US Politics: Free Trade, Freer Trade, and Nuclear War

[Fragile Bird]

My original post, btw.

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/145838-smaller-things-even-less-worthy-of-a-thread-of-their-own/&do=findComment&comment=8124038

 

[GAROVORKIN]

20 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

My original post, btw.

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php?/topic/145838-smaller-things-even-less-worthy-of-a-thread-of-their-own/&do=findComment&comment=8124038

 

 

Correction , I did see you comment but didn't read it.  My bad. 

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, GAROVORKIN said:

Medication tends to cost money to produce. If your  getting for cheap in Canada, it's coming out of someone else pocket is it not?

No, it isn't. Medication is not that expensive to produce; it's expensive to produce AND make major profits on. Shockingly, the drug manufacturers are making massive profits. 

[Kalbear]

Also, the notion that opposition to libertarianism means you favor being in a purely socialist state is as stupid as saying that if you don't favor Democracy (as libertarians do not) then you favor being in a fascist state. Why is it that libertarians never bring up the examples of Sweden, Denmark, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Finland, or even Canada as 'socialist' places? Hmm.

[Martell Spy]

The Sam Harris debate
Ezra and Sam Harris debate race, IQ, identity politics, and much more.
By Ezra Klein

https://www.vox.com/2018/4/9/17210248/sam-harris-ezra-klein-charles-murray-transcript-podcast

Quote

 

But even if you’re not interested in the backstory, I think this discussion — which is also being released on Harris’s podcast — is worth listening to. Harris’s view is that the criticism he and Murray have received is a moral panic driven by identity politics and political correctness. My view is that contemporary IQ results are inseparable from both the past and present of racism in America, and to conduct this conversation without voices who are expert on that subject, and who hail from the affected communities, is to miss the point from the outset.

So that’s where we begin. Where we go, I think, is more important: These hypotheses about biological racial difference are now, and have always been, used to advance clear political agendas — in Murray’s case, an end to programs meant to redress racial inequality, and in Harris’s case, a counterstrike against identitarian concerns he sees as a threat to his own career. Yes, identity politics are at play in this conversation, but that includes, as it always has, white identity politics.

To Harris, and you’ll hear this explicitly, identity politics is something others do. To me, it’s something we all do, and that he and many others refuse to admit they’re doing. This is one of the advantages of being the majority group: Your concerns get coded as concerns; it’s everyone else who is playing identity politics.

 

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

11 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Also, the notion that opposition to libertarianism means you favor being in a purely socialist state is as stupid as saying that if you don't favor Democracy (as libertarians do not) then you favor being in a fascist state. Why is it that libertarians never bring up the examples of Sweden, Denmark, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Finland, or even Canada as 'socialist' places? Hmm.

Or recognize that the U.S. once had a largely libertarian government and it failed quickly and that countries today that are close to being libertarian states are total disasters? It’s like they don’t want to have an honest conversation……  

[Kalbear]

It's also a shame that libertarians are virtually defined by the right-libertarian corporatist view; I wish there were more left-libertarians like there used to be. The idea there is that it is obvious that fundamental needs must be met before anyone can do anything, and the right of an individual cannot exist without things like food, shelter, and safety, so these things must be provided first before worrying about any other rights. This seems obvious; being free while not being able to eat seems like a pretty silly freedom.

[Paladin of Ice]

Since the right wing likes to shout that liberals are threatening Free Speech by boycotting speakers who literally want genocide, I thought I'd highlight the tactics the Right is using to assault education. (Y'know, other than defunding it and slandering it during their Two Minute Hate sessions) The Alt-Reich promotes recording and misleadingly editing lectures or other comments by professors, ginning up online and right wing media outrage with said recording, and using campaigns including physical threats and mass mailings to colleges to get those teachers and professors fired. (Oh, and "watchlist" websites with names, pictures, and other information about the professors.) Because, y'know, they love Free Speech so much and only the Left hates it.

Some selected quotes from the various articles:

Quote

There is a red light flashing in professor Albert Ponce's cubby-sized office. The light comes from an old-fashioned answering machine.
Lately, he doesn't like to listen to the messages by himself. When he presses play, it's obvious why. Here are a couple of messages:
"Albert Ponce, you are a piece of s*** f****** gutter slug that needs his neck snapped, OK? Call me if you need me. I'll do it for ya.
"F****** race-baiting f****** piece of trash."

Ponce teaches political science at Diablo Valley College, a community college in California's East Bay. It all started in October when he was invited to give a public lecture on campus on an area he specializes in: race and politics.
In the speech, which was filmed, he called the United States "a white supremacist, patriarchal, heteronormative, capitalist system." He also mentioned Karl Marx in passing, praised civil disobedience and referred to a white supremacist in the White House. The result: attacks on Facebook and threatening voice messages and emails.

Colleges are meant to be a home for free inquiry. But these days, not all professors feel that freedom. Across the country, in the past year and a half, at least 250 university professors, including Ponce, have been targeted via online campaigns because of their research, their teaching or their social media posts. Conservative professors have been attacked from the right and the left, both with equally dire language.

Ponce says his ideas, in context, are "not controversial at all" in his circles of academia. For example, when he talks about white supremacy, he says, he is talking about a system of power, not about individual white people.

But in today's highly polarized political climate, almost any statement about race or diversity can prove extremely controversial. Here are a few examples:

Josh Cuevas, an associate professor in the school of education at the University of North Georgia, came under inquiry from his congressional representative after getting into an argument on Facebook about President Trump and voter turnout.

Eve Browning, the chair of the department of philosophy and classics at the University of Texas, San Antonio, was targeted, as was her entire department, when a student surreptitiously recorded a disciplinary conversation that touched on his negative comments about Islam.

Laurie Rubel, a professor of education at Brooklyn College, published a National Science Foundation-funded research paper about race and mathematics education. Rubel tells NPR that she was looking at how to support high school math teachers who teach in hypersegregated urban schools, in part by being critical of the concept of meritocracy. The on-air take of Fox News commentator Greg Gutfeld was: "A math professor ... claimed that merit-based education is ... a tool of evil whiteness."

...

On the right, though, a network of outside groups and sites has mobilized against academics. Their views range from libertarian to conservative to white nationalist.

Sites such as The College Fix and Campus Reform pay student reporters to contribute stories titled: "Meritocracy is a 'tool of whiteness,' claims math professor" (Campus Reform) or "History professor calls for repeal of Second Amendment" (The College Fix).
Jennifer Kabbany, editor of The College Fix, told NPR that the site's purpose is to train future journalists, not to foment hate. "The College Fix has publicly denounced any vile emails that a professor might get," she said. "I'm sorry if professors received that kind of backlash." In reference to Ponce, of Diablo Valley College, she added, "It appeared the lecture was not balanced and didn't do academic inquiry and debate justice."

The College Fix is run by the Student Free Press Association. The association has had Education Secretary Betsy De Vos' son listed on its board of directors and is funded by an anonymous conservative donor fund.

Campus Reform is a project the Leadership Institute, a conservative think tank. Professor Watchlist, which lists more than 250 professors who advance what it calls a "radical" left-wing agenda, is maintained by Turning Point USA, an on-campus group that has been labeled "alt-right."

Campus Reform and Professor Watchlist did not respond to requests for comment.

The Red Elephants is a pro-Trump "alt-right media collective" founded in November 2016. Founder Vincent James Foxx has reportedly denied the Holocaust and been accused of urging violence at rallies. The site posted an edited video of Ponce's talk on YouTube with commentary calling it "Marxist, Communist, disgusting rhetoric that they spew in these classrooms to indoctrinate these children." It used the video to kick off an initiative called "Film Your Marxist Professor."

The administrator of the "Film Your Marxist Professor" Facebook page, who gave his name as Aaron Burr, told NPR via Facebook message: "We receive around 10 submissions per day. Our goal is to stop the anti-white and anti-American rhetoric that is being spewed on college campuses all across the country."

From these specialized sites, content travels to alt-right media sources like Breitbart and Infowars and neo-Nazi sites like Stormfront, and then, sometimes, to Fox News and the New York Post, CNN and other outlets.

Meanwhile, harassment is coordinated out in the open on anonymous, uncensored forums like 4chan, 8chan and Reddit, where self-identified "trolls" uncover and post people's personal information, known as doxing, and try out strategies of attack. Cuevas at the University of North Georgia obtained screenshots of the 4chan forum on which people were fabricating social media posts in an attempt to paint him as anti-Semitic and racist or, alternatively, as pushing anti-Trump views onto his students.

"Their stated goal was to get me fired," he says, but he fears that is not the worst of it: "Georgia had just passed the campus carry law [for firearms], and what worried me was a lone nut case."
 

 

Quote

Lisa Durden, an adjunct professor at New Jersey’s Essex County College, appeared on Tucker Carlson’s primetime Fox News show earlier this month to debate the merits of a blacks-only Memorial Day party held by a New York City chapter of Black Lives Matter. Carlson, as he does, provoked Durden. “You’re demented, actually,” he said. “You’re sick, and what you’re saying is disgusting.” Durden, a media personality herself, did not respond in kind. “Boo-hoo,” she said, “you white people are angry because you couldn’t use your ‘white privilege’ card to get invited to the Black Lives Matter all-black Memorial Day celebration.”

Two days later, Essex County College suspended Durden, and last week she was fired. Because of Durden’s appearance, school president Anthony E. Munroe wrote on Friday, “The College was immediately inundated with feedback from students, faculty and prospective students and their families expressing frustration, concern and even fear that the views expressed by a College employee (with influence over students) would negatively impact their experience on the campus…. While the adjunct who expressed her personal views in a very public setting was in no way claiming to represent the views and beliefs of the College, and does not represent the College, her employment with us and potential impact on students required our immediate review into what seemed to have become a very contentious and divisive issue.”

This justification for Durden’s firing, while disappointing, didn’t surprise me. I’m also a college professor, and appeared on Carlson’s show in April to defend my New Republic article about why colleges have a right to reject hateful speakers. While my appearance didn’t generate the same controversy as Durden’s, a wave of people contacted my school, Colby College in Maine, in an attempt to have me fired (they apparently missed the irony of trying to get someone fired for their speech, about speech, because you disagree with that speech). In addition, my colleagues in the English department, plus a few lucky senior administrators, have been hapless recipients of racist and anti-Semitic diatribes, thus burdening our IT staff.

Meanwhile, I received thousands of insults and threats. Beginning mere minutes after my appearance, I was deluged with emails and instant messages calling me a “fucking liberal idiot,” “pussy snowflake,” “ignorant and hypocritical cunt,” “fucking Nazi,” and “Jew fag.” Strangers threatened to break my legs, scalp me, and make me “eat a bullet.” One wished, in all-caps, “Hopefully you get robbed and killed by an illegal immigrant that was deported five times and he leaves you to bleed to death slowly so you have time [to] realize how fucking stupid you were all along.” There have also been repeated and likely actionable defamation attempts, which I’m still dealing with. (It’s also worth noting that I’m a straight, white, male, tenure-track professor at a top-tier institution that supports my public engagement, which is to say my experience with strangers eroticizing my slow death has been less traumatic than most professors’. I can only imagine—though I’d rather not—the bile directed privately at Durden.)

This was all in response to my careful argument about how campuses should handle invitations to speakers who are intentional provocateurs. Indeed, I had to remind Carlson and his audience no fewer than three times, in a roughly seven-minute TV segment, that I stand emphatically opposed to any sort of violence, from the left or the right, that would shut down free speech. While the right was calling for my job (and my head), I was meeting and corresponding with members of Colby’s chapter of the Young America’s Foundation, a conservative youth organization, to discuss campus free speech issues. Over five years, in hundreds of pages of teaching evaluations by my students, I haven’t received a single complaint about political bias.
 

 

Quote

Review enough such cases of faculty polemic gone viral, and an archetype starts to emerge — an assembly line of outrage that collects professors’ Facebook posts, opinion essays, and classroom comments and amplifies them until they have become national news. Often, at the start of that line, you’ll find Campus Reform, a news site that dispatches student journalists to track "liberal bias and abuse on America’s campuses."

Campus Reform’s pieces are often stamped with the hallmarks of nonpartisan journalism. Its reporters reach out to the professors, and sometimes to their institutions, to seek comment. But the stories run beneath shareable, quote-strewn headlines that tend to offer a thumbnail sketch of a more complicated statement: "American patriotism is ‘drenched in whiteness,’ prof claims." "Prof blames ‘Trump and trumpism’ for Scalise shooting."

Then, and often quite quickly, a thriving conservative-media industry delivers a signal boost. Longstanding industry leaders like The National Review and edgier newcomers like Heat Street and The Blaze offer their own write-ups of the controversies, often drawing from the Campus Reform reports without contributing additional reporting.

As the signal is boosted, it is slowly but inexorably mutated, as in a game of telephone. A Campus Reform headline describes a professor’s essay as arguing that white marble in sculptures "contributes" to white supremacy. Two days later, a Daily Caller piece, citing Campus Reform, has the professor "equating" white-marble statues with white supremacy. Two days after that, a site called Truth Revolt — now citing another account from Heat Street, which had also picked up on Campus Reform’s report — is blunter: "Professor: White Marble Statues Are Racist."

The end result, much of the time, is reporting from more-conventional national outlets. A professor, now at the center of a firestorm, gets a call from the producers of Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News: Would she like to come on the air and defend her views? A pundit, reading a local newspaper’s report on the incident, folds it into an essay on the state of the academy. Or The Chronicle reports on threats of violence the professor or her institution has received since her comments made their way through the assembly line.

About those threats: They’re increasingly common. The assembly line of outrage doesn’t just expose faculty statements to a national audience; it also calls forth an id. Readers disgusted by what they view as the social-justice agenda of higher education barrage professors and their colleges with invective and promises of personal or campuswide violence.
 

 

[Rippounet]

58 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Also, the notion that opposition to libertarianism means you favor being in a purely socialist state is as stupid as saying that if you don't favor Democracy (as libertarians do not) then you favor being in a fascist state.

To be clear: I agree with this. The reason I brought up the "f word" (well, the second one) was precisely to point out the dangers of using big -ism words.

However... although hyperbole and the "slippery slope" fallacy should be avoided in any reasonable discussions... Within the context of this discussion, the issues at hand are important enough to lead to very serious accusations. Healthcare *is* about life and death situations, and the way societies approach it does have huge implications. It's a good way to discuss the fundamental nature of individual rights or freedom, and the cost that they may have.

[Maithanet]

As expected, FL Gov. Rick Scott is running for Senate against Bill Nelson (D).

Scott is a decidedly pro-Trump politician, and has a reputation as a strong campaigner and a skilled politician.  Trump has made explicitly clear he'll do what he can to boost Scott by exempting Florida from offshore Drilling.  But Scott's two previous statewide elections in 2010 and 2014 were in a decidedly pro-GOP mood.  Nonetheless, this is a big recruitment win for the GOP.  Scott has a chance here, he has great name recognition and a huge bankroll. 

If Scott can unseat Nelson, there's more or less no path to the Senate for Democrats.  So that's just one more seat to worry about, and in a very expensive state no less. 

[Werthead]

Trump is almost certainly going to launch a military strike on Syria in the next day or two, which will risk a direct military confrontation with Russia (who said last time they would not tolerate a repeat of what happened last year). It feels like this should be more of A Thing, unless people are just assuming that Russia is going to back down and not retaliate (although their failure to respond to Israel's bombing of Syrian targets suggests maybe they are bit more noise than substance).

[Gronzag]

1 hour ago, Paladin of Ice said:

Since the right wing likes to shout that liberals are threatening Free Speech by boycotting speakers who literally want genocide, I thought I'd highlight the tactics the Right is using to assault education. (Y'know, other than defunding it and slandering it during their Two Minute Hate sessions) The Alt-Reich promotes recording and misleadingly editing lectures or other comments by professors, ginning up online and right wing media outrage with said recording, and using campaigns including physical threats and mass mailings to colleges to get those teachers and professors fired. (Oh, and "watchlist" websites with names, pictures, and other information about the professors.) Because, y'know, they love Free Speech so much and only the Left hates it.

Some selected quotes from the various articles:

Oh, the surreal irony of this post...

[Martell Spy]

27 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Trump is almost certainly going to launch a military strike on Syria in the next day or two, which will risk a direct military confrontation with Russia (who said last time they would not tolerate a repeat of what happened last year). It feels like this should be more of A Thing, unless people are just assuming that Russia is going to back down and not retaliate (although their failure to respond to Israel's bombing of Syrian targets suggests maybe they are bit more noise than substance).

Are we sure about this? He did very little last time and it appears Israel struck this time. Not saying he is not capable, just wondering what you heard.

Ah, I see the new comments. Could happen, maybe. It also looks like Trump gets more upset if there are grisly visuals.

[Martell Spy]

However Trump Responds, Things in Syria Are About to Get Worse

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/04/however-trump-responds-things-in-syria-are-about-to-get-worse.html

 

Quote

 

President Donald Trump vowed on Monday to decide on a course of action very soon, perhaps by the end of the day, in response to Saturday’s chemical attack in Douma, Syria. He has denounced the attack, on Twitter, as “SICK” and an “atrocity,” vowing that there would be a “big price to pay.” It’s more or less pointless, though, to try to predict how the president will actually respond.

For one thing, Trump’s views can shift wildly. He once suggested a willingness to partnerwith the Syrian leader he now calls “Animal Assad” to fight ISIS but shifted gears dramatically after last year’s chemical attack, which led to U.S. airstrikes.

 

 

[Lord Mord]

Gronzag,

52 minutes ago, Gronzag said:

Oh, the surreal irony of this post...

In what way is it ironic?

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Paladin of Ice said:

Whatever you were trying to do, you might want to fix it.

I tried when it happened, couldn't so I thought I'd deleted it.

Can't do more as I'm getting ready to leave on another trip  (work, not vacay -- that will be later this month, first actual vacation in years -- that is if there is a world to vacay in by then).

However, evidently today on Faux Noose a guest who was advocating military action in Syria, turned his head away from the host and said, "President Trump, I am speaking to you directly."

So I was told.  I don't have a tv and don't watch such things anyway.

Wonder if there will be a country left here for me to return to . . . .

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Trump is almost certainly going to launch a military strike on Syria in the next day or two, which will risk a direct military confrontation with Russia (who said last time they would not tolerate a repeat of what happened last year). It feels like this should be more of A Thing, unless people are just assuming that Russia is going to back down and not retaliate (although their failure to respond to Israel's bombing of Syrian targets suggests maybe they are bit more noise than substance).

I think the more likely scenario is that Trump will announce that he’s going to make a major military move, but that ultimately it will be narrow in scope and more of a public demonstration rather than a thought out campaign.

[James Arryn]

8 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I think the more likely scenario is that Trump will announce that he’s going to make a major military move, but that ultimately it will be narrow in scope and more of a public demonstration rather than a thought out campaign.

Yes, and then Putin...

I suppose there would be some ironic justice in mankind going out on a dick-measuring contest of doom.

[Fragile Bird]

CNN is reporting right now that the FBI has raided the offices of Michael Cohen to seize files, including communications with Donald Trump.

eta: Robert Mueller....

[Kalbear]

We talk a lot about what Democrats should do; this is a pdf on the populist idea of the Democratic party, and it firmly believes the biggest thing to do is simply go and register more poor people.