| Forum Index > Closed |
|
IgnE
United States7681 Posts
On January 24 2019 11:50 xDaunt wrote: Oh, and as a relevant aside, Venezuela is a perfect example of why the Second Amendment matters. An armed populace would be able to more easily get rid of Maduro. Oh come on. Poor taste and worse logic. | ||
|
GreenHorizons
United States23160 Posts
(U.S. Representative from California's 17th congressional district) | ||
|
IgnE
United States7681 Posts
| ||
|
Jockmcplop
United Kingdom9607 Posts
To be fair it would work perfectly. All those poor people who keep voting for the wrong guy can't afford guns. Problem solved. | ||
|
GreenHorizons
United States23160 Posts
| ||
|
Jockmcplop
United Kingdom9607 Posts
On January 24 2019 17:42 GreenHorizons wrote: I just hope people notice the US is doing everything that Russia was accused of and worse right now in Venezuela and virtually none of the people who think Russia is a big deal think the US doing worse is a problem let alone worse. Its the politics of principle - with exceptions. Interfering in foreign elections is bad, unless the other country is socialist/communist - then you are simply 'saving' the population. Never look at the principles to determine what someone's politics are, its always the exceptions that tell you what someone really thinks. Freedom is good - unless its Palestinians, or black Americans. Election interference is bad - unless they're commies. | ||
|
GreenHorizons
United States23160 Posts
On January 24 2019 17:51 Jockmcplop wrote: Its the politics of principle - with exceptions. Interfering in foreign elections is bad, unless the other country is socialist/communist - then you are simply 'saving' the population. Never look at the principles to determine what someone's politics are, its always the exceptions that tell you what someone really thinks. Freedom is good - unless its Palestinians, or black Americans. Election interference is bad - unless they're commies. I mean I pointed it out so many times (to little avail) it's just funny/sad to see them literally talking SOTU melodrama instead of yet another US backed coup in an oil rich country while also backing a literal fascist in Brazil and the (further and explicit) use of the US military in Venezuela. Like gets pretty tough to make the moral case the world shouldn't invade the US since our political system seems incapable of outing a clear corrupt criminal and his election was questionable at best. | ||
|
iamthedave
England2814 Posts
On January 24 2019 11:31 GreenHorizons wrote: I can't keep straight whether the Venezuelan people elected Maduro like you just said to cushion the inhumanity you're supporting or he's not an elected leader like your presidents administration just said to justify the coup to take back US corporate interests in Venezuela? Bolsonaro openly said he would imprison and/or banish his political opposition, as well as a whole ton of draconian bullshit. SA is still fucking decapitating people for non-violent crimes as well as plenty of other horrific shit that typically is used to justify fucking up other Muslim countries. That you describe that as not "outright fucking over their people" at least jives with your previously articulated morally bankrupt and deplorable position on foreign policy. I certainly still see it plainly as such. I believe I've done this dance around the pole quite enough but I'll chip in to say Maduro was largely elected because Chavez hand-picked him. He did win the election, but realistically anyone Chavez picked was going to because of his popularity with the public (waning in his dying years, but still overwhelmingly popular). On January 24 2019 11:44 xDaunt wrote: Even if we presume that Venezuela had a fair election (huge presumption) in which they chose Maduro, that is not a good enough reason for the Venezuelan people to continue to suffer under his rule. So yes, they absolutely should overthrow his ass. Wake me up when Brazil and Saudi Arabia are enduring massive famines and economic collapse. Then we can talk about how horrible they are in relation to Maduro-era Venezuela. The fact that you refuse to admit and accept is that Venezuela is in a completely different league of "horrible" than either Saudi Arabia or Brazil. Doesn't SA's horrendous (truly horrendous) record on human rights and state-level oppression of women have some influence on this? Or is the economy god-king of your world and it doesn't matter how bad the people are treated so long as someone's getting rich? | ||
|
GreenHorizons
United States23160 Posts
On January 24 2019 18:15 iamthedave wrote: I believe I've done this dance around the pole quite enough but I'll chip in to say Maduro was largely elected because Chavez hand-picked him. He did win the election, but realistically anyone Chavez picked was going to because of his popularity with the public (waning in his dying years, but still overwhelmingly popular). I got sick of trying to warp everything to fit a Democrat worldview the first acute bending I remember was trying to explain why Obama did jack shit about the banks while trying to ignore his campaign fundraising. Partisans and centrists nowadays laugh at such a minor discordance. They can call for a coup on someone they call a democratically elected leader by a relatively unknown self appointed asshole in the name of democracy the same day they justify US support of the coup by claiming he's an unelected dictator. Like holy fuck Cheney is jealous of such favorable propaganda in favor of US neocolonialism. But not too jealous since we can be pretty sure he'll be profiting off of it. | ||
|
Jockmcplop
United Kingdom9607 Posts
It could well turn out to be better for the people of Venezuela. I doubt it, but it could. It'll certainly be better for any of the people that we are likely to hear from. It ain't democracy though, this is just foreign powers acquiring a vassal state. | ||
|
Dromar
United States2145 Posts
On January 24 2019 17:51 Jockmcplop wrote: Its the politics of principle - with exceptions. Interfering in foreign elections is bad, unless the other country is socialist/communist - then you are simply 'saving' the population. Never look at the principles to determine what someone's politics are, its always the exceptions that tell you what someone really thinks. Freedom is good - unless its Palestinians, or black Americans. Election interference is bad - unless they're commies. I don't think it's that, personally. I think that a lot of people aren't really all that disturbed by the US doing the exact same things we condemn Russia for doing to us. xDaunt pretty much said it a page ago: Foreign policy is a very different animal from domestic governance. I fully support the US fucking with other countries to the extent that it benefits Americans. And I honestly think that many, many Americans, though they wouldn't want to admit it, and probably haven't thought about it enough to realize it themselves, feel the same way. Deep down, they realize that this shit happens all the time, and they hope their team is better at it than the other team(s). Is it morally righteous? No, but many people, at their core, are not the paragons of virtue they like to believe they are. Besides, people's attention is already occupied with current events here in the US. Most US citizens never even register that this type of stuff is happening. | ||
|
Jockmcplop
United Kingdom9607 Posts
I would suggest that this is mostly a centrist or neolib thing. | ||
|
GreenHorizons
United States23160 Posts
On January 24 2019 18:33 Jockmcplop wrote: The simple fact is that Venezuelans elected the guy that was running their country. The entire world has stepped in and said that no, they don't like it, so they've changed it. This is a dictatorship now, run by the EU, the US and Canada against the wishes of the people of Venezuela. It could well turn out to be better for the people of Venezuela. I doubt it, but it could. It'll certainly be better for any of the people that we are likely to hear from. It ain't democracy though, this is just foreign powers acquiring a vassal state. Right? Which is why I appreciated xDaunt just saying he supports that rather than the twisting and turning most folks are trying in order to justify all the neocolonialism by pointing to the non-zero chance that while destroying the planet and extracting the countries wealth, some (a lot of them being capitalist that already fled/returned to the US) people in Venezuela may see a neoliberal "improvement" to the quality of their life. Namely slightly better infrastructure to more efficiently extract said wealth for western corporations and governments and a petty bourgeoisie class intended to shield the western backed elites from political uprisings. On January 24 2019 18:41 Jockmcplop wrote: Well I agree with that, the problem here isn't the right wingers who never had a problem with Russia interfering in US elections. The problem is the people who were actively against such things on principle, but whose principles seem to have gone missing in the last day or so. I would suggest that this is mostly a centrist or neolib thing. Indeed xDaunt just did us the unfortunate favor of giving us both the "he's an unelected dictator" and "Well they elected him so their suffering is on them" almost back to back | ||
|
iamthedave
England2814 Posts
What I mean by that, do you feel politics needs to be a series of exact, unbendable principles, or is it reasonable that people might have a lot of conditional factors involved? I have the feeling most people believe their politics to be consistent because they don't examine them deep enough, and in actuality most are built on a series of conditionals. | ||
|
Nebuchad
Switzerland12152 Posts
On January 24 2019 14:16 IgnE wrote: The economy wouldn't collapse but capital is more fluid, across a global level, than it was in the postwar decades. I don't oppose a 70% marginal tax rate, but I don't think it will be very effective. It will simply change incentives, change where the money is, how it is, but not whose it is. This I think is closer to the truth, but the efficiency can be down the line as well. When these capitalists move out of our countries because they don't want to pay more taxes, all of the narratives that they're trying to do what's best for society are shattered, and a lot of rightwing myths about the economy are no longer sustainable. This by itself moves the Overton window to the left massively. It's also a decent step toward establishing a global work force to fight the globalization of capital, but I suspect that one won't matter as much cause climate change will take center stage first. Just imagine how much it does for the left if we go from Dell saying "It can't work because socialism is idealism for stupid people, lol grow up" to Dell saying "It can't work because me and my friends are such greedy egotistical bastards that we'd rather move to another country and live there than give back a reasonable amount of money to the society of the United States whose labor we have exploited to get that money." | ||
|
GreenHorizons
United States23160 Posts
On January 24 2019 20:07 iamthedave wrote: Here's a possibly interesting question for you, GH: Do people's politics need to be consistent? What I mean by that, do you feel politics needs to be a series of exact, unbendable principles, or is it reasonable that people might have a lot of conditional factors involved? I have the feeling most people believe their politics to be consistent because they don't examine them deep enough, and in actuality most are built on a series of conditionals. One's politics should be changing over time because they should be improving but those improvements should line up with thoughtful and identifiable processes surrounding that evolution. I'd agree that even the majority of people here don't engage with their political beliefs beyond a very gamified and superficial level, myself included (though I've made a conscious effort to improve on that over the last few years). | ||
|
Nebuchad
Switzerland12152 Posts
On January 24 2019 20:07 iamthedave wrote: Here's a possibly interesting question for you, GH: Do people's politics need to be consistent? What I mean by that, do you feel politics needs to be a series of exact, unbendable principles, or is it reasonable that people might have a lot of conditional factors involved? I have the feeling most people believe their politics to be consistent because they don't examine them deep enough, and in actuality most are built on a series of conditionals. I think liberalism is an incoherent political belief, but I'm not exactly bashing liberals for having it. Liberalism is what we have right now, so it's very easy, in the first world, to just assume it works well. I do believe most liberals are just misinformed and don't realize the inconsistency in their beliefs. In the case of fascists and other theories that are to the right of economic liberalism (but let's face it it's mostly fascism in our case), I think they have a coherent political belief, it's just that it's based on principles that are unpopular in the general population, and they've learned to pretend that they don't hold those principles, which causes them to appear incoherent if you trust everything they say. "I'm not a racist, but [racist idea]", and so on. As long as you ignore the rhetoric, there is a coherency in the world view. In a sense liberalism is a better enemy than fascism because you can easily show the flaws in the logic of liberals. To fight fascism in the battle of ideas you have to get people to redefine their core world view, often while they pretend that their world view is something else. That's a lot harder. | ||
|
GreenHorizons
United States23160 Posts
On January 24 2019 20:42 Nebuchad wrote: I think liberalism is an incoherent political belief, but I'm not exactly bashing liberals for having it. Liberalism is what we have right now, so it's very easy, in the first world, to just assume it works well. I do believe most liberals are just misinformed and don't realize the inconsistency in their beliefs. In the case of fascists and other theories that are to the right of economic liberalism (but let's face it it's mostly fascism in our case), I think they have a coherent political belief, it's just that it's based on principles that are unpopular in the general population, and they've learned to pretend that they don't hold those principles, which causes them to appear incoherent if you trust everything they say. "I'm not a racist, but [racist idea]", and so on. As long as you ignore the rhetoric, there is a coherency in the world view. In a sense liberalism is a better enemy than fascism because you can easily show the flaws in the logic of liberals. To fight fascism in the battle of ideas you have to get people to redefine their core world view, often while they pretend that their world view is something else. That's a lot harder. I agree with that important addition about folks who support fascism. EDIT: With respect to daves post I'd add that I'm discovering that neoliberalism has recognized and incorporated a similarly distorted world view. I don't think "a coherency" regarding fascism was meant to imply that it's thoroughly coherent just it can pass a reasonable but somewhat cursory examination of it's coherence For example: xDaunts proclamation in support of US neocolonialism (and colonialism in general for that matter) vs a neoliberal position of supporting a coup for democracy, or more specifically, US (and let's be real here, Trump) favored neoliberal capitalism. ____________________________________________________________________________________________ This is an older report but if you can manage to get through the few minutes that should be queued up (13:58) it can give folks a glimpse into the another perspective of the violence and reporting of that violence in Venezuela. | ||
|
iamthedave
England2814 Posts
On January 24 2019 20:42 Nebuchad wrote: I think liberalism is an incoherent political belief, but I'm not exactly bashing liberals for having it. Liberalism is what we have right now, so it's very easy, in the first world, to just assume it works well. I do believe most liberals are just misinformed and don't realize the inconsistency in their beliefs. In the case of fascists and other theories that are to the right of economic liberalism (but let's face it it's mostly fascism in our case), I think they have a coherent political belief, it's just that it's based on principles that are unpopular in the general population, and they've learned to pretend that they don't hold those principles, which causes them to appear incoherent if you trust everything they say. "I'm not a racist, but [racist idea]", and so on. As long as you ignore the rhetoric, there is a coherency in the world view. In a sense liberalism is a better enemy than fascism because you can easily show the flaws in the logic of liberals. To fight fascism in the battle of ideas you have to get people to redefine their core world view, often while they pretend that their world view is something else. That's a lot harder. I've not found that. I see very little true coherence of belief in any established viewpoint. The most fundamental issue with fascism is that it isn't actually meant to result in the deaths of thousands of people. The idea behind fascism is to put the best guy in charge, as defined by characteristics that are entirely arbitrary (a fundamental incoherence since it becomes Might Makes Right, which by definition means that any force that defeats Facism is inherently superior to it), and that the best guy will justly rule their nation in the perfect way, leading to the perfect economy, order and strength. It's the idea of benevolent dictatorship. I can think of very few fascists who frame it in anything but the most ideal of ways (as in 'we'll kill everyone I personally don't like and nobody else' and it'll be fantastic) or engage honestly with the lessons that should logically be learned from failed fascist states of the past (such as how planned, centrally controlled economies tend to fall apart and actually aren't as reactive to shifts in the market as fascists believe, because unless The Leader believes a threat is a threat, the market will be prevented from responding to it). It's coherent on paper, but not in the mouths and minds of actual fascists. Conservatism and Liberalism are both coherent on paper but less so in practice. | ||
|
Nebuchad
Switzerland12152 Posts
On January 24 2019 21:48 iamthedave wrote: I've not found that. I see very little true coherence of belief in any established viewpoint. The most fundamental issue with fascism is that it isn't actually meant to result in the deaths of thousands of people. The idea behind fascism is to put the best guy in charge, as defined by characteristics that are entirely arbitrary (a fundamental incoherence since it becomes Might Makes Right, which by definition means that any force that defeats Facism is inherently superior to it), and that the best guy will justly rule their nation in the perfect way, leading to the perfect economy, order and strength. It's the idea of benevolent dictatorship. I can think of very few fascists who frame it in anything but the most ideal of ways (as in 'we'll kill everyone I personally don't like and nobody else' and it'll be fantastic) or engage honestly with the lessons that should logically be learned from failed fascist states of the past (such as how planned, centrally controlled economies tend to fall apart and actually aren't as reactive to shifts in the market as fascists believe, because unless The Leader believes a threat is a threat, the market will be prevented from responding to it). It's coherent on paper, but not in the mouths and minds of actual fascists. Conservatism and Liberalism are both coherent on paper but less so in practice. Fascism has to be thought in terms of hierarchy of society. Some people are inferior to others, because they don't have the right race or ethnicity, the right sexuality, the right political beliefs. Because we, having the right all of that, are superior as a group, we ought to be on top of society, and we should model society in a way that allows us to be on top of it. Capitalism and liberal democracy can't give us that situation, so we need something else. Those are all coherent follow-ups to the initial (incorrect) belief that some people are inferior to others because of their identity. As a political ideology, it mostly works in terms of its rationality as long as you accept the premise. It's still not rational, of course, because the premise isn't a rational one, but it's much harder to convince someone if you have to fight the premise of their world view than if you can show that their world view isn't coherent with their own premises. Conservatism... doesn't tell me much about what your ideology is. You want to keep things the way they are. Okay... But then how are things? If it's liberalism, then you're a liberal. If it's fascism, then you're a fascist. If it's socialism, then you're a socialist. Liberalism is not coherent on paper. It posits at the same time to be based on liberty and equality, and to support capitalism, a system that is based on forcing an inferior class of people into exploitation. It is incoherent that when you posit that people are equal, you look at gender, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, religion, but you can't look at class, because capitalism requires class in order to exist. The moment you ignore class, people by definition aren't starting on an equal footing, and the meritocracy is skewed. Liberalism was always meant as a cover of capitalism more than as a coherent ideology; all liberal democracies have a much easier time denying rights to a group of people (something that is completely illiberal) than denying the capitalist class what they want. | ||
| ||
StarCraft 2 StarCraft: Brood War Calm Dota 2 14682Sea  3499Flash 2830Mini  769BeSt 640Hyuk 529Bisu 515EffOrt 495Soma 414Soulkey 375[ Show more ] League of Legends Counter-Strike Super Smash Bros Other Games hiko924 B2W.Neo666 crisheroes402 DeMusliM394 Happy316 Lowko313 Fuzer  299Pyrionflax277 XaKoH  247QueenE41 ZerO(Twitch)19 |
|
PiGosaur Monday
The PondCast
Replay Cast
RSL Revival
ByuN vs Classic
Clem vs Cham
WardiTV European League
Replay Cast
RSL Revival
herO vs SHIN
Reynor vs Cure
WardiTV European League
FEL
Korean StarCraft League
[ Show More ] |
|
|
EPT
