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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. |
On July 20 2017 01:50 mozoku wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2017 01:33 Wegandi wrote:
The GOP wants a fighter not an intellectual (as evident by Trump's victory and Rand's + Ron's losses). It's about who can be the biggest bully, because if it was obviously on issues the *base* says it supposedly supports then he would have lost. I don't understand why the GOP focuses so much effort on the social issues stuff, but in light of the insanity coming from the "left" I suppose they decided to put the more society destroying and Government-expanding issues of War and Economy behind them in the rear view mirror. Which brings me to - why the fuck are we still in the Middle East and what on Gods green Earth are we doing spending 700 billion on a bloated MIC-laden imperialist military. The Federal Reserve and the Pentagon are drowning this country, and oh yeah, the expanding welfare state is right there too. You do realize that US military power is what's keeping Taiwan independent, keeping Ukraine independent, ISIS mostly destroyed, enforcing the UN Convention of the Law of the Seas in the South China Sea (aka stopping a giant territorial bully in China), and keeping some minority of Syria out of Assad's reach? As far as exactly what we're doing in the Middle East: in addition to Syria, the Taliban is trying to regain a foothold in Afghanistan, Yemen in a civil war that is a proxy battleground between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and ISIS is still not fully removed from Syria (though I believe they're fully cleared out of Iraq within the last month). As Iraq still has to deal with pockets of terrorism (even with the Iraqi fall of ISIS), US troops there are advising and training Iraq to handle counter-terrorism operations on their own. I know this thread takes for granted that the "MIC" is some kind of Republican conspiracy to pad the 1%'s pockets, but I don't understand what you guys think the world would be like without US military hegemony. Putin and the CCP are just teddy bears at heart, I'm sure. After all, autocratic bullies have done so much good for the world when left as regional/global powers throughout history. North Korea also comes to mind as a reason to maintain a strong military.
I'm reading a lot of words and areas of the world that have dick all to do with us. If Putin and Russia is a problem, I'm confident that the European powers can handle him. Ain't no one invading the US even given your very imaginative scenario's you've cooked up.
In fact, the biggest foreign threat to US citizens come from the drug cartels on our southern border (I'm not in a mood to have a long argument about why legalizing drugs would destroy these mafia goons (just as legalizing prohibition, destroyed all the alcohol gangs and mobs re: Capone, etc.)).
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The entire discussion from Kickboxer seems to be based around him arguing with some fictional version of TL. Like the topic of pronoun usage has not been discussed before. Or that 90% of the site is "leftist" and he is presenting a unique perspective. The whole thing seems set up for him to claim he is being attacked/repressed/misrepresented, right down to the demand that we watch 10 hours of video before responding to him. He is talking at us, not to us.
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On July 20 2017 02:10 Plansix wrote:
The entire discussion from Kickboxer seems to be based around him arguing with some fictional version of TL. Like the topic of pronoun usage has not been discussed before. Or that 90% of the site is "leftist" and he is presenting a unique perspective. The whole thing seems set up for him to claim he is being attacked/repressed/misrepresented, right down to the demand that we watch 10 hours of video before responding to him. He is talking at us, not to us.
To be fair, that 90% number isn't too far off. TL is extremely progressive.
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On July 20 2017 01:33 Wegandi wrote:
The GOP wants a fighter not an intellectual (as evident by Trump's victory and Rand's + Ron's losses). It's about who can be the biggest bully, because if it was obviously on issues the *base* says it supposedly supports then he would have lost. I don't understand why the GOP focuses so much effort on the social issues stuff, but in light of the insanity coming from the "left" I suppose they decided to put the more society destroying and Government-expanding issues of War and Economy behind them in the rear view mirror. Which brings me to - why the fuck are we still in the Middle East and what on Gods green Earth are we doing spending 700 billion on a bloated MIC-laden imperialist military. The Federal Reserve and the Pentagon are drowning this country, and oh yeah, the expanding welfare state is right there too.
because defense sells well and makes people feel safe (and politics runs on feels not facts). it also makes for good pork; and the dod has become very good at setting thnigs up so that the prok gets spread around so they get the votes for things.
eisenhower was right.
as to ME; because stupid. that's my answer at least, plus some anti-terror stuff. mostly it's due to political complications though,a nd the need to act like you're responding to terror in a highly visible way; rather than the more effective but less visible ways.
humans are not rational, and are not well-informed, and people take advantage of that, so having a rational ME policy is a lot harder. the only way to have a rational policy is for the electorate to not care about something, so it can be done quitely in a non-partisasn way in the background cuz noone has anything to gain from doing anything other than being basically competent.
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On July 20 2017 02:00 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2017 01:41 Wulfey_LA wrote:On July 20 2017 01:33 Wegandi wrote:
The GOP wants a fighter not an intellectual (as evident by Trump's victory and Rand's + Ron's losses). It's about who can be the biggest bully, because if it was obviously on issues the *base* says it supposedly supports then he would have lost. I don't understand why the GOP focuses so much effort on the social issues stuff, but in light of the insanity coming from the "left" I suppose they decided to put the more society destroying and Government-expanding issues of War and Economy behind them in the rear view mirror. Which brings me to - why the fuck are we still in the Middle East and what on Gods green Earth are we doing spending 700 billion on a bloated MIC-laden imperialist military. The Federal Reserve and the Pentagon are drowning this country, and oh yeah, the expanding welfare state is right there too. So we are actually winning against ISIS. Decisively. President Trump doesn't have the attention span to finish reading a whole piece of paper ... so he hasn't been able to disrupt the plans laid back in the Obama administration. Thanks to his inattentiveness nothing has been changed and his idiocy and venality keeps the USA campaign against ISIS out of the news. The military has quietly been pushing our best proxies into victory. The media doesn't talk about it much, but ISIS is being destroyed. Now would be the worst of all possible times to withdraw from the middle east. The liberation of Mosul in Iraq. http://www.nrttv.com/en/Details.aspx?Jimare=15608Our proxies (with boots on the ground USA troop help) are fighting in Raqqa already. http://www.militarytimes.com/articles/us-backed-forces-battle-isis-in-heart-of-syrias-raqqa ISIS is not an existential threat to the US. It's a threat to the Middle East, but not to us. What's with this winning or losing mentality? Just the very fact we're wasting $$$ and blood in a conflict that has no tangential impact on our society (in the very literal sense - in the real sense though, War expands the state and erodes liberty, as we've seen with the NSA/CIA, etc. don't get me started on the TSA either), mean's we've lost. I think Madison put it best - when the US goes looking for foreign boogeyman, liberty is lost. Let's not go making every tom, dick, and harry bad person in the world our problem (even if our prior actions caused said tom, dick, and harry to arise - two wrongs don't make a right).
Do you care about the facts of the situation? If this is all just your own ideology trumping whatever the facts are, then this is pointless. But the facts include that ISIS long ago declared war on us and does their best to send what they can against us. They also killed thousands of citizens of our allies. They also brought Genocide back. We are talking about heaps and heaps of dead in big mass graves. As a bonus, they sent a nice refugee crisis straight into our allies. These guys are not every tom, dick and harry. Just because you have some ideological feelings doesn't make ISIS's war against us, our allies, and the innocents nearby them go away.
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On July 20 2017 02:12 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2017 02:10 Plansix wrote:
The entire discussion from Kickboxer seems to be based around him arguing with some fictional version of TL. Like the topic of pronoun usage has not been discussed before. Or that 90% of the site is "leftist" and he is presenting a unique perspective. The whole thing seems set up for him to claim he is being attacked/repressed/misrepresented, right down to the demand that we watch 10 hours of video before responding to him. He is talking at us, not to us. To be fair, that 90% number isn't too far off. TL is extremely progressive.
I think we might be closer to 50/50 than you think, even though many TL members might consider themselves progressive/liberal. I remember the endless threat of people yelling about the rainbow horse, gay marriage and Mephisto hilarious post that being against gay marriage was all about "Gay men kissing kills my boner". Like most video game communities, we are more diverse in opinions that people might think.
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it's hard ot tell what TL as a whole is like; each thread has a somewhat different population; and the number of people who post in any individual thread is often quite small; i'm not sure how many people post in the US politics thread, but I wouldn't be surprised if 99% of posts are done by 40 or fewer people. there's also a bunch of people who read sometimes and might answer a poll button, but almost never say anything.
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On July 20 2017 02:12 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2017 02:10 Plansix wrote:
The entire discussion from Kickboxer seems to be based around him arguing with some fictional version of TL. Like the topic of pronoun usage has not been discussed before. Or that 90% of the site is "leftist" and he is presenting a unique perspective. The whole thing seems set up for him to claim he is being attacked/repressed/misrepresented, right down to the demand that we watch 10 hours of video before responding to him. He is talking at us, not to us. To be fair, that 90% number isn't too far off. TL is extremely progressive.
There are few conservatives and libertarians, which I guess is what you were saying. There are a lot of liberals though, and not a whole ton of progressives/leftists (a lot less than I would expect in a crowd of generally young people).
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Just from looking at the last 20 posters in this thread, I counted 15-16 I'd consider (or have seen them consider themselves) left-leaning, and 4 who I'd say are right-leaning (those are pretty obvious because they're constantly in arguments).
I think 80/20 (i.e. 4:1) sounds roughly accurate, though there's also proportionally a lot more progressives in this thread (perhaps due to Europeans and age range) than there are in the general US populace.
Am I the only one who thinks a poll would make sense here? Is that allowed in this thread?
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It probably comes down to perspective. To an american conservative, 90% of the people in europe count as "leftists", be they social democrats, christian center-right, greens, or whatever else your country might have. Few would see themselves as leftists.
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Donald Trump Jr. is reportedly "miserable" and can't wait for the next four years to end.
A friend of President Trump's two adult sons told People that Trump Jr. and Eric Trump "never wanted this."
“Don can’t do any deals, because he’ll be overly scrutinized. He just goes to work every day and is miserable," a source in their circle added.
Trump Jr. is facing backlash after news surfaced earlier this month that he took a meeting last year with a Russian lawyer.
Last week, Trump Jr. released a chain of emails detailing his conversations about setting up a meeting with a Russian lawyer, who he was told had compromising information on then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Trump Jr. has since appeared on Fox News, where he said he likely would have "done things a little differently" in retrospect.
President Trump has defended his eldest son, saying most politicians would have taken similar meetings.
A family friend especially close to Trump Jr. and Eric Trump told People the loyalty within their family is "insane."
“They would never speak against their dad," the family friend said.
The source in the brothers' circle added: “You can’t bite the hand that feeds you, but [Trump Jr.] can’t wait for these four years to be over.”
thehill.com
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On July 20 2017 02:32 Simberto wrote:
It probably comes down to perspective. To an american conservative, 90% of the people in europe count as "leftists", be they social democrats, christian center-right, greens, or whatever else your country might have. Few would see themselves as leftists.
In the politics threat, this can be summed up with the The Kwark effect. Left and right are relative and also complete construct created to simplify complex political views to single terms.
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On July 20 2017 02:23 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2017 02:12 Wegandi wrote:On July 20 2017 02:10 Plansix wrote:
The entire discussion from Kickboxer seems to be based around him arguing with some fictional version of TL. Like the topic of pronoun usage has not been discussed before. Or that 90% of the site is "leftist" and he is presenting a unique perspective. The whole thing seems set up for him to claim he is being attacked/repressed/misrepresented, right down to the demand that we watch 10 hours of video before responding to him. He is talking at us, not to us. To be fair, that 90% number isn't too far off. TL is extremely progressive. I think we might be closer to 50/50 than you think, even though many TL members might consider themselves progressive/liberal. I remember the endless threat of people yelling about the rainbow horse, gay marriage and Mephisto hilarious post that being against gay marriage was all about "Gay men kissing kills my boner". Like most video game communities, we are more diverse in opinions that people might think.
Considering the amount of Europeans I don't think TL is far from being 90% liberal, at least by US standard. There is definitely a vocal conservative minority so that might skew your perception of the distribution.
I do get your point about the conservatives feeling attacked/misrepresented tho. For people who like to call liberal "special snowflakes" they sure like to paint themselves as victims...
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On July 20 2017 02:35 Nevuk wrote:Show nested quote +Donald Trump Jr. is reportedly "miserable" and can't wait for the next four years to end.
A friend of President Trump's two adult sons told People that Trump Jr. and Eric Trump "never wanted this."
“Don can’t do any deals, because he’ll be overly scrutinized. He just goes to work every day and is miserable," a source in their circle added.
Trump Jr. is facing backlash after news surfaced earlier this month that he took a meeting last year with a Russian lawyer.
Last week, Trump Jr. released a chain of emails detailing his conversations about setting up a meeting with a Russian lawyer, who he was told had compromising information on then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Trump Jr. has since appeared on Fox News, where he said he likely would have "done things a little differently" in retrospect.
President Trump has defended his eldest son, saying most politicians would have taken similar meetings.
A family friend especially close to Trump Jr. and Eric Trump told People the loyalty within their family is "insane."
“They would never speak against their dad," the family friend said.
The source in the brothers' circle added: “You can’t bite the hand that feeds you, but [Trump Jr.] can’t wait for these four years to be over.”
thehill.com
he only feels bad because he got caught...
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On July 20 2017 02:39 Diavlo wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2017 02:23 Plansix wrote:On July 20 2017 02:12 Wegandi wrote:On July 20 2017 02:10 Plansix wrote:
The entire discussion from Kickboxer seems to be based around him arguing with some fictional version of TL. Like the topic of pronoun usage has not been discussed before. Or that 90% of the site is "leftist" and he is presenting a unique perspective. The whole thing seems set up for him to claim he is being attacked/repressed/misrepresented, right down to the demand that we watch 10 hours of video before responding to him. He is talking at us, not to us. To be fair, that 90% number isn't too far off. TL is extremely progressive. I think we might be closer to 50/50 than you think, even though many TL members might consider themselves progressive/liberal. I remember the endless threat of people yelling about the rainbow horse, gay marriage and Mephisto hilarious post that being against gay marriage was all about "Gay men kissing kills my boner". Like most video game communities, we are more diverse in opinions that people might think. Considering the amount of Europeans I don't think TL is far from being 90% liberal, at least by US standard. There is definitely a vocal conservative minority so that might skew your perception of the distribution. I do get your point about the conservatives feeling attacked/misrepresented tho. For people who like to call liberal "special snowflakes" they sure like to paint themselves as victims...
Agreed on both fronts. But even within that, I believe we are best served by not labeling entire groups as all having the same or even similar opinions. I have some very liberal/progressive friends that I completely disagree with on a large number of subjects. But they still consider me to be liberal/progressive. Saying that 90% of the site is "leftist" just flattens everyone's viewpoint, smoothing out all the nuance and unique perspectives that individuals have.
On July 20 2017 02:40 Kevin_Sorbo wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2017 02:35 Nevuk wrote:Donald Trump Jr. is reportedly "miserable" and can't wait for the next four years to end.
A friend of President Trump's two adult sons told People that Trump Jr. and Eric Trump "never wanted this."
“Don can’t do any deals, because he’ll be overly scrutinized. He just goes to work every day and is miserable," a source in their circle added.
Trump Jr. is facing backlash after news surfaced earlier this month that he took a meeting last year with a Russian lawyer.
Last week, Trump Jr. released a chain of emails detailing his conversations about setting up a meeting with a Russian lawyer, who he was told had compromising information on then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Trump Jr. has since appeared on Fox News, where he said he likely would have "done things a little differently" in retrospect.
President Trump has defended his eldest son, saying most politicians would have taken similar meetings.
A family friend especially close to Trump Jr. and Eric Trump told People the loyalty within their family is "insane."
“They would never speak against their dad," the family friend said.
The source in the brothers' circle added: “You can’t bite the hand that feeds you, but [Trump Jr.] can’t wait for these four years to be over.”
thehill.com he only feels bad because he got caught...
I am of the opinion that Don Jr. believed he was doing nothing wrong. Manafort would have known that was not a meeting they should have been taking. As much as I dislike Trump and his goons, there is a part of me that feels bad for his family. Politics destroys people and our elected officials go out of their way to keep their children out of politics if they don't want to be involved. Trump dragged his whole family into this and then actively chased away anyone that could prevent the conflicts that arise from doing so.
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On July 20 2017 02:39 Diavlo wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2017 02:23 Plansix wrote:On July 20 2017 02:12 Wegandi wrote:On July 20 2017 02:10 Plansix wrote:
The entire discussion from Kickboxer seems to be based around him arguing with some fictional version of TL. Like the topic of pronoun usage has not been discussed before. Or that 90% of the site is "leftist" and he is presenting a unique perspective. The whole thing seems set up for him to claim he is being attacked/repressed/misrepresented, right down to the demand that we watch 10 hours of video before responding to him. He is talking at us, not to us. To be fair, that 90% number isn't too far off. TL is extremely progressive. I think we might be closer to 50/50 than you think, even though many TL members might consider themselves progressive/liberal. I remember the endless threat of people yelling about the rainbow horse, gay marriage and Mephisto hilarious post that being against gay marriage was all about "Gay men kissing kills my boner". Like most video game communities, we are more diverse in opinions that people might think. Considering the amount of Europeans I don't think TL is far from being 90% liberal, at least by US standard. There is definitely a vocal conservative minority so that might skew your perception of the distribution. I do get your point about the conservatives feeling attacked/misrepresented tho. For people who like to call liberal "special snowflakes" they sure like to paint themselves as victims...
It's pretty exhausting and takes a lot more time to have to argue against 4+ leftists with each post you make. Where as a leftist in this thread, you usually have one (if any) right-leaning opponents to your view posting at a given time to respond to (if you choose to).
Given that view, I don't think it's surprising at all that right-leaning posters feel attacked and misrepresented... 4x the opponents means 4x the opportunity for misrepresentation, all else equal.
It's not the leftist posters' fault at all, but it's a reality of the thread's heavy leftward skew.
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United States43272 Posts
On July 20 2017 02:01 Sent. wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2017 01:30 KwarK wrote:On July 20 2017 01:23 Sent. wrote:On July 20 2017 01:10 Kickboxer wrote:
I'm just representing an alternative viewpoint. I also pointed out an easy and exhausting way to get in touch with what I'm talking about so I don't have to write a hundred-page essay, given my limited knowledge and capacity for expression, but since being a "leftist" and a "progressive" is likely part of the core identity of 90% of this forum (which should strike you as very odd in itself), I find my point rather difficult to get across. Trump vs Clinton polls made in this thread before the election had Clinton winning with "only" 60-65% of the votes. Obviously it's not a reliable source but I think it's closer to reality than your 90/10 split. Those polls were bot spammed. R1CH confirmed. It's not a binary division either way though. Danglars isn't DEB who isn't xDaunt who isn't Bio Major who isn't Introvert who isn't RiK. There aren't two homogenous camps. I'm a conservative, and former member of the Conservative party, but seem to find myself grouping with the "liberal" side here until GH or a_flayer show up and insist that only the hard left is acceptable. You find yourself grouping with the liberals, but do you consider yourself a leftist or a progressive? I was only trying to say that "not-leftists", or "not-progressives" constitute more than 10% of the forum's posters/lurkers. "Not-leftist" meaning anything between center-left and Trump supporters. I don't mean the post-debate polls with crazy amount of votes, I know those were spammed. I mean those made earlier and for no particular reason. I think those were "legit", to a certain degree. Don't want to derail so last post on this topic.
Socially liberal. Against discrimination, against prohibition for the sake of prohibition, in favour of free expression of ideas etc until it limits another person's freedom (so no freedom to organize a lynch mob etc)
Economically conservative. Free market is good, except when it's not. Government works to correct the free market. Pragmatic, individual choice works for coke vs pepsi but not for retirement plan vs truck.
Cliched third way centrist bullshit basically.
+ Show Spoiler [accidentally wrote too much] +I'm certainly not in favour of equalization of outcomes and I very strongly disagree with shit like preventing conservative speakers from promoting their ideas. The idea that someone with a very limited idea of the ideology a book or speaker espouses, based entirely from a facebook post they saw, believes they have the right to decide which ideas I should and should not choose to expose myself to rankles me immensely. With that in mind I'm certainly not a member of some of the further left groups.
I'm strongly secular so that eliminates me from a lot of the American right and once you add in that I not only believe discrimination exists but also that it's a bad thing that excludes me from the rest of it. To compound my sins, I think the free market is a fantastic tool for getting things that people want to people that want them but it's not a divine entity, and certainly not a benevolent one. The main problem I have with the free market is that it completely fails to recognize externalities, a cost that doesn't appear on the financial statements is a cost that doesn't exist as far as the free market is concerned. The job of government regarding the free market should be to make it more closely reflect reality. A good example of this is environmental cleanup costs. Originally companies just left fucked up bits of land behind them for the state to clean up. That's effectively theft by the shareholders of the company from the community as a whole. Then the government mandated that companies pay up and they started declaring bankruptcy and leaving the government with the bill anyway. Now they're mandated to pay into a reserved fund for cleanup as they fuck shit up so the cost is immediately and directly tied to the production. This is one of the job killing regulations people talk about but I have absolutely no problem with the industries that cost more than they product being killed, they existed only as a product of bad accounting and that accounting failure has been fixed.
I dislike a lot of the social welfare systems, such as Social Security, but also recognize them as a necessity. I believe pretty strongly in personal responsibility but I also accept that an awful lot of people will immediately shirk any responsibility you give them and then expect you to bail them out later on. If we're not willing to let people live or die based on the consequences of their own decisions then at a certain point we need to limit how badly they can fuck themselves up based on those decisions. We're not willing to let the old die so we must be willing to force the young to save some money for when they're old.
I like the idea of merit dictating your outcomes a lot which means that I think the birth lottery should be leveled out somewhat. That puts me ideologically in favour of socialized provision of healthcare, education, housing etc. What form that comes in (state run, state funded privately run ie voucher system etc) doesn't matter so much to me but people shouldn't be fucked by things outside of their control. The flipside of that is that I also don't really mind when people who make unhealthy choices get screwed by public healthcare. Under the utilitarian rulings of the NHS if you're obese and need a knee replacement you're going to be pushed back in the waitlist behind the people who didn't fuck up their own knees with bad choices (you of course do have the option to go private though).
Guns, don't really give a fuck. People probably shouldn't have the ability to kill a bunch of people really quickly in case they go ahead and do that but it's a little late to stop that from happening now.
Gays etc, humans should have human rights because, you know, they're humans. Discrimination is bad, if you offer something to the public then you should offer it to all the public.
Religious freedom, fine with it, should probably be extended to any strongly held conviction though. It's weird that in America if I say an invisible man said I wasn't allowed to eat meat then that's respected but if I have ethical problems with industrial meat production then that's a choice.
Immigration, process is a clusterfuck, I know that first hand. Migrant labour is a thing that exists, it should be formalized and run as such, keeping all the economic incentives that make it happen while fighting it at the top is insane. Highly skilled individuals coming to the US is awesome, we should let more in and make it much easier for them to stay. Hordes of low skilled individuals coming for benefits obviously not ideal but also not really happening. Either way, it'll be much easier to manage if we accept the reality that migrant labourers exist and start documenting them. A lot of them don't really want to live in America year round but just want some assurance that they'll be able to come back and work next season.
Black lives matters. Police do seem to kill a lot of black people in situations where a white dude would live. I can certainly see why people who are black might be upset about that. We should probably look into it. Have a report, have some findings, discuss the findings with criminologists, leading members of the black community, police representatives etc and come up with some kind of broad new social contract for how policing should work.
Islam. Most Muslims are fine. The ones that are fascists probably shouldn't be let in, but nor should any other fascists. About half of the people I work with are Muslims of varying degrees of strictness and I see no reason why America shouldn't want them here. Given their proficiency with nuclear engineering we probably don't want to send them back to Pakistan anyway.
Foreverwars around the world. Case by case basis. Pax Americana is a thing and the last 70 years of peace have been amazing. I'm not too stupid to see that America derives benefits from her military spending from a stable world and the America based trade. Equally I'm not sure that every conflict around the world needs American intervention. Somewhere between "America should invade Iran" and "America shouldn't have bases in Japan".
Progressive tax system = good. Death taxes = good. Sin taxes = good. Flat taxes = bad. Lower taxes = better, where practical. Government spending = sometimes good, depends what was bought. Deficit = more complicated than a metaphor involving a household and a credit card balance.
Net neutrality = good.
Climate change = happening.
North Korea = invent a time machine and regime change with Chinese help in the 90s.
Iran = basically fine.
Russian hacking = to be expected.
Trump working with the Russian hackers = not fine.
Alt-right = weirdly fascist.
Feminism = basically just turning a critical eye to social constructs and asking why they exist, what they do and how that manifests. I have no problem with that.
Probably missing a lot here but whatever.
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Quite a few posters here are probably fairly centrist/conservative by their nations' standards, but the US is like bizarro world.
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On July 20 2017 02:44 mozoku wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2017 02:39 Diavlo wrote:On July 20 2017 02:23 Plansix wrote:On July 20 2017 02:12 Wegandi wrote:On July 20 2017 02:10 Plansix wrote:
The entire discussion from Kickboxer seems to be based around him arguing with some fictional version of TL. Like the topic of pronoun usage has not been discussed before. Or that 90% of the site is "leftist" and he is presenting a unique perspective. The whole thing seems set up for him to claim he is being attacked/repressed/misrepresented, right down to the demand that we watch 10 hours of video before responding to him. He is talking at us, not to us. To be fair, that 90% number isn't too far off. TL is extremely progressive. I think we might be closer to 50/50 than you think, even though many TL members might consider themselves progressive/liberal. I remember the endless threat of people yelling about the rainbow horse, gay marriage and Mephisto hilarious post that being against gay marriage was all about "Gay men kissing kills my boner". Like most video game communities, we are more diverse in opinions that people might think. Considering the amount of Europeans I don't think TL is far from being 90% liberal, at least by US standard. There is definitely a vocal conservative minority so that might skew your perception of the distribution. I do get your point about the conservatives feeling attacked/misrepresented tho. For people who like to call liberal "special snowflakes" they sure like to paint themselves as victims... It's pretty exhausting and takes a lot more time to have to argue against 4+ leftists with each post you make. Where as a leftist in this thread, you usually have one (if any) right-leaning opponents to your view posting at a given time to respond to (if you choose). Given that view, I don't think it's surprising at all the that right-leaning posters feel attacked and misrepresented... 4x the opponents means 4x the opportunity for misrepresentation, all else equal. It's not the leftist posters' fault at all, but it's a reality of the thread's heavy leftward skew.
I don't feel to bad for the conservative posters. They ham it up pretty wells and sometimes take great pride in tweeking the nose of the left leaning posters. And there are differences between the conservatives posters. LordofAwesome is a find person to have a discussion with and manages to avoid "take that liberals" style posting.
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On July 20 2017 01:27 Kickboxer wrote:
He won because the left is losing its mind, as well as any touch it had with the actual working class. These are very serious issues. And free speech or the lack thereof is probably the most serious one of all.
Even assuming this claim is correct, which is doubtful since Trump's win was conditional on a number of factors, it represents such a silly judgment by Trump's voters because Trump's mouth is a nonsense factory. His word is worth just about nothing. So you're saying THAT is a positive direction? It's worse than what you complain about. You've shot yourself in the foot.
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EPT
