US Politics Mega-thread - Page 9158

On November 06 2017 07:08 Danglars wrote:

I’m not in this to differentiate between misguided liberals and anti-civilizations/dyscivic liberals. Trump has a danger, but it’s mild compared to Clinton’s. Conservatives survive Trump to fight another day. Clinton puts conservatism on the ropes so hard that it’s doubtful that the movement ever again holds political power. Liberals had their chance to show compromise and didn’t choose it. Welp, that’s that.

It’s pretty humorous talking about theocracy in the age of Trump. It’s like you’re searching for the most implausible scapegoats because it’s too hard to present compelling arguments. You want to call the shots to how and why the country is falling apart? Meet me at the electoral college, because the rationales are fundamentally irreconciliable.

On November 06 2017 07:21 Jockmcplop wrote:
Is there going to be a point at which people stop pretending that its nothing to do with Trump that all his friends, advisers and staff are corrupt liars and criminals?

IT WAS HUGE NEWS when White House Chief of Staff John Kelly appeared before the White House press corps two weeks ago to defend President Trump’s phone call to the widow of Army Sgt. La David T. Johnson.

But Kelly’s most peculiar remarks went largely unnoticed. U.S. soldiers, Kelly said, volunteer even though “there’s nothing in our country anymore that seems to suggest that selfless service to the nation is not only appropriate, but required.” This was, Kelly lamented, because nothing in America is “sacred” anymore, like women or religion. We’ve also, according to Kelly, discarded the “sanctity of life” (i.e., abortion is legal).

In other words, Kelly may love whatever version of America’s past that he has in his mind. But he is not particularly fond of this actual country, today, or Americans themselves (unless they’ve been in the military).

Kelly went on to express similar feelings in his recent Fox News interview when discussing Trump’s call to Myeshia Johnson, which Florida Democrat Rep. Frederica Wilson criticized for upsetting Johnson. (Trump told Johnson that her late husband “knew what he was getting into,” and Johnson believed Trump had trouble recalling La David’s name.) Wilson’s statements, Kelly said, made him wonder if “doing anything” for the United States “is worth it anymore.”

Moreover, Kelly has clearly felt this way for quite some time. In a 2007 speech he claimed that America has “lost something of quality over the years. … Today, unfortunately, to most it’s about quick gratification, and what’s in it for me. Memorial and Veteran’s Day are more about a day off to take advantage of the big sales at the malls.” Indeed, he said, it’s almost inexplicable why anyone would join the military, given how awful the U.S. is, including the “great pressure from our society to sit it out and not get involved.”

By contrast, the military is an ideal institution that has never lost a war, although it has been stabbed in the back by the terrible people back in America: “When we have lost,” according to Kelly, “we lost at home, and others declared defeat — not us.”

Of course, it’s completely legitimate to criticize the U.S., and it would be truly worthwhile to sit down with Kelly and explore why he feels this way. But an honest discussion wouldn’t go the way he anticipates.

First, Kelly’s perspective is noticeably Marxist. As the Communist Manifesto famously claims, under capitalism “All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away … All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.” But it’s unlikely Kelly wants to face the reality that much of his anger should be directed at America’s economic system.

Kelly also might be surprised that women did not experience not being able to vote, or to have credit cards in their own name, or to have legal protection from being fired for being pregnant, as being “sacred.” He could also usefully ponder, particularly since he’s from Boston, whether the previous sanctity of the Catholic Church had something to do with priests sexually abusing children for decades with impunity.

And an examination of the most valid part of his bill of indictment – the unconscionable burden our wars place on a small slice of the U.S. population – would be particularly uncomfortable for Kelly. He believes that we are locked in a deathmatch with countless, merciless savages, and resents the fact that most young people don’t agree enough to enlist. From a certain angle this is understandable, especially given the fact that one of his sons was killed in Afghanistan and another is still in the Marines.

But then Kelly should immediately have a talk with both Donald Trump and George W. Bush, who not only haven’t persuaded most Americans of these stakes, but can’t even persuade their own children — every single one of whom has instead chosen the kind of civilian, sybaritic, careless life Kelly finds so distasteful. Kelly might also consider that the Pentagon does not want lots of additional volunteers, and loathes the idea of the draft, because the fewer Americans involved in our wars the freer political hand the generals have to prosecute them.

It may seem like a weird contradiction for Kelly to speak constantly about his devotion to his country, while finding his fellow citizens so detestable. But if you pay attention, you’ll see this kind of worldview is common among the loudest patriots everywhere on earth.

On November 06 2017 07:25 Buckyman wrote:
As far as I can tell...
...the national Democratic party organization is broken. They're spamming identity politics that divide even themselves. Meanwhile, the relatively-conservative faction concerned with maintaining power has sidelined the relatively-populist and relatively-socialist wings. And they've outright lost the blue collar white demographic and most of the classic liberals. I don't know whether the party can survive in its current form.
...the national Republican party is splintering as a side effect of absorbing the blue collar white demographic and most of the classic liberals. "It turns out the GOP wasn’t simply out of touch with its voters; the party had no idea who its voters were or what they believed" - Tucker Carlson. You have the out-of-touch "mainstream" wing of the party at odds with the relatively-radical wing, hamstringing their political agendas. Expect a wave of successful outsider primary challenges, after which the party might be able to realign intact on more reasonably positions.
...the parties are united in their opposition to strong third parties. Both Democrats and Republicans agree that the duopoly should be maintained.

...despite the inflamatory rhetoric and institutional decay, America remains a generally nice county. Our disadvantaged groups are treated better than most countries' advantaged groups. And our citizens have a higher degree of personal freedom than most other countries'.

VATICAN CITY — California has opened a new front in its war on Donald Trump — the Vatican, where Gov. Jerry Brown on Saturday sought to enlist the Catholic Church in his effort to undermine the president’s climate policies abroad.

Brown, addressing a somber gathering of scientists, politicians and religious leaders here, rebuked Trump’s rejection of mainstream climate science as a “lie within a lie,” urging religious establishments to help “awaken the world” to efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The conspicuous repudiation of the president, in this center of Christendom on the eve of this week’s international climate talks in Bonn, Germany, served to underscore Brown’s role as one of the most prominent figures in the anti-Trump resistance. But it also highlighted California’s deep antipathy toward the president on a global stage, allying the nation’s most populous state with the international community against the backdrop of simmering tension between the White House and Pope Francis on climate change.

The pope, who did not appear at the conference, implicitly criticized the president in October for withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, a decision that weighed heavily over the gathering.

Brown wasn’t the only Californian emphasizing the American divide over global warming — or the state’s determination to blaze its own trail on the issue. Rallying the same audience the previous day, California Democratic state Senate leader Kevin de León cast California’s leaders — and not, explicitly, Washington’s — as the “faithful stewards of God’s creation.”

Daniel Kammen, the University of California, Berkeley, professor who resigned noisily from his role as science envoy to the State Department in August, called Trump’s election America’s “existential crisis” and encouraged efforts to impeach him. And California Democratic Congressman Scott Peters said the relatively large proportion of U.S. Congress members who are Catholic is “one reason why Pope Francis’ commitment to making environmental stewardship a priority of his papacy has such a potential to affect American climate policy.”

The meeting, hosted by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, preceded two weeks of climate talks in Bonn, where Brown and leaders of other Democratic states will seek to persuade the world’s nations that wide swaths of the United States remain committed to the Paris agreement. Trump’s withdrawal from the pact has cast a cloud over the upcoming gathering in Germany.

Still, California's Democratic governor minimized the significance of Trump’s withdrawal from the accord, saying the decision helped focus public attention on the issue.

In comparison to worldwide efforts to address climate change, Brown said, “The Trump factor is very small, very small indeed.”

Instead, Brown called for a fundamental transformation of people’s way of life.

“It’s not just a light rinse,” Brown said. “We need a total, I might say brainwashing. We need to wash our brains out and see a very different kind of world.”

Yet the Catholic Church’s ability to move American public opinion on climate change remains in doubt. For one thing, relations between Trump and the spiritual leader of America’s more than 50 million Catholics remain cool after Pope Francis criticized Trump on issues ranging from climate change to immigration to refugee resettlement.

“The state of relations between the pope and Trump is not good and has never been good,” longtime Vatican analyst Iacopo Scaramuzzi said in an email. “They are openly at odds on almost every point, from personal style of life to issues as climate change or migrations, from attitude towards China, Iran or Cuba to the concept of ‘people’ and ‘populism.’”

While the pope’s encyclical on the environment served as an inspiration for negotiations in Paris two years ago, many climate activists hoped lobbying by a popular religious figure might also nudge public opinion on climate among conservatives in the United States. There is little evidence that has happened.

Following the encyclical’s release and the pope’s 2015 U.S. tour, researchers at the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication found a short-term increase in the number of Americans who said climate change was a “moral,” “social justice” or “poverty” issue. Soon after, however, they found public opinion returned to pre-encyclical levels.

“It was him coming to the Untied States, where he got 24-7, wall-to-wall coverage …. we saw a significant impact on public opinion,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. “We also found that six months later, that effect had faded away.”

Bob Inglis, a former Republican congressman whose progressive views on climate change contributed to his defeat in a South Carolina primary in 2010, said of the pope’s encyclical, “I do acknowledge that it hasn’t exactly — it hasn’t yet turned into the barn burner that I had hoped that it might have been.”

For conservatives, Francis may be an imperfect messenger, controversial for his relatively progressive views not only on climate, but on marriage and immigration. The pope and Trump traded jabs during the presidential campaign last year about Trump’s proposal to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, and Trump announced his withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement just days after a visit in which the pope handed him a copy of his encyclical, Laudato Si.

“I’ve got a Catholic friend in Congress who will go nameless, who told me that, and he was only halfway joking, that he thinks this pope is the anti-Christ,” Inglis said. “There’s a contingent of American Catholics who really think that the pope has left the reservation.”

Inglis said he is optimistic for the long-term effect of the pope’s advocacy on climate change, as the issue is taught in local parishes and other religious organizations. Climate activist Bill McKibben said the Catholic Church is “one of those bureaucracies through which things work their way kind of slowly,” and he said its effects will likely percolate for years.

But Francis is also suffering in America from a problem that he shares with Trump: a declining base. Though about 1 in 5 American adults are still affiliated with the Catholic Church, their numbers are in decline. A survey last month from the Pew Research Center found a majority of U.S. adults do not think it is necessary to believe in God to be moral. And regardless of religious affiliation, climate change has failed in recent elections to register a top level of concern for most voters.

Jim Nicholson, the former secretary of Veterans Affairs and Republican National Committee chairman who served as ambassador to the Holy See under George W. Bush, said Trump’s relationship with the Vatican “got off to a ragged start” but has improved steadily and is now “pretty good.” He cited Trump’s nomination of Callista Gingrich, the wife of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, to be ambassador to the Holy See.

“There are obvious differences on some subjects, like climate and immigration and the death penalty, always. But there’s an awful lot of alignment in values — religious freedom and trafficking and life,” he said.

Trump has said he is withdrawing from the Paris agreement because it puts the United States “at a very, very big economic disadvantage.” But he heartened many religious leaders with his appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court and his opposition to funding for nongovernment organizations that perform abortions.

For many religious voters, said Mitch Hescox, president of the Evangelical Environmental Network, matters such as abortion and Supreme Court nominations carry more weight at the ballot box than climate change.

“The problem is that [climate change] is not on the radar screen of the reasons they vote yet at this point in time,” Hescox said. “That’s my job, is to help them to see why it is as important as being pro-life. Our No. 1 message is that climate change is a pro-life issue.”

Climate experts stewed throughout the Vatican meeting over global climate projections they described as “horrific,” “terrifying” and “depressing.”

Brown, who left the Vatican for an 80-minute meeting with Arturo Sosa, the superior general of the Jesuits, said Saturday night that he is “going around enlisting allies” in the battle over climate change.

“What it all comes down to is we’ve got to act sooner, and we have to act more decisively, and that’s not happening,” Brown said. “There’s real horror in store for us if we don’t take action.”

On November 06 2017 08:01 Falling wrote:
@GH
Not really true. I would see the FLQ and the IRA as very much terrorists and being French-Canadian and Irish- and indeed, they were viewed as such by the wider populace. And they're are as white as you can get without being Anglo-Saxon (if we want to jump back to that old hierarchy). But definitions, categories, and motivations matter. If a lone guy goes out and kills a bunch people, it might just be a mass murder. He might also be mentally ill. Or perhaps he was connected to something larger, in which case maybe he was a terrorist. And maybe he was also mentally ill- some of these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that terrorism needs some sort of ideology or organization. I'm not exactly sure of the dividing line, and I'm sure there are lots of edge cases. But at the very least, I think the idea is false that the distinction is really just a matter of colour codes.

On November 06 2017 08:01 Falling wrote:
@GH
Not really true. I would see the FLQ and the IRA as very much terrorists and indeed, they were viewed as such by the wider populace. And being French-Canadian and Irish, they're are as white as you can get without being Anglo-Saxon (if we want to jump back to that old hierarchy). But definitions, categories, and motivations matter. If a lone guy goes out and kills a bunch people, it might just be a mass murder. He might also be mentally ill. Or perhaps he was connected to something larger, in which case maybe he was a terrorist. And maybe he was also mentally ill- some of these things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But it seems to me that terrorism needs some sort of ideology or organization. I'm not exactly sure of the dividing line, and I'm sure there are lots of edge cases. But at the very least, I think the idea is false that the distinction is really just a matter of colour codes.

On November 06 2017 07:28 kollin wrote:
'Classic liberal' is the umbrella under which people who are either racist or educated on YouTube (often both) like to hide.

On November 06 2017 07:08 Danglars wrote:

I’m not in this to differentiate between misguided liberals and anti-civilizations/dyscivic liberals. Trump has a danger, but it’s mild compared to Clinton’s. Conservatives survive Trump to fight another day. Clinton puts conservatism on the ropes so hard that it’s doubtful that the movement ever again holds political power. Liberals had their chance to show compromise and didn’t choose it. Welp, that’s that.

It’s pretty humorous talking about theocracy in the age of Trump. It’s like you’re searching for the most implausible scapegoats because it’s too hard to present compelling arguments. You want to call the shots to how and why the country is falling apart? Meet me at the electoral college, because the rationales are fundamentally irreconciliable.

On November 06 2017 08:13 Buckyman wrote:


"Classic liberal" basically denotes the moderate libertarian-leaning voters.