EPTUS Politics Mega-thread - Page 1455
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Now that we have a new thread, 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 complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets. Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source. If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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GreenHorizons
United States23248 Posts
On May 13 2019 05:44 Liquid`Drone wrote: I mean, Igne can argue his own point of view, but my understanding is that he examines political issues from a class-lens rather than an identity one. I agree with this and feel the same way. And then the notion that all women should get subsidized items due to them being female doesn't really make sense, because there are female millionaires who don't need that help at all. I mean I do understand that white males are still wealthier than all identities other than asian male (I think?) and that identity-based subsidies will often also have some overlap with class-oriented subsidies, but this is incidental and thus less ideal than simply subsidizing based on class in the first place. I think people conflated Igne's opposition to gender-based subsidies with a more right-wing opposition to giving benefits to poor people, in a way that he never stated at all, and that all the negative responses he gets to the examples he gives for 'why subsidize tampons and not x' are based around this mistake. *Note that I think certain identity-based programs have played an important role in including more women/minorities in certain professions/positions, but I no longer really believe that this is the ideal path forward both because it fails to pick up on needs of poor white males and because it detracts from the real success of some women and minorities. I still strongly favor social programs that will overwhelmingly be beneficial towards women or certain minority groups, as every significant difference between people of different non-chosen identities is based around structural differences, but I still want those social programs to be based around class-related factors rather than identity-related factors; there's no reason why a millionaire woman or black person should enjoy subsidies that a white male with parents making combined $35000 should not. This is what I extracted and was a bit perplexed by the responses it drew myself. I think IgnE needs a more intersectional analysis myself, but we're generally in agreement on the principle in question, whereas it's those impugning IgnE's motives that are actually taking an oppositional position (but regularly insist we're on the same side). Report in the NYT appears to me to be encouraging more violent actions from Trump regarding Venezuela, Iran, and N. Korea Trump Said He Would Tame Rogue Nations. Now They Are Challenging Him. 3 nations that have long defined themselves as bitter adversaries of the United States — North Korea, Iran and Venezuela — are now challenging President Trump, betting that he is neither as savvy a negotiator nor as ready to use military force as he claims The confrontation with Iran appears to be the most volatile at the moment, with tensions escalating by the day. On Friday, the Pentagon said it was sending another naval ship and Patriot missile interceptor battery to the Middle East, in addition to an earlier dispatch of a carrier group and bombers, because of potential threats from Iran or allied Arab militias. And in Venezuela, President Nicolás Maduro remains in power, despite American efforts to lure military officers to the opposition. Mr. Trump is irate that the strategies devised by his national security adviser, John R. Bolton, and his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, have failed to oust the Venezuelan leader, aides say. Mr. Trump’s problems with all three countries reveal a common pattern: taking an aggressive, maximalist position without a clear plan to carry it through, followed by a fundamental lack of consensus in the administration about whether the United States should be more interventionist or less. www.nytimes.com | ||
KwarK
United States42775 Posts
On May 13 2019 03:15 IgnE wrote: Well no, you are being rather unfair. Money is fungible. You haven't demonstrated why tampons, in particular, should be free to everyone. I already said tampons should be accessible to the poor, like every other basic human need, but you continue to conflate me saying "free tampons for everyone doesn't really make much sense" with me saying "fuck anyone who can't pay for things they need." But at least you are virtue signalling as hard as you possibly can. Asking "why are you choosing X over Y" is not whataboutism when the two are paid for with fungible tax dollars. You have to be able to justify your choice in the political arena. The #1 most annoying thing on this forum is people throwing out trendy words like whataboutism instead of considering the logical/rhetorical structure of the argument and actually thinking for themselves. Like you realize that you seem to be taking the position that middle class and rich women should be getting a tampon subsidy over more redistribution to people with less money? No one taking your line of argument has explained why this should be. "It's a basic human right" doesn't cut it because that argument can be applied to a ton of shit and yet those things aren't being made free. Why would you choose to distribute societal resources based on identity rather than need? Forcing someone to pick between X and Y assumes that they wouldn't fund both. While dollars are finite they are sufficient to do both. This is not a problem of allocating limited resources optimally to achieve the maximum good. If they fund X then that's great because we wanted X and Y funded and X is one of those things. If they fund Y, also great.That's also on the list. | ||
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Fleetfeet
Canada2558 Posts
It's a different story if the response is a direct "I agree with this, but let's talk about classes and what this change would mean to america as a whole" or some other tangible argument, but instead we're presented with attacks on points noone has made and "yeah but what about this?" situations. Overall I appreciated the debate and learned from it. IgnE is clearly not an idiot, even though I have trouble understanding what they're driving at. I feel really fucking awkward talking about you in the third person btw. I mean no offense by it. | ||
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Ben...
Canada3485 Posts
taking an aggressive, maximalist position without a clear plan to carry it through That sounds as much like John Bolton as it does Trump to me. Basically since he's been brought on, Bolton has done seemingly nothing, yet loves to talk up potential options the US has for various situations. I guess it makes sense that a person Trump hired based on Fox News appearances would be good at bluster, but not actually good at anything else.At the same time though, for Venezuela, it's hard to blame Bolton for Trump essentially changing his position on the conflict after his most recent call with Putin. I imagine it's pretty difficult to ever actually plan anything when the person you are trying to plan things for doesn't actually give a shit about anything and will reverse his position on something on a whim (or gentle suggestion from Putin). edit: On the topic of the New York Times and some of articles as of late. I've noticed they've been very strange the last month or two. A lot of their article headlines on Iran in particular have come off as quite alarmist compared to similar articles from other news agencies. By alarmist, I mean much more grave and threatening sounding. I've also seen concern from a few journalists on Twitter regarding NYT putting out pieces that clearly are based on access to people within the Trump administration, and either come off as being easy on the administration, or don't necessarily question things said, and the worry is that this is being done because they don't want to lose access. Also, that piece on Biden not making a political gaffe yet was particularly bizarre. Writing an article on something not happening seems counterproductive. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23248 Posts
On May 13 2019 12:37 Fleetfeet wrote: My objection was that IgnE was not clearly taking a position in the debate, but was offering facetious distractions from the main thread of the conversation without ever explicitly stating their stance. In that way, it is easy to read things like "I believe men have a higher caloric intake lets subsidize food for men" and take from it the idea that the fundamental objection is a gender-based one, because no clear alternative was presented. It's a different story if the response is a direct "I agree with this, but let's talk about classes and what this change would mean to america as a whole" or some other tangible argument, but instead we're presented with attacks on points noone has made and "yeah but what about this?" situations. Overall I appreciated the debate and learned from it. IgnE is clearly not an idiot, even though I have trouble understanding what they're driving at. I feel really fucking awkward talking about you in the third person btw. I mean no offense by it. It seems to me he was pretty unambiguous but people just didn't digest the comment. On May 12 2019 11:44 IgnE wrote: I don’t have any argument not to make tampons free, I wouldn’t even vote against it. But you guys don’t have any clue what the average (necessary?) maintenance cost for women vs. men is or for any group vs. any other group. You have no clue whether it’s more expensive to live as a woman or man, or how we might even decide that. It’s not clear to me why you’d spend a lot of political capital on making tampons free when people go hungry, people have no eyeglasses, people can’t afford their insulin, etc. He's pointing out that you guys (not me who he was originally prodding) are making a poorly formed argument. Not that he disagreed that women should have essentially free to use menstrual products. Granted it took a couple posts to become obvious/explicitly stated, but I noticed at least Drone, myself, and I think Thaddeus, all picked up what he was doing. | ||
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Fleetfeet
Canada2558 Posts
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Stratos_speAr
United States6959 Posts
On May 13 2019 11:44 GreenHorizons wrote: This is what I extracted and was a bit perplexed by the responses it drew myself. I think IgnE needs a more intersectional analysis myself, but we're generally in agreement on the principle in question, whereas it's those impugning IgnE's motives that are actually taking an oppositional position (but regularly insist we're on the same side). Report in the NYT appears to be encouraging more violent actions from Trump regarding Venezuela, Iran, and N. Korea www.nytimes.com There's nothing "encouraging" about what you highlighted in the NYT article. It's merely making the observation that Trump has been all talk but no action. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23248 Posts
On May 13 2019 13:20 Stratos_speAr wrote: There's nothing "encouraging" about what you highlighted in the NYT article. It's merely making the observation that Trump has been all talk but no action. I suppose if you think putting a headline out that Trump will see that says he's all talk and no action isn't encouraging someone like Trump to take action, that's a fair assessment. I disagree with it, but if people feel it's that misleading of a preface I can pretty easily edit something they prefer in. To me it's like walking up and saying a bully is all talk in front of a crowd and suggesting you're not goading him into action. | ||
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Danglars
United States12133 Posts
On May 12 2019 22:25 Liquid`Drone wrote: Sorry I haven't been responding to your replies, I've been too busy as of late to really engage in discussions, so I just drop off my comments / don't want to bring up week old discussions when I find myself having more time. But I'll give a quick reply to the climate change one: While probably not pedagogically sound, when dealing with people who do not acknowledge that humans contribute to climate change, I've largely given up trying to convince them, and I'm sure I'm guilty of ridiculing this group. However, I feel like you didn't get the main point of the post, because the main point is that you actually can be a believer in man made contributions to climate change without having to adopt the point of view that we must severely cut emissions. Then I listed several different varieties of alternative approaches - but these positions are not ones that I ridicule. Every single approach towards dealing with climate change has very problematic elements to it that make them not viable as a singular approach, however all of these (including 'I don't give a fuck about the consequences for life on earth in the future / in other regions of the world today so I'm just gonna keep on truckin') is preferable to the notion that 'it's not really happening'. The fact that large segments of the current republican party either is or pretends to be more ignorant about this than what the republican party was during the 80s is a disgrace and one of the many areas showcasing their intellectual dishonesty, imo, because it should not be possible for a genuinely intellectually curious person to conclude that human actions do not significantly contribute to the climate change we are currently experiencing and projected to experience far more of. There are however many possible reasons to be skeptical of emissions cutting as a primary method of dealing with the issue, but almost all the voices that argue against emissions cutting seem to also argue against the concept of man made climate change. This ticks me off. You can compare it to say, us having an abortion debate, and rather than me arguing for the merits of abortion, I instead argue that children are not actually being aborted, every single instance of provoked abortion was actually a miscarriage that randomly happened to happen just as the person went to an abortion clinic. If that were my argument, I assume you would not take me seriously at all- rightfully so. Yeah, I know how these old ones can sometimes derail. All PM responses are welcome, especially when other public parties weren't in the response threadline. I do see your approach as causing other people, just sincere questioners, to dig in on the debate further. That's what I think the danger is in your pedagogic technique. If everybody was already not able to be convinced contrary, there's no harm in ridiculing them. I'm not very optimistic on many of my political positions, but I have found more people than I thought reversing their opinion over time on topics like the abortion debate, gun rights, limited government, and free speech/hate speech. I wince a little thinking how much I misjudged the "face" they were presenting on the debate (especially the ones using large helpings of ridicule) to generalize to their heart or maybe soul. But most of my objection was on the debating or pedagogical technique. I think the real danger is downplaying the costs to your approach while heightening the problematic aspects of others. Nuclear's in the basket. The power demands of humanity, down to the factory worker in East Asia that would otherwise be starving, is another. But I don't think the question on perceptions will be settled. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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Velr
Switzerland10719 Posts
On May 13 2019 08:29 ShoCkeyy wrote: And Velr, you don’t need toothpaste, you can just let your teeth rot. You choose to buy toothpaste because you want your teeth to look, feel and smell good. You think women choose to have periods? Uhm, they could chose to just let it flow, thats most likely much less "dangerous" than letting your theeth rot  ?You missed my point, which to be fair I didn't spell out. My point was, that this is an issue that goes way beyond tampons or some other womens issue, there are plenty of products that everyone needs or at least should use from a healthcare standpoint. Soap, Toothpaste, Shampoo, Toilet Paper and tons of other products, I don't see how Tampons are fundamentally diffrent from this aside form the fact, that most men don't have much of a clue about the whole ordeal that comes with them. If you make Tampons free, your opening up an interesting dicussion, because by that logic you could make tons of personal hygiene products free. You can argue that they all should be free and i'm not totally against that, atleast they shouldn't be taxed, just making this about Tampons seems very shortsightet. | ||
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Excludos
Norway8087 Posts
On May 13 2019 19:53 Velr wrote: Uhm, they could chose to just let it flow, thats most likely much less "dangerous" than letting your theeth rot ?You missed my point, which to be fair I didn't spell out. My point was, that this is an issue that goes way beyond tampons or some other womens issue, there are plenty of products that everyone needs or at least should use from a healthcare standpoint. Soap, Toothpaste, Shampoo, Toilet Paper and tons of other products, I don't see how Tampons are fundamentally diffrent from this aside form the fact, that most men don't have much of a clue about the whole ordeal that comes with them. If you make Tampons free, your opening up an interesting dicussion, because by that logic you could make tons of personal hygiene products free. You can argue that they all should be free and i'm not totally against that, atleast they shouldn't be taxed, just making this about Tampons seems very shortsightet. I agree, all hygiene products should be at the very least untaxed, preferably even subsidized, as the positive impact it has on society far outweighs the cost of the products themselves. This also extends to dentists, and healthcare. Making the discussion only about tampons only serves to hamper the discussion as a whole. | ||
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Slydie
1921 Posts
On May 13 2019 20:16 Excludos wrote: I agree, all hygiene products should be at the very least untaxed, preferably even subsidized, as the positive impact it has on society far outweighs the cost of the products themselves. This also extends to dentists, and healthcare. Making the discussion only about tampons only serves to hamper the discussion as a whole. What is this discussion? Why bother with government intervention for things the market takes care of perfectly? If anything we use way too much hygiene products already so there is no reason whatsoever to encourage creating even more waste and polluted water... | ||
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Excludos
Norway8087 Posts
On May 14 2019 00:46 Slydie wrote: What is this discussion? Why bother with government intervention for things the market takes care of perfectly? If anything we use way too much hygiene products already so there is no reason whatsoever to encourage creating even more waste and polluted water... Are you basing this off of anecdotal evidence perhaps? | ||
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Velr
Switzerland10719 Posts
Yeah, no. Your clearly bullshitting. | ||
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ShoCkeyy
7815 Posts
On May 13 2019 19:53 Velr wrote: Uhm, they could chose to just let it flow, thats most likely much less "dangerous" than letting your theeth rot ?You missed my point, which to be fair I didn't spell out. My point was, that this is an issue that goes way beyond tampons or some other womens issue, there are plenty of products that everyone needs or at least should use from a healthcare standpoint. Soap, Toothpaste, Shampoo, Toilet Paper and tons of other products, I don't see how Tampons are fundamentally diffrent from this aside form the fact, that most men don't have much of a clue about the whole ordeal that comes with them. If you make Tampons free, your opening up an interesting dicussion, because by that logic you could make tons of personal hygiene products free. You can argue that they all should be free and i'm not totally against that, atleast they shouldn't be taxed, just making this about Tampons seems very shortsightet. We're on the same page. I'd rather have hygienic products be free, than not. If Universal Healthcare ever took off, these are items that can be included at your doctor. Dentists hold dental hygiene items, gyno's hold women personal products, that can be off brand or what the doctor recommends if you decide to purchase better branded stuff... That's my ideal situation. | ||
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Slydie
1921 Posts
On May 14 2019 02:25 Velr wrote: I'm more interested in how the system works perfectly. There are people that require foodstamps or other goverment aid but buying basic hygiene products from the freemarket is the PERFECT solution? Yeah, no. Your clearly bullshitting. You should be able to live from the minimum social care. If you can't, then that is too low, and is what should be changed. Food stamps are not a thing in most countries for a reason. | ||
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On_Slaught
United States12190 Posts
On top of this the IG of the DoJ is expected to release his preliminary findings on the FISA warrants this month. None of this undermines the Special Counsels investigation since it was Trumps actions while in office that led to that, but for the sake of transparency there is def enough smoke to justify an investigation into the original warrants. Tho ofc this could also blow up in Trumps face by putting a spotlight on just how compromised his campaign was to justify the investigation in the first place. Edit: did I miss something? Why is this thread so dead? Seems weird to separate the discussion of Democratic candidates to a diff thread from the "US Politics " thread. | ||
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IyMoon
United States1249 Posts
On May 15 2019 00:41 On_Slaught wrote: Looks like we will be getting an official report on the legality of the investigation of Trump as expected. US Attorney of Connecticut Durham will lead the investigation. Hopefully this one doesnt take 2 years (since there is a paper trail of all FBI activities, it shouldn't). https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1128241060734545920 On top of this the IG of the DoJ is expected to release his preliminary findings on the FISA warrants this month. None of this undermines the Special Counsels investigation since it was Trumps actions while in office that led to that, but for the sake of transparency there is def enough smoke to justify an investigation into the original warrants. Tho ofc this could also blow up in Trumps face by putting a spotlight on just how compromised his campaign was to justify the investigation in the first place. Edit: did I miss something? Why is this thread so dead? Seems weird to separate the discussion of Democratic candidates to a diff thread from the "US Politics " thread. I agree with you, the 2020 dem nom thread does not really make sense to me. I have noticed this thread is really dead as well. If this does blow up in Trumps face, they will bury it under redaction before it ever hits the public | ||
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