US Politics Mega-thread - Page 9054

On October 25 2017 04:31 Plansix wrote:

They are likely equal in scope. The Chinese civil war lasted longer and had twice the number of casualties. But the US civil war was also fought before the industrial revolution, which makes the nearly 1 million casualties grimly impressive.

On October 25 2017 05:33 zlefin wrote:

pedantic note: the US civil war was after the industrial revolution. (or at most at the tail end of that period).

On October 25 2017 05:16 Yurie wrote:


You usually don't realise just how many people China have and have had until you end up with half the top ten of worst wars being two factions/dynasties/kingdoms against each other in what is modern China.

Both of those have 20 million +. One being 755–763 which predates the American one by a millennia.

Something that always struck me as strange is how little India features in the worst wars when one considers the huge modern population the region has.

On October 25 2017 02:06 Danglars wrote:

The issue is that it's not a simple criticism of its past actions and history, it is a broad characterization of what they were and mean. If you think the size of importance and broad construal is a load of shit, maybe you can understand why subjecting that to criticism isn't some Chinese or Russian blind love of country and pride in its accomplishments. You're mixing a shit sandwich and telling people because it's only 50% shit, rejecting the sandwich is tantamount to ignoring criticism of the country. It's not the purity of the nation's history, it's the ahistorical race and class warfare bullshit that's being peddled as criticism. But if you can't see the two (All criticism is just an emanation of correct criticism) then our problem is understanding nuance and not anything else.

Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) blasted President Trump on the senate floor today as he made his official announcement that he will not seek re-election in 2018.

Flake’s departure from Congress is bound to be a major development in the Republican Party’s civil war between pro-Trump factions and more traditional conservative politicians. The senator seemed to acknowledge this as he spoke about his regrets for deteriorating political discourse, American leadership, and the country’s moral authority on the world stage

“There are times when we must risk our careers in favor of our principles. Now is such a time. It must also be said that I rise today with no small measure of regret. Regret, because of the state of our disunion, regret because of the disrepair and destructiveness of our politics, regret because of the indecency of our discourse, regret because of the coarseness of our leadership, regret for the compromise of our moral authority, and by our – all of our – complicity in this alarming and dangerous state of affairs.”

Flake went on to say that Trump’s “reckless, outrageous, and undignified behavior” presents a danger to democracy that must not be accepted as a political normality. He also lamented the decline of political decency and behavior, as well as the GOP’s failure in calling out Trump’s missteps for the sake of party interests.

“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”

Flake continued to tear apart the Republican Party’s handling of Trump, noting how certain segments think absolutely loyalty to the president is the only acceptable conservative platform. The senator said it was an “obligation” to be critical when necessary, and that people must not accept “the personal attacks, threats against principles, freedoms, and institutions.”

Flake has been a vocal critic of Trump’s rhetoric for months, and he acknowledged the electoral pressure he faces by saying that the path of the traditional conservatism “has a narrower and narrower path to nomination in the Republican Party.” Nonetheless, he warned against regressive populism and the urge to reject America’s core values in favor of division.

“Despotism loves a vacuum. And our allies are now looking elsewhere for leadership. Why are they doing this? None of this is normal. And what do we as United States Senators have to say about it? The principles that underlie our politics, the values of our founding, are too vital to our identity and to our survival to allow them to be compromised by the requirements of politics. Because politics can make us silent when we should speak, and silence can equal complicity. I have children and grandchildren to answer to, and so, Mr. President, I will not be complicit.”

Watch above, via C-SPAN.

On October 25 2017 05:19 Wulfey_LA wrote:


This is laughably false. If slavery were so efficient, why didn't the CSA win in a war of industrial production with the non-slaver North? Shouldn't all that super efficient slave production have lead to more efficient production of weaponry and food to support a larger army? The efficiency of slavery was tested, it was found wanting.

On October 25 2017 05:18 Wulfey_LA wrote:


Flake voted 100% Conservative in the Senate and voted with Trump/McConnell every time a vote came up

But Flake wouldn't go along with the daily lies and Kulturkampf, so he is a RINO!

I am glad you are so transparent that you have no ideology and actual voting records don't matter. Kulturkampf was always your underlying value system, and by extension Kulturkampf has always been the true value system of supposed 'conservatives'.

On October 25 2017 06:26 Tachion wrote:

Just to rant, but what Corker, Flake, and McCain are doing isn't even anything amazing. They're just sticking up for basic human decency and showing a modicum of independence, yet they're getting called the hell out like they're crazy assholes despite overwhelmingly voting along party lines. These guys are showing how normal people are supposed to behave in the face of indignity. The rampant tribalism in the GOP is just at absurd levels right now. This has got to be my #1 beef with the Republican party presently. Don't dare be a moderate or speak out of turn or you'll get cast the hell out, even when everyone knows Trump is wrong. What garbage.

On October 25 2017 01:53 Mohdoo wrote:
One thing I've been wondering: Based on everything I know about social programs intended to empower poor communities so that lowly people are able to go to college and have jobs that generate a lot of tax revenue, wouldn't that mean slavery actually hurt us? It isn't that the US was able to siphon productivity from slaves, right? What really happened is that we lost productive members of society by only allowing them a limited scope of contribution.

If we taught the slaves to be scientists, engineers, agricultural designers and shit like that, wouldn't the US have actually benefitted more than by using slaves? If so, wouldn't that mean that "built on slavery" actually set us back?

On October 25 2017 04:31 Plansix wrote:

They are likely equal in scope. The Chinese civil war lasted longer and had twice the number of casualties. But the US civil war was also fought before the industrial revolution, which makes the nearly 1 million casualties grimly impressive.

On October 25 2017 06:22 Mohdoo wrote:
After Flake's shpeal about how it is anti-patriotic to commit to supporting a president for party tribalism bullshit reasons, I started to wonder: would I do the same thing? What would a democrat version of Trump look like? Would I support him? I really don't think I would. If, let's say...Jimmy Kimmel was elected president and went full blast on full amnesty, open borders and government forcefully absorbing American health insurance companies into a single payer entity, and all along the way, doing a really shit job, I really don't think I'd support him. Especially if he was being extremely aggressive towards Iran and NK. Sure, he gave us Oprah as a supreme court justice, which is rofl, but there's so much more to it than that.

Is this a fair comparison? What would a democrat version of Trump look like? I am trying to make sure I fully understand why people like Danglars ended up accidentally brain washed into supporting someone they loathed 2 years ago.

On October 25 2017 04:23 Danglars wrote:

It was somewhat intentional. My default reaction to seeing this "amorphous" and "difficult to scrutinize and determine" is to point out that much of what's lacking has been supplied in this forum. You should be much better informed about the various desires and reactions Trump voters had compared to leftists in other left-dominant forums and news outlets. You're much better off synthesizing the characterizations and evidence for them from our argumentation and then proceeding to cut back where you think it lacks. It's high time some of the poor takeaways were pruned and some of the more obvious takeaways were adopted. You're really in the position of asking the pitiful few on the Right here to increase your understanding again having missed the last twenty or thirty pages on the topic. I think some of this bears repeating, and I'll repeat myself, but I'm not about to steer the discussion back into the big tenets if your #1-4s show the last ones were similarly ignored. I won't be in the business of convincing the unconvincable. I'll just wait until two more elections (at this point, maybe narrowly lost elections) bring up a couple more of your presuppositions to the chopping block.

There's this rather dumb idea that a president who claims crowds were bigger and frequently talks all kinds of nonsense suddenly means it specifically going against the norms of racial discussion. He's not a precise man with his language. He lurches everywhere. Suddenly one lurch is this deep insight into who he is and what he thinks. And this is all besides the fact that the norms needed to be thrown out for a while now and twenty minutes of apologies for every one minute talking about disproportionate impact topics.

You'll really have to actually give the direct quotes. Paraphrasing Trump does not work for you. He didn't increase Republican shares among hispanics because his speech was so obviously inflammatory. He said a lot of things because the broad takeaway was he was going to treat border security, immigration, jobs, and repeat violent offenders seriously. Instead of ignoring all these things (not racist to ignore repeatedly deported violent offenders), he made a mark that he was listening and he would take it seriously. That's why it was absolutely warranted to bring up victims because topics like Kate's Law were missed among bipartisan consensus that a few more repeat rapists catch and release were called for in a broadly low-violence population. Not a pleasant thing for the victims in society, but people on your side pick who gets to be victims and who doesn't get to be victims, however unconvinced I am that you specifically choose to ignore victims according to your own ideology.

You tried to capture all the possibilities and stopped short in spectacular fashion. It was a little demeaning, I'll admit. But my big takeaway from your attempted summation of the race issue is only indicative of your ignorance on the issue. It's partly informed by past attempts to explain the goals within the constitution without desiring to read the Federalist Papers describing them, as sold to the states to sign on and make this great nation. Here, you're missing the history of amnesty without border enforcement, inaction on sanctuary cities catch-and-release, concomitant punishment of States trying to enforce immigration law by the courts, RINO inaction/corruption on illegal immigration for cheap labor and dodging a divisive topic, Mexico's angle on remittances, drug trafficking, and I'm sure I'm missing some. If you had nailed two or three of these in this broad topic while trying to peg attitudes broadly, I wouldn't have seen the need. It happened that you want to box in comments + reaction without looking at the broad picture, which is absolutely not appropriate here. Simultaneously, I wanted to mention the reason why people are less and less inclined to argue the point because you never make headway in understanding.

Two big ones: Gang of Eight Immigration Bill, and Jeb Bush's frontrunner campaign "they come out of love" style amnesty statements. Rubio forever wears the label of selling out his conservative supporters' stance on immigration by trying to compromise through an amnesty bill with token enforcement (really, unenforceable provisions). Conservative Republicans remember that betrayal and saw just how strong he was coming out on immigration, which brought the duplicity in the limelight. The second aspect is how much money Jeb raised with such a pro-amnesty position on all the issues. He was declared the frontrunner, articles were written wondering if anybody could catch him. He had all the pro establishment campaign team on his side, all the advisors, all the stuff we hated about George W Bush here for all to see. Trump made immigration his stand out issue from the start and brought necessary contrast to everybody's sinking feeling seeing the Jeb Bush campaign and Marco's about-face. The only other Republican in that packed field that had standing on the matter was Cruz, maybe a little on Scott Walker.

You're still missing the quote on what Trump said, so I'll be waiting for a real characterization and not a third bad attempt (not Mexican government, not that it was all he singled out the country was sending).

When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

But I can’t apologize for the truth. I said tremendous crime is coming across. Everybody knows that’s true. And it’s happening all the time.

The Mexican Government is forcing their most unwanted people into the United States. They are, in many cases, criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc.

I don't see much progress until you can criticize Trump on what he said, not on what you thought you heard. I say this in contrast to future times I'd join you in saying Trump was wrong to say this. You're missing an "until" in the Muslim quote, and I don't know what country you live in to think Trump was talking about pure policy proposals. I'd love to see this campaign where he talked pure policy proposals ... they were very few and far between e.g. tax plan.

He got so much fire behind him because Republicans believed he would get serious about the immigration problems in the United States. I'm not with you that he tapped into racist sentiment. I'd put that so low on the percent affected that we'd have to start talking about Hillary's courting of Communist party sentiment and the conversation would collapse. It's not a force and and wasn't a force during the campaign.

It results from slander by the left, the media, and the DNC that this country's got a huge racist population and wants a racist president to support their views. It's that the opponents estimate America to be this evil racist place that gives rise to stupid people saying that he didn't disavow the racist positions hard enough.

That's one sticking point that will never change: the great danger was that Trump would talk a big game on immigration and sell out his voters like almost every other Republican candidate in the last forty years. It wasn't a matter of being cautious about inflammatory speech, because the speech policing has already gone so far overboard that he would've reaped that characterization regardless (see: Romney, McCain, George W Bush, George H W Bush). It's a political play and right up Trump's alley and he hit it out of the park.

I really wish the country's dialogue allowed such nuanced talking positions because I would never consider Trump a necessary evil in that case. We've lost it and I doubt we can recover it. Sorry.

On October 25 2017 06:37 KwarK wrote:

Surely you understand that the using a human as a source of muscle power, similar to an oxen, is a worse economic decision today than it was in the 1700s. And likewise, that investing resources in educating a human is an economic decision likely to yield dividends today in a way that it wasn't in the malarial plantations.

It's also probably somewhat harder for slaveowners to compel a group of factory owners, scientists, engineers and so forth to work to death creating value for the slaveowner than it is to compel them to pick cotton.

Honestly the starting assumptions you have to make for that comparison to even make sense are really fucking weird but basically it comes down to different conditions and externalized costs. All of the investment in creating fully grown humans to be consumed as a resource by the plantation was externalized to Africa, treating people like coal being fed into a furnace is a net loss to the species, but a net positive for the slavers themselves. The species would have been better off had they been left to be productive members of their own societies, but the slavers wouldn't have been,

On October 25 2017 06:48 Mohdoo wrote:


I understand that manual labor was a greater benefit or more competitive or more valuable or whatever you wanna call it in the 1700s. I just assumed that while this is true, there were still members of society who were generating significantly more value than slaves. But maybe I'm totally wrong. You are right to point out that slaves were forced to work very hard and treated like poo. This likely squeezed a lot of extra value out of them. And just like we see today, lower class whites are often not willing to do the grueling work on farms that current day illegals do. Even modern day farms would get some serious value out of slavery.