US Politics: Culture Club

[Kalbear]

So let's see.

We have Trump saying he'd weaken the dollar after Kudlow this morning saying he wouldn't, North Korea has tested a couple shortish range ballistic missiles and probably has made about 12 nukes since last summit, the economy did not actually hit 3% growth last year.

So ya know, another rosy outlook

[Jace, Extat]

That's a good title. Not going to say mine was better, but I will suggest it by mentioning for no reason that I didn't start a new thread on account of having made one two threads ago.

Now, can we all agree that @Triskele and @Jace, Basilissa expressing concerns about dem candidates being too honest on immigration is a normal conversation worth having after a 'cultural preservationist' has reared its fucking head? I'm kinda glad it showed up, to be honest.  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 minute ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

That's a good title. Not going to say mine was better, but I will suggest it by mentioning for no reason that I didn't start a new thread on account of having made one two threads ago.

The people must know what it was, Basilissa!!! 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Thanks @Rippounet!!! I strongly encourage everyone to read this article. It highlights just how insane the Republican Party has become. They're actually to the right of Le Pen's reformed neo-Nazi party.
 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/26/opinion/sunday/republican-platform-far-right.html

TLDR:

 

Quote

The difference is that in Europe, far-right populist parties are often an alternative to the mainstream. In the United States, the Republican Party is the mainstream.

“That’s the tragedy of the American two-party system,” Mr. Greven said. In a multiparty government, white working-class populists might have been shunted into a smaller faction, and the Republicans might have continued as a “big tent” conservative party. Instead, the Republican Party has allowed its more extreme elements to dominate. “Nowhere in Europe do you have that phenomenon,” he said.

 

[Kalbear]

Well, other than, ya know, the UK. But I guess they're not actually part of Europe any more. 

[Jace, Extat]

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

The people must know what it was, Basilissa!!! 

One does not tease then tell. 

When it is finished. When Minneapolis is... ashes. Then you have my permission to cry.

Until then the title must remain a vaguely hinted at stroke of brilliance. Forever untainted by interpretation.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

5 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Well, other than, ya know, the UK. But I guess they're not actually part of Europe any more. 

I believe they rebuttal would be the Conservative Party verses UKIP. The former is closer to the medium party line than they are to the latter.

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

I believe they rebuttal would be the Conservative Party verses UKIP. The former is closer to the medium party line than they are to the latter.

The only reason UKIP dissolved is because it got literally everything it wanted from the conservative party. 

[Darth Richard II]

Man I don’t know what the fuck happened in the last thread, did you all do too many drugs?

or not enough drugs...

[DanteGabriel]

3 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Man I don’t know what the fuck happened in the last thread, did you all do too many drugs?

or not enough drugs...

"Western chauvinism" is a hell of a drug.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Okay, sorry for flooding the new thread, but I've been sitting on a couple stories that may have gotten missed during all the chaos of the last few weeks. First up, Muslim travel ban, you now have a brother. The WH is looking into implementing a travel ban on people coming from Guatemala. It's not the only option they're weighing, but it's certainly the cruelest, making it the most likely outcome. The other story is of Trump clearly getting caught in an obvious lie. While hosting Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan, Trump volunteered that a few weeks early he had spoken with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he visited the WH with the latter asking Trump to mediate a long held dispute between India and Pakistan, specifically on the decades long Kashmir dispute. India in turn immediately denied these claims and said they were false. Soon after the WH had to walk back the comment. Trump really cannot help himself. He told an blatant lie for no reason what so ever. Just another example of how no other world leader can trust this guy.

[DanteGabriel]

3 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Okay, sorry for flooding the new thread, but I've been sitting on a couple stories that may have gotten missed during all the chaos of the last few weeks. First up, Muslim travel ban, you now have a brother. The WH is looking into implementing a travel ban on people coming from Guatemala. It's not the only option they're weighing, but it's certainly the cruelest, making it the most likely outcome. The other story is of Trump clearly getting caught in an obvious lie. While hosting Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan, Trump volunteered that a few weeks early he had spoken with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he visited the WH with the latter asking Trump to mediate a long held dispute between India and Pakistan, specifically on the decades long Kashmir dispute. India in turn immediately denied these claims and said they were false. Soon after the WH had to walk back the comment. Trump really cannot help himself. He told an blatant lie for no reason what so ever. Just another example of how no other world leader can trust this guy.

That's not completely accurate. It seems like Putin and Kim can trust Trump to be a perfect patsy.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Just now, DanteGabriel said:

That's not completely accurate. It seems like Putin and Kim can trust Trump to be a perfect patsy.

You think they trust him? He's a useful idiot, not a partner. Also, it appears the first story I linked is now moot:

Quote

President Trump announced Friday that Guatemala would agree to restrict asylum applications to the US from Central America.

The so-called “safe third country” agreement would require migrants, including Salvadorans and Hondurans, who cross into Guatemala on their way to the US to apply for protections in Guatemala instead of at the southern border.

It could potentially ease the crush of illegal immigrants overwhelming the US immigration system and hand Trump a win in his effort to fulfill his campaign promises to restrict illegal entry.

 https://nypost.com/2019/07/26/trump-reaches-landmark-immigration-deal-with-guatemala/

[DanteGabriel]

Just now, Tywin et al. said:

You think they trust him? He's a useful idiot, not a partner. 

Well, yes, that's why I called him a patsy. He is utterly predictable and thus easily manipulated. He is greedy, racist, cruel, dumb, responds to flattery, and can't help but admire authoritarians. He can always be trusted to respond in a certain way to specific stimuli. He's the fish at the poker table who thinks he's a sharp. Even my four-year-old is more wise to manipulation.

[Jace, Extat]

12 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

Well, yes, that's why I called him a patsy. He is utterly predictable and thus easily manipulated. He is greedy, racist, cruel, dumb, responds to flattery, and can't help but admire authoritarians. He can always be trusted to respond in a certain way to specific stimuli. He's the fish at the poker table who thinks he's a sharp. Even my four-year-old is more wise to manipulation.

And this is why he's so popular with certain ilks.  He's a dumb ass who lucked into a massive amount of chips that he can use to bully the smarter players. Donald Trump is the greatest aspiration of at least 63 million Americans. To just have so much that it doesn't matter if you're stupid or weak or insane, you'll always have.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

49 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Thanks @Rippounet!!! I strongly encourage everyone to read this article. It highlights just how insane the Republican Party has become. They're actually to the right of Le Pen's reformed neo-Nazi party.
 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/26/opinion/sunday/republican-platform-far-right.html

TLDR:

 

 

Nowhere in Europe?

I think the author has not paid much attention to Hungary and Poland then.

The UK's Tory party with their ERG wing is on its way, too. But let's stick with the established far right parties in Hungary and Poland. Fidesz and PiS are just nasty.

[The Mother of The Others]

Having is evil.

Mueller didn't respond to flattery.  They told him he was the biggest patriot in the room.  Then they tried to get him to cross the line for them.  And he looked back at them like, "Bitch, I'm not going to jail for you!" And all he'd say was, "That's not in my perv view."    And they asked him, "well what is in your purview?"  And he was like, "I'm looking at you, and you're a marvelous flock of pervs."

Quote

some quote that didn't transfer over about how fascists want to make everybody the same and that's a shame.   Using this fine definition (which is fine) as a starter......

(Standard disclaimer, this is really to everyone, not only the quoted Zorral, whom I bear no ill will toward)

Good.  This ^ means you share my outrage at the masked fools chasing people off of college campi for the crime of having differing opinions.   Diversity includes diversity of thought.   Not just diverse places of origin.   The expansive minded progressives allowed their definition of diversity to contract on them, so higher learning feels very constricted (devil snake in the gargen all over again).  Now let's see them re-expand their definition of diversity so it once again means something, so people are seen not only through the racist skein of skin color categorization and are not peer pressured to all feel the same way as one cultural voting block, which stirs up lots of that hate you lefters like to avoid.  So here's a great opportunity to turn down the hate up in here- - by not always stirring it up to begin with so you can then use it as a talking point. 

 Imagine a world where people are treated as people whose thinking may differ.  Even from yours!   Let's celebrate that diversity once more in our halls of 'learning.'   Stop steering the thought channels of impressionable youth with such religious fervor as the new church, since you tend to despise the old one so much.  You haven't really freed yourself from religion very well if you're cracking heads over doctrine.  Shutting down diversity of thought mostly speaks to the weakness of the arguer.   Stop relying on the fascist branch of Progress to squash news sources and free speech for you.   The deans and faculty just let it happen, too, either because they're horrible people, or are horrified at what their teaching methods have engendered and would rather not cop to it as they live in denial and fear of being marked as the next target of the masked mob should they ever speak their conscience.   Better to just let the ideals of their institution die an ugly death than risk their triple dipping pension.  Better to just go on silently ashamed, collecting racial data on anyone who tries to so much as use a campus bathroom while allowing the fascists to eat away at the very concept of schooling and diversity.

And there's no problem with championing multiculturalism.  Until you realize it's the only thing you're championing.  Until you hear yourself throwing a fit whenever someone reminds you there are other proirities too.  Like the ability for us to also stand united as a people, to know we're on the same team underneath all our vaunted differences.  When this notion slips from our national consciousness, it's because the educators haven't been reminding us of it enough.  When you do constant maintenance to the one concept and go silent on the other, we fall into disrepair as a society.   Stress lines appear, and we fracture.  Put enough stress on a condom and it breaks, put enough stress on a multicultural society and you get a pregnant situation with everyone claiming this isn't their america, because not enough people are reminding them that it is.   

Buy into it.   Stop only serving as a drag on it.   Stop asking Maury who the father is.  It's never going to be any of the 8 people you brought with you from Detroit to do the paternity testing.  (Regular viewers of the program know what I'm talking about.)  The founding fathers are the father.   We need to both hold on to that AND move forward.  Or else we're a bunch of blind lil baby birds by choice, like how the government goobers looked during that Mueller show.  You know, when they showed the world that we're still helpless and internicine two years later after we were messed with.....by Russia!   Lester Holt hilariously mentioned at one point that the actual Russian involvment in crimes against our electoral process had gone underreported.   Well?  Les, aren't y'all the ones who under reported it?  Perhaps due to your raging hardons for Trump that lasted for far in excess of 4 hours?   You should have called your doctor about that 2 year long hardon, national newsrooms!  Maybe you got too involved in aiding a coup attempt based on an illegitimately launched investigation instead of making sure to shine a light on how we need to safeguard the next election?   The enemy is still chuckling at these procedings.  Our 'response' to their incursion is the most encouraging one they could have imagined.  They boned us and our response was to flaggelate ourselves inwardly with nary an outward glance toward the offender.   On the shamefulness of this, at least, I agree with Chuck Todd.   The emphasis being all on Trump shows the true motivation of the whole affair.  Politically motivated takedown attempt, not national security motivated, not the high road but the low.   Theater.  They know the high road will never be theirs by way of merit, so they falsified an onramp so as to fraudulently claim moral authority.

Anyway, as Ellen might intone, .... if you'd just turn your philosophical frown upside down and buy into the world that is you'd find this america is yours indeed.  It's right here for you to feel at home in.  But I think lots of the Dem schtick involves taking that feeling of home away from people.  So they never settle in and start taking their own lives in a wonderful direction by choosing the high road.  So they remain manipulatable by the company store.  ~ 'Only by getting getting back at Johnny will you get even, get what's yours.  And we, the gov,  will provide you with what's.....yours.'    It's class war hate speech and the death of self reliance from the party that keeps us in turmoil.  Good for business.  Historically.   It's a shame we study the history of deception more these days than we study.... history.

Good day, professors

[DMC]

I agree with Ty that neither Putin nor Kim "trust" Trump.  They're willing to play him, of course, but I think both are well aware Trump will turn on them on a dime if self-interest/preservation required it.

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Thanks @Rippounet!!! I strongly encourage everyone to read this article. It highlights just how insane the Republican Party has become. They're actually to the right of Le Pen's reformed neo-Nazi party.

Yeah that was the link I was referring to when I first responded.  I wouldn't put too much faith in the figures they presented - the methodology does not appear to be peer reviewed (nor sufficiently explained), so that's not exactly a "study," and certainly not rigorous.

[DMC]

14 minutes ago, The Mother of The Others said:

Good day, professors

...Can you PM me the number of your weed dealer?

[Fragile Bird]

1 hour ago, Darth Richard II said:

Man I don’t know what the fuck happened in the last thread, did you all do too many drugs?

or not enough drugs...

I just got caught up on the closed thread. Living in Canada as I do, everywhere I go the air is tinged with the sweet smell of marijuana. Reading those last couple of pages was like my walk in the park every day.