6 Comments

The violence is Trump's fault. He has encouraged it from the beginning. It's he Republicans who need to tone it down. I just hope that the Biden campaign can figure out a way out of this mess.

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I feel your unease as well since one of the candidates wants to radically change our Country. I'm taking all polls with a grain of salt since they haven't been too accurate over the past cycles. As it gets closer to election day I think the MAJORITY of Americans will realize we can't have another Trump term and the women of this Country will bail us out. The Dems in congress not supporting the incumbent need to close their mouths in public and get on board. It really is embarrassing.

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Thank you for the data that indicates its not just donor class elites among Dems who are speaking up about preferring another candidate. I had bought into that narrative, based on my own anecdotal findings that everyone I spoke with thought we all need to hold firm. It's basically, vote blue, no matter what.

I do think, that if they do decided to change the ticket, that it should be done via ranked choice voting, with all the delegates at the convention participating. We have to get off this hyperpartisan duopoly and change the incentives so people can't win just by attacking the other.

RCV really could bring down the temperature. Let's introduce more sanity into our electoral process. We need electoral reforms.

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Just 3 cents' worth: (1) I'm glad to hear "anecdotal evidence" such as that presented because I trust the source, and qualitative research has been for me a favored research method. (2) Use of the term "selective outrage"--especially in this context--says tons about our collective reactivity about seriously dangerous events. It's a predictable, pathetic, and unread rhetorical move. (3) Along the same line as unlearned discourse--the power of images has become so potent because many choose not to read and allow images and memes to be all there is to a story. Rather than do difficult processing to challenge personal beliefs and unconscious biases. Photojournalism has and continues to be powerful, but viewers are required to analyze and think about images. The sad tale is the blood on the face image, with fist raised, will have legs.

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It will likely have much more than ‘legs’. Images have a rhetoric of their own that mainlines emotion.

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I agree with the way you say images have rhetoric of their own that "mainlines emotions." For someone as cruel a savage as the one with blood on his face, this particular depiction--about as satanic an image I've ever seen. Nothing like the brown hair dye dribbling down Giuliani's sweaty face although that is an icky visage that imitates demonic. The other does not pretend his consumed possession.

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