Oh, there's nothing "sort of" about it- it's the kind of tunnel vision and mentality that make up the extremists on every side (the ones screaming in everyone's face and giving their respective parties a bad name). It's a little sad that the post you responded to laments the loss of meaningful debate in the very same breath as a sweeping umbrella vilification of the entire party and every one of its values.

The first step of a debate is to have a set of understood and shared facts, the reality of whatever is currently going on. On some issues, yes, this is still possible. On the vast majority, and unfortunately the ones most pressing, it is not.

If you talk to the average Republican voter about, for example, climate change, you'll hear about China is faking the whole thing to make American industry less competitive, or about how, since we got some snow last night, that must mean it's a hoax. If you talk to them about job growth, they'll tell you we need to resurrect the COAL INDUSTRY, which was in rapid decline already and has only accelerated as coal continues to be less and less appealing as an energy source, because, you know, it's coal, and it's not very good. Jobs have been slipping in that industry since the 1940's, and automation has only worsened it. Yet Trump campaigns about revitalizing it, and the rest of the Republican party enables that, no matter how unrealistic it is.

It's just non stop conspiracy theories, disinformation, denial of fact, on and on. Watch Fox News some time. It's unbelievable how utterly insane the coverage is. I'm not talking a "different point of view" I'm talking about they are literally destroying any sense of truth to push their agenda, which shouldn't be surprising to anyone paying attention because that's basically what Roger Ailes started the company to fucking do: Appeal to conservative viewpoints that felt left behind as progressive stances became more and more mainstreamed.

This is not a conspiracy theory: Fox News' origins, along with smaller outfits like InfoWars, various talk radio stations, all the way to more recent ones like Brietbart, have been running this grift for decades; enabling the intellectual rot that has destroyed the GOP from it's core, and annihilated everything they ever stood for, all of it murdered on the altar of making money.

I say all of this as someone who is ashamed to acknowledge being a conservative, who has slowly watched the party he grew up believing in become a sad parody of it's former self, able to stand for NOTHING, NOT A THING other than squeezing out the last few dimes before the planet bursts into flames. What the GOP is today is a disgusting husk, a cancer-laden zombie kept moving by Koch brothers money and the sheer refusal of huge parts of the country lacking in proper education to admit they were fucking conned.

> Watch Fox News some time. It's unbelievable how utterly insane the coverage is.

MSNBC is every bit as unhinged as Fox News. It wasn't always that way, but it's become worse and worse over time. Rachel Maddow's ranting and raving about the Russians, panel discussions about Tulsi Gabbard being a Russian asset - it's bad. I feel sorry for anyone who gets their news from either channel.

Except that MSNBC doesn't dominate the left like Fox does the right. There are many networks that liberals watch: MSNBC, CNN, the BBC, etc. etc. and that's not even going into the fact that liberals are generally smarter consumers of news as a whole, reading multiple papers, watching multiple news networks, not to mention independent sources too. Conservatives rarely if ever leave the bubble.

Most liberal-leaning media in the US went absolutely insane over Russiagate. You wouldn't do much better by watching CNN. Every day, the walls were closing in, the big breakthrough was right around the corner. I don't doubt that liberals are typically more "sophisticated" than conservatives in the US, but that doesn't translate into political sense. The greatest condemnation of their sophistication is that so few of them predicted Trump's election, and that so many still have no idea why he won. That's why the Russiagate narrative is so popular among American liberals. It gives them an easy way to explain a phenomenon that they fundamentally do not understand.

I have not seen a single leftist defending Hunter Biden. Hell, the majority I talk to are hoping that's what sinks Biden's campaign, since as a candidate, he's the only weaker option to oppose Trump than perhaps Hillary Clinton was. The only reason he's even IN the primary is because he was attached to Obama, if it weren't for him being the VP, nobody would care who the hell he was. He's failed to run for the presidency, what, 3 times prior?

I don't care about Joe Biden. He's as crooked as any of the other big business Democrats. He'd do the country a tremendous service in just fucking off back to Pennsylvania and never going on TV again.

> I prefer the First Amendment to the truth police.

I welcome the truth police with open arms, because the alternative is what we have now: a free-for-all in which well funded interests, both political and corporate, can spew whatever well produced and intelligent-sounding bullshit they please onto our mass media and an unsuspecting populace. This is not sustainable. I would've really hoped that people would know better and be able to properly vet sources, but it's been proven, again and again, that they cannot, or will not.

We're talking about Democrats, not "leftists." Last debate, Joe Biden denied any wrongdoing by his son, and Cory Booker then chastised the moderators for even asking about Hunter. Elizabeth Warren has also been reluctant to condemn what looks like obvious corruption, which is notable, given that that's one of her signature issues.

> I welcome the truth police with open arms, because the alternative is what we have now: a free-for-all in which well funded interests, both political and corporate, can spew whatever well produced and intelligent-sounding bullshit they please onto our mass media and an unsuspecting populace.

This always sounds like a great idea if you assume that you're the one who will get to decide what's true and what's false. But what makes you think the truth police themselves won't be corrupt? Once they exist, and once they come for your views, it's too late. By throwing away the First Amendment, you're condemning your own views to eventual suppression.

> Joe Biden denied any wrongdoing by his son

I do not care about Joe Biden. He's a disheveled artifact of pretty much everything wrong with the Democrat party. You can criticize him all you want and I'll agree with you but please stop presenting this as though it means anything about the vast majority of the Democrat party, which again, is not supporting him.

> Elizabeth Warren has also been reluctant to condemn what looks like obvious corruption, which is notable, given that that's one of her signature issues.

What "looks like corruption" that she hasn't condemned?

> But what makes you think the truth police themselves won't be corrupt?

You say this as though corruption isn't fought off regularly in basically all functions of Government? And that's not say we're totally free of corruption, because well, yeah. But in general the country gets along okay. It's not stellar and could be improved quite a lot, but in the grand scheme, roads are maintained, government workers are paid, government contractors get paid, our sewage and water systems (in most places) are fine, our electrical grid is pretty standard.

You know it's easy to get disillusioned and say our Government as a whole is a shitheap, but honestly, we're doing okay. Certainly well enough to say that just because something the Government does might be influenced by corruption isn't reason enough, by itself, to not even try.

And this idea that mass media should be policed for something resembling accuracy and honesty means the first amendment is dead is just ridiculous false dichotomy. We police speech CONSTANTLY. Spreading information you know to be false about a person is already covered under the law as libel, and in order to put that law to someone speaking requires THOROUGH, WELL DOCUMENTED evidence, it's not just something that gets thrown around, other than by people who don't understand what it really is. We police speech that incites violence, again requiring thorough proof as we do for any crime. In my mind, there's no difference between that, nor any requirement for the "Truth Police," and going to a place like a talk radio station and say "This host on this date espoused a thoroughly debunked viewpoint that has been proven false, demonstrably, with data, multiple studies, and testimony from experts all over the country. Because of this we're assessing your station a $50,000 fine, and $5,000 per day additionally that this host is on the air and has not yet fully retracted this statement, and accepted that they have been spreading misinformation."

> What "looks like corruption" that she hasn't condemned?

Hunter Biden working for Burisma. She was asked about it, and the contorted answer she gave to avoid condemning it is rather hilarious.

> You say this as though corruption isn't fought off regularly in basically all functions of Government?

And you're proposing giving a corruptible institution vast new powers to control public dialogue.

> And this idea that mass media should be policed for something resembling accuracy and honesty means the first amendment is dead is just ridiculous false dichotomy. We police speech CONSTANTLY.

Libel and incitement are very narrowly defined, and proving either is incredibly difficult. Those laws could be used as a political tool to suppress speech, which is why they're so narrowly construed.

I can predict with 99% confidence what will happen if the truth police are instituted. The truth police will be heavily influenced by the same industries and financial interests that dominate government today. Many views that you hold will be declared false. Black Lives Matter will be declared a form of incitement. Socialism will be declared a false ideology.

I'm just very surprised by how many Americans have decided after Trump's election that the First Amendment has to go. It's very short-sighted.

> And you're proposing giving a corruptible institution vast new powers to control public dialogue.

And you're continuing to argue as though the vast already thoroughly corrupted institution already doing that is somehow better.

> Libel and incitement are very narrowly defined, and proving either is incredibly difficult.

No shit. I'm saying exactly that laws to police speech can be done right. It should be a sizable burden of proof needed, it should be difficult specifically so that the Government can't simply say "that's bad, stop saying it." That's my whole damn point.

> I can predict with 99% confidence

Is this prediction based on something besides your own biases?

> I'm just very surprised by how many Americans have decided after Trump's election that the First Amendment has to go. It's very short-sighted.

I said no such thing. Please read my posts if you intend to respond to them.

> And you're continuing to argue as though the vast already thoroughly corrupted institution already doing that is somehow better.

No, I'm arguing that that institution should not be given vast new powers to determine what can and cannot be said, based on what it deems to be true and false.

> I'm saying exactly that laws to police speech can be done right.

The right way to do it is to not give the government the power to censore "untrue" speech in the first place. What you're proposing is incredibly dangerous, and would be a clear break with the 1st Amendment - the bedrock of American democracy.

> Is this prediction based on something besides your own biases?

It's based on a simple analysis of what would serve the interests of those who wield great influence in government. Since November 2016, I've heard lots of liberals argue for censorship of "untrue" or far-right speech. They seem to imagine that they can create a system in which they will determine what is true or acceptable, and that those definitions will be imposed on the "bad guys." I think that's incredibly naive. Lots of conservatives call Black Lives Matter "hate speech" and the like. If you give them a tool to suppress speech, they'll turn it against BLM and other causes they dislike.

> I said no such thing. Please read my posts if you intend to respond to them.

You're arguing against the 1st Amendment. You want to impose an official government standard of what is true and false, which can be used to muzzle speech. I get that you want this standard to be objective, but the obvious direction that such laws will go is towards wide-ranging political censorship. The 1st Amendment is central to American democracy, and one shouldn't play around with it. Leave it alone. You can't ban people you think are wrong from speaking. Try arguing against them, convincing them.