Dear mhaze,

You write; “I notice that you've dropped your Venezuela idiocy.”

What? Where did I do that? I have said we will see what will happen by the end of the month. And if the Russians start landing nuclear bombers in the country? Would this be a line too far for you?

And what lame excuse are you trying to float? That Trump needs to play the diplomatic game which is why he sought, against the vast majority of the democratically elected House, to ease sanctions on one of Putin's corrupt oligarchs.

If that was true then all he needed to do was not raise the issue with Putin and just take it as a given hat he was involved. Yours is actually the type of excuse that the Russian gave for the poisoning of the dissident and his daughter in England. 'It was rouge elements within the Russian secret services and Putin knew nothing'. No body except perhaps yourself actually believes this.

Time to grow up and engage the brain.

Now mate, you got your facts wrong on collusion and conspiracy and then tried to double down on it which not made you look very foolish but also made it very easy for me. Contrary to what you may think I do prefer to earn my wins not have them handed to me on a silver platter. I hope you have learnt a valuable lesson and you do some homework before swaggering in here claiming all sorts of things for your president.

We have had some solid exchanges in the past, some of which have been quite enjoyable but this was not your finest hour. Over the top triumphalism which you displayed more often than not predicates a fall and this went true to form. I'm sure you will bounce back though.

“Time to grow up and engage the brain”, says SR. That coming from one of the brain dead UN & EU quoting fools is a bit rich.

Perhaps SR has had an actual thought of his own at some time, but you can bet it was very quickly suppressed, all appearance of thought has to be as dictated by his socialist masters.

When you think about it becomes obvious. All these lefties are in lock step on everything. They can’t have opinions of their own, no group could ever actually agree on every part of life, unless 1984 like, they are behaving as directed by their masters.

You see them come & go, under different names of course. Could they be given a direction to be the lefty mouth piece on OLO for 6 months, as penance for having once had a personal thought, outside the group think.

No group could march in such perfect unison, unless singing, as directed, from the same hymn book. I wonder which will be first to have finished their penance & move on this time?

Steel Redux it seems to me you are a balanced poster, may well not like me but in truth the junk thrown at you is weird stuff
Having a different opinion is your crime, if only you would fall in line with the post above and below yours
Hope you never ever do
Being different is in my view something to be proud of
The walking talking wreckage that is Donald Trump, like some comments here, has no relation to truth

Dear Hasbeen,

Good to hear from you old cock. Bit of a Sunday rant is always jack dandy for the constitution.

So I'm trying to get my head around one of the truculent climate change denying clique on OLO lecturing other posters about group think.

Mate there is nothing that speaks to the notion of group think that the wilfully denial of widely accepted science by a bunch of ideologues.

Somethings are self evident, like that the world is round, yet we have a growing group of people who take a contrary view. It is not those who know the earth is a sphere rather than a disc who are engaging in group think but rather the flat earthers.

In fact you could be regarded as a poster boy for the 'group think' movement.

Dear Belly,

I don't have an issue with you at all mate. Those I do I just ignore, pretty easy really. Don't even read their posts.

Posters like mhaze can often get me to delve more deeply into topics to defend a position but admittedly he has lost a bit of balance of late so the exchanges aren't as meaty, pity.

And blokes like Hasbeen are part of the furniture. He represents everyone's permanently pissed off uncle. Good for a quick spar on occasions but too set in his ways to make a more fulsome effort over and he does get pretty repetitive. Just look at his last post; “Lefties”, “lefty”, “socialists”, “1984” etc. There was a time when he would come up with something original to throw back but those days are but a dim memory.

This place certainly was a more collegiate in the past but identity politics laid waste to all that.

The era of the smug blustering and posturing by Abbott's almost totally male supporters saw a lot of really good posters move on. I've stuck around because tweaking their noses is fun and you know you are doing your job when they have a crack at you in a personal manner. No sheep stations here though so all generally goes through to the keeper.

As for me being different in my extended family of let's say over 100 people we have probably 3 climate deniers, 3 antivaxxers, 2 moonlandings were a hoax types, and 4 who constantly bang on with openly anti-Islamic clap trap.

The thing is most of these overlap so there really are only 6 or 7 people out of the 100 who are outliers. The rest of us are pretty normal. So I'm interested why you think I am different.

To Belly.

I don't think trump supporters are a small minority as you've suggested. Instead I would say that Trump is showing his merit enough times to give him a second or third glance without the lenses of the media witch hunt on him.

Let me explain. First issue was Trump's character as a whole and what he says. The worry? That having him as president will start WWIII with the aggressive world powers. Instead of entering new wars Trump's "character flaws" seem to be the closest to successfully talk with North Korea. And his record on military action shows he's not trying to start any new wars, but also won't stand on the sidelines and do nothing. Such as when Syria used chemical weapons on it's people in their civil war, Trump did what no other nation did. He acted militarily on Syria on one single and direct hit to say that the chemical warfare is not going to be tolerated. Since then, Trump seems to be trying to get the US to a position to withdraw more of it's troops instead of going to more locations.

Trump has also recognized Israel's capital and seems to be closer to finding a real solution to the Israel/Palestine civil war, by stoping the ridiculous 2 state solution that is ignored by the Palestinians and the surrounding Islamic countries. (They repeatedly say they only want one state and to destroy Israel. Somehow that never gets acknowledged when a two state approach is recommended. Funny huh).

(Continued)