US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1692

On July 19 2019 19:23 Acrofales wrote:
@GH: I haven't forgotten our discussion. I was just occupied. So here goes.

Firstly, I can freely admit that different areas of Brazil can lead to different experiences. It is indeed a big country, and Artisreal pointed out a different experience from mine.

Mine was very much that the idea of "white" being better than "black" was only still alive in the economic sense, but other than that, everything was just mixed up. That isn't to say that people don't self-identify as "black", but just as Kwark was pointing out that "whiteness" is a construct that only historically has something to do with skin color, that same is true for "blackness". Plenty of people who live in favelas in Rio self-identify as "black" (because they identify favela culture as a "black" culture) despite looking less black than the average Brazilian. So when people criticize what is happening to Rio's favelas as "black genocide" you cannot take it literally. As you pointed out, the racial whitening approach Brazil took to their "negro problem" in the early 20th century was almost the opposite to what the US, South Africa or Australia did with their "negro problems": rather than segregating blacks and whites into separate areas, they encouraged mingling. Now I'm not saying the "white elites" didn't pull up their noses at this: there was obviously one class that was mingling "for the betterment of the nation" and one class that was "being improved". And as Artisreal's experience shows, that pulling up of noses is still a reality in parts of Brazil.

I will also admit it is possible that I bought into the propaganda, because Brazil does like to present itself as a country where racism doesn't exist. And it may just be true that superficially this is true, but under the hood it is just as present as elsewhere. But at least in my wife's experience, she felt far less discriminated against in Brazil than she does in Spain. It could just be that there she belonged to the "white club" (any non-South American immigrant almost automatically becomes a card carrying member on arrival), whereas in Spain she doesnt.

I'd still argue that there are better examples to pick for countries where "whiteness" as a social construct is doing harm, but I don't disagree with the overarching point. I was only arguing against Brazil being used as your main example outside of the US.

----

Now, on to argue about the current topic. Would I be stating your point of view properly if I said: GH doesn't have a plan for after the revolution, and doesn't know if the situation will be better. What he believes is that it is almost impossible to be worse than the status quo, so why not revolt? Worst case? Everything goes to shit for people in the "white club" and for those outside the "white club" things don't change. A bunch of people die in the process, but given impending doom hanging over the planet, it's worth that shot. Best case, a reconfiguration of how we value "things", and a transition to a socialist utopia.

I'm in team Kwark. I don't think the revolution is going to happen. We're comfortably in the white club, so I'll just keep enjoying the band while the titanic sinks. I do think the lower decks should be open, and let the riff raff come and enjoy the music too. It won't change the ship sinking, but at least everybody has a choice in what to do while it does. My brother, btw, is closer to team GH. He believes that if enough people get on board, we can patch the gaping hole we made by ramming an iceberg. He doesn't think we need to change the government (he's plenty disillusioned with it, but takes a more hands-on approach): he is working in sustainable agricultural and a cyclical economy.

I'm not completely nihilistic, btw. I do believe that there is a future for humanity. Just society as we know it is doomed. The inherent selfishness of humanity and petty squabbling is too big a hurdle for mere humans to reach a solution to environmental collapse, so we need something supra-human to solve it for us. Our society is doomed either way. Either it is radically changed by the biggest natural catastrophe since the ice age. Or it is radically changed by AI reshaping it for us. I'm doing my best to help create that AI, btw. I just hope it ends up as something closer to the Culture series AIs rather than Skynet. To a large extent I believe that is up to us. We just have to not screw that up as well.

On July 19 2019 11:36 Fleetfeet wrote:


Thanks for clarification

I'd agree that women should be given equal opportunity to be powerful figures in politics, but don't expect them to perform any better or worse than men do. I do expect the first few of them to be engaged in heavy criticism based on gender before the general public gets over the fear that they're going to spontaneously give birth and/or get all emotional and menstruate everywhere.

On July 19 2019 22:17 JimmiC wrote:
The biggest threat to the planet is misinformation and authoritarianism.

On July 20 2019 00:25 KwarK wrote:
In other news, I had the misfortune of catching some Fox News last night and they were promoting a documentary on the mysterious disappearance of JFK Jr. (nobody has seen him since he died, explain that). For context, the QAnon fandom saw a guy at a Trump rally a while back and decided that he was JFK Jr. This became a retelling of the Arthurian myth where he was betrayed by the deep state and went into hiding until the time of America’s greatest need when he will come forth and reclaim his birthright by running as VP on the Trump ticket in 2020. It’s all just perfectly normal insanity, but what alarms me is a news organization that the plurality of Americans consume has identified these people as a significant portion of their base and is producing media specifically to encourage their insanity.

Shit’s nuts.

Thomas “the Chin” Friedman, a weak and pathetic sort of guy, writes columns for The New York Times in between rounds of his favorite game, golf. Two weeks ago, while speaking to a friend on his cell phone, I unfortunately ended up speaking to Friedman. We spoke for a while and...

....he could not have been nicer or more respectful to your favorite President, me. Then I saw the column he wrote, “Trump Will Be Re-elected, Won’t He?” He called me a Racist, which I am not, and said Rhode Island went from economically bad to great in 5 years because the.....

....Governor of the State did a good job. That may be true but she could not have done it without the tremendous economic success of our Country & the turnaround that my Administration has caused. Really Nasty to me in his average I.Q. Columns, kissed my a.. on the call. Phony!

On July 20 2019 01:03 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:
Story time with the POTUS



I think this is a classic in the realm of the nuclear uncle and goddamned steam catapults

How do you end up 'unfortunately speaking to someone' on a phone

On July 20 2019 01:03 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:
Story time with the POTUS



I think this is a classic in the realm of the nuclear uncle and goddamned steam catapults

How do you end up 'unfortunately speaking to someone' on a phone

On July 19 2019 14:46 GreenHorizons wrote:
Grant me this curiosity if you will, what's your angle? You're well read on this stuff in general, what's your interest in my perspectives? How you identify yourself politically would be helpful as well, it would help me better understand the nature of the answer you're looking for.

On July 19 2019 14:46 GreenHorizons wrote:
1. Generally the top 1% of the 1% but power brokers that aren't especially affluent (at least on paper) probably fall in there too.

On July 19 2019 14:46 GreenHorizons wrote:
2. Any of that you say must be excluded can be a part of direct action but does not in itself constitute direct action imo.

On July 19 2019 14:46 GreenHorizons wrote:
3. The general protest of "what about the negative consequences/risks" can't be viewed in a vacuum right? It's not the potential negative consequences of revolution or eternal bliss for all mankind. It's revolution or certain doom for millions, and horrific catastrophe for billions and maybe a handful of people live luxuriously in the rubble that's left. I'd add there's a lot of suffering, death and violence used to maintain this system as it is.

On July 19 2019 20:04 Artisreal wrote:
I'll give you the name of two chapters in a McKinsey report on "Women leaders, a competitive edge in and after the crisis":

• Companies with at least three female executives score higher on the key organizational dimensions
  
• Leadership behaviors more frequently adopted by women leaders are critical to navigate through the crisis and beyond
  

A generalization is rather difficult to make and I've yet to meet a leadership figure that deserved the name in my professional career outside of University, the person male/female/diverse didn't impact that judgement.
Nonetheless, research shows that women tend to lead differently from men and more successfully so in times of crisis.
And with more women on (the) board, businesses tend to be more successfull compared to mens only boardrooms (Forbes).

While I wouldn't deduct from a small snippet of research that women are better leaders - my personal experience with my first boss differs vastly from that supposition :-D - but it certainly shows strong signals that diversity helps, a lot.

On July 20 2019 02:41 CosmicSpiral wrote:


I like investigating an idea to tease out all the implications.

I'm Mark Fisher minus the crippling depression.



So are we limiting this to political and economic titans + influencers?



If we're following your line of thought, they wouldn't be entertained until the revolutionaries have effectively cornered their opponents. Those are options that have either been denied or manipulated to the latter's benefit.



Of course not. When talking about the sustainability and survival of the world, utilitarian necessity becomes impossible to ignore. Yet if the victory is too Pyrrhic, recovery becomes impossible and everyone dies anyway. That is a rather pertinent detail.

Suffering, death and violence are used to maintain all systems (natural included). The obstacle for your vision is that in practice, revolutions usually embrace those byproducts and never relinquish them.



Most of this is backwards rationalization. We could equally claim that companies with more robust infrastructure and better track records can absorb the negative impact of woman executives without noticeable repercussions, and there would be no discernible difference in correlation. Not to mention the methodology behind the surveys is nebulous at best. For example, no one can reasonably ascribe or deny the presence of p-value fishing in the McKinsey reports (and it would be trivial to exploit it due to the vague boundaries).

Suffering, death and violence are used to maintain all systems (natural included). The obstacle for your vision is that in practice, revolutions usually embrace those byproducts and never relinquish them.

On July 20 2019 02:56 GreenHorizons wrote:


Die hard capitalist artist, I'm not sure that works without the crippling depression? ;P

For those following along Cosmic is making the argument not that capitalism is great, but there is literally no other option.

On July 20 2019 03:05 Mohdoo wrote:


This is a common belief and it is not something someone should feel bad for thinking. There are a lot of factors involved in developing ideas and it is well described in this episode of philosophize this: http://philosophizethis.org/gramsci-hegemony/

CosmicSpiral, I strongly encourage you to consider listening to this podcast. If you do, I will paypal you $5.

Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/episode/62i1Q2wHMXyg3jcDo0M7r6?si=hKI-YVROQyG-9XL1rpqgsA

The goal of anyone trying to bring about any kind of social change should be to provide alternatives in all three of these areas…they should create a counterculture…an alternative set of cultural norms and taboos reinforced by intellectuals whose job it is to actively CHALLENGE the status quo. He called this other type of intellectuals “organic” intellectuals and it was their job to be skeptical of the existing order of things…provide an alternative means of education that took cues from the counterculture that was created and to embolden the average citizen to take political action by giving them a philosophical outlook that changes the way they see themselves and how they fit into the world. This is why so many attempts at revolution have failed in the past to Gramsci…the orthodox Marxists that tried to organize it didn’t understand the “common sense” of the workers that needed to carry out the revolution. These workers saw themselves and their place in the world solely in terms of how they relate to Capitalist ideology…the ONLY WAY to shift their perspective enough to see the other side would be to fundamentally change the way they look at the world philosophically.

On July 20 2019 03:10 Nebuchad wrote:
I'm not sure that's the argument Cosmic is making given that he mentioned Mark Fisher

On July 20 2019 02:41 CosmicSpiral wrote:


I like investigating an idea to tease out all the implications.

I'm Mark Fisher minus the crippling depression.



So are we limiting this to political and economic titans + influencers?



If we're following your line of thought, they wouldn't be entertained until the revolutionaries have effectively cornered their opponents. Those are options that have either been denied or manipulated to the latter's benefit.



Of course not. When talking about the sustainability and survival of the world, utilitarian necessity becomes impossible to ignore. Yet if the victory is too Pyrrhic, recovery becomes impossible and everyone dies anyway. That is a rather pertinent detail.

Suffering, death and violence are used to maintain all systems (natural included). The obstacle for your vision is that in practice, revolutions usually embrace those byproducts and never relinquish them.



Most of this is backwards rationalization. We could equally claim that companies with more robust infrastructure and better track records can absorb the negative impact of woman executives without noticeable repercussions, and there would be no discernible difference in correlation. Not to mention the methodology behind the surveys is nebulous at best. For example, no one can reasonably ascribe or deny the presence of p-value fishing in the McKinsey reports (and it would be trivial to exploit it due to the vague boundaries).

On July 20 2019 00:25 KwarK wrote:
In other news, I had the misfortune of catching some Fox News last night and they were promoting a documentary on the mysterious disappearance of JFK Jr. (nobody has seen him since he died, explain that). For context, the QAnon fandom saw a guy at a Trump rally a while back and decided that he was JFK Jr. This became a retelling of the Arthurian myth where he was betrayed by the deep state and went into hiding until the time of America’s greatest need when he will come forth and reclaim his birthright by running as VP on the Trump ticket in 2020. It’s all just perfectly normal insanity, but what alarms me is a news organization that the plurality of Americans consume has identified these people as a significant portion of their base and is producing media specifically to encourage their insanity.

Shit’s nuts.