EPTUS Politics Mega-thread - Page 4018
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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please. In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. | ||
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CorsairHero
Canada9491 Posts
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Ufnal
Poland1435 Posts
On June 10 2016 12:54 KwarK wrote: That's not how personal responsibility works. If you choose to do nothing you can't subsequently go "well nor did some other people so I'm absolved of any blame for my choice". Every voter who could have voted against Trump and didn't is to blame when he wins, no less than those who went and voted for him. It's a zero sum game, one more vote for Trump helps him as much as one less vote for Hillary. Unless you're not in a swing state, in which case do whatever the fuck you like. No this is not a zero sum game in a strict sense (EDIT: OK, it is, for the candidates. But I think you can't use "zero sum game" to describe the voters' choice) and no, people who don't vote for anyone shouldn't be blamed "no less than" Trump voters (as a person who didn't vote "contributes" less to Trump - hell, if the Democrat candidate wins, no-voters can be "blamed" for their victory, too!) | ||
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Surth
Germany456 Posts
On June 10 2016 12:57 oneofthem wrote: this is the kind of information driven radicalization i'm talking about. there is a sizeable alt-left sort of media that basically engage in conspiracy mongering and ideological struggle with the new boogieman of neoliberalism. to this kind of left there is no difference between trump and clinton, and really obama and republicans. There's definitely a difference between Trump and Clinton. There's not so much difference between Obama and Republicans, or Clinton and Republicans. And the "boogieman" of neoliberalism is not so new, to the point that the word has lost most of its edge in my opinion, though I haven't read David Harvey yet, maybe he makes good use of the term. On June 10 2016 14:49 Nyxisto wrote: Well, American politisc are almost universally "right-wing", so even if she was to the liberal side of the senate, that wouldn't mean so much. And 538, as usual, have a knack for missing everything that matters about politics in their quest for "data-driven compelling narratives". isn't this "hillary is right wing" meme really, really silly? 538 put her ahead of 85% of all senate members during her term on the 'liberal' scale http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/hillary-clinton-was-liberal-hillary-clinton-is-liberal/ Put differently, a lot of the supposed "liberalness" of the Democrats comes from their support for all the highly visible issues that are used as an imaginary line of separation between the two parties, e.g. gay marriage (which she has been against until very recently, by the way!) or abortion. These are not completely cosmetic issues (well, gay marriage is pretty trivial), but from a staunch leftist view, they are more of a distraction from what they perceive to be the bigger issues (War, Climate Change, Capitalism) on which Republicans and Democrats often are not so different. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23745 Posts
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NukeD
Croatia1612 Posts
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Biff The Understudy
France8000 Posts
On June 10 2016 02:27 xDaunt wrote: Sure. I am not a fan of subjectivism and its bastard son, moral relativism. I like the objective -- the black and white. And my comment wasn't necessarily aimed at you (I have no idea what you think about tranny rights). Think of it as a scud missile aimed at the left in general. I suggest you open a book of philosophy once, to avoid saying stuff like that. | ||
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Surth
Germany456 Posts
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Biff The Understudy
France8000 Posts
On June 10 2016 16:17 NukeD wrote: I can understand voting for Hillary just for not getting Trump elected but endorsing Hillary and thinking she is a great candidate is beyond me. This just shows how much of a joke the democratic process is where you are being served and have to vote for terrible candidates (both Trump and Hillary) no one in their right mind would endorse. Its a rigged game, Trumps rigjt about that if nothing else. I think Hillary is a good candidate. I like her platform, I like the people who surround her, I think she has the nerves and the toughness to make a great president, and I am sometimes reserved at her way of maneuvering. It's not about liking someone. It's about getting someone qualified (she is more than anyone else) with a platform you agree with. Her term will be in line with Obama's and that a great great thing in most regards. Most Clinton haters hate her on stuff they absolutely can't back up. She is "crooked" (oh yeah, how? Mystery) she is "insincere" (she has has coherent views during her career even though she has changed opinion over decades on a variety of subject - which imo is a good thing), she is "sold to wall street" (even though she has supported and voted for financial regulation - and the argument is really rich from the GOP) etc.. If you remove Fox News level propaganda arguments, she is just a good candidate. And then, yes, democracy is sometimes choosing between a lesser evil and a disaster. You can dislike Hillary for whatever good or bad reason you have, she is not a potential catastrophe for her country and the world. That's also what we vote for sometimes. | ||
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Biff The Understudy
France8000 Posts
On June 10 2016 19:01 Surth wrote: This isn't the philosophy thread. Please continue to talk about the latest tweet that Trump has tweeted, for only that is political. Poll numbers may also be discussed. I know, but when someone posts his badly digested notions in a sentence that makes no sense at all, I think it's fair to react. I don't want to enter into a philosophical argument, just to point out that what xDaunt said : "Moral relativism" beeing the bastard child of "subjectivism", to oppose to "objectivism" is just a cluster fuck massacre of elementary philosophical notions. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States45375 Posts
On June 10 2016 19:01 Surth wrote: the latest tweet that Trump has tweeted lol that's hardly political, but I'm a little bit surprised at how everyone was like :"ooooh sick burn!" when Hillary responded to Trump's comment with "Delete your account". Everyone says matter-of-fact things like that on social media; I guess it was because Hillary is seeming more personable by just shutting Trump down? And then on the other hand, we have some crazy people going way too far with inferences like "Hillary said Delete your account to Trump, which means she's a crazy fascist and will censor everyone!" as if they've never been told to "stfu" before. | ||
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Biff The Understudy
France8000 Posts
On June 10 2016 18:06 Surth wrote: There's definitely a difference between Trump and Clinton. There's not so much difference between Obama and Republicans, or Clinton and Republicans. And the "boogieman" of neoliberalism is not so new, to the point that the word has lost most of its edge in my opinion, though I haven't read David Harvey yet, maybe he makes good use of the term. Well, American politisc are almost universally "right-wing", so even if she was to the liberal side of the senate, that wouldn't mean so much. And 538, as usual, have a knack for missing everything that matters about politics in their quest for "data-driven compelling narratives". Put differently, a lot of the supposed "liberalness" of the Democrats comes from their support for all the highly visible issues that are used as an imaginary line of separation between the two parties, e.g. gay marriage (which she has been against until very recently, by the way!) or abortion. These are not completely cosmetic issues (well, gay marriage is pretty trivial), but from a staunch leftist view, they are more of a distraction from what they perceive to be the bigger issues (War, Climate Change, Capitalism) on which Republicans and Democrats often are not so different. Global warming? Social security? Progressive taxation? Utterly broken justice system? Affordable education? Firearms regulations? That's what this election is about and Clinton and Trump are at 180° of each other on all those issues. I advise you to simply read the platforms of the two candidates. You can call that cosmetic, the truth is that this election, despite being personalized to the extreme, is the most substantial America has had for decades. I also would like the Democrats to be more on the left. But between centre left and far right there is an enormous difference. I support Clinton and I think she is the best America can get right now, as Obama has been. It's not the best that could be, it's the best the country is ready to elect. And that's what matters, and that's what elections are about. If Obama had ran against a left wing candidate, I would have supported the left wing candidate. He ran against Mc Cain and Palin, so I supported him. And what he did was aligned with my left wing views, for he pushed America to the direction I think is right. As Clinton will. | ||
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Aquanim
Australia2849 Posts
On June 10 2016 19:19 Biff The Understudy wrote:... That's what this election is about and Clinton and Sanders are at 180° of each other on all those issues. ... Did you mean Clinton and Trump? | ||
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Biff The Understudy
France8000 Posts
Yes sorry. | ||
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Surth
Germany456 Posts
On June 10 2016 19:10 Biff The Understudy wrote: I know, but when someone posts his badly digested notions in a sentence that makes no sense at all, I think it's fair to react. I don't want to enter into a philosophical argument, just to point out that what xDaunt said : "Moral relativism" beeing the bastard child of "subjectivism", to oppose to "objectivism" is just a cluster fuck massacre of elementary philosophical notions. I was kidding, I wish there was more philosophy in this thread. Nice quote by the way, I love-hate Deleuze  Global warming? Social security? Progressive taxation? Utterly broken justice system? Affordable education? Firearms regulations? That's what this election is about and Clinton and Trump are at 180° of each other on all those issues. I advise you to simply read the platforms of the two candidates. You can call that cosmetic, the truth is that this election, despite being personalized to the extreme, is the most substantial America has had for decades. I also would like the Democrats to be more on the left. But between centre left and far right there is an enormous difference. I support Clinton and I think she is the best America can get right now, as Obama has been. It's not the best that could be, it's the best the country is ready to elect. And that's what matters, and that's what elections are about. If Obama had ran against a left wing candidate, I would have supported the left wing candidate. He ran against Mc Cain and Palin, so I supported him. And what he did was aligned with my left wing views, for he pushed America to the direction I think is right. As Clinton will. I don't think reading the platforms help you very much. I happen to think climate change is the most important issue in the world right now (global capitalism might be more important if we see it at the root of climate change). I'm sure both Obama's and Clinton's platforms include a lot of waffling about climate change, but I haven't seen any drastic measures by the Obama administration at all. I think the democrats spend a lot of time ridiculing the GOP for not believing in science and being dumb troglodytes (which, hey, fair game), but they don't actually do anything about climate change either. To be fair, it's pretty much too late already, so I guess they successfully waited us out and now they can just shrug their shoulders and say "b-b-b-but we wanted to do something!" Affordable education is another interesting thing. I would like to see more education, but I think everything the democrats do is more or less entirely counter-productive. I know, I think this thread sucks balls. I would love to pretend that me telling Testie he's dumb constitutes a political debate, but its not. I think we should ban poll numbers and tweets and shit from this thread. You can't have a political debate by only debating whatever has happened in the last two weeks. | ||
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Nebuchad
Switzerland12418 Posts
On June 10 2016 14:49 Nyxisto wrote: isn't this "hillary is right wing" meme really, really silly? 538 put her ahead of 85% of all senate members during her term on the 'liberal' scale http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/hillary-clinton-was-liberal-hillary-clinton-is-liberal/ Well she's clearly at the left of american politics, but I don't think that's a huge feat. She's slightly at the right of Obama and Obama is mostly a centrist, which is why I go for the center right description. Your mileage may vary, but surely you can see how "true" leftists from America won't be satisfied (and they should suck it up, as I've already said). | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States45375 Posts
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Biff The Understudy
France8000 Posts
On June 10 2016 19:52 Surth wrote: I was kidding, I wish there was more philosophy in this thread. Nice quote by the way, I love-hate Deleuze I don't think reading the platforms help you very much. I happen to think climate change is the most important issue in the world right now (global capitalism might be more important if we see it at the root of climate change). I'm sure both Obama's and Clinton's platforms include a lot of waffling about climate change, but I haven't seen any drastic measures by the Obama administration at all. I think the democrats spend a lot of time ridiculing the GOP for not believing in science and being dumb troglodytes (which, hey, fair game), but they don't actually do anything about climate change either. To be fair, it's pretty much too late already, so I guess they successfully waited us out and now they can just shrug their shoulders and say "b-b-b-but we wanted to do something!" Affordable education is another interesting thing. I would like to see more education, but I think everything the democrats do is more or less entirely counter-productive. Don't agree. In general your argument should apply to Obama's terms. Obama hasn't done enough (mainly because the House was held by nutcases) but what he has done has been extremely important. And what his opponents would have done had they been elected would have been extremely important too, except it would have made everything much worse. The Obamacare is changing America and the lives of millions of poor people. The financial reform is a model that Europe can only dream of. etc etc There is no reason to think Clinton won't carry on with that kind of policies. If on the issues I raised that are by the way all in her platform, Clinton achieves, as Obama did, two items, be it affordable education and more progressive taxation for example, her term will have been a gigantic success. Of course you might say that compared to, say, the German social security, Obamacare sucks. But what matters in politics is not if someone wants to do everything you think is right, but what direction he or she is pushing the country to. America needs to go massively to the left, and that's what Democrats have been doing the past eight years. So eight years ago we might have said "I don't like Obama, his position on social security are too right wing", which is true, and the result that instead of Obamacare (which is again not enough) we would have today eight more years of demolition of medicaid and medicare by Romney and Mc Cain. I can guarantee you that the lives of million would be much, much worse today. And that's what politics is about. Making people's lives better. In four years, poor and middle class people's lives will be better if Clinton is elected and significantly worse if Trump wins. That's what I care about. If she achieves what Obama achieves, and she should, then there is every reason in the world to support her, Trump or not. | ||
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Biff The Understudy
France8000 Posts
On June 10 2016 20:11 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Over 3,500 lawsuits against Trump lol... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SNZorD55XU What's amazing is the double standard: Clinton is a liar because she hid something over an email server, but when Trump lies every sentence he says, it's just tactics, he doesn't say what he thinks and it's all right. Clinton is a crook because of ??????, but Trump has made a whole career of dodgy and predatory business practices that were often the definition of crookery, but that's fine because he is very rich. Someone saying that they will vote Trump over Clinton because she is a liar and crooked is either completely blind or a total hypocrite. | ||
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farvacola
United States18856 Posts
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Velr
Switzerland10866 Posts
This just seems really strange to me, it looks like she just wants power no matter what policies are "en vogue". Still way better than Trump. | ||
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