US elections 2016 - "Go ahead, throw your vote away"

[Jace, Extat]

6 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Why you shouldn't vote third party: Because the third party people are fucking idiots. 

 

×slow clap×

[The Mance]

Vote for Gary Johnson in 2,000,000,016!

[The Anti-Targ]

2 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Why you shouldn't vote third party: Because the third party people are fucking idiots. 

 

LOL!!! I wonder over what timescale he thinks this expansion of the sun thing will happen? IIRC the red giant engulfment is about 5 billion years away. It is true that the sun is getting hotter and Earth will no longer be in the habitable zone sooner than 5 billion years. But I think that time scale is about 500 million years. So we have a wee bit of time still where Earth is going to be our only/primary viable home.

Still, on another level global warming isn't a threat to life, not even a threat to humanity. It would cause problems, like lots of people dying and being displaced, but we, and more importantly the Earth would adapt. The question really is do we put resources into adapting or into limiting/reversing. With all the foot dragging the major polluters are and have been doing, perhaps getting ahead of the game with adapting to the shit we've created is the better way to go now. The limiting/mitigating window may have closed. With the news that the rate of ise loss from Greenland is more than has been estimated up to now, it seems more and more likely that almost all we can do now is getting on with trying to cope. Humanity is too useless, selfish and tribal right now to really solve the big problems.

 

[James Arryn]

3 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I don't know.  But 140,000,000 people is a lot of bigotry.  Regardless of how awful the bigotry is that an awful lot of people to worry about.  Some people if engaged harshly are likely to respond in kind.  But in fairness harsh and ridculing treatment is the only way to get through to some people.  However, it's a dice roll as to whether or not such treatment will work or if it will push them deeper into their noxious ideology. 

I have no simply answer to this rather glaring problem.

I hate to invoke Godwin, but go back to Germany in the late 20's...how should the significant % of that country well on their way to becoming Nazis have been accounted for? I get what you're struggling with, and I appreciate that you aren't pulling punches in calling bigotry what it is, but the arbitration approach to any conflict automatically imbues each side with some legitimacy. Do you want bigotry to be given legitimacy? I know you don't, and you're trying to find another path. I hope you come up with something.

But the U.S. has a long and troubling track record wrt bigotry, been a-ok with taking extreme positions on race, etc. And those periods have often been arrived at through compromise and then sustained through pseudo 'freedom/patriotism' and that weird American resolve that becomes stronger the more it becomes globally isolated, and I think we might be heading towards another of these dark times. So until you come up with a third path, I have to choose to yell 'bigotry' at bigotry even if, as we agree, that pisses off and probably shuts off a big chunk of the populace.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

I hate to invoke Godwin, but go back to Germany in the late 20's...how should the significant % of that country well on their way to becoming Nazis have been accounted for? I get what you're struggling with, and I appreciate that you aren't pulling punches in calling bigotry what it is, but the arbitration approach to any conflict automatically imbues each side with some legitimacy. Do you want bigotry to be given legitimacy? I know you don't, and you're trying to find another path. I hope you come up with something.

But the U.S. has a long and troubling track record wrt bigotry, been a-ok with taking extreme positions on race, etc. And those periods have often been arrived at through compromise and then sustained through pseudo 'freedom/patriotism' and that weird American resolve that becomes stronger the more it becomes globally isolated, and I think we might be heading towards another of these dark times. So until you come up with a third path, I have to choose to yell 'bigotry' at bigotry even if, as we agree, that pisses off and probably shuts off a big chunk of the populace.

I get where you are coming from and thank you for seeing my point.  

[Shryke]

2 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

How many of them are this dumb? Seems like a lot. Or at least they have those dumb opinions but are smart enough not to trip over a camera crew looking for juicy examples of American morons. There's a shocking percentage of white people who think black people aren't systematically discriminated against, that there's no racial police violence problem, that white people are persecuted, etc.

Alot of white people in america apparently believe race relations are worse now then they were back in, say, the 1950s. They just think the reason that is so is because anti-white racism is now a bigger problem then anti-black racism.

Here's some stuff on it if you want:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/07/21/white-people-think-racism-is-getting-worse-against-white-people/?utm_term=.11c407230e31

These guys have a paper from I think 2011 or so that basically talked about white views on race relations vs black views and the biggest takeaway was that white people viewed racial issues as a zero-sum game and so as black people are less discriminated against, white people are discriminated against more.

The larger point is generally that alot of white people in america have deeply fucked up views on race and deeply resent the perceived loss of preferential position within american society. And so, well, they want to fix that. They want to make america like it used to be. To make it great again.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 minutes ago, Shryke said:

Alot of white people in america apparently believe race relations are worse now then they were back in, say, the 1950s. They just think the reason that is so is because anti-white racism is now a bigger problem then anti-black racism.

Here's some stuff on it if you want:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/07/21/white-people-think-racism-is-getting-worse-against-white-people/?utm_term=.11c407230e31

These guys have a paper from I think 2011 or so that basically talked about white views on race relations vs black views and the biggest takeaway was that white people viewed racial issues as a zero-sum game and so as black people are less discriminated against, white people are discriminated against more.

The larger point is generally that alot of white people in america have deeply fucked up views on race and deeply resent the perceived loss of preferential position within american society. And so, well, they want to fix that. They want to make america like it used to be. To make it great again.

Yeah, it's really messed up.  What is incredibly problematic is that there appear to be so many of them.

[Shryke]

5 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I don't know.  But 140,000,000 people is a lot of bigotry.  Regardless of how awful the bigotry is that an awful lot of people to worry about.  Some people if engaged harshly are likely to respond in kind.  But in fairness harsh and ridculing treatment is the only way to get through to some people.  However, it's a dice roll as to whether or not such treatment will work or if it will push them deeper into their noxious ideology. 

I have no simply answer to this rather glaring problem.

Show them it's socially unacceptable and just keep pushing to have that ideology pushed out of the mainstream and into the shadows were it can eventually wither. It's basically all you can do in the long run.

At the moment the best way for that to happen is for Trump to be crushed come the election. The worst thing that can happen is a near miss and the group that has come together behind him becomes more emboldened and legitimised. And then 4 years from now you maybe get the same thing over again, except with terrifying competence at the helm.

[Shryke]

2 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Why you shouldn't vote third party: Because the third party people are fucking idiots. 

 

As I've said before, Johnson is a moron running a scam campaign. Just after the bombing in NY he commented that "at least no one was hurt" on I believe CNN, essentially showcasing his complete lack of awareness of anything that was going on. And, last I checked, he's still funnelling almost all his campaign funds into "consultants" that seem to produce essentially nothing.

But that's the problem with 3rd party candidates at this level. They are jokes. Charlatans and morons to the man. Johnson is a bit of both. Stein seems at least genuine, she's just also genuinely stupid and incompetent and pushing the accelerationism angle. And losing to a dead gorilla in many polls.

But many idiots are turning to these candidates, at least when answering polls, despite what's happening in the real race and apparently without ever actually paying attention to anything these fuckers actually say on the campaign trail. But then, apparently no one learns from history. Not 2000, not 1968 and I will bet a few decades from now, not 2016.

[Altherion]

4 hours ago, James Arryn said:

So until you come up with a third path, I have to choose to yell 'bigotry' at bigotry even if, as we agree, that pisses off and probably shuts off a big chunk of the populace.

In fact, this is precisely what the elites and their servants in academia and the media have been doing for decades. To be more precise, the Republicans would appeal to the people who are shouting at, but within very well defined boundaries (i.e. using "dog whistles" which can be plausibly denied rather than outright saying anything politically incorrect). The Democrats would loudly shout at any instance of political incorrectness and corporations would withdraw funding. Of course, the drawback of this approach is that eventually a demagogue like Trump comes along and makes political incorrectness into a virtue.

Trump himself might not win: he is aiming for a national prize and, as has been pointed out ad nauseum in practically every thread on this topic, he has many flaws independent of what you call "bigotry." However, you can be sure that more conventional and less flawed politicians are looking at how well political incorrectness has served him in this campaign. The wonderful thing about having 140 million silenced people on your side is that even if you cannot win nationally, it may be possible to win quite a few states by simply giving them a voice.

2 hours ago, Shryke said:

At the moment the best way for that to happen is for Trump to be crushed come the election. The worst thing that can happen is a near miss and the group that has come together behind him becomes more emboldened and legitimised.

Out of curiosity, how do you defined "crushed" and "near miss" in this context?

[The Anti-Targ]

4 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I get where you are coming from and thank you for seeing my point.  

Sometimes a big, ugly, festering boil just needs to be burst and cause a huge mess and a gaping ugly hole before it can start to heal. Minority relations (because it's not solely about race, and you can probably put women among the "minority" even though they are a slight majority) may well just be a boil that has to burst.

Or for another medical analogy, some cancers can only be cured by almost poisoning the patient to death, and you hope like hell that the cancer dies faster than the patient.

People who don't know any better think racism is cured because a black man became president. Or that sexism is cured because a woman is president (not yet of course), or because the law of the land says you're not allowed to discriminate on the basis of race or sex. But cancer is only cured when it has been completely removed from the body. And so bigotry will only be cured when there aren't 100,000,000 or more bigots in the country.

Maybe it'll only happen when all those bigots are dead (of old age of course) and the only solution is a generational one where you sequester the bigots from society as much as possible (by not electing them to public office) so allow for succeeding generations to grow up not being indoctrinated with bigoted ideas. One problem I see with the interwebs, is that the current young generation seems to be getting exposed to (and absorbing) as much bigotry as it is progressive liberal thought. So the generational approach seems like it will have to wait for a generation or two before it can start to have any effect.

One approach we have to crime is to lock away criminals, especially the ones who are beyond rehabilitation. We cut them off from society. In a figurative way, for some of the worst examples of intolerance and hatred of otherness that may be the only solution. Cut them off from society, isolate them so that their influence withers and dies.

When the wolf threatens the sheep you either kill it, or you put up barriers. You don't try to negotiate with it and see if you can let if have a place among the sheep as long as it promises to not eat them. 

[James Arryn]

12 minutes ago, Altherion said:

In fact, this is precisely what the elites and their servants in academia and the media have been doing for decades. To be more precise, the Republicans would appeal to the people who are shouting at, but within very well defined boundaries (i.e. using "dog whistles" which can be plausibly denied rather than outright saying anything politically incorrect). The Democrats would loudly shout at any instance of political incorrectness and corporations would withdraw funding. Of course, the drawback of this approach is that eventually a demagogue like Trump comes along and makes political incorrectness into a virtue.

Trump himself might not win: he is aiming for a national prize and, as has been pointed out ad nauseum in practically every thread on this topic, he has many flaws independent of what you call "bigotry." However, you can be sure that more conventional and less flawed politicians are looking at how well political incorrectness has served him in this campaign. The wonderful thing about having 140 million silenced people on your side is that even if you cannot win nationally, it may be possible to win quite a few states by simply giving them a voice.

Out of curiosity, how do you defined "crushed" and "near miss" in this context?

What are the specific distinctions between bigotry and not being politically correct in Trump's actions? Are you actually saying it's only the latter? If there's bigotry, you'd suggest not shouting about it because it'll have blowback?

And that aside, you do realize that bigotry has been a big political seller for like ever, long before the concept of political correctness even existed, right? In fact, what you're calling political correctness came about as a means of trying to correct that big seller. Take it out and we're right back here anyways, excepting more bigoted but without that back door excuse for bigots, so everyone's less happy.

Like anything, reactions to bigotry can get out of hand, and people can see it where it's not. But do you really want to hang your hat on that being true in this case? 

[Altherion]

5 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

What are the specific distinctions between bigotry and political correctness evident in Trump's actions? If there's bigotry, you'd suggest not shouting about because it'll have blowback?

Take a look at the dictionary's definition of bigotry: "stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one's own." By this definition, the behavior of people who call millions of others "deplorable", "irredeemable", "morally wrong" and so on are no less bigoted than the purported properties of the people they're insulting. There are other definitions (e.g. ones which add value judgments like "unreasonable" or "unfair" to the ideas being adhered to), but the problem remains (the value judgment is inevitably ambiguous). Political correctness is itself a specific form of bigotry; one which is acceptable to the ruling elites and explicitly excludes a variety of others not acceptable to them. And no, I'm not suggesting anything of the sort -- shout all you like. I'm just saying that all of this shouting might have unintended consequences (e.g. Trump).

Quote

 

And that aside, you do realize that bigotry has been a big political seller for like ever, long before the concept of political correctness even existed, right? In fact, what you're calling political correctness came about as a means of trying to correct that big seller. Take it out and we're right back here anyways, excepting more bigoted but without that back door excuse for bigots, so everyone's less happy.

Like anything, reactions to bigotry can get out of hand, and people can see it where it's not. But do you really want to hang your hat on that being true in this case? 

 

Regarding your first question: yes, of course bigotry has been around for much longer than political correctness (as I said, the latter is a modern variety of the former). In fact, the elites of every time and place have enforced intolerance of certain ideas so it's not really possible to remove political correctness -- the most that can be done to it is to alter the ideas so much that the name changes to something else.

[lokisnow]

Political correctness doesn't silence bigotry rather political correctness says that bigots should feel responsible for the harm caused by their bigoted words and bigoted actions and ought to probably experience social approbation for said words and actions.

[mormont]

Dictionary definitions. Those are always a telling argument!

[The Anti-Targ]

Soooo stubborn and complete intolerance to racism now makes you a bigot. Interesting. We have another form of moral equivalency happening.

[Shryke]

1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Soooo stubborn and complete intolerance to racism now makes you a bigot. Interesting. We have another form of moral equivalency happening.

Yes, that is the idea from people like Altherion. I explained it above already.

Remember that many white people think they are the real victims.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

6 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Sometimes a big, ugly, festering boil just needs to be burst and cause a huge mess and a gaping ugly hole before it can start to heal. Minority relations (because it's not solely about race, and you can probably put women among the "minority" even though they are a slight majority) may well just be a boil that has to burst.

Or for another medical analogy, some cancers can only be cured by almost poisoning the patient to death, and you hope like hell that the cancer dies faster than the patient.

People who don't know any better think racism is cured because a black man became president. Or that sexism is cured because a woman is president (not yet of course), or because the law of the land says you're not allowed to discriminate on the basis of race or sex. But cancer is only cured when it has been completely removed from the body. And so bigotry will only be cured when there aren't 100,000,000 or more bigots in the country.

Maybe it'll only happen when all those bigots are dead (of old age of course) and the only solution is a generational one where you sequester the bigots from society as much as possible (by not electing them to public office) so allow for succeeding generations to grow up not being indoctrinated with bigoted ideas. One problem I see with the interwebs, is that the current young generation seems to be getting exposed to (and absorbing) as much bigotry as it is progressive liberal thought. So the generational approach seems like it will have to wait for a generation or two before it can start to have any effect.

One approach we have to crime is to lock away criminals, especially the ones who are beyond rehabilitation. We cut them off from society. In a figurative way, for some of the worst examples of intolerance and hatred of otherness that may be the only solution. Cut them off from society, isolate them so that their influence withers and dies.

When the wolf threatens the sheep you either kill it, or you put up barriers. You don't try to negotiate with it and see if you can let if have a place among the sheep as long as it promises to not eat them. 

I do see your point but just an FYI, we all have cancer in our bodies.  Every single one of us.  Cancer becomes a pathology when it grows out of control and spreads outside of its normal areas.  Thus, saying you need to destroy each and every cancer cell is not really a good analogy. 

To move on to your wolf analogy, what happens when you have a massive pack of wolves 140,000,000 strong?  Are you implying we should kill most of that pack?  That is how large packs of aggressive predators were dealt with in Europe and North America.

[aceluby]

The good ole intolerance to other people's racial intolerance means you're just as bad argument. It never gets old.

"I know you are, but what am I?"

[The Marquis de Leech]

9 hours ago, Shryke said:

 But then, apparently no one learns from history. Not 2000, not 1968 and I will bet a few decades from now, not 2016.

Not sure 1968 is a particularly good analogy, given that Wallace voters likely had Nixon (rather than Humphrey) as their second choice, and were in any case conveniently located in one part of the country. As it was, that Humphrey came as close as he did, after that convention, was a minor miracle for the Democrats.