US politics : clowns want their money back

[Kalbear]

And in a hopeful sign, this is what dem legislatures and dem governors can do. VA is absolutely crushing it in early turnins.

 

 

[Fez]

2 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

“It’s the most important election in the history of the USA!”

I mean, it's up there. I would also argue that as the Republican party has gotten more extreme, each successive election from 1996 to 2020 has gotten more and more important. In 1996, it wasn't that important (relative to the importance of any other Presidential election) and now in 2020 I think we're in basically a tie with 1860, 1864, and 1932 as the most important one in US history.

[Guy Kilmore]

13 minutes ago, Kalibear said:

And in a hopeful sign, this is what dem legislatures and dem governors can do. VA is absolutely crushing it in early turnins.

 

 

This is why, I agree with some posters here.  If the Democrats get control of the Senate and the Presidency, they need to move warp speed on the courts and to also put forward some legislation towards federal guidelines and structures on voting.  The only way some of these social ills changing is by making people feel that they have a voice again.

[Kalbear]

I assume @DMC and @Tywin et al. are also now considered Rhodes scholars

 

 

[Altherion]

59 minutes ago, Kalibear said:

At the same time I will say this: it is not a fascist aesthetic to recognize that we are at a point of no return - both politically and ecologically. It is not unreasonable to frame this as the last chance outside of war to have a vaguely representational form of government in the US and a vaguely nondisastrous planet to live on.

Points of no return in complex systems are really, really hard to spot except in hindsight. Ecologically, there are actually many of them and we know that we are already past some while others are ahead, but we don't know how many there are or when we'll cross most of them. If I had to guess, if we fail to stop global warming and some future historian is forced to choose one American election which might have made a difference, they would pick not the upcoming one, but the one exactly two decades ago in which, at the turn of the millennium, a genuine environmentalist came oh-so-close to being elected.

Politically, you really are being eschatological for no obvious reason. The current form of US government is about as representational as it has ever been and certainly much more so than for the first century of the nation's existence. The tug of war between the people crying "Voter suppression!" and the ones crying "Voting fraud!" is not new -- it dates back to at least the mid-19th century. Clashes on the streets between the more extreme elements of the national parties are not new either. The only new thing which might cause a problem is the prevalence of mail-in voting, but this is a temporary phenomenon and will probably diminish when the virus goes away.

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, Altherion said:

Politically, you really are being eschatological for no obvious reason. The current form of US government is about as representational as it has ever been and certainly much more so than for the first century of the nation's existence. The tug of war between the people crying "Voter suppression!" and the ones crying "Voting fraud!" is not new -- it dates back to at least the mid-19th century. Clashes on the streets between the more extreme elements of the national parties are not new either. The only new thing which might cause a problem is the prevalence of mail-in voting, but this is a temporary phenomenon and will probably diminish when the virus goes away.

It isn't just representational government as far as voting goes. It's incarceration, it's police brutality, it's open grift and corruption, it's actual federal LEO attacking protesters. 

This hasn't happened since the 1960s to any scale, and that involved someone literally breaking the law to get elected - except in that case, they got kicked out of office by their own party. The big difference is that Nixon today would never, ever be voted against by his other Republicans, not in a million years. If you don't see that as a massive danger to the republic beyond voter suppression - where there are no effective checks on the power or corruption of the executive branch - I don't know what to tell you, other than, yet again, you're the one who thought that Trump would be a good choice.

[sologdin]

has gotten more extreme

i don't disagree that they keep doubling down on fascistic crazy--so it's exponential when looking back across a lifetime--but from their perspective, is not the democratic party also quantitatively evolving campaign by campaign into something that appears, in their uncritical apprehension, to be qualitatively radically distinct? all that is solid melts into air for conservatives, surely?

 

 feel the boding, the ache beyond the horizon?

love that.  it does help to have RSB in the head while reading these sort of campaign pronouncements. please be advised, all readers of bakker:  trump is not the consult.  not even close. and his followers are not sranc who traumatically inseminate their fallen enemies on  the field of battle. trump is by contrast just a trashy nouveau riche legatee who doesn't know anything other than fast-talking, and his cultists, poor things, have irrational fears and unwarranted beliefs that for all their insipid braggadocio need not result in violence or even deviation from the norms of civil society.

 

not a fascist aesthetic to recognize that we are at a point of no return - both politically and ecologically. 

point of no return for what? politics is a continuous set of developments.  the apocalypticism was patent during the last two supreme court appointments--and yet we have an 6-3 expansion of title VII to include non-heteronormative and transgender rights written by one of those appointees. personality aside, the policy preferences of the current regime are throwbacks to prior policy preferences--all of which were overcome or diminished through the regular democratic process.  

i get the ecological concern; we are certainly seeing quantitative changes--where however is the qualitative threshold beyond which there is no return? i write with the assumption that we have streaked past a number of PONRs--with the passage of one of them, new orleans is likely toast within my kid's lifetime, say, and inexorably has been for the last however many years, irrespective of what action is taken to alleviate anthropogenic climate change.  and i expect her to live elsewhere once new orleans becomes untenable. this is, i.e., a problem to be solved through the political process, primarily through economic means.

i suppose polar bears whose home melts into the arctic or penguins whose antarctic glacier collapses into the sea will mark a PONR at some point in the recent past--but that means we have a continual passage of local PONRs, each itself a quantitative increment in a long process of planetary development.  is there a qualitative change in there at some point that can't be undone from the perspective of terrestrial habitability?  i assume that's what this is ultimately about--bare survivability? otherwise apocalypticism does not make sense?

 

 

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Kalibear said:

I assume @DMC and @Tywin et al. are also now considered Rhodes scholars

 

 

I really must have kicked your dog. And everyone knows my honorary degree is in thuganomics from Mean Streets University. 

[Kalbear]

3 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I really must have kicked your dog. And everyone knows my honorary degree is in thuganomics from Mean Streets University. 

My dog totally deserved it, that incontinent jerk. Also, you're a Rhoades scholar now! Just like justice Barrett!

 

59 minutes ago, sologdin said:

point of no return for what? politics is a continuous set of developments.  the apocalypticism was patent during the last two supreme court appointments--and yet we have an 6-3 expansion of title VII to include non-heteronormative and transgender rights written by one of those appointees. personality aside, the policy preferences of the current regime are throwbacks to prior policy preferences--all of which were overcome or diminished through the regular democratic process.  

Politics is a continuous set of developments, and I would argue that this is a point of no return for the actual democratic state that had been roughly established in 1968 in the US. 

Those transgender and non-heteronormative rights are almost certain to be stricken down, btw. 

59 minutes ago, sologdin said:

i get the ecological concern; we are certainly seeing quantitative changes--where however is the qualitative threshold beyond which there is no return? i write with the assumption that we have streaked past a number of PONRs--with the passage of one of them, new orleans is likely toast within my kid's lifetime, say, and inexorably has been for the last however many years, irrespective of what action is taken to alleviate anthropogenic climate change.  and i expect her to live elsewhere once new orleans becomes untenable. this is, i.e., a problem to be solved through the political process, primarily through economic means.

4 more years of the country that emits the greatest amount of carbon per capita and drives economic patterns throughout the world is, IMO, going to put us into the category of massive human die-offs - billions of people - in our lifetime. And it will put us there in a way that cannot be solved via economic means. 

59 minutes ago, sologdin said:

 i assume that's what this is ultimately about--bare survivability? otherwise apocalypticism does not make sense?

Yep! Bare survivability. Not bear survivability, which is very important to me obviously, but simply the ability for a large chunk of the US population to live. You can presumably move from New Orleans; can all of Latin America be evacuated? Can you just 'move' from South India? 

[Altherion]

1 hour ago, Kalibear said:

It isn't just representational government as far as voting goes. It's incarceration, it's police brutality, it's open grift and corruption, it's actual federal LEO attacking protesters. 

This hasn't happened since the 1960s to any scale, and that involved someone literally breaking the law to get elected - except in that case, they got kicked out of office by their own party. The big difference is that Nixon today would never, ever be voted against by his other Republicans, not in a million years. If you don't see that as a massive danger to the republic beyond voter suppression - where there are no effective checks on the power or corruption of the executive branch - I don't know what to tell you, other than, yet again, you're the one who thought that Trump would be a good choice.

Police brutality in the US is surprisingly persistent -- there is unrest over it once or twice a decade as far back as I can remember. The previous major event was in 2014 (in Ferguson, Missouri, in New York City and in various other places), but looking it up just for New York, it goes far, far back. Here are a couple of examples, one from 1943 and one from 1964. It's actually rather surprising that American police just can't stop killing people after all this time. And protesters often get attacked by law enforcement regardless of whether it is federal, state or local.

Grift and corruption are also not new. I don't think the current system does to a more considerable extent than, say, Tammany Hall at its height. It has also been done on a national scale before with the most recent example probably being Halliburton and the Iraq War. Also, Nixon broke the law to be re-elected in the 1970s, not the 1960s.

The increased polarization is indeed worrisome, but again, it comes and goes and the country has survived much worse than this. I wouldn't start with the eschatology until there is at least physical violence in the Senate.

 

[Jace, Extat]

18 minutes ago, Kalibear said:

My dog totally deserved it, that incontinent jerk. Also, you're a Rhoades scholar now! Just like justice Barrett!

 

Politics is a continuous set of developments, and I would argue that this is a point of no return for the actual democratic state that had been roughly established in 1968 in the US. 

Those transgender and non-heteronormative rights are almost certain to be stricken down, btw. 

4 more years of the country that emits the greatest amount of carbon per capita and drives economic patterns throughout the world is, IMO, going to put us into the category of massive human die-offs - billions of people - in our lifetime. And it will put us there in a way that cannot be solved via economic means. 

Yep! Bare survivability. Not bear survivability, which is very important to me obviously, but simply the ability for a large chunk of the US population to live. You can presumably move from New Orleans; can all of Latin America be evacuated? Can you just 'move' from South India? 

The exigence of latins will be of zero concern in this greatest nation of ours, ever. No matter who claims victory next month. We as a people did nothing about refugees from these same areas being put into literal cages during a time of plenty. If you believe that American soldiers and private citizens alike will not shoot down masses of humanity attempting to enter this country during the upcoming dark times, you simply are not paying attention.

But if you wanna look at the bright side, as long as you stay chill with the government America is going to be one of the better places to live.

[sologdin]

Those transgender and non-heteronormative rights are almost certain to be stricken down, btw. 

gorsuch left an ambiguity at the end of the opinion about religious exceptions that may arise in appropriate cases--you think the rule will be completely consumed by the exception, then? it seems unlikely that roberts and gorsuch will reverse themselves on the basic question, even if the court wanted to take up another title VII case.

 

the category of massive human die-offs

the climate denialism, including hiring deniers at NOAA, strikes me as so irrational that it can only be consistent with a terraforming project, as in twohy's arrival. if trump turns out to be an alien, then i respectfully reserve the right to amend my allegation, supra, that trump is not the consult.

 

can all of Latin America be evacuated? Can you just 'move' from South India? 

mass migration tendencies will be exacerbated, yes. it would change how the world works--but doubtful we'd be living in the hunger games or the windup girl? am thinking that an apocalypse that is non-nuclear must be slow--and, like the boiled frog of urban legend, passes imperceptibly until too late.  we currently have plenty of derelict buildings in new orleans--a number of those are katrina casualties. the old local WTC is an asbestos abatement problem--and it's been sitting for years.  not on that list: the hard rock collapse is still sitting downtown, as well as another office tower, the bank of new orleans building, which is owned by the hard rock people, and was under renovation until the collapse; that renovation project is now in jeopardy because of the hard rock. it's fine, though, the mass dereliction amid surfeit otherwise, apparently? i suppose it is a matter of deciding when the relations of capitalist production become fetters on the development of the productive forces, which must be burst asunder.

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, sologdin said:

Those transgender and non-heteronormative rights are almost certain to be stricken down, btw. 

gorsuch left an ambiguity at the end of the opinion about religious exceptions that may arise in appropriate cases--you think the rule will be completely consumed by the exception, then? it seems unlikely that roberts and gorsuch will reverse themselves on the basic question, even if the court wanted to take up another title VII case.

I think that the idea of precedence is going to likely be over in the court. I think you're going to see a lot of things that were wrongfully decided,  apparently. 

1 minute ago, sologdin said:

the category of massive human die-offs

the climate denialism, including hiring deniers at NOAA, strikes me as so irrational that it can only be consistent with a terraforming project, as in towhy's arrival. if trump turns out to be an alien, then i respectfully reserve the right to amend my allegation, supra, that trump is not the consult.

Yeah, it's not just that we're doing nothing special - it's that we're actively working to make things worse despite it being economically more expensive to do so. 

1 minute ago, sologdin said:

can all of Latin America be evacuated? Can you just 'move' from South India? 

mass migration tendencies will be exacerbated, yes. it would change how the world works--but doubtful we'd be living in the hunger games or the windup girl? am thinking that an apocalypse that is non-nuclear must be slow--and, like the boiled frog of urban legend, passes imperceptibly until too late. 

I think that it won't be super slow. I think we'll have a lot of punctuated equilibrium events. I think we will see massive famine events similar to what happened in Syria in 2010ish. Basically things will be not great but tolerable, and then they will be completely intolerable due to some massive weather event or drought that pushes the barely sustaining local climate over the top. That will cause others to fall in political and ecological domino effects. Chances are good that we will have a massive attempted influx of refugees around the world, and that will cause some major antihuman decisions to be made. All the while the actual economy will be hitting record drops everywhere as things are simply unsustainable and the only funding you can do is for emergency funds to keep things barely working. Authoritarianism naturally follows in these cases, often at the behest of liberals like myself, in major emergency situations. 

But mostly, millions and billions of people are going to probably just die. Not because anyone killed them, but because it's too hot, there's no potable water and no food, and they'll just die silently. And as we've seen in this pandemic, most people are perfectly fine if someone else is dying somewhere else. As long as they're not experiencing it, no big deal.

[Trebla]

Welp, Trump went and lost the Dilbert vote over his Proud Boys answer!

 

[DMC]

3 hours ago, Guy Kilmore said:

I think a lot of people recognized an exasperated adult getting flustered by a toddler having a tantrum.

Morning Consult asked who interrupted more, and 71 to 18 percent said Trump.  This is why I don't get any consternation about Biden's performance - again, most everyone watching recognizes Trump is just acting like an asshole (even many of his hardcore supporters), and as long as that's his schtick he has zero chance of gaining any support.  Another interesting result - it appears the American public writ large is just as masochistic as us political junkies.  While 52 percent of those who watched said they did not enjoy the debate, 55 to 29 said there still should be more debates between the two.

[DanteGabriel]

47 minutes ago, Trebla said:

Welp, Trump went and lost the Dilbert vote over his Proud Boys answer!

 

I'll confess, I was mildly surprised that Scott Adams cared that much about denouncing white supremacists, but then it's clear that he is mad because Trump's latest failure just makes Adams look bad for his previous defense of Trump over the "very fine people" comment after Charlottesville.

In other words, Scott Adams is sort of on the right side for once, for the shittiest and most venal reasons. He can continue to go fuck himself.

[Ran]

10 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

I'll confess, I was mildly surprised that Scott Adams cared that much about denouncing white supremacists, but then it's clear that he is mad because Trump's latest failure just makes Adams look bad for his previous defense of Trump over the "very fine people" comment after Charlottesville.

In other words, Scott Adams is sort of on the right side for once, for the shittiest and most venal reasons. He can continue to go fuck himself.

Did not last long:

 

[DanteGabriel]

1 minute ago, Ran said:

Did not last long:

 

Is there a single fucking right-winger out there who isn't a massive fucking baby?

[argonak]

6 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

Is there a single fucking right-winger out there who isn't a massive fucking baby?

Like most things with them, it seems calling everyone else snowflake was something of projection.

edit:  it is mind boggling to me that someone would let someone else dictate their own voting, even via negative behavior.  I'm not voting for Joe because my neighbor loves Trump, I'm voting for Joe because I hate Trump.  Me.  Its my decision.

[sologdin]

idea of precedence is going to likely be over in the court. I think you're going to see a lot of things that were wrongfully decided,  apparently

maybe. but there's more to it than that. roberts had a shot at doing this in the louisiana abortion case this year, but acted like a professional instead. the current nominee is involved with a right to life group that believes in life beginning at fertilization and ending at natural death--but as a circuit judge has affirmed capital punishment sentences.

if they stop following the doctrine of stare decisis, the court will lose institutional legitimacy and all the bourgeois who allegedly value predictability and certainty in their affairs will get sufficiently jittery to back a legislature that either packs the court or impeaches unruly judges. there are democratic remedies for judicial misconduct, after all.

 

punctuated equilibrium events

nice.  late bronze age systems collpase, jared diamond stuff, gotcha.  plausible.  we enter a dark age after a trojan war.

 

single fucking right-winger out there who isn't a massive fucking baby?

amazing how they can handle no disagreement or contrary views. exposure to leftwing ideas at college after a lifetime of dreary theocratic conservative homebrew is brainwashing. they are oppressed if they lose an iota of privilege. they experience discrimination if their monopoly ends.  it is indoctrination to speak facts.  it is unfair to point out their lying boasts. 

if adams lives in california, it really doesn't matter whether he votes one way or another.  a review of his self-described political history indicates that he preferred trump to clinton in 2016 because of personality-related criteria, so he's basically, as i wrote, supra, a lumpenized antisocial nihilist.  he might as well write in the pointy hair boss.