EPTUS Politics Mega-thread - Page 8342
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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please. In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. | ||
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
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Danglars
United States12133 Posts
On August 10 2017 00:08 Plansix wrote: I am far more concerned with my town coming after me for the shed that I am 99% sure had the wrong permit pulled. My fear of being changed with a felony for picking up a feather is beyond low. I understand the theory, but it is low on the list of existential threats. I doubt the shed or the crimes you are guilty of but remain uncharged actually threaten your existence. Now, you get vocal enough for a cause that heightens your profile to the powerful, and your fears just changed. | ||
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m4ini
4215 Posts
On August 09 2017 23:48 mahrgell wrote: North Korea is threatening the destruction of the USA for about 50 years now. I'm pretty sure they threatened destroying New York and Washington quite a lot of times. Are there some kind of rare turtles on Guam, or why is it suddenly something completely different, even though their language really hasn't changed. There's a difference between empty threats and suddenly (possibly) have nukes and the means to use them. Don't you think that there's a difference between me telling you here for 50 years that i'm going to burn your house down, and me suddenly actually standing in front of your house with a torch? | ||
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
On August 10 2017 00:13 Danglars wrote: I doubt the shed or the crimes you are guilty of but remain uncharged actually threaten your existence. Now, you get vocal enough for a cause that heightens your profile to the powerful, and your fears just changed. The fear of the abuse of power will not be mitigated by the reduction of regulations. Power will be abused and reasons will be created, regulations or none. | ||
KwarK
United States44121 Posts
On August 10 2017 00:17 m4ini wrote: There's a difference between empty threats and suddenly (possibly) have nukes and the means to use them. Don't you think that there's a difference between me telling you here for 50 years that i'm going to burn your house down, and me suddenly actually standing in front of your house with a torch? Sure. The situation has gotten much worse. But I don't know that it is necessarily critical. The assumption should still be that the NK leadership are rational actors. Incidentally this led me to watching a documentary that was mostly McNamara talking about his life but was super interesting as it related to the Cuban Missile Crisis. The intelligence at the time was that there were no missiles on Cuba, the missiles were on a ship headed to silos in Cuba, therefore the rational choice was to intervene militarily in Cuba. The CIA, military command and everyone else were pushing to invade Cuba before it was too late. What McNamara found out decades later when speaking to Castro is that the CIA were wrong, there were already nuclear missiles on Cuba at the time. In describing the crisis his take on it (which is as informed as anyone can be) is that the world just got lucky. A man named Llewellyn Thompson was on hand who knew Khrushchev intimately and he managed to win Kennedy's ear and convince him to defy the educated (but misinformed) opinions of the military command. Everything worked as it was supposed to and in the end, the future depended on just getting lucky. | ||
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farvacola
United States18864 Posts
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a_flayer
Netherlands2826 Posts
Fascism is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism, characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and control of industry and commerce, that came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe. They definitely control industry and commerce, wouldn't you agree? They certainly oppress opposition through various methods like straight up oppression of votes with gerrymandering and oppression of ideas with overwhelming propaganda that includes ownership of media and even a force present on social media which is echoed by the US President. They have dictatorial power over politics through lobbying and bribes (they write the laws and get elected officials to sign them). Their propaganda certainly includes nationalism. I'd say it very clearly hits all the marks of fascism in one way or another. I don't remember whether it was you or Plansix, but one of you said something along the lines of "I associate fascism with people dying as a result of the oppression". Well, there you go. People are fucking dying. If you don't want to recognize it as such in order to feel better about your position in life, then that's on you, but then I think you're complicit in it. | ||
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Doodsmack
United States7224 Posts
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KwarK
United States44121 Posts
On August 10 2017 00:53 a_flayer wrote: They definitely control industry and commerce, wouldn't you agree? They certainly oppress opposition through various methods like straight up oppression of votes with gerrymandering and oppression of ideas with overwhelming propaganda that includes a force present on social media which is echoed by the US President. They have dictatorial power over politics through lobbying and bribes (they write the laws and get elected officials to sign them). Their propaganda certainly includes nationalism. I'd say it very clearly hits all the marks of fascism in one way or another. I don't remember whether it was you or Plansix, but one of you said something along the lines of "I associate fascism with people dying as a result of the oppression". Well, there you go. People are fucking dying. If you don't want to recognize it as such in order to feel better about your position in life, then that's on you, but then I think you're complicit in it. I hold to a much narrower definition of fascism than twitter and facebook. But either way, what you're describing is far closer to corporate oligarchy than fascism. There is no component of nationalism, no creation of a hostile other which must be oppressed, no glorious past to recover, no unification of the people behind the idea of a great leader who is one and the same as the people, no subsuming personal identity to the idea of the nation and the great works etc. Fascism is called fascism because of the fasces, a deliberate reference to the Roman past that the National Fascist Party was trying to unify the people to rebuild. Words matter. Fascism is a specific thing beyond "something I don't like". What you're describing is not fascism. There are very few fascist states in the world right now. Putin's Russia is one of them. That doesn't mean Putin's Russia is especially bad (although I think it is), you could go ahead and argue that corporate oligarchy and American populism are worse than fascism. Hell, Saddam's baathism was a hell of a lot worse than Franco's fascism, although baathism was somewhat of a secular and futurist twist on traditional fascism. It is not my intent to apologize for America's faults with this post, only to clearly communicate what I believe fascism means and the historical context of that. My own "is it fascism" checklist. Feel free to disagree. 1) Is the nation composed of one people? 2) Do those people have a national destiny? 3) Are the people represented by a single great leader who embodies them and will lead them to their national destiny? 4) Must the individuals subsume their own interests to that of the people (and therefore the leader)? 5) Has the national destiny previously been stolen away, denied, or betrayed at the hand of an enemy? 6) Must the people unite behind the great leader to destroy this enemy? 7) Is the broader and underlying truth of the national identity and the destiny of the people a deeper truth than the specific facts that make up reality? 8) Is morality defined relative to the person of the great leader and the undoubtable morality of the national destiny? | ||
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a_flayer
Netherlands2826 Posts
Great whataboutism with mentioning Russia as a fascist state though. | ||
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Nevuk
United States16280 Posts
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Yurie
12107 Posts
On August 10 2017 01:20 Nevuk wrote: Person at work today was ranting about how there's going to be a civil war if Trump is removed from office by the "deep state." Always disturbing being reminded these people are real. Sad thing is I would be almost as happy if he was removed as Putin. This is speaking from a third party perspective since I live in neither nation. I think internationally it would be positively received if he was peacefully removed. If he keeps ramping up the nuke rhetoric even a violent removal would be well received. | ||
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
On August 10 2017 01:17 a_flayer wrote: No rabid nationalism in the US? That is just laughable. And there is no hostile other? Did the propaganda not work hard to make terrorists, Russia, Muslims, North Korea fill that role? Good job playing down the notion of the propaganda by suggesting that I think facebook and twitter are fascism, though. Isn't Fox News the most watched propaganda outlet in the US? Isn't Sinclair filling up a lot of the local news with the same purpose? Both very nationalistic in nature. Calling Fox News state propaganda really diminishes the word's true meaning. Fox news has aspects of propaganda in it, but they will go full bore against the US goverment and power once a Democrat is in office. And it is all pandering for profit, not for some overarching goal of the state. True propaganda is made by the state to praise the state's actions and motives. | ||
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a_flayer
Netherlands2826 Posts
On August 10 2017 01:25 Plansix wrote: Calling Fox News state propaganda really diminishes the word's true meaning. Fox news has aspects of propaganda in it, but they will go full bore against the US goverment and power once a Democrat is in office. And it is all pandering for profit, not for some overarching goal of the state. True propaganda is made by the state to praise the state's actions and motives. It is not state propaganda. It is corporate propaganda. It is not state fascism. It is corporate fascism. There is just a nationalistic aspect to it. CNN plays a similar role. MSNBC feeds into it as well. | ||
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KwarK
United States44121 Posts
On August 10 2017 01:17 a_flayer wrote: No rabid nationalism in the US? That is just laughable. And there is no hostile other? Did the propaganda not work hard to make terrorists, Russia, Muslims, North Korea fill that role? Good job playing down the notion of the propaganda by suggesting that I think facebook and twitter are fascism, though. Isn't Fox News the most watched propaganda outlet in the US? Isn't Sinclair filling up a lot of the local news with the same purpose? Both very nationalistic in nature, not to mention the nationalistic obedience being drilled into the school kids every day. There are certainly a few ticks on my "is it fascism" checklist for the US. And I believe that an awful lot of Trump's diehard supporters are definitely fascists. Hell, I believe that Trump would love to be the fascist ideal of the great leader. But that does not make America fascist. Trump declares that his truths which are derived a priori from his beliefs about the nation are a greater and more universal truth than the specific facts that are being observed. That's extremely fascist. But the nation laughs at him when he does it. And that's not. Likewise, as much as he suggests that legality and morality should be subsumed to his vision, that's just not happening. He'll happily say that the police should rough up people who don't conform to his idea of America, and that legal permanent residents from certain countries should be barred from return, but it doesn't actually happen. America is not fascist. There are fascists within America who would really like America to be fascist, but there are also an awful lot of Americans who oppose fascism, and they're winning (except for the electoral college, they didn't win that). | ||
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Doodsmack
United States7224 Posts
On August 10 2017 01:20 Nevuk wrote: Person at work today was ranting about how there's going to be a civil war if Trump is removed from office by the "deep state." Always disturbing being reminded these people are real. I have little doubt that there would be armed acts of rebellion if Trump were removed. Keep in mind those people were stockpiling guns in case Obama came to take them away. There was a poll that asked people different questions and attempted to predict their support for Trump based on the answers. Those who stated that they own a gun and that Obama is a Muslim were 90% likely to support Trump. | ||
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a_flayer
Netherlands2826 Posts
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KwarK
United States44121 Posts
On August 10 2017 01:17 a_flayer wrote: Great whataboutism with mentioning Russia as a fascist state though. It was an example. I clearly explained it was an example. I explicitly said that I wasn't trying to go "what about Russia" and that I was open to the argument that Russian fascism wasn't as bad as what America had. The argument was explicitly not "if you think America is bad, look at Russia, Russia is fascist, fascism is evil". It was explicitly "what America has going on is not fascism, fascism doesn't look like that, fascism looks more like what Russia has going on, that doesn't mean America is good and Russia is bad, fascism isn't the worst of all possible things". On August 10 2017 01:01 KwarK wrote: There are very few fascist states in the world right now. Putin's Russia is one of them. That doesn't mean Putin's Russia is especially bad (although I think it is), you could go ahead and argue that corporate oligarchy and American populism are worse than fascism. Hell, Saddam's baathism was a hell of a lot worse than Franco's fascism, although baathism was somewhat of a secular and futurist twist on traditional fascism. It is not my intent to apologize for America's faults with this post, only to clearly communicate what I believe fascism means and the historical context of that. You need to read the actual words that are being said. | ||
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
On August 10 2017 01:26 a_flayer wrote: It is not state propaganda. It is corporate propaganda. It is not state fascism. It is corporate fascism. There is just a nationalistic aspect to it. CNN plays a similar role. MSNBC feeds into it as well. Yes, and people are asking you to please stop abusing those words, which have specific meanings and implications. You can't have fascism without the state, it isn't possible. I can't just say corporate communism over and over and expect to be taken seriously or for those two words to have any meaning. There are plenty of words out there to describe what you want, including oligarchy. | ||
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KwarK
United States44121 Posts
On August 10 2017 01:29 a_flayer wrote: You are arguing against the idea that it is state fascism, KwarK. Fascism is state fascism. There is no other. The people must be united behind a single leader who has the will to achieve the national destiny and defeat the great enemy. That is at the heart of fascism. | ||
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