US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2939

On January 07 2021 04:32 Danglars wrote:

That's the trouble with politics. We're always going to disagree on what harms people, and what's generally true about oppression. One person's support of Kenosha riots thinks it brought police reform/defunding closer, and another thinks the wake of crime and business closure always made it a source and not a cure of harm.

For the Supreme Court example, look at major decisions in Trump's term. Did they decide rightly about discrimination directed against the Colorado baker? Was their greater harm to his rights, or was the harm to the gay couple? How about Catholic nuns in Pennsylvania?

I've spent almost a decade arguing politics on this forum, and found a very high percentage of people immediately dismissing my appraisal of harms, for example generally united against the baker and the nuns. The tradeoff is something like one or two with me, and a dozen against. Whereas in the country at large, the sides are way more equitable. The obvious conclusion is not to trust you one bit in appraisal of harm, we genuinely both think at opposites almost all the time, and distrust your conclusions about "Republicans use X generally to oppress others." That thinking should carry over to the matter at hand: you're just a twin of people that think Trump was worth the reset in activist judge majority on the court, and the debate on immigration and trade. You can see people still certainly believe those four years of Trump in the executive was worth the gains over the costs. Welcome to positing the existence of people that think different than you, and on some of the spectrum of breaking the system to fix the system.

See also my hypothesis that the average TLer would never even detect oppression in a system where large states dismiss and ignore smaller states when it comes to national politics. It's just the wrong minority, and not an obvious racial category of minority. The modern left is too wedded to majoritarianism, "our solutions will work out the best for everyone everywhere" political idealism, and the ascendency of cosmopolitan culture (the needs and social attitudes of the more vibrant, diverse cultures should and will triumph over ones we describe as backward and stagnant+ Show Spoiler +. I'm not the best at describing these pieces that make up a whole, but the summary goes something like "I'm in favor of breaking a broken system to fix it, but only in the ways that I know constitute the least harm, and groups of people that disagree with me in what's broken and how to fix it should never be allowed to do the same." I thought throwing Trump in the face of this kind of political thought would be enough to teach the lesson, but apparently we're heading to worse-than-Trump.

On January 07 2021 04:40 TheTenthDoc wrote:
Danglars, you probably don't want to lecture people about inaccurately appraising the harms of Trump or "worse-than-Trump" while armed Trump supporters have broken into the Capital Building more or less on his behest.

On January 07 2021 04:40 TheTenthDoc wrote:
Danglars, you probably don't want to lecture people about inaccurately appraising the harms of Trump or "worse-than-Trump" while armed Trump supporters have broken into the Capital Building more or less on his behest.

On January 07 2021 04:46 Danglars wrote:

I mean if you think the worst that can happen with break-the-system-to-fix-the-system is violent riots in the US capitol to end the presidency of someone who can't admit he lost fair and square, you've got another thing coming.

On January 07 2021 04:51 TheTenthDoc wrote:


These aren't riots to end the presidency of that man. They're the opposite.

On January 07 2021 04:51 TheTenthDoc wrote:


These aren't riots to end the presidency of that man. They're the opposite.