US Politics Mega-thread - Page 8752

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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.

GreenHorizons

United States22736 Posts

September 16 2017 06:09 GMT

#175021

On September 16 2017 15:00 Aquanim wrote:

Show nested quote +

I think this is only true for a careful definition of the word "owe". It is not as though he had his slaves ghostwrite the Declaration of Independence.

He wouldn't have been writing much of anything without them is the point. So I don't think we need to be too careful. But yeah, they didn't write it.

Sermokala

United States13754 Posts

September 16 2017 06:21 GMT

#175022

On September 16 2017 14:51 Aquanim wrote:

Show nested quote +

On September 16 2017 14:48 Sermokala wrote:

On September 16 2017 14:36 Wulfey_LA wrote:

On September 16 2017 14:08 Sermokala wrote:

On September 16 2017 13:53 Wulfey_LA wrote:
This whole statue thing is a giant lib v con cognitive divide. Libs always question whether a tradition is a good thing before accepting it. Cons think everything would go better if people just listened to tradition. When a lib sees a monument, they ask what good the man on the monument did and think about whether or not they support the ideas behind the monument. When a con sees a monument, they don't think. The con knows the statute/monument stands for tradition and that is good enough. So this debate goes nowhere.

IgnE even proposing to question what a monument should stand for already takes him outside of the cognitive realm of a conservative thinker. The conservative flatly doesn't care. All the talk of facts about Jefferson's deeds, words, and writings are irrelevant. You might get some bad faith arguments from the conservative or some slippery slope arguments and certainly a pointless tuquoque fallacy. But the conservative is not judging the monument on the merits of the thing being monumented. It is about tradition.

Do you just think things up in your head and say "other people should hear what I think"? I don't think your post is even directed at anyone. Its just a stream of raw thoughts that don't pretend to be anything other then logical fallacies and insults at anyone who might disagree with you. You do everything you accuse conservatives of point by point. If you don't care about the argument and you don't want to even begin to have an argument with someone you disagree with are you just here to cheer lead about how superior you are or do you genuinely think you won with this post?

Do you think there is no value in tradition or remembering historical figures in context?

Did you watch any of the statue protest coverage? Do you follow the arguments on this thread? Have you ever heard President Trump speak on the statute matter? This thread is filled with libs going back and forth over details about Jefferson what should be thought about him. Then you have plenty of con posters putting up slippery slope arguments about how the founding father statues are going to be next after the CSA statues**. And leading it all you have Trump making pure tradition-only and fact-free arguments to defend the statues. My point is that these arguments talk past each other. EDIT: and I have plenty of facts here and elsewhere to support my generalizations.

Have a sample of traditions based reasoning.

Trump said it was "sad" that the "history and culture" of the United States is "being ripped apart" by the removal of Confederate statues and monuments after ripping two GOP senators earlier in the morning over their criticism of his remarks this week blaming white supremacists and counterprotesters alike for Saturday's violence.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/346929-trump-revives-defense-of-confederate-monuments

** To this point, some race activists are always going to go just a little too far for moderate sensibilities. It is unfortunate, but their antics won't be bringing down any Jefferson statues.

Nothing in my post was about Trump. You go down point by point doing everything you accuse people you disagree with. You don't even propose any points or do anything but make statements. You go through the whole post saying conservatives don't even think and that they accept things blindly. You don't even frame that there is even a discussion to be had because conservatives aren't even arguing anything. I could punch up trumps first speech about the wall with quotes from your post and it wouldn't be that out of what he said.

I don't think you've yet made the point that Wulfey_LA's post is "doing everything you accuse people you disagree with" in a way that convinces me.

What exactly are you saying Wulfey is accusing other people of that you think his post is itself doing? Being intolerant of other people's opinions, or something else?

edit: Also, what is the nature of your disagreement with the statement that "conservatives place value on the tradition of respecting historical figures, as opposed to being open to reconsidering the merits of those historical figures"?

So his post basically accuses conservatives of not thinking, then really just mutters on until I guess the main point of being that conservatives might somehow provide bad faith arguments, a slippery slope argument, and then ,oddly decides to force everyone to google a word in order to just get back to, appealing to the hipocracy of the other sides arguments.

So first the not thinking. he makes no examples no points and no arguments. Theres no thinking involved in the post other then to repeat thoughts he had. That the post lacks any elaboration or change to these ideas shows there was no thinking involved in the post. It was just repeating what was in his head. "proposing to question" is just nonsense. Bad faith is obvious from the generalization of everyone who disagrees with him and the dismissal of any possible argument that they might have yet at the same time not think of. Slippery slope comes from him connecting "conservatives think everything will be better if people listen to tradition" to an elimination of any thought or argument about the monuments contradicting that people should listen to tradition instead of blindly following tradition. This is the appeal to hipocracy that he acuses conservatives of. The bulk of his post is him supporting his argument with an appeal to conservatives hippoocracy on the issue.

the nature of my argument is that the value of the tradition of respecting historical figures is core to learning from them and understanding history better. Even at the least learning on what not to do. "those that don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it" basically.

Wulfey_LA

932 Posts

September 16 2017 06:35 GMT

#175023

I am not trying to argue on the merits. I am trying to describe the arguments being made by the arguing groups, and point out how the groups are arguing on utterly skew points. If you listen to people at the rallies or conservatives being interviewed on the street, they stand by the traditional value of the statues and all the lib concerns about the facts of the lives behind the statutes never comes up. For the statue argument to progress past yelling past each other, then both sides to settle on what axis to argue.

And your attitude is awful Sermokala. How did you get so triggered by a rhetorical flourish? I used the ~"the conservative doesn't think. Traditions decides" line to focus the distinction between lib historical analysis. You just fly off the handle cause of one point. Further, what am I accusing people of that I don't have explicit backup on? You leapt up to attacking me as a speaker the moment my flourish triggered you. You never even tried to dispute my characterization of the lib/con divide here.

EDIT: I am making a descriptive argument here, not a normative one. Have some facts:

Conservatives make slippery slope arguments:
http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/matt-walsh-first-they-tore-down-confederate-monuments-next-theyll-come-for-the-founders/

Libs making arguments with a whole lot of factual details that cons ignore:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/statues-washington-jefferson-aren-t-next-it-s-complicated-historians-n793971

And of course you are great example of attacking a speaker instead of trying to dispute any of my assertions.

Aquanim

Australia2849 Posts

September 16 2017 09:14 GMT

#175024

On September 16 2017 15:21 Sermokala wrote:...
the nature of my argument is that the value of >the tradition of respecting historical figures< is core to >learning from them and understanding history better<. Even at the least learning on what not to do. "those that don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it" basically.

I don't really see how the first and the second are related. I think it's entirely possible to learn from historical figures without respecting them, or having a tradition of respecting them.

Sermokala

United States13754 Posts

September 16 2017 09:58 GMT

#175025

On September 16 2017 18:14 Aquanim wrote:

Show nested quote +

I don't really see how the first and the second are related. I think it's entirely possible to learn from historical figures without respecting them, or having a tradition of respecting them.

Its possible but it's much less likely and I would say much harder to justify anyone's attention. Looking at a statue implies the kind of credibility that's at the core of why the Confederate statues are being removed instead of ignored. Also there's I belive a difference between respecting the person for what he's done in history and respecting a person for his place in history. The magna Carta was ground breaking but only for the nobles as was "all men are created equal" wasn't meaning even all white men. We still respect those events as much as we should respect the people's place in history that were there.

Sermokala

United States13754 Posts

September 16 2017 10:47 GMT

#175026

On September 16 2017 15:35 Wulfey_LA wrote:
I am not trying to argue on the merits. I am trying to describe the arguments being made by the arguing groups, and point out how the groups are arguing on utterly skew points. If you listen to people at the rallies or conservatives being interviewed on the street, they stand by the traditional value of the statues and all the lib concerns about the facts of the lives behind the statutes never comes up. For the statue argument to progress past yelling past each other, then both sides to settle on what axis to argue.

And your attitude is awful Sermokala. How did you get so triggered by a rhetorical flourish? I used the ~"the conservative doesn't think. Traditions decides" line to focus the distinction between lib historical analysis. You just fly off the handle cause of one point. Further, what am I accusing people of that I don't have explicit backup on? You leapt up to attacking me as a speaker the moment my flourish triggered you. You never even tried to dispute my characterization of the lib/con divide here.

EDIT: I am making a descriptive argument here, not a normative one. Have some facts:

Conservatives make slippery slope arguments:
http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/matt-walsh-first-they-tore-down-confederate-monuments-next-theyll-come-for-the-founders/

Libs making arguments with a whole lot of factual details that cons ignore:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/statues-washington-jefferson-aren-t-next-it-s-complicated-historians-n793971

And of course you are great example of attacking a speaker instead of trying to dispute any of my assertions.

You don't need to add in an edit to all your posts. Let's begin on this, I don't think the words you are using mean what what you think they mean. Saying that you arn't arguing the merits of an argument is a baffling start to any post but yours is much worse in that your whole post is arguing the merits of each argument. You arn't making detailed points or showing examples of things you're just making judgements on things and expecting people to agree with you beacuse you compare the blaze to msnbc. I don't think you understand that the msnbc article wasn't an opinion piece but was just reporting on an issue. The author just links events to people's responses to those events in a way to inform the reader. It at least appeals to tradition and makes the issue about why the statues were made and nothing about the statues or the people depicted.

You talk about people being interviewed at protests and the arguments they make. Do you think the people at these events care about exchanging ideas or aren't emotionally involved? I'm not saying their opinions arn't indicative but they're hardly the first place I'd go to show honest examples of real arguments. You come very near making sense on the idea that neither party is arguing on the same axis but you never describe how both sides skew past eachother other then your snide insistence that one side is entirely based on the facts and that the other side somehow doesn't.

I don't know what's worse that you're accusing me of being triggered by my obvious baffle ment at your post or that you think that " people who don't think like me don't think" is a rhetorical flourish. You start your post by using my name and saying how my attitude is awful and then end your paragraph with the words "you leapt to attacking me as a speaker the moment my statement triggered you". That's exactly the thing I said that you were doing in your last two posts. I mean Jesus I go on about how you don't make arguments and you don't make examples and then you reinforce this by not making arguments and then you ask what exactly you are accusing people up without "explicit backup". Nothing there is what's being argued. In saying you arn't making acusations and you have no facts. You make a series of statements and never went anywhere past the things you where thinking of.

Finally the edit. Are you just making the descriptive argument for the portion of the edit or is this a retroactive statement? You can't link to news reporting and say that they are facts that's not how any of this works. You take a quote from said article set the person up as the other I mean a conservative or liberal and then make an argument from that example. The lack of effort to even fully type out conservative or liberal next to an lack of context and engagement baffles and intrigues me.

Schmobutzen

Germany284 Posts

September 16 2017 11:26 GMT

#175027

You can do this condescending thing via pm, Sermokala. Thx.

Plansix

United States60190 Posts

September 16 2017 12:35 GMT

#175028

On September 16 2017 14:34 Sermokala wrote:

Show nested quote +

But thats wrong. He advocated for the ending of the slave trade and freed a few of this slaves. That he wanted a slower more pragmatic freeing of slaves rather then setting them all free and hoping for the best means that hes bad enough to be ignored in history? Abolitionists were fringe people at the time and the southern states wouldn't have gone into a new nation if slavery was banned from the start. Should we really be punishing the people who wanted the nation to be whole and not segmented?

Show nested quote +

On September 16 2017 14:28 KwarK wrote:

On September 16 2017 14:24 Sermokala wrote:

On September 16 2017 14:10 KwarK wrote:

On September 16 2017 13:54 Sermokala wrote:

On September 16 2017 12:30 IgnE wrote:
What would your Jefferson plaque say?

"Here is a man whose fortune was built on the backs of slaves.

He also wrote the Declaration of Independence."

"He was in a day where racism and outright white supremism was not only accepted but was the societal norm. He had slaves he bought slaves he sold slaves and he didn't free his slaves apon his death."

Judging people of the past on the standards of today is okay and all but the man has an important place in history that people need to remember and learn from. The things that were acceptable back then and the progress that we've made on issues can go hand in hand with the good things that were done.

Not celebrating anything that happened more then 20-30 years ago just seems dumb. I don't know where you can draw a decent line but the amount of important people that owned slaves vs the amount of important people who didn't own slaves and didn't do other things we'd consider horrible today doesn't really leave with many positive examples of the past for people to look to.

You say that as if it's impossible for him to have known that owning people might have been wrong. Let's say that in the future our descendants decide that factory farming is unethical etc and judge us for that. Do we not deserve that judgement? I'd rather be remembered as an asshole who thought torturing animals was worth it if it meant getting to eat beef than as some kind of idiot who didn't know that cows would rather not get eaten.

Jefferson didn't own slaves because everyone else was doing it and he didn't know that you shouldn't own people. He owned slaves because owning other people is pretty fucking sweet. He knew what he was doing.

I don't think its impossible for him to have known that owning people might have been wrong but its wrong to think that it was anything other then a fringe idea at the time. I think he truly believed that black people were inferior to white people as was the common thinking of the time. That didn't stop him from freeing a pair of slaves on his death that he knew were trained enough to get employment on their own. A little research into his relationship to slavery that I was doing on the side here argues that he was doing a lot during his time in government to fight slavery and to discontinue it in america. He got slave importation banned in Virginia and criminalized the international slave trade when he was president. He apparently believe in gradual emancipation training and colonizing slaves rather then freeing them wholesale. That would probably have been a lot better for the black race in america in the long term instead of the chronic socioeconomic problems that they've been in as a result of poverty and racism in america.

I mean gay rights, when do we draw the line where it was the time for everyone to wake up and say that they deserve the same rights as straight people? Does that disqualify everyone in the past as well?

The correct time to wake up and realize that gay people deserve the same rights as straight people was all the time. However I accept that some people struggle with reaching their own conclusions and rely upon the moral guidance of others. So let's establish a cutoff around 30AD when some Jewish guy said that you should treat everyone with the same respect.

You don't get to paint Jefferson as one of the enlightened slaveowners. There's a word for enlightened slaveowners. Ex-slaveowners.

What I'm trying to say isn't that Jefferson was one of the enlightened slave owners. I'm trying to say in context he wasn't as shitty of a person as he by all rights should be expected he should have been. For the sake of recognizing progress allowances have to be made for where we were before we made said progress. I was trying to get us all to agree that he was better then king Leopold in Belgium and that they seem to be fine with the contextualization that they've put him in.

The Jefferson plan of setting slaves free slowly always rang hollow, since he never did it himself.

ticklishmusic

United States15977 Posts

September 16 2017 15:42 GMT

#175029

On September 16 2017 09:37 Plansix wrote:

Show nested quote +

I borrowed my attorney's copy for a couple lunch breaks and got that impression myself. Her editor might have helped her punch it up a bit. That person in the book is a far better candidate than the one she and her team constructed.

but also, look much of the candidate hillary people knew came from 30 second tweets, breaking news headlines and the like.

farvacola

United States18819 Posts

September 16 2017 16:33 GMT

#175030

Hey, y'all remember when I pointed out that Equifax employed a Music MFA as chief security officer? They just forced her out lol.

Equifax on Friday said that Susan Mauldin, chief security officer, and David Webb, chief information officer, were retiring.

Equifax two top technology executives leave company 'effective immediately'

Naturally, "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" only applies to people who don't happen to be corporate officers employed by a company that should not exist in the first place; a cushy retirement following one of the largest breaches ever...yeah, fuck that.

Karis Vas Ryaar

United States4396 Posts

September 16 2017 16:38 GMT

#175031

IgnE

United States7681 Posts

September 16 2017 16:52 GMT

#175032

On September 17 2017 01:33 farvacola wrote:
Hey, y'all remember when I pointed out that Equifax employed a Music MFA as chief security officer? They just forced her out lol.

Show nested quote +

Hey, you don't know. Maybe she was a programming wiz with a lot of practical experience. You know, after she discovered her MFA was "worthless" in the STEM economy.

farvacola

United States18819 Posts

September 16 2017 16:58 GMT

#175033

Maybe she was, though the effort being put into cleaning up digital traces of her background suggests otherwise

That said, I think the real offense comes from the fact that she will likely face no real punishment, you're right that we can't really know how she came into that job.

ticklishmusic

United States15977 Posts

September 16 2017 17:37 GMT

#175034

the CTO of one of the companies that my company partners with doesn't have a real college degree - think it's from like ITT tech or something like that. but then he worked at ibm for a couple years, had a stint at a big consulting shop and how he's CTO of a billion dollar company. i wouldn't judge people who have had long careers by their degrees. hell, i'm just a few years out and barely use mine.

taking a quick look, the equifax CSO was an exec at first data corp and suntrust before. that's a solid resume.

{CC}StealthBlue

United States41117 Posts

September 16 2017 17:39 GMT

#175035

Jesus christ...

Gahlo

United States35093 Posts

September 16 2017 17:46 GMT

#175036

Why are there that many typos?

Liquid`Drone

Norway28561 Posts

September 16 2017 17:47 GMT

#175037

lol, I was wondering if andenterinto was one of those super weird english words I've never seen before. figureditout eventually though!

Dangermousecatdog

United Kingdom7084 Posts

September 16 2017 17:50 GMT

#175038

Jeez, whoever the Press Secretary is doesn't know how to use a spell checker. Or proof read. Actually it's scarier to think he proofread it.

________

On September 16 2017 08:59 Danglars wrote:

Show nested quote +

There's a certain pain involved when someone can't distinguish between what you have the right to do and what's a good idea in society.

So marching with guns for white supremacy is a right that you vehemently argue for as an absolute right, but draping a statue in cloth is not a good idea in society, that you must vehemently argue against because it is a slippery slope. Ok...y'all.

Nevuk

United States16280 Posts

September 16 2017 18:06 GMT

#175039

This is a GOP state rep talking about dealing with protestors in St. louis