U.S. Politics: A Democracy In Decay

[Kalbear]

Furthermore - and this is a bigger point here - violence has already been introduced. It's already there. It's largely being used by one side and one side only. And as far as I can tell, things are not de-escalating. You're getting calls to forcibly separate families, the DoJ is specifically ignoring requests to reform police departments and ignoring police brutality issues, incarceration rates are increasing and more people are being wrongly killed without justice provided. Even worse, things like domestic terrorism fighting has been reduced as well, making it more likely for these radicalized terrorists to kill more people in various attacks. 

So yeah, sorry, calming the rhetoric down when it happens to the other side once in a while feels fairly tone deaf. 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

14 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Furthermore - and this is a bigger point here - violence has already been introduced. It's already there. It's largely being used by one side and one side only. And as far as I can tell, things are not de-escalating. You're getting calls to forcibly separate families, the DoJ is specifically ignoring requests to reform police departments and ignoring police brutality issues, incarceration rates are increasing and more people are being wrongly killed without justice provided. Even worse, things like domestic terrorism fighting has been reduced as well, making it more likely for these radicalized terrorists to kill more people in various attacks. 

So yeah, sorry, calming the rhetoric down when it happens to the other side once in a while feels fairly tone deaf. 

 It's not about vilifying one side over the other, it's what do you hope to gain by bringing violence into the equation. Is the cost of that violence going to be worth whatever resistance it provides.  Let's take the separating families example. This is a terrible policy, granted. It is truly shortsighted and cruel. What do you think is going to happen if this policy is met with violence? You're going to have paramilitary style SWAT teams exercising these types of warrants. Family members will be killed instead of deported. I guess that would make it more expensive for the Feds to carry out, but the cost seems prohibitive to me.   

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

 It's not about vilifying one side over the other, it's what do you hope to gain by bringing violence into the equation. Is the cost of that violence going to be worth whatever resistance it provides.  Let's take the separating families example. This is a terrible policy, granted. It is truly shortsighted and cruel. What do you think is going to happen if this policy is met with violence? You're going to have paramilitary style SWAT teams exercising these types of warrants. Family members will be killed instead of deported. I guess that would make it more expensive for the Feds to carry out, but the cost seems prohibitive to me.   

It also will possibly look incredibly unpopular on the news and in media sources. And the first dead white kid shot dead by those SWAT teams will have a pretty big outcry - or it won't, which is also demonstrative of where the acceptable window is. 

[Zorral]

3 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

 It's not about vilifying one side over the other, it's what do you hope to gain by bringing violence into the equation. Is the cost of that violence going to be worth whatever resistance it provides.  Let's take the separating families example. This is a terrible policy, granted. It is truly shortsighted and cruel. What do you think is going to happen if this policy is met with violence? You're going to have paramilitary style SWAT teams exercising these types of warrants. Family members will be killed instead of deported. I guess that would make it more expensive for the Feds to carry out, but the cost seems prohibitive to me.   

As for trhe above --

What happened when Jesus violently cleansed the Temple of money lenders?  What happened when the Boston mobs violently resisted the Intolderable Acts?  What happened when when when.

But ya, we see what you're saying.  But what was happening already to the Dakota people when Sitting Bull went off the reservation and took down Custer at Little Big Horn?  It hastened the process that was already in process of an entire people targeted to die of famine, cold, and no where to stand that was theirs.

It only takes one and that one has been in the process for a very long time.  Jesus said the poor you will have with you always.  Others say, equally truthfully, those who are determined to repress and harm you will be with you always..

People can take only so much before they punch back, even when the all the odds are that they will lose.  Toning down changed nothing either way, does it, when it's like that.

Kalbear -- you are very good at picking the strands apart and explaining each to each,

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Please, please, please stop relitigating the election. Please. Yes, so much of it is inaccurate and it doesn't matter, especially to a Trump voter like Cas. 

I hate to break it to ya bud, but the 2016 presidential election will be one of the most rehashed elections of all time. You're not going to be able to escape it. 

3 hours ago, Week said:

LOL.

Two can play at this game!

#weaponizingemojis

And if that's not enough Week, please see my avatar. 

[Altherion]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

When congresspeople refuse to listen to their constituency and poll numbers and record calls and town halls, there is only so much people can do. When you tell them to trust the system or to calm down, it is simply not going to work. At that point you really have two options - you give in to at least some of their demands so that you can have some kind of pressure valve release, or things escalate. This is what happens with humans, period. 

When Congresspeople refuse to listen to their constituency, the constituency can vote them out. I would agree with your analysis of violence in the case of a system where a significant majority of the people are united against the leadership and the latter refuses to budge (e.g. France just before the French Revolution). However, this has little to do with the United States of today: we have two roughly equal groups who disagree with each other as to how the country should be. Each of these groups has elements which are close to being angry enough for violent action and should one of them decide to proceed with this, the other one would certainly retaliate in kind.

Do you really want this kind of conflict taking place somewhere near you?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

No.  I think it is absolutely accurate.  What do you take issue with?  She lost to Obama, who then an unknown?  Bernie Sanders mounted a successful challenge that was only thwarted by the DNC? That she was historically unpopular for a presidential candidate?  That Trump didn't run a traditional campaign? That her base lacked enthusiasm?  That ignoring the swing states in the last days of the election when your own people told you there was trouble is evidence of a good campaign?  LOL.

Pretty much all of it from your previous post. You said she was not well liked within the Democratic Party, which is absolutely inaccurate. Her popularity had little to do with her loss to Obama. Both were popular, he was just more popular. Furthermore, how could she be unpopular within her party if the narrative was that she was anointed to be the next nominee years in advance? That makes no sense. You also said she almost lost to Sanders, which is again inaccurate. Sanders was never going to win, and the primary was over after Super Tuesday. Did the DNC help Clinton to some extent? Sure, but that's not why she won. And yes while she was unpopular in general, Trump was even more unpopular. However, her popularity was north of 60% before the email scandal while Trump was never popular across the board. And I have to conclude that her being a woman did play a role in her popularity drop afterwards because Republicans did basically the same thing and never took a hit for having private servers and email accounts. 

[Fragile Bird]

On a totally different subject for a moment...

Otto Warmbier, the poor, foolish student put on a show trial by the North Koreans and returned to his parents last week in a coma, has died.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-northkorea-detainee-idUSKBN19A2TW?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social

[Cas Stark]

17 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Pretty much all of it from your previous post. You said she was not well liked within the Democratic Party, which is absolutely inaccurate. Her popularity had little to do with her loss to Obama. Both were popular, he was just more popular. Furthermore, how could she be unpopular within her party if the narrative was that she was anointed to be the next nominee years in advance? That makes no sense. You also said she almost lost to Sanders, which is again inaccurate. Sanders was never going to win, and the primary was over after Super Tuesday. Did the DNC help Clinton to some extent? Sure, but that's not why she won. And yes while she was unpopular in general, Trump was even more unpopular. However, her popularity was north of 60% before the email scandal while Trump was never popular across the board. And I have to conclude that her being a woman did play a role in her popularity drop afterwards because Republicans did basically the same thing and never took a hit for having private servers and email accounts. 

Even after becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee, Clinton has seen little improvement in her standing among Democrats and Democratic leaners. According to Gallup, Clinton’s favorable rating among those groups was 68 percent on the day of the California primary (June 7). Today, it stands at 70 percent. In other words, nearly a third of Democrats don’t hold a favorable view of her. At this point in the 2008 campaign, only 14 percent of Democrats didn’t hold a favorable view of Barack Obama, according to Gallup — 84 percent did. Even if most Democrats prefer Clinton to Trump, a sizable portion of them do so at this point without liking her.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/hillary-clinton-and-donald-trump-are-now-equally-unpopular/

Interestingly, Clinton's numbers appear to have dropped since that early August poll mostly in groups that have been very supportive of her:

• Her favorable rating among women dropped from 54 percent to just 45 percent.
• Among Hispanics, it went from 71 percent to 55 percent.
• Among liberals, it went from 76 percent to 63 percent.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/31/a-record-number-of-americans-now-dislike-hillary-clinton/?utm_term=.5bb0abd4e4f7

 

Clinton’s popularity among this group is below where it was in the fall of 2015, but notably the group itself – Sanders supporters – has likely experienced significant churn over the same period. In October and November, his support among Democrats and leaners ranged from 23% to 33% (that number would rise to more than 40% in 2016). In other words, it may be that the Sanders campaign eventually attracted voters already unhappy with Clinton as he became better known as the main alternative.

Favorability isn’t everything, however, and many Sanders supporters may just need to be convinced to hold their noses and vote for a candidate they don’t like. In voting intention, 60% of Sanders-supporting voters back Clinton over Trump – which is more than the 47% who have a favorable opinion of Clinton in the same poll. But Donald Trump gets 9%, Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson gets 6% and the Green Party’s Jill Stein gets 11% with this same group; another 14% are undecided or don't plan on voting. If Clinton could even get to 80% with these voters, her support would have been at 45% rather than 42% overall in the poll (Trump was five points behind at 37%) – a more comfortable place to be in a volatile four-way race.

https://today.yougov.com/news/2016/09/02/clinton-still-struggles-sanders-democrats/

 

[all swedes are racist]

4 hours ago, Week said:

Bug or (#tinfoilhat) feature? Not exactly a breach if the data was left unsecured to the public internet for anyone (*cough* ) to use. Shocking that the Russians couldn't penetrate the RNC security like the DNC, right? /smh

Probably just a huge fuck up considering much of the secret sauce / analytics methodology exposed.

well, not tinfoil, but it may very well have been a feature, in that it provided a way for pacs to access this information for the purpose of targeted messaging, while not exactly violating the rule that prevents campaigns and pacs from collaborating. all they had to know is the address to the amazon sub domain and bam, marketing goldmine

[Martell Spy]

Sources: Senate GOP prepares for Obamacare repeal vote next week

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/06/19/sources-senate-gop-prepared-for-obamacare-repeal-vote-next-week-239726

 

How 2 academics got the Supreme Court to reexamine gerrymandering

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/6/19/15831640/supreme-court-gerrymandering-wisconsin

[maarsen]

2 hours ago, BloodRider said:

I get that.  It's hard to say torture is bad when your country is torturing people.  Just so it's hard to say punching people is bad when your side is punching people.  Being the better side is so very fucking hard, and sometimes ineffectual - I mean we all read the books that brought us here, right?

As for if it will be the end of Democracy?  I doubt it.  The 60s/70s were much worse with liberal violence, and the 90s were no cake walk with the right and militias.

The 60's/70's were worse with liberal violence? If using your face to attack police nightsticks is liberal violence then I suppose there was a lot of liberal violence. 

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

When Congresspeople refuse to listen to their constituency, the constituency can vote them out. I would agree with your analysis of violence in the case of a system where a significant majority of the people are united against the leadership and the latter refuses to budge (e.g. France just before the French Revolution). However, this has little to do with the United States of today: we have two roughly equal groups who disagree with each other as to how the country should be. Each of these groups has elements which are close to being angry enough for violent action and should one of them decide to proceed with this, the other one would certainly retaliate in kind.

Do you really want this kind of conflict taking place somewhere near you?

That only works if systematic voter repression, gerrymandering and the rest the rethugs have been doing for years had not been going on.  Recall, the stated objective of these people, starting with the kochs who are and have been pouring billions of dollars is to have a new constitution and get of voting except by wealth.

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

When Congresspeople refuse to listen to their constituency, the constituency can vote them out. I would agree with your analysis of violence in the case of a system where a significant majority of the people are united against the leadership and the latter refuses to budge (e.g. France just before the French Revolution). However, this has little to do with the United States of today: we have two roughly equal groups who disagree with each other as to how the country should be. Each of these groups has elements which are close to being angry enough for violent action and should one of them decide to proceed with this, the other one would certainly retaliate in kind.

20% of the constituency is currently in favor of the AHCA, and 60% are strongly opposed.

On some issues you're right, but on a pretty major one you're totally wrong. And my suspicion given Hodkingson's target, is that he falls in that 60% trap. 

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

Do you really want this kind of conflict taking place somewhere near you?

Of course I don't - but that doesn't mean I can't recognize that it may be coming. And even more, understand why it's coming. I would prefer there not be massive uprisings and violence and assassination attempts on politicians, but we are getting closer and closer to the point that you would amusingly desire - the part where people simply have had enough and have nothing left to lose.

When you take away people's ability to survive - when they have no hope for medical care, when they have no hope for justice, when they have no hope for success - they really don't have other options, and that monkeybrain part of them that says they would rather die than face this unfairness is going to rear its head. That isn't me advocating it - that's me describing it. 

48 minutes ago, maarsen said:

The 60's/70's were worse with liberal violence? If using your face to attack police nightsticks is liberal violence then I suppose there was a lot of liberal violence. 

There were a lot of other things going on; police station bombings, a number of riots, a lot of very violent protests, clashes with the police, etc. The movie Detroit is a good example of this, where there were military deployed to keep the peace in various places. It wasn't just the people in charge doing the violence. 

[BloodRider]

35 minutes ago, maarsen said:

The 60's/70's were worse with liberal violence? If using your face to attack police nightsticks is liberal violence then I suppose there was a lot of liberal violence. 

Nah - I am talking about the bombings by the Weather Underground and associated left leaning groups that perpetrated over 2,500 bombings in the late 60s early 70s, the Students for a Democratic Society, and to a lesser extent groups like the Black Panthers, the Black Liberation Army, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the New World Liberation Front, the FALN, the “Family,” and the United Freedom Front.

Sure there was a lot of state sponsored violence, and these groups rose in response to that.  But that is exactly what we are talking about here, no?

[maarsen]

I remember civil rights protesters being murdered, churches being firebombed, students on university campuses being shot by a badly regulated militia,  the police routinely beating the snot out of antiwar protesters, and then charging the victims with conspiracy to riot. Any violence was usually the result of massive displays of force and escalation by the police,  to unarmed protesters.  The violence was very much one sided. I was born in the 50's and remember the 60's and 70's quite well.  Being assaulted by the police was common enough that it did not even raise an eyebrow. If your hair was too long or you were thought to be gay it was basically open season for you and no recourse to the justice system as the older generation figured you got what you deserved. I did come away with a healthy disrespect for authority from living through this. Watching a movie about this is not really the same thing. 

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, maarsen said:

I remember civil rights protesters being murdered, churches being firebombed, students on university campuses being shot by a badly regulated militia,  the police routinely beating the snot out of antiwar protesters, and then charging the victims with conspiracy to riot. Any violence was usually the result of massive displays of force and escalation by the police,  to unarmed protesters.  The violence was very much one sided. I was born in the 50's and remember the 60's and 70's quite well.  Being assaulted by the police was common enough that it did not even raise an eyebrow. If your hair was too long or you were thought to be gay it was basically open season for you and no recourse to the justice system as the older generation figured you got what you deserved. I did come away with a healthy disrespect for authority from living through this. Watching a movie about this is not really the same thing. 

I'm not saying that it wasn't massive state-sponsored violence; I'm simply saying that there was quite a bit of left-leaning violence out there as well. Quite justified, IMO. 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

3 hours ago, Kalbear said:

It also will possibly look incredibly unpopular on the news and in media sources. And the first dead white kid shot dead by those SWAT teams will have a pretty big outcry - or it won't, which is also demonstrative of where the acceptable window is. 

Sure, I suppose that could work in a court of public opinion sort of a way. The Revolution would most certainly be televised. I suspect you'd also see an uptick in White Supremacist violence against latinos once you had a couple of incidents where dead cops was the major result.

On a related note Sam Harris did a really solid interview with Timothy Snyder regarding his book On Tyranny: 20 Lessons From the 20th Century a few weeks back. Kind of a handbook on how authoritarian autocracies take hold and what you can do to resist them. Check it out if you are so inclined.

  

 

[Fragile Bird]

CNN has been pretty hot under the collar all day about the fact that the WH is no longer allowing press conferences to be filmed or taped. I assume others are just as pissed off.

Yup, you read that correctly. Press conferences are no longer allowed to be filmed or recorded.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/journalists-barred-from-recording-white-house-press-briefing?via=desktop&source=copyurl

Reporters were barred from recording video or audio footage during Monday afternoon's White House press briefing. "Make no mistake about what we are all witnessing," Jim Acosta, CNN's senior White House correspondent tweeted. "This is a WH that is stonewalling the news media. Hiding behind no camera/no audio gaggles." On CNN, Acosta described White House press briefings as becoming "kind of useless," and questioned why journalists bother attending if they are not allowed to record on camera or with audio. "It just feels like we're slowly but surely being dragged into what is a new normal in this country where the President of the United States is allowed to insulate himself from answering hard questions."

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

5 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

CNN has been pretty hot under the collar all day about the fact that the WH is no longer allowing press conferences to be filmed or taped. I assume others are just as pissed off.

Yup, you read that correctly. Press conferences are no longer allowed to be filmed or recorded.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/journalists-barred-from-recording-white-house-press-briefing?via=desktop&source=copyurl

That is some bullshit. Sean Spicer's Dance Party has been the most consistently entertaining product that this administration has produced. Taking that away is inhuman.