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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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GreenHorizons
United States22736 Posts
On December 24 2017 00:56 Excludos wrote: I'm interested to see what all this has to do with the estate tax.. The tangent came from grave robbing, I should have been satisfied with pointing out that if they actually buried their hoard with them the government wouldn't get it's hands on it. | ||
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Uldridge
Belgium4591 Posts
Belgium, such a tiny country, had HUGE effects on central Africa. Just read this fucked up little thing here for example. One could also argue that all the those different nations taking interest in India fractured it to the point of barely functioning nation it is today. It should be on par with China (it has 1.3 billion people living in it ffs), but it's still "just" a developing country, with a few hot shot cities, but this is the US mega thread, so it's not that relevant. I feel like the destruction or having a very strong hand into doing so in Africa to be absolutely horrid as well, because we meddled (and we still do) with their development. I think I find the eradication of native people in America probably to be even worse than the era of slavery. It's not constructive to play this he said she said game every other page in this thread. It's actually insane how pedantic and at the same time redundant these discussions are. I want to see constructive discussions that actually lead somewhere, not the same old shit that we were 2 years or more ago. Can't we at least be capable of progressing the discussion instead of becoming entrenched in the same bullshit? I've gotten the point, other people have gotten the point, there must come a time you leave the people behind that can't follow because they take up too much time and energy to put into. How many more iterations of the same conversation are we going to have before this sinks in? | ||
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zlefin
United States7689 Posts
the same stuff comes up over and over again because there's no enforcement mechanism to ensure thinsg move on (and to ensure actual determinations of outcome); i.e. people can keep making the same bs claim over and over again. no discussion here will be truly productive becuase none of us matter or can influence policy. and most of the people don' teven have the requisite expertise to have useful opinions of their own (as opposed to ones that are simply cribbed from a more learned source); and quite a few aren't even good at cribbing opinions from other sources (which is a pretty hard task in itself really, to do so intelligently) and when people try to have serious discussion, it's usually met with disinterest, because serious discussion is boring. and trash discussion tends to generate more trash; filtering that out requires a considerable amount of work, and at any rate would require a different moderation policy. you can' t"leav people behind" unless you can exclude them from the discussion, which you can't here. if you want to establish some place with higher standards that could be done of course; | ||
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Uldridge
Belgium4591 Posts
So my question then is this: why is this thread still alive, or not being more strictly moderated, because it's literally the same 3 topics being talked about ad nauseam and maybe 10% of it being actually US politics stuff. We either need a seperate thread for this, or we need to rename it to: society, people don't agree with each other. | ||
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zlefin
United States7689 Posts
if you want higher moderation, there's a long website feedback thread on that topic, and others have asked as you did many times; the mods have chosen their path, but feel free to go there and make some proposals. it's not always so easy to ignore people as that. especially without an "ignore" feature. if you want to truly be informed about things, ther'es better places than an internet forum; like reading the news, or scholarly books. and of course, us politics itself is stupid, if you throw out stuff that doesn't hold up to rigor, most of what us politicians say and do gets tossed. | ||
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Ayaz2810
United States2763 Posts
"President Trump, while complaining earlier this year about immigration levels during his first months in office, reportedly suggested that Haitian immigrants "all have AIDS." According to a New York Times report, Trump did not only single out Haitian immigrants. He also said that Nigerians who gained entrance to the U.S. would never "go back to their huts" in Africa, and that Afghan immigrants came from a terrorist haven. The remarks came during a meeting in June in which the president reportedly lashed out at what he deemed inadequate efforts to curb the number of foreigners receiving U.S. visas, according to the Times." http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/366304-report-trump-suggested-haitian-immigrants-to-us-all-have-aids | ||
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Uldridge
Belgium4591 Posts
This forum is usually an ok place to stay in the loop about certain hand picked topics, which is fine. And how isn't it easy to ignore people on an internet forum? You choose to read a post, no? You can choose not to read a post if you know the poster has a track record of being obstructive. I guess I'll let it go though. I won't address it again, because it seems my sentiment isn't really shared here. | ||
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zlefin
United States7689 Posts
On December 24 2017 04:03 Ayaz2810 wrote: Holy shit. "President Trump, while complaining earlier this year about immigration levels during his first months in office, reportedly suggested that Haitian immigrants "all have AIDS." According to a New York Times report, Trump did not only single out Haitian immigrants. He also said that Nigerians who gained entrance to the U.S. would never "go back to their huts" in Africa, and that Afghan immigrants came from a terrorist haven. The remarks came during a meeting in June in which the president reportedly lashed out at what he deemed inadequate efforts to curb the number of foreigners receiving U.S. visas, according to the Times." http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/366304-report-trump-suggested-haitian-immigrants-to-us-all-have-aids the underlying quotes appeared to happen in June, so why are they reporting on it/complaining about it now? and uldridge, you should post your concerns in the website feedback thread, that's what it's for. | ||
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Ayaz2810
United States2763 Posts
On December 24 2017 04:28 zlefin wrote: the underlying quotes appeared to happen in June, so why are they reporting on it/complaining about it now? and uldridge, you should post your concerns in the website feedback thread, that's what it's for. Maybe it took that long for the person/people to become disgruntled enough to reveal it. Who knows? All I know is that I believe the Times 100%. | ||
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JimmyJRaynor
Canada16445 Posts
The USA produces some awesome comedians. Here is to Larry David, Jerry Seinfeld, and Jason Alexander. These 3 guys kick ass. It is December 23rd ..... Happy Festivus Everyone! + Show Spoiler + | ||
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IgnE
United States7681 Posts
On December 23 2017 18:59 GreenHorizons wrote: You won't see me disagreeing with the idea that exploitation of workers is a theme throughout much of human history. + Show Spoiler + EDIT: we can't really know what was in the average Egyptian worker's head but indications are that their beliefs were largely sincere and while we know they were exploited, it's unlikely they viewed it that way. More likely that they had a similar pride to those who built the Hoover Dam (despite making sub union wages) or your Delta Works (while notably less visually impressive & probably exploited the workers significantly less) Though it's quite probable there were plenty of workers who thought they were getting screwed. so slavery is in the mind of the slave? re: slefin's remarks slefin is spinning in the void, repeating the same thing every few months | ||
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Biff The Understudy
France7811 Posts
On December 24 2017 01:54 Uldridge wrote: You can ignore the people that choose to not understand the argument, like Sermokola did last page. You can choose to ignore xDaunt and Danglars when they make their insane remarks. A more productive route can also be chosen instead of trash discussions for the sake of trash discussions. If people have the patience, time and willingness to dig up posts from each other from several cycles ago, they're certainly serious enough to engage into something. Maybe that can be channeled into something more productive, IDK. Maybe it's not possible and people just want to sling mud at each other the entire time. Maybe that's more fun than talking about what's possible or how to move on in the future or how certain policies can/will shape the societal landscape. I personally love being educated and love talking possibilities/hypotheticals, so when I'm visiting and walk into one of those I'll gladly be part of it. So my question then is this: why is this thread still alive, or not being more strictly moderated, because it's literally the same 3 topics being talked about ad nauseam and maybe 10% of it being actually US politics stuff. We either need a seperate thread for this, or we need to rename it to: society, people don't agree with each other. I have to say that 75% of the time the thread has a sterile, polemic tone, but then again, it reflects the sterile, polemic political landscape of the US. So many pages are simply about Danglar fighting the world with unlimited supply if bad faith and shitty arguments, everyone (including me) getting triggered by it, and RiK and xDaunt throwing their ultra far right insight and everyone normal losing their sanity. It’s a defeat to admit it, but if this thread was split into « US politics megathread for sane people » and an « argue endlessly with Danglar and xDaunt thread over the merit of ethnostates, 19th century racial theories and how worthless eveything and everyone connected to Africa and Islam is », we would at least have a chance to have an interesting bit of discussion from time to time. Now, US politics in general is shaped by the fact that the GOP doesn’t even try anymore to make sense and seems to be a competition about who displays the least intelectual integrity / is the biggest pond scum, so we are doing ok at reflecting it I guess. | ||
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Excludos
Norway7967 Posts
On December 24 2017 05:23 Biff The Understudy wrote: I have to say that 75% of the time the thread has a sterile, polemic tone, but then again, it reflects the sterile, polemic political landscape of the US. So many pages are simply about Danglar fighting the world with unlimited supply if bad faith and shitty arguments, everyone (including me) getting triggered by it, and RiK and xDaunt throwing their ultra far right insight and everyone normal losing their sanity. It’s a defeat to admit it, but if this thread was split into « US politics megathread for sane people » and an « argue endlessly with Danglar and xDaunt thread over the merit of ethnostates, 19th century racial theories and how worthless eveything and everyone connected to Africa and Islam is », we would at least have a chance to have an interesting bit of discussion from time to time. Now, US politics in general is shaped by the fact that the GOP doesn’t even try anymore to make sense and seems to be a competition about who displays the least intelectual integrity / is the biggest pond scum, so we are doing ok at reflecting it I guess. What you're in danger of creating tho is less of a landscape to debate US politics and more of a giant circlejerk where everyone agrees on how retarded everyone in power right now is. As much as it feels good, it's not very very productive. It's the reason I've stopped discussing on r/politics and instead use it as a collection of news to fuel my anger at the current administration. Then again it might be that everything happening right now is just indefensible, and trying to bring in opposing views just clouds the water with strawmen, whataboutism and complete lack of reason and logic instead of bringing in reasonable arguments from every side. | ||
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zlefin
United States7689 Posts
a thoughtful reasonable discussion of policy and solutions is not what politics is about. | ||
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Doodsmack
United States7224 Posts
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Excludos
Norway7967 Posts
On December 24 2017 06:56 Doodsmack wrote: And yet, people still don’t believe Trump is an old school racist...simply because the media called him that. But what about simply observing what he says and does? This is who you put in the White House. https://twitter.com/peterbakernyt/status/944617718258511872 Yes, but who is it that reports on what he says? Isn't that the media also? It's all just fake news and a giant conspiracy made by Killary and traitor Obama.. (I just wish I was completely making this up and not actually mimicing people with these actual arguments) | ||
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{CC}StealthBlue
United States41117 Posts
Pete Hoekstra, the newly sworn-in US ambassador to the Netherlands, issued a public apology on Saturday for comments he made in a 2015 interview about so called “no-go” zones in Muslim communities in Europe. The comments came to light during a cringeworthy exchange on the current affairs programme Nieuwsuur on Friday where Hoekstra directly contradicted himself twice in a matter of less than a minute on live television. “I made certain remarks in 2015 and regret the exchange during the Nieuwsuur interview. Please accept my apology,” Hoekstra shared on Twitter. The myth of “no-go zones”, concentrated pockets of Muslim immigrants in Europe so hostile to outsiders that non-Muslims cannot safely pass, has been widely debunked. It still, however, remains popular in some conservative and anti-Islamic circles and reached its peak shortly after the January 2015 terror attacks in Paris. In the interview, reporter Wouter Zwart says: “You mentioned in a debate that there are no-go zones in the Netherlands, and that cars and politicians are being set on fire in the Netherlands.” Hoekstra replies: “I didn’t say that. This is actually an incorrect statement. We would call it fake news.” Hoekstra is then shown clips of him saying: “The Islamic movement has now gotten to a point where they have put Europe into chaos. Chaos in the Netherlands, there are cars being burnt, there are politicians that are being burnt … and yes there are no-go zones in the Netherlands.” Challenged about having called this “fake news”, Hoekstra then went on to deny to Zwart that he had in fact used the phrase “fake news”. “I didn’t call that fake news. I didn’t use the words today. I don’t think I did.” Hoekstra, who was born in Groningen in the Netherlands, was a Republican congressman for Michigan between 1993 and 2011, and served as chair of the House intelligence committee for two years during that time. In his statement he described himself as being “passionate about confronting the global threat of terrorism”, and elsewhere has described himself as a “Frequent writer and commentator on intelligence issues and the threat from radical Islam”. Source | ||
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JonnyBNoHo
United States6277 Posts
On December 24 2017 04:03 Ayaz2810 wrote: "President Trump, while complaining earlier this year about immigration levels during his first months in office, reportedly suggested that Haitian immigrants "all have AIDS." Grandpa! shoosh!! | ||
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JonnyBNoHo
United States6277 Posts
On December 24 2017 12:17 JonnyBNoHo wrote: Grandpa! shoosh!! Edit: also, for anyone who wants to know more about the modern history of Haiti... www.revolutionspodcast.com | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States22736 Posts
On December 24 2017 05:12 IgnE wrote: so slavery is in the mind of the slave? re: slefin's remarks slefin is spinning in the void, repeating the same thing every few months I'm no Egyptologist or epistemological expert, but my relatively uninformed opinion is that it's a factor. Part of the problem is who is saying it for what purpose. Hence pointing out that xDaunt is unlikely to see peasants as basically equivalent to slaves, mostly because it opens up the interpretation that there are still a shit ton of slaves around the world (not just in Libya). Which in turn undermines the religious myth on the right that other people's poverty is unrelated to the people getting wealthy off of those impoverished people's labor. For instance, Africa is the wealthiest in natural resources but the people are often poor because of their own personal failings in accepting the "gift" of colonialism, rather than their poverty being directly related to the Europeans getting wealthy off of plundered African resources. In a more enlightened and nuanced discussion I'd be more flexible, but when someone is trying to compare the Ancient Egypt that built one of mankind's most enduring and massive monuments with what was basically an ancient version of taxes (seasonal labor for the common good [I get that in retrospect it's clear it was a selfish creation]) to the US southern slavery circa 1800, I think it's important to note that they were very different practices, even if when push comes to shove I may call them both slavery when engaged with someone who recognizes the distinctions. | ||
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