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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread |
On May 26 2022 05:40 plasmidghost wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2022 05:12 BlackJack wrote:On May 26 2022 00:28 ChristianS wrote:On May 25 2022 19:38 BlackJack wrote:On May 25 2022 17:41 Aceace wrote:On May 25 2022 07:32 plasmidghost wrote:On May 25 2022 07:14 JimmiC wrote:Guns, Jesus and babies will solve this. It is a false flag by the deep state. Here comes the excuses. Like I said Biden does not matter, you could have a house cat as the opponent of a Rep right now and it comes down to whether you think everything awful is the deepstates fault or if maybe there is some actual issues to tackle. And yes the cat could tackle them better than Trump because the cat won't reverse what little exists. Edit: the Ted Cruz answer is more gunz! Damn all these other countries without gunz do not have this problem, but the USA which has the most gunz and the most shootings, I KNOW I KNOW what will fix it, MORE GUNZ!!! You know inevitably, when there's a murderer of this kind, you see politicians try to politicize it, you see Democrats and a lot of folks in the media whose immediate solution is to try to restrict the constitutional rights of law abiding citizens. That doesn't work. It's not effective. It doesn't prevent crime,” he said.
Instead, Cruz advocated for more armed law enforcement resources on school campuses.
“There's no doubt we need to do more to keep children in school safe. We know from past experience one of the most effective tool for keeping kids safe is armed law enforcement on the campus. We don't know the details of what happened at Robb Elementary School, but there will be a lot of time to examine what steps could have been taken proactively to enhance the safety and security of the school right now," he said. We are literally living in a police state that gets more fascist every day Nonono... You don't live in a police state. I do. You live in a free state, idiots being in charge. If at least %50 of American's demand a change, sooner or later things will be better. I live in a police state, being charged by a clever dictator. Even if more then %50 of Turks demand a change, there is no guarantee. Because you know... If you have absolute power, you will absolutely try everything to keep that power. There is a hope for you, not for me. Hey man, don’t ruin the immersion for them You strike me as someone for whom being smarter/better at critical thinking than the lib masses is a big part of their political identity. I don’t mean that as a huge criticism (hardly anybody has a good word to say about “liberals” these days) but it can lend itself to a sort of snide contrarianism if you’re not careful. So rather than oblique mockery, why not address the claim in front of you directly? From where I’m sitting it looks like the political factions in the US are increasingly unwilling to do anything but escalate tactics for harming each other. Using state power to imprison people or have CPS take their kids away is a political winner, if the targets are seen as representing the other side. Outright ignoring election outcomes and just keeping or seizing power has never been more popular. There’s more public fantasizing about killing each other than there’s ever been in my lifetime. I can’t actually imagine a mechanism by which this would get better, and I can imagine so, so many ways it could continue to get worse. I don’t have such specific predictions as plasmidghost’s “2025” but I certainly think this can only tend toward catastrophe. Do you disagree? Where do you think this analysis is failing? I said on this forum some time early 2021 something like “we all keep doing and redoing math on how far we are from the cliff, and how fast we’re going, and how much braking power we have, but the math isn’t actually that hard; it’s just that the answer we keep getting is unthinkable.” That feels more true to me now than it ever has. If your math is coming out differently I’d love if you’d show your work. Do you think there is an argument I could formulate that would change the mind of someone that thinks the US is a "police state that's getting more fascist every day"? Is that something you believe as well? I agree that our society is more polarized and our language is more inflammatory than it has ever been in my lifetime. I don't know where this is headed although I'm a lot more optimistic than most people here. I'm just confused that if you're so concerned why not do more in calling out the incendiary and hyperbolic posts themselves instead of calling me out for mocking them? I don't know how my belief can be considered hyperbolic when literal kids in my state are being taken from their homes and their parents investigated for child abuse because the kid happens to be trans and the parents are supportive when every major study points to support being the best thing for the kid
I don't know a lot about this. Do you have any more information on this? I tried googling but I couldn't find any information on children being taken away from their parents homes for being trans. I found some articles about custody battles between two parents where they disagree how to raise their child. I found some other articles about CPS investigations or about families "fearing" that their child will be taken away. But I couldn't actually find anything about trans children being taken from their families homes. Given what little I know about the foster-care system this would be truly reprehensible if trans kids were being taken from homes with loving parents. I just can't determine how common this is.
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Northern Ireland26967 Posts
On May 25 2022 17:41 Aceace wrote:Show nested quote +On May 25 2022 07:32 plasmidghost wrote:On May 25 2022 07:14 JimmiC wrote:Guns, Jesus and babies will solve this. It is a false flag by the deep state. Here comes the excuses. Like I said Biden does not matter, you could have a house cat as the opponent of a Rep right now and it comes down to whether you think everything awful is the deepstates fault or if maybe there is some actual issues to tackle. And yes the cat could tackle them better than Trump because the cat won't reverse what little exists. Edit: the Ted Cruz answer is more gunz! Damn all these other countries without gunz do not have this problem, but the USA which has the most gunz and the most shootings, I KNOW I KNOW what will fix it, MORE GUNZ!!! You know inevitably, when there's a murderer of this kind, you see politicians try to politicize it, you see Democrats and a lot of folks in the media whose immediate solution is to try to restrict the constitutional rights of law abiding citizens. That doesn't work. It's not effective. It doesn't prevent crime,” he said.
Instead, Cruz advocated for more armed law enforcement resources on school campuses.
“There's no doubt we need to do more to keep children in school safe. We know from past experience one of the most effective tool for keeping kids safe is armed law enforcement on the campus. We don't know the details of what happened at Robb Elementary School, but there will be a lot of time to examine what steps could have been taken proactively to enhance the safety and security of the school right now," he said. We are literally living in a police state that gets more fascist every day Nonono... You don't live in a police state. I do. You live in a free state, idiots being in charge. If at least %50 of American's demand a change, sooner or later things will be better. I live in a police state, being charged by a clever dictator. Even if more then %50 of Turks demand a change, there is no guarantee. Because you know... If you have absolute power, you will absolutely try everything to keep that power. There is a hope for you, not for me.
You are right to put this into perspective, and thanks for stopping by always good to see a new face.
How much of this is is tied into Erdogan himself? I know he’s certainly not without some popularity, but if he were to die tomorrow would what he is built remain or would it start to crumble without the man himself?
A difficult question to answer with any authority of course, but I’m not very familiar with Turkish politics!
It is less the current/recent state of the States, more the general trends and direction of travel that is worrying.
The other part that is worrying is, from my perspective is that American political dysfunction, aside from some mechanisms in dire need of reform, is not something that’s being driven from the top.
There are large and seemingly irreconcilable schisms amongst the American populace, and widening ones at that. It’s one thing to be at odds with a tyrannical government apparatus, quite another to be at odds with broadly half of your fellow citizens.
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Northern Ireland26967 Posts
On May 26 2022 05:12 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2022 00:28 ChristianS wrote:On May 25 2022 19:38 BlackJack wrote:On May 25 2022 17:41 Aceace wrote:On May 25 2022 07:32 plasmidghost wrote:On May 25 2022 07:14 JimmiC wrote:Guns, Jesus and babies will solve this. It is a false flag by the deep state. Here comes the excuses. Like I said Biden does not matter, you could have a house cat as the opponent of a Rep right now and it comes down to whether you think everything awful is the deepstates fault or if maybe there is some actual issues to tackle. And yes the cat could tackle them better than Trump because the cat won't reverse what little exists. Edit: the Ted Cruz answer is more gunz! Damn all these other countries without gunz do not have this problem, but the USA which has the most gunz and the most shootings, I KNOW I KNOW what will fix it, MORE GUNZ!!! You know inevitably, when there's a murderer of this kind, you see politicians try to politicize it, you see Democrats and a lot of folks in the media whose immediate solution is to try to restrict the constitutional rights of law abiding citizens. That doesn't work. It's not effective. It doesn't prevent crime,” he said.
Instead, Cruz advocated for more armed law enforcement resources on school campuses.
“There's no doubt we need to do more to keep children in school safe. We know from past experience one of the most effective tool for keeping kids safe is armed law enforcement on the campus. We don't know the details of what happened at Robb Elementary School, but there will be a lot of time to examine what steps could have been taken proactively to enhance the safety and security of the school right now," he said. We are literally living in a police state that gets more fascist every day Nonono... You don't live in a police state. I do. You live in a free state, idiots being in charge. If at least %50 of American's demand a change, sooner or later things will be better. I live in a police state, being charged by a clever dictator. Even if more then %50 of Turks demand a change, there is no guarantee. Because you know... If you have absolute power, you will absolutely try everything to keep that power. There is a hope for you, not for me. Hey man, don’t ruin the immersion for them You strike me as someone for whom being smarter/better at critical thinking than the lib masses is a big part of their political identity. I don’t mean that as a huge criticism (hardly anybody has a good word to say about “liberals” these days) but it can lend itself to a sort of snide contrarianism if you’re not careful. So rather than oblique mockery, why not address the claim in front of you directly? From where I’m sitting it looks like the political factions in the US are increasingly unwilling to do anything but escalate tactics for harming each other. Using state power to imprison people or have CPS take their kids away is a political winner, if the targets are seen as representing the other side. Outright ignoring election outcomes and just keeping or seizing power has never been more popular. There’s more public fantasizing about killing each other than there’s ever been in my lifetime. I can’t actually imagine a mechanism by which this would get better, and I can imagine so, so many ways it could continue to get worse. I don’t have such specific predictions as plasmidghost’s “2025” but I certainly think this can only tend toward catastrophe. Do you disagree? Where do you think this analysis is failing? I said on this forum some time early 2021 something like “we all keep doing and redoing math on how far we are from the cliff, and how fast we’re going, and how much braking power we have, but the math isn’t actually that hard; it’s just that the answer we keep getting is unthinkable.” That feels more true to me now than it ever has. If your math is coming out differently I’d love if you’d show your work. Do you think there is an argument I could formulate that would change the mind of someone that thinks the US is a "police state that's getting more fascist every day"? Is that something you believe as well? I agree that our society is more polarized and our language is more inflammatory than it has ever been in my lifetime. I don't know where this is headed although I'm a lot more optimistic than most people here. I'm just confused that if you're so concerned why not do more in calling out the incendiary and hyperbolic posts themselves instead of calling me out for mocking them?
While America is indeed obviously polarised, I’m not a massive fan of holding that up as something that is in and of itself the problem, as it implies that division between the poles carries equal fault and somewhat sidesteps why those divisions exist.
Not that I’m attributing this to you but it’s the bread and butter of the ‘enlightened centrist’.
I would absolute say calling out some of the hyperbole is fair enough and merited, on a social and cultural level America is still more free and vibrant than many places on the globe.
On the flip side the direction of travel recently is not exactly positive, especially in resolving economic problems. There’s very clear movement in stripping back freedoms in certain locales. Its democratic governmental mechanisms just do not function properly, they’re in dire need of reforms with scant evidence that that is happening anytime soon.
It’s not a place I would like to live on account of me being rather poor and having chronic health problems alone, but that aside I’m a straight white dude so I’d be fine otherwise. Racial inequality is still a problem, granted I’m not seeing any negative movement there. If I was a woman, or trans however, I would absolutely be worried at what’s on the cards for me down the line.
I’m just not seeing a huge amount of evidence that would have me be anything but pessimistic. I had thought January 6th might be the shock needed to have people pull away from the edge of the precipice, and some soul-searching to occur. That doesn’t appear to have happened, indeed some quarters we’re seeing a doubling down of that kind of rhetoric.
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On May 26 2022 07:06 plasmidghost wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2022 06:22 BlackJack wrote:On May 26 2022 05:40 plasmidghost wrote:On May 26 2022 05:12 BlackJack wrote:On May 26 2022 00:28 ChristianS wrote:On May 25 2022 19:38 BlackJack wrote:On May 25 2022 17:41 Aceace wrote:On May 25 2022 07:32 plasmidghost wrote:On May 25 2022 07:14 JimmiC wrote:Guns, Jesus and babies will solve this. It is a false flag by the deep state. Here comes the excuses. Like I said Biden does not matter, you could have a house cat as the opponent of a Rep right now and it comes down to whether you think everything awful is the deepstates fault or if maybe there is some actual issues to tackle. And yes the cat could tackle them better than Trump because the cat won't reverse what little exists. Edit: the Ted Cruz answer is more gunz! Damn all these other countries without gunz do not have this problem, but the USA which has the most gunz and the most shootings, I KNOW I KNOW what will fix it, MORE GUNZ!!! You know inevitably, when there's a murderer of this kind, you see politicians try to politicize it, you see Democrats and a lot of folks in the media whose immediate solution is to try to restrict the constitutional rights of law abiding citizens. That doesn't work. It's not effective. It doesn't prevent crime,” he said.
Instead, Cruz advocated for more armed law enforcement resources on school campuses.
“There's no doubt we need to do more to keep children in school safe. We know from past experience one of the most effective tool for keeping kids safe is armed law enforcement on the campus. We don't know the details of what happened at Robb Elementary School, but there will be a lot of time to examine what steps could have been taken proactively to enhance the safety and security of the school right now," he said. We are literally living in a police state that gets more fascist every day Nonono... You don't live in a police state. I do. You live in a free state, idiots being in charge. If at least %50 of American's demand a change, sooner or later things will be better. I live in a police state, being charged by a clever dictator. Even if more then %50 of Turks demand a change, there is no guarantee. Because you know... If you have absolute power, you will absolutely try everything to keep that power. There is a hope for you, not for me. Hey man, don’t ruin the immersion for them You strike me as someone for whom being smarter/better at critical thinking than the lib masses is a big part of their political identity. I don’t mean that as a huge criticism (hardly anybody has a good word to say about “liberals” these days) but it can lend itself to a sort of snide contrarianism if you’re not careful. So rather than oblique mockery, why not address the claim in front of you directly? From where I’m sitting it looks like the political factions in the US are increasingly unwilling to do anything but escalate tactics for harming each other. Using state power to imprison people or have CPS take their kids away is a political winner, if the targets are seen as representing the other side. Outright ignoring election outcomes and just keeping or seizing power has never been more popular. There’s more public fantasizing about killing each other than there’s ever been in my lifetime. I can’t actually imagine a mechanism by which this would get better, and I can imagine so, so many ways it could continue to get worse. I don’t have such specific predictions as plasmidghost’s “2025” but I certainly think this can only tend toward catastrophe. Do you disagree? Where do you think this analysis is failing? I said on this forum some time early 2021 something like “we all keep doing and redoing math on how far we are from the cliff, and how fast we’re going, and how much braking power we have, but the math isn’t actually that hard; it’s just that the answer we keep getting is unthinkable.” That feels more true to me now than it ever has. If your math is coming out differently I’d love if you’d show your work. Do you think there is an argument I could formulate that would change the mind of someone that thinks the US is a "police state that's getting more fascist every day"? Is that something you believe as well? I agree that our society is more polarized and our language is more inflammatory than it has ever been in my lifetime. I don't know where this is headed although I'm a lot more optimistic than most people here. I'm just confused that if you're so concerned why not do more in calling out the incendiary and hyperbolic posts themselves instead of calling me out for mocking them? I don't know how my belief can be considered hyperbolic when literal kids in my state are being taken from their homes and their parents investigated for child abuse because the kid happens to be trans and the parents are supportive when every major study points to support being the best thing for the kid I don't know a lot about this. Do you have any more information on this? I tried googling but I couldn't find any information on children being taken away from their parents homes for being trans. I found some articles about custody battles between two parents where they disagree how to raise their child. I found some other articles about CPS investigations or about families "fearing" that their child will be taken away. But I couldn't actually find anything about trans children being taken from their families homes. Given what little I know about the foster-care system this would be truly reprehensible if trans kids were being taken from homes with loving parents. I just can't determine how common this is. There was a temporary injunction issued by a court that stopped the investigations from proceeding for a couple of months, but it was unanimously overruled by the Texas Supreme Court a week ago. Because of that, investigations are resuming into the initial few cases and more are happening according to people I know around the state, but the latest news articles I can find only say that the investigations are resuming. There's been a ton of legal and regulatory violations committed during the investigations but Texas simply doesn't care. I'm at least thankful the kids are with their families for now, but that will most likely change again https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/20/trans-texas-child-abuse-investigations/
You said kids were being taken from their homes. Do you not have any information on that?
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Northern Ireland26967 Posts
It’s absolutely outrageous/no longer outrageous behaviour.
Using pictures of another person, an unrelated transgender woman is egregiously irresponsible, one day somebody is going to get killed by a vigilante having been exposed so erroneously.
In the absence of verified information it’s just prudent to sit tight, and I don’t think there’s even the excuse of ‘oh I got it wrong it was chaotic’ given the shooter was identified rather quickly.
The same folks who trot out ‘don’t make this a political issue’ are happy to (wrongly) attribute it to leftist politics, great. There are a good many of these shootings one can file into the disaffected rampage category, but those that do have some political manifesto behind them are clearly of the right wing persuasion anyway.
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Transgender folks already get harassed, assaulted, and killed out of transphobic hate all the time. If you're implying that a Republican is making a statement trying to pinpoint transgender people for hateful, bigoted stochastic terrorism, why, I'm simply shocked.
You can't see my shocked face. But if you could, ooh.
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On May 26 2022 07:58 plasmidghost wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2022 07:20 BlackJack wrote:On May 26 2022 07:06 plasmidghost wrote:On May 26 2022 06:22 BlackJack wrote:On May 26 2022 05:40 plasmidghost wrote:On May 26 2022 05:12 BlackJack wrote:On May 26 2022 00:28 ChristianS wrote:On May 25 2022 19:38 BlackJack wrote:On May 25 2022 17:41 Aceace wrote:On May 25 2022 07:32 plasmidghost wrote:
[quote]
We are literally living in a police state that gets more fascist every day Nonono... You don't live in a police state. I do. You live in a free state, idiots being in charge. If at least %50 of American's demand a change, sooner or later things will be better. I live in a police state, being charged by a clever dictator. Even if more then %50 of Turks demand a change, there is no guarantee. Because you know... If you have absolute power, you will absolutely try everything to keep that power. There is a hope for you, not for me. Hey man, don’t ruin the immersion for them You strike me as someone for whom being smarter/better at critical thinking than the lib masses is a big part of their political identity. I don’t mean that as a huge criticism (hardly anybody has a good word to say about “liberals” these days) but it can lend itself to a sort of snide contrarianism if you’re not careful. So rather than oblique mockery, why not address the claim in front of you directly? From where I’m sitting it looks like the political factions in the US are increasingly unwilling to do anything but escalate tactics for harming each other. Using state power to imprison people or have CPS take their kids away is a political winner, if the targets are seen as representing the other side. Outright ignoring election outcomes and just keeping or seizing power has never been more popular. There’s more public fantasizing about killing each other than there’s ever been in my lifetime. I can’t actually imagine a mechanism by which this would get better, and I can imagine so, so many ways it could continue to get worse. I don’t have such specific predictions as plasmidghost’s “2025” but I certainly think this can only tend toward catastrophe. Do you disagree? Where do you think this analysis is failing? I said on this forum some time early 2021 something like “we all keep doing and redoing math on how far we are from the cliff, and how fast we’re going, and how much braking power we have, but the math isn’t actually that hard; it’s just that the answer we keep getting is unthinkable.” That feels more true to me now than it ever has. If your math is coming out differently I’d love if you’d show your work. Do you think there is an argument I could formulate that would change the mind of someone that thinks the US is a "police state that's getting more fascist every day"? Is that something you believe as well? I agree that our society is more polarized and our language is more inflammatory than it has ever been in my lifetime. I don't know where this is headed although I'm a lot more optimistic than most people here. I'm just confused that if you're so concerned why not do more in calling out the incendiary and hyperbolic posts themselves instead of calling me out for mocking them? I don't know how my belief can be considered hyperbolic when literal kids in my state are being taken from their homes and their parents investigated for child abuse because the kid happens to be trans and the parents are supportive when every major study points to support being the best thing for the kid I don't know a lot about this. Do you have any more information on this? I tried googling but I couldn't find any information on children being taken away from their parents homes for being trans. I found some articles about custody battles between two parents where they disagree how to raise their child. I found some other articles about CPS investigations or about families "fearing" that their child will be taken away. But I couldn't actually find anything about trans children being taken from their families homes. Given what little I know about the foster-care system this would be truly reprehensible if trans kids were being taken from homes with loving parents. I just can't determine how common this is. There was a temporary injunction issued by a court that stopped the investigations from proceeding for a couple of months, but it was unanimously overruled by the Texas Supreme Court a week ago. Because of that, investigations are resuming into the initial few cases and more are happening according to people I know around the state, but the latest news articles I can find only say that the investigations are resuming. There's been a ton of legal and regulatory violations committed during the investigations but Texas simply doesn't care. I'm at least thankful the kids are with their families for now, but that will most likely change again https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/20/trans-texas-child-abuse-investigations/ You said kids were being taken from their homes. Do you not have any information on that? I'm not trying to deflect but the info I had on that was from people on Twitter, which while I know and believe they're trustworthy, won't really hold up on here because of the source requirements
Maybe I'm wrong but I've been under the impression that if you can't source your claims in this thread then you shouldn't be making them in the first place.
If an anti-vaxxer said that they were starting to round up the unvaccinated to take to Mohdoo Island and their source for that was "people on twitter that they trust" they probably would have some action taken on them by the mods.
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On May 26 2022 07:20 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2022 07:06 plasmidghost wrote:On May 26 2022 06:22 BlackJack wrote:On May 26 2022 05:40 plasmidghost wrote:On May 26 2022 05:12 BlackJack wrote:On May 26 2022 00:28 ChristianS wrote:On May 25 2022 19:38 BlackJack wrote:On May 25 2022 17:41 Aceace wrote:On May 25 2022 07:32 plasmidghost wrote:On May 25 2022 07:14 JimmiC wrote:
Guns, Jesus and babies will solve this. It is a false flag by the deep state.
Here comes the excuses.
Like I said Biden does not matter, you could have a house cat as the opponent of a Rep right now and it comes down to whether you think everything awful is the deepstates fault or if maybe there is some actual issues to tackle.
And yes the cat could tackle them better than Trump because the cat won't reverse what little exists.
Edit: the Ted Cruz answer is more gunz! Damn all these other countries without gunz do not have this problem, but the USA which has the most gunz and the most shootings, I KNOW I KNOW what will fix it, MORE GUNZ!!!
[quote] We are literally living in a police state that gets more fascist every day Nonono... You don't live in a police state. I do. You live in a free state, idiots being in charge. If at least %50 of American's demand a change, sooner or later things will be better. I live in a police state, being charged by a clever dictator. Even if more then %50 of Turks demand a change, there is no guarantee. Because you know... If you have absolute power, you will absolutely try everything to keep that power. There is a hope for you, not for me. Hey man, don’t ruin the immersion for them You strike me as someone for whom being smarter/better at critical thinking than the lib masses is a big part of their political identity. I don’t mean that as a huge criticism (hardly anybody has a good word to say about “liberals” these days) but it can lend itself to a sort of snide contrarianism if you’re not careful. So rather than oblique mockery, why not address the claim in front of you directly? From where I’m sitting it looks like the political factions in the US are increasingly unwilling to do anything but escalate tactics for harming each other. Using state power to imprison people or have CPS take their kids away is a political winner, if the targets are seen as representing the other side. Outright ignoring election outcomes and just keeping or seizing power has never been more popular. There’s more public fantasizing about killing each other than there’s ever been in my lifetime. I can’t actually imagine a mechanism by which this would get better, and I can imagine so, so many ways it could continue to get worse. I don’t have such specific predictions as plasmidghost’s “2025” but I certainly think this can only tend toward catastrophe. Do you disagree? Where do you think this analysis is failing? I said on this forum some time early 2021 something like “we all keep doing and redoing math on how far we are from the cliff, and how fast we’re going, and how much braking power we have, but the math isn’t actually that hard; it’s just that the answer we keep getting is unthinkable.” That feels more true to me now than it ever has. If your math is coming out differently I’d love if you’d show your work. Do you think there is an argument I could formulate that would change the mind of someone that thinks the US is a "police state that's getting more fascist every day"? Is that something you believe as well? I agree that our society is more polarized and our language is more inflammatory than it has ever been in my lifetime. I don't know where this is headed although I'm a lot more optimistic than most people here. I'm just confused that if you're so concerned why not do more in calling out the incendiary and hyperbolic posts themselves instead of calling me out for mocking them? I don't know how my belief can be considered hyperbolic when literal kids in my state are being taken from their homes and their parents investigated for child abuse because the kid happens to be trans and the parents are supportive when every major study points to support being the best thing for the kid I don't know a lot about this. Do you have any more information on this? I tried googling but I couldn't find any information on children being taken away from their parents homes for being trans. I found some articles about custody battles between two parents where they disagree how to raise their child. I found some other articles about CPS investigations or about families "fearing" that their child will be taken away. But I couldn't actually find anything about trans children being taken from their families homes. Given what little I know about the foster-care system this would be truly reprehensible if trans kids were being taken from homes with loving parents. I just can't determine how common this is. There was a temporary injunction issued by a court that stopped the investigations from proceeding for a couple of months, but it was unanimously overruled by the Texas Supreme Court a week ago. Because of that, investigations are resuming into the initial few cases and more are happening according to people I know around the state, but the latest news articles I can find only say that the investigations are resuming. There's been a ton of legal and regulatory violations committed during the investigations but Texas simply doesn't care. I'm at least thankful the kids are with their families for now, but that will most likely change again https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/20/trans-texas-child-abuse-investigations/ You said kids were being taken from their homes. Do you not have any information on that?
I am not aware of transgender kids having been taken from their parents by Child Protective Services in Texas.
It's hard to imagine what else the goal of Gov. Abbott's directive would be, though.
Imagine a plumber is hired to do a repair. So far, he has doused the building in gasoline and is holding a lit match and yelling, "I swear to God I will burn this fucking place to the ground." Now, you might reason that he hasn't yet lit the fire, and he might not really intend to, and he may soon put out the match and get on with the plumbing, and maybe even do a creditable job. Others, though, might conclude that this plumber is dangerously irresponsible before the building lies in ruins.
(If you prefer, imagine that after pouring the gasoline, instead of brandishing a match and yelling, the plumber merely sits and lights his cigarette.)
I understand why you are pressing plasmidghost for examples of transgender kids being taken from their parents. It's fair to press on that. Even if it hasn't yet happened, though, anybody whose beloved family includes loves a transgender kid in Texas (myself, for example) is still wondering who the fuck hired this plumber.
The analogy also works for every Republican lawmaker who won't admit Trump lost fair and square, which is apparently all of them.
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On May 26 2022 05:12 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2022 00:28 ChristianS wrote:On May 25 2022 19:38 BlackJack wrote:On May 25 2022 17:41 Aceace wrote:On May 25 2022 07:32 plasmidghost wrote:On May 25 2022 07:14 JimmiC wrote:Guns, Jesus and babies will solve this. It is a false flag by the deep state. Here comes the excuses. Like I said Biden does not matter, you could have a house cat as the opponent of a Rep right now and it comes down to whether you think everything awful is the deepstates fault or if maybe there is some actual issues to tackle. And yes the cat could tackle them better than Trump because the cat won't reverse what little exists. Edit: the Ted Cruz answer is more gunz! Damn all these other countries without gunz do not have this problem, but the USA which has the most gunz and the most shootings, I KNOW I KNOW what will fix it, MORE GUNZ!!! You know inevitably, when there's a murderer of this kind, you see politicians try to politicize it, you see Democrats and a lot of folks in the media whose immediate solution is to try to restrict the constitutional rights of law abiding citizens. That doesn't work. It's not effective. It doesn't prevent crime,” he said.
Instead, Cruz advocated for more armed law enforcement resources on school campuses.
“There's no doubt we need to do more to keep children in school safe. We know from past experience one of the most effective tool for keeping kids safe is armed law enforcement on the campus. We don't know the details of what happened at Robb Elementary School, but there will be a lot of time to examine what steps could have been taken proactively to enhance the safety and security of the school right now," he said. We are literally living in a police state that gets more fascist every day Nonono... You don't live in a police state. I do. You live in a free state, idiots being in charge. If at least %50 of American's demand a change, sooner or later things will be better. I live in a police state, being charged by a clever dictator. Even if more then %50 of Turks demand a change, there is no guarantee. Because you know... If you have absolute power, you will absolutely try everything to keep that power. There is a hope for you, not for me. Hey man, don’t ruin the immersion for them You strike me as someone for whom being smarter/better at critical thinking than the lib masses is a big part of their political identity. I don’t mean that as a huge criticism (hardly anybody has a good word to say about “liberals” these days) but it can lend itself to a sort of snide contrarianism if you’re not careful. So rather than oblique mockery, why not address the claim in front of you directly? From where I’m sitting it looks like the political factions in the US are increasingly unwilling to do anything but escalate tactics for harming each other. Using state power to imprison people or have CPS take their kids away is a political winner, if the targets are seen as representing the other side. Outright ignoring election outcomes and just keeping or seizing power has never been more popular. There’s more public fantasizing about killing each other than there’s ever been in my lifetime. I can’t actually imagine a mechanism by which this would get better, and I can imagine so, so many ways it could continue to get worse. I don’t have such specific predictions as plasmidghost’s “2025” but I certainly think this can only tend toward catastrophe. Do you disagree? Where do you think this analysis is failing? I said on this forum some time early 2021 something like “we all keep doing and redoing math on how far we are from the cliff, and how fast we’re going, and how much braking power we have, but the math isn’t actually that hard; it’s just that the answer we keep getting is unthinkable.” That feels more true to me now than it ever has. If your math is coming out differently I’d love if you’d show your work. Do you think there is an argument I could formulate that would change the mind of someone that thinks the US is a "police state that's getting more fascist every day"? Is that something you believe as well? I agree that our society is more polarized and our language is more inflammatory than it has ever been in my lifetime. I don't know where this is headed although I'm a lot more optimistic than most people here. I'm just confused that if you're so concerned why not do more in calling out the incendiary and hyperbolic posts themselves instead of calling me out for mocking them?
Sorry, I typed most of a response and then work stuff came up and kept me busy all day.
I don’t expect you to change anyone’s mind, and in general I don’t expect posts on TL to have almost any effect on US political outcomes. Also, to be clear, “inflammatory rhetoric” has only a little to do with the sort of stuff I’m afraid is inevitable.
I don’t think “we live in a police state” is useful analysis at present, although I think a lot of the stuff people associate with police states is more present than is commonly admitted. I think “getting more fascist every day” is obviously true but it’s not especially useful phrasing either - it’d be nice to know what terrible things will happen when, which is obviously a much harder prediction to make.
But peaceful coexistence keeps looking less and less possible. When the other side wants to arrest you, take your kids away from you*, criminalize your whole way of life it gets harder and harder to maintain “but THESE tactics are out of bounds.” So tactics escalate, revenge cycles make each escalation easier to justify (e.g. “court packing is okay because the other guys already shrunk the court until they could install their own guy!”) and it’s not clear how de-escalation could even happen.
Meanwhile nobody’s under any illusions that the government actually has the ability to enact meaningful change anymore. Whatever political solution you want to see to major problems we’re facing (universal healthcare? UBI? Cap and trade? A wall on the southern border? Defunding or even reforming the police? Gun control? Election integrity protections?) it’s obvious to everyone it won’t happen in the next, say, 5 years. The actual issues people are fighting over for the midterms are just culture war bullshit (CRT, GRT, etc.) that make no pretense of solving anybody’s issues with healthcare or climate change or immigration or anything else obviously big and important and bad.
Like, I don’t know what it takes for people to, say, start killing each other at scale over political conflict, but I’m confident the limit exists, and we’re moving toward it, and I see no indication we will or even can decelerate. Like, my goal here isn’t to call you out so much as figure out if you see more hope than I do, and if so where you’re finding it!
*I see in the intervening hours there’s been some dispute about whether any trans kids have actually been taken away by CPS yet. My understanding was no, since Abbott instructed his administration to do so but got blocked by courts. I think Idaho’s anti-trans bill also criminalizes various aspects of affirming your kid’s gender; imprisoning the parents necessarily involves taking them away from their kids, but I’m going on recollection and I’m not sure where the Idaho bill ended up. I can research it more later if we actually think the specifics are important here.
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Might make sense to distinguish between fascism and militarism. I believe the two are being used synonymously here.
Fascism usually involves paramilitary organizations working against the form of government. The last US variant being weirdos in bison costumes.
Not necessarily with paramilitaries but it would be rare for the status quo to allow that without trying to repress it forcefully.
Militarism means the government tries to push its citizens into police/military and equips them with more power.
Probably what others here mean when they say fascist.
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Fascism is always difficult and controversial to define, but I’m not sure your distinction has clarified much. There’s no fundamental requirement of paramilitary forces, and it certainly doesn’t have to be against the current government. By that definition a “fascist government” would be a contradiction in terms! Not even the third reich would qualify!
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On May 26 2022 12:50 ChristianS wrote:
Fascism is always difficult and controversial to define, but I’m not sure your distinction has clarified much. There’s no fundamental requirement of paramilitary forces, and it certainly doesn’t have to be against the current government. By that definition a “fascist government” would be a contradiction in terms! Not even the third reich would qualify!
I'd say that your example would be a fascist organization that succeeded into becoming the ruling government. Before Hitler took power, he commanded the SA (the paramilitary arm) and then instituted the SS (the loyalists and party member fraction within the military).
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EPT
