u.s. politics: sundowning on the american empire

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I worked for a law firm until last October.  Since then I have been employed as a “corporate counsel”.

That's what I figured. Chances are you're more likely to encounter political stuff at a firm than as a corporate adviser. 

[Fragile Bird]

35 minutes ago, Seli said:

Dropping of per capita gun suicides makes sense, considering gun ownership is dropping as well and suicide(by gun) is an impulsive action facilitated by access. This in contrast to mass shootings, which are planned.

How can gun ownership be dropping when there were massive sales while Obama was president, because the Dems were going to take their guns away. Once Trump was elected, the frantic sales slowed down, but I’m not aware of any evidence gun ownership has dropped. And what do you mean by gun ownership? That gun owners have sworn off guns, or there are fewer per capital, or what, exactly?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, DMC said:

Can't say I necessarily agree with this in my experience.  When I taught community college, yeah.  But at the university I'm at, most students probably don't do any reading until the tests, but there's always at least a handful that participate in discussions and clearly at least skimmed the material.  Even the empirical articles from scholarly journals I'll assign which are pretty tough for an undergrad.

Hmm, that's really not what I'd expect to hear. I always found my classmates and I were pretty up to date on our readings after freshman year. 

And it will come as no surprise that I was that student that always bailed the professor out when no one would responded to their questions during discussions. 

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

How can gun ownership be dropping when there were massive sales while Obama was president, because the Dems were going to take their guns away. Once Trump was elected, the frantic sales slowed down, but I’m not aware of any evidence gun ownership has dropped. And what do you mean by gun ownership? That gun owners have sworn off guns, or there are fewer per capital, or what, exactly?

 

Quote

The number of American households with guns has dropped 19 percentage points from 50 percent in 1977 to 31 percent in 2014 according to the General Social Survey of the National Opinion Research Center, which has surveyed about 2,000 Americans on the same set of questions since the early 1970's. 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/despite-mass-shootings-number-of-households-owning-guns-is-on-the-decline/

 

Basically fewer people own more guns. I've got three. 

[Seli]

12 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

How can gun ownership be dropping when there were massive sales while Obama was president, because the Dems were going to take their guns away. Once Trump was elected, the frantic sales slowed down, but I’m not aware of any evidence gun ownership has dropped. And what do you mean by gun ownership? That gun owners have sworn off guns, or there are fewer per capital, or what, exactly?

Basically (if numbers are still consistent with the last time I checked) the percentage of households (that acknowledge) owning guns has been dropping for years. But the amount of guns the remaining gun-owning households own has been increasing.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 minutes ago, Seli said:

Basically (if numbers are still consistent with the last time I checked) the percentage of households (that acknowledge) owning guns has been dropping for years. But the amount of guns the remaining gun-owning households own has been increasing.

 

[Seli]

12 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

I’m not commenting on your personal position. I’m commenting on how widespread your position is on this site, and pointing out (once again) that this site is an echo chamber for a radical minority viewpoint which does not represent main stream politics.

More interesting to me is why this forum happens to attract such a skewed sample of the population. My working hypothesis - with only anecdotal data to support it - is that what we are dealing with here is disproportionate representation from academia, either in the form of students or lecturers/ researchers, or ex academics /recent students, etc. And as Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro have pointed out so eloquently, academic institutions have radicalized dramatically in recent decades to the point of becoming bubbles of left wing extremism within broader society.

I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure it out. Maybe it’s something else entirely.

Keep in mind the denizens of this forum are not limited to the USA, and US politics is still to the right of the overton window in large parts of the rest of the world.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

3 hours ago, DMC said:

Can't say I necessarily agree with this in my experience.  When I taught community college, yeah.  But at the university I'm at, most students probably don't do any reading until the tests, but there's always at least a handful that participate in discussions and clearly at least skimmed the material.  Even the empirical articles from scholarly journals I'll assign which are pretty tough for an undergrad.

I was too broadly generalizing, I agree. 

[Bonnot OG]

2 hours ago, Fez said:

Well, how strongly do you feel about the fellas that helped start the Iraq War?

David Frum, Bill Kristol, etc.

They, along with the rest the media and politicians that supported it & still justify it, should be forced to hand dig for unexploded bombs & mines for the rest of their days as the victims & families of the dead sit hundreds of yards back behind sandbags while in Kevlar squelch feedback at them each time they go for a deep dig. 

[Kalbear]

As to winning over conservatives - I think the right strategy is to do what Trump did in 2016 - simply make conservatives not that likely to vote at all. Instead of modulating the platform you have to try and win some conservatives, just...don't. Get people energized to vote for you, get people who care interested in your message, win the voters who stayed home for Clinton, and make sure that a lot of Trump voters who were kinda meh on him in the past aren't interested in voting for him again. 

If I were running it, I'd put a lot of negative ads out that basically say 'how are you going to explain your vote for Trump to your children'? How are you going to explain voting for someone who encouraged white supremacists, who encouraged racism, who kept kids in cages and let them die? In 20 years, are you going to be able to say that you voted for Trump to your friends? 

And don't say who you want them to vote for. That doesn't matter. Just make them ashamed to vote for Trump. 

[Martell Spy]

Quote

 

A 41-year-old Detroit man deported to Iraq in June died Tuesday, according to the American Civil Liberties Union and two people close the man’s family.

The man, Jimmy Aldaoud, spent most of his life in the U.S., but was swept up in President Donald Trump’s intensified immigration enforcement efforts.

Edward Bajoka, an immigration attorney who described himself as close to Aldaoud’s family, wrote on Facebook that the death appeared to be linked to the man’s inability to obtain insulin in Baghdad to treat his diabetes.
Aldaoud was an Iraqi national, but he was born in Greece and came to the U.S. as a young child, his family friend said. He had never lived in Iraq and did not speak Arabic, according to Bajoka.

“Rest In Peace Jimmy,” Bajoka wrote. “Your blood is on the hands of ICE and this administration.”

 

Iraqi man dies after Trump administration deports him

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/07/iraqi-man-dies-deportation-trump-administration-1643512

[Fragile Bird]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/despite-mass-shootings-number-of-households-owning-guns-is-on-the-decline/

 

Basically fewer people own more guns. I've got three. 

That stuff I knew. Old news. I expected recent news.

eta: what I mean is that I think in the last decade the numbers have been steady.

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, Seli said:

Keep in mind the denizens of this forum are not limited to the USA, and US politics is still to the right of the overton window in large parts of the rest of the world.

I assume it's because everyone on this site can read and like to read. We're all here (or at least we used to be until that TV abomination came along, though it was pretty good at the start) because we've read at least one of GRRMs weighty tomes, and most of us have read 3-5 of them. What does that mean? Collectively we are all much more well educated than the average person (and much more well educated than the average USA'n). And I'm pretty sure analysis has shown that the more well educated a person is the more likely they are to lean towards progressive ideologies. So online communities that are light on people only educated to highschool level (or less) are more likely to be left of centre in their views.

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, Seli said:

Also, fine, even if you count the suicides; the gun violence rate decreased from 15.2 in 1993 to 10.5 in 2014. A decline. Which is exactly what I said.

How often must it be revealed, even here, in this very thread, to those who don't pay attention to the past, that this happened to due to the Clinton administration voting in prohibition of military grade weapons and aggressive, federally funded and supported programs for communities to rid themselves of guns?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Assault_Weapons_Ban

Which, of course, the Bushwas immediately rolled back.  Not to mention how tvillain got rid of the support for red flag checks on mentally ill people buying weapons.  Sheesh.

In the meantime, Elizabeth Warren has plans, and she's talking about them with 'rural' white women -- she does know their language and cultures, having grown up that way. A big reason she's my first choice. Read all about it here, in the first of the articles, which deals with the closing of rural hospitals, rising medical costs and the general all around degradation of rural -- WHITE -- USA's medical conditions.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/08/warren-bets-on-progressive-policies-to-win-rural-voters.html

As anyone who teaches and spends time in higher education classrooms, including the 'elite' universities, it was in the last two years that students just right out said, "We don't read books, we won't read books, " and go the the program's director to complain about being assigned print.  Everything is supposed to be on Youtube.

But people who haven't been in academia since they were students just don't know this stuff -- including that libraries keep count of how many and who comes in, keeps track of how much food garbage is generated in vain hopes that they will be allocated more maintenance salaries for the food and beverage containers, and left over food and the rest -- and, of course eradication of the accompanying rising population of roaches, rats and other vermin.  Also -- hello? Colleges and universities keep records of who are in which programs.

At my university, the white and black kids are by and large enrolled in business, finance, economics, political sciences, journalism, theater, film and television and media -- and performance arts, with the idea of becoming a professional singer-songwriter etc. -- lots of programs for that! 

The number of latinx students here is still quite low. 

Lots of students from Saudi and the oil monarchies -- and they are generally assholes.  They won't do anything at all.  These guys all see themselves as music and film stars already.  They often take the same mandatory class in their programs multiple times and they still never do any work. Or even bother coming to class. Daddy pays ....

No wonder higher education has become essentially a scam for the rich and connected.

However, the vast numbers enrolled in STEM and medical sciences are -- overwhelmingly Asian.  Many of them from China, India, Korean nd other Asian nations, who are paying full ride (rich parents), so of course the university adores them.  And THEY ARE TERRIFIED OF FAILING.  Like all college students these days, whose stress levels are off the hook.  Not that somebody who isn't working in these institutions would know anything about it.

 

 

[Bonnot OG]

Stewart fucked up when he went on crossfire and only debated and scolded this cockhead instead of choking him with his bow tie.

[The Anti-Targ]

Tucker Carlson is right, but for all the wrong reasons.

I also just noticed this connections:

Quote

During his 10-minute speech at the White House yesterday Mr Trump condemned the two shooters as "mentally ill monsters" and called for the death penalty for those who commit mass shootings.

I thought there was a general sentiment in the USA that you don't give the death penalty to the mentally ill. But maybe I'm wrong.

In my opinion, anyone who commits murder*, no matter the body count, is mentally ill.

*talking about the pre-meditated kind mostly, but even some cases of manslaughter can be attributed to a mental defect.

[karaddin]

AT - the way you're using mental illness there is kind of like they have dysfunctional morality - it's qualitatively different to what we generally mean by mental illness and avoiding tainting all the people with mental illness with that brush is exactly why you get the push back on trying to label it as such. It's a completely different axis of mental health if you will.

[TrueMetis]

So, harsher measures against "illegal" immigrants have quickly moved into abducting legal immigrants, and people who were born there on the grounds they have dark skin. Also killing people who were sent to countries they never lived in and couldn't speak the language.

Now Trump is calling for the death of "mentally ill" criminals, no points for guessing where that will lead.

Look I've hit Nazi Germany bingo here, can we skip the appeasement step and just go straight to invading them?

[Bonnot OG]

 

Mass report this fascist motherfuckers  account. Last time he did this sort of thing people got out on Nazi kill lists. I know two people on this tweet that have already received death and rape threats by his disgusting fucking fascist jackboot base.  

[karaddin]

1 hour ago, TrueMetis said:

So, harsher measures against "illegal" immigrants have quickly moved into abducting legal immigrants, and people who were born there on the grounds they have dark skin. Also killing people who were sent to countries they never lived in and couldn't speak the language.

Now Trump is calling for the death of "mentally ill" criminals, no points for guessing where that will lead.

Look I've hit Nazi Germany bingo here, can we skip the appeasement step and just go straight to invading them?

From what I'm seeing on Twitter it looks like there were mass ICE raids in Mississippi during the school day that have left hundreds of children with no parents to go home to and no one to look after them. Some are being put up at a local gym overnight but... Fucking hell. 

As you just said, it's past the point of trusting the system to stop this, mass resistance needs to happen right now.