Steve_R, forgive my rudeness, but from what I see from your posts (and several other members) here, you deny to see the facts because of your political stand point. I may be wrong, but there’s a difference between right and wrong. No matter which side you belong to. Your President was wrong about mask (and a lot of other things) and you try to justify it because another Democrat or Governor behaved this or that. What do you want to prove here? You bring your president position down to the level of a governor? And compare him to a governor?
Or because a Democrat does something foolish, your president is allowed to do the same mistakes?
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Wrong. I am not denying to see any facts. As I pointed out above, that there is an issue of relative importance. If Trump fails to wear a mask at one event, it pales in comparison to Democratic governors and mayors purposely allowing and in fact ecnouraging people to congregate for political reasons. This has the effect of accelerating the spread the virus. Trump is one person, the protestor are thousands of people.
What I have observed and some thoughts concerning it:
There are those who feel that whenever Trump is accused of doing something wrong, his supporters (or similar) answer the charge by simply comparing it to "worse" things done by the other side. They feel this is an inadequate response to the charge.
Then there are those who feel that the general sense of "awareness" about wrongs done generally, always seems to be skewed toward finding wrongs done by Trump. They feel that this is a legitimate problem in and of itself.
I have concluded that both viewpoints have merit, and unfortunately sometimes the interplay between them, when applied in actual situations, does cause some conflict, or the appearance thereof.
Several years ago, I was involved in an email conversation with the rest of my family. (Generally they are Republicans). I was bemoaning certain behaviors of ICE or Border Patrol, and the fact that Trump supported it. I can't remember what it was specifically, but at the time, it seemed very much on the side of immoral and overly mean. Something about separating families I think. Anyway, one of my brothers responded by telling me that "Well, take most OTHER countries - Mexico included. If you illegally enter their country, like they are ours, they do much worse to you than we are to them". To me that was the equivalent of, "Well, it's OK for us to do something immoral, because someone else does something similar and we are
less bad than them". I told my family member that I thought his response to the charge was inappropriate or inadequate and perhaps a bit deflective.
However, there are many in this country who perceive that due to our media (mostly), there in
imbalance in the
awareness/sensitivity to wrongs committed only on one particular side of the political aisle. That too many people save all of their righteous indignation energy for one side.
Say you had a bunch of children on a playground. They were mostly split into two "groups", each group had a unique viewpoint and way of playing. Each group committed a share of rule infractions, deceit, bullying, etc. However, the playground referee mostly focused on one of these groups-Group 1. Group 1's flaws were magnified above all else and Group 2's flaws largely ignored.
EVEN THOUGH this difference in focus "shouldn't" be a defense (by Group 1) when charges on individual instances of bad behavior were brought up....Yet, it would be naive and maybe even disingenuous to have the expectation that Group 1 would continue patiently and humbly responding to each charge solely on the merits of that charge. Eventually, this would become untenable to even those on the highest of moral grounds; they would struggle with the overall approach to enforcement.
Again, I believe that both viewpoints have some merit. On the one hand, when Republicans are challenged about the right- or wrong-ness of a given policy, we should strive to respond on the merits of that issue alone - along with, perhaps, any comparisons that are useful in shedding a contextual light - but only with an eye toward identifying the right or wrongness of the thing (not merely as a "but he didn't get punished for that").
On the other hand, to the degree that my Playground analogy is actually true, we should not have the expectation that this will not factor into people's feelings about right, wrong, and enforcement. If it has risen to the level that some think it has, it can be expected to color the issue significantly. Fair enforcement and fair focus on all parties' wrongs is a very reasonable request.
Ironically, even within the current discussions on race equality vs. "crime & punishment", this issue can be clearly seen! There are those who argue that african americans are unequally targeted for harsher consequences in sentencing and bail. Most of us agree that, IF this is true, it seems patently wrong. If a white man and a black man have both committed the exact same crime, most of us would not want their punishment to be different, given that all else were equal. And IF such a "same punishment" result is NOT happening, then most people would hardly expect the african american to be silent on that issue, and merely admit "well, I did the crime - now I must do the time". Most fair people would expect this topic of unfair treatment to become inextricably involved in the conversation--and pratically inseparable from any discussion of the crime at hand.
I am not saying which one of these things I agree with, merely noting some observations about how I think they are interconnected and give rise to the feelings demonstrated in this very thread, and around the country.
