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United States42776 Posts
On February 14 2017 00:15 biology]major wrote: I don't think people understand how much it takes for someone to abandon their own political ideology and switch from one party to another. For me, it would have to take an utterly shit republican and a great democrat to cross over. I would have voted for 08 obama over trump for instance. But not Hillary? Hillary was Republican-lite. A progressive in her day, but all the big battles she was on the progressive side of were in the past. Four more years of peace, prosperity and capitalism.
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On February 14 2017 01:20 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2017 01:07 Sermokala wrote:On February 14 2017 00:31 Nebuchad wrote:On February 14 2017 00:29 TomatoBisque wrote: If you replace "racist" with some generic insult like "dickhead" or "asshole" it becomes apparent why the strategy fails. That sort of label means nothing because it's just a bullying tactic, trying to strongarm someone into changing their beliefs through that kind of pressure without actually undermining why they support Trump and dislike Clinton or whatever candidate you wanted instead. This is never ever going to work, it will just breed contempt and resentment You cannot factually be a dickhead. You can factually be a racist. This is nonsense. You can't factually be an insult. People are more then just the labels people put on each other. People can be racist and do racist things but that can't define someone factually like a progressive or a conservative can define themselves factually as those labels. Once you identify someone with a negative label like that you slowly dehuminize them like hate mongers all do. Hate monger is a negative label, I don't think you should label me like that cause there's more to me than just that and you're dehumanizing me when you say it. Or you know, we could stop saying stuff that is utterly absurd. Of course there is such a thing as factual racism. I craft an argument and detail why what you said is wrong and you respond is "of course I'm right don't be absurd".
Your being dumb on purpose factual racism is a thing but labeling someone as a factual racist is dehuminizeing. Do you have any intent to help anyone or anything? If not then what's the point other then to spread hate and revel in your perceived enlightenment?
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United States42776 Posts
On February 14 2017 00:29 TomatoBisque wrote: If you replace "racist" with some generic insult like "dickhead" or "asshole" it becomes apparent why the strategy fails. That sort of label means nothing because it's just a bullying tactic, trying to strongarm someone into changing their beliefs through that kind of pressure without actually undermining why they support Trump and dislike Clinton or whatever candidate you wanted instead. This is never ever going to work, it will just breed contempt and resentment The problem is for some reason people seem to think that you can just deny being an asshole, or a racist, or whatever else and then continue about your business. That if someone comes to you and says "hey, you do realize you're being an asshole right now, right?" you can check with your own thoughts about your own version of events and your own self image and see if they're willing to corroborate that story. And if they don't, well, clearly this person is lying to you, you're not sure why but it doesn't matter because you're clearly not an asshole. And so you get defensive and respond with anger.
It's far simpler than asking yourself why people seem to think you're an asshole, even if deep down you know that you're not. But a lot of people are extremely afraid of introspection, they don't want to ask themselves why people keep calling them an asshole, they just want to be reassured that everyone else is wrong and then move on.
It's not that insulting doesn't work. It's that some people are completely incapable of any form of reflection or introspection.
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On February 14 2017 01:18 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2017 01:12 a_flayer wrote:On February 14 2017 00:50 Acrofales wrote:On February 14 2017 00:40 LegalLord wrote:On February 14 2017 00:34 Acrofales wrote:On February 14 2017 00:21 a_flayer wrote:On February 14 2017 00:03 ZasZ. wrote:On February 13 2017 23:36 Trainrunnef wrote:On February 13 2017 23:12 Biff The Understudy wrote: Btw, I remember when i was a kid, that voting Le Pen was an extremely shameful thing to do in most people's mind. It basically made you a bad person.
Then appeared the idea that you really shouldn't say bad things about Le Pen voters and now it's totally ok to support fascism. Surprise, Le Pen is also at 25%.
This PC crap about not simply calling a FN voter a fascist is a strategic mistake imo. Much like calling Trump voters racists or mysoginists, I doubt it will have the effect that you are looking for. Shame only works when the people being shamed care enough about your opinion. Agreed. So many people have convinced themselves that the designation "racist" or "misogynist" means nothing that this strategy does not work. The thing that still floors me is that people can watch or listen to him talk and think to themselves "Yeah this guy is totally smart and rational, he would make a good leader of the free world." Believe me, I understand hating Hillary as a candidate and I totally get the people who didn't want to vote for either one. But the level of enthusiasm with which half the country voted for Trump still floors me, and suggests that there is another motive, because his towering intellect and sensible behavior is certainly not the reason. I once commented online that I didn't join in the Woman's March and was immediately congratulated on my white penis. It was quite astonishing. I have some understanding on why people attach little value to accusations such as "racist" and "misogynist". Just for the sake of discussion, were they wrong in guesstimating that you are a white male? What relevance does that have in whether or not he chose to take part in some event or other? That was clearly not the discussion. For instance, being asked "so, did you go to the woman's march?" and answering "no", then being told that, would be a bit weird. Barging into a reddit discussion about the woman's march to loudly pronounce that you didn't go... well... different context. It was an imgur post about enthusiastically marching on the day of the march. I had commented something along the lines of "I'd march, but I'm about ready to give up altogether". I don't remember the exact wording, and I'm not sure if I included my general support for the spirit of the march despite my lack of willpower to support them on the ground. I deleted my comment rather quickly, feeling defeated due to their accurate assessment of my physical appearance. aka you were called out for shitposting a motivational image.
I don't know man, this was on the day of the protests in usersub, and most of the protest submissions were being downvoted to oblivion (at least, the ones I saw). Meanwhile the nastiest comments were being upvoted. I probably let that influence my mood quite a bit when I made the comment, but I felt like it was rather unnecessary to call me out on having a white penis in that scenario. I don't think "shitposting a motivational image" applies here, not nearly in comparison to what other people were saying at least.
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On February 14 2017 01:41 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2017 01:32 Plansix wrote: Do we really need to beat the “Hilary Clinton electability” dead horse some more? Have we not gotten enough blood from that stone over the last 2 months? I mean, it's relevant enough to how we got to where we are now, so it's important to acknowledge it again and again and again. When people question how we got to where we are now... just look at the electable candidate who we had to choose because we couldn't afford risking the loss here. Turns out, if you push people enough in a bad way, they might just elect a meme.
"Who we had to choose." This is the argument we are making. You did not have to choose Trump. All indications were that electing Hillary Clinton would be another 4-8 years of business as usual politics, with maybe some corruption and data management incompetence thrown in if 100 percent of the smears against her had weight. All indications were that electing Donald Trump would result in violent upheaval of the system. If that's what you wanted, at least say it. But I cannot fathom a rational viewpoint that viewed them both as "equally bad," but has Trump come out on top. It sounds like an equivocation for somebody that doesn't want to admit they really just prefer Trump's policies.
But again, this is my opinion and like so many others of mine it is almost entirely rooted in logic rather than emotion. I could never vote for a man like Donald Trump even if he was a democrat, because he is a certifiable moron. That's a deal-breaker for me. This election was eye-opening in that not many people seemed to care, or even notice that fact.
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On February 14 2017 01:46 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2017 01:20 Nebuchad wrote:On February 14 2017 01:07 Sermokala wrote:On February 14 2017 00:31 Nebuchad wrote:On February 14 2017 00:29 TomatoBisque wrote: If you replace "racist" with some generic insult like "dickhead" or "asshole" it becomes apparent why the strategy fails. That sort of label means nothing because it's just a bullying tactic, trying to strongarm someone into changing their beliefs through that kind of pressure without actually undermining why they support Trump and dislike Clinton or whatever candidate you wanted instead. This is never ever going to work, it will just breed contempt and resentment You cannot factually be a dickhead. You can factually be a racist. This is nonsense. You can't factually be an insult. People are more then just the labels people put on each other. People can be racist and do racist things but that can't define someone factually like a progressive or a conservative can define themselves factually as those labels. Once you identify someone with a negative label like that you slowly dehuminize them like hate mongers all do. Hate monger is a negative label, I don't think you should label me like that cause there's more to me than just that and you're dehumanizing me when you say it. Or you know, we could stop saying stuff that is utterly absurd. Of course there is such a thing as factual racism. I craft an argument and detail why what you said is wrong and you respond is "of course I'm right don't be absurd". Your being dumb on purpose factual racism is a thing but labeling someone as a factual racist is dehuminizeing. Do you have any intent to help anyone or anything? If not then what's the point other then to spread hate and revel in your perceived enlightenment?
I have the intent of stating a true fact. If someone is displaying racist behavior, that's what we call a racist person. I'm sure he also plays cello and donates to charity and likes kittens but that's not really relevant to what I'm talking about in this specific conversation where he is displaying racist behavior and I'm calling him out for it.
You can disagree that a behavior is racist, and we can have a discussion about that on a case by case basis. That is fine. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe that person isn't being factually racist. But that doesn't mean that nobody can ever be and you sound ridiculous when you argue that, especially if your argument is that he can't be racist because that's not how he identifies himself.
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On February 14 2017 01:40 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2017 01:14 Sermokala wrote:On February 14 2017 01:05 Mohdoo wrote:On February 14 2017 01:03 opisska wrote:On February 14 2017 00:45 LegalLord wrote: They probably would have drawn the line at Trump if not for the fact that Hillary is extremely hated among those people.
I think you simply underestimate how much people don't like her. That's probably the most confusing part of the whole thing when seen from the outside. To me Clinton is just another cookie cutter politician, why do people hate her so much? I just can't fathom any sequence of thoughts that would make me pick her as unacceptable and Trump not, so this whole theory of Trump "winning by exclusion" is really hard to grasp. I tried to ask some people randomly and usually got some generic stuff about establishment, big money etc... is it really all that there is, or is there some henious aspect to Clinton that only americans understand? People feel like our country should be doing much better than it is. People who were in careers of inflated value suddenly saw their value drop to a more reasonable level. This damaged their fragile view of their self worth and they blamed the elite. This even without context is a absurdly great description of people's reaction to globalization. For a new discussion what do people think about a legitimate military intervention into Mexico to drive out the cartels and end the drug war afterwords? What do you mean with "end the war on drugs"? Legalize marihuana and decriminalize cocaine? Shouldn't you start with that? Going to war in Mexico to *drive out* the carterls (as if that were an easy thing) is expensive, and will do exactly nothing unless you remove the monetary incentive for the cartels' existence in the first place. And if you *do* do something about the monetary incentive for the cartels' existence (by legalizing marihuana and decriminalizing cocaine), then the situation in Mexico will change. If it turns out the cartels are just transferring into something else (like the mafia after the prohibition ended), and Mexico needs help cleaning that up, then maybe help them with that. The cartels were mostly driven out of South America and farc is on its last legs. Clearly military intervention and cooperation helped. Doing the same for Mexico and trying to stabilize what's a pretty close nation to us has to do a bit of good.
Changing major things in our country and expecting it to help other countries shouldn't be our focus. Our focus should be to solve the issue by acting first.
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On February 14 2017 01:41 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2017 01:32 Plansix wrote: Do we really need to beat the “Hilary Clinton electability” dead horse some more? Have we not gotten enough blood from that stone over the last 2 months? I mean, it's relevant enough to how we got to where we are now, so it's important to acknowledge it again and again and again. When people question how we got to where we are now... just look at the electable candidate who we had to choose because we couldn't afford risking the loss here. Turns out, if you push people enough in a bad way, they might just elect a meme. I get that, but there are other factors worth discussing and we have beat that horse to death. Though I will concede that it is your favorite topic of discussion and you view it as the most important factor.
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On February 14 2017 01:53 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2017 01:46 Sermokala wrote:On February 14 2017 01:20 Nebuchad wrote:On February 14 2017 01:07 Sermokala wrote:On February 14 2017 00:31 Nebuchad wrote:On February 14 2017 00:29 TomatoBisque wrote: If you replace "racist" with some generic insult like "dickhead" or "asshole" it becomes apparent why the strategy fails. That sort of label means nothing because it's just a bullying tactic, trying to strongarm someone into changing their beliefs through that kind of pressure without actually undermining why they support Trump and dislike Clinton or whatever candidate you wanted instead. This is never ever going to work, it will just breed contempt and resentment You cannot factually be a dickhead. You can factually be a racist. This is nonsense. You can't factually be an insult. People are more then just the labels people put on each other. People can be racist and do racist things but that can't define someone factually like a progressive or a conservative can define themselves factually as those labels. Once you identify someone with a negative label like that you slowly dehuminize them like hate mongers all do. Hate monger is a negative label, I don't think you should label me like that cause there's more to me than just that and you're dehumanizing me when you say it. Or you know, we could stop saying stuff that is utterly absurd. Of course there is such a thing as factual racism. I craft an argument and detail why what you said is wrong and you respond is "of course I'm right don't be absurd". Your being dumb on purpose factual racism is a thing but labeling someone as a factual racist is dehuminizeing. Do you have any intent to help anyone or anything? If not then what's the point other then to spread hate and revel in your perceived enlightenment? I have the intent of stating a true fact. If someone is displaying racist behavior, that's what we call a racist person. I'm sure he also plays cello and donates to charity and likes kittens but that's not really relevant to what I'm talking about in this specific conversation where he is displaying racist behavior and I'm calling him out for it. You can disagree that a behavior is racist, and we can have a discussion about that on a case by case basis. That is fine. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe that person isn't factually racist. But that doesn't mean that nobody can ever be and you sound ridiculous when you argue that, especially if your argument is that he can't be racist because that's not how he identifies himself. You're almost there but the problem isn't in your idea of the accuracy of your labeling but the result of it. People and society change over time which means it will change in the future. Calling someone out on racist and labeling them as racist are different. It's applying a standard that changes on someone that you disagree with. Obviously it being a negative means that you think less of the person due to that label. This is exactly how the racists and hate mongers reinforce their attitute. And no one wants to be like racists even if they aren't racist
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On February 14 2017 01:53 ZasZ. wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2017 01:41 LegalLord wrote:On February 14 2017 01:32 Plansix wrote: Do we really need to beat the “Hilary Clinton electability” dead horse some more? Have we not gotten enough blood from that stone over the last 2 months? I mean, it's relevant enough to how we got to where we are now, so it's important to acknowledge it again and again and again. When people question how we got to where we are now... just look at the electable candidate who we had to choose because we couldn't afford risking the loss here. Turns out, if you push people enough in a bad way, they might just elect a meme. "Who we had to choose." This is the argument we are making. You did not have to choose Trump. All indications were that electing Hillary Clinton would be another 4-8 years of business as usual politics, with maybe some corruption and data management incompetence thrown in if 100 percent of the smears against her had weight. All indications were that electing Donald Trump would result in violent upheaval of the system. If that's what you wanted, at least say it. But I cannot fathom a rational viewpoint that viewed them both as "equally bad," but has Trump come out on top. It sounds like an equivocation for somebody that doesn't want to admit they really just prefer Trump's policies. But again, this is my opinion and like so many others of mine it is almost entirely rooted in logic rather than emotion. I could never vote for a man like Donald Trump even if he was a democrat, because he is a certifiable moron. That's a deal-breaker for me. This election was eye-opening in that not many people seemed to care, or even notice that fact. I agree on at the very least that Trump was not the better of the two options. But I know that for many people the case against Hillary was so substantial that they went the other way.
If Trump is a 1 on a scale of 1 to 10, then the DNC decided that they could give us a 1.1 (or a 3, if you prefer to say that the orange meme is significantly worse) and we should just choose that because it's "better." Strictly speaking it is better, but either way we lose, so it becomes something of a tough choice.
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On February 14 2017 01:54 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2017 01:40 Acrofales wrote:On February 14 2017 01:14 Sermokala wrote:On February 14 2017 01:05 Mohdoo wrote:On February 14 2017 01:03 opisska wrote:On February 14 2017 00:45 LegalLord wrote: They probably would have drawn the line at Trump if not for the fact that Hillary is extremely hated among those people.
I think you simply underestimate how much people don't like her. That's probably the most confusing part of the whole thing when seen from the outside. To me Clinton is just another cookie cutter politician, why do people hate her so much? I just can't fathom any sequence of thoughts that would make me pick her as unacceptable and Trump not, so this whole theory of Trump "winning by exclusion" is really hard to grasp. I tried to ask some people randomly and usually got some generic stuff about establishment, big money etc... is it really all that there is, or is there some henious aspect to Clinton that only americans understand? People feel like our country should be doing much better than it is. People who were in careers of inflated value suddenly saw their value drop to a more reasonable level. This damaged their fragile view of their self worth and they blamed the elite. This even without context is a absurdly great description of people's reaction to globalization. For a new discussion what do people think about a legitimate military intervention into Mexico to drive out the cartels and end the drug war afterwords? What do you mean with "end the war on drugs"? Legalize marihuana and decriminalize cocaine? Shouldn't you start with that? Going to war in Mexico to *drive out* the carterls (as if that were an easy thing) is expensive, and will do exactly nothing unless you remove the monetary incentive for the cartels' existence in the first place. And if you *do* do something about the monetary incentive for the cartels' existence (by legalizing marihuana and decriminalizing cocaine), then the situation in Mexico will change. If it turns out the cartels are just transferring into something else (like the mafia after the prohibition ended), and Mexico needs help cleaning that up, then maybe help them with that. The cartels were mostly driven out of South America and farc is on its last legs. Clearly military intervention and cooperation helped. Doing the same for Mexico and trying to stabilize what's a pretty close nation to us has to do a bit of good. Changing major things in our country and expecting it to help other countries shouldn't be our focus. Our focus should be to solve the issue by acting first.
My main issue with it (aside from the fact that Mexico needs to give approval) is that from what I understand the gangs in Mexico are prominently in civilian area's where people live their normal lives. Sending the army into cities to rout out violent and heavily armed gangs will cause a lot of blood to flow through the streets. and much of it will be innocents.
Edit: Fixed wrong quote.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On February 14 2017 01:55 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2017 01:41 LegalLord wrote:On February 14 2017 01:32 Plansix wrote: Do we really need to beat the “Hilary Clinton electability” dead horse some more? Have we not gotten enough blood from that stone over the last 2 months? I mean, it's relevant enough to how we got to where we are now, so it's important to acknowledge it again and again and again. When people question how we got to where we are now... just look at the electable candidate who we had to choose because we couldn't afford risking the loss here. Turns out, if you push people enough in a bad way, they might just elect a meme. I get that, but there are other factors worth discussing and we have beat that horse to death. Though I will concede that it is your favorite topic of discussion and you view it as the most important factor. It's either that or Trump's Twitter feed. Because those are the two stories that come up in here frequently enough to be recurring topics of discussion.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On February 14 2017 02:04 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2017 01:53 ZasZ. wrote:On February 14 2017 01:41 LegalLord wrote:On February 14 2017 01:32 Plansix wrote: Do we really need to beat the “Hilary Clinton electability” dead horse some more? Have we not gotten enough blood from that stone over the last 2 months? I mean, it's relevant enough to how we got to where we are now, so it's important to acknowledge it again and again and again. When people question how we got to where we are now... just look at the electable candidate who we had to choose because we couldn't afford risking the loss here. Turns out, if you push people enough in a bad way, they might just elect a meme. "Who we had to choose." This is the argument we are making. You did not have to choose Trump. All indications were that electing Hillary Clinton would be another 4-8 years of business as usual politics, with maybe some corruption and data management incompetence thrown in if 100 percent of the smears against her had weight. All indications were that electing Donald Trump would result in violent upheaval of the system. If that's what you wanted, at least say it. But I cannot fathom a rational viewpoint that viewed them both as "equally bad," but has Trump come out on top. It sounds like an equivocation for somebody that doesn't want to admit they really just prefer Trump's policies. But again, this is my opinion and like so many others of mine it is almost entirely rooted in logic rather than emotion. I could never vote for a man like Donald Trump even if he was a democrat, because he is a certifiable moron. That's a deal-breaker for me. This election was eye-opening in that not many people seemed to care, or even notice that fact. I agree on at the very least that Trump was not the better of the two options. But I know that for many people the case against Hillary was so substantial that they went the other way. If Trump is a 1 on a scale of 1 to 10, then the DNC decided that they could give us a 1.1 (or a 3, if you prefer to say that the orange meme is significantly worse) and we should just choose that because it's "better." Strictly speaking it is better, but either way we lose, so it becomes something of a tough choice. a more accurate picture in numbers that reflects the cognitive situation of busters is like this,
on the scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being bad, hillary is a 1000000000 and trump is a 100000000000000000. when you place hillary so far on the evil scale, comparison with other large evils lose meaning. it's not really a 'let the perfect be the enemy of the good' situation. that narrative is just for moderates. busters are the ones who genuinely see hillary as very evil.
but even more accurate would be the simple categorical thinking with vague but strongly influential ideological labels i described earlier. these people are not evaluating weighted outcomes.
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United States42776 Posts
On February 14 2017 02:05 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2017 01:55 Plansix wrote:On February 14 2017 01:41 LegalLord wrote:On February 14 2017 01:32 Plansix wrote: Do we really need to beat the “Hilary Clinton electability” dead horse some more? Have we not gotten enough blood from that stone over the last 2 months? I mean, it's relevant enough to how we got to where we are now, so it's important to acknowledge it again and again and again. When people question how we got to where we are now... just look at the electable candidate who we had to choose because we couldn't afford risking the loss here. Turns out, if you push people enough in a bad way, they might just elect a meme. I get that, but there are other factors worth discussing and we have beat that horse to death. Though I will concede that it is your favorite topic of discussion and you view it as the most important factor. It's either that or Trump's Twitter feed. Because those are the two stories that come up in here frequently enough to be recurring topics of discussion. I tried to bring up the fact that Russia is literally invading Ukraine and that the western world needs decisive American leadership in response to this.
Nobody bit.
This is the first international crisis of the Trump era. There needs to be a response to it and so far none is happening.
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On February 14 2017 02:00 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2017 01:53 Nebuchad wrote:On February 14 2017 01:46 Sermokala wrote:On February 14 2017 01:20 Nebuchad wrote:On February 14 2017 01:07 Sermokala wrote:On February 14 2017 00:31 Nebuchad wrote:On February 14 2017 00:29 TomatoBisque wrote: If you replace "racist" with some generic insult like "dickhead" or "asshole" it becomes apparent why the strategy fails. That sort of label means nothing because it's just a bullying tactic, trying to strongarm someone into changing their beliefs through that kind of pressure without actually undermining why they support Trump and dislike Clinton or whatever candidate you wanted instead. This is never ever going to work, it will just breed contempt and resentment You cannot factually be a dickhead. You can factually be a racist. This is nonsense. You can't factually be an insult. People are more then just the labels people put on each other. People can be racist and do racist things but that can't define someone factually like a progressive or a conservative can define themselves factually as those labels. Once you identify someone with a negative label like that you slowly dehuminize them like hate mongers all do. Hate monger is a negative label, I don't think you should label me like that cause there's more to me than just that and you're dehumanizing me when you say it. Or you know, we could stop saying stuff that is utterly absurd. Of course there is such a thing as factual racism. I craft an argument and detail why what you said is wrong and you respond is "of course I'm right don't be absurd". Your being dumb on purpose factual racism is a thing but labeling someone as a factual racist is dehuminizeing. Do you have any intent to help anyone or anything? If not then what's the point other then to spread hate and revel in your perceived enlightenment? I have the intent of stating a true fact. If someone is displaying racist behavior, that's what we call a racist person. I'm sure he also plays cello and donates to charity and likes kittens but that's not really relevant to what I'm talking about in this specific conversation where he is displaying racist behavior and I'm calling him out for it. You can disagree that a behavior is racist, and we can have a discussion about that on a case by case basis. That is fine. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe that person isn't factually racist. But that doesn't mean that nobody can ever be and you sound ridiculous when you argue that, especially if your argument is that he can't be racist because that's not how he identifies himself. You're almost there but the problem isn't in your idea of the accuracy of your labeling but the result of it. People and society change over time which means it will change in the future. Calling someone out on racist and labeling them as racist are different. It's applying a standard that changes on someone that you disagree with. Obviously it being a negative means that you think less of the person due to that label. This is exactly how the racists and hate mongers reinforce their attitute. And no one wants to be like racists even if they aren't racist
Well your premise is that we should focus on results rather than accuracy for no particular reason. I disagree. I think we should strive to be correct at all times.
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On February 14 2017 02:04 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2017 01:53 ZasZ. wrote:On February 14 2017 01:41 LegalLord wrote:On February 14 2017 01:32 Plansix wrote: Do we really need to beat the “Hilary Clinton electability” dead horse some more? Have we not gotten enough blood from that stone over the last 2 months? I mean, it's relevant enough to how we got to where we are now, so it's important to acknowledge it again and again and again. When people question how we got to where we are now... just look at the electable candidate who we had to choose because we couldn't afford risking the loss here. Turns out, if you push people enough in a bad way, they might just elect a meme. "Who we had to choose." This is the argument we are making. You did not have to choose Trump. All indications were that electing Hillary Clinton would be another 4-8 years of business as usual politics, with maybe some corruption and data management incompetence thrown in if 100 percent of the smears against her had weight. All indications were that electing Donald Trump would result in violent upheaval of the system. If that's what you wanted, at least say it. But I cannot fathom a rational viewpoint that viewed them both as "equally bad," but has Trump come out on top. It sounds like an equivocation for somebody that doesn't want to admit they really just prefer Trump's policies. But again, this is my opinion and like so many others of mine it is almost entirely rooted in logic rather than emotion. I could never vote for a man like Donald Trump even if he was a democrat, because he is a certifiable moron. That's a deal-breaker for me. This election was eye-opening in that not many people seemed to care, or even notice that fact. I agree on at the very least that Trump was not the better of the two options. But I know that for many people the case against Hillary was so substantial that they went the other way. If Trump is a 1 on a scale of 1 to 10, then the DNC decided that they could give us a 1.1 (or a 3, if you prefer to say that the orange meme is significantly worse) and we should just choose that because it's "better." Strictly speaking it is better, but either way we lose, so it becomes something of a tough choice. Except thats how the world works. You (almost) never get what you want and you spend your entire life compromising.
Hillary was 4-8 more years mostly the same like the last 4-8 years (complete with Republican obstruction preventing real change). And while I understand Republicans didn't think Obama was good and that they wanted things differently, I don't think they wanted America to be the laughing stock of the world, antagonize every single ally you have, head strait for another financial crisis by de-regulating the banks again and any number of other issues that will come up over the next 4 years (probably at a rate of atleast 1 per week).
its a "The world is not perfect so lets burn it down and see what else we can get" attitude that completely forgets how damn good things are for a US citizens and how bad it can get.
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On February 14 2017 02:08 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2017 02:05 LegalLord wrote:On February 14 2017 01:55 Plansix wrote:On February 14 2017 01:41 LegalLord wrote:On February 14 2017 01:32 Plansix wrote: Do we really need to beat the “Hilary Clinton electability” dead horse some more? Have we not gotten enough blood from that stone over the last 2 months? I mean, it's relevant enough to how we got to where we are now, so it's important to acknowledge it again and again and again. When people question how we got to where we are now... just look at the electable candidate who we had to choose because we couldn't afford risking the loss here. Turns out, if you push people enough in a bad way, they might just elect a meme. I get that, but there are other factors worth discussing and we have beat that horse to death. Though I will concede that it is your favorite topic of discussion and you view it as the most important factor. It's either that or Trump's Twitter feed. Because those are the two stories that come up in here frequently enough to be recurring topics of discussion. I tried to bring up the fact that Russia is literally invading Ukraine and that the western world needs decisive American leadership in response to this. Nobody bit. This is the first international crisis of the Trump era. There needs to be a response to it and so far none is happening. I feel like everyone has gone full Neville Chamberlain and decided that Russia can have Ukraine because ISIS is scary. Mind you, nations taking over other nations is 1000% more scary than 30K fighters getting their ass kicked from all sides, but terrorism.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On February 14 2017 02:08 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2017 02:05 LegalLord wrote:On February 14 2017 01:55 Plansix wrote:On February 14 2017 01:41 LegalLord wrote:On February 14 2017 01:32 Plansix wrote: Do we really need to beat the “Hilary Clinton electability” dead horse some more? Have we not gotten enough blood from that stone over the last 2 months? I mean, it's relevant enough to how we got to where we are now, so it's important to acknowledge it again and again and again. When people question how we got to where we are now... just look at the electable candidate who we had to choose because we couldn't afford risking the loss here. Turns out, if you push people enough in a bad way, they might just elect a meme. I get that, but there are other factors worth discussing and we have beat that horse to death. Though I will concede that it is your favorite topic of discussion and you view it as the most important factor. It's either that or Trump's Twitter feed. Because those are the two stories that come up in here frequently enough to be recurring topics of discussion. I tried to bring up the fact that Russia is literally invading Ukraine and that the western world needs decisive American leadership in response to this. Nobody bit. This is the first international crisis of the Trump era. There needs to be a response to it and so far none is happening. I brought it up like a week before you did (in a "Ukraine is heating up, be aware" way). Beyond that, none of us want to make this another Ukraine thread.
Conventional wisdom suggests that the US would normally posture and huff and puff about some issue far eastward - but if it were to come to the threat of force (from a conventional opponent) it would back off and bark from a safe distance.
North Korea launched a missile recently, if you want to look at international crises from a "rogue threat" perspective, by the way.
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On February 14 2017 01:54 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2017 01:40 Acrofales wrote:On February 14 2017 01:14 Sermokala wrote:On February 14 2017 01:05 Mohdoo wrote:On February 14 2017 01:03 opisska wrote:On February 14 2017 00:45 LegalLord wrote: They probably would have drawn the line at Trump if not for the fact that Hillary is extremely hated among those people.
I think you simply underestimate how much people don't like her. That's probably the most confusing part of the whole thing when seen from the outside. To me Clinton is just another cookie cutter politician, why do people hate her so much? I just can't fathom any sequence of thoughts that would make me pick her as unacceptable and Trump not, so this whole theory of Trump "winning by exclusion" is really hard to grasp. I tried to ask some people randomly and usually got some generic stuff about establishment, big money etc... is it really all that there is, or is there some henious aspect to Clinton that only americans understand? People feel like our country should be doing much better than it is. People who were in careers of inflated value suddenly saw their value drop to a more reasonable level. This damaged their fragile view of their self worth and they blamed the elite. This even without context is a absurdly great description of people's reaction to globalization. For a new discussion what do people think about a legitimate military intervention into Mexico to drive out the cartels and end the drug war afterwords? What do you mean with "end the war on drugs"? Legalize marihuana and decriminalize cocaine? Shouldn't you start with that? Going to war in Mexico to *drive out* the carterls (as if that were an easy thing) is expensive, and will do exactly nothing unless you remove the monetary incentive for the cartels' existence in the first place. And if you *do* do something about the monetary incentive for the cartels' existence (by legalizing marihuana and decriminalizing cocaine), then the situation in Mexico will change. If it turns out the cartels are just transferring into something else (like the mafia after the prohibition ended), and Mexico needs help cleaning that up, then maybe help them with that. The cartels were mostly driven out of South America and farc is on its last legs. Clearly military intervention and cooperation helped. Doing the same for Mexico and trying to stabilize what's a pretty close nation to us has to do a bit of good. Changing major things in our country and expecting it to help other countries shouldn't be our focus. Our focus should be to solve the issue by acting first.
You seem to have a misunderstanding of the drug problem: you are fundamentally not reducing demand. Cocaine usage declined because it got priced out of the market due to the Colombian cartels being shut down. Meth took over, and with it the Mexican cartels. Shut down hard on meth, and something else will pop up. Probably opioids, because they're already a vast problem in the US with the overprescription of pain killers. Or maybe cocaine again, because coca grows just fine in the jungles of Venezuela and Bolivia, which currently don't have governments that are very friendly with the US. Just because you can shut down cartels in Mexico doesn't mean you can shut down the problem, because the demand is still there.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
the bigger danger on the russia front is some sort of mix of signals between trump and the military. trump gives assurance that russia can do some stuff, military command thinks otherwise. we've got a hot one.
it's not really relevant for ukraine, but in places where the u.s. has actual presence.
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