US Politics Mega-thread - Page 8869

On September 28 2017 13:44 Aquanim wrote:

What (if anything) do you feel is unreasonable about the position of "I believe that the country is profoundly not politically (and morally) united, so I choose not to act in a way that would lead people to think otherwise about my beliefs"?

On September 28 2017 13:38 NewSunshine wrote:
I always find it interesting when people respond to protest with the whole "I agree with what you're doing, but I just don't think you're using the right methods. You're really hurting your cause" thing. Not only have these people been consistently shown to not actually agree with what's being protested, but they've also been proven wrong, time and time again, about the "hurting your own cause" bit. People have used that tired line about protests since before the Civil Rights Movement, and they've been sidelined in the face of real progress each time. You would think they'd catch on and just stop saying it.

On September 28 2017 13:14 LegalLord wrote:

Was thinking of writing more, but actually I decided I prefer to keep this brief.

I guess the best way is to try to figure out what we mean by fascism in the first place. Obviously it's not like an academic or textbook definition of fascism, or even more nebulously, neofascism. Not because we wouldn't want to have a strict definition by the book, but because this is a term that is rooted far deeper in connotation than denotation. Otherwise maybe we would have a consideration like "the pledge of allegiance is fascist, but having fascist elements might not be so bad!" No, no one thinks that, not even for a moment. It's a direct and blatant reference to mid-1900s fascists and most directly, Hitler and the Nazis. Saying "X is fascist" in modern lingo is really not unlike saying "X is just like Hitler" when faced with the realities of what that term means in context.

I think it's perhaps important to note that I said "unwilling to draw attention to genuine fascism" not "willing to deny that real fascism is fascism." A few good examples of what I focus on as genuine fascism are Waffen SS supporters in East Europe and Banderites in Ukraine. Arguably the second iteration of the KKK had important fascist elements and a notable fondness for Hitler, but I would hesitate to use that term rather than perhaps seek a better one. The problem is that these genuine fascist groups tend to get buried for convenience. I still remember "Soviet invasion of Germany" and Merkel's reaction to that revisionism quite well: muted and uncritical. That multiplied by a large swath of similarly minded people makes genuine fascism never see light. Instead we focus on talking about trivial shit like if hand-on your heart "I pledge allegiance" is somehow going to lead to a movement very much akin to Hitler's Nazi movement. Why not focus on the movements like it that already exist? By overusing and abusing fascism to try to silence any right-wing ideas, good or bad, real fascism falls by the wayside. Though few would probably say "those Waffen SS marches aren't fascist" people sure as hell are willing to close their eyes, shut their ears, and pretend that that doesn't exist.

On September 28 2017 13:48 Danglars wrote:

Clearly, Trump was a move in the right direction for racial progress. You sure proved them wrong, NewSunshine!

On September 28 2017 13:46 Danglars wrote:

"I think unity as Americans and pause from relentless political strife is a stupid concept and politics must happen 24/7 in order for real change to occur"

On September 28 2017 09:22 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


Are you saying that the National Anthem and Pledge of Allegiance aren't political?

On September 28 2017 13:57 NewSunshine wrote:

Please don't respond to me if it's just going to be inane shitposting.

On September 28 2017 14:02 Falling wrote:

I don't think they are political- at least not in the national sense. Perhaps if you are thinking internationally- US against the world. But singing the Star Spangled Banner... or in my case 'O Canada' is expressing a national identity that includes every political stripe from the anarchist to the anarcho-capitalist, from the hill-billy to the New York financier. What it's not doing is chanting G O P, G O P. That would be blatantly political in the national sense. I also don't think it's fascist. Sure fascists may be big on singing songs. They were also big on building highways, but that's a pretty loose connection. But even if I agreed that it is political and it has parallels to fascism, I do not understand and completely disagree that it's 'scary'. If my history was correct, this has been going on for a century, predating the Nazis... I'm sorry, but I really don't see this as a path to Hitler's America. It's innocuous or mildly annoying at worst.

On September 28 2017 11:13 RealityIsKing wrote:


Maybe jerks to you because your party lost.

But for the most of the people that are sick of women vitctimizing themselves with the myth of doing the same job and getting paid 70% as male and also using false rape accusation to destroy innocent people's lives.

And then there are also industries based upon these scams like your mattress girls, Rolling Stones, and Anita Sarkeesians.

On September 28 2017 13:45 Danglars wrote:

We went through this rodeo before with xDaunt/RiK so I doubt we'll make much progress here. It's like you're fine with Trump in 2020 because at least you showed whitey he can't have his sports without remembering how the left racialized and politicized the country. Okay, bro. Enjoy drawing all your parallels to 1960s and MLK and "white moderates." At some point you gotta let people vent that would rather blacks suffer so long as they have another group to yell at.

On September 28 2017 14:17 crms wrote:


But there has been tremendous social progress in spite of 'white moderates' getting annoyed anytime people speak up. So Trump happened, so what? You think Trump is the new norm? I don't. I would predict the whiplash of Trump will likely cause more social progress in the next ten years than if Hillary would have won because even less 'moderate' people would have paid attention. I guess we will just have to wait and see who is right in 20+ years.

On September 28 2017 14:02 Aquanim wrote:...
I think that if one accepts the proposition that previous methods for obtaining the desired real change have failed, are failing and will continue to fail, then more blunt methods are justified.+ Show Spoiler +

I am aware that you probably don't agree with me about the validity of the proposition (feel free to contradict if that is inaccurate). I doubt either of us fully agrees with GreenHorizons about it.

Do you agree that if one accepts the proposition, then the conclusion follows?

On September 28 2017 14:26 GreenHorizons wrote:
This is madness. I'm not going to treat this crap as if it's a serious and dignify it with a response more than once in a while reminding people it's COMPLETELY ABSURD to think it's "the left' that brought politics into sports, that the anthem was unifying, basically every point Danglars is making is completely absurd.

Ironically (and this should shock him, but it really shouldn't), he's right that liberals did a trash job in a lot of ways, counted on putting black faces on crappy policies, and helped bring in Trump by being so bad at much more than lip service.

That said, it doesn't excuse 200 years and growing of white America failing to provide constitutional rights to black people, or attitudes like his that suggest white America is too frail to be called names by people they are mandated by the constitution and honor (if it means anything) to secure the rights of.

Nor does it diffuse the disgusting nature of claiming offense by the kneeling in the face of constant flag violations during an anthem THAT HAS NEVER BEEN what they say it is.

They like to say the conversation started when they started listening, which just also happens to be when we started forcing them to listen against their will, but the conversation started with "Hey you, your skin color means you're our property now" and they've had their fingers jammed in their ears ever since. And if you take them out they say "don't assault me, I was listen just fine before".

I'm just glad Danglars, xDaunt, and others have been able to help more people see what I've seen for a long time.

On September 28 2017 14:20 Danglars wrote:

I got a little whiplash myself reading. "There has been tremendous social progress" became "there will be more social progress in next ten years." Is the 'has been' visible in the winding up of the backlash to the backlash?

On September 28 2017 14:44 Danglars wrote:

Here we go again, starting from "politics was already in sports, the anthem, right?" and ending at literal "you're our property now" remembrance of slavery. You get minor accolades for spotting failed liberal policies. Sometimes that's too sacrosanct for the left. And I'll be extra charitable: if you construct your arguments in a hypothetical "Blacks are basically slaves today as they were in much of the 1800s," then asking to play sports in peace would be a bad thing. There would literally be slaves serving peanuts. But when we talk about constitutional rights violations in GH's construction, he's referring to the things white people don't get ... since defending them of neonazis and WS gets little sympathy and prompts his racist tirades. Your constitutional rights prompt righteous protests of the flag anthem and sports (politics 24/7 boys), other's constitutional rights are only brought up by the sufferers of white fragility. To quote you, it's "COMPLETELY ABSURD" and "this is madness" with a healthy dose of "I'm not going to dignify it with a response more than once in a while."

On September 28 2017 14:02 Aquanim wrote:

I think that if one accepts the proposition that previous methods for obtaining the desired real change have failed, are failing and will continue to fail, then more blunt methods are justified.+ Show Spoiler +

I am aware that you probably don't agree with me about the validity of the proposition (feel free to contradict if that is inaccurate). I doubt either of us fully agrees with GreenHorizons about it.

Do you agree that if one accepts the proposition, then the conclusion follows?

On September 28 2017 15:02 Danglars wrote:...
The conclusion also doesn't follow because you claim a false contrast between previous methods and blunt methods. You must go further and say that everything short of forcing people going about their daily lives to be deluged in identity politics and racial protest from sunup to sundown has been tried. Literally everything. You're taking this super broad so I have to dabble in larger themes too here.