> It’s a difference in degree (e.g. protests to disrupt the Kavanaugh hearing) not a difference in kind.
Differences in degree can matter, sometimes hugely.
> the machine recount should have been the final word. It doesn’t actually matter what the votes were—from a statistical standpoint it was a tie. It’s more important that the process not seem open to manipulation (and the process happening in Florida was not something anyone could trust).
Hmm — very interesting thought; you might have a point there about perceived trustworthiness as opposed to actual vote count.
No, the machine recount should have been the final word. It doesn’t actually matter what the votes were—from a statistical standpoint it was a tie. It’s more important that the process not seem open to manipulation (and the process happening in Florida was not something anyone could trust).
>,First of all, context matters:
No, baseline political norms must be black and white. Political parties disagree about fundamental things, like God and how to raise children. They often find each other’s values disgusting, and worry about how their kids will fare in the country the other side is creating. These people will never see eye to eye on context-laden issues. The norms must be such that you can operate within them alongside people you don’t like and don’t trust.
> It's one thing for one backbencher congresswoman to say "get in their face." It's another matter entirely for the outgoing POTUS to say, "fight like hell" on Vote Counting Day to an armed mob that he summoned and then to send them off to the location of the counting, and finally to sit watching them on TV (and even encouraging them) as they invade the Capitol and disrupt the proceedings.
It’s a difference in degree (e.g. protests to disrupt the Kavanaugh hearing) not a difference in kind. Especially when you consider something like RESISTANCE—taxpayer paid employees of the federal government basically committing mutiny against their CEO that the taxpayers duly elected.
> Second: If you feel compelled to paint all "Democrats" with the same brush, then please don't use Maxine Waters — and sure as hell don't use sporadic acts of arson (NOT "lighting cities on fire for months") — as supposedly being representative of Dems.
It wasn’t isolated acts of arson. Every storefront in my wife’s office block in DC was smashed. Courthouses were lit on fire in Portland. And the whole Democratic Party sanctioned and egged on the rioting, saying “riots are the voice of the unheard,” for months.