @12:27AM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday February 10 2018, @12:27AM (#635801) Journal

      They only sell to a local grainery.

      Not strictly true, but true enough for your argument, I think. I have been party to transactions between individual farmers/ranchers and far off business partners. I haven't been party to any overseas transactions, but "international" would include US/Canada deals, as well as US/Mexico, and Canada/Mexico deals. But, the vast majority of farmers/ranchers tend to sell their product locally, because their financing and other debts are local. If the banker loans you twenty thousand against your season's harvest, you are kind of limited to arrangements that your banker approves of.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 10 2018, @04:37AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 10 2018, @04:37AM (#635870)

      Pretty much all the impoverished countries are now self sufficient with regard to domestic cereal production

      In some places, crop yields are already down due to climate change.
      Growing zones for crops are shifting toward the poles.

      I heard someone on Pacifica Radio ("Alternative Radio"?? "Letters and Politics"??) talking about how there is a trade in virtual water via grain markets.
      Things didn't sound all that self-sufficient to me.

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

      • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday February 10 2018, @04:46AM

        by Gaaark (41) on Saturday February 10 2018, @04:46AM (#635873) Journal

        I don't know what THIS spring will deliver (been a lot harder this winter: much colder and a lot more snow... like when i was a kid, not like lately), but the last few years has seen a longer growing season here in Canada: moved up a whole 'planting zone', whatever it's called.

        I like it! :)

        --
        --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
    • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday February 12 2018, @07:17PM (2 children)

      by meustrus (4961) on Monday February 12 2018, @07:17PM (#636787)

      From my local newspaper: Iowa corn farmers tell Trump: 'Don't withdraw from NAFTA' [desmoinesregister.com].

      Commodity producers are a little smarter than you seem to think. They might sell local, but they know enough about the distribution chain to know that a lot of their product ends up overseas.

      --
      If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
      • (Score: 2) by PocketSizeSUn on Tuesday February 13 2018, @06:24AM (1 child)

        by PocketSizeSUn (5340) on Tuesday February 13 2018, @06:24AM (#637019)

        That isn't true for Iowa corn, hence the huge ethanol subsidies, that's all local production. Include silage and domestic animal feed and that accounts for pretty much all the Iowa production.
        From the article

        the fourth year of farm incomes dropping below the cost of production

        NAFTA participation isn't going to do f* all to fix that. If Iowa is selling corn below cost to Mexico and Canada that is itself a violation of NAFTA anyway (selling below cost is called dumping). We call them commodities because there is no 'market differentiation' on these productions. Mexican corn and Canadian corn is just corn on the commodities market. Same as Iowa corn and Nebraska corn ... it's just corn.

        https://www.iowacorn.org/media-page/corn-facts/ [iowacorn.org]
        9% of Iowa corn leaves the state of Iowa. A *very* *very* small portion of that may even leave the country ... say 1%.

        All told ... NAFTA participation by the US (as it is implemented today) is net loss for Iowa, not including the ~1% of Iowa corn that sold at a net loss.

        • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday February 13 2018, @02:46PM

          by meustrus (4961) on Tuesday February 13 2018, @02:46PM (#637116)

          I'm not here to argue that NAFTA in particular or free trade in general are good or bad for agriculture. I'm here to argue that NAFTA in particular and free trade in general is favored by Republicans, especially farmers, in the state of Iowa and likely throughout the entire corn belt.

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