We can read the same words and take something different from them. That reads to me like he was able to pretty easily dismiss the temptation. Maybe he would've been tempted like Boromir was, maybe he would've had the resolve of Frodo, maybe he could've held it for much longer like Bilbo.
His Hobbit-sense saved him there. The only one who can tell us with certainly where it lies in relation to Frodo is no longer able to.
Southern is fairly fluid depending on who you ask. A Floridian thinks they're southern but an Alabaman likely doesn't.
Texas is, well, Texas.
A while ago I was outside Saint Louis and one of the guys who traveled down there with me kept calling that the south.
If you wanna be Midwest you can be. If you wanna be Southern or Western I think that's alright too.
I can not fathom how you can comfortably go from
I never said "just as corrupt".
to
Most of the time, there actually is little difference between Democratic and Republican levels of corruption.
without whiplash.
And no, you didn't directly say that, but you did say
For millions of poorly informed Americans, this is Democrats being just as corrupt as Republicans. We have to quit excusing Democratic “just the tip” corruption.
Which carries that wiggle room. It's plenty of space for the identity politics crowd to claim you know your guy is corrupt and that's why he's going after their guy who isn't. Again, I'm not saying to excuse or ignore corruption but how you say something can be more important than what you say.
If Democratic party supporters won't tackle the corruption problem
What do you suggest they do that they aren't already doing? If you're faced with someone who wants people like you sterilized/exterminated and someone who sucks but will do at least some good things what is your correct course of action?
then a lot of people are going to give up on electoral politics.
And then we'll be worse off. Which is why when I encounter people with that mindset I talk to them and try to get them to understand how that's only going to make things worse. I'm confident I've been more successful than not.
Most of the time, there actually is little difference between Democratic and Republican levels of corruption.
This is absurd. There are no shortage of GOP elected officials you can point out the corruption in. The GOP put a known child molester up for election and despite all the highlighting of that during campaigning he barely lost. The Dem that took his seat was replaced at the earliest possibility by a football coach that doesn't know the branches of government.
Dems may be capable of the same levels of corruption but to claim they're nearly the same "most of the time" is not based in reality.
Democrats serve their donors just like Republicans
That's how our broken system works. I'd love to see it replaced. Do you have any realistic suggestions there?
It's also not quite as true as your oversimplified statement. Look at voting records. You can see trends of Republicans voting for donor interests constantly while Dems may at times but not at others. Net neutrality comes to mind as an easy example.
it's just that Democratic donors are more reasonable oligarchs than Republican donors
And when they're the same donors? Aside from that why do you suppose the more reasonable ones trend toward one side? Coincidence?
Trump is so cartoonishly evil that Republicans have just been made far worse
No, he's been a great diversion. Do you really think their practices have changed since Trump was elected? The only change has been their ability to get away with it which lets them push the line more.
I would like to argue that their guys are corrupt and mine aren't
You will never get that change. The number of humans without corruption in tiny. Then it's just a hop skip and a jump to "power corrupts".
but having to fall back to tit for tat arguments that their guys are worse
That's politics. Even if you did somehow come up with uncorrupted officials the argument is going to stay the same. They'll argue that your guy is corrupt because he wants to let people murder babies, or won't make them believe in Jesus, or any other number of things. To them your people are corrupt because they have different values.
The latter never goes anywhere.
Then you're doing it wrong. It's the only way it's ever going to happen.
I can sell Bernie to a Trump voter, but not Biden.
I don't believe you. To a hard right winger, Trump supporter or not, Bernie is an evil socialist that just wants to give everything away. He's going to destroy the country because no one will work when they can get it all for free. You may not be selling them on Biden but you are absolutely not selling them on Bernie. They'll fall right into Bernie being "thrown out of a commune for being lazy" if they've heard it before.
If you could sell them on Bernie you would absolutely be able to walk them from there back to Biden.
We're clearly not going to agree here. Plenty of people would rather be made aware of their mistakes and that's no less valid than your point of view. Personally I would rather avoid potential misunderstandings than deal with them after the fact. I'm not the only one who feels that way.
In which case wouldn't "nearly a third of voting Americans" be a far more useful phrase than "millions of Americans"? This is functionally the same problem. Allowing a thing to be watered down. Your "millions of Americans" may very well mean a very large part. But then Fred says the same thing about a fringe group and they carry the same weight.
Yes, there's corruption in the Democratic party. I'm not arguing that. I'm saying that when you tolerate "just as corrupt" rhetoric it's exacerbating the issue you're complaining about. And that's their goal. But if they were anywhere in the neighborhood as the same we wouldn't have spent so much time hearing about Hunter.
We accepted a match and they compared it to an inferno. Instead of pointing out the difference, admittedly over and over, you're agreeing that they're both fire and letting them run with that.
Say you're hiring a new employee. One has a few outstanding parking tickets and the other has pending assault and robbery charges against them. The other person reviewing applications with you says "well they're both criminals so there's no reason we shouldn't hire the second guy". From what I see you're essentially saying, "yeah, well..." and the other person runs off to hire the second guy.
You need to be saying, "no. While the first guy also has some issues that need to be addressed and corrected he is nowhere near on the same level as the second. The second guy may very well do damage to our business or our employees."
The things are very different. You can acknowledge the problems in one party without dismissing the larger ones in the other.
If other people are watering down the things you're saying, say them in a way that they can't do it so easily.
Just because you understand someone well enough to correct them doesn't mean everyone else will
Just because you understand them well enough today doesn't mean you will tomorrow
We should all be striving to be better than we are, not breeding resentment from contentment
Oh I'm not directing to complaint at you at all. Apologies if it sounded that way
Mr. Fragile Ego here may be one of the only people a "slam" might matter to.
It still almost certainly doesn't and it would be nice if the word stopped being such a mainstay of headlines
I've got three monitors and a few other PCs that are all interconnected so I can mouse off one on to another.
I just turn my chair
Like when Kirk et al left the galaxy but it's going to take Voyager decades to get back from another quadrant.
We could go on about just Voyager honestly.
Stardates.
The Warp Speed Limit appears to have just been dropped.
Pretty sure Kirk also broke warp 10 before and no one turned in to a lizard.
Star Trek has plenty of inconsistency too, these are just some examples.
It sounds more like you're unhappy someone is criticizing a thing you like. We like it too. Sometimes we do it so someone who is writing can recognize a problem and improve. Sometimes we do it because it's fun. Like Weird Al parodying a song you like.
Is it Star Wars fans complaining about Troi? I always figured it was Star Trek fans. Then again I never understood why there was a divide or why you have to be one or the other?
Even so empathy is the thing that Troi is supposed to excel at. She's the counselor presumably because she's an empath.
Vader, on the other hand is a capable warrior, commands the dark side of the force, is a legendary pilot, leads troops, and senses other force users. At this point neither Luke nor Vader is aware of Leia's sensitivity to the force.
This seems like the equivalent of the Flash being bad at running then saying Superman isn't very fast either.
I've got no problem criticizing Star Wars. There's plenty to over. But this isn't really a good comparison.
Interesting choice given the way that's been shifting slowly back to the more accurate form in the past however many years.
If colloquial usage did trump all, irregardless would've been acknowledged as a correct word well before I was born. It may be the driving force but it's hardly the only, or even constantly deciding, factor