US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2718

On October 06 2020 11:22 NewSunshine wrote:
Maybe he can finally relate to the George Floyd protests now.

The whole "don't be afraid of COVID-19, I got through it and so can you" is very much a Let Them Eat Cake moment, too. Tell that to all the people you killed with your negligence, and tell it to all the people who can't afford health insurance because of fucking late-stage capitalism. Just go to a cutting-edge White House doctor, great fucking idea, Donny.

On October 06 2020 11:37 Nevuk wrote:
He was in the 30s vs Hillary on election day on 538. He's never been even remotely that close vs Biden, where it's generally been <20% on the "if this were held today" calculations. The only reason it's above 10% right now is that there are still 4 weeks left.

On October 06 2020 17:28 Doublemint wrote:
"Don't mask, don't tell." The Trump Covid policy described by a guy from the Lincoln project I found on twitter.

glorious :D

On October 06 2020 01:05 Liquid`Drone wrote:


Bringing up a bunch of european countries that were invaded/occupied by the soviet union as evidence against revolutions? What's the point with that?

I mean, I am an incrementalist rather than revolutionary, and that comes from a combination of two factors: 1) realizing that the short term consequences of a revolution are likely to be highly negative and 2) attachment to my current privilege. (I would to some degree be very happy about an erosion of this privilege - I want Norway and the rest of the west to focus on increased prosperity and economic output for poorer regions of the world rather than increased prosperity and economic output within Norway and other wealthy western nations.

But I wouldn't be happy with my standard of living immediately dropping down to match that of the global average - even if it is my eventual political goal that no country or region should be worse off than the rest of the world.

However, I can't really blame people who find themselves in the bottom half, who notice that climate change represents and existential threat for them, who still have to hope that 'well, if I work incredibly hard and make all the smartest choices I possibly can, then perhaps my grandchildren will live moderately decent lives', who think 'the fact that these god damn western fuckers are living lives of obscene lavishness and gross consumption which directly contributes to the destruction of my environment is driving me mad to the point where I want them to be toppled, violently if need be', especially not when I realize that I have much of the same thoughts for the rich kids on instagram group.

Anyway.

There are 0 examples of a poor country undertaking a violent revolution for then to quickly become a prosperous, well functional nation.

But there are also 0 examples of the opposite - a prosperous, well functional nation undertaking a violent revolution which turned the country poor. A revolution does not happen unless a very large amount of people in a country are so disheartened and desperate that they feel like they have nothing to lose. This is why white, reasonably wealthy (not within Norway, but certainly in the world) people like myself, who observe the gross inequalities in much of the world and think 'that sucks and is really unfair', still won't join in; we have too much to lose. But fucking hell, I at least want to increase the increments by which the world becomes more equitable, because I am the one with the moral failing here, not the downtrodden masses who scream faster or not enough.

On October 06 2020 19:16 Liquid`Drone wrote:
To my knowledge there's hardly a person alive *, and certainly not participating in this thread, who advocates a system akin to what we saw in the soviet union or any country occupied by the soviet union. GH sure as hell isn't, nothing even remotely closely resembling it either. So talking about the dangers of marxist leninism as practiced by the soviet union and her satellite states is fairly pointless and mostly just serves as a distraction.

GH keeps talking about Freire, not Stalin or Lenin. And most far leftists who concern themselves with socialist theory are similarly minded to that. Step one of 'the revolution' is convincing a sufficient amount of people that it is necessary. Very, very few people are advocating for a revolution without popular support. And then the 'violent' element of the revolution is not 'once we're enough people to violently overthrow society, we'll do it', it's 'once we're enough people to win an election, we have to be prepared to use violence if or after the holders of power refuse to relinquish their power.

It is true that some Eastern European countries became significantly worse because of 'communism'. But those countries did not revolt. They were occupied, and 'communism' was forced upon them. They're irrelevant from a 'revolution' perspective. If you look at for example Cuba, where they definitely had a communist revolution, then it is rather obvious that the Castro regime was abhorrent. However, it is not so obvious that it was worse than the Batista regime it followed. (Honestly, I don't know. I imagine it was a lot worse for the wealthy and in many ways better for the impoverished. This is not me defending Castro, it's just stating that the situation pre-revolution was also really bad. )

As stated, I'm not a revolutionary myself. I just get pretty irked by seeing people continuously, and primarily through the fault of their own, misrepresent what the more revolutionary crowd is advocating for. And, I really feel like I must be cognizant of the fact that 'incremental improvement but plz don't break the system' is a whole lot more attractive of a prospect when you are part of the top ~5% than when you are downtrodden and suffering.

*(In Norway there's a group called Tjen Folket (serve the people) who have something like 50 members total, and that's also just about the totality of their support. They're advocating violent revolution, and are actually Stalinists. So maybe the real number of supporters of that type of ideology is in the 0.001% range. )

** My wife is polish, and while she certainly doesn't support the type of dictatorship found in the soviet union, she's just as much of a leftist as I am, and I know several polish people who easily consider themselves marxists. (As in, idealizing the theoretical framework presented by Marx and expanded upon by later theorists, not as in idealizing the dictatorships created by countries claiming to be marxist. This is akin to being pro-democracy and not thinking the Democratic Republic of Korea is a good example of democracy. I also don't think 'what gets you punched in the face in Poland' is a good metric for 'what behavior you should avoid'.

On October 06 2020 11:22 NewSunshine wrote:
Maybe he can finally relate to the George Floyd protests now.

The whole "don't be afraid of COVID-19, I got through it and so can you" is very much a Let Them Eat Cake moment, too. Tell that to all the people you killed with your negligence, and tell it to all the people who can't afford health insurance because of fucking late-stage capitalism. Just go to a cutting-edge White House doctor, great fucking idea, Donny.