US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2146

On February 26 2020 04:56 Xxio wrote:
Interesting paper related to advantage/disadvantage-advantage. A 2016 New Zealand paper found that women never achieve a net positive fiscal contribution. Working age men contribute significantly more taxation and receive less income support than their female counterparts, largely due to higher workforce participation rates and higher wage rates in employment. Data from 5,000 households.

Regarding men getting away with more things than women: + Show Spoiler +

On February 26 2020 00:25 ChristianS wrote:

As an aside, the “what if the roles were reversed” argument is usually bad in cases of discrimination, because most such accusations would look kinda weird if roles were reversed. “They just wouldn’t hire me because they’re scared of white people!” “I think my professor gave me a bad grade just because I’m straight!” “As a man I have trouble being taken seriously in professional settings because of my gender.” Sounds silly, right? These subtext for discrimination is usually systemic power differential that makes the discrimination possible. Reverse the roles, and reverse the power differential, and it doesn’t work.

On February 26 2020 05:24 Artisreal wrote:

Would it not make sense to include unpaid work in this assessment?
NZ women and men work about 7 hrs a day. While 60% of the men's work is paid, that only applies to 30% of the women's.
In a layman's attempt at statistics that should double the income of women from the taxable income category. This in turn brings it on par with the male graph on figure three (eyeballing a bit here of course), at least for the 75 percentile as well as mean and median.
So I'd say that adjusted for that additional unpaid work men and women in NZ around the year 2000 we are equal in the thing that got measured/calculated Inn the paper you cited?

On February 26 2020 06:42 Elroi wrote:

I don't think that is silly at all. I teach comparative literature at the university and I am positive my career outlook would be much better if I were a woman because these research environments are so full of feminists and gender critical perspectives that you almost have to excuse yourself for being a man. Conversely it seems to me that you can almost publish anything if you simply repeat the reigning ideology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair). The roles are probably reversed in a lot of other fields, but I don't think Warren actually thinks that being a woman is bad for a left wing political candidate. She probably thought it would be great if she were a native american too in this particular context and so she tried to turn herself into one (from what I hear). I don't know so much about the American political scene but here in Sweden every political commentator you can find would agree that it is better for a left wing candidate to be a woman and a minority person. To me that is sexist and it makes me angry when people attempts to take advantage of that (just as the sexism à la Trump makes me angry).

On February 26 2020 02:00 Mohdoo wrote:


I am of the belief that false accusations hurt women more than the act of shaming women who make false accusations. It is hard to overstate how horrible it is for someone to use past tragedies to elevate themselves. I don't think the comparison to Black People is valid. They are entirely different situations that both involve discrimination, but I feel the same way about jussie smollett. He has an absolute piece of shit and I hope he goes to prison for a very long time. He exploited a history of hate crimes to elevate his career. Warren exploited a history of sexism to elevate her chances in the primary. In both cases, the person should be severely punished.

Women deserve to be believed and respected. I will always err on the side of the woman in cases of accusations etc but in this instance, the accusation is so wildly unbelievable, and opportunistic, as she has been in the past. Warren does NOT have nearly the ethical/philosophical purity that Bernie does. She has been shown to be a snake and opportunist in the past.

Before she started tanking, she ran a respectable campaign, mostly. The fact that she has been doing all this stuff after tanking says a lot.

It all comes down to: I think she is exploiting a history of sexism against women for personal gain. False accusations are a massive disrespect to past victims and harm future victims by making people skeptical. Warren's accusations were so unreasonable and weird that I can't imagine believing her. There's a reason basically no one believed her and it tanked her numbers. It was stupid and outrageous. She is exactly who we MUST be shaming, out of respect for other women.

On February 26 2020 08:05 ChristianS wrote:

I tend to agree that false accusations are very damaging, and if we had, like, forensic evidence that she invented the story whole cloth, I’d understand the derision a little more. But what we actually have is a man with high status and respect in the community being accused of something by a woman of medium-to-low status and respect in the community, and the community deciding based on their relative assessment of the honesty and integrity of the parties that she’s probably the one who’s lying. And unless there was a development I missed in that saga, the accusation isn’t even “he’s a sexist,” it’s that he said something along the lines of “I don’t think a woman can win in 2020.”

I agree that Bernie Sanders has a strong history of honesty, integrity, and generally saying what he actually believes even if it’s not fashionable. As Nina Turner likes to put it, “we have the receipts.” That sincerity of belief is probably the single biggest thing I like about him. I also agree that Elizabeth Warren isn’t proven in the same way. As for the accusation itself, I agree it doesn’t really sound like Bernie, although I could imagine that he’s a little less careful with his speech speaking to a friend in private than when he’s in front of a microphone. I seriously doubt he would say “I don’t think a woman will ever be able to be president.” On the other hand, something like “Donald Trump will make it REALLY hard for any woman running against him in 2020” wouldn’t sound that crazy to me.

I blink a little when people say things like “women should always be believed,” because situations like this are gonna come up - and in fact, I think they’re the norm, not the exception. I don’t want to ruin anyone’s career or “cancel” them based on unsubstantiated accusations, but I also don’t want to subject a woman to public shaming and ridicule just because she doesn’t have proof for her claims. How to handle such situations is inevitably a case-by-case question, but there has to be some room for compassionate acknowledgement of the accuser’s claims without automatically presuming the accused’s guilt. If she’s demanding punishment, we should have a higher standard of proof; if not, maybe it’s possible to treat her as truthful for purposes of treatment and recovery while treating the accused as innocent for purposes of employment or criminal justice. And if we’re going to retaliate against the accuser, whether with condemnation, ridicule, or legal repercussions, I think the burden of proof that she’s lying ought to be extremely, extremely high.

Again, my goal wasn’t berate you, and I don’t think you’re a misogynist or sexist or anything. Your apology was admirable, and more than I thought was necessary, honestly; if someone had said “Mohdoo was an ass and should apologize” I would have thought it was a huge overreaction. But I thank you for the discussion; I, at least, found it enlightening.

On February 26 2020 07:59 Nakajin wrote:


There's a fairly big gap between on one side beeing able to take adventage of an identity to boost your candidacy and beeing in itself of that identity. Warren native american stance is a good exemple, claming a native identity certainly can give you some credit among a particular group of the population but actually being native american reduce your chance of holding office by a lot. (as exemplify by the fact that to the best of my knowledge no native american has hold any significant state or federal office in history in the US or Canada).
Now if a native american, a real one, was to get all the way to a presidential primary he/she could probably take advantage of that identity, it wouldn't change the fact that it's way less likely for native american to become president than for the rest of the population.

I've heard the women/minority thing about the left a lot of time, and there's certainly among a part of the base a willingnes to promote these people above white men in a whillingness to have a representation that's more diverse, and there's certainly a lot of criticism that can be made of a somewhat superficial or essentialistic way to think about representation, but I'd say that in my (altought somewhat limited) experience of taking part in those white man are still fairly numerous in those organisation in particular the white part (on top of like everyone having a university degree) and that there's less and less representation the further up you go.

I can't say I know swede politics but a quick google search tell me that 3 out of the 4 last PM were democrat-socialist and also all white dude. As a better exemple, I've heard pretty much my whole life than canadian politics gave to much place to women and minority yet the best performance a women ever did in a national was 3 county (out of 338) and for a minority candidate it was 24 (with a 20 county loss).

As for ideological preference among academia, well ya there it's pretty obvious it exist. Personally I did/am doing political study at the most left leaning university in my province and got 8 classes thought by women and a single non-white teacher out of 34 total and only two of them had a proffesoral status, but I also pretty much only got left leaning teacher lol. It's also a market thing, the university need student so it's generaly profitable to offer classes on the thing that's hype. (not saying it's a good thing)

I assume comparative litterature is probably the place where identity politics idea have to be the strongest among all academia, I mean it's pretty much the corner stone of the whole thing.

And as a final idea, I personally think there's no world in which less discrimination dosen't hurt the status of white men, dosen't mean it's not moral.

On February 26 2020 01:37 Liquid`Drone wrote:


I have a hard time reconciling this with former statements where you expressed hesitance towards voting for the eventual democratic candidate in the general election even if this candidate is not Sanders? I mean maybe you meant Sanders or Warren and you were always happy to vote Warren either way, but this is essentially the reason why I think an outspoken 'fight hard in the primary, vote for whichever democrat wins in the general' attitude is important - if you are arguing that it's bernie or bust then that very much encourages a similar attitude from the other candidates and their supporters, too.

On February 26 2020 08:33 Wombat_NI wrote:

Depends how the redress is made, although I do largely agree with the sentiment. Hopefully we’ll get there though.

To try and fill shortfalls in the industry over here there are all sorts of bursaries and other inducements to get women into various tech fields.

Which is fine by me, but there’s a conspicuous lack of class related opportunities on a similar basis accompanying it. Or, for the most part concerted pushes to get men into traditionally female jobs. We’re crying out for nurses here and especially down South.

It’s a noted phenomena that a loss of privilege and a reversion to equality tends to be parsed as being an attacked class, and you can certainly see a lot of that wherever you choose to look.

On the other hand, I find people totally myopic on who does or doesn’t have privilege, or engaging in such lines of argumentation and it can be beyond irritating. Thankfully an extreme outlier but being lectured by a woman who earns 4x what I do, and her knowing I am Bipolar and spent a year in hospital that I still somehow was more privileged than her, just an anecdotal case in point.

Northern Ireland is less complex than other areas because it’s one of the whitest places on Earth, so it’s a little easier to isolate gender alone as a factor. Also we were behind the curve and legitimately were in the dark ages as regards abortion for example, so I feel there’s been a cross-class solidarity on feminism. Elsewhere, at least in terms of the media prominence given to topics I feel it has a distinctly middle class flavour and that can be alienating to people of the working class of either gender.

On February 26 2020 08:27 MWY wrote:


Warren claimed Bernie said "a woman can't become president", which would be sexist. Warren then actively avoided to clear things up or give proper context when given the chance multiple times, yet held on to the initial claim. So from her side, it clearly was the intention to paint him as a sexist and discredit him (otherwise she also wouldn't even have made this specific part of a private/friendly conversation public).

On February 26 2020 09:28 ChristianS wrote:

I just Googled it again just to remind myself what the specific allegation was (checked this article, if there’s another you think tells more of the story feel free to link it). Supposedly Warren talked about why she thought she’d be a strong candidate, including her appeal to female voters, and Bernie said he didn’t think a woman could win. Even in the allegation, it seems pretty clear the implication is “in 2020.” Honestly, I wouldn’t hold it against someone for thinking “I don’t think a woman can win in 2020.” One school of thought is that Democrats should nominate a white male, because racism and sexism are just too strong in America right now (I think Kwark made this argument on this very forum). I think that’s cynical, and kinda defeatist, but I don’t think it’s fundamentally racist or sexist.

There’s a lot of assumptions in your description of the events, and while I think most of them are probably correct, added together I think there’s just more uncertainty than you’re accounting for. Was the original story leaked by someone in the Warren campaign? Almost certainly. Was it leaked at Warren’s instruction? I dunno, probably? Maybe it doesn’t matter because Warren did confirm that the conversation happened, and her description largely agrees with the original article’s claims. She kinda went out of her way not to frame it as “Bernie is a sexist.” Was that tactical, leaving the mudslinging to others while she stays out of the fray? Maybe. Probably depends on whether you think the initial story was an intentional Warren-directed strategem or not.

Meanwhile, what do we think actually happened in the original conversation? It seems vanishingly unlikely to me that Bernie would say or think something like “I believe women are biologically incapable of the tasks required to win the presidency or serve as president.” I also think it’s vanishingly unlikely that he would say or think “I don’t think American society will ever be ready to elect a female president.” But is there something more moderate he might have said, perhaps speaking informally and off-the-cuff, that Warren would interpret as him disagreeing that a woman can win in 2020? I don’t find that very unlikely at all. Alternatively, would Warren completely invent a conversation like this as a mercenary attempt to trade her friendship with Bernie for a surge in the polls? I’d like to think not, but I don’t have a ton of information about her character, and I bet a lot of politicians would do some pretty desperate things if they thought it would make them president.

Obviously YMMV on every one of these assessments of likelihood. But one of the problems in he-said, she-said situations is that there’s usually a lot of uncertainty in what happened, and outside observers are usually very uncomfortable with that. If the possibilities are “widely beloved local golden boy is actually a rapist” or “local girl fabricated a rape allegation against golden boy,” people can’t stand not knowing which is true. There’s a strong urge to decide which they think is more likely, and then proceed as though they were 100% certain of it.

Maybe you guys aren’t doing that. Maybe you really believe that it’s so definitively certain she fabricated the story whole cloth that no other possibilities are likely enough to be worth entertaining. As I said, YMMV, and anyway it’s old drama about a woman who will almost certainly never be president so it might not be worth arguing about anyway. The only part of this I thought mattered enough to be worth talking about was how we should treat women talking about these issues, particularly if our opinion of their character is not high and we’re skeptical of the claims they’re making.

On February 26 2020 09:28 ChristianS wrote:

I just Googled it again just to remind myself what the specific allegation was (checked this article, if there’s another you think tells more of the story feel free to link it). Supposedly Warren talked about why she thought she’d be a strong candidate, including her appeal to female voters, and Bernie said he didn’t think a woman could win. Even in the allegation, it seems pretty clear the implication is “in 2020.” Honestly, I wouldn’t hold it against someone for thinking “I don’t think a woman can win in 2020.” One school of thought is that Democrats should nominate a white male, because racism and sexism are just too strong in America right now (I think Kwark made this argument on this very forum). I think that’s cynical, and kinda defeatist, but I don’t think it’s fundamentally racist or sexist.

There’s a lot of assumptions in your description of the events, and while I think most of them are probably correct, added together I think there’s just more uncertainty than you’re accounting for. Was the original story leaked by someone in the Warren campaign? Almost certainly. Was it leaked at Warren’s instruction? I dunno, probably? Maybe it doesn’t matter because Warren did confirm that the conversation happened, and her description largely agrees with the original article’s claims. She kinda went out of her way not to frame it as “Bernie is a sexist.” Was that tactical, leaving the mudslinging to others while she stays out of the fray? Maybe. Probably depends on whether you think the initial story was an intentional Warren-directed strategem or not.

Meanwhile, what do we think actually happened in the original conversation? It seems vanishingly unlikely to me that Bernie would say or think something like “I believe women are biologically incapable of the tasks required to win the presidency or serve as president.” I also think it’s vanishingly unlikely that he would say or think “I don’t think American society will ever be ready to elect a female president.” But is there something more moderate he might have said, perhaps speaking informally and off-the-cuff, that Warren would interpret as him disagreeing that a woman can win in 2020? I don’t find that very unlikely at all. Alternatively, would Warren completely invent a conversation like this as a mercenary attempt to trade her friendship with Bernie for a surge in the polls? I’d like to think not, but I don’t have a ton of information about her character, and I bet a lot of politicians would do some pretty desperate things if they thought it would make them president.

Obviously YMMV on every one of these assessments of likelihood. But one of the problems in he-said, she-said situations is that there’s usually a lot of uncertainty in what happened, and outside observers are usually very uncomfortable with that. If the possibilities are “widely beloved local golden boy is actually a rapist” or “local girl fabricated a rape allegation against golden boy,” people can’t stand not knowing which is true. There’s a strong urge to decide which they think is more likely, and then proceed as though they were 100% certain of it.

Maybe you guys aren’t doing that. Maybe you really believe that it’s so definitively certain she fabricated the story whole cloth that no other possibilities are likely enough to be worth entertaining. As I said, YMMV, and anyway it’s old drama about a woman who will almost certainly never be president so it might not be worth arguing about anyway. The only part of this I thought mattered enough to be worth talking about was how we should treat women talking about these issues, particularly if our opinion of their character is not high and we’re skeptical of the claims they’re making.

On February 26 2020 08:05 ChristianS wrote:And unless there was a development I missed in that saga, the accusation isn’t even “he’s a sexist,” it’s that he said something along the lines of “I don’t think a woman can win in 2020.”

I agree that Bernie Sanders has a strong history of honesty, integrity, and generally saying what he actually believes even if it’s not fashionable. As Nina Turner likes to put it, “we have the receipts.” That sincerity of belief is probably the single biggest thing I like about him. I also agree that Elizabeth Warren isn’t proven in the same way. As for the accusation itself, I agree it doesn’t really sound like Bernie, although I could imagine that he’s a little less careful with his speech speaking to a friend in private than when he’s in front of a microphone. I seriously doubt he would say “I don’t think a woman will ever be able to be president.” On the other hand, something like “Donald Trump will make it REALLY hard for any woman running against him in 2020” wouldn’t sound that crazy to me.

On February 26 2020 08:05 ChristianS wrote:

I blink a little when people say things like “women should always be believed,” because situations like this are gonna come up - and in fact, I think they’re the norm, not the exception. I don’t want to ruin anyone’s career or “cancel” them based on unsubstantiated accusations, but I also don’t want to subject a woman to public shaming and ridicule just because she doesn’t have proof for her claims. How to handle such situations is inevitably a case-by-case question, but there has to be some room for compassionate acknowledgement of the accuser’s claims without automatically presuming the accused’s guilt. If she’s demanding punishment, we should have a higher standard of proof; if not, maybe it’s possible to treat her as truthful for purposes of treatment and recovery while treating the accused as innocent for purposes of employment or criminal justice. And if we’re going to retaliate against the accuser, whether with condemnation, ridicule, or legal repercussions, I think the burden of proof that she’s lying ought to be extremely, extremely high.

On February 26 2020 08:05 ChristianS wrote:
Again, my goal wasn’t berate you, and I don’t think you’re a misogynist or sexist or anything. Your apology was admirable, and more than I thought was necessary, honestly; if someone had said “Mohdoo was an ass and should apologize” I would have thought it was a huge overreaction. But I thank you for the discussion; I, at least, found it enlightening.

On February 26 2020 09:32 GreenHorizons wrote:


She doubled down with the cynical women need superPACs too, which pretty much eliminated any benefit of the doubt she had remaining after her poor handling of the alleged comment from Bernie.

On February 26 2020 09:58 ChristianS wrote:

Wait, so you would have given her the benefit of the doubt about the initial story, but you didn’t like her later comments about super PACs so she lost that privilege? I don’t follow that logic at all. I don’t particularly like those comments either, but it has very little bearing on what I think happened with Bernie. I certainly don’t think such tangential evidence is ever going to get me over the line from “think she’s lying but not sure” to “definitely lying, no point entertaining other possibilities.”

I guess the part that bothers me most is that it reinforces a dynamic wherein a woman who accuses someone of something is signing herself up for an indefinite character parole. All her future actions are not just judged as evidence of who she is, but as evidence for or against her initial allegations. Those are high stakes! Don’t get me wrong, I think Elizabeth Warren is gonna be just fine. But as a general response to a he-said, she-said, I think it sucks.

P.S. Jesus guys, I can’t keep up with all of you!

On February 26 2020 09:58 ChristianS wrote:

Wait, so you would have given her the benefit of the doubt about the initial story, but you didn’t like her later comments about super PACs so she lost that privilege? I don’t follow that logic at all. I don’t particularly like those comments either, but it has very little bearing on what I think happened with Bernie. I certainly don’t think such tangential evidence is ever going to get me over the line from “think she’s lying but not sure” to “definitely lying, no point entertaining other possibilities.”

I guess the part that bothers me most is that it reinforces a dynamic wherein a woman who accuses someone of something is signing herself up for an indefinite character parole. All her future actions are not just judged as evidence of who she is, but as evidence for or against her initial allegations. Those are high stakes! Don’t get me wrong, I think Elizabeth Warren is gonna be just fine. But as a general response to a he-said, she-said, I think it sucks.

P.S. Jesus guys, I can’t keep up with all of you!