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.
On December 03 2016 10:54 GreenHorizons wrote: I have to agree that this is pretty ridiculous. Not necessarily that it's disruptive of our relationship, that may be true, it's ridiculous that it may be more disruptive than selling them weapons.
Well that is how diplomacy works. Gestures and symbols can cause much more trouble than most other things. This is why you usually appoint people to political offices who are vaguely familiar with it. We are in for a few interesting years.
I'm saying if selling someone weapons is less offensive than talking to them, diplomacy has got it's priorities out of wack.
I agree it's going to be an interesting few years for sure.
The perceived threat for China is political instability in the form of independence movements, they won't ever feel threatened by Taiwan militarily no matter how many weapons the US sells them. It's a perfectly logical reaction.
Fair point, but if this really is more upsetting it'll be curious to see how they escalate from their objections to the weapons sales.
China objects
China, which views Taiwan as part of its indivisible territory, has consistently opposed U.S.-Taiwan weapons sales and reiterated that stance Wednesday, summoning Deputy Mission Chief Kaye Lee of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, according to a statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
The statement from Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Zheng Zeguang called the deal "a serious violation of international laws ... as well as China's territory and security interest."
"To safeguard our national interests, China has decided to take necessary measures, including imposing sanctions against the companies involved in the arms sale," Zheng said, according to state news agency Xinhua.
It's funny, Trump called Taiwan and Jezebel's SJWs are going nuts "we're totally fucked" because it'll spoil the relationship with China... so it's a bad thing that the president of the US is talking with a democratic regime that gets threatened by the authoritarian mainland China? Holy shit dude, this is the kind of insane disregard for the consequence of one's actions that SJWs love so much, they should rejoice! If Hillary had done the same thing every conservative would be fucking livid at the degradation of our ties with a major trade partner, and the left would be like YAY TAIWAN IS COOL IN AN IDEALISTIC WORLD SO LET'S TALK TO THEM.
On December 03 2016 11:16 LegalLord wrote: Who here thinks that Romney will ultimately be the SoS pick?
It seems likely that Romney will be the pick once Trump gets his fill of Romney's grovelling and public humiliation.
The status quo people probably care more enough than he does about FP to get someone who will toe the line on general FP matters into his administration. I really doubt Trump cares or knows enough about how those dealings should go to change course in any meaningful way. Still, I don't think that the enemies to Romney's nomination are going to go down easily. He pissed a lot of people off with his #nevertrump involvement.
There is definitely no clear best choice for Secretary of State. Rand Paul keeps going around talking about how he's not going to confirm neocons that would get nominated. I haven't seen him on any lists so it'd be a nice surprise, but if he's under consideration or even wants to be it's been well hidden.
On December 03 2016 07:19 Buckyman wrote: XDaunt: "The problem is that elements of the left have weaponized the civil rights discussoon and used it to silence their opposition. That act alone delegitimizes their cause."
Logo: "Isn't that hypocritical in the face of people using the right to further racist agendas?"
He' doesn't seem to be complaining about racism per se, but about responses to racism that he finds more threatening than the actual racism.
I know, I understood that part. The point is the people who are making what he consider free-speech threatening statements are by all accounts a minority or sub-group of the entire left, much like some of the racist sub-groups of the right. But his statements connects the entire platform to those views, my follow-up is an attempt to ask if he paints the right (or alt-right) the same way, i.e judging them by the actions of a sub-group.
To be fair the part of the original statement:
That act alone delegitimizes their cause
Their Cause here is a bit confusing (who and what cause?). The context seems to be "Elements of the Left" and "The Civil Right Movement" respectively. Which would mean that elements of the left are delegitimizing the civil rights movement which is a cause bigger than "elements of the left". So that can be sowing confusion, but is where the statement appears to be applying ideas of a sub-group to an entire cause.
The point is they're not by all accounts a minority or sub-group of the entire left, and not all that much like the racist sub-groups of the right (But here as before we're forced to ask what you mean by racist, since xDaunt's been called a racist repeatedly across dozens of pages). Surely you can follow that disagreement?
The bold is a totally unsubstantiated claim and a direct contradiction of how you identified the group to begin with. Yeah if you want to just ignore the actual make up of groups it's pretty easy to paint the entire group as something you don't like.
As for racist I'm referring in this case to the literal undeniable racists (kkk and what not among other offenders) who have tied themselves to the republican party.
On December 03 2016 07:19 Buckyman wrote: XDaunt: "The problem is that elements of the left have weaponized the civil rights discussoon and used it to silence their opposition. That act alone delegitimizes their cause."
Logo: "Isn't that hypocritical in the face of people using the right to further racist agendas?"
He' doesn't seem to be complaining about racism per se, but about responses to racism that he finds more threatening than the actual racism.
I know, I understood that part. The point is the people who are making what he consider free-speech threatening statements are by all accounts a minority or sub-group of the entire left, much like some of the racist sub-groups of the right. But his statements connects the entire platform to those views, my follow-up is an attempt to ask if he paints the right (or alt-right) the same way, i.e judging them by the actions of a sub-group.
To be fair the part of the original statement:
That act alone delegitimizes their cause
Their Cause here is a bit confusing (who and what cause?). The context seems to be "Elements of the Left" and "The Civil Right Movement" respectively. Which would mean that elements of the left are delegitimizing the civil rights movement which is a cause bigger than "elements of the left". So that can be sowing confusion, but is where the statement appears to be applying ideas of a sub-group to an entire cause.
The point is they're not by all accounts a minority or sub-group of the entire left, and not all that much like the racist sub-groups of the right (But here as before we're forced to ask what you mean by racist, since xDaunt's been called a racist repeatedly across dozens of pages). Surely you can follow that disagreement?
The bold is a totally unsubstantiated claim and a direct contradiction of how you identified the group to begin with. Yeah if you want to just ignore the actual make up of groups it's pretty easy to paint the entire group as something you don't like.
As for racist I'm referring in this case to the literal undeniable racists (kkk and what not among other offenders) who have tied themselves to the republican party.
Au contraire, I quoted the original reference with intention, just as perhaps you failed to re-quote it with intention. The point very much lies in contention, and isn't bold at all. Hillary made great use of it in speeches. Her supporters and surrogates used it as well. LegalLord was one pointing it out recently in the thread.+ Show Spoiler +
On December 03 2016 04:01 ticklishmusic wrote: "identity politics" is a way to make civil rights sound like some sort of a bad thing.
Or a way to say that "women go to hell if they don't vote for Hillary Clinton" and "I'm the first woman running for president and that's why you should vote for me" and "anyone who opposes our team is a racist sexist xenophobe" really isn't ok.
On December 03 2016 04:01 ticklishmusic wrote: "identity politics" is a way to make civil rights sound like some sort of a bad thing.
Literally logged in to say that im so fucking sick of the term "identity politics", and this is the first post im faced with. Thanks internet.
oh what a difficult life you must lead. must be almost bad as ivanka's.
On December 03 2016 04:29 LegalLord wrote:
On December 03 2016 04:01 ticklishmusic wrote: "identity politics" is a way to make civil rights sound like some sort of a bad thing.
Or a way to say that "women go to hell if they don't vote for Hillary Clinton" and "I'm the first woman running for president and that's why you should vote for me" and "anyone who opposes our team is a racist sexist xenophobe" really isn't ok.
pointing to the extremes, which i have noted that i disagree with numerous times, to discredit the fact there are very real problems facing minorities, LGBT people and so forth is a very disingenuous argument.
Did you watch the DNC, identity politics was the name of the game. Not the economy, not immigration, barely any mention of terrorism and chaos of middle east but just "she's a woman, cares about minorities, and immigrants and isn't donald trump." This message continued well beyond the DNC as well. Oh and let's not forget Obama's "I will consider it an insult if black people don't show up and vote for hrc"
Are you sure about that or is that just the message you listened to?
There was definitely a disgusting amount of identity politics at play there under the banner of false inclusiveness.
Let me just say, if the literal KKK is your definition of racist, and you're comparing the identity champions of the left to their numbers, you're killing it on ludicrous claims. Vote with your sex, race, gender identity, and sexual orientation is very mainstream ... fringe groups like you mention just want the microphone attention in exchange for being tied to Trump. If you want to stop ignoring the differences and take a peek under the hood of Clinton's '16 campaign, you'll deepen your understanding about where the party is now to examine how it moves forward.
Okay for those of you interested in that psychology study talked about by Dr Peterson, I don't have the actual study, but I do have him talking about the methodology behind the study and its findings.
Starts at 37:00 or so.
Peterson is from the University of Toronto, and he is speaking with Gad Saad of John Molson School of Business.
On December 03 2016 10:54 GreenHorizons wrote: I have to agree that this is pretty ridiculous. Not necessarily that it's disruptive of our relationship, that may be true, it's ridiculous that it may be more disruptive than selling them weapons.
What's interesting is that this might actually be a serious international faux pas, and the systems of international signaling are sufficiently convoluted that Donald Trump is likely to bull his way through this China shop without even realizing.
In the name of even-handedness, I'll give an example of something Obama screwed up. If you listen to Obama give speeches about Ukraine, you'll hear him refer to it several times as "the Ukraine." That's a fairly common, if aging, speech form among people in government. And it pisses off Ukrainians to no end.
See, when people call it "the Ukraine," it's a bit like when you say "the Midwest." It's a region, it's a territory, but it's not a sovereign state. This is the kind of thing Russians will say and piss off Ukrainians. For the US president to say it is likely to be read into by Ukrainians. If Obama intended to impugn Ukraine's sovereignty then that would be proper use of signaling, but he probably didn't, in which case that's actually a pretty blatant screw up by his speechwriters and advisers. And that's all just for a simple "the."
All this is to say that in international affairs, there's a lot of ways to offend a lot of people without meaning to, which shouldn't surprise anyone given that it's a stage characterized by cross-cultural interaction, high stakes, a lot of long-lasting and deeply-cut historical feuds, and layers upon layers of secrecy and doublespeak. Each of those ingredients by themselves tends to breed miscommunication and imagined offenses which were not intended. Throw them all together, and international diplomacy is an etiquette minefield.
I think it should be obvious to everyone that Donald Trump will have neither the will nor the ability to navigate that minefield gracefully. I don't really see much reason to relitigate the 2016 election at this point, but worth noting this is the kind of shit HRC would have been really good at.
I say the Ukraine because I find it to be a hilarious thing that people put emphasis on when it literally doesn't matter. There is no article "the" in Russian so it's an entirely Western invention for that to even come up. It really doesn't exist in Russia, at all. Some people have made arguments about "на Украине" ("on Ukraine") vs. "в Украине" ("in Ukraine") but if you complain about that then you should also complain about "на Ямайке" ("on Jamaica") being disrespectful of Jamaican sovereignty. Fun fact: it isn't.
People should learn to care about things that actually matter. The "the Ukraine" situation is not one of them.
Though if you want a more interesting Obama speech blunder, look at Polish death camps.
On December 03 2016 16:03 LegalLord wrote: I say the Ukraine because I find it to be a hilarious thing that people put emphasis on when it literally doesn't matter. There is no article "the" in Russian so it's an entirely Western invention for that to even come up. It really doesn't exist in Russia, at all. Some people have made arguments about "на Украине" ("on Ukraine") vs. "в Украине" ("in Ukraine") but if you complain about that then you should also complain about "на Ямайке" ("on Jamaica") being disrespectful of Jamaican sovereignty. Fun fact: it isn't.
People should learn to care about things that actually matter. The "the Ukraine" situation is not one of them.
Though if you want a more interesting Obama speech blunder, look at Polish death camps.
It matters if it pisses people off. Jamaica's sovereignty is not in question, Ukraine's is, and a lot of countries out there are analyzing the US's every move for signals as to our policy on issues they care about. Ukraine cares about its sovereignty.
On December 03 2016 16:03 LegalLord wrote: I say the Ukraine because I find it to be a hilarious thing that people put emphasis on when it literally doesn't matter. There is no article "the" in Russian so it's an entirely Western invention for that to even come up. It really doesn't exist in Russia, at all. Some people have made arguments about "на Украине" ("on Ukraine") vs. "в Украине" ("in Ukraine") but if you complain about that then you should also complain about "на Ямайке" ("on Jamaica") being disrespectful of Jamaican sovereignty. Fun fact: it isn't.
People should learn to care about things that actually matter. The "the Ukraine" situation is not one of them.
Though if you want a more interesting Obama speech blunder, look at Polish death camps.
It matters if it pisses people off. Jamaica's sovereignty is not in question, Ukraine's is, and a lot of countries out there are analyzing the US's every move for signals as to our policy on issues they care about. Ukraine cares about its sovereignty.
It's a matter confined to the English language, so your mention of Russians in that context is unfounded. And also kind of makes it a bit of a pointless matter.
Though it does touch at something deeper, though perhaps less respectable, that would be very similar to what you could read in the "Polish death camps" article.
On December 03 2016 16:03 LegalLord wrote: I say the Ukraine because I find it to be a hilarious thing that people put emphasis on when it literally doesn't matter. There is no article "the" in Russian so it's an entirely Western invention for that to even come up. It really doesn't exist in Russia, at all. Some people have made arguments about "на Украине" ("on Ukraine") vs. "в Украине" ("in Ukraine") but if you complain about that then you should also complain about "на Ямайке" ("on Jamaica") being disrespectful of Jamaican sovereignty. Fun fact: it isn't.
People should learn to care about things that actually matter. The "the Ukraine" situation is not one of them.
Though if you want a more interesting Obama speech blunder, look at Polish death camps.
It matters if it pisses people off. Jamaica's sovereignty is not in question, Ukraine's is, and a lot of countries out there are analyzing the US's every move for signals as to our policy on issues they care about. Ukraine cares about its sovereignty.
It's a matter confined to the English language, so your mention of Russians in that context is unfounded. And also kind of makes it a bit of a pointless matter.
Though it does touch at something deeper, though perhaps less respectable, that would be very similar to what you could read in the "Polish death camps" article.
Okay, small clarification since this wasn't clear: that's the kind of thing Ukrainians perceive Russians as doing, not to say Russians commit this precise offense. But if you think Ukrainians aren't offended by it you're just mistaken. Not all of them, of course, but since nobody's offended by omitting the "the," it's only a mistake to include it. There's no upside.
Briefly skimming the article you linked, it seems like you're agreeing with the larger point anyway: that in international diplomacy, it's very easy for small accidental slights to turn into international incidents, or at the very least harm our relationships with foreign powers with no gain for us.
From the outside, the plan of Trump looks pretty smart:
Trigger mainland China to follow there "one china policy" by keep doing no apropiate stuff with Taiwan till China outlaws all contact to the US and Apple has to produce their smartphones somewhere else. Then raise tarifs and taxis on imported goods from "low income countries" so they cant produce them in vietnam or another low income place.
On December 03 2016 19:49 Clonester wrote: From the outside, the plan of Trump looks pretty smart:
Trigger mainland China to follow there "one china policy" by keep doing no apropiate stuff with Taiwan till China outlaws all contact to the US and Apple has to produce their smartphones somewhere else. Then raise tarifs and taxis on imported goods from "low income countries" so they cant produce them in vietnam or another low income place.
Even if that's his plan, it does look smart to me. Looks like a good way of ensuring a bunch of businesses go bankrupt.
EPT
