US Politics: Primary Schoolin'

[Phylum of Alexandria]

15 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

It's truly difficult to follow the thought-process here.

It makes sense to me as nihilism. Or like a 90% honest version of that. There's a little bit of dancing around the issue, but he's more transparent than most about the destructive and vindictive urges that animate him.

[Rippounet]

21 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

It makes sense to me as nihilism. Or like a 90% honest version of that. There's a little bit of dancing around the issue, but he's more transparent than most about the destructive and vindictive urges that animate him.

The one thought that did come to my mind was that some people just want to watch the world burn.

[Kalbear]

30 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

The one thought that did come to my mind was that some people just want to watch the world burn.

There is that, but there's also the notion that the system as it exists is fundamentally broken and cannot be repaired or reformed. This is a very common viewpoint of both left and right folks and I see it all the time in my field of software engineering too. 

Lost in the case of breaking it is the cost of that breakage and usually ignoring what it actually provided. 

Again, the idea of being so angry that you don't care if you lose as long as the other guy does is deeply human, and is the cornerstone of my favorite video ever. 

[Rippounet]

14 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Again, the idea of being so angry that you don't care if you lose as long as the other guy does is deeply human, and is the cornerstone of my favorite video ever. 

Altruistic punishment or aggressive morality, yes. Considered to be the dark side of our cooperative nature.

What's the video?

[Martell Spy]

Exclusive: House ethics probe of Gaetz seeks information from DOJ and woman who allegedly had sex with congressman as a minor

https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/24/politics/house-ethics-matt-gaetz/index.html

Quote

 

The House Ethics Committee investigating Rep. Matt Gaetz has reached out to the woman whom the congressman allegedly had sexual relations with when she was a 17-year-old minor, according to a source familiar with the committee’s work.

The outreach, which has not previously been reported, is a sign that the GOP-led committee’s investigation into the Florida Republican has recently expanded to include questioning around allegations of sex crimes.

Sources said the committee also has reached out to the Justice Department requesting materials from its investigation into Gaetz, which included allegations of lobbying violations, sex-trafficking and possible obstruction of justice. The federal probe, which also included allegations he had sex with a minor, concluded in 2023 with no charges brought against the congressman.

 

 

[Kalbear]

40 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Altruistic punishment or aggressive morality, yes. Considered to be the dark side of our cooperative nature.

What's the video?

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

There is that, but there's also the notion that the system as it exists is fundamentally broken and cannot be repaired or reformed.

Hate to break it to you, but it's kind of true.

 

[sologdin]

the notion that the system as it exists is fundamentally broken 

seems like there's a smooth functionality resulting inexorably from founding documents and statutes enacted under same, sorting benefits and burdens in predictable ways.  less broken, i.e., than operating precisely as intended.  revising it doesn't require extraparliamentary measures. but if we're at that point that the fascists are organizing against mere revision, and we haven't even gotten to the despotic inroads on the right to property yet, then it's plain that mark fisher remains correct in how it's easier, for some, to envision the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

[The Anti-Targ]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

 

So not deeply human then. More deeply primal, that should be able to be overcome by human enlightenment if we use our uniquely evolved frontal cortex rather than our lizard brain to manage human relations.

The breaking of current economic and political systems is inevitable. The only question is if you are going to enjoy watching it burn down or if you will deeply lament the suffering of millions that's going to happen.

[Kalbear]

27 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

So not deeply human then. More deeply primal, that should be able to be overcome by human enlightenment if we use our uniquely evolved frontal cortex rather than our lizard brain to manage human relations.

Sure! It's deeply mammalian and even deeply social-animal. And sure, we can overcome it - but you should be very well prepared to know that it is going to happen and that it isn't particularly weird or even an outlier when it does. Note also that this isn't a lizard brain thing - this is a central part of what it means to be part of a social animal on our planet. This is much more evolved than lizards. This part is even bigger in humans than it is in monkeys or birds. 

It also means that it will be VERY difficult to overcome, and you'll likely need to harness other similarly deep-seated morality values in order to do so. That is how we've been able to convince folks to change their minds most effectively - by associating the change that we want with it being part of the group of people that they care about. 

2 hours ago, Mr. Chatywin et al. said:

Hate to break it to you, but it's kind of true.

I think that's reasonable as a point of view and I often think that's the case, but I also recognize that it will take significant change and pain to revise things and there is very little guarantee that things will be better in ways I recognize as better with that system being broken. I get the desire for revolution but the revolution part is the 'easy' part - that's the part that appeals to emotion and anger and vendetta. The hard part is the reconstruction. 

45 minutes ago, sologdin said:

the notion that the system as it exists is fundamentally broken 

seems like there's a smooth functionality resulting inexorably from founding documents and statutes enacted under same, sorting benefits and burdens in predictable ways.  less broken, i.e., than operating precisely as intended.  revising it doesn't require extraparliamentary measures. but if we're at that point that the fascists are organizing against mere revision, and we haven't even gotten to the despotic inroads on the right to property yet, then it's plain that mark fisher remains correct in how it's easier, for some, to envision the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

I mean, yeah. We see that in this thread and others all the time - when we talk about how capitalism is one of if not the core problem and is fundamentally broken, we get told some variations of it being the best, or the alternatives being so much worse because look USSR or China, or that democracy and capitalism are absolutely linked, or how it really isn't that bad it's just we need more government intervention (ignoring the basic premise that capitalism by its nature encourages, facilitates and eventually captures government intervention). That said I think that there's another angle here, which is not that fascists are organizing against revision - they're observing that people are accepting of more authoritarian control and can get away with being even more horrible, and combining that with appeals to natural xenophobia and tribalism. I'm sure some of this is responding to progressive wins, but a lot of it is universal in the world that has little to do with progressive success (see: UK, France, Hungary, Poland) and more to do with a direct response to a set of real and perceived existential crises. 

[fionwe1987]

4 hours ago, Mr. Chatywin et al. said:

Hate to break it to you, but it's kind of true.

It is, but less democracy certainly ain't gonna fix it. That's where these Trumpistas lose me. 

Pissed off at the system and wanna make huge changes? I'm right with ya. 

Think a rapey, dictatorial sleazebag will do it? Yeah, no. 

Edited January 25 by fionwe1987

[Kalbear]

35 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

It is, but less democracy certainly ain't gonna fix it. That's where this Trumpistas lose me. 

Pissed off at the system and wanna make huge changes? I'm right with ya. 

Think a rapey, dictatorial sleazebag will do it? Yeah, no. 

It will for them, though. That's sort of the point. The problems they have with the system are largely solved by a xenophobic asshole who hates everyone who doesn't worship him. Being rapey isn't great, but that really doesn't matter to them nearly as much as who he includes and who he excludes.

As to dictator - yeah, I disagree about that. Sometimes less democracy is needed to fix a system that is broken, at least for a time. FDR threatening to obliterate the SCOTUS if they didn't go along with him is an example of this - that was most certainly not a democratic viewpoint. There is a time and place for democracy and there is also a time and place for lack of committees and more direct, immediate action.

I'm not saying we're there yet, but I'm not going to say that more voting or voting harder is going to be the solution, any more than I'll say violence is never the solution. 

[fionwe1987]

3 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

It will for them, though. That's sort of the point. The problems they have with the system are largely solved by a xenophobic asshole who hates everyone who doesn't worship him. Being rapey isn't great, but that really doesn't matter to them nearly as much as who he includes and who he excludes.

How are their problems largely solved? He may block the border, cancel asylum, maybe even get rid of birthright citizenship. Is this the sum total of their problems?

3 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

As to dictator - yeah, I disagree about that. Sometimes less democracy is needed to fix a system that is broken, at least for a time.

Bullshit.

3 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

FDR threatening to obliterate the SCOTUS if they didn't go along with him is an example of this

It most certainly is not. He was threatening to expand the Supreme Court, but only because he had the Constitutional right to do so. And he was not going to be able to do so unilaterally, but by working with Congress. This may have been norm-breaking, but dictatorial it was not.

3 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

- that was most certainly not a democratic viewpoint.

Huh? He was a democratically elected President threatening to use Constitutionally provisioned powers through a democratically elected Congress to modify the composition of the Supreme Court. Nothing about this is dictatorial.

3 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

There is a time and place for democracy and there is also a time and place for lack of committees and more direct, immediate action.

Direct, immediate action is not antithetical to a democracy. That's why we have a representational system, a Republic. Sometimes, it feels like American's have no sense of how deeply democratic their country is, compared to the norm. And how well it works. If FDR is your prime example of "less democracy", to the rest of the world, you sound ridiculous. 

3 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I'm not saying we're there yet, but I'm not going to say that more voting or voting harder is going to be the solution, any more than I'll say violence is never the solution. 

Yeah except when I say "more democracy", I don't just mean more voting. I mean systemic changes so the voting can affect change, more regularly, without protection for elected officials from electoral consequences for their actions. 

[Kalbear]

46 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

How are their problems largely solved? He may block the border, cancel asylum, maybe even get rid of birthright citizenship. Is this the sum total of their problems?

No, but those aren't really what he'd solve. What he'd likely do is make sure that liberal viewpoints can no longer rule, and when they do they're minority views in states they don't live in. That's very much what they view as their primary problems. 

Now, would it actually solve things for them? Probably not. But that's what they want.

46 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

Bullshit.

It most certainly is not. He was threatening to expand the Supreme Court, but only because he had the Constitutional right to do so. And he was not going to be able to do so unilaterally, but by working with Congress. This may have been norm-breaking, but dictatorial it was not.

Huh? He was a democratically elected President threatening to use Constitutionally provisioned powers through a democratically elected Congress to modify the composition of the Supreme Court. Nothing about this is dictatorial.

it's a profoundly illiberal viewpoint to go around both norms and laws to enact rules that you want. I don't even understand how it could be considered otherwise. It's especially illiberal if he was threatening to do so because the justices were saying that what he was doing was unconstitutional; if he wanted to change the constitution there is a legal process to do that as well. He didn't want to because it would have been too slow and because he felt he had enough popular support to threaten the courts - but that isn't following the process at all, nor is it using the norms of the time.

And violating norms is absolutely a way to make things less democratic; in the book how democracies die the authors point out repeatedly that democracies are often not about what laws they have but about what norms they have along with NOT exercising powers that you may be granted and instead choosing discretion. When one party decides to start breaking those things is when it is often the case that the democracy starts dying. 

Most democracies fail because their systems legally enable people to take over using the powers given to people, and they exploit it. Following rules is not the bastion of a democracy that you think it is. I mean, imagine you saying the same thing but it applies to Trump - he was democratically elected (at least in the US system), he was using provisioned powers that his appointed court okayed him to use - that doesn't make it particularly more democratic. 

46 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

Direct, immediate action is not antithetical to a democracy. That's why we have a representational system, a Republic. Sometimes, it feels like American's have no sense of how deeply democratic their country is, compared to the norm. And how well it works. If FDR is your prime example of "less democracy", to the rest of the world, you sound ridiculous. 

Direct, immediate action that does not have consensus backing absolutely is antithetical to a democracy. I'm also confused about you using 'we' here when you're also saying you're not American, but I'll point out that the US is one of the worst examples of representative democracy in the known world and the system that America has is highly illiberal on a lot of levels, and has been so for a long time. 

FDR isn't my prime example, just one that I thought would provoke a reaction. Warfare to force regime change is probably a more palatable one for you. 

46 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

Yeah except when I say "more democracy", I don't just mean more voting. I mean systemic changes so the voting can affect change, more regularly, without protection for elected officials from electoral consequences for their actions. 

How is that not 'more voting'? Furthermore, how do you expect to enact any of those changes without some level of antidemocratic process? The majority in the US can't do that sort of thing. Even a supermajority couldn't do it. It would require potentially multiple constitutional amendments, and it's not even clear if that would work because of the way states rights are set up. More likely it would require a whole new constitution, and there is literally no process in the system for doing that. 

So how do you get there from here? You either blow up the system and dictate the new one or...well, that's really the only thing you can do. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

3 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Direct, immediate action that does not have consensus backing absolutely is antithetical to a democracy. I'm also confused about you using 'we' here when you're also saying you're not American, but I'll point out that the US is one of the worst examples of representative democracy in the known world and the system that America has is highly illiberal on a lot of levels, and has been so for a long time. 

FDR isn't my prime example, just one that I thought would provoke a reaction. Warfare to force regime change is probably a more palatable one for you. 

That sentence needs a qualifier. Namely:

Within the boundaries of law.  that is if you consider the rule of law to be a feature of democracies. Illegal immediate actions are antithetical to a democracy, no matter the consensus backing it. Ironically, that's also at the very heart of 45's absolute immunity claims. I mean, just going by the logic of your statement without that qualifier, a POTUS could send Seal Team Six (or another death squad) after any political opponent, as long as he has the consensus backing it. At that point, we really wouldn't be talking about a democracy in a modern sense.

 

[fionwe1987]

4 hours ago, Kalbear said:

No, but those aren't really what he'd solve. What he'd likely do is make sure that liberal viewpoints can no longer rule, and when they do they're minority views in states they don't live in. That's very much what they view as their primary problems. 

Now, would it actually solve things for them? Probably not. But that's what they want.

So now we get to it. The issue for these folks is not, then, that the system is fucked. It's that the system is too "liberal"/"woke", etc. And that must be purged. No matter that a substantial portion of the US population is similarly "liberal"/"woke". Thus the need for anti-democratic and dictatorial power grabs.

4 hours ago, Kalbear said:

it's a profoundly illiberal viewpoint to go around both norms and laws to enact rules that you want.

Except that is not remotely what happened. The bill was introduced, and it failed, in committee even. At which point, FDR admitted defeat and moved on. So what violation of law occured? 

4 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I don't even understand how it could be considered otherwise. It's especially illiberal if he was threatening to do so because the justices were saying that what he was doing was unconstitutional; if he wanted to change the constitution there is a legal process to do that as well. He didn't want to because it would have been too slow and because he felt he had enough popular support to threaten the courts - but that isn't following the process at all, nor is it using the norms of the time.

But he did follow the process. He didn't declare an expansion of the Supreme Court by executive order, unless you're reading some other history. 

And sure, there was a political/pressure angle to the introduction of the bill. But that's permitted, and very much a regular part of the workings of a democracy, no? The pressure wasn't personal, in the form of threats to the lives of the sitting justices or anything.

4 hours ago, Kalbear said:

And violating norms is absolutely a way to make things less democratic; in the book how democracies die the authors point out repeatedly that democracies are often not about what laws they have but about what norms they have along with NOT exercising powers that you may be granted and instead choosing discretion. When one party decides to start breaking those things is when it is often the case that the democracy starts dying. 

Uh huh. And since democracy died in the US after FDR introduced this bill, you are, clearly, correct. 

Let me ask another way: if the way a person tries to break a norm is by introducing a bill, and abiding by the output of the Congressional process, how in the world is this contributing to a weakening of democracy? 

4 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Most democracies fail because their systems legally enable people to take over using the powers given to people, and they exploit it. Following rules is not the bastion of a democracy that you think it is. I mean, imagine you saying the same thing but it applies to Trump - he was democratically elected (at least in the US system), he was using provisioned powers that his appointed court okayed him to use - that doesn't make it particularly more democratic.

What is this "it"? Because yes, Trump was democratically elected, and not every action he took violated the constitution or threatened democracy, even if it was abhorrent and disgusting. I don't need to imagine saying this about Trump. I have said it. 

4 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Direct, immediate action that does not have consensus backing absolutely is antithetical to a democracy.

Ah, now we've shifted the goalpost. 

4 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I'm also confused about you using 'we' here when you're also saying you're not American,

Perils of the suspended animation immigrants are in. I'm a resident and have been for 2 decades. But I am not a citizen, and likely won't be for a couple of decades more. But I pay taxes, get affected by the outcomes of the elections, and the decisions of the leaders.

So I'm both part of an American "we" and not American in many ways that matter. 

4 hours ago, Kalbear said:

but I'll point out that the US is one of the worst examples of representative democracy in the known world and the system that America has is highly illiberal on a lot of levels, and has been so for a long time. 

Yeah, it is not. It has plenty of flaws, don't get me wrong. I feel I could vomit out a thesis on the flaws and issues with American representative democracy, but it is most certainly not one of the "worst examples" of representative democracy in the world. That's you turning your First-world problems into existential crises because you're thoroughly unaware, by experience, how much worse it can get. 

4 hours ago, Kalbear said:

FDR isn't my prime example, just one that I thought would provoke a reaction.

Well yes, completely incorrect examples do provoke a reaction, but I don't think that's a route to healthy dialog. Maybe lead with what you believe to be true, rather than what you think will provoke? 

4 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Warfare to force regime change is probably a more palatable one for you. 

I don't know why that is palatable. Just more accurate. 

4 hours ago, Kalbear said:

How is that not 'more voting'?

Because no one needs to vote more than they do now to have greater impact. 

4 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Furthermore, how do you expect to enact any of those changes without some level of antidemocratic process?

Community organization, peaceful protest, strikes? You really don't have to give power over to autocrats to improve a democracy. That is complete blather. 

4 hours ago, Kalbear said:

The majority in the US can't do that sort of thing. Even a supermajority couldn't do it. It would require potentially multiple constitutional amendments, and it's not even clear if that would work because of the way states rights are set up. More likely it would require a whole new constitution, and there is literally no process in the system for doing that. 

There is, actually. It's called a Constitutional Convention.

4 hours ago, Kalbear said:

So how do you get there from here? You either blow up the system and dictate the new one or...well, that's really the only thing you can do. 

Gee, thanks. Someone go back in time and tell African Americans the only way for them to end segregation is to blow up the system, take over the government, and dictate a better "democracy". 

Edited January 25 by fionwe1987

[Liffguard]

9 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Again, the idea of being so angry that you don't care if you lose as long as the other guy does is deeply human, and is the cornerstone of my favorite video ever. 

Yeah I think this is a key point; the extent to which support for Trump (and other similar movements around the Globe) is based fundamentally on spite.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

3 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

That's you turning your First-world problems into existential crises because you're thoroughly unaware, by experience, how much worse it can get. 

I would venture that most of the cynicism and apathy on the left--and also the revolutionary cosplaying that bubbles up from time to time--stems from a failure to think about how much worse things can get should our admittedly highly flawed institutions crumble or fall.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

It looks like “accelerationism” for the win is the rule of the day in this discussion…

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

18 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

I would venture that most of the cynicism and apathy on the left--and also the revolutionary cosplaying that bubbles up from time to time--stems from a failure to think about how much worse things can get should our admittedly highly flawed institutions crumble or fall.

Agreed and a false sense of utopian ideals for what would come.  Utopianism regardless of the point of view scares the shit out of me.  People always claim the murders are justified.