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My honest response to some of these points
I don't think throwing money and psychiatrists is a solution to the mental health problem plaguing society today (declining mental health is an issue far beyond a couple of wackos shooting up a school). Guns are part of American life for a lot of people, it's enshrined in the constitution. Argue about interpretations if you want but that doesn't change the fact that there are people in America who are willing to take the negatives of gun ownership so they can have the positives. People don't like feeling helpless and for some gun ownership is the most important thing when it comes to protecting their family.
The truth is mental health will not improve until material conditions improve. Mental health counseling is not going to do squat to a continuously discouraged populace. I also think "mass shootings" as we know them today are a uniquely modern phenomena that is influenced by the modern media landscape. People idolize going out guns a blazing on their own terms and the media circus encourages the next one. I am willing to live with the consequences of gun ownership if it means I have a gun to protect myself, especially as things go further south.
I do agree that the right does not have many good politicians. I feel a bit politically homeless sometimes because of how bad things are. But the elected officials do not always accurately represent the voting base, we simply vote for who we are supposed to just like people on the left do. I think you have to either be crazy or financially motivated to get into politics in the first place so that really only leaves weirdos. The most successful people on the right are running businesses and feeding their family, not playing the dirty game of electoral politics. I think the left wing politicians are just as corrupt though, but people just look past it because its their side. Check out Nancy Pelosi's amazing stock trading performance as an example.
I know, I have friends with like 30+; I honestly don't care that they have them. I've increasingly seen an appetite from Democrats I know to just drop the damn guns thing. We really don't care about "taking all the guns", we just want people to stop shooting up school buildings and random public events in our cities. I don't think that's a big ask.
Here's where Republicans fall short. They give no potential solutions. If mental health isn't solved by "money and psychiatrists", why not? What will solve "metal health"? There's a fine line between yelling "IDK look over there" and making a quality suggestion. People love to talk about both sides and debates ... but there hasn't been a serious policy debate in this country at the national stage in years because one side decided to start yelling something with the substance of "DDDDURRRRRRRRRRRR DDURRRRRR DDDDDURRRRRR" (typical about "woke", "radical", "socialist", etc) rather than making actual points.
I can't even tell you why Trump's Obamacare replacement plan is or isn't a bad idea, because (again) he never presented one. He just said "there will be one". I don't vote for promised plans, if you want my vote you better have a plan. The Democrats do have (even if flawed) thought out plans; the Republicans (increasingly) don't.
I can't tell you what Trump's plan for this is either, because while you tie the gun and mental health crisis together and link them to the economy, the Republican party as a whole doesn't. There's not a policy position arguing "we're going to solve the gun problem by doing X". Here's the Republican platform for 2016, reused for 2020: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/2016-republican-party-platform. I challenge you to find anything in there stating how they're going to address the left's concerns about gun violence.
This is the Democrat platform for 2020, see "Ending the Epidemic of Gun Violence" (and yes it includes a real plan for how to solve the migration/border problem by attacking it at the roots not "building a wall" -- which the cartels just dug tunnels under and cut through): https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2020-Democratic-Party-Platform.pdf
You're welcome to disagree with parts of the gun plan, or the plan in its entirety, but it's a starting point. In a functioning Democracy, Republicans would come back with a serious proposal for "here's how to improve this situation in a way that protects gun rights." They have done no such thing. It would be one thing if this was "just" about guns, but it's not, they do this all the time.
This to me is missing the forest for the trees. Sure, there are definitely corrupt politicians on both sides. However, what are they getting done and who are they serving at the end of the day?
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/biden-promise-tracker/ https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpometer/
Again, Trump promised to "repeal Obamacare and replace it with something so much better" (loose quote). Republicans before him like Paul Ryan made the same bogus claims. They all said "we'll get it out right after we repeal Obamacare". That's not a plan, that's a literal death sentence for some number of Americans (I won't make up an internet statistic). Hell no I'm not voting for that, and I immediately am going to question your motive as a politician for suggesting the moral equivalent of "take the worn tires off the car and only then check to see if there are even any other tires to put on the car" (carrying the metaphor further, people have places to be and things to get done, they don't need you breaking their cars in the middle of their day to day lives with no fix in sight).
Meanwhile, Joe Biden promised to make progress on the country's aging infrastructure and followed through with the infrastructure bill.
I am a policy and action oriented person, and the policies and actions of Republican politicians I find reprehensible and at times completely counter productive.
I'd encourage you (and your friends) to pay attention to the Democrats running in your area, and their actual policy stances. There is variance in the Democrat's platform (especially at the primary stage), and there is an appetite for compromise (they do it constantly, the infrastructure bill was passed because of compromise; it was not everything the majority of the party wanted -- far from it -- but it was what they could get done now). I'm willing to let guns go for other priorities, personally guns are not a "hell no" issue for me, and I know many other Democrats that agree. The country hasn't lost its mind, but the Republican party has, and their false compromise, hostage taking, and political theater is making it REALLY hard to get shit done.
You seem to give the benefit of doubt to Republicans, and then assume the worst of Democrats. We can provide Receipts of Republicans breaking the law, having massive conflicts of interest etc but that's ignored while Gossip about Democrats is treated as cold hard fact. This was rampant during 2016. Look at the Clinton Foundation vs The Trump Foundation. One of those is a real charity, the other is a grift. But the Real one was the one to get heavily scrutinized.
I dislike the republican establishment greatly. They are filled with people just as corrupt as the left. Does that answer your question? The Clinton foundation is far from innocent either, you're not making the distinction you think you are. The Clintons are extremely corrupt, I think an honest person would be able to come to terms with that.
You dislike them, yet you’re repeating their talking points. The GOP is corruption personified. The left isn’t in the same stratosphere. It was the Republicans whose refused to vote on Judges during the Obama administration so they could stack the courts with questionable Judges. It’s the Republicans who fabricate voter fraud with no evidence to pass their voting restrictions that unfairly target legal voters that just happen to vote against them. It’s the Republicans who start up endless investigations without knowing what they are looking for. That’s three odd the top of my head. They’ve been up to it for forty years and recently straight up gave up creating a platform with any sort of governance instead just using wedge issues and fabricated culture war issues to make you think they’re doing anything for you. They aren’t, and they will turn on you the very second it benefits them because. If you haven’t noticed all the old reasonable Republicans are gone. The grifting crazies are the only ones left.
I don’t care to get into another Clinton conversation. I know how this goes. Laundry list of accusations with discredited evidence or implications that go nowhere because the vast majority of them stem from Republican strategists in the 90s who had a vested interest in defeating the Clintons.