US Politics - Trump - Making America Grate!

[LongRider]

1 hour ago, OldGimletEye said:

Also, most TV news just doesn't get much in depth about issues.

You OGE, are so wrong here I must speak out.  I just watched a few minutes of the ABC Nightly News and they spent their time with in depth reporting about the security for the Super Bowl.  Not just in depth, but delving into the important issues of the day!  Because what is more important in America then the surveillance state trying out and perfecting their spying apparatus on a soon to be drunk pubic cheering grown men knocking each other down? Perfection in reporting, no alternative facts needed.    At all.

Ha-rumph!

[Samantha Stark]

Quote

Trump supporters appear to have no trouble with that already.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/25/shooting-milo-yiannopoulos-speech-seattle-charges

I believe this incident has been pointed out to you before, and you just blew right past it. Hypothetical shootings of Trump supporters by anti-fascist protestors appear to be a concern, but actual shootings of protestors by Trump supporters aren't. As long as you take that stance, your repeated interjections are clearly shown as insincere and should be ignored.

@mormont I did not get to reply to this before the last thread closed, but I will do so now. If the story is exactly as the article says than of course it's a reprehensible act...but somehow I doubt it given antifa's behavior at these sort of things. They have used almost every other form of violence there is BESIDES shooting someone. And you and others can choose to ignore what I have to say at anytime if you want your left wing echo chamber.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

14 minutes ago, Samantha Stark said:

  They have used almost every other form of violence there is BESIDES shooting someone. And you and others can choose to ignore what i have to say at anytime if you want your left wing echo chamber.

 They are certainly violent. I don't think anyone is denying that. To say that they've used almost every other form of violence is hyperbolic. Near as I can tell they smash things with blunt objects, set off fireworks, and set fires. No stabbings, no weaponized explosives, no shootings. They are leaving some classics off the table.

[Altherion]

Here's another long article about Steve Bannon's views:

Quote

Once in power, the liberal, secular, global-minded elite overhauled the institutions of democracy and capitalism to tighten its grip on power and the ability to enrich itself. The “party of Davos,” as Bannon long ago dubbed this clique, has warped capitalism’s institutions, depriving middle classes everywhere of the wealth they deserve.

This pattern of exploitation came to a head in the 2008 global financial and economic crisis. Wall Street—enabled by fellow global elites in government—spun profits out of speculation instead of investing their wealth in domestic jobs and businesses. When the resulting bubble finally burst, the immoral government stuck hardworking American taxpayers with the bailout bill.

This is the kind of thing that led Bannon to say in that 2011 LRF lecture that there is “socialism for the very wealthy.” The rest of the country, he says, is “common sense, practical, middle-class people.”

There is also “socialism for the very poor,” he adds. “We’ve built a welfare state that is completely and totally unsupportable, and now this is a crisis.”

Bannon wants all of this liberal-sponsored “socialism” to end.

...

In addition to enriching themselves and encouraging dependency among the poor, global elites also encourage immigrants to flood the US and drag down wages. Immigrant labor boosts the corporate profits of globalists and their cronies, who leave it to middle-class natives to educate, feed, and care for these foreigners. The atheistic, pluralist social order that has been allowed to flourish recoils at nationalism and patriotism, viewing them as intolerant and bigoted. Without the moral compass of our forefathers, the system is so adrift in relativism that it champions the “rights” of police-hating deadbeats, criminal aliens, and potential terrorists over ordinary Americans, turning cities into hotbeds of violence and undermining national security. As one interviewee declares in Border War: The Battle over Illegal Immigration, another of Bannon’s documentaries, “The right sees [undocumented immigrants] as cheap labor, the left sees this as cheap votes.”

I don't see how he's going to convince the elites to play along given that the current system enriches them and the one he's proposing won't do it quite as much, but he has almost certainly thought of it. I'm not sure whether he can succeed, but he does appear to have the ear of the most powerful person in the country right now:

Quote

Trump’s inaugural address was basically a telepromptered Bannon rant. Where inaugural speeches typically crackle with forward-looking optimism, Trump’s was freighted with anti-elite resentment. He described a Bannonistic vision in which the “wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed all across the world.” The “forgotten men and women of our country”—a meme that Trump claimed, but that appears in Generation Zero—had a cameo too.

Trump heaped blame on the “establishment,” which “protected itself” but not American citizens from financial ruin. “And while they celebrated in our nation’s capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land,” Trump continued. “We’ve made other countries rich, while the wealth, strength and confidence of our country has dissipated over the horizon.”

“America first” is Bannon’s economic nationalism in slogan form.

 

[IamMe90]

2 hours ago, Altherion said:

Here's another long article about Steve Bannon's views:

I don't see how he's going to convince the elites to play along given that the current system enriches them and the one he's proposing won't do it quite as much, but he has almost certainly thought of it. I'm not sure whether he can succeed, but he does appear to have the ear of the most powerful person in the country right now:

 

this is so fucking stupid. "socialism is for the wealthy." OKAY, except it isn't, why is he identifying a real problem and then conflating it with something totally antithetical to the identified problem? "socialism" is not for the wealthy. it describes a set of ideas that actually make a lot of sense and would benefit a lot people... except wealthy people. 

So I guess I'm not really understanding why you think he will even try to "convince the elites [to do whatever the fuck it is you think he's doing]." It appears that he is attempting to push Trump to accelerate another great recession that will almost invariably affect only middle class and poor people. If he isn't actively pushing him in this direction, he certainly isn't "convincing" him to do otherwise. But yet, you're wondering about how he's going to convince the elite, rather than, will he... 

[Altherion]

7 minutes ago, IamMe90 said:

this is so fucking stupid. "socialism is for the wealthy." OKAY, except it isn't, why is he identifying a real problem and then conflating it with something totally antithetical to the identified problem? "socialism" is not for the wealthy. it describes a set of ideas that actually make a lot of sense and would benefit a lot people... except wealthy people. 

I think you misunderstand. He is not saying that socialism is intrinsically for the wealthy, he is appropriating the word to insult the current system wherein the wealthy keep their gains but their losses are spread across the population. It's a pretty standard reaction to the bailout.

10 minutes ago, IamMe90 said:

So I guess I'm not really understanding why you think he will even try to "convince the elites [to do whatever the fuck it is you think he's doing]." It appears that he is attempting to push Trump to accelerate another great recession that will almost invariably affect only middle class and poor people. If he isn't actively pushing him in this direction, he certainly isn't "convincing" him to do otherwise. But yet, you're wondering about how he's going to convince the elite, rather than, will he...

That's easy; he believes that society is in crisis:

Quote

“This is the fourth great crisis in American history,” he says in the speech to the LRF. “We had the revolution, we had the Civil War, we had the Great Depression and World War II. This is the great Fourth Turning in American history.”

I'm not sure if it is quite as catastrophic as those three periods (i.e. he might be exaggerating somewhat), but on the whole, he is almost certainly right.

[IamMe90]

8 minutes ago, Altherion said:

I think you misunderstand. He is not saying that socialism is intrinsically for the wealthy, he is appropriating the word to insult the current system wherein the wealthy keep their gains but their losses are spread across the population. It's a pretty standard reaction to the bailout.

That's easy; he believes that society is in crisis:

I'm not sure if it is quite as catastrophic as those three periods (i.e. he might be exaggerating somewhat), but on the whole, he is almost certainly right.

See... I don't think he's doing that. I think that, in some bizarro alternate reality, if you were Steve Bannon, what you just described would be exactly what you did in this situation. But you're not Steve Bannon. And you can't just assert your interpretation of Bannon's acts like theyre common knowledge and really EVERYONE totally knows EXACTLY what he was saying... 

yeah okay, bullshit.

[Altherion]

1 minute ago, IamMe90 said:

See... I don't think he's doing that. I think that, in some bizarro alternate reality, if you were Steve Bannon, what you just described would be exactly what you did in this situation. But you're not Steve Bannon. And you can't just assert your interpretation of Bannon's acts like theyre common knowledge and really EVERYONE totally knows EXACTLY what he was saying... 

yeah okay, bullshit.

Sure, only a small number of people knows exactly what he is doing. The article acknowledges that the rest of us know very little about him and we're trying to figure out his ideology from what he has said and done in the past. I think the article's interpretation is a pretty good guess, though of course we'll all find out soon.

[IamMe90]

4 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Sure, only a small number of people knows exactly what he is doing. The article acknowledges that the rest of us know very little about him and we're trying to figure out his ideology from what he has said and done in the past. I think the article's interpretation is a pretty good guess, though of course we'll all find out soon.

Well, it was you that said that I "misunderstood" and then continued to show how I misunderstood by asserting your perspective of how you view Steve Bannon's motivations,  as if it is fact

[mormont]

4 hours ago, Samantha Stark said:

@mormont I did not get to reply to this before the last thread closed, but I will do so now. If the story is exactly as the article says than of course it's a reprehensible act...but somehow I doubt it given antifa's behavior at these sort of things. They have used almost every other form of violence there is BESIDES shooting someone. And you and others can choose to ignore what I have to say at anytime if you want your left wing echo chamber.

You exhibit no such scepticism when the story concerns people you don't like. You've shown you have no ability to be objective about this. You hate anti-fascist demonstrators, and the issue of their violence is clearly an excuse, not the reason.

[Samantha Stark]

3 minutes ago, mormont said:

You exhibit no such scepticism when the story concerns people you don't like. You've shown you have no ability to be objective about this. You hate anti-fascist demonstrators, and the issue of their violence is clearly an excuse, not the reason.

Has it been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt how exactly the incident unfolded? Is it unreasonable to assume that perhaps the Antifa initiated the violent contact and ended up biting off more than he could chew? And I assure you it is the reason. It's all the hypocrisy of regressive left on full display.

[BigFatCoward]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38872680

Bid to reinstate travel ban fails.  He is a total fucking loser, literally as well as figuratively. 

[mormont]

6 minutes ago, Samantha Stark said:

Has it been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt how exactly the incident unfolded? Is it unreasonable to assume that perhaps the Antifa initiated the violent contact and ended up biting off more than he could chew? And I assure you it is the reason. It's all the hypocrisy of regressive left on full display.

Do you ask those type of questions when the violence is allegedly committed by antifascist protestors? You do not. Is this your own hypocrisy 'on full display'? It is. Does this fatally undermine the claims in your last two sentences? It does.

[Samantha Stark]

4 minutes ago, mormont said:

Do you ask those type of questions when the violence is allegedly committed by antifascist protestors? You do not. Is this your own hypocrisy 'on full display'? It is. Does this fatally undermine the claims in your last two sentences? It does.

It...actually doesn't. What provoked Antifa to commit the acts that they did at these two events? Someone they disagreed with politically speaking at a university? And also there is no 'allegedly' when it comes to these things as Antifa is out and proud about having disrupted them, there are pictures and videos. That is unless you think it wasn't really them?

[mormont]

There's no 'allegedly' about that shooting either: but you're desperately trying to find an excuse for it just the same. You have a track history of doing this for other incidents of violence committed by Trump supporters at rallies, as I recall. Your agenda is not about the use of violence, it's about hatred of the left. Which is not exactly a big reveal: it's not as if the pretence was fooling anyone.

[GrimTuesday]

38 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Sure, only a small number of people knows exactly what he is doing. The article acknowledges that the rest of us know very little about him and we're trying to figure out his ideology from what he has said and done in the past. I think the article's interpretation is a pretty good guess, though of course we'll all find out soon.

Actually, we know Bannon's ideology quite well. His tenure at Breitbart, as well as comments he has made in the past have made it quite clear that he is a far right Christain ideologue who sees the larger geopolical picture as being Christian capitalists against Islam. Of course, he doesn't seem to differentiate between Islamic extremists and the majority of Muslims. I think this quote is rather indicative of his thinking

Quote

We’re at the very beginning stages of a very brutal and bloody conflict, of which if the people in this room, and people in the church, do not bind together and really form what I feel is an aspect of the church militant, to really be able to not just stand with our beliefs against but to fight for our beliefs this this new barbarity that’s starting, uh that we will literally eradicate everything we’ve been bequeathed over the last 2,000 and 2,500 years.

He is basically calling for a watered down version of the Crusades. I think we are really seeing Bannon's ideology coming out in Trump's policies, the discrimination and demonization of Muslims, the appallingly pro business stances this white house has taken (though that's probably equally Trump and his other advisors). Bannon is clearly the one pulling the strings, and he seems to be directing us into a fullscale conflict with the Muslim world.

[Samantha Stark]

Just now, mormont said:

There's no 'allegedly' about that shooting either: but you're desperately trying to find an excuse for it just the same. You have a track history of doing this for other incidents of violence committed by Trump supporters at rallies, as I recall. Your agenda is not about the use of violence, it's about hatred of the left. Which is not exactly a big reveal: it's not as if the pretence was fooling anyone.

I never denied the shooting happened, ever. And if it was done without good reason or provocation I think it is a reprehensible act, as I have said on the previous page. And I'm going to need a cite on doing this at previous incidents of of Trump supporters using violence, as I don't recall doing it, and in the subject of myself, I consider myself an expert. 

Also, do you condone the violence used by Antifa? You seem to be tip toeing around the issue.

[GrimTuesday]

2 minutes ago, Samantha Stark said:

I never denied the shooting happened, ever. And if it was done without good reason or provocation I think it is a reprehensible act, as I have said on the previous page. And I'm going to need a cite on doing this at previous incidents of of Trump supporters using violence, as I don't recall doing it, and in the subject of myself, I consider myself an expert. 

Also, do you condone the violence used by Antifa? You seem to be tip toeing around the issue.

Is there honestly a good reason to shoot someone? Short of fearing for one's life, I can't think of one. And from all the reports of the protest, there wasn't any reason for the individual to be whipping out a gun. And for the record, there is a Video out there that certainly looks like the shooter already had his gun out by the time the victim was trying to deescalate the situation. I'd say it was far more likiely to have been a trigger happy asshole who didn't mean to shoot anyone but was certainly brandishing a gun. And for the record, Trump himself admitted his supporters were violent during the campaign. There was the incident at the rally where the protester was socked in the face by a Trump supporter, that is the first one to spring to mind, but all you have to do is look up Trump Supporters violence, and you'll find all sorts of reports (inb4 she blames this on the liberal bias of the main stream media).

And you know what, I personally wouldn't commit violent acts, but to be honest, it's really hard to get mad about racists getting beat.

[Seli]

1 hour ago, Samantha Stark said:

It...actually doesn't. What provoked Antifa to commit the acts that they did at these two events? Someone they disagreed with politically speaking at a university? And also there is no 'allegedly' when it comes to these things as Antifa is out and proud about having disrupted them, there are pictures and videos. That is unless you think it wasn't really them?

They are of the opinion that Milo (and other fascist-adjoining types) speaking is an act of violence that threatens the safety of many people who are already in difficult positions.

[Inigima]

12 hours ago, The Killer Snark said:

If people want to discuss anti Constitutionality, where was the Left Wing concern over Hillary wishing it were easier to implement martial law at a moment's notice, by overturning the posse comitatus, in one of her Goldman Sachs speeches? Or even bothering to marvel in horror at what was disclosed in the Podesta Leaks? That's right. A plague of crickets.

I'm not aware of it, and frankly you are so completely clueless I'm not prepared to take your word for it that it's there, but I would be horrified by that too.

Try, just once, to have an argument on the merits without falling back on, "Oh, but Hillary is secretly worse!"