First bit is problematic. What political alignment does "Stephen Colbert roasting of George Bush" suggest? At the time Stephen Colbert was very well liked by conservatives because they thought he was one. He was a liberal pretending to be a conservative in order to satirize conservatives.

Are you a conservative? Then how do you know for certain that conservatives liked Colbert? I know plenty who have never liked him. That doesn't mean conservatives think he never makes good jokes sometimes, no matter who they're about.

It's just so filled with bizarre ideas of like "conservatives don't do drugs or dislike Jesus." Lots of statements that just aren't true, or don't seem to have any political alignment whatsoever. 

Do you think that conservatives can't have crazy ideas about who Jesus is? One of my previous coworkers literally believes that Dr. Fauci is literally the anti-christ. Do you think that Atheists can't be politically conservative?

Conservatives also don't get abortions, because they're pro-life, except when they do, because they think their abortions are different, they are justified. I have incredibly conservative family members that do drugs. There are also conservatives who live off welfare. They just think that their circumstances make welfare justifiable. 

Democrats aren't for violence or guns, until one of their own shows up to a Republican baseball practice and shoots some of them.

What about Q? The crazy conservative conspiracy theory, apparently? Q names both Democrats as well as Republicans, amongst others, so how does that make Q conservative? Maybe because Q is against complete globalism? Since when are all conservatives against that and all liberals for that? Some are for it, some are partially against it, and some are entirely against it.

And you'll also find that some illegal immigrants are conservatives. They also think their particular circumstances makes it justifiable.

I never said all immigrants are liberals. To assume that's what I meant would be a very poor assumption, and since so many assumptions are being made in these conversations, you can't help but wonder how incorrect they may be.

It's a big reason why conservatives get called hypocrites and selfish. Because even if/when there aren't any differences between how liberals and conservatives act in their daily lives (whether it's drug use, abortion rates, welfare, etc), conservatives will frequently view their actions as being better/justifiable. They're "hard working Americans down on their luck. They're not like those other people that are getting so much out of the system even though they could be working instead".

Conservatives say the same thing about liberals, about how they automatically think they're better and are hypocrites with double standards, with plenty to back that up. So looks like that's something both sides share in common.

But I'm getting away from a very important point. It doesn't really matter if he was a leftist or if he was a centrist with lots of right wing and left wing positions. What exactly pushed him over the edge? He wasn't in Nancy's house because he supported her positions so strongly.

Finally. Someone mentions the fact that there may be something else to this. Like maybe his mentally stability is a concern, and that it has nothing to do with his political affiliation. This was the first thing I thought when I heard the story, but that's seen as a pretty poor argument unfortunately, when one side has already labelled him as a riled up conservative. Maybe more effort and time should have gone into the story before big famous names and media started labelling him. How would that help make conservatives look bad though?

On a related note, you seem to have completely skipped over the part where Elon Musk shared a tweet that alleged that this man was Pelosi's gay lover, and that it was a dispute that they had. It doesn't seem to bother you that Elon Musk tweeted out such a claim.

I'm the one who initially explained the Elon tweet to Clinton. All he was doing was making a point. If she's going to jump to conclusions about the story, then so will he. If she's going to post something that's mostly a guess, then he's going to do the same. If she's going to smear the right, he's going to smear the left.

The overall point was, you can either play clean or play dirty, and if you want to play dirty, two can play at that game. Conservatives aren't playing nice anymore. That much has been clear to me for a while now. If the left can get away with it, then so can the right. Either things can go back to being more legitimate, or they can keep getting worse and it's not the right who's going to decide that. That's the stance the right is taking, that looks to be clear, and if the left doesn't like it, the right isn't going to care going forward until things change.

Or you know, don't make any assumptions whatsoever and look at the facts.

All these conversations about this have been nothing but assumptions by everyone, so why does this only apply to me? That seems to be a trend now.

Bolded: Logical deduction.

His mental stability has been talked about immediately. Obviously he isn't right in the head, because otherwise his blog wouldn't have hosted so much rubbish and he wouldn't have gone to Pelosi's house.

As for conservatives looking bad, that has been done by conservatives themselves. Namely by denying that the culprit is a far-right nutjob and looking for every possible excuse to align him with the political left. Do you know what European conservatives do when a far-right nutjob commits a crime? They call it a crime and clearly distance themselves from such people instead of trying to shift the blame or even endorsing it. But then again, Europe has the benefit of the political right being split up into conservatives and far-right nutjobs, whereas in the USA the conservatives seem to happily mix with the far-right all too often. Although after the results of the midterm elections where far-right affiliation has backfired, conservatives may begin to rethink their attitude.

Basically what you've boiled it all down to is insert whatever the hell you want to create whatever narrative you want.  

His own blog writings?  Don't believe them.  Make up your own whatever.

His admission for the attack on the Pelosi's?  Don't believe him.  Make up your own whatever.

But be a Canadian? Boy we got ourselves a liberal. 

In other words, you've applied a skeptical stance, contrarian even, on absolutely anything and everything that gives the allusion of allegiance to Trump but are accepting without question even the most narrow scope of left wing political ideologies. 

Right - "Well, if you look at it this way or ignore that stuff, he's not really on the right."
Left - "See, this is definitive proof that he's on the left."

The question then being if the left is so aware he's mentally unstable or mentally ill, then why not point that out and leave it at that? Why also add that it's because he's clearly a crazy conservative? Because you don't let a good political opportunity go to waste, especially right before the mid terms.

Logical deduction = political deduction. Got it.

This is also why the right won't simply point out it's mental illness, because if they do, like in the past, the left will keep hammering the so called conservative connection as if it's vital. So the right also points out why it's just as likely, if not more likely, that the culprit is a liberal.

Trying to split the left and right is normal and done all the time in America. The right very rarely acknowledges the bad things the far right might do, because while the left will acknowledge far left negative happenings at times, it's always followed by but, as in it's not that big of a deal, and then when election time comes, they vote left anyway, so why would the right fight each other and split themselves when the left won't in the end no matter what. It's good strategy from the right based on how the left operates.

How often the culprit is actually right or left, if we left it up to the media, would be on the right 99% of the time, coincidentally. If that were the truth, then there's no chance that DeSantis, a conservative, could've crushed Crist as badly as he did in a purple state.

As I explained with Musk, when it comes to politics now, the right sees it as if it's good enough for the goose, it's good enough for the gander.

If the left is going to make up nonsense or come to odd conclusions that benefit them, then the right is just going to do the same, if they have to.

The unfortunate truth is that the truth no longer matters in politics. The more honest you are, the more likely you're going to lose.

I wonder why I, lose so much, when it comes to likes in threads like these? Must be because I'm always completely wrong. Must be.

Left - Even if we think we're at fault, we'll blame the right and stick together.

Right - It's sad, but since it's so effective, we'll also play that game now since it works.

I'm going to blanket reply to all of this, because it's all driven by the same fallacy.

Republicans/Conservatives are not a bloc, they do not all believe the same things. I'm just saying that a lot of them have different feelings. That's my point.

Liberals and left wingers and socialists are also not a bloc. They do not believe the same things. Plenty of left wingers have right wing beliefs. Plenty of right wingers have left wing beliefs.

Some conservatives loved Colbert back in the day, some hated him. 

Some conservatives hate abortion, some conservatives say they hate abortion, some will still get an abortion for themselves.

Some conservatives hate welfare, and some conservatives say they hate welfare, but have no problem getting something for themselves.

The reason why I was pointing out hypocrisy, is because I'm pointing out that those left wing positions aren't the important factor. Being pro-marijuana or pro-BLM doesn't make someone not a conservative. That's all I'm saying.

>I never said all immigrants are liberals.

You were giving a long list of things you felt disqualified someone from being conservative. I was pointing out that plenty of people are hypocritical. 

The more important point that I was making before, it doesn't matter if DePape was the most leftwing person on the planet, what matters is what drove him to do something. Which was in this case, anti-democratic/anti-leftwing propaganda. Which lots of left wingers fall for, but that propaganda is not left wing.

It doesn't even matter if he was mentally unwell, where did he get the idea to do something?

@underlined: Yes and I was pointing out that you're wrong. And then you ignored it. That's why I'm bringing it up again.

And no these two things are not the same. One of them is just blatant misinformation, and the other one is something that is reasonably correct, even if it doesn't tell the whole story. 

Secondly no, conservatives have been playing dirty for decades.

Fox News, Breitbart, New York Post, Washington Times, etc pretty much exist solely for some conservatives to play dirty.

Looking at reporting is not making assumptions.

Because you clearly don't make an effort to try to understand what the other viewpoints are. You're just here to argue, you're just to "win". 

For example, I don't personally view these discussions as things I am losing or winning. 

I get in these conversations partly to try to understand where you're coming from, partly because I would like to share my perspective. 

And it's clear that you're not here for the same reasons. You're almost practically throwing a large part of my argument back at me, without understanding the point.

It's said that the culprit is aligned with the far-right because he is aligned with the far-right. These are the facts that played a crucial part for why he committed the crime, so why pretend that his political alignment didn't matter.

Since there isn't more to respond to this post of yours, I'll address your follow-up post as well. The reason why you lose the "likes" battle in political threads is because the far-right constitutes a minority everywhere, except on sites that are specifically tailored to the far-right. An important additional reason is that people in general don't like bullshit. I suppose you could call yourself a victim of free speech; you love the role of the victim, after all.

There's talk in this thread about what was the primary motive behind the attack on Paul Pelosi; mental illness or political extremism. I would argue that which contributed more matters very little when they both go hand in hand so often:

Ohio Man Fatally Shoots Neighbor 'Because He Thought He Was A Democrat'

Mentally ill people exist around the world but the overwhelming majority of political violence is committed by and for the right wing. This is no accident when the conservative media apparatus is so comfortable with violent rhetoric and the movement so comfortable with authoritarianism. Eventually some crazy fool is going to act on it. Stochastic Terrorism 101.

Someone is having a real good one in thus thread and it's funny to see

Get rid of mass Mail-in Ballots. They're slow, unreliable, and can be easily manipulated by either political party. Mail-ins should only be used in special cases like military or citizens traveling. Conservative or Liberal, nobody wants to wait days, let alone weeks to find out who won an election, regardless of who wins. The fact that several states kept their COVID-era election rules despite COVID being pretty much over is pathetic. Elections should be done in person, on one night, and the winner should be decided the same night. If other countries can do this, why can't the U.S.?