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u.s. politics: faygo to the polls


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38 minutes ago, Seli said:

So US government became Nazi like after WWII, and therefore people these days don't have to worry about the raise of Nazis because they will never get to power?

That doesn't seem to be the most logical line of thought.

Toe the line; the expression is toe, not tow :)

 All I said was we employed former Nazis against the Russians after the second world war.

Im at a loss as what your  point and criticism is here.

Thank you pointing out the correct usage of toe. 

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6 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

Maybe we already are at war, just not in the old fashioned 20th century sense of it. Especially if the rising tide of fascism in Western nations has been fed by Putin.

Your invocation of Total War kind of reminds me of plutocrats who accuse people of waging a class war when they point out rising inequality and ask for more progressive tax models. Or when a racist accuses someone of playing "the race card" for calling out racism. The war's already going on, it's just been one-sided so far and they didn't want their victims to call it out.

Also: I'll say it publicly -- Sword of Doom, I do not think it's fair or accurate to accuse Manhole or even Garovorkin of being Nazi sympathizers just because they do not feel the danger as urgently as we do. There are unflattering words that may be applicable, but I don't believe they are in any way sympathetic to Nazis (though Garo might qualify as a Useful Idiot, we'll have to see). You ought to be more careful with the accusation.

In general I don't think we should visit violence upon people for their political ideology, but I think you can make an exception for Nazis. We're not talking about advocating violence against smug libertarians or Chinese Communists. We're talking about the modern definition of evil.

Im a useful Idiot ? Gee aren't you nice . Neither I nor Manhole have any use at all for Nazi  or White supremacists scumbags .  That should have been glaringly obvious to you from the beginning .

If you can make an exception and justification for one  group , you can make an exception and justification for other groups . You can't make exceptions because it suits you . Why can't you grasp that concept ? it's pretty basic stuff isn't it?  

 

 

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1 hour ago, butterbumps! said:

It does seem neat and pragmatic, but it looks like it comes back down to the same discussion of Constitutionality and First Amendment rights anyway, doesn't it?

Yes, it will inevitably encounter the same difficulties with trying to take First Amendment rights away from Nazis wholesale.  However, how we deal with FTOs provides a basis - one that's been recently upheld by SCOTUS in denying US citizens' right to "material support" for such groups - that makes it comparatively much more plausible in the long run.  Would it be a long and arduous battle?  Yep.  But so was Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP's, and they still eventually reached Brown v. Board.

Further, I think this is the right method to deny nazis free speech groups on principle.  Suppressing any individual's speech based on content is still something I'm not entirely comfortable with.  Suppressing a group's speech because they have demonstrated violence and even terrorism?  That's something I find hard for any reasonable person to disagree with.

1 hour ago, butterbumps! said:

I'm also keen to understand how something like this could be constructed so that other sides don't weaponize categorization like this against causes they don't like/ feel threatened by/ already crow about being "genocidal" or "terrorist" (such as a Pence would say of abortion, or "conservatives" say of BLM).

As I mentioned in the previous thread, this is most certainly an incredibly important concern.  I'm not equipped to answer exactly how to protect against this, but I definitely would insist on lawyers employing such protections and subsequently would like to review it before I signed off on anything.

ETA:  @butterbumps! - I would suggest looking at our hate crime statutes, as well as other countries' hate speech laws if you're interested.  This could give you a good idea on how such a classification would be codified, and I suspect give you a sense of how to institute protections against abuse as well.

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New Marist Poll on Trump's approval in the three states that won him the election:

Quote

These three NBC/Marist polls were conducted August 13-17 — after the Aug. 12 unrest and violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, and in the midst of Trump’s multiple responses to the events.

In Michigan, 36 percent of voters approve of Trump’s job performance (including 19 percent who strongly approve), while 55 percent disapprove (including 40 percent who strongly do).

In Pennsylvania, 35 percent give the president’s job a thumbs up (17 percent strongly), versus 54 percent who disapprove (41 percent strongly).

And in Wisconsin, 34 percent of voters approve of Trump (17 percent strongly), compared with 56 percent who disapprove (42 percent strongly).

In 2016’s general election, Trump won all three states by a combined 80,000 votes, becoming the first Republican to carry these states since the 1980s.

Asked if Trump’s conduct as president made them proud or embarrassed them, 64 percent of voters in Michigan and Wisconsin say they’ve been embarrassed, while 63 percent say that in Pennsylvania.

 

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Sword of Doom (Lev?),

A few practical question: are you only going to kill those who have openly espoused nazi philosophy, or, are you going to dig to find those that are in hiding?  What about the kids of people who espouse nazi philosophy, do they die too or can they be re-educated?  If the latter, why can't the same be attempted with the adults?  

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7 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

Thanks, but I don't think I'll be back long. I dropped out because I knew getting involved in these threads in the Age of Trump would be bad for my stress and my soul, and it never really goes anywhere. I came back to comment on Boston because I was feeling pretty fucking proud of this fucked up city, half of whose inhabitants I would gladly punch in the face just for their driving habits, and I wanted to stick up for my adopted town after they did a pretty good thing. But now I'm just getting back into the patterns I wanted to avoid, getting worked up by transparently shitty arguments and throwing insults at a clueless numpty.

 

You don't seem to understand what the first amendment is about and you call me clueless ? I think what you really need to do is read up on the constitution. 

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55 minutes ago, GAROVORKIN said:

 

You don't seem to understand what the first amendment is about and you call me clueless ? I think what you really need to do is read up on the constitution. 

I understand that the First Amendment deals with government suppression of speech, so you might have to dig deep into your online university understanding of history and tell me why that's relevant to a discussion about what private citizens should do in response to Nazi speech.

As for "Useful Idiot" -- I chose my words carefully. It has a historical connotation that fits you.

Speaking of "glaringly obvious" -- yes, I agree, neither you nor Manhole are Nazi sympathizers. I said so. In the post you quoted. I defended you both against such an accusation. Do you actually try to read for comprehension or do you just mouth the words as you scroll to the bottom for your opportunity to respond to what you imagine I said?

I see you've spent a lot of time thinking hard about these comebacks. That's very precious.

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11 hours ago, Altherion said:

The Supreme Court has thus far refrained from eliminating affirmative action at universities -- they got rid of quotas a while back, but the recent cases have preserved the status quo.

But what status quo is that exactly? Without quota or point systems, I'm not sure "affirmative action" really exists anymore in the US.
The way the admission system works in most US universities is that race is one of many factors that are considered. It's not a case of one individual's achievement on one side and their race on the other, thus automatically lowering the bar for minorities. This is still the popular perception of affirmation action, and yet it's exactly what Supreme Court decisions have eliminated.
Today you have something like at least a dozen factors (random number for my demonstration, it may be far more than that) to be admitted to university and race is only one of them, so it's really not clear whether the bar is at all lower for minorities. According to my readings, "diversity" these days means that universities are looking for different profiles. Which means that race doesn't matter so much as having an original profile.
So you might say that hard-working white students from poor or middle-class backgrounds are at a disadvantage because supposedly there will be a lot of applicants with such a profile... But then, you might also have a similar tough competition between deserving black or latino students from poor backgrounds, because there may be an equally important number of such applicants as well. Ironically, perhaps a student from a very small minority (like, I dunno, someone whose parents emigrated from Mongolia or Vanuatu) will have an edge over most applicants because they will have original skills and activities.
The common assertion is that poor minority students have an edge over poor white students, and that this is because of race. But hey, what if that's not true? What if, in fact, most poor applicants come from minorities? Would that be surprising? Or wouldn't it be logical?
My point is... With such a process there's absolutely no way to know whether whites are actually at a serious disadvantage. In fact, remove the race factor, and minority students may well turn out to have far more original backgrounds and activities than middle-class whites. I mean, as crazy as such a proposition may sound, how do you know this is not, in fact, the case? At the end of the day, it probably depends on each specific admission commission. There may be times when a specific commission on a given year does put whites at a disadvantage... And other years when they don't...
This whole discussion about affirmative action seems to me to be an excuse not to talk about the real element preventing people from going to university in the US... And that is, of course, the price of higher education. Compared to the class divide, the racial divide is almost insignificant. What I mean by that is that you shouldn't have an edge because you are black or latino, but because being black or latino probably means you're not part of the wealthier section of the US population.
 

11 hours ago, Altherion said:

However, the issue is not so much at the university level as at the corporate one and the buzzword there is not affirmative action, but "diversity".

I'm not going to pretend I know anything about corporate America as a whole, because I don't. But again, how can you be certain?
I'm sure some companies do make huge efforts to have a diverse workforce, and that may hurt white applicants. But then, the reverse will probably be true as well (i.e. racist employers preferably hiring WASPs). How can you be certain that the whites are the ones at a disadvantage in the end? Even claiming this is the case is rather bizarre. Do you have any numbers or studies to back this odd propositon?

Then there's also other factors that mitigate this "white victimization" trend, which is that in some fields, most skilled applicants are no longer white. In some very specialised fields, most students in American universities are massively immigrants. Not because of affirmative action, but because some fields are very attractive to foreign students.
Like, if you take a random Silicon Valley company, chances are that you don't need any specific program to have a diverse workforce, because for some positions you won't even have any white applicants in the first place...

11 hours ago, Altherion said:

American schools are typically funded by local property taxes so schools in all poor neighborhoods (not just those which are predominantly of one race) will have less money than those in average or wealthy neighborhoods. It would be different if the discrimination was based on income, but as it stands, the main beneficiaries are people who are already reasonably well off (the truly poor ones have no chance even with the edge).

Not sure what your point is. Mine is that affirmative action was always supposed to be about social engineering, to compensate for the fact that members of minorities are more likely to have had serious obstacles to their secondary education, and that thus, "straight-A" students from disadvantaged backgrounds were probably more deserving than others.
I think you would have a point if the racial composition of the poorest section of the US population was the same as that of the population as a whole. In which case, there might be no reason for affirmative action (i.e., taking race into account) at all.
But that's not the case. Everyone knows that. So again, take away the race factor and replace it with a quota of applicants from a poor background instead, and you'll probably end up with affirmative action in all but name.

Holy f***, I've almost convinced myself that affirmative action is actually a bad idea.
But in actuality, it isn't. Because Americans are more comfortable talking about the racial divide than the class divide, even when the two are pretty much the same thing. Would the US be ready to make university free for all people from poor backgrounds? I don't think so. I think this would be too "socialist" for most Americans. It's way easier and safer to pit the poor WASPs against everyone else.

11 hours ago, Altherion said:

Sure, but this is simply enforcement of the law and has nothing to do with the far-right. In fact, the deportation rate is slower under Trump than it was under Obama.

Deportations, maybe. What about arrests? Also, what about the type of people arrested? Did the ICE go after immigrants who had been living in the US for years or decades under Obama? I'm honestly curious, because Trumpists claim that Trump is far more efficient at hunting the "bad guys" than Obama, so...

11 hours ago, Altherion said:

Only Congress can lower or raise taxes and they haven't done that yet during the Trump administration. We'll see.

Of course they'll do it. This has been the main purpose of the Republican Party for the last thirty years. You know it, and I know it. Don't play the fool.
Point is, Trump actively supported such policy, as well as the deregulating of finance, which very clearly makes him a neo-liberal. I have no idea why you would want to delude yourself on that point.
 

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Someone just posted this analysis of "Obama-Trump voters" on my Facebook. I thought some here might be interested:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/upshot/the-obama-trump-voters-are-real-heres-what-they-think.html?mc=aud_dev&mcid=fb-nytimes&mccr=AugustMC810mcdt%3D2017-08&subid=AugustMC810&ad-keywords=AudDevGate

The most surprising paragraph in this to me was:

Quote

More generally, there is reason to think these voters are likelier to vote for a Democrat against a more traditional Republican who hasn’t developed a message to match Mr. Trump’s appeal to white working-class Democrats. These voters, for instance, tend to support abortion rights and same-sex marriage. They support a higher minimum wage.

I think it's remarkable that these voters tend to support abortion rights and same-sex marriage (though I really do find it unsurprising that non-college-educated Whites who switched from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016 would support a higher minimum wage.)

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6 minutes ago, Ormond said:

The Obama-Trump voters still get too much press IMO for how many there are (answer: not many).  The problem for the Democrats is turnout.  In 2008, Obama got 69.5 million votes.  Between 2008 and 2016, the US population had increased by 6.3%, but Clinton got only 65.8 million votes.  That is a LOT of people who stayed home. 

And it's not that the Obama-Trump voters doomed Clinton's chances.  Trump got just under 63 million votes, compared to 60 million for McCain.  So Trump's gain in voters was slightly below population growth.

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18 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

The Obama-Trump voters still get too much press IMO for how many there are (answer: not many).  The problem for the Democrats is turnout.  In 2008, Obama got 69.5 million votes.  Between 2008 and 2016, the US population had increased by 6.3%, but Clinton got only 65.8 million votes.  That is a LOT of people who stayed home. 

And it's not that the Obama-Trump voters doomed Clinton's chances.  Trump got just under 63 million votes, compared to 60 million for McCain.  So Trump's gain in voters was slightly below population growth.

It seems to me that the problem with the above is that it just focuses on national figures, again. The argument in the article I posted is that this obscures what was going on in the swing states, especially Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, where the Obama-Trump voters were a bigger factor. It was the distribution of these voters among the states that mattered. 

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The first thing Russians did in Ukraine was divide the left using stories of nazis, causing the left to fight each other and abandon the things they claimed they believed in.

once they did that, it was easy to start an actual war.

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10 hours ago, IamMe90 said:

I am gay and I would most likely be pretty high (not on the top, though) on the list of people to eliminate were the Nazis to gain political power in the US. I have a chronic disease and have worried about whether or not I would be able to afford the medication I need to live were the ACA repealed. I believe all of these things are a real concern and I worry about them frequently.

And yet, I do not think that vaporizing all neo-nazis off the face of the country in an unorganized, unregulated, and fractured civilian militant effort is a good idea in any way, shape, or form. Nor do I believe the same of people who wish to repeal the ACA. Not just for moral reasons, but for practical reasons as well. How many innocent people would get killed as collateral? And would it work? Would this really permanently rid the US of neo-nazis? Or people who are ignorant and wish the ACA weren't in effect?

And because what, their organization's stated view explicitly advocates violence? Last time I checked, North Korea's government has put out official videos depicting the total destruction of New York City. Where were all of you calling for us to prematurely nuke them off the face of the Earth them, damn the consequences? And that isn't even a free speech issue.

And before anyone says "no one's advocating that," it's been advocated numerous times throughout this thread, and many people have rushed to the defense of these people. And what's worse, if anyone has the gumption to disagree about where the lines of acceptable use of violence, self defense, and free speech start and end, that person has been consistently and without fail called a nazi sympathizer, a coward, privileged, or a "spineless shithead." Even if we actually agree that using violence in defense of violence by hate groups is totally justified, the fact that some may disagree about the level of justification behind premature violence (either to the extent that this is okay in principle, or to what extent the current activity of neo-nazis in the US actually invokes the right to self-defense in this sort of manner for their targets), earns these people (on the "wrong" side of this debate) those monikers. 

This thread used to be an awesome place to read and digest a lot of intelligent and well-educated peoples' nuanced political views and disagreements. As of late, it appears to mostly consist of tribal political fist pounding, personal insults, and implications of the moral fortitude and character of strangers based on disagreements on edge cases of ethics that do not have easy answers. That's sad. 

Beautifully put, IamME90. Thank you for that. 

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13 hours ago, lokisnow said:

Um no it's not being flushed down the drains. It is being funneled into the pockets of the medical care providers, making them very rich and well paid. That money doesn't just vanish down the drain, it goes to a huge cohort of people who expect that money flow to never change and are strong advocates of keeping that money flow on.

its something that liberals ever talk about, if we succeeded in matching the amount other countries spend with what we spent per person on medical care those providing the care who receive all that money would no longer be receiving that money.

we need to own that that our goal is that doctors and nurses will ultimately be paid half of what we currently pay them. The first step would be having the government start seriously forgiving med school debt. Then institute wage caps but grandfather in the current wages and then just let the best paid literally die out of the system over three or four decades.

Ah, I didn't mean it like that. It is flushed down the drain in the sense that you don't seem to get much extra value for spending twice as much on healthcare as normal countries. But yeah I agree, US doctors are extremely well paid compared to the rest of the developed world. I think the average in 'Murica is about 300 000 USD per year, which is insane. Doctors here average less than a third of that, and their program is still the hardest one in university to get admitted to due to the volumes of applicants. They don't get any debt from med school, but the difference in wages still shouldn't be nearly that large for countries with pretty comparable GDP per capita. 

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31 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

The first thing Russians did in Ukraine was divide the left using stories of nazis, causing the left to fight each other and abandon the things they claimed they believed in.

once they did that, it was easy to start an actual war.

I'm not sure this really covers what happened in the Ukraine very well, nor is it all that applicable to the US.

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9 hours ago, dmc515 said:

And what's the answer?  Because what it seems to be here is preemptive violence against the devil before it's seized much of anything - at least in any discernible way than it has in the past - beyond the rambling of our insane president.

And what happens when you don't let nazis speak?  You get less nazis?  Even though I agree enough is enough and it's time to crack down on these groups, that's not borne out empirically, and makes very little sense logically.

Erm, the entire idea of law is to "protect" things that will attack it (granted, not "nurture" - but I fail to see how the law nurtures nazis).  That's the entire concept of an adversarial system.  The foolishness of this quote is that it implicitly attacks the entire system of due process.

What's the answer? You don't let them speak. It's really not that hard.

Your last paragraph here really illustrates the extent to which you are not understanding the point. (frankly, I have zero idea where you are getting due process here) By allowing a system of absolutist free speech you allow the spread of ideas and political movements that undermine that very system. A free and democratic society with the rule of law does not protect itself.

To use the analogy from A Man for All Seasons, More imagines that the forest protects him as much as the Devil. But he's a fool because this quote can't imagine that allowing the Devil protection simply allows him to grow till he's powerful enough to control the whole thing. And at that point, all the trees in the england ain't gonna do shit. White supremacists and fascists aren't gonna do you a solid because you kept the system in place for them. They will hide behind the protections you afford them and then when they get the chance they will stomp your face in with no regard for the ideals you hold that you believe protect the both of you from each other.

I mean, we know this already. They've been doing it for well over a century in the US. And it ain't like this is uniquely American either. Guys like Erdogan and Duerte were legitimately elected. So was Trump. So were several of the governments in eastern Europe that have been taking troubling turns of late. But none of them have any interest in preserving that system.

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13 hours ago, lokisnow said:

Um no it's not being flushed down the drains. It is being funneled into the pockets of the medical care providers, making them very rich and well paid. That money doesn't just vanish down the drain, it goes to a huge cohort of people who expect that money flow to never change and are strong advocates of keeping that money flow on.

its something that liberals ever talk about, if we succeeded in matching the amount other countries spend with what we spent per person on medical care those providing the care who receive all that money would no longer be receiving that money.

we need to own that that our goal is that doctors and nurses will ultimately be paid half of what we currently pay them. The first step would be having the government start seriously forgiving med school debt. Then institute wage caps but grandfather in the current wages and then just let the best paid literally die out of the system over three or four decades.

One of the things you see discussed sometimes in US healthcare policy is that, at the end of the day, if the Democrats want to fix the system (cause God knows the right-wing has zero interest in it) at some point they are gonna have to pick a fight with doctors. Like straight up head-on battle. It's one of those reasons you see some policy experts on the issue thinking it will never really be fully fixed. 

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1 hour ago, Maithanet said:

The Obama-Trump voters still get too much press IMO for how many there are (answer: not many).  The problem for the Democrats is turnout.  In 2008, Obama got 69.5 million votes.  Between 2008 and 2016, the US population had increased by 6.3%, but Clinton got only 65.8 million votes.  That is a LOT of people who stayed home. 

And it's not that the Obama-Trump voters doomed Clinton's chances.  Trump got just under 63 million votes, compared to 60 million for McCain.  So Trump's gain in voters was slightly below population growth.

I wouldn’t compare 2008 with 2016. It’s not a good indicator for the past election or future elections. There were too many anomalies.

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4 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

I understand that the First Amendment deals with government suppression of speech, so you might have to dig deep into your online university understanding of history and tell me why that's relevant to a discussion about what private citizens should do in response to Nazi speech.

As for "Useful Idiot" -- I chose my words carefully. It has a historical connotation that fits you.

Speaking of "glaringly obvious" -- yes, I agree, neither you nor Manhole are Nazi sympathizers. I said so. In the post you quoted. I defended you both against such an accusation. Do you actually try to read for comprehension or do you just mouth the words as you scroll to the bottom for your opportunity to respond to what you imagine I said?

I see you've spent a lot of time thinking hard about these comebacks. That's very precious.

 

Dante , I think things have gotten just  bit out of hand between.  I think it best if  we both just drop it and move no. There is no gain for either one of us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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