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!
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On February 15 2025 00:11 Jockmcplop wrote: [quote] I disagree. Simply existing does make you complicit in anything. Making a positive choice to be complicit in something makes you complicit.
Let me put this another way. How is a person supposed to convince the Democrats to change their policy without threatening to withhold their vote, and actually meaning it? It is the only lever anybody has.
What do you mean by "change their policy"? The Democratic policy wouldn't improve as a result of them losing the election; the only thing that would change is that Palestinians would have to deal with the Republican policy, which is even worse.
Biden worked to create a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel - the very one that's still mostly working right now, even while Trump is president - and during the election, Harris repeatedly pledged to continue pushing for a peaceful end where Gaza/Palestinians aren't completely overrun by Israel. The Democrats' two-state solution where Palestinians still exist would have been a much better situation than what Trump was/is pushing for, where he's okay with Israel taking over completely.
The non-Democratic voters worked against the Democrats' vision and ended up aiding the Republicans' vision, which is about as anti-Gaza as you could get. (One could argue that Biden/Harris didn't/wouldn't do everything in their power to stop Netanyahu, and that Biden/Harris are extremely flawed when it comes to this issue, but they're still miles ahead of Trump's vision... and non-Democratic voters weren't willing to pick the more helpful of the two options.)
It's like talking to the Rs in this thread. The people like Jock and GH have this moral highground that they're unwilling to come down off of because they can't fathom being wrong in this case. The people who voted Ds aren't complicit in the war in Gaza or Ukraine. They're trying to get people in positions to stop it using democratic methods. Now they have to justify fuckin up the vote and convince themselves that abstaining from participating was the correct choice. Conciousness aside. This isn't about the right thing to do, it's about what makes them feel better when they go to sleep. "I tried but no one listened, guess that's all I can do. Time for napsies."
This is the third time i've told I'm trying to take the moral high ground, when I joined this conversation to try and empathize with the people that Dem voters were claiming were responsible for everything Trump is doing.
It is you (collective), not I, who was taking the moral high ground, and you don't even notice yourselves doing it.
Its not like the Democrats haven't been told, repeatedly, by every single non Democrat in America, that this behaviour is a massive turn off and gives out the impression that a) The Democrats and their voters believe they have the moral high ground absolutely b) Are perfectly happy telling everyone else they are evil c) Are incredibly arrogant about their self-defined position on the top of the moral superiority pyramid.
The problem is the refusal to even try and see anyone else's point of view. I've been told in this very thread that if I was a Palestinian who has watched their family slaughtered because of the policies of Democrats, that I should still vote Democrat. The lack of empathy is absolutely astonishing tbh.
On February 15 2025 01:08 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
On February 15 2025 00:59 Jockmcplop wrote:
On February 15 2025 00:53 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: [quote]
What do you mean by "change their policy"? The Democratic policy wouldn't improve as a result of them losing the election; the only thing that would change is that Palestinians would have to deal with the Republican policy, which is even worse.
Biden worked to create a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel - the very one that's still mostly working right now, even while Trump is president - and during the election, Harris repeatedly pledged to continue pushing for a peaceful end where Gaza/Palestinians aren't completely overrun by Israel. The Democrats' two-state solution where Palestinians still exist would have been a much better situation than what Trump was/is pushing for, where he's okay with Israel taking over completely.
The non-Democratic voters worked against the Democrats' vision and ended up aiding the Republicans' vision, which is about as anti-Gaza as you could get. (One could argue that Biden/Harris didn't/wouldn't do everything in their power to stop Netanyahu, and that Biden/Harris are extremely flawed when it comes to this issue, but they're still miles ahead of Trump's vision... and non-Democratic voters weren't willing to pick the more helpful of the two options.)
By 'change their policy' I mean stop selling the weapons that kill the civilians in Gaza, stop unconditionally supporting any extremity of action that Israel decides is appropriate, and stop being the single world power who more than anyone else has caused this genocide to occur.
Sure, well done, they engineered a ceasefire after so many civilians unnecessarily died at the hands of the US's little brother while the Democrats sat there and applauded, but for me, that doesn't inspire me to vote for them.
I get it, you are unconditionally a Dem voter, but you shouldn't assume that everyone else will give their vote out so easily.
And let's be clear here, the Democrats' vision wasn't a ceasefire and then peace forever, it was a ceasefire that allows them restock Israel with newer, more expensive weapons for the next round of massacre in a few years.
Okay, so let's play it out your way, according to your argument: A bunch of people decided not to vote for Kamala Harris because they were convinced that Harris losing would result in the Democrats finally changing their Israel-Palestine policy to be more pro-Palestine and less pro-Israel. How'd that plan work out for you / the non-Democratic voters? Do we see any indication that the Democratic party is now shifting towards being more pro-Palestine? Do we have any reason to think that Palestinians will be safer, thanks to non-Democratic voters aiding Trump?
In the short term, for the next few years, you have a good point here. It all falls apart if you look any further ahead than that. Why would the democrats ever need to listen to what their voters want again? They can just dictate what you are going to vote for and you'll vote for it to keep the Republicans out. Long term, I believe it is very helpful for political parties to genuinely believe that people will stop voting for them if they don't listen to their voters. That is the entire purpose of not voting Democrat in this case. It isn't going to make the lives of people in Gaza better, that horse has bolted. The ship has sailed. The people of Gaza are fucked because the Democrats decided it could be so.
Maybe though, next time the Democrats are in the middle of a genocide and an election is coming up, they'll think twice about their policies.
We recognized what the Ds did in the campaign that probably led to their defeat and we also gave a lot of benefit of the doubt to what was being said. But time and time again, all we're getting are people bashing the D party for things that the Rs did or refused to cooperate on. So all you're doing, by continuing to bash Ds and not hold Rs responsible for the shitshow we're currently seeing, is allowing them to grab more of the power. We understand the problems and have offered solutions. But those solutions aren't palatable to people like you and GH (collective). What you effectively want are for the Ds to assume total power and just kick the Rs out and invite a civil war to try and accelerate whatever asinine ideas you dream up. That isn't how it works.
This entire thread is just a circular argument. I don't think I have a moral superiority over you or GH. But I know that pouting because your ideal candidate didn't get in and handing the country to fascism isn't the play. Either put up or shut up. If you're not going to participate, then what grounds do you have to stand on to tell those that are, what to do? At the end of the day, we're a bunch of strangers on the internet arguing. It's not helping.
Again, this simply is not what happened and is not reflective of my participation in the discussion at all. You're acting like I just turned up and started blaming Democrats for everything. I'm here because I just don't buy the argument that was being made that anyone who didn't vote Democrat is responsible for everything that Trump decides to do. You are flipping that on its head and claiming that in defending those people, I'm somehow attacking the Democrats.
edited for niceness
And I'm saying that it is precisely the issue of them not supporting the platform that allowed this takeover. I'm not saying you personally, it's a collective. GH sits here and shits on the Ds for failing, but at the same time, it was enough people who were Ds that voted trump/third party/did not vote that caused this. And they are assigned some of the blame. To pin it all on the Ds is shifting blame so that they don't have to feel bad.
You're welcome to defend them and I'm sure they and others appreciate it. But at the end of the day, they are also to blame and should be held accountable for that as well as the D party. The D voters voted to keep trump out and it didn't work. The messaging was bad and the play was bad. But to now sit back and attack D voters because they voted? What's the angle or prize you're fishing for?
The prize I'm fishing for I suppose is a Democrat party that listens to its voters a little bit more, or frankly a Democrat party that listens to voters who share my perspective on world events.
I don't think I'll see that in my lifetime, but I definitely won't see it if people give the Democrat their vote unconditionally.
I'm also fishing for just a little bit of give and take here. I understand the argument that rationally, voting for the Dems is marginally better for the people of Gaza in the short term. I think in the long term it is worse for reasons I have described.
I also think that some acknowledgement that rationality, although very important, can be overridden in certain circumstances. Of course no Palestinian is going to vote for the party that took part in the slaughter of their family. Engaging with the topic on a human level, that should be obvious. Yet even when discussing that quite extreme example, people fall back on logic and rationality and refuse to empathize with those for whom that kind of discussion has gone out of the window.
There's a whole middle ground as well with general Middle-Eastern voters who feel that it is 'their people' that the Democrats have taken part in killing. I would wager that for alot of those people, voting rationally for a tiny percentage gain in survivability for the people of Gaza has gone out of the window just through sheer anger and sadness. To dismiss this and then blame those people for what Trump is doing is something I just can't get my head around.
Then we finally get to the people on this forum who are making arguments. There's no recognition that maybe some people engage with these world events on an emotional level and simply cannot bring themselves to vote for people who are taking part in genocide. There's no 'Maybe these people think completely different to how I think about events'. Its simply a numbers game. Calculate the percentage and vote accordingly. Rationality wins. Except as we've seen, it doesn't. The human element of this, the refusal to take part in something that a person sees as evil, is important even if it seems irrational and the numbers don't add up in the very short term.
I think, by and large quite a lot of the thread broadly agree with rather a lot of this, at least based on posting histories.
I know I do, broadly, speaking!
I think the friction point comes from something of a have your cake and eat it scenario. Voting is complicity in whatever thing crosses a red line, but the consequences of that don’t have anything to do with me.
I also think people here are perfectly aware of the emotive element of politics, but this also swings both ways. I’m sure trans folk are feeling quite a lot of strong emotions now they’re at the political mercy of the GOP for the next wee stretch.
More generally I’ve consistently bemoaned the combo of don’t court the left/blame them for political losses, not just in the States and elsewhere, so you’re basically preaching to the converted.
But speaking of the converted, well you gotta convert people. Bridges have to be built or we’re collectively fucked.
If roughly half of the country is now what medicine would clinically term completely fucking mental, there’s only so much of a post-mortem and blame apportioning the rest can indulge in before that elephant in the room shuffles over and smacks you with its glorious, glistening trunk.
It need not necessitate dropping one’s principles either, for the most part, merely communicate and build things better.
It need not necessitate eating the delicious dish of humble pie either, but folks are gonna have to concede some things.
In terms of individuals in the populace, not the Dem Party, folks pursued courses of action aligning with their values, that they earnestly thought would work.
But it didn’t work, hey it happens.
I don't know how someone who didn't vote Democrat can build a bridge to the people saying 'anyone who didn't vote Democrat is the enemy'.
It looks very much like that's an unbridgeable gap, unfortunately. Such is the extreme nature of US politics. The bridge you're wanting to build looks increasingly like a no man's land in a trench war.
I bet it would be a lot easier to build that bridge if all people saw int heir feeds wasn't stuff like "if you vote for the democrats, you are complicit in genocide".
On February 15 2025 00:53 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: [quote]
What do you mean by "change their policy"? The Democratic policy wouldn't improve as a result of them losing the election; the only thing that would change is that Palestinians would have to deal with the Republican policy, which is even worse.
Biden worked to create a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel - the very one that's still mostly working right now, even while Trump is president - and during the election, Harris repeatedly pledged to continue pushing for a peaceful end where Gaza/Palestinians aren't completely overrun by Israel. The Democrats' two-state solution where Palestinians still exist would have been a much better situation than what Trump was/is pushing for, where he's okay with Israel taking over completely.
The non-Democratic voters worked against the Democrats' vision and ended up aiding the Republicans' vision, which is about as anti-Gaza as you could get. (One could argue that Biden/Harris didn't/wouldn't do everything in their power to stop Netanyahu, and that Biden/Harris are extremely flawed when it comes to this issue, but they're still miles ahead of Trump's vision... and non-Democratic voters weren't willing to pick the more helpful of the two options.)
It's like talking to the Rs in this thread. The people like Jock and GH have this moral highground that they're unwilling to come down off of because they can't fathom being wrong in this case. The people who voted Ds aren't complicit in the war in Gaza or Ukraine. They're trying to get people in positions to stop it using democratic methods. Now they have to justify fuckin up the vote and convince themselves that abstaining from participating was the correct choice. Conciousness aside. This isn't about the right thing to do, it's about what makes them feel better when they go to sleep. "I tried but no one listened, guess that's all I can do. Time for napsies."
This is the third time i've told I'm trying to take the moral high ground, when I joined this conversation to try and empathize with the people that Dem voters were claiming were responsible for everything Trump is doing.
It is you (collective), not I, who was taking the moral high ground, and you don't even notice yourselves doing it.
Its not like the Democrats haven't been told, repeatedly, by every single non Democrat in America, that this behaviour is a massive turn off and gives out the impression that a) The Democrats and their voters believe they have the moral high ground absolutely b) Are perfectly happy telling everyone else they are evil c) Are incredibly arrogant about their self-defined position on the top of the moral superiority pyramid.
The problem is the refusal to even try and see anyone else's point of view. I've been told in this very thread that if I was a Palestinian who has watched their family slaughtered because of the policies of Democrats, that I should still vote Democrat. The lack of empathy is absolutely astonishing tbh.
On February 15 2025 01:08 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
On February 15 2025 00:59 Jockmcplop wrote: [quote]
By 'change their policy' I mean stop selling the weapons that kill the civilians in Gaza, stop unconditionally supporting any extremity of action that Israel decides is appropriate, and stop being the single world power who more than anyone else has caused this genocide to occur.
Sure, well done, they engineered a ceasefire after so many civilians unnecessarily died at the hands of the US's little brother while the Democrats sat there and applauded, but for me, that doesn't inspire me to vote for them.
I get it, you are unconditionally a Dem voter, but you shouldn't assume that everyone else will give their vote out so easily.
And let's be clear here, the Democrats' vision wasn't a ceasefire and then peace forever, it was a ceasefire that allows them restock Israel with newer, more expensive weapons for the next round of massacre in a few years.
Okay, so let's play it out your way, according to your argument: A bunch of people decided not to vote for Kamala Harris because they were convinced that Harris losing would result in the Democrats finally changing their Israel-Palestine policy to be more pro-Palestine and less pro-Israel. How'd that plan work out for you / the non-Democratic voters? Do we see any indication that the Democratic party is now shifting towards being more pro-Palestine? Do we have any reason to think that Palestinians will be safer, thanks to non-Democratic voters aiding Trump?
In the short term, for the next few years, you have a good point here. It all falls apart if you look any further ahead than that. Why would the democrats ever need to listen to what their voters want again? They can just dictate what you are going to vote for and you'll vote for it to keep the Republicans out. Long term, I believe it is very helpful for political parties to genuinely believe that people will stop voting for them if they don't listen to their voters. That is the entire purpose of not voting Democrat in this case. It isn't going to make the lives of people in Gaza better, that horse has bolted. The ship has sailed. The people of Gaza are fucked because the Democrats decided it could be so.
Maybe though, next time the Democrats are in the middle of a genocide and an election is coming up, they'll think twice about their policies.
We recognized what the Ds did in the campaign that probably led to their defeat and we also gave a lot of benefit of the doubt to what was being said. But time and time again, all we're getting are people bashing the D party for things that the Rs did or refused to cooperate on. So all you're doing, by continuing to bash Ds and not hold Rs responsible for the shitshow we're currently seeing, is allowing them to grab more of the power. We understand the problems and have offered solutions. But those solutions aren't palatable to people like you and GH (collective). What you effectively want are for the Ds to assume total power and just kick the Rs out and invite a civil war to try and accelerate whatever asinine ideas you dream up. That isn't how it works.
This entire thread is just a circular argument. I don't think I have a moral superiority over you or GH. But I know that pouting because your ideal candidate didn't get in and handing the country to fascism isn't the play. Either put up or shut up. If you're not going to participate, then what grounds do you have to stand on to tell those that are, what to do? At the end of the day, we're a bunch of strangers on the internet arguing. It's not helping.
Again, this simply is not what happened and is not reflective of my participation in the discussion at all. You're acting like I just turned up and started blaming Democrats for everything. I'm here because I just don't buy the argument that was being made that anyone who didn't vote Democrat is responsible for everything that Trump decides to do. You are flipping that on its head and claiming that in defending those people, I'm somehow attacking the Democrats.
edited for niceness
And I'm saying that it is precisely the issue of them not supporting the platform that allowed this takeover. I'm not saying you personally, it's a collective. GH sits here and shits on the Ds for failing, but at the same time, it was enough people who were Ds that voted trump/third party/did not vote that caused this. And they are assigned some of the blame. To pin it all on the Ds is shifting blame so that they don't have to feel bad.
You're welcome to defend them and I'm sure they and others appreciate it. But at the end of the day, they are also to blame and should be held accountable for that as well as the D party. The D voters voted to keep trump out and it didn't work. The messaging was bad and the play was bad. But to now sit back and attack D voters because they voted? What's the angle or prize you're fishing for?
The prize I'm fishing for I suppose is a Democrat party that listens to its voters a little bit more, or frankly a Democrat party that listens to voters who share my perspective on world events.
I don't think I'll see that in my lifetime, but I definitely won't see it if people give the Democrat their vote unconditionally.
I'm also fishing for just a little bit of give and take here. I understand the argument that rationally, voting for the Dems is marginally better for the people of Gaza in the short term. I think in the long term it is worse for reasons I have described.
I also think that some acknowledgement that rationality, although very important, can be overridden in certain circumstances. Of course no Palestinian is going to vote for the party that took part in the slaughter of their family. Engaging with the topic on a human level, that should be obvious. Yet even when discussing that quite extreme example, people fall back on logic and rationality and refuse to empathize with those for whom that kind of discussion has gone out of the window.
There's a whole middle ground as well with general Middle-Eastern voters who feel that it is 'their people' that the Democrats have taken part in killing. I would wager that for alot of those people, voting rationally for a tiny percentage gain in survivability for the people of Gaza has gone out of the window just through sheer anger and sadness. To dismiss this and then blame those people for what Trump is doing is something I just can't get my head around.
Then we finally get to the people on this forum who are making arguments. There's no recognition that maybe some people engage with these world events on an emotional level and simply cannot bring themselves to vote for people who are taking part in genocide. There's no 'Maybe these people think completely different to how I think about events'. Its simply a numbers game. Calculate the percentage and vote accordingly. Rationality wins. Except as we've seen, it doesn't. The human element of this, the refusal to take part in something that a person sees as evil, is important even if it seems irrational and the numbers don't add up in the very short term.
I think, by and large quite a lot of the thread broadly agree with rather a lot of this, at least based on posting histories.
I know I do, broadly, speaking!
I think the friction point comes from something of a have your cake and eat it scenario. Voting is complicity in whatever thing crosses a red line, but the consequences of that don’t have anything to do with me.
I also think people here are perfectly aware of the emotive element of politics, but this also swings both ways. I’m sure trans folk are feeling quite a lot of strong emotions now they’re at the political mercy of the GOP for the next wee stretch.
More generally I’ve consistently bemoaned the combo of don’t court the left/blame them for political losses, not just in the States and elsewhere, so you’re basically preaching to the converted.
But speaking of the converted, well you gotta convert people. Bridges have to be built or we’re collectively fucked.
If roughly half of the country is now what medicine would clinically term completely fucking mental, there’s only so much of a post-mortem and blame apportioning the rest can indulge in before that elephant in the room shuffles over and smacks you with its glorious, glistening trunk.
It need not necessitate dropping one’s principles either, for the most part, merely communicate and build things better.
It need not necessitate eating the delicious dish of humble pie either, but folks are gonna have to concede some things.
In terms of individuals in the populace, not the Dem Party, folks pursued courses of action aligning with their values, that they earnestly thought would work.
But it didn’t work, hey it happens.
I don't know how someone who didn't vote Democrat can build a bridge to the people saying 'anyone who didn't vote Democrat is the enemy'.
It looks very much like that's an unbridgeable gap, unfortunately. Such is the extreme nature of US politics. The bridge you're wanting to build looks increasingly like a no man's land in a trench war.
I bet it would be a lot easier to build that bridge if all people saw int heir feeds wasn't stuff like "if you vote for the democrats, you are complicit in genocide".
Well I don't really have much of a response to this because I don't have GH's patience for going around in circles. I'm happy with the POV I've put forward here.
In other news, Trump has banned the AP from the Oval Office for using 'Gulf of Mexico'.
I wonder if I can get my government to insist that everyone now calls America 'Baby Diaper Land' out of respect for their current leaders.
On February 15 2025 00:58 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote: [quote] It's like talking to the Rs in this thread. The people like Jock and GH have this moral highground that they're unwilling to come down off of because they can't fathom being wrong in this case. The people who voted Ds aren't complicit in the war in Gaza or Ukraine. They're trying to get people in positions to stop it using democratic methods. Now they have to justify fuckin up the vote and convince themselves that abstaining from participating was the correct choice. Conciousness aside. This isn't about the right thing to do, it's about what makes them feel better when they go to sleep. "I tried but no one listened, guess that's all I can do. Time for napsies."
This is the third time i've told I'm trying to take the moral high ground, when I joined this conversation to try and empathize with the people that Dem voters were claiming were responsible for everything Trump is doing.
It is you (collective), not I, who was taking the moral high ground, and you don't even notice yourselves doing it.
Its not like the Democrats haven't been told, repeatedly, by every single non Democrat in America, that this behaviour is a massive turn off and gives out the impression that a) The Democrats and their voters believe they have the moral high ground absolutely b) Are perfectly happy telling everyone else they are evil c) Are incredibly arrogant about their self-defined position on the top of the moral superiority pyramid.
The problem is the refusal to even try and see anyone else's point of view. I've been told in this very thread that if I was a Palestinian who has watched their family slaughtered because of the policies of Democrats, that I should still vote Democrat. The lack of empathy is absolutely astonishing tbh.
On February 15 2025 01:08 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: [quote]
Okay, so let's play it out your way, according to your argument: A bunch of people decided not to vote for Kamala Harris because they were convinced that Harris losing would result in the Democrats finally changing their Israel-Palestine policy to be more pro-Palestine and less pro-Israel. How'd that plan work out for you / the non-Democratic voters? Do we see any indication that the Democratic party is now shifting towards being more pro-Palestine? Do we have any reason to think that Palestinians will be safer, thanks to non-Democratic voters aiding Trump?
In the short term, for the next few years, you have a good point here. It all falls apart if you look any further ahead than that. Why would the democrats ever need to listen to what their voters want again? They can just dictate what you are going to vote for and you'll vote for it to keep the Republicans out. Long term, I believe it is very helpful for political parties to genuinely believe that people will stop voting for them if they don't listen to their voters. That is the entire purpose of not voting Democrat in this case. It isn't going to make the lives of people in Gaza better, that horse has bolted. The ship has sailed. The people of Gaza are fucked because the Democrats decided it could be so.
Maybe though, next time the Democrats are in the middle of a genocide and an election is coming up, they'll think twice about their policies.
We recognized what the Ds did in the campaign that probably led to their defeat and we also gave a lot of benefit of the doubt to what was being said. But time and time again, all we're getting are people bashing the D party for things that the Rs did or refused to cooperate on. So all you're doing, by continuing to bash Ds and not hold Rs responsible for the shitshow we're currently seeing, is allowing them to grab more of the power. We understand the problems and have offered solutions. But those solutions aren't palatable to people like you and GH (collective). What you effectively want are for the Ds to assume total power and just kick the Rs out and invite a civil war to try and accelerate whatever asinine ideas you dream up. That isn't how it works.
This entire thread is just a circular argument. I don't think I have a moral superiority over you or GH. But I know that pouting because your ideal candidate didn't get in and handing the country to fascism isn't the play. Either put up or shut up. If you're not going to participate, then what grounds do you have to stand on to tell those that are, what to do? At the end of the day, we're a bunch of strangers on the internet arguing. It's not helping.
Again, this simply is not what happened and is not reflective of my participation in the discussion at all. You're acting like I just turned up and started blaming Democrats for everything. I'm here because I just don't buy the argument that was being made that anyone who didn't vote Democrat is responsible for everything that Trump decides to do. You are flipping that on its head and claiming that in defending those people, I'm somehow attacking the Democrats.
edited for niceness
And I'm saying that it is precisely the issue of them not supporting the platform that allowed this takeover. I'm not saying you personally, it's a collective. GH sits here and shits on the Ds for failing, but at the same time, it was enough people who were Ds that voted trump/third party/did not vote that caused this. And they are assigned some of the blame. To pin it all on the Ds is shifting blame so that they don't have to feel bad.
You're welcome to defend them and I'm sure they and others appreciate it. But at the end of the day, they are also to blame and should be held accountable for that as well as the D party. The D voters voted to keep trump out and it didn't work. The messaging was bad and the play was bad. But to now sit back and attack D voters because they voted? What's the angle or prize you're fishing for?
The prize I'm fishing for I suppose is a Democrat party that listens to its voters a little bit more, or frankly a Democrat party that listens to voters who share my perspective on world events.
I don't think I'll see that in my lifetime, but I definitely won't see it if people give the Democrat their vote unconditionally.
I'm also fishing for just a little bit of give and take here. I understand the argument that rationally, voting for the Dems is marginally better for the people of Gaza in the short term. I think in the long term it is worse for reasons I have described.
I also think that some acknowledgement that rationality, although very important, can be overridden in certain circumstances. Of course no Palestinian is going to vote for the party that took part in the slaughter of their family. Engaging with the topic on a human level, that should be obvious. Yet even when discussing that quite extreme example, people fall back on logic and rationality and refuse to empathize with those for whom that kind of discussion has gone out of the window.
There's a whole middle ground as well with general Middle-Eastern voters who feel that it is 'their people' that the Democrats have taken part in killing. I would wager that for alot of those people, voting rationally for a tiny percentage gain in survivability for the people of Gaza has gone out of the window just through sheer anger and sadness. To dismiss this and then blame those people for what Trump is doing is something I just can't get my head around.
Then we finally get to the people on this forum who are making arguments. There's no recognition that maybe some people engage with these world events on an emotional level and simply cannot bring themselves to vote for people who are taking part in genocide. There's no 'Maybe these people think completely different to how I think about events'. Its simply a numbers game. Calculate the percentage and vote accordingly. Rationality wins. Except as we've seen, it doesn't. The human element of this, the refusal to take part in something that a person sees as evil, is important even if it seems irrational and the numbers don't add up in the very short term.
I think, by and large quite a lot of the thread broadly agree with rather a lot of this, at least based on posting histories.
I know I do, broadly, speaking!
I think the friction point comes from something of a have your cake and eat it scenario. Voting is complicity in whatever thing crosses a red line, but the consequences of that don’t have anything to do with me.
I also think people here are perfectly aware of the emotive element of politics, but this also swings both ways. I’m sure trans folk are feeling quite a lot of strong emotions now they’re at the political mercy of the GOP for the next wee stretch.
More generally I’ve consistently bemoaned the combo of don’t court the left/blame them for political losses, not just in the States and elsewhere, so you’re basically preaching to the converted.
But speaking of the converted, well you gotta convert people. Bridges have to be built or we’re collectively fucked.
If roughly half of the country is now what medicine would clinically term completely fucking mental, there’s only so much of a post-mortem and blame apportioning the rest can indulge in before that elephant in the room shuffles over and smacks you with its glorious, glistening trunk.
It need not necessitate dropping one’s principles either, for the most part, merely communicate and build things better.
It need not necessitate eating the delicious dish of humble pie either, but folks are gonna have to concede some things.
In terms of individuals in the populace, not the Dem Party, folks pursued courses of action aligning with their values, that they earnestly thought would work.
But it didn’t work, hey it happens.
I don't know how someone who didn't vote Democrat can build a bridge to the people saying 'anyone who didn't vote Democrat is the enemy'.
It looks very much like that's an unbridgeable gap, unfortunately. Such is the extreme nature of US politics. The bridge you're wanting to build looks increasingly like a no man's land in a trench war.
I bet it would be a lot easier to build that bridge if all people saw int heir feeds wasn't stuff like "if you vote for the democrats, you are complicit in genocide".
Well I don't really have much of a response to this because I don't have GH's patience for going around in circles. I'm happy with the POV I've put forward here.
In other news, Trump has banned the AP from the Oval Office for using 'Gulf of Mexico'.
I wonder if I can get my government to insist that everyone now calls America 'Baby Diaper Land' out of respect for their current leaders.
Memerica. Entertainment über alles.
This gulf of Mexico thing is the most petty thing one could come up with on the priority list.
On February 15 2025 01:42 Jockmcplop wrote: [quote]
This is the third time i've told I'm trying to take the moral high ground, when I joined this conversation to try and empathize with the people that Dem voters were claiming were responsible for everything Trump is doing.
It is you (collective), not I, who was taking the moral high ground, and you don't even notice yourselves doing it.
Its not like the Democrats haven't been told, repeatedly, by every single non Democrat in America, that this behaviour is a massive turn off and gives out the impression that a) The Democrats and their voters believe they have the moral high ground absolutely b) Are perfectly happy telling everyone else they are evil c) Are incredibly arrogant about their self-defined position on the top of the moral superiority pyramid.
The problem is the refusal to even try and see anyone else's point of view. I've been told in this very thread that if I was a Palestinian who has watched their family slaughtered because of the policies of Democrats, that I should still vote Democrat. The lack of empathy is absolutely astonishing tbh.
[quote]
In the short term, for the next few years, you have a good point here. It all falls apart if you look any further ahead than that. Why would the democrats ever need to listen to what their voters want again? They can just dictate what you are going to vote for and you'll vote for it to keep the Republicans out. Long term, I believe it is very helpful for political parties to genuinely believe that people will stop voting for them if they don't listen to their voters. That is the entire purpose of not voting Democrat in this case. It isn't going to make the lives of people in Gaza better, that horse has bolted. The ship has sailed. The people of Gaza are fucked because the Democrats decided it could be so.
Maybe though, next time the Democrats are in the middle of a genocide and an election is coming up, they'll think twice about their policies.
We recognized what the Ds did in the campaign that probably led to their defeat and we also gave a lot of benefit of the doubt to what was being said. But time and time again, all we're getting are people bashing the D party for things that the Rs did or refused to cooperate on. So all you're doing, by continuing to bash Ds and not hold Rs responsible for the shitshow we're currently seeing, is allowing them to grab more of the power. We understand the problems and have offered solutions. But those solutions aren't palatable to people like you and GH (collective). What you effectively want are for the Ds to assume total power and just kick the Rs out and invite a civil war to try and accelerate whatever asinine ideas you dream up. That isn't how it works.
This entire thread is just a circular argument. I don't think I have a moral superiority over you or GH. But I know that pouting because your ideal candidate didn't get in and handing the country to fascism isn't the play. Either put up or shut up. If you're not going to participate, then what grounds do you have to stand on to tell those that are, what to do? At the end of the day, we're a bunch of strangers on the internet arguing. It's not helping.
Again, this simply is not what happened and is not reflective of my participation in the discussion at all. You're acting like I just turned up and started blaming Democrats for everything. I'm here because I just don't buy the argument that was being made that anyone who didn't vote Democrat is responsible for everything that Trump decides to do. You are flipping that on its head and claiming that in defending those people, I'm somehow attacking the Democrats.
edited for niceness
And I'm saying that it is precisely the issue of them not supporting the platform that allowed this takeover. I'm not saying you personally, it's a collective. GH sits here and shits on the Ds for failing, but at the same time, it was enough people who were Ds that voted trump/third party/did not vote that caused this. And they are assigned some of the blame. To pin it all on the Ds is shifting blame so that they don't have to feel bad.
You're welcome to defend them and I'm sure they and others appreciate it. But at the end of the day, they are also to blame and should be held accountable for that as well as the D party. The D voters voted to keep trump out and it didn't work. The messaging was bad and the play was bad. But to now sit back and attack D voters because they voted? What's the angle or prize you're fishing for?
The prize I'm fishing for I suppose is a Democrat party that listens to its voters a little bit more, or frankly a Democrat party that listens to voters who share my perspective on world events.
I don't think I'll see that in my lifetime, but I definitely won't see it if people give the Democrat their vote unconditionally.
I'm also fishing for just a little bit of give and take here. I understand the argument that rationally, voting for the Dems is marginally better for the people of Gaza in the short term. I think in the long term it is worse for reasons I have described.
I also think that some acknowledgement that rationality, although very important, can be overridden in certain circumstances. Of course no Palestinian is going to vote for the party that took part in the slaughter of their family. Engaging with the topic on a human level, that should be obvious. Yet even when discussing that quite extreme example, people fall back on logic and rationality and refuse to empathize with those for whom that kind of discussion has gone out of the window.
There's a whole middle ground as well with general Middle-Eastern voters who feel that it is 'their people' that the Democrats have taken part in killing. I would wager that for alot of those people, voting rationally for a tiny percentage gain in survivability for the people of Gaza has gone out of the window just through sheer anger and sadness. To dismiss this and then blame those people for what Trump is doing is something I just can't get my head around.
Then we finally get to the people on this forum who are making arguments. There's no recognition that maybe some people engage with these world events on an emotional level and simply cannot bring themselves to vote for people who are taking part in genocide. There's no 'Maybe these people think completely different to how I think about events'. Its simply a numbers game. Calculate the percentage and vote accordingly. Rationality wins. Except as we've seen, it doesn't. The human element of this, the refusal to take part in something that a person sees as evil, is important even if it seems irrational and the numbers don't add up in the very short term.
I think, by and large quite a lot of the thread broadly agree with rather a lot of this, at least based on posting histories.
I know I do, broadly, speaking!
I think the friction point comes from something of a have your cake and eat it scenario. Voting is complicity in whatever thing crosses a red line, but the consequences of that don’t have anything to do with me.
I also think people here are perfectly aware of the emotive element of politics, but this also swings both ways. I’m sure trans folk are feeling quite a lot of strong emotions now they’re at the political mercy of the GOP for the next wee stretch.
More generally I’ve consistently bemoaned the combo of don’t court the left/blame them for political losses, not just in the States and elsewhere, so you’re basically preaching to the converted.
But speaking of the converted, well you gotta convert people. Bridges have to be built or we’re collectively fucked.
If roughly half of the country is now what medicine would clinically term completely fucking mental, there’s only so much of a post-mortem and blame apportioning the rest can indulge in before that elephant in the room shuffles over and smacks you with its glorious, glistening trunk.
It need not necessitate dropping one’s principles either, for the most part, merely communicate and build things better.
It need not necessitate eating the delicious dish of humble pie either, but folks are gonna have to concede some things.
In terms of individuals in the populace, not the Dem Party, folks pursued courses of action aligning with their values, that they earnestly thought would work.
But it didn’t work, hey it happens.
I don't know how someone who didn't vote Democrat can build a bridge to the people saying 'anyone who didn't vote Democrat is the enemy'.
It looks very much like that's an unbridgeable gap, unfortunately. Such is the extreme nature of US politics. The bridge you're wanting to build looks increasingly like a no man's land in a trench war.
I bet it would be a lot easier to build that bridge if all people saw int heir feeds wasn't stuff like "if you vote for the democrats, you are complicit in genocide".
Well I don't really have much of a response to this because I don't have GH's patience for going around in circles. I'm happy with the POV I've put forward here.
In other news, Trump has banned the AP from the Oval Office for using 'Gulf of Mexico'.
I wonder if I can get my government to insist that everyone now calls America 'Baby Diaper Land' out of respect for their current leaders.
Memerica. Entertainment über alles.
This gulf of Mexico thing is the most petty thing one could come up with on the priority list.
The Karenification of NA.
No, its just a nice excuse to ban non-conservative controlled media.
I think its easy to discount the impact conservative media has had on America, its everywhere and anyone who has clicked on the 'wrong' video on Youtube can probably attest to how easy it is to fall into a bubble where your feed is full of the crap.
On February 15 2025 00:11 Jockmcplop wrote: [quote] I disagree. Simply existing does make you complicit in anything. Making a positive choice to be complicit in something makes you complicit.
Let me put this another way. How is a person supposed to convince the Democrats to change their policy without threatening to withhold their vote, and actually meaning it? It is the only lever anybody has.
What do you mean by "change their policy"? The Democratic policy wouldn't improve as a result of them losing the election; the only thing that would change is that Palestinians would have to deal with the Republican policy, which is even worse.
Biden worked to create a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel - the very one that's still mostly working right now, even while Trump is president - and during the election, Harris repeatedly pledged to continue pushing for a peaceful end where Gaza/Palestinians aren't completely overrun by Israel. The Democrats' two-state solution where Palestinians still exist would have been a much better situation than what Trump was/is pushing for, where he's okay with Israel taking over completely.
The non-Democratic voters worked against the Democrats' vision and ended up aiding the Republicans' vision, which is about as anti-Gaza as you could get. (One could argue that Biden/Harris didn't/wouldn't do everything in their power to stop Netanyahu, and that Biden/Harris are extremely flawed when it comes to this issue, but they're still miles ahead of Trump's vision... and non-Democratic voters weren't willing to pick the more helpful of the two options.)
It's like talking to the Rs in this thread. The people like Jock and GH have this moral highground that they're unwilling to come down off of because they can't fathom being wrong in this case. The people who voted Ds aren't complicit in the war in Gaza or Ukraine. They're trying to get people in positions to stop it using democratic methods. Now they have to justify fuckin up the vote and convince themselves that abstaining from participating was the correct choice. Conciousness aside. This isn't about the right thing to do, it's about what makes them feel better when they go to sleep. "I tried but no one listened, guess that's all I can do. Time for napsies."
This is the third time i've told I'm trying to take the moral high ground, when I joined this conversation to try and empathize with the people that Dem voters were claiming were responsible for everything Trump is doing.
It is you (collective), not I, who was taking the moral high ground, and you don't even notice yourselves doing it.
Its not like the Democrats haven't been told, repeatedly, by every single non Democrat in America, that this behaviour is a massive turn off and gives out the impression that a) The Democrats and their voters believe they have the moral high ground absolutely b) Are perfectly happy telling everyone else they are evil c) Are incredibly arrogant about their self-defined position on the top of the moral superiority pyramid.
The problem is the refusal to even try and see anyone else's point of view. I've been told in this very thread that if I was a Palestinian who has watched their family slaughtered because of the policies of Democrats, that I should still vote Democrat. The lack of empathy is absolutely astonishing tbh.
On February 15 2025 01:08 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
On February 15 2025 00:59 Jockmcplop wrote:
On February 15 2025 00:53 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: [quote]
What do you mean by "change their policy"? The Democratic policy wouldn't improve as a result of them losing the election; the only thing that would change is that Palestinians would have to deal with the Republican policy, which is even worse.
Biden worked to create a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel - the very one that's still mostly working right now, even while Trump is president - and during the election, Harris repeatedly pledged to continue pushing for a peaceful end where Gaza/Palestinians aren't completely overrun by Israel. The Democrats' two-state solution where Palestinians still exist would have been a much better situation than what Trump was/is pushing for, where he's okay with Israel taking over completely.
The non-Democratic voters worked against the Democrats' vision and ended up aiding the Republicans' vision, which is about as anti-Gaza as you could get. (One could argue that Biden/Harris didn't/wouldn't do everything in their power to stop Netanyahu, and that Biden/Harris are extremely flawed when it comes to this issue, but they're still miles ahead of Trump's vision... and non-Democratic voters weren't willing to pick the more helpful of the two options.)
By 'change their policy' I mean stop selling the weapons that kill the civilians in Gaza, stop unconditionally supporting any extremity of action that Israel decides is appropriate, and stop being the single world power who more than anyone else has caused this genocide to occur.
Sure, well done, they engineered a ceasefire after so many civilians unnecessarily died at the hands of the US's little brother while the Democrats sat there and applauded, but for me, that doesn't inspire me to vote for them.
I get it, you are unconditionally a Dem voter, but you shouldn't assume that everyone else will give their vote out so easily.
And let's be clear here, the Democrats' vision wasn't a ceasefire and then peace forever, it was a ceasefire that allows them restock Israel with newer, more expensive weapons for the next round of massacre in a few years.
Okay, so let's play it out your way, according to your argument: A bunch of people decided not to vote for Kamala Harris because they were convinced that Harris losing would result in the Democrats finally changing their Israel-Palestine policy to be more pro-Palestine and less pro-Israel. How'd that plan work out for you / the non-Democratic voters? Do we see any indication that the Democratic party is now shifting towards being more pro-Palestine? Do we have any reason to think that Palestinians will be safer, thanks to non-Democratic voters aiding Trump?
In the short term, for the next few years, you have a good point here. It all falls apart if you look any further ahead than that. Why would the democrats ever need to listen to what their voters want again? They can just dictate what you are going to vote for and you'll vote for it to keep the Republicans out. Long term, I believe it is very helpful for political parties to genuinely believe that people will stop voting for them if they don't listen to their voters. That is the entire purpose of not voting Democrat in this case. It isn't going to make the lives of people in Gaza better, that horse has bolted. The ship has sailed. The people of Gaza are fucked because the Democrats decided it could be so.
Maybe though, next time the Democrats are in the middle of a genocide and an election is coming up, they'll think twice about their policies.
We recognized what the Ds did in the campaign that probably led to their defeat and we also gave a lot of benefit of the doubt to what was being said. But time and time again, all we're getting are people bashing the D party for things that the Rs did or refused to cooperate on. So all you're doing, by continuing to bash Ds and not hold Rs responsible for the shitshow we're currently seeing, is allowing them to grab more of the power. We understand the problems and have offered solutions. But those solutions aren't palatable to people like you and GH (collective). What you effectively want are for the Ds to assume total power and just kick the Rs out and invite a civil war to try and accelerate whatever asinine ideas you dream up. That isn't how it works.
This entire thread is just a circular argument. I don't think I have a moral superiority over you or GH. But I know that pouting because your ideal candidate didn't get in and handing the country to fascism isn't the play. Either put up or shut up. If you're not going to participate, then what grounds do you have to stand on to tell those that are, what to do? At the end of the day, we're a bunch of strangers on the internet arguing. It's not helping.
Again, this simply is not what happened and is not reflective of my participation in the discussion at all. You're acting like I just turned up and started blaming Democrats for everything. I'm here because I just don't buy the argument that was being made that anyone who didn't vote Democrat is responsible for everything that Trump decides to do. You are flipping that on its head and claiming that in defending those people, I'm somehow attacking the Democrats.
edited for niceness
And I'm saying that it is precisely the issue of them not supporting the platform that allowed this takeover. I'm not saying you personally, it's a collective. GH sits here and shits on the Ds for failing, but at the same time, it was enough people who were Ds that voted trump/third party/did not vote that caused this. And they are assigned some of the blame. To pin it all on the Ds is shifting blame so that they don't have to feel bad.
You're welcome to defend them and I'm sure they and others appreciate it. But at the end of the day, they are also to blame and should be held accountable for that as well as the D party. The D voters voted to keep trump out and it didn't work. The messaging was bad and the play was bad. But to now sit back and attack D voters because they voted? What's the angle or prize you're fishing for?
The prize I'm fishing for I suppose is a Democrat party that listens to its voters a little bit more, or frankly a Democrat party that listens to voters who share my perspective on world events.
I don't think I'll see that in my lifetime, but I definitely won't see it if people give the Democrat their vote unconditionally.
I'm also fishing for just a little bit of give and take here. I understand the argument that rationally, voting for the Dems is marginally better for the people of Gaza in the short term. I think in the long term it is worse for reasons I have described.
I also think that some acknowledgement that rationality, although very important, can be overridden in certain circumstances. Of course no Palestinian is going to vote for the party that took part in the slaughter of their family. Engaging with the topic on a human level, that should be obvious. Yet even when discussing that quite extreme example, people fall back on logic and rationality and refuse to empathize with those for whom that kind of discussion has gone out of the window.
There's a whole middle ground as well with general Middle-Eastern voters who feel that it is 'their people' that the Democrats have taken part in killing. I would wager that for alot of those people, voting rationally for a tiny percentage gain in survivability for the people of Gaza has gone out of the window just through sheer anger and sadness. To dismiss this and then blame those people for what Trump is doing is something I just can't get my head around.
Then we finally get to the people on this forum who are making arguments. There's no recognition that maybe some people engage with these world events on an emotional level and simply cannot bring themselves to vote for people who are taking part in genocide. There's no 'Maybe these people think completely different to how I think about events'. Its simply a numbers game. Calculate the percentage and vote accordingly. Rationality wins. Except as we've seen, it doesn't. The human element of this, the refusal to take part in something that a person sees as evil, is important even if it seems irrational and the numbers don't add up in the very short term.
I think, by and large quite a lot of the thread broadly agree with rather a lot of this, at least based on posting histories.
I know I do, broadly, speaking!
I think the friction point comes from something of a have your cake and eat it scenario. Voting is complicity in whatever thing crosses a red line, but the consequences of that don’t have anything to do with me.
I also think people here are perfectly aware of the emotive element of politics, but this also swings both ways. I’m sure trans folk are feeling quite a lot of strong emotions now they’re at the political mercy of the GOP for the next wee stretch.
More generally I’ve consistently bemoaned the combo of don’t court the left/blame them for political losses, not just in the States and elsewhere, so you’re basically preaching to the converted.
But speaking of the converted, well you gotta convert people. Bridges have to be built or we’re collectively fucked.
If roughly half of the country is now what medicine would clinically term completely fucking mental, there’s only so much of a post-mortem and blame apportioning the rest can indulge in before that elephant in the room shuffles over and smacks you with its glorious, glistening trunk.
It need not necessitate dropping one’s principles either, for the most part, merely communicate and build things better.
It need not necessitate eating the delicious dish of humble pie either, but folks are gonna have to concede some things.
In terms of individuals in the populace, not the Dem Party, folks pursued courses of action aligning with their values, that they earnestly thought would work.
But it didn’t work, hey it happens.
I don't know how someone who didn't vote Democrat can build a bridge to the people saying 'anyone who didn't vote Democrat is the enemy'.
It looks very much like that's an unbridgeable gap, unfortunately. Such is the extreme nature of US politics. The bridge you're wanting to build looks increasingly like a no man's land in a trench war.
Who said that those that didn't vote democrat is the enemy?
On February 15 2025 08:00 GreenHorizons wrote: People know they can discuss socialism with me on my blog so I'd like to get people's thoughts on this stuff going on with Mayor Adams (D-NYC)
The governor of New York state, Kathy Hochul, has the power to remove Adams from office.
this shit bananas. just firing people until you find someone willing to drop the case. that’s fucking crazy. absolutely disgusting.
i’d love to be surprised but hochul won’t do shit.
The whole Eric Adams pretending it isn't quid pro quo only to have Trump's immigration czar threaten him by pointing out it quite literally is quid pro quo felt pretty surreal.
Seems like that should be more than enough for Hochul to get rid of him. What benefit do Democrats gain by keeping Adams around?
Trump fired - and then had to immediately rehire - hundreds of important staffers, not realizing that their specific jobs were to *manage our nation's nuclear arsenal*. This is why blindly defunding agencies and recklessly removing experts are potentially catastrophic moves... kind of like when Trump stupidly disbanded Obama's Pandemic Response Team instead of using it to mitigate the devastation from covid-19.
This was also a thing in the past, with someone wanting to close the Department of Energy before learning that they, and not the DoD, maintain the nuclear missiles.
It's a matter of if, not when, a pinnacle event will occur because of all their meddling in the rank-and-file portions of the executive branch. Air traffic control is probably temporarily safe due to all the concern lately about aviation accidents. The nuclear-themed agencies are more hit-or-miss right now.
But hey, according to oBlade, this guy knows how the governmental agencies function due to him being having been and currently being the president. What a fucking clown.
On February 16 2025 02:15 Uldridge wrote: But hey, according to oBlade, this guy knows how the governmental agencies function due to him being having been and currently being the president. What a fucking clown.
The world is not ending because 50-300 probationary employees are or aren't getting fired by cabinet officials doing downsizing. Just like it didn't when Clinton trimmed the federal bureaucracy. You simply need to breathe.
On February 16 2025 02:15 Uldridge wrote: But hey, according to oBlade, this guy knows how the governmental agencies function due to him being having been and currently being the president. What a fucking clown.
The world is not ending because 50-300 probationary employees are or aren't getting fired by cabinet officials doing downsizing. Just like it didn't when Clinton trimmed the federal bureaucracy. You simply need to breathe.
It doesn't take that many government employees in the same division being fired, without authorization to immediately re-fill those positions, for the wheels to come off a government service or regulatory role. Even if transfer or hiring is allowed, it can take a lot of time to replace several overlapping specialists effectively if all the knowledge is now gone. Many specialized jobs in the government take years of experience/training to do effectively without hand-holding. That's why downsizing needs to follow careful analysis of what employees are minimally needed. DoGE doesn't seem to really put much effort into reading/analyzing those analyses... they shoot first ask questions later, hence stories starting to pop up of firings being reversed when they took a closer look.
If my boss and his boss retire (which they've been thinking about since even before 2025), I am fired (which they shouldn't be allowed to do arbitrarily but all bets are off right now), and like 1-2 other adjacent people who are fairly knowledgeable in my area leave or are fired, there will be nobody who can fill my role, which is rightfully considered essential (hence I work during shutdowns etc). It doesn't take 50 people... just like 3, if timing is bad, for the Navy to need to start seeing impacts to missions. Of course, that's just an example, although there's not a ton of redundancy for my role obviously. There are admittedly plenty of jobs in the government where the consequences of a poorly thought out firing or three won't have such immediate and significant impacts. I don't think DoGE really knows which jobs are which, though.
There has been some back and forth on this board about whether Trump is irrational or he is "Crazy Like A Fox".
Fantastic Analysis of Donald Trump's foreign policy strats: Is Calculated Chaos Trump's Key Strategy? Canadians are excellent at negotiating with Americans and I think Steve Paikin did a great job in this episode of "The Agenda".
On February 16 2025 02:15 Uldridge wrote: But hey, according to oBlade, this guy knows how the governmental agencies function due to him being having been and currently being the president. What a fucking clown.
The world is not ending because 50-300 probationary employees are or aren't getting fired by cabinet officials doing downsizing. Just like it didn't when Clinton trimmed the federal bureaucracy. You simply need to breathe.
Amongst the dozen or so Federal government workers I know in the US Navy and in the FDIC... right now.. its a shitshow. Everyone is hanging on for dear life.
Trump's moves have been chaotic relative to Clinton's. It is interesting that there are some very valid and boring criticisms of Trump's moves thus far that never make it into mainstream media.
Overall, I think Trump is doing a great job, however, he is far from flawless. When you do as much as he as done in such a short time period errors are inevitable.
“The beauty of doing nothing is that you can do it perfectly. Only when you do something is it almost impossible to do it without mistakes. Therefore people who are contributing nothing to society, except their constant criticisms, can feel both intellectually and morally superior.” - Thomas Sowell
Also, regarding Canada/US international relations.... I am pumped tonight for the Canada/USA hockey game. The atmosphere in Montreal's Bell Centre will be electric. I've been looking forward to it all week.
On February 16 2025 09:25 JimmyJRaynor wrote: There has been some back and forth on this board about whether Trump is irrational or he is "Crazy Like A Fox".
no, there hasn’t. you’re the only one saying this.
the game is.. a little crazy though. three fights in the first minute. looks like they’re playing hockey now though.
On February 16 2025 09:25 JimmyJRaynor wrote: There has been some back and forth on this board about whether Trump is irrational or he is "Crazy Like A Fox".
no, there hasn’t. you’re the only one saying this. the game is.. a little crazy though. three fights in the first minute. looks like they’re playing hockey now though.
is this board some kind of political authority though? i'm backing my points in the back and forth. the panelists know what they are talking about on "The Agenda" and the consensus is that it is calculated chaos and they back it up with all kinds of historical examples of Trump's previous moves.
if you have any direct rebuttals to Drezner's or Stein's explanations about Trump's track record though.. i'm all ears.
If the "Controlled Chaos" analysis of Trump's actions had zero merit it would not be a topic on "The Agenda".
On February 16 2025 10:43 brian wrote: the game is.. a little crazy though. three fights in the first minute.
The Soviet Union got a better reception during the height of the cold war than the USA got tonight.
On February 16 2025 09:25 JimmyJRaynor wrote: There has been some back and forth on this board about whether Trump is irrational or he is "Crazy Like A Fox".
no, there hasn’t. you’re the only one saying this. the game is.. a little crazy though. three fights in the first minute. looks like they’re playing hockey now though.
is this board some kind of political authority though? i'm backing my points in the back and forth.
We have about a decade of Trump acting like a moron, and the most recent incident was him accidentally firing and immediately needing to rehire essential employees because, again, Trump is a moron. Your arguments that he's crafty aren't persuasive, because we all know better.
On February 16 2025 09:25 JimmyJRaynor wrote: There has been some back and forth on this board about whether Trump is irrational or he is "Crazy Like A Fox".
no, there hasn’t. you’re the only one saying this. the game is.. a little crazy though. three fights in the first minute. looks like they’re playing hockey now though.
is this board some kind of political authority though? i'm backing my points in the back and forth.
We have about a decade of Trump acting like a moron, and the most recent incident was him accidentally firing and immediately needing to rehire essential employees because, again, Trump is a moron. Your arguments that he's crafty aren't persuasive, because we all know better.
You should just post thirty minute videos as a rebuttal because the only “backing” Jimmy ever does is using media to appeal to authority. You can do the same thing.
The last time he did this by posting an article, not even properly summarised too, ended up being a milquetoast article that wasn’t actually saying anything substantial/enlightening but also actually behind the 8 ball because the conservatives have already openly admitted some of the shit the lady was hypothesising. Shit even some of the shit she was saying was said by me and I didn’t work for the Canadian government.
On February 16 2025 09:25 JimmyJRaynor wrote: There has been some back and forth on this board about whether Trump is irrational or he is "Crazy Like A Fox".
no, there hasn’t. you’re the only one saying this. the game is.. a little crazy though. three fights in the first minute. looks like they’re playing hockey now though.
is this board some kind of political authority though? i'm backing my points in the back and forth.
We have about a decade of Trump acting like a moron, and the most recent incident was him accidentally firing and immediately needing to rehire essential employees because, again, Trump is a moron. Your arguments that he's crafty aren't persuasive, because we all know better.
You should just post thirty minute videos as a rebuttal because the only “backing” Jimmy ever does is using media to appeal to authority. You can do the same thing.
The last time he did this by posting an article, not even properly summarised too, ended by being a milquetoast article with content already been said before but also actually behind the 8 ball because the conservatives have already admitted the shit the lady was hypothesising. Shit even some of the shit she was saying was said by me and I didn’t work for the Canadian government.
Who cares if Donald Trump destroys the country as long as he makes fun of Justin Trudeau while doing it!!! /s
EPT
