US politics: Georgia on my mind

[karaddin]

On 10/23/2018 at 6:42 AM, Kalbear said:

When you can remove 300,000 registered voters 4 weeks before the election occurs and have no real challenge to it legally at any level, I'm not sure how gerrymandering even matters at that point. 

 

I assume no one really replied to this because the implications are pretty pessimistic. A system that allows that to happen is just utterly and fundamentally broken.

22 hours ago, S John said:

I hate that I often see the word ‘globalist’ tossed around as pejorative term, as though we were calling someone a thief, or a coward, or an asshole. 

Worth noting in case you aren't aware, but 'globalist' is used as a direct dogwhistle for "Jew". I'm not saying anyone in this thread was doing that, as the context in which it came up was actually talking about globalism, but people using it the way you describe here? If there's no further context they're likely antisemitic pieces of shit.

ETA

6 hours ago, Bonnot OG said:

IDK if people here have friends and family in Brazil, but I would seriously start talking to them and tyrying to help them find a way out of Brazil given how that fascist with genocidal cravings, Bolsonaro, could very well become president there. 

And our horrible anti brown skin immigration here will cause lots of people from there to die and be oppressed.

This goes double for trans people, the murder rate of trans people in Brazil is the highest in the world and I can't imagine that someone like him is going to have a positive impact on this even before he starts mass murdering people.

[DMC]

38 minutes ago, karaddin said:

I assume no one really replied to this because the implications are pretty pessimistic. A system that allows that to happen is just utterly and fundamentally broken.

I didn't reply to it because I don't know its impact on an election.  I know of similar maneuvers in the past, and their effects turned out to be negligible.  As an empiricist, I'll wait until there's verifiable data.  That being said, I have no problem with people raising this issue and screaming about it at the top of their lungs.  I've done the same regarding Florida.

44 minutes ago, karaddin said:

Worth noting in case you aren't aware, but 'globalist' is used as a direct dogwhistle for "Jew".

Yup, this is probably more than just noteworthy.

[Free Northman Reborn]

Seems like there has been half a page of arguments boiling down to a disagreement on whether Trump has lost a billion dollars or “only” a few hundred million dollars since taking office. I’m happy to go with a few hundred million. The point is, I don’t think someone can seriously claim the Presidency is enriching  him. He is actually growing poorer the longer he stays in office.

I think he really doesn’t want immigrants in the country, he really wants to be hard on potential terrorists, he really wants America to negotiate as the biggest dog in the pack on economic affairs, to put its interests first and to walk back globalism.

Those are not policies geared to increasing his personal wealth. I am on record that I don’t particularly like him, and that he isn’t a very nice person. But I don’t think he is in it to get rich. There are easier ways to do that.

[DMC]

13 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

The point is, I don’t think someone can seriously claim the Presidency is enriching  him. He is actually growing poorer the longer he stays in office.

I agree it's hard to claim whether he's making money or not.  I don't know that, you don't know that, nobody knows that.  You know why?  Because he violated a basic norm of presidential candidates.  If the Dems are able to take the House maybe they can bring light to this subject.  I'm sure you'll be thrilled with the results.

17 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Those are not policies geared to increasing his personal wealth.

True, but they are policies that allow him to perpetuate his personal wealth.  Your attempt at excusing him is almost as pathetic as his rhetoric.

[Free Northman Reborn]

7 minutes ago, DMC said:

I agree it's hard to claim whether he's making money or not.  I don't know that, you don't know that, nobody knows that.  You know why?  Because he violated a basic norm of presidential candidates.  If the Dems are able to take the House maybe they can bring light to this subject.  I'm sure you'll be thrilled with the results.

True, but they are policies that allow him to perpetuate his personal wealth.  Your attempt at excusing him is almost as pathetic as his rhetoric.

See that’s incorrect. I’m not excusing whatever action you think I’m excusing. I’m disagreeing with the assertion that his policies are motivated by personal enrichment. Simple.

[Ran]

Just to point out one thing, there is an exceptionally strong case that Trump forced the FBI and GAO to not use a site they had long intended to use for a new FBI headquarters because the current site would have been sold for private development... and it is across the street from the Trump Hotel, which at best meant years of construction outside, and at worst meant not just construction, but construction of a rival hotel.

That's just one example. There are others.

[DMC]

31 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

See that’s incorrect. I’m not excusing whatever action you think I’m excusing. I’m disagreeing with the assertion that his policies are motivated by personal enrichment. Simple.

No.  It's not incorrect.  You were attempting to absolve Trump of any usury or anything of the sort based on his policies.  That's incorrect, or at least unknowable at this point.  Simple.  If you're gonna spout a bunch of bullshit like that, find another platform to do so.  There's plenty available.

[Free Northman Reborn]

32 minutes ago, DMC said:

No.  It's not incorrect.  You were attempting to absolve Trump of any usury or anything of the sort based on his policies.  That's incorrect, or at least unknowable at this point.  Simple.  If you're gonna spout a bunch of bullshit like that, find another platform to do so.  There's plenty available.

I think you need to wind your neck in a tad. You will find that in the real world (read: outside your little echo chamber) you will come across opinions that differ from yours from time to time. No need to start frothing at the mouth when that occurs.

I can only repeat: I don’t think Trump’s policies are motivated by personal enrichment. He may cheat on taxes, he may have committed financial fraud many times, he may be guilty of a whole host of transgressions in multiple spheres of life.

But I don’t think his anti-immigration, anti-globalisation, pro-America policies are pursued for personal enrichment. I think they are positions he genuinely identifies with. It is simply not worth the bother otherwise.

[Bennis of the Brown Shield]

On 10/23/2018 at 7:05 AM, S John said:

I kind of get the anti globalism stance in an economic sense where we blame corporate globalism for the death of American manufacturing and want to reverse that somewhat.  At this point it may just be a futile race against the robots, but a country as big as ours would be well served by a strong domestic manufacturing base until skynet takes over, IMO.  

That said I have some major problems with blanket anti- globalist sentiment.  The world is so interconnected now that we legitimately need a sense of global shared responsibility in many areas.  The most obvious example for me is that envieonmental issues don’t recognize international borders and its painful to me to see the US lead the charge in the wrong direction by refusing to even pay lip service to the idea that there might be a problem and that global cooperation is the only way to mitigate it.  

There’s also a general disdain for NATO and the UN, mainly stemming from perceived unfairness in the feeling that the US taxpayer inordinately foots the bill.  I get the gripe, particularly with regard to NATO, and past presidents have as well -  but post WW2 organizations set up to help prevent WW3 shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand and I do see that in not-hard-to-find corners of the internet.  Its not entirely by chance that we have not yet experienced WW3.  Maybe we are just far enough removed from the Cold War that people have forgotten that it’s not at all out of the realm of possibility that none of us survive a WW3.  The nuclear threat has never gone away it’s just out of the headlines.

Sometimes I don’t think people really consider the genuinely existential threat presented by simply tossing aside ‘globalist’ attitudes because it has created discomfort in certain sectors and is politically unpopular at the moment.  I mean, yea I’d like to see droves of jobs that used to be done here come back and come back at a fair wage, but I also don’t want my family to be vaporized in a nuclear exchange because a new wave of nationalism caused a breakdown of the post WW2 order.

We should put our own country first when it makes sense to do that, and it often does.  But there are several areas where it really needs to be Earth First and not because of some hippy bullshit but because that is genuinely in the best interest of all humans.  I hate that I often see the word ‘globalist’ tossed around as pejorative term, as though we were calling someone a thief, or a coward, or an asshole.  Strikes me as not having really thought it through, or of underestimating the damage that was done in the pre-nuclear age by rampant nationalism.  The stakes are too high now and that’s simple reality.  We cannot afford to backslide very far in this regard.  

Good post. I recommend anyone who hasn't done so to read Yuval Noah Harari's recent text in the Economist about this: 

https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/09/26/we-need-a-post-liberal-order-now 

I find the argument about preventing future thermonuclear warfare to be one of the strongest for increased globalization. 

If we go back to a world order with multitudes of independent nation states and empires engaged in military competition and distrust of each other, but with modern weaponry, then one can make the case that humanity would more or less be living on borrowed time. 

To add an interesting tidbit to this, modern countries like Japan and South Korea are judged to be capable of developing such weapons in a matter of months should they want to. In other words, it wouldn't need to take very long for nuclear weapons to proliferate across the globe should the security situation change. 

 

[Free Northman Reborn]

16 minutes ago, Khaleesi did nothing wrong said:

Good post. I recommend anyone who hasn't done so to read Yuval Noah Harari's recent text in the Economist about this: 

https://www.economist.com/open-future/2018/09/26/we-need-a-post-liberal-order-now 

I find the argument about preventing future thermonuclear warfare to be one of the strongest for increased globalization. 

If we go back to a world order with multitudes of independent nation states and empires engaged in military competition and distrust of each other, but with modern weaponry, then one can make the case that humanity would more or less be living on borrowed time. 

To add an interesting tidbit to this, modern countries like Japan and South Korea are judged to be capable of developing such weapons in a matter of months should they want to. In other words, it wouldn't need to take very long for nuclear weapons to proliferate across the globe should the security situation change. 

 

That is a compelling argument. And yet, there is the inevitable loss of so much that is precious in a globalized society. At one point it seemed inevitable. Now it is becoming at least slightly less certain, although I still think the current backlash is still just a blip on the long term trendline towards the eradication of seperate cultural identities and a future homogenized - probably totalitarian, thought police controlled world.

Or maybe AI takes over and this entire discussion becomes moot.

[Bonnot OG]

4 hours ago, karaddin said:

I assume no one really replied to this because the implications are pretty pessimistic. A system that allows that to happen is just utterly and fundamentally broken.

Worth noting in case you aren't aware, but 'globalist' is used as a direct dogwhistle for "Jew". I'm not saying anyone in this thread was doing that, as the context in which it came up was actually talking about globalism, but people using it the way you describe here? If there's no further context they're likely antisemitic pieces of shit.

ETA

This goes double for trans people, the murder rate of trans people in Brazil is the highest in the world and I can't imagine that someone like him is going to have a positive impact on this even before he starts mass murdering people.

Yea, I've heard a lot about it down there. I also saw a video of a trans person that was beaten to death there. It broke my heart and enraged me, still does when I think about it.

Someone like him is going to genocide demographics off in Brazil, and he is going to committ ecocide on top of it. He will absolutely kill tribes off to damage the rain forest.
 

If you know anyone down there, inform them to lock down private communication channels.

They should be thinking about getting their hands on a laptop, installing linux, and practicing strict operational security for all political activity.

This is just general advice, and assumes they have a wifi enabled laptop and access to a public wireless access point.

If they have been politically active on social media, using a real name or photo, then there's a record of it. There are ways to scrub accounts, which will mitigate the threat from reactionary mob violence.

They are likely flying under the gov's radar, unless they start making a lot of noise. If not, them staying under their radar will most likely continue.

If they're active enough that they think they could possibly be on a watchlist / target list, then they should be thinking about an immediate exit plan.

For most people, just staying off the hitlist of the local fascist brown / black shirts is probably the best someone can hope for... and good enough.

Try to do the best to appear normal on social media. Blend in and tone down their presence on all official channelsbut stop revealing so much about where they are and what they are doing.

The best option would be to obtain a business-class laptop, and do so with cash or some other untraceable currency, but not bitcoin since that is very much traceable.

A used / second hand laptop from a mom and pop shop is fine, but brand new (still sealed) is a better option.

It's nearly impossible to protect against pre-installed hardware bugs, but honestly, don't be too worried about intellectual property being appropriated at the moment.

Use an Intel CPU with integrated graphics and Intel wifi/bluetooth, it's the safest bet for running linux on a laptop.

If they don't know how to use linux and tor, the safest way to maintain communication is by installing [TAILS](https://tails.boum.org) on a USB flash drive.

TAILS stands for The Amnesic Incognito Live System. It's designed for the specific purpose of securing and concealing private communication between political activists, journalists and their sources, etc. Even though it is designed to be fairly easy to use, read all of the [documentation](https://tails.boum.org/doc/index.en.html). Don't skimp.

When it is used, make sure that only happens when it's on public wifi so they are less visible to correlation analysis.

Make sure the the same location is not used, keep it changing. Also, make sure this is done with out any sort of cellphone on their person. The gov will start tracking cell pings.

When booting into TAILS and connecting to the internet, the connection will be encrypted, sent through a series of 3 tor nodes. The result is that the IP address can't be tracked from the other end, and no individual node has access to all the encryption keys. Tor stands for The Onion Router, named as such because it uses multiple layers of encryption to anonymize network activity. If more info is wanted about onion routing, watch this [Computerphile](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRYzre4bf7I).

After all this, the best thing to do is use encrypted email services to stay in communication with political contacts, who should / need to be met with face to face in order to exchange addresses. Create throw throwaway accounts for reddit and other services like raddle.me

[SweetPea]

8 hours ago, Week said:

Do you have an alert for when anything negative is said about Richard Spencer? Pretty telling that you choose to leap to the discussion ONLY to defend Richard Spencer. Really? 

I was busy with work in the past few days and didn't have time to visit this forum.  I finally had some free time yesterday, and this was the last post in the thread. I don't like Richard Spencer, but against false statements, sure, I'll defend him anytime.

[Rippounet]

22 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

But I don’t think his anti-immigration, anti-globalisation, pro-America policies are pursued for personal enrichment. I think they are positions he genuinely identifies with.

Indeed. And they reveal his thought process. In fact everything we know about him points to a simple hierarchy in his mind:

Me >> Family >> Nation >> the world

A hierarchy which many people consider normal. And yet, we now know for a fact that it is extremeley dangerous for humanity as a whole.

As for the defense of "separate cultural identities"... Blah. Modernity is the main threat to tradition, and that ain't going away anytime soon. In fact, traditions evolve, full stop, and culture isn't some magically fixed element that should be protected, but a fluid ever-changing relative notion. Cultures vary across continents much more than across nations, and are enriched through exchanges across borders that are really abstractions. Is there a lot of difference between Chicago and Toronto? Not much that I could see as a European. OTOH the differences between Tokyo and Chicago aren't going to disappear any time soon, even if you eat sushi in Chicago and burgers in Tokyo.

I could go on, but I have to go to work. Seriously though, nations are fictions. They're a relatively recent invention. There are cultural variations across the globe, but they are unlikely to vanish. The only thing that you are really afraid of is to see what you have known in your lifetime disappear. But guess what? Even in a world of fortress-nations what you have known in your lifetime would disappear. "Conservatism" is, in itself, a delusion, like building sand castles to protect yourself from the rising tide. You'll build your castle again and again as the tide ebbs and flows, but it'll never last.

[felice]

2 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

The point is, I don’t think someone can seriously claim the Presidency is enriching  him. He is actually growing poorer the longer he stays in office.

Only partially because he's in office, if it's happening at all (we have very limited information on his finances); he'd still be growing poorer for many of the same reasons if he hadn't entered politics. And it doesn't mean he's not trying to use the Presidency to enrich himself.

2 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

I think he really doesn’t want immigrants in the country, he really wants to be hard on potential terrorists, he really wants America to negotiate as the biggest dog in the pack on economic affairs, to put its interests first and to walk back globalism.

He's certainly genuinely racist, but that doesn't mean he cares at all about whether or not racist policies are actually good for America. And he's only interested in America's top dog position because of how it reflects upon himself, again without concern for what America's interests actually are or the consequences of acting tough.

2 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

But I don’t think he is in it to get rich. There are easier ways to do that.

He's also in it to boost his ego.

[mormont]

2 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Seems like there has been half a page of arguments boiling down to a disagreement on whether Trump has lost a billion dollars or “only” a few hundred million dollars since taking office. I’m happy to go with a few hundred million. The point is, I don’t think someone can seriously claim the Presidency is enriching  him. He is actually growing poorer the longer he stays in office.

OK, once more for the hard of reading: 

The question under discussion was not whether Trump has grown richer. The question was whether he puts his own interests above those of the country. These are totally distinct questions. That Trump has lost money, does not prove either that he is not attempting to make money off the Presidency in a corrupt way - and I note that you are silent on the repeated evidence cited that he has done so - nor does it prove that he is not putting his interests, which are not all financial and can't all be measured by estimates of his net worth, above those of the country.

tl;dr - you're shifting the goalposts.

[DMC]

55 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

I think you need to wind your neck in a tad. You will find that in the real world (read: outside your little echo chamber) you will come across opinions that differ from yours from time to time. No need to start frothing at the mouth when that occurs.

Well, ya got me there.  Wind my neck in a tad?  The fuck does that even mean?  And how am I frothing at the mouth?  It must be nice, in your little chair or whatever, to assume everybody that disagrees with you is in an "echo chamber."  You know what that means?  You're in the echo chamber.  Enjoy being another uninformed asshole.  There's plenty at that table.

[Rippounet]

Slow morning at work and this was nagging me...

1 hour ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

I still think the current backlash is still just a blip on the long term trendline towards the eradication of seperate cultural identities and a future homogenized - probably totalitarian, thought police controlled world.

Funny thing, I largely agree with you here. It's just that I disagree about the meaning of "totalitarian, thought-police-controlled world."

I imagine that in the future, most humans will be taught what is today considered "liberal" (with "liberal" meaning something else entirely), because the alternative (conservative religiousness and nationalism) would lead or will have led to conflict and war.

I just don't see what's "totalitarian" about it, unless you consider that any dominant set of values is totalitarian. Which isn't what the word is supposed to mean, like, at all. It's also ironic, coming from a conservative, because conservatism, through religious values, tends to exercise a far higher degree of control over public and private life than liberalism. That's almost, like, the definition of liberalism: liberal principles are about individual choice. It's precisely this wealth of choice that conservatives loathe (the right to "choose" your gender being high on the list these days). By contrast, conservatism is far more constraining as far as personal life choices go, hence would be far closer to anything "totalitarian" on principle.

Anyway, long way of saying that we don't seem to disagree about what the future holds, but about how to label things.

Now the irony is, your labels make more sense if you are actually liberal on some issues and feel that the dominant values are preventing some personal life choices. But for better or for worse, I fail to see what these would be...

[Free Northman Reborn]

1 hour ago, mormont said:

OK, once more for the hard of reading: 

The question under discussion was not whether Trump has grown richer. The question was whether he puts his own interests above those of the country. These are totally distinct questions. That Trump has lost money, does not prove either that he is not attempting to make money off the Presidency in a corrupt way - and I note that you are silent on the repeated evidence cited that he has done so - nor does it prove that he is not putting his interests, which are not all financial and can't all be measured by estimates of his net worth, above those of the country.

tl;dr - you're shifting the goalposts.

Mormont, you seem to want to engage me on a much broader front than the point I am making. How much clearer can I be that I am not trying to refute every allegation made against Trump, or defend his altruism or character in general.

I just don’t believe that his motivation for being President is to increase his personal wealth. And I find it ironic that those who do make that assertion also seem to say that I can’t argue the opposite because his financial affairs are not open to scrutiny. Well, that by default means they don’t know either.

In my view. Note. “My” view (you can have a different view), the controversial policies he has been pursuing have been severely damaging to his brand and business interests. And it would seem that independent estimates of his wealth decline over the course of his Presidency support such a view.

As for whether he cares about the interests of all Americans or just certain classes of Americans, whether he has the long term benefit of society in mind, or any other broader assessments of his motivations, I am not commenting on that in THIS point. He does after all have severe narcissistic (spelling) tendencies.

I am allowed to make my point, however. And set my own goalpoasts wherever I wish to. Just because it is not the point you wish to debate does not mean I’m “shifting the goalposts.” You can play between your goalposts with anyone who wishes to engage on that much broader issue.

I’m saying (and this is getting repetitious), that his anti immigration, anti terror, anti globalist, America first policies seem like stupid policies to follow if you are primarily focused on increasing your personal wealth.

[Bennis of the Brown Shield]

2 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

That is a compelling argument. And yet, there is the inevitable loss of so much that is precious in a globalized society. At one point it seemed inevitable. Now it is becoming at least slightly less certain, although I still think the current backlash is still just a blip on the long term trendline towards the eradication of seperate cultural identities and a future homogenized - probably totalitarian, thought police controlled world.

Or maybe AI takes over and this entire discussion becomes moot.

For sure. Still, you have to weigh the negatives against each other. 

Also, with the rate technology is advancing the world is bound to change in massive ways regardless. It is not impossible that the main divisions of the future will be more along the lines of genetically enhanced humans vs. normal people, or something like that, rather than present day ethnic or religious groups. Stephen Hawking seems to have believed in such a scenario, according to the posthumously published book that was recently released (which I haven't read, only seen some reviews). 

[mormont]

1 minute ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

I just don’t believe that his motivation for being President is to increase his personal wealth.

OK. But to ground this belief in the fact that his personal wealth has not increased is a flawed, fallacious, even specious bit of reasoning. You rely totally on the post hoc (estimated) valuation of his business interests and utterly ignore direct evidence of him funneling cash to his businesses and engaging in corruption. 

 

5 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

And I find it ironic that those who do make that assertion also seem to say that I can’t argue the opposite because his financial affairs are not open to scrutiny. Well, that by default means they don’t know either.

But they're not claiming to know his net wealth, and their argument doesn't depend in any way on knowing it. It's based on direct proof of him acting to personally profit from his office. 

You have no counter to that, it seems. So let's agree that it is true, and that Donald Trump is corrupt and seeks to personally profit from his office.