EPTIf (Trump did something bad) then (Trump blames someone else for doing that bad something)
It does not necessarily follow that:
If (Trump blames someone else for something bad) then (Trump did that bad thing)
It's conceivable, but nothing more.
US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2308
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micronesia
United States24579 Posts
If (Trump did something bad) then (Trump blames someone else for doing that bad something) It does not necessarily follow that: If (Trump blames someone else for something bad) then (Trump did that bad thing) It's conceivable, but nothing more. | ||
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NewSunshine
United States5938 Posts
On May 13 2020 03:53 micronesia wrote: Let's break this down logically: If (Trump did something bad) then (Trump blames someone else for doing that bad something) It does not necessarily follow that: If (Trump blames someone else for something bad) then (Trump did that bad thing) It's conceivable, but nothing more. That's been the Republican playbook more than Trump's, for whatever that's worth. His M.O. has usually been to divert and distract, and make up whatever outrageous bullshit, or recruit whatever conspicuous allies, he has to. Him blaming something outrageous on someone at random doesn't necessarily mean he did that exact thing, but it probably means he's worried people are onto something fucked up that he did do. | ||
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Gahlo
United States35093 Posts
On May 13 2020 03:53 micronesia wrote: Let's break this down logically: If (Trump did something bad) then (Trump blames someone else for doing that bad something) It does not necessarily follow that: If (Trump blames someone else for something bad) then (Trump did that bad thing) It's conceivable, but nothing more. No, no, Trump has Little Richard killed confirmed. | ||
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iamthedave
England2814 Posts
On May 13 2020 03:51 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Given Trump's track record of committing serious offense X as he accuses someone else of committing the same serious offense X, I think we should all be trying to figure out who Trump just murdered. Trump's thing about injecting bleach puts him on the hook for any lives lost as a consequence as far as I'm concerned. Nobody should be allowed to use such a powerful pulpit to spew that level of bullshit. That's so far beyond 'condemn his words' it's unreal. But it's reflective of how diseased the political system in America's become that he retains A LOT of support despite saying something like that. I appreciate that there was a degree of taking his words out of context, but he's throwing out these theories to a nation full of scared people who are desperate for solutions. | ||
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Biff The Understudy
France7811 Posts
On May 13 2020 09:27 iamthedave wrote: Trump's thing about injecting bleach puts him on the hook for any lives lost as a consequence as far as I'm concerned. Nobody should be allowed to use such a powerful pulpit to spew that level of bullshit. That's so far beyond 'condemn his words' it's unreal. But it's reflective of how diseased the political system in America's become that he retains A LOT of support despite saying something like that. I appreciate that there was a degree of taking his words out of context, but he's throwing out these theories to a nation full of scared people who are desperate for solutions. The more it goes and the more I think America's problem is not its political system. It's its culture as a whole, the way its people are raised and the way its people think. The political system just reflects it. And that's nothing new, it's going back decades if not centuries. | ||
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iamthedave
England2814 Posts
On May 13 2020 18:25 Biff The Understudy wrote: The more it goes and the more I think America's problem is not its political system. It's its culture as a whole, the way its people are raised and the way its people think. The political system just reflects it. And that's nothing new, it's going back decades if not centuries. A fair counterpoint. | ||
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farvacola
United States18819 Posts
Said another way, the cultural attitudes towards pandemic measures in Toledo, Ohio are so dramatically different from their companions in Seattle, Washington, Amarillo, Texas, or Sioux Falls, South Dakota that generalizing is almost certainly a fool's errand or a politics at work. | ||
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Salazarz
Korea (South)2590 Posts
On May 13 2020 18:25 Biff The Understudy wrote: The more it goes and the more I think America's problem is not its political system. It's its culture as a whole, the way its people are raised and the way its people think. The political system just reflects it. And that's nothing new, it's going back decades if not centuries. At some point in time, the political system of a state may have reflected the culture of its people, but I am quite positive that in present day US of A, the culture of people is much more influenced by the politics than it is the other way around. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States22736 Posts
On May 13 2020 18:25 Biff The Understudy wrote: The more it goes and the more I think America's problem is not its political system. It's its culture as a whole, the way its people are raised and the way its people think. The political system just reflects it. And that's nothing new, it's going back decades if not centuries. I'd argue it is both and it is intrinsic to the US since its creation. | ||
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farvacola
United States18819 Posts
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GreenHorizons
United States22736 Posts
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farvacola
United States18819 Posts
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Nebuchad
Switzerland11932 Posts
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farvacola
United States18819 Posts
On May 13 2020 21:15 Nebuchad wrote: I have a hard time looking down on Americans for having a rightwing culture when the whole world is drifting right and doing so for similar reasons as the US did. You guys did it first sure but I'm not sure why I should feel superior to you about that, we're all human societies, the mechanisms are the same. For me, it's a question of propriety. "Oh, this nation's problem is its culture" is either very lazy or a building block for the worst kinds of programs. It's reminiscent of when xDaunt would try to chalk up the dangers of being a black person in the US as related to "black culture." That's some bad shit in my eyes. Maybe, just maybe, if enough rigor is used and the conclusion is highly confined, an outsider can say something right and true about a specific "culture," (maybe Tocqueville gets this honor, hard to say without a lot of legwork), but that's so rare and such a difficult undertaking that I am personally fine with totally avoiding any and all attempts at summarizing national trends with reference to cultural identities. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States22736 Posts
On May 13 2020 21:13 farvacola wrote: So you've been indoctrinated to leave slavery in the past? I totally agree that this nation is rooted in chattel slavery, but there's more to the picture given that historically fervent abolitionism is also a very American thing. This is all why "good" cultural criticism is deconstructive in nature, the shadows cast by the words we use to describe particular cultural dynamics are oftentimes more important than the words themselves. Yeah? "Slavery was a long time ago, get over it" and the variations of that sentiment are pretty ubiquitous in the US. I trust I've endured it here even. Fervent abolitionism isn't unique to the US, the US was one of the last slave trade countries to (sorta) abolish slavery. That's not to take anything away from heroines like Harriet Tubman and heroes like Nat Turner though. | ||
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farvacola
United States18819 Posts
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GreenHorizons
United States22736 Posts
On May 13 2020 21:41 farvacola wrote: You're using availability heuristics to assume away a difference that undermines a generalization that isn't necessary in the first place, which is part of my point. Yes, the US was late to the abolition game in terms of government, but it was also a breeding ground for some of the most radical takes on emancipation in the world. Yes, there are millions of Americans who will do anything to pretend that the spectre of slavery isn't there any more, but there are also millions of Americans who believe truth, reconciliation, and reparations are the only the way forward (and are working to that end, much like yourself). This gets back to why good pomo criticism is an important component of a robust cultural criticism, the substance of a people is comprised of both the obvious and the lurking alike, and those two interact with one another in ways that defy basic indictments. America was built on the backs of black men and women, but it was also where Frederick Douglass,Martin Luther King, Jr., John Brown, and James Baldwin did and said things that would fundamentally change how we regard one another (or at least move the needle). America is both at once, and there's a perpetual fight over that equilibrium that won't be won by telling Americans working to change America that what they're doing isn't American. This feels like an elaborate "not all men" argument in response to pointing out the dominant culture and political forces in the US have always been atrocious (which you agree with). Maybe even a step into the shining city on the hill by pointing to the counterculture in the US as a saving grace product. The same counterculture which has been murderously harassed by the nation from the federal to the local level as long as they've existed. The redeeming aspects of US culture you point to there exist despite the state's best efforts to exterminate them. Perhaps you're making a forged in fire argument. That those people, liberation, and society have been better served by their dedication to a struggle they only faced because of the deeply ingrained viciousness of the society that they existed in? I know we can make heroes of those people, but (very loosely) like healthcare workers getting applause instead of adequate ppe, their heroism is a direct result of a sick society that disregards their humanity and that heroification a poor substitute. It reminds me of celebrating the kids selling lemonade to pay for their parents life saving surgery/insulin. It's not an inspiring feel-good story of young/ambitious entrepreneurship and familial love, it's a horror story about a morally bankrupt society. | ||
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farvacola
United States18819 Posts
On May 13 2020 22:38 GreenHorizons wrote: This feels like an elaborate "not all men" argument in response to pointing out the dominant culture and political forces in the US have always been atrocious (which you agree with). Maybe even a step into the shining city on the hill by pointing to the counterculture in the US as a saving grace product. The same counterculture which has been murderously harassed by the nation from the federal to the local level as long as they've existed. The redeeming aspects of US culture you point to there exist despite the state's best efforts to exterminate them. Perhaps you're making a forged in fire argument. That those people, liberation, and society have been better served by their dedication to a struggle they only faced because of the deeply ingrained viciousness of the society that they existed in? I know we can make heroes of those people, but (very loosely) like healthcare workers getting applause instead of adequate ppe, their heroism is a direct result of a sick society that disregards their humanity and that heroification a poor substitute. It reminds me of celebrating the kids selling lemonade to pay for their parents life saving surgery/insulin. It's not an inspiring feel-good story of young/ambitious entrepreneurship and familial love, it's a horror story about a morally bankrupt society. Nope, this is just my personal brand of deconstructive politics that I try to use in service of pushing for basically all of the same things you do, only I'm a white looking son of an immigrant who occupies a liminal space that I'd like to take advantage of as I live and work towards changing things. In developing the language I use to try to explain myself, I have found that many, if not most, of the most time consuming disputes in basic political discourse actually miss the point of doing discourse in the first place, in large part because very few people spend the time necessary to tease out the definitional instabilities that undermine even the most basic of coming to terms. Your response to what I'm saying is a good example of why deconstructive principles carry more water than basic inferences in terms of furthering radically progressive ideas. By asserting that the substance of Americanism is a fluid object that shifts in response to the stakes/outcomes of political disputes, I'm not putting forward some kind of redemptive program that seeks to shine positive light on Americanism, rather I'm pointing out that power is left on the table when people fighting for the "correct" reasons state their case in terms that fundamentally privy the opposing view. That's why I'm hostile to most kinds of cultural criticism, because to be frank, that's the playpen of the right and the left simply won't win if it perpetually tries to stake its claim in plain-faced terms of casual cultural identities, terms that are easily co-opted by preexisting hierarchies that already have the floor. Take your criticism of how Americans regard "heroism," which is itself a concept I'd say that deals primarily in conservative ideals. You're more or less getting at the same thing I am, that the stuff of "heroism" isn't actually rooted in fundamental concepts, but rather in a zeitgeist that is perpetually mobilized in service of adding texture to the choices that individuals must make while others watch. Capitalistic nations need soldiers to be heroes in wartime just as they need grocery store workers and nurses to be heroes during the time of a pandemic not because pursuing a particular profession or maintaining it during a dangerous time are especially brave acts, rather because the status quo needs people to have motivational frameworks available that justify their continued participation in a system that might otherwise push people towards something else as its faultlines begin to show under stress. On balance, I prefer that nurses keep going to work and clerks keep food available, so I'll join in thanking them for their work and doing my small part to support them, but by doing so, I'm simply making a pragmatic decision that differs from one someone like you would make. Believe me, I am elsewhere bugging everyone I know with sentiments like, "ya know, this whole mess certainly shows off a ton of the current system's shortcomings, doesn't it? Does it seem fair to you that someone worried about their health should have their means of living dangled overtop of them like a carrot on a stick?" Overall, concepts like "what it means to be American" or any other fundamental question of national/regional/local identity are basically rootless, oftentimes contradictory political objects that only become a stable basis for saying true things when they are either confined to a high level of specificity or set forth as what they truly are, the building blocks of a perpetual socio-linguistic fight over how people situate themselves as actors in a world heavily overlaid with colossal, complicated systems that constantly try to subsume the individual. Relatedly, I think this ties into why an approach that admits that stark contradiction, deliberate hypocrisy, and ubiquitous substantive incoherence are the building blocks of any programmatic ideology is the way to go in terms of coming up with a truly progressive project. When consensus builds on the point that a lot of what we mistake for substance is actually arbitrary or even imaginary, seemingly impossible changes in the status quo become far more tenable imo. I'm mostly reading on this stuff with regard to finance, economy, and money, but I think it's something that applies widely. | ||
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ChristianS
United States3187 Posts
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farvacola
United States18819 Posts
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