U.S. Politics: Death and Tax Cuts

[Martell Spy]

GOP senator praises McCain but says he's 'partially to blame' for White House flag controversy

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/08/27/politics/james-inhofe-john-mccain-white-house-flag/index.html

Quote

Well, you know, frankly, I think that John McCain is partially to blame for that because he is very outspoken. He disagreed with the President in certain areas and wasn't too courteous about it," Inhofe said.

 

[Darth Richard II]

24 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

What the fuck did I do?

You know what you did.

[Liver and Onions]

So is this all philosophical politics or political philosophy? Just checking. 

[Jace, Extat]

2 hours ago, DMC said:

Sorry, missed this.  Not arguing dehumanization can be successful.  I'm arguing, as I think Scot is, that dehumanizing the outgroup affects dehumanizing one's self. 

This is exactly why I didn't return to DC when I had the opportunity.  Most think this is the soundest political strategy, so politics is filled with craven operatives.  But that's decidedly not true.  The most successful politicians are those that express and connect hope to people.  Is that difficult to figure out?  You bet.  But it should be our aim, not shitting on the other side.

Name one.

And let me stop you. How about one whose "successes" lasted five minutes past the moment he left office.

I'll wait.

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Name one.

And let me stop you. How about one whose "successes" lasted five minutes past the moment he left office.

I'll wait.

FDR, JFK, Reagan, Obama.  What the fuck's your stupid qualification?  How their successes last after they left office?  Well, FDR precipitated a a generation that wanted to extend his vision of social democracy, JFK, then LBJ perpetuated it, Reagan's MAGA lives to this day.  We'll see about Obama.  What exactly are you whining about?  I'll wait.

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Liver and Onions said:

So is this all philosophical politics or political philosophy? Just checking. 

No, not at all.  It's just pissed off people talking about politics.

[Ice Queen]

3 hours ago, Bonnot OG said:

You're justifying McCains racism. That's pathetic.

Liberals gonna lib. 

White liberal empathy certainly is terrible. It white washing scumbags like John McCain. Fuck em.

Yes, and I'm sure you're Jesus Christ come again. I'm not justifying anything but you're using black and white thinking. Unfortunately, life and the world aren't so cut and dried.

Maybe it's because I grew ip in a home where Vietnam was all around us and we could never escape its shadow. My dad suffered from PTSD my whole life. When we were kids, he would set up his Kodak projector in our living room and show 35mm slides to the neighborhood kids as a history lesson, so we never forget. It was his way of dealing with the atrocities that he himself committed.

The fact is, war sucks for all sides involved, especially civilians but also the soldiers. It might help if you looked with better eyes and tried to understand that. People are people and we do horrible things to each other. Small wonder if some people never get past it psychologically. You don't have to condone it, but you can at least try to understand it and put it in perspective.

And yet, McCain and John Kerry together fought to normalize relations with Vietnam, which today put out a statement that makes the occupant of the WH look like the petty and vindictive child he is.

[James Arryn]

11 hours ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

If you have a point to make, make it. Don't ask me to do the leg work for you. I don't deny the US military has a far higher body count. What's the point? Does that make anything I said wrong? Why do you think I called it a war machine in the first place. Mao killed more people than Hitler, did that make him a bigger monster?

Okay, sure. I’ll try. Really I thought the numbers...not that 1 is greater than the other, but the fact that 1 is many, many, many times greater would kind of be eloquent enough, but maybe you’re right and I’m being lazy. 

My point is really one with 2 thrusts, and I’ll start off obliquely with a true completely unrelated story from my life that illustrates the fallacy at the heart of a lot of this. 

One night I was the only guy in a group of about 12 girls, and we were going to do mushrooms and go to this all night bowling alley that turned off the lights, and had balls and pins that glowed in the dark while blasting music. We thought it would be a great mix. Just before we got there we all did about half the mushrooms and agreed to do the other half later on. 

So, a while goes by, we’re playing, they’re all pretty stoned but for w/e reasons mushrooms just don’t affect me much, but we’re having fun. One of the girls wasn’t having any, and suddenly at one point after bowling I realize that she and I are alone. She tells me they all went to the girls bathroom, and I guess they’re doing the other half. When they come back, they’ve used it all. I’m pretty annoyed, and I ask why they decided to go off and do it in the bathroom, and they said they felt a bit too exposed doing it out in the open. Okay, I guess, but why the girls bathroom rather than outside, or why didn’t they leave enough for me or ask if I wanted to do the rest before, and they looked at me like I was an idiot and said ‘But we couldn’t...it was the girls’ bathroom!

Me and the sober girl were laughing pretty hard, and when they sobered up they were on the floor laughing at themselves for such clearly inverted logic, and it kind of became a code word we all used for bass ackwards thinking being presented as the obvious explanation. ‘But if course we couldn’t include you, it was the girls bathroom!’ Lol.

And this is how I feel Americans often approach their conduct/record/history in foreign climes, where much and many evils are often ignored and sometimes grudgingly acknowledged, but always under the general heading of ‘but that’s war’. Without at any point recognizing that war is not a state of being, and that has for the most part been a constant in American history by American choice. America as we speak is involved in 2 wars and yet the streets and forums are filled with Americans pissed that they’re not attacking even more countries. 

When assessing the actions of other nations, we generally include their choices re: invading other states. We generally draw a connection between those choices and all the inherent ‘yeah, but that’s war’ things that follow. To watch an individual choose to, say, rob a bank and then brush off the tellers that got shot as ‘that’s bank robbery’ would be a startling thing to witness, but we watch America do this over and over and over again with war.

And my second thrust of the point is kinda how/why, and it’s this: I think many Americans also invert their war/political morality process. Rather than decide what is right and what is wrong and then examine their nation's actions, they decide their nation is right, therefore does right, and therefore they decide what is right or wrong based on what their nation does or does not do, and then find a rationale to fit.

So that’s how we get bizarre thinking like ‘killing hundreds of thousands of civilians with bombs dropped from planes  is right’, but killing a thousand with a suicide bomb is wrong’ stated as tautologies. So by now I’m sure the well worn rationales are kicking in, so I’ll illustrate it more clearly: torture.

There was a time, not all that long ago, when the vast majority of Americans thought torture was wrong, full stop. It was evil, it was other, it was what the bad guys did. You can find all kinds of past polls to show this clearly, or if you’re old enough you can remember the reaction in America when it was first being suggested that America had secret prisons where people were extrajudicially extracted to, confined and tortured...it was outrage. Not at the government, but at the cretins who were trying to foist this bullshit onto the American people. Complete fiction, probably invented by anti-American commies or maybe even the terrorists themselves, classic propaganda. 

But.

Then a whole slew of evidence, video and eventually testimony made the fiction undeniable truth. It was happening. It was happening a lot. It was happening so much soldiers were taking lol selfies with tortured prisoners. 

And, for a bit, the outrage turned inwards, but that was very brief and then an amazing but impossible to deny change took place. When confronted with 1) an action pretty universally acknowledged as a wrong 2) undeniable truth that America was and had been systematically doing 1, a great many Americans changed their opinion. About what was wrong. This is it in a nutshell, for me. When given the option of applying established moral standards to established American conduct, Americans chose to question the standard itself. Before long a clear majority were either redefining torture or simply calling it a necessary evil. That’s...remarkable. There are British spy thrillers about the question of someone in the British governmental knowing what the Americans were doing, but in America itself, after the initial shock, it was just normalized. The current President ran on a proud and often voiced position that not only would he torture suspects, he would torture their families and friends and was unimpressed that that would necessarily include many innocent men, women, children. ‘Choose better families’ was I think the joke at the time. It wasn’t like new arguments had been discovered, all that had happened between when torture was what the cackling movie bad guy did and what the grim movie anti-hero did was that America discovered it was doing it. 

I’m not saying this only happens in America, but it seems to happen on a much bigger scale and much more often than elsewhere. Many Americans treat America as it’s own moral litmus test. America is right, therefore what America does is right, as a default. And therefore wrongs are found in the spaces America does not share. Unless/until it becomes impossible to deny that they do, in which case wrong is righted. 

So, this is how I see your rubric. This is why some things matter to you as evidence of distinct wrongdoing, but the ‘most applied rubric when contrasting other to other, ie how many innocent people did they directly kill?’ is suddenly less important than, what was it, did you shoot protesters or let wives choose their husbands or w/e? Important things, these, but generally below the ‘innocents knowingly killed’ as an easy-to-hand guide of wrongness. 

 

[DMC]

33 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

And, for a bit, the outrage turned inwards, but that was very brief and then an amazing but impossible to deny change took place. When confronted with 1) an action pretty universally acknowledged as a wrong 2) undeniable truth that America was and had been systematically doing 1, a great many Americans changed their opinion. About what was wrong. This is it in a nutshell, for me. When given the option of applying established moral standards to established American conduct, Americans chose to question the standard itself. Before long a clear majority were either redefining torture or simply calling it a necessary evil. That’s...remarkable. There are British spy thrillers about the question of someone in the British governmental knowing what the Americans were doing, but in America itself, after the initial shock, it was just normalized. The current President ran on a proud and often voiced position that not only would he torture suspects, he would torture their families and friends and was unimpressed that that would necessarily include many innocent men, women, children. ‘Choose better families’ was I think the joke at the time. It wasn’t like new arguments had been discovered, all that had happened between when torture was what the cackling movie bad guy did and what the grim movie anti-hero did was that America discovered it was doing it. 

Yeah, anyone that thinks the average American thinks torture or killing civilians is cool or passe can go fuck themselves.  Grow the fuck up.  You have zero understanding of American political behavior, and are just clearly just whining like Jace or Kal.

38 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

I’m not saying this only happens in America, but it seems to happen on a much bigger scale and much more often than elsewhere. Many Americans treat America as it’s own moral litmus test. America is right, therefore America does is right. And therefore wrongs are found in the spaces America does not share. Unless/until it becomes impossible to deny that they do, in which case wrong is righted. 

I AM saying you have a hard-on for hating on the US.  I get it, I spent a lot of years acting as you do.  And, plainly, I've always loved Canada.  But your abject and unqualified hatred towards the US is grossly annoying.  Sorry, sorry.  The US is a superpower - start to contextualize that or stop pretending like you know what you're talking about.

[Gone and Quite Forgotten]

51 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

Okay, sure. I’ll try.

*Snip*

Can not describe the flat-footed shock I’m feeling that you chose to avoid answering the question and instead went off on some prattling story meant to illustrate a parallel to what you think "many Americans" do, while really not addressing anything specific that I've said.

[Week]

1 minute ago, DMC said:

The US is a superpower - start to contextualize that or stop pretending like you know what you're talking about.

I'm genuinely curious -- of the current US bombings/wars/etc. -- what does the "superpower" title obligate the US to? Or how do you view this term as having relevance in justifying the violence conducted by our military?

https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/a3ywd5/white-house-acknowledges-the-us-is-at-war-in-seven-countries (just to have a simple list)

• Afghanistan
• Iraq
• Syria
• Yemen
• Somalia
• Libya
• Niger

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Week said:

I'm genuinely curious -- of the current US bombings/wars/etc. -- what does the "superpower" title obligate the US to? Or how do you view this term as having relevance in justifying the violence conducted by our military?

https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/a3ywd5/white-house-acknowledges-the-us-is-at-war-in-seven-countries (just to have a simple list)

• Afghanistan
• Iraq
• Syria
• Yemen
• Somalia
• Libya
• Niger

What qualifications would you like?  Am I in favor of the US being a dominant military superpower?  No.  Is that an empirical fact?  Yes.  Please present me evidence that it isn't.

[Darth Richard II]

All I'm getting from this is don't do mushrooms.

[Jace, Extat]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

FDR, JFK, Reagan, Obama.  What the fuck's your stupid qualification?  How their successes last after they left office?  Well, FDR precipitated a a generation that wanted to extend his vision of social democracy, JFK, then LBJ perpetuated it, Reagan's MAGA lives to this day.  We'll see about Obama.  What exactly are you whining about?  I'll wait.

Good boy.

10 minutes ago, DMC said:

Yeah, anyone that thinks the average American thinks torture or killing civilians is cool or passe can go fuck themselves.  Grow the fuck up.  You have zero understanding of American political behavior, and are just clearly just whining like Jace or Kal.

 

There's that vim and righteousness I like so much about you.

Give us more, darling. 

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Good boy.

There's that vim and righteousness I like so much about you.

Give us more, darling. 

Love you too sweetheart.  Can I go drink and smoke?

[Rippounet]

12 minutes ago, DMC said:

Yeah, anyone that thinks the average American thinks torture or killing civilians is cool or passe can go fuck themselves.  Grow the fuck up.  You have zero understanding of American political behavior, and are just clearly just whining like Jace or Kal.

I AM saying you have a hard-on for hating on the US.  I get it, I spent a lot of years acting as you do.  And, plainly, I've always loved Canada.  But your abject and unqualified hatred towards the US is grossly annoying.  Sorry, sorry.  The US is a superpower - start to contextualize that or stop pretending like you know what you're talking about.

No contextualizing will help. You really proved his point. 

1 minute ago, Darth Richard II said:

All I'm getting from this is don't do mushrooms...

... with greedy people. 

[Martell Spy]

Jerry Falwell Jr. says Sessions has lost evangelical support

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/27/jerry-falwell-donald-trump-fire-jeff-sessions-797854

Quote

 

Jerry Falwell Jr., a top conservative religious leader, said Monday he urged President Donald Trump to fire Jeff Sessions over his handling of investigations into Russian election meddling, saying the attorney general has lost evangelicals' support.

 

 

[Bonnot OG]

1 hour ago, Crazy Cat Lady in Training said:

Yes, and I'm sure you're Jesus Christ come again. I'm not justifying anything but you're using black and white thinking. Unfortunately, life and the world aren't so cut and dried.

Maybe it's because I grew ip in a home where Vietnam was all around us and we could never escape its shadow. My dad suffered from PTSD my whole life. When we were kids, he would set up his Kodak projector in our living room and show 35mm slides to the neighborhood kids as a history lesson, so we never forget. It was his way of dealing with the atrocities that he himself committed.

The fact is, war sucks for all sides involved, especially civilians but also the soldiers. It might help if you looked with better eyes and tried to understand that. People are people and we do horrible things to each other. Small wonder if some people never get past it psychologically. You don't have to condone it, but you can at least try to understand it and put it in perspective.

And yet, McCain and John Kerry together fought to normalize relations with Vietnam, which today put out a statement that makes the occupant of the WH look like the petty and vindictive child he is.

Ah, the typical I bet you have never made a mistake sort of bs to justify horrible behavior. 

McCain was a racist. Stop justifying it, which you are regardless of you saying you are not.  You're making an excuse for him being a sack of shit.

And yup, when it comes to racism there is no middle ground. Thinking there is middle ground is such a white position to have. 

I'm don't make excuses like white moderates like yourself do. Your type enables their bullshit and does nothing to combat bigotry.

My father is a racist, no doubt it has to do with 9/11 happening and him having worked in one of the trade centers and how he could have been a casualty of the attack if not for lucking out. But that is a shit excuse and justification on his part for his racism. Plenty of people that were in similair positions as him or McCain came away from their experiences without holding onto racist beliefs. 
 

[Martell Spy]

Manafort starting to crack. I wonder if Trump still thinks he is a brave man?

Manafort Was Reportedly Trying to Negotiate a Deal Ahead of Second Trial

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/08/manafort-was-reportedly-trying-to-negotiate-a-deal-ahead-of-second-trial.html

Quote

Before former Trump campaign head Paul Manafort was found guilty on eight counts relating to bank and tax fraud last week, the Wall Street Journal reports Manfort’s legal team was actively negotiating a deal with prosecutors on a second set of charges set to go to trial in September, including charges of obstruction of justice, Manafort’s failure to register as a foreign agent, and conspiracy to launder money. The two sides were unable to come to agreement to avoid another trial because of issues raised by Special Counsel Robert Mueller himself about the potential agreement, according to the Journal. The exact details of Mueller’s objection remain unknown.

 

[DMC]

19 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

No contextualizing will help. You really proved his point. 

Explain and involve yourself.  Or don't.