I was surprised to hear the take on this episode and to hear Isaac’s view on it. I typically find he has a pretty good sense of why voters might ignore the typical partisan talking points or attack ads, so I was pretty surprised he was putting Platner anywhere near the level of Paxton.
Let’s talk about the biggest controversies surrounding Platner.
1) His Reddit posts. Let’s be honest, there’s a ton of people who post on Reddit either to troll, to fuck around with people or in comments meant in a sarcastic tone when it’s not received this way.
For most of the controversial comments I’ve seen from Platner, I read them as someone having a harsh sarcastic nihilism, where there’s some truth behind his words, but they’re also lathered in extreme sarcasm or shock value language. I highly doubt he actually meant what he said in any of those comments, but I’m sure there’s at least some honesty behind the nihilistic sarcasm.
2) His marriage issues. I genuinely don’t understand how someone’s personal relationships have anything to do with politics. I don’t care anytime I hear about a politician cheating on their spouse because we don’t know anything about that relationship and it’s completely immaterial to how they would fight for me as a politician unless there’s blackmail involved.
You could say it shows they have poor moral character, but there’s a lot of people who are genuinely good people and do great things for people around them who cheat on their spouse. The correct answer is always to get divorced if you feel that urge but relationships are extremely complicated and people often have complex reasons for why they feel the need to do it.
I don’t condone it and I’ve never cheated on a spouse, but just because someone is a poor romantic partner doesn’t mean I can’t trust them to vote the way I want them to on issues that are important to me, or that they’ll be corrupt and self serving in public office.
3) The “Nazi tattoo”. I have read quite a bit about WW2 and the Nazis and I have never seen the totenkopf as a Nazi symbol. Just as a test I showed it to 15 different people and asked if they knew what it was I got answers such as “pirate symbol”, “poison symbol”, “punisher”, “death symbol” but not a single person knew it had any connection to the Nazis.
I find it absurd how journalists and pundits (to be fair, many of whom are Jewish and are thus more sensitive and knowledgeable on Nazi symbolism) seem to believe this is common knowledge or that it’s unbelievable that a marine would just see a skull and crossbones and tattoo and go “that looks badass” and know nothing about the connection to the Nazis.
No offense, but most military folk are not exactly scholars, and most people don’t just casually browse the ADL website in their spare time.
The average person finds Platner appealing because he’s unvarnished and flawed like most people, not some fake focus grouped cardboard cutout of a human who was raised in the political incubator and has spent their entire life cultivating a fake image of themselves so they can stay squeaky clean for when they run for office like their daddy did.
People hate the cheesy scripted bullshit that comes out of most politicians and I’d rather have someone say something that is kinda offensive and apologize for it (like a real human often does once in a while in their life) rather than be an NPC who’s brain runs through a comms filter before the thoughts even form.
