US Politics Mega-thread - Page 4950

On September 11 2016 11:20 TheYango wrote:

To be fair, this is also true in part of a lot of the people that do the calling-out. A lot of the cries of racism/sexism don't necessarily come from minorities that actually experience racism/sexism, but from white-knighting white males who themselves likewise do not experience racism/sexism and are overeager to call things as they see them, which leads to a lot of subsequent disagreement.

On September 11 2016 08:43 IgnE wrote:


can you just clarify 1) what were the conservative policies responsible for 2) what success? like are you saying mandatory mimimum and three strike laws are responsible for lower crime rates? what is the "success" of welfare reform? fewer people on welfare?


and re: you being called sexist for asserting that the gender pay gap doesnt exist

i can bring up my doubts about the gender pay gap with certain qualifications without being called a sexist in company that is probablu far more leftist than the company you keep. that is because 1) im not an asshole 2) i appreciate nuance 3) i dont make stupid statements about "feminism" and 4) im not an asshole.

usually when people you are interacting with call you sexist its in the context of your entire projected personality and the sum of your articulations

On September 11 2016 08:58 KwarK wrote:

I do believe it has. However I believe that a lot of the reason that it has expanded is because not white male voices got a chance to make themselves heard on what they experienced as racist/sexist/etc. A status quo in which the group which is not generally on the receiving end of the -ism decide amongst themselves what does and does not count and then correct the people who experience it existed for a long time. Hell, we still see it constantly. We still get people like Roger Ailes insisting that he did not act inappropriately and that if some women who worked for it perceived it as sexist, well, they're just being hysterical.

It has expanded beyond the definition that the group most responsible for sexist/racist/etc behaviour defined it as the groups on the receiving end have been given more of a voice. But that's not a bad thing, even if it makes you uncomfortable. Part of it comes down to that ever abused concept, privilege. For a long time white privilege meant getting to control the narrative by correcting minorities who claimed to experience racism, effectively saying "no you didn't just experience racism, that wasn't racist, you just don't understand racism like we do". As part of the societal erosion of that privilege people who try to do that shit are getting called out on it more and more.


I'm as guilty of it as anyone else. If I say something and someone tells me "that was kinda racist" my immediate thought is "but I know I'm not a racist so that means that what I said wasn't racist so you're wrong". And if your definition of racist is swastika tattoos and so forth then sure, I'm not a racist (although a lot of Trump supporters still would be). But given that I don't experience racism personally I'm not really the best judge and probably shouldn't spend my time correcting the people who do. An approach that would show a little more good faith would be to ask why they experienced what I said as being racist and make an effort to understand it in the broader context that they describe which I may not have previously been aware of. I might still feel they misunderstood me at the end of it but at least I'd have learned a little more about how other people experience the world. Alternatively I could see their point of view and go "you know what, that thing I said was pretty racist, I'll try to work on that". But it's very hard to assume good faith opposition to racism from people who refuse to listen to the experience of racism from people who don't look like them.

On September 11 2016 09:07 Nyxisto wrote:


You have a presidential candidate that retweets stormfront memes including Hillary Clinton on a pile of bank notes with a David Star, and that wasn't even the worst thing he had uttered that week. This isn't just 'college campus level' of controversy, it's 'the fluoride in your drinking water controls your thoughts' bad

On September 11 2016 09:07 Nyxisto wrote:


You have a presidential candidate that retweets stormfront memes including Hillary Clinton on a pile of bank notes with a David Star, and that wasn't even the worst thing he had uttered that week. This isn't just 'college campus level' of controversy, it's 'the fluoride in your drinking water controls your thoughts' bad

On July 03 2016 04:47 oBlade wrote:

Indeed, they should have left it up and let the people complaining, which is mainly journalists themselves manufacturing controversy, implode with sanctimony.

The bigots were the people who saw money and a six pointed star in the same image and couldn't stop themselves from thinking there must be anti-Semitism afoot. Perpetuating a tired, ugly stereotype to try to score a cheap political victory. It's the same attitude of people who think Buddhist temples are Nazi headquarters. Nobody "owns" the symbol of a six-pointed star, just think about how absurd it is that we wouldn't be here with any other star. You know what would give a semblance of truth to the charge of inappropriateness? If the huge face of his political opponent on the image, instead of Hillary Clinton, were some other politician, like for example if there was a famous Jewish candidate who had been one of most serious contenders during the campaign. Then you would have had my attention. But no, DJT has never the least bit implied or dogwhistled anything anti-Semitic about Bernie Sanders. And one of the criteria of the GOP primary, along with checking off pro life, is being the person to most emphatically be pro-Israel. And yes, there's his Jewish son-in-law and grandchildren.

Trump's not a designer, so what do people who buy bait like this actually believe? That the campaign held a meeting, maybe Trump, Ivanka, and Manafort were all there, and they said, we need to get someone to design a pic attacking our rival, the nominee of the only other major party. But you know what this pic needs most of all? It needs a subtle way to dogwhistle to the critical anti-Semitic vote, a crucial demographic for anybody who wants to be president, that's who we really need to target. Maybe a memo went out to that effect. And nobody's paying close attention to the campaign; there isn't an army of journalists scrutinizing every aspect of it, quote mining every soundbyte that the candidate says, so they're able to slip things like this right under the noses of the American people. That's the brilliant part of their strategy, surely.

The media is overflowing with things like this. They're either incompetent or they know better, but in any case it's bringing down the entire level of political discourse in the USA. CBS reporting something that belongs in a tabloid. Even trying to explain this, instead of ignoring it, might be adding to the culture of non-issues.

I mean, the alleged anti-Semites would already have to be following him on Twitter, and being brainless anti-Semites, they probably wouldn't even notice the (rotated) star. So if, hypothetically, the narrative that this is dogwhistling were true, the media is the one broadcasting his message to a wider audience for free, shouldn't they be outraged at themselves? Why isn't the headline "CBS Recirculates Nazi Graphic" if it's so offensive?

On September 11 2016 11:37 Danglars wrote:
The right of center posters made no such stormfront connection in the atmosphere of just another corruption attack ad.

On September 11 2016 12:32 Dan HH wrote:


Oh wow, oBlade made a ridiculous strawman instead of acknowledging that Trump's staff regularly reuses questionable material from the openly racist sites/forums where his fanbase is concentrated, colour me surprised. As for right of centre, most people here are right of centre, as is Hillary.

On September 11 2016 07:35 zlefin wrote:

I do get it; you're the one trolling by asserting I don't get it, and making up strawmen.
don't argue badly; and don't make useless comments please.
you're not helping anything along or enlightening anyone; nor are you venting usefully.

On September 11 2016 15:17 MasterCynical wrote:
Just commenting from my basket of deplorables... She can call me a racist all she wants. I'll never support someone who should be in prison

On September 11 2016 15:25 KwarK wrote:
So I take it you're not voting Trump. What with all the naked bribery and fraudulent business practices.

On September 11 2016 15:17 TMagpie wrote:


You're trying to make an axiom where you believe politicians are not acting pragmatically. You believe that it is possible to have a humans make decisions where their ideologies does not affect them. That is stupid, wrong, and shows a lack of awareness of how humans behave. For the most part, it is impossible to remove your biases. Impossible to have no ideals.

Thats not trolling, that's calling you out that the baseline of your argument, the methods of your proposition, and the conclusions of your analysis are 100% wrong on every level.

Here's a hint. Government already hires top experts on their field to make decisions and policies. That request you have to infuse more science into politics has already happened. But politics is a human and societal action, no amount of pretending to be objective will make people stop acting for their own interest.

On September 11 2016 17:29 Kickboxer wrote:
Let me play the devil's advocate here for the record I don't see myself as either conservative or liberal but someone who cherry picks his views on various topics from whichever camp I believe is getting it. I'm on the left when it comes to most topics and quite far on the right when it comes to some others.

One thing the conservatives are doing right is their defense / advocation of the nuclear family or "traditional" family if you will. They're doing it in awkward and often distorted ways, sure, but they're the only ones actually at it and I personally think this is very much correct because the traditional family is very good at producing healthy and balanced human beings as opposed to progressive entities.

Another is their opposition to the gender theory and the surrounding circus. To me gender theory (why isn't it called a hypothesis btw? It doesn't fit the criteria of a scientific theory) is some of the worst science of all times, up there with eugenics that incidentally used to be about as popular and "factual", and is already doing tremendous damage since it is likely in direct opposition to what is correct. So I'm happy somebody is standing against it.

Third is their focus on personal responsibility which is something the left appears to have completely forgotten about. This is the cardinal concept / philosophy to follow when it comes to changing your life in a positive way no matter where you're at. Over-focusing on external reasons and solutions to anyone's problems is disempowering at best, silly at worst.

I know these aren't "policies" but it seems like a meaningful point of conservatism is to act as a philosophy that participates in the discourse, often as a resistance check against some of the more inane movements and novelties so they can fail the test of time before they cause too much havoc.

On September 11 2016 18:41 Acrofales wrote:

Some error bars would be nice. I suspect most of those differences are statistically insignificant, and thus the graph is probably rather misleading... It has some info on that at the bottom, but I'm not sure whether that's the 1 sigma or 95% error. If the latter, the differences are almost certainly significant, but for the former, you'd need to ANOVA it (or if only interested in Clinton vs Trump, a t-test).

And I believe that there is a basket of deplorables amongst Trump supporters.

On September 11 2016 15:48 Slaughter wrote:


Therein lies the problem. You can find experts from all fields who ascribe to minority opinions in their field and you just use them to legitimize your own opinion. You can find PhDs in Biology who are creationists and don't think evolution is a thing. Hell even the Wakefield quack who is disgraced in the eyes of the medical community found a place. I am sure the GOP climate deniers have people with advanced degrees telling them stuff too. You can cherry pick anything and scientists are no different, which is why you should look at the body of work going on in a field instead of just accepting one expert's opinion.

On September 11 2016 15:17 TMagpie wrote:


You're trying to make an axiom where you believe politicians are not acting pragmatically. You believe that it is possible to have a humans make decisions where their ideologies does not affect them. That is stupid, wrong, and shows a lack of awareness of how humans behave. For the most part, it is impossible to remove your biases. Impossible to have no ideals.

Thats not trolling, that's calling you out that the baseline of your argument, the methods of your proposition, and the conclusions of your analysis are 100% wrong on every level.

Here's a hint. Government already hires top experts on their field to make decisions and policies. That request you have to infuse more science into politics has already happened. But politics is a human and societal action, no amount of pretending to be objective will make people stop acting for their own interest.