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U.S. Politics: Phantom of the Emergency


DMC

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1 minute ago, larrytheimp said:

Apologies, didn't mean you specifically at all.

No worries.

2 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

I was very vocally against the Iraq War from the yellow cake uranium Valerie Plame shit and before.  There's definitely an "I told you so" aspect to it

Not sure if there's much correlation there.  I don't identify with the emergent left but was definitely vocally against Iraq from the get-go.    

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12 minutes ago, DMC said:

No worries.

Not sure if there's much correlation there.  I don't identify with the emergent left but was definitely vocally against Iraq from the get-go.    

I was more referring to the "rabid left" (which probably has some overlap with the emergent faction you mention).  I don't think you can say that moderate Dems were against the Iraq War, unless it's after the fact.  I'm sure there are a few exceptions but I remember being surprised and frustrated at the time about how many Dems and liberals were ok with it.

For reference, I'm 35, college dropout, rural (at the moment) white voter.  

 

 

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Just now, larrytheimp said:

I don't think you can say that moderate Dems were against the Iraq War, unless it's after the fact.  I'm sure there are a few exceptions I remember being surprised at the time how many Dems and liberals were ok with it.

Oh, definitely.  Basically the entire party-in-government bent over on Iraq.  That reckoning came with Obama, whose primary opening argument was opposing Iraq from the beginning.  Not sure if it still has an impact - hell, I'm about the same age (turn 34 in May), and I wonder if those much younger than me even remember/have an opinion on the disgusting way in which Bush got us into Iraq.

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Dude, I love AOC because she's bringing it. We need more real people like her with ideas that start conversations. I don't agree or disagree with her tax policy. I'm more for it than against, but I think it still is a band-aid to tax policy. It needs to be razed to the ground and rebuilt so we can close the gap between the stated tax rates and effective tax rates to see what we actually have to work with. It's only then that conversations about specific tax brackets becomes relevant, IMO.

Iraq was always bullshit.

Even when talking to party loyalists of either side, I can find some overlap of agreement, it's just hard to have these conversations because we shorthand them in different ways and aren't using the same vocabulary. If you can get past that initial knee-jerk reaction to words, there is a lot of room to work. I just did it myself with the phrase 'rabid left'. It's hard to get past words sometimes.

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On the left engaging in crazy ideas, according to certain sorts of "centrist": Green New Deal Edition.

According to some centrist, the idea of a Green New Deal is out in crazy land.

But, here is what is really crazy: We've known about climate change for a long time. We had a chance when there was a worldwide thirst for safe financial assets around the world, to cheaply finance investments in Green technologies, but didn't do it because according to centrist, fiscal debt was our biggest issue. That was crazy.

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1 hour ago, Gertrude said:

That's actually part of my mindset too. I want the party to come to some kind of reckoning so that an actual conversation and some compromises between the parties can happen in good faith so governance can happen. I want an actual choice again.

Why should they? George w Bush’s biggest policy victory of his presidency was enacted by a democrat when Obama accepted Biden’s last minute compromise and made the bush tax cuts permanent. 

With democrats willing to do all the hard work to enact republican policies, why should republicans have any sort of reckoning? They win massively even when they lose.

and if Obama hadn’t done that? We might have razed the tax system to the ground in response to the bush tax cuts expiring.

***

one of the things that made the Republican Party Change last time was the new deal. A major series of massive policy victories finally caused a reckoning. Democrats have avoided doing that, and this republicans have no incentive to change. This is a big reason to sign on to a green new deal because without the incentive of democrats actually accomplishing left policy goals, republicans have no reason to change.

in other words, to cause republicans to change, first we must commit to democrats changing.

 

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We're coming at the problem from different angles, but towards the same goal. It's kind of the language issue I was alluding to. From either of our perspectives, the action is the same - vote D. Just because we don't agree on how we frame it in our heads, the result is the same. Or am I not getting some nuance? Is it because I support but don't shout from the rooftop that the Green New Deal is A-OK the difference?

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"The only people we hate more than the Romans, are the fucking Judean People's Front."


This quote is from the Life of Brian, where The People's Judean Front are enemies of The People's Front of Judea. The joke of course is how those on the left tend to eat each other alive, often over relatively small differences. What makes the whole gag funny, like most jokes that are funny, is that it contains an element of truth.
 

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My take on that is that it's virtually a non-issue. I respect that others may see it very differently and I get that. I don't have an opinion on Gabbard other than a vague nope for reasons I can't remember right now. I haven't had the energy to educate myself about potential candidates yet, Lord help us.

But since we're kind of talking about different spectrums on the political scale, I'll tell you why I don't really care. This was in the past and she was still very young. The article has suggested to me that her personal views haven't really evolved, but her political motives have. I don't know her full voting record and if it shows that her political record has turned around on these issues, then it's all good. If she still backslides a bit, that's where the problem lies. (I don't want to be inundated with facts about her right now, I'm just basing this on surface level reporting.)

On a personal level I think the comment was wrong, but I don't have to personally agree with someone or like them to work with them. It's a bonus, of course, but it's not the most important factor. 

edit: to clarify - I see where the issue is in a wider political sense, I am saying that for me the existence of this comment is not a big factor.

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Tulsi Gabbard seems like a natural Republican who had to put a D in front of her name to get a shot at a congressional seat in Hawaii. I've not read too much on her policy positions on broader soci-economic stuff, so Maybe she's a D on some things and R on others.

Didn't Hillary have some problematic historical statements and policy positions on LGBT issues? It didn't harm her for the 2016 nomination, but perhaps there was no viable LGBT ally among the primary candidates to rally around, so it didn't hurt her. Who are the LGBT allies among the likely 2020 Democrats?

Also Roseanne Barr claiming her firing was anti-semitism. Personally I had no idea she was Jewish. Finding that out doesn't change my opinion about her being racist.

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19 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Tulsi Gabbard seems like a natural Republican who had to put a D in front of her name to get a shot at a congressional seat in Hawaii. I've not read too much on her policy positions on broader soci-economic stuff, so Maybe she's a D on some things and R on others.

Didn't Hillary have some problematic historical statements and policy positions on LGBT issues? It didn't harm her for the 2016 nomination, but perhaps there was no viable LGBT ally among the primary candidates to rally around, so it didn't hurt her. Who are the LGBT allies among the likely 2020 Democrats?

Also Roseanne Barr claiming her firing was anti-semitism. Personally I had no idea she was Jewish. Finding that out doesn't change my opinion about her being racist.

She's also like a fucking holocaust denier so...

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5 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

According to some centrist, the idea of a Green New Deal is out in crazy land.

Can you oppose something like a Green New Deal and be a centrist?

It's a genuine question, but one of semantics. Because US politics have moved so far to the right, it's become difficult to know what a "centrist" is supposed to be. Not that this hasn't been a recurrent question on these threads, but I think it's an important one: when we use a label like "centrist" should we be talking of centrists in the current sense, i.e. left of the Republicans, or centrists in the absolute sense, i.e. to the right of socialists?

Climate change throws in an extra layer of difficulty. I don't think anyone reasonable can deny climate change in 2019. Nor can anyone reasonable deny that it requires pretty major policies at this point. So a centrist should not be opposing a "Green New Deal" but simply refusing "extreme" socialist solutions to curb corporate power. A reasonable centrist however should accept that there's simply no way to deal with climate change without at least hurting the industries primarily responsible for it. A reasonable centrist might even have to accept the fact that eternal economic growth is quite simply not fully compatible with the survival of our species.

All that is tricky. Climate change basically means that the West cannot protect its "way of life" indefinitely, so this should be a pretty centrist position. However, if you oppose the American "way of life," you're supposed to be a dangerous anti-American commie or something. And fact is, as of now, it's difficult to see how to change our way of life without massive government intervention.
Because it seems to me that, on some level, Republicans have a point: anyone wanting to deal with climate change will almost automatically advocate for what are essentially radical leftist policies.

So how do you guys make sense of all this mess? Doesn't accepting climate change mean becoming a leftist or even worse? Aren't all reasonable people forced to contemplate becoming radical activists of sorts? Again, not a rhetorical question. My GF is constantly asking me what we should do. As in, what kind of political activism we should engage in. But is there anything centrist at this point? Doesn't climate change mean that there are really two possibilities: denying it and sticking our heads in the sand or becoming radical eco-activists of sorts?

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1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

Can you oppose something like a Green New Deal and be a centrist?

It's a genuine question, but one of semantics. Because US politics have moved so far to the right, it's become difficult to know what a "centrist" is supposed to be. Not that this hasn't been a recurrent question on these threads, but I think it's an important one: when we use a label like "centrist" should we be talking of centrists in the current sense, i.e. left of the Republicans, or centrists in the absolute sense, i.e. to the right of socialists?

Climate change throws in an extra layer of difficulty. I don't think anyone reasonable can deny climate change in 2019. Nor can anyone reasonable deny that it requires pretty major policies at this point. So a centrist should not be opposing a "Green New Deal" but simply refusing "extreme" socialist solutions to curb corporate power. A reasonable centrist however should accept that there's simply no way to deal with climate change without at least hurting the industries primarily responsible for it. A reasonable centrist might even have to accept the fact that eternal economic growth is quite simply not fully compatible with the survival of our species.

All that is tricky. Climate change basically means that the West cannot protect its "way of life" indefinitely, so this should be a pretty centrist position. However, if you oppose the American "way of life," you're supposed to be a dangerous anti-American commie or something. And fact is, as of now, it's difficult to see how to change our way of life without massive government intervention.
Because it seems to me that, on some level, Republicans have a point: anyone wanting to deal with climate change will almost automatically advocate for what are essentially radical leftist policies.

So how do you guys make sense of all this mess? Doesn't accepting climate change mean becoming a leftist or even worse? Aren't all reasonable people forced to contemplate becoming radical activists of sorts? Again, not a rhetorical question. My GF is constantly asking me what we should do. As in, what kind of political activism we should engage in. But is there anything centrist at this point? Doesn't climate change mean that there are really two possibilities: denying it and sticking our heads in the sand or becoming radical eco-activists of sorts?

There are people who accept anthropogenic climate change, but who have faith that Elon Musk, or someone like him, will come up with a technical solution to prevent major catastrophes that mean we don't need to do anything about emissions.

But as Mohammad once famously said: "Trust in Musk, but tie your camel."

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1 hour ago, Triskele said:

She seems to stake out a few positions that might seem more Republican-ish like acting a bit jingoish on military stuff and saying there's religious bigotry against Christians.  On economic issues she's a Bernie supporter though I don't know much more about specifics of what she's going to stake out position-wise.   

Yeah, Gabbard has a weird mix of positions that, taken all together, don't really add up to being a liberal, conservative, or moderate. Steve Bannon once called her his favorite member of congress, which no one should take as a ringing endorsement.

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I've seen her take flak for meeting with Assad. But US policy on Syria has been pretty incoherent since 2012 or so a rebel victory has meant a literal genocide of minorities, so I see her as taking a much more realistic position on foreign policy. Frankly the US position on Assad is disgusting given what a rebel victory would actually mean (not counting the SDF). 

 

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