> Once you start to notice the pattern of one-sided appropriation of blame in pretty much every fking scenario, you end up discounting any criticism of republicans as bias.

Exactly this. What people like me are tired of is the legions of armchair experts that opine in such way as to support their prejudices while pretending to be rational and intellectual about it.

For example: complaints about the complicated tax filing system, yet when Ted Cruz offers a postcard-sized tax return as a proposal, that idea is ignored and “Republicans” get blamed for being in bed with TurboTax. When Rand Paul calls out and presents proposals against excessive government surveillance, he gets ignored and this crowd still overtly or tacitly support the party to which they belong, rather than supporting the actual ideas that claim to care about. If Obama cut taxes, it’s “good,” when Republicans do it, it’s “for the rich” or whatever tribal argument is en vogue. When Republicans wanted to reduce SALT deductions, all hell broke lose (in California at least,) while the increase in the standard deduction gets ignored. Nancy Pelosi argued the tax cut was “for the rich,” while saying that the $1000 average in lower taxes for working people was a pittance. $1000 isn’t a pittance for many people.

In the current discussion, the FAA is “bad,” but only because Trump is in office, despite the Max certification happening with officials appointed by Obama. When Obama put kids “in cages,” the media literally ignored it. When Trump did it, there was mass outrage, ironically using Obama-era photos as “proof” of how bad Trump is.

Even the Coronavirus is being politicized beyond all reason. The Democrat aligned media makes it seem like we are all about to suffer a zombie apocalypse, despite a low American infection rate. When the economy was up, that was because of Obama’s policies, yet when it’s down, that’s because of Trump.

San Francisco “liberals” are every bit as tribal and biased as some NRA bubbas in an Arkansas Cracker Barrel — and both groups are wrong. The answer is somewhere in the middle. But the middle has dissolved because honestly, the near non-stop Trump hatred has turned the country into a place that is barely removed from some warlord-infested tribal region in Africa. Republicans weren’t fans of Obama, but they didn’t launch non-stop, media fueled investigations over and over again. First it was Russia. Then Ukraine. Now it’s Coronavirus. We had the FBI at the highest levels sending text messages vowing to stop Trump.. even before he was inaugurated. Imagine if the George Bush FBI started wiretapping the Obama campaign and then, Republicans calling for impeachment before he even took office. Imagine if Trump directed the head of the IRS to not testify to Congress over proven discrimination over tax exempt statuses of left wing groups. That would be considered obstruction, yet Obama did exactly that when Loris Lerner refused to testify about IRS targeting of conservative tax exempt groups. Was Obama impeached over that obstruction? Of course not.

There is a huge double standard fueled by an intellectual class that’s offended that the crowd that shops at Bass Pro Shops has just as much a right to their opinions as some writer at the New Yorker. Some cafe-culture liberal doesn’t have more right to their opinion than anyone else. Hillary Clinton actually called half of the country “deplorable,” and Bloomberg said farmers were essentially stupid.

It’s evil, this environment. Bill Maher even publicly wished for a recession so that Trump wouldn’t be re-elected. There are Democrats actually hoping this Coronavirus thing gets worse because, as Rahm Emmanuel once said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” It’s disgusting.