U.S. Politics: There's Identity Politics, On Many Sides

[GAROVORKIN]

46 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Trump ran a better campaign than most people gave him credit for, but there's no way he managed to discredit the mainstream media -- he did as much as he could, but for the most part, they did it to themselves. You can verify this by looking at the extent to which Americans trust the media. It started declining long, long before Trump.

The public was  skeptical of the media long before the election.  The outcome of the election deepened it.

[Bonnot OG]

2 hours ago, Mexal said:

Trump ending DACA with a 6 month delay.  This benefits no one.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/03/trump-dreamers-immigration-daca-immigrants-242301

800,000 people is too many to lock up and send away peacefully, this is going to be a mess.

[DMC]

2 hours ago, Mexal said:

Trump ending DACA with a 6 month delay.  This benefits no one.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/03/trump-dreamers-immigration-daca-immigrants-242301

Depending on your perspective, it either passes the buck to or affords Congress time to pass something.

[Altherion]

28 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

People used to distrust other skin colours. Something occurring is not an indication of merit. 

Of course not, but in the case of trust in the media, the lack thereof is almost certainly well-earned.

[KingintheNorth4]

16 minutes ago, Sword of Doom said:

800,000 people is too many to lock up and send away peacefully, this is going to be a mess.

Many families are going to be torn apart by this, sadly.

[LongRider]

49 minutes ago, KingintheNorth4 said:

Many families are going to be torn apart by this, sadly.

Trump can be counted to do the most cruel thing.

[James Arryn]

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

Of course not, but in the case of trust in the media, the lack thereof is almost certainly well-earned.

Oh, well in that case.

[drawkcabi]

Since November I keep thinking about this encounter I had at a grocery store over a year ago. I was sitting in the pharmacy and a mother and daughter comes in, the daughter is asking what they will do if Trump wins, she is definitely worried. If I had to guess I'd say they were of some middle eastern descent.

"What is he does win though?"

"Will we leave the country?"

"Will we be made to leave the country?"

"Where will we go?"

So with all the overconfidence I had until about a week before the election, I spoke up, interjected myself and assured the daughter no way would Trump win. I told her even if he won the Republican nomination, as it looked like he was about to do at that time, during the general election, the voters would rise up and overwhelmingly vote against Trump, just to keep him out of office, no matter who the Dem candidate was.

The mom looked at her daughter and said "feel better?"

The daughter still looked unsure but nodded.

I feel like a shitheel every time I think about that. I wonder where they are and hope they are doing ok. 

[Yukle]

3 hours ago, Altherion said:

Trump ran a better campaign than most people gave him credit for, but there's no way he managed to discredit the mainstream media -- he did as much as he could, but for the most part, they did it to themselves. You can verify this by looking at the extent to which Americans trust the media. It started declining long, long before Trump.

I'm less convinced that's true. Sometimes people feel comfortable buying into the fallacy that all spectrums of politics are all equally complicit at all times in all wrongs.

Because Fox News is horrendous, it's an expectation that you must concede that at least one high-rating mainstream left-wing news outlet is equally terrible.

There have been times when left-wing and times when right-wing outlets were essentially propaganda - but it's rare for it to be at the same time within the same society. So I don't think CNN discredited themselves; certainly I think it was a mistake to run Trump's speeches unedited, live and without commentary - but that's why they began live fact-checking. Their mistake wasn't in their coverage and bias - it was in their lack of appropriate bias for their audience. They just let Trump speak, without any proper competition or counter-arguments, assuming that their audience would, as their producers did, laugh at how ludicrous he is.

[Yukle]

11 minutes ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

Three more years of this fucking shit...

Don't worry, we'll be dead in a nuclear war within a few months.

[GAROVORKIN]

7 hours ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

Three more years of this fucking shit...

A Golden Age. 

[LongRider]

A great tax plan, the best tax plan for the best people:

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The options include capping the mortgage interest deduction for homeowners; scrapping people's ability to deduct state and local taxes; and eliminating businesses' ability to deduct interest, while also phasing in so-called full expensing for small businesses that allows them to immediately deduct investments like new equipment or facilities.

hmmmmmmmmm,

Quote

One idea quietly being discussed would be taxing the money that workers place into their 401(k) savings plans up front: an idea that would raise billions of dollars in the short-term and is pulled from the Camp plan. This policy idea is widely disliked by budget hawks, who consider it a gimmick; the financial services industry that handles retirement savings; and nonprofits that try to encourage Americans to save.

Americans barely save for retirement now, let's make that worse!  yeeee haw.   

Quote

Top White House officials are less concerned about adding to the deficit because many believe that the economic growth stemming from lower tax rates will make up any budget shortfalls.

Unintentional comedy.   

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Members of Congress, particularly in the House, may be less sanguine about that prospect after years of pushing for fiscal constraints, stricter spending caps, and greater emphasis on the deficit.

Everybody's a critic!

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

Anne Frank Center Latest to Bash Trump...

 

[Zorral]

15 hours ago, Altherion said:

Not quite. Any one of those words is potentially scary to those who benefit from the current system, but all three of them together are indicative of an incoherent ideological mess that is unlikely to be a threat to the existing order. Of course, the antifa are scary in the same way as any other set of masked thugs is scary, but they lack material support from any broad class of people and they have no means of mobilizing such support.

Thus, in and of themselves, the antifa would be minor pests that occasionally violate the rights of some American citizens, but are easily dealt with by the police. However, they do not exist in a vacuum: if you've studied history, you should recognize how such thugs can be used by a more ideologically coherent foe. Fortunately, there is no such entity in the present context, but it is entirely possible that the violence of the antifa is currently helping to forge and temper one.

Why yes, I have studied extensively how thugs are used to control those who protest the status quo of racism (KKK, cops etc.), labor exploitation (the Pinkertons, Italian gangsters etc.), the crack down on any political dissent (the Brown shirts, fascist militias, etc.).

As even these reviewers state, one cannot equate antifa with any of these -- particularly any of the current armed alt right 'militias.'

In any battle for social justice or even defense of one self, home and family, in a context in which the the legal system and other institutions are so weighted against social justice and equality in the law, and in which so much of them, from cops to white supremacists are openly armed, openly committing violence as intimidation leading to the endless silence for those who object, there needs to be a wing that is armed and willing to mix it up.  No single approach wins, including the violence only -- unless, of course, they are nazis, slaveholders, etc. -- but they have all the law and government institutions working for them. 

[LongRider]

1st Amendment; 

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Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

and yet

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Anti-Protest Bills Around the Country

In response to epic protests around the country, state legislators in nearly 20 states proposed bills in 2017 that would restrict people’s right to protest. The ACLU fought back and many of the bills died or were amended to remove unconstitutional language. For those that passed, we’re hopeful that protestors will exercise their right to dissent and courts will prevent the use of these laws to unconstitutionally burden protest activity. This map is current as of June 23, 2017. 

People wear all types of masks in political protest and have as long as protests have existed, it's tradition.

https://www.google.com/search?biw=1097&bih=489&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=protest+masks&oq=protest+masks&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0.10580.14555.0.15000.13.13.0.0.0.0.228.2309.0j11j2.13.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..0.13.2305...0i67k1j0i8i30k1.-U0k3VlJ_6U

first they came for our masks, then what?  Our puppets?

https://www.google.com/search?biw=1097&bih=489&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=protest+puppets&oq=protest+puppets&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0.94340.96379.0.96828.8.8.0.0.0.0.210.1468.0j5j3.8.0....0...1.1.64.psy-ab..0.8.1464...0i67k1j0i30k1j0i8i30k1.KVsIkjOh8qE

 

[Altherion]

10 hours ago, Yukle said:

I'm less convinced that's true. Sometimes people feel comfortable buying into the fallacy that all spectrums of politics are all equally complicit at all times in all wrongs.

They are not equally complicit, but they are all part of the same system and each would not be able to accomplish their objectives nearly as well if the other did not exist.

10 hours ago, Yukle said:

So I don't think CNN discredited themselves; certainly I think it was a mistake to run Trump's speeches unedited, live and without commentary - but that's why they began live fact-checking. Their mistake wasn't in their coverage and bias - it was in their lack of appropriate bias for their audience.

Who decides which bias is "appropriate"? Also, they did the only thing they could have -- had they started editing his speeches or whatever, he would have (correctly!) accused them of doing so and it would have made his position even stronger.

55 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Why yes, I have studied extensively how thugs are used to control those who protest the status quo of racism (KKK, cops etc.), labor exploitation (the Pinkertons, Italian gangsters etc.), the crack down on any political dissent (the Brown shirts, fascist militias, etc.).

As even these reviewers state, one cannot equate antifa with any of these -- particularly any of the current armed alt right 'militias.'

Look more closely at the 1930s. The issue is not that the antifa can be equated with these (they clearly cannot), it's that the antifa are useful tools to any would-be dictator because they help hone the militias you mention and because they can always be blamed for starting a fight or a fire or something of the sort.

[Rippounet]

1 hour ago, Lew Theobald said:

That's fine, as long as you are not pretending that I am the one making that argument.  My position is that speech is performed by people, and that corporations are fictional constructs, that do not truly exist.

If speech is performed by people and corporations are fictional constructs, why would corporations have any rights? Can't people use their first amendment rights whenever they want to talk about corporate interests? Basically, all that would be necessary would be for people to specify when they are talking about their corporation or defending their corporation's interests, and voilà!

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Lew Theobald said:

I can imagine the howls of bloody murder that would occur if Trump, with the aid of a Republican congress, were to try to censor the N.Y. Times, relying on the excuse that the N.Y. Times was a corporation and not an actual person with rights; and/or on the excuse that its editorials cannot be proven to reflect the views of each of its individual shareholders.  In that case, it might occur to some of you, not only that real people are actually being censored, but that real people YOU AGREE WITH are actually being censored.  

In that case, I would join you all in howling bloody murder, because I really and truly value the protections of the First Amendment.  But I suspect that with so many others, it would be simply an issue of the "wrong" people being censored, rather than the "right" people being censored.

That's not even remotely close to a valid comparison.  Citizens United is a 501(c)(4) group bankrolled by the Koch brothers that produced a hitjob "documentary" on Hillary.  A valid comparison would be if America Votes, a 501(c)(4) group bankrolled by George Soros, produced a hitjob "documentary" in the vein of Michael Moore's efforts.  Incidentally - in breathtaking irony and hypocrisy, Citizens United called for government limits on advertising for Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 on the grounds they were tantamount to campaign ads and should be subject to FEC campaign finance regulations.  Anyway, if such a group and documentary were subject to the BCRA's rules along with conservative groups would I howl bloody murder?  Not in the slightest - but then censoring Moore is like a win-win in my book.

[Rippounet]

5 minutes ago, Lew Theobald said:

Are you suggesting that all Citizen's United needs to win their case is to have various shareholders and/or CEO and/or director (etc.) of "Hillary: The Movie" join in the case in his/her/their capacityI(ies) as individual person(s)?

Why are shareholders, CEOs and movie directors not "speaking" as individual persons in the first place?

[DMC]

6 minutes ago, Lew Theobald said:

It is a perfectly valid comparison if the sole justification of the opposing argument is "corporations are not people and have no rights".  If you don't like the comparison, come up with a more sophisticated argument.

I posted my argument last night here.