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100% this.

Leftist out here doing stupid purity tests, looking for some fairy tale candidate messiah. Gatekeeping anyone who isnt some perfect being. Because that's representative of the normal human experience......

The tattoo thing was ALWAYS overblown. Anyone who knows marines, especially young shithead marines, knew that tattoo thing was stupid. I believe that he and his fellow marines didn't know what it was when he got it. Because most people just learned what it was. So many people just now, this week, hearing the word "totenkopf" for the first time in their lives and feigning outrage.

I'll even give you that maybe he found out later, knew what it was, but didn't have it covered. And why?

Because it didn't matter. That's not what the tattoo meant to him, and its not what anyone around him thought it was. He had no pressing reason to cover it. Maybe it even served as a reminder of his shithead past.

It wasn't until he got into the public eye when a bunch of terminally online nitpickers lost their shit that it actually became an issue to him to fix.

And he did fix it IMMEDIATELY.

And I've yet to see anyone who smugly reacted to the initial story with "so he got it covered right? right?" eat their words. Instead they've doubled down and moved the goal posts to "well, he should have had it covered forever ago". Insufferable bullshit.

My brother in law, also a prior marine, had tattoos of clovers. Because he's Irish and thought they were cool. It wasn't until after his service that he learned that clovers are common with skinheads. And because he want a job in teaching, he got them covered.

This shit happens all the time. People making a stink about it are so far out of touch. They either need to touch grass, pull the stick out of their ass or the silver spoon out of their throat.

The privileged pearl clutching to instead defer support to another Biden/Pelosi/Schumer corpo dinosaur is pathetic.

Let's just hope he doesn't have a stroke before getting into office. 😒

This right here. He's had to work for his principles which means he's more likely to stick by them. I believe he means well and wants to step up, not just get power and bribes or maintain the status quo. Nice to see how scared the billionaires are of him.

You got a link for the interview? I've only read a few articles but I am interested

He had that tattoo for years after it was clear he knew what it meant, you really are going to trust someone is a good candidate that not only did several tours in Iraq but was hired by fucking Blackwater to continue killing because he stated he enjoyed it? If this is the best candidate in the state we are so truly fucked, I refuse to believe there is no one better that could run.

Nobody is perfect but are you kidding me with this? You really are going to say this guy is awesome, who stated essentially "millions may die because our way of life is better", had no problem with being a for-profit war criminal less than ten years ago, because he claims he has good views on healthcare. I agree people change but that doesn't mean he should be trusted in a position of power.

Im pretty wary... i think hes probably got a bit of authoritarian streak and probably got this tat when he was young and dumb and in the military which leans right. I also think people change and he has changed. I think he's taken a hard left on the economy and class consciousness.

But is his authoritarian streak gone? His reddit comments show that at the time of posting he had little sympathy for sexual assault victims and was at the very least kinda weird about black people. Hes also very pro gun, which I dont find to be an inherent issue and I even agree the left needs to be more prepared and armed, but when lined up with other problematic views it stresses me out. And I dont realllly trust all of his hand waving around the tattoo and reddit comments.

But maybe should we embrance that hes a bit of a bulldog in an era when the left is so toothless? Also its almost impossible to do worse than Susan Collins lol.

I think we have to be very careful who we vote for these days. All candidates and parties are leaning into dishonesty and misdirection even more than usual, as they can see it being so very successful in the recent past, and they will continue to use it and push the boundaries on how much and how blatant manipulations they can get away with. What they say and what they actually do are trending in very divergent directions.

On the other hand, when we start looking for non-establishment candidates who haven't been vetted and groomed for most of their professional lives, we need to understand that many of them, being actual humans, are going to have been wrong and stupid in the past, as we all are sometimes, and some of those things may be forgivable and some may not. In the age of social media, this is almost guaranteed to happen. The internet always remembers, and oppo research is as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.

One of the things I think we need to remember in this case is that some humans are still genuine creatures of thoughts and feelings and emotions that don't always immediately lead us to a good place, and that people can and should improve and change and grow throughout their lives as their experiences do. If I was going to be judged on the political ideology I supported when I was an idiotic 15 year old no one would ever take me seriously ever again. But that might be a mistake. Because I like to think that I've grown quite a bit since then. I've read Plato's Republic, understood most of it, and agreed with some of it. I consume a lot of information from a wide variety of sources, some of that information is not so good and sometimes it leads me astray. I'll take responsibility for those mistakes, and I'll genuinely try to do better. And I think other people should be given at least the opportunity to own their mistakes too. Instead of immediately dismissing somebody that said some bad shit once upon a time, go to the next step and ask them what they think about it now. Then ask them why they changed their mind, which is the much more important part I think.

Granted, some people are just predators and opportunists, and will say whatever they think their current audience wants to hear, including what you want to hear. Distinguishing these types of the people from the people who have genuinely changed is not easy and I don't have an easy answer for how to do it. I'm wrong most of the time when I try too. I don't pretend to be a good judge of character.

I'm preaching this point of view in the hopes that other people, who are perhaps better judges of character than I am, can find some way to identify the difference themselves. Because we desperately need to find a way to put some genuine people in leadership roles. Our current system of democracy clearly isn't doing it. For this moment in history, I think we need a philosopher-king.

The four tours and Blackwater employment made him a Nazi before his tattoos did 😮‍💨