deskthority

If they don't think exactly like me then they may as well be Hitler.

-- Regressive left 101

Muirium wrote: They're only people if they look like me.

—Conservatism 101.

andrewjoy wrote: If they don't think exactly like me then they may as well be Hitler.

-- Regressive left 101

And this is the microcosm of what is going on currently.

God Help Us

chuckdee wrote:

Muirium wrote: They're only people if they look like me.

—Conservatism 101.

andrewjoy wrote: If they don't think exactly like me then they may as well be Hitler.

-- Regressive left 101

And this is the microcosm of what is going on currently.

God Help Us

Exactly, you beat me to it. Political discussion reduced to Twitter-length rants, barbs, insults, sarcastic remarks, and fact-less statements.

vivalarevolución wrote:
Political discussion reduced to Twitter-length rants, barbs, insults, sarcastic remarks, and fact-less statements.

Generally I take statements seriously when they are corroborated, and often dismiss spews of "word-salad" as vents of emotion, not information.

I read the multi-page tree article and watched the 20-minute speech at the scientists convention. I spend far more time reading than writing.

Haven't you heard? We're post truth now, people. Alice is through the looking glass. Dogs and cats are living together. Mass hysteria. Batshit fucking insane is the new normal.

Citation needed? Use your eyes. Then don't trust a word they told you, the lying bastards! That's precisely how they getcha. It all boils down to precious bodily fluids.

fohat wrote:

vivalarevolución wrote:
Political discussion reduced to Twitter-length rants, barbs, insults, sarcastic remarks, and fact-less statements.

That was basically the whole presidential race 2016. The only impressive achievment to me is how one guy who isn't even a politician managed to successfully communicate that way and then actually win although the winning part still seems strange to me.

Muirium wrote:
Haven't you heard? We're post-truth now, people.

I had not seen that article, but it is plenty frightening.

"in post-truth it had taken on the meaning of “belonging to a time in which the specified concept has become unimportant or irrelevant”. The nuance, it said, originated in the mid-20th century, and has been used in formations such as post-national (1945) and post-racial (1971)."

I was in Architecture School in the 1970s when the term "Post-Modern" came into use, and that struck me, at the time, as truly bizarre.

Muirium wrote: It all boils down to precious bodily fluids.

Interesting choice of words. Would that we had a president as rational as Merkin Muffley.

I'm just glad Muirium is back in our political discussions.

fohat wrote:

Muirium wrote:
Haven't you heard? We're post-truth now, people.

I had not seen that article, but it is plenty frightening.

"in post-truth it had taken on the meaning of “belonging to a time in which the specified concept has become unimportant or irrelevant”. The nuance, it said, originated in the mid-20th century, and has been used in formations such as post-national (1945) and post-racial (1971)."

I was in Architecture School in the 1970s when the term "Post-Modern" came into use, and that struck me, at the time, as truly bizarre.

If you thought the term "post modern" to be bizarre, I can only imagine what you think of "post, post modernism " which is widely discussed in philosophical circles today.

While I align myself with over half of Trump's implied positions on issues, I fear for what his Presidency will do to the English language specifically and communication in general. While I fully acknowledge my literary limitations, I still have great respect for the precision of language and its proper use. The purpose of language is communication, and as people's ears become desensitized by abuses of speech, it follows that language will change and become more vague as we reinterpret sentences from what is said to what is meant. Now back to Architecture:

I've never been formally educated in architecture but, as a fellow builder, have more than a passing interest in it. I'm struck by how many of the acclaimed architects from the past saw their work as statements of philosophy as much as designs in aestheticism. The Modernist reaction to the excessive and "dishonest" use of classical elements such as lintels, posts, etcetera, unnecessary in the age of steel and concrete, led to purely functional examples of design which lacked heart. Le Corbusier was probably vilified more than the others as the worst example of this overreaction. The resulting early master planned communities with populations treated as herds with function being the only criteria for form led to the questioning of the "truth" of Modernism. Post-Modern Architecture response was to deny that truth in form exists. In fairness to the Modern Architecture movement, today we have examples of "honest" architecture which has also been softened to reflect the sensitivities of humanity. Time has a way of correcting excesses and rounding sharp edges.

I think that says something about more than just architecture. As the pendulum swings to its extreme, natural law prevents it's continued direction. The same gravity which provides the movement also, in the end, restricts it. Some on the Right feared President Obama's agenda but in the end, it was his over-reaching against the people's will which led to a Trump. I suspect that President Elect Trump's excesses will do the same.

My comment was strictly about language, and the disconnect between intuitive understandings of terms such as "modern" (ie that which is current in the present time) vs the arbitrary symbolic name of an isolated "movement" that occurred during some brief isolated period in the past.

Just as what could possibly be more "conservative" than man's attempt to preserve the planet Earth? But meanwhile that term has been hijacked and come to symbolically stand for the political position of the so-called "right" which continuously demonstrates its contempt for preservation and conservation.

The underlying problem is symbolism - symbols are seductive, especially to lazy thinkers, and they can be helpful - but they are extremely dangerous when they start to displace and replace the realities that they are standing in for.

fohat wrote: My comment was strictly about language, and the disconnect between intuitive understandings of terms such as "modern" (ie that which is current in the present time) vs the arbitrary symbolic name of an isolated "movement" that occurred during some brief isolated period in the past.

Just as what could possibly be more "conservative" than man's attempt to preserve the planet Earth? But meanwhile that term has been hijacked and come to symbolically stand for the political position of the so-called "right" which continuously demonstrates its contempt for preservation and conservation.

The underlying problem is symbolism - symbols are seductive, especially to lazy thinkers, and they can be helpful - but they are extremely dangerous when they start to displace and replace the realities that they are standing in for.

I think that I understand your concern with symbolism but wouldn't go so far as to call it "the" underlying problem. Even if it were, it is unavoidable in language; words themselves being the ultimate symbol ( a possible exception being the onomatopoeia). Even our first or most basic understanding of a word expands and sometimes even changes as we grow. As an example, I would posit that among students majoring in history, philosophy, literature and to a lesser degree even science, their primary concept of "modern" would just as likely refer to a specific period of time in recent history and not the present time.

Using symbolism may lead to confusion but I would suggest that its danger pales in comparison to the harm caused by inflammatory language. By using words like stupid, a**hole, Nazi, rabid, bleeding heart, tree hugging, and ignorant to name a few, we immediately change a healthy argument designed to find truth and common ground into a personal attack. Few of us are immune to insults and instead of being persuasive, they alienate us and make it difficult for us to find those many values we do share. I'm convinced that most of us share the same basic core values but are confused by the way those values are expressed by others. Our resulting knee-jerk reaction is to assume the other person is evil and their predictable reaction to our insults seem to prove our point.

And so the problems of mankind continue, whether by ignorance, neglect or willful acts.

There is no “healthy argument” involved in Trumpism (or the greater portion of the institutional GOP these days). It’s a movement of self-serving plutocrats who don’t give two shits about anyone else, reactionaries motivated by nihilistic hatred and a desire to tear everything down, followers blinded by 24–7 propaganda who deny basic reality and vote to destroy their own interests.

It’s a cop-out to say “Stop associating me with nasty names. I’m not a racist, I’m not a sexist, I’m not a hateful person, I’m not in favor of shitting on basic decency and wiping with the constitution, I’m not a warmonger, I’m not a terrorist, I’m not a thief, I don’t want to sell all our infrastructure and institutions to the highest bidder, I don’t want our elderly to die in poverty living on the street, I don’t want to jail journalists, I don’t want to defund and cover up science, I don’t want unlimited surveillance, I’m not dumping toxic waste into the waterways, I don’t want to eliminate public schooling and divert the money to young-earth creationist schools, I don’t want to redistribute wealth from the bulk of citizens to the 0.1%, I don’t want to get rid of all worker and consumer protections, I don’t want to take away people’s voting rights, I’m not destroying civic institutions, ... I just vote for those people because the other side is {inaudible mumble mumble, something about condescending}”.

It ultimately doesn’t matter whether the cause of this support is ignorance, greed, hatred, machismo, wounded pride, paranoia, nostalgia for the past, religious righteousness, persuadability by a slick huckster or a cult of personality, peer pressure, or whatever. In a democracy, citizens have a basic responsibility to not hand the levers of power to grossly unqualified angry megalomaniacs. To do so is to fail the most basic test as a citizen.

Trump is not personally a “Nazi”. He just humors his sizable contingent of fascist supporters in the US and overseas. He just praises all the authoritarian leaders, threatens to silence the press, questions our democratic institutions (e.g. fair elections) while cheerleading foreign subversion thereof, proposes to round up millions of people, proposes to put people of minority religious groups on lists, is starting to build lists of civil servants to purge, wants to shut down government programs which expose inconvenient facts, ....

This is not normal. This is not regular political discourse. This is a flagrantly anti-American, anti-Western wannabe dictator who has never been told “no” in his life, stocking his administration with billionaires and hawkish ex-generals many of whom are on the record as wanting to destroy the institutions they’re being put in charge of, and most of whom are laughably unqualified. This is a GOP which has suspended support for centuries-old political norms, and especially in embracing Trump has become the most severe threat to democracy and peace around the world.

Kurplop wrote: it was [Obama’s] over-reaching against the people's will which led to a Trump.

This has to be a joke. Obama has been the classiest, most patient, most Christian, most accommodating president in decades. He is fastidiously careful about working within the law, and has gone above and beyond to reach across the aisle, and turns the other cheek in response to pure spite, but has faced nothing but obstruction and disrespect by a GOP which has abdicated its basic responsibilities to govern and just wants to break things so they can blame Obama for it. Repeated threats of government shutdowns are not normal. Threats to default on US debts are not normal. Hundreds of (mostly failed) lawsuits by state attorneys general against enforcement of well established federal regulation is not normal. States turning down free federal money just so their own citizens won’t benefit from federal law and come to support it is not normal. Just deciding that a Supreme Court seat will stay vacant indefinitely until a favorable president gets to office is not fucking normal.

The backlash has nothing to do with Obama “over-reaching” (construct any set of criteria you want to judge “over-reach”, and compare Obama to past presidents with opposing-party congresses, and that argument is shown to be ludicrous on its face, entirely disingenuous). It’s all about race, money, and the extreme radicalization of the GOP.

It can be plausibly argued that Lincoln/Johnson “overreached”. It can be plausibly argued that TR “overreached”. It can be plausibly argued that FDR/Truman “overreached”. It can be plausibly argued that Johnson “overreached”. It can be plausibly argued that every GOP president since Nixon “overreached”. But Obama? Give us a break.

Anyone selling the story that Obama is “overreaching” is either not paying attention, is tricking himself, or is disingenuously selling a lie for some ulterior motive.

Luckily the scared uneducated old white Fox News watchers who form the bedrock of the Trumpist GOP are going to keep dying at above their replacement rate, and within another generation the GOP will not have a competitive coalition unless they stop directing their message primarily at racists, sexists, nativists, and religious reactionaries. For the future of the world, we can only hope that the transition comes fast enough to forestall climate catastrophe, large-scale wars, or the permanent crippling of our institutions. The hateful and ignorant will still make up a disturbingly large proportion of the population, but the fate of the country won’t be in their hands anymore.

Has it ever occurred to you that other people can have a point of view of a situation from a different vantage point and see the same reality in a different way? I don't mean this in a condescending way or as an insult, but I honestly think that you are so immersed in ultra left wing politics and their publications that you are unable and possibly unwilling to entertain another perspective.

I believe that we should always maintain a healthy doubt about both our world views and even our values. I make it a point to digest two to three times as much information from sources hostile to or at least different from the views I currently hold. I find that it challenges my own perspective and has given me a much broader base to draw from; I've even modified many of my strongly held beliefs. It is also good to have friends with different ideological perspectives. It not only helps me to understand their convictions in a sympathetic way but also teaches me how to still love and respect them despite our differences.

My suggestions may sound paternalistic and maybe condescending but I truly don't mean it that way. It has obviously been difficult for many to have lost what they consider to be the progress made in the last decade. What makes it worse is the perpetuation of non-acceptance by the far left. The longer the far left is in denial about the election, the more they will work each other up into either fear or anger. Many on the right and left who didn't want a Trump victory are settling into the reality that he will be the next President. They will continue to fight for their causes and resist policies they don't agree with. They will educate others to better understand their views and try to defeat him the next time around. Conversely, those who can't accept what has happened, will just look like sore losers to the majority.

From the beginning of his Presidency, President Obama refused to work toward bipartisan solutions. His refusal to meet with minority GOP leaders in the early years, the Pelosi Reid stranglehold in the house, the deceptive tactics used to pass the unpopular ACA, all set the stage for a hostile working relationship in Washington. Certainly, McConnell's pronouncement to defeat Obama shortly after his election was inappropriate and didn't help but grownups on both sides need to just get over it. His use of Executive Orders to circumvent Congress as well as Reid's Nuclear Option have, unfortunately for Democrats and Republicans alike, set precedent for future independent actions without substantial buy-in. You probably didn't notice how offensive, condescending, and bullying his tactics were because he was your champion.

I suggest you consider for a moment the possibility that the Democratic Party lost big this election cycle because voters simply have had enough and had reason to point the finger of blame at the Democrats.

jacobolus wrote: It’s all about race, money, and the extreme radicalization of the GOP

Obama (2nd term) was the first presidential race where I voted for someone that actually made it into office. I take a different interpretation of this role of president than most. In my lifetime (about average here I believe), this role is more closely tied to the Queen of the UK than of a position of real authority. Aside from holding their finger on the "let's go to war" button, I struggle anymore to see power of this position. Every aspect of the other two houses are so bifurcated, that the role of President is little more than honorary position (congeniality prize) at this point given checks and balances.


Do you/are you:

• at or over 35 years of age = ✔
• speak with authority = ✔
• can co-mingle (back pat) with other world leaders = ✔
• can make "uplifting" public addresses = ✔
• point out that Congress (both houses) should "just get along", and their inability holds back your "grand vision" = ✔
• maintain yourself in a way that everyone in your country and other countries envy what you represent = ? (what we view as a successful President)

Obama did well aside from forcing a flawed healthcare policy that honestly had no chance. Bush Jr. was a fucking mess (still BLOWN away he had two terms). Clinton did well at not hindering an economic bubble (other than using a cigar as a sex toy), Bush Sr. was a puppet to Regan, and Regan was great other than being a bold faced liar about Iran-Contra, and eventually succeeding at being shot at.

I love the US (no other country I'd rather live in during my income earning years), but we are a mess. Parties aside... It's still the best mess available though as a citizen imo.

Trump is going to be a disaster. What fucking President elect tweets confrontationally and has ongoing social media debates with citizens?!? Completely absurd. But Hillary has MASSIVE baggage as well, and I think she falls short with the 3rd and 6th points above (the world doesn't view women as they should). The role should exude power if we are to maintain the perceived power that remains.

Moral... the world isn't doomed to fail, but the world is doomed to wallow in ignorance at a rate that people like us just can't comprehend. This is true of all countries.

Kurplop wrote: Has it ever occurred to you that other people can have a point of view of a situation from a different vantage point and see the same reality in a different way? I don't mean this in a condescending way

First, yes you do mean it condescendingly. The construction is inherently condescending. But that’s okay, I don’t fault you for condescension, only for being yourself blinkered, unwilling or unable to face the staggering reality of current events.

Yes, that has occurred to me.

I have a wide variety of friends and acquaintances with various ideologies and policy preferences. My godparents are indigenous Mexican peasants whose ancestors were screwed for centuries and whose family and neighbors lived until the past few years in mud huts with dirt floors and no running water and mostly earn a few dollars per person per day (though many in the younger generations have gotten educations and migrated to other parts of Mexico or the US, and some of them are doing better). My grandfather was a WWII veteran, worked for Nixon’s campaign and then in the Nixon and Ford White Houses. My maternal grandmother was a single mother of 5 who worked as a secretary and was deeply involved in her Methodist church. Most of my paternal grandmother’s extended family are devout Mormons living in Utah. My mother’s grandfather and great uncles were oil workers. I have cousins and uncles who are engineers, professors, nurses, career soldiers, rich lawyers, blue-collar laborers, and retail service workers. My parents went to the peace corps in Peru (partly as a way to dodge the Vietnam war) where they came face to face with many problems of clueless top-down policymaking, and have since devoted their careers to scholarship (anthropology) and public service (teaching in a public elementary school). My brother has a masters degree and most of a Ph.D in public policy, and works in government. My wife’s parents live in China, and as teenagers were sent away to the countryside for a decade during the Cultural Revolution. One of my wife’s uncles owns several factories. My wife’s Chinese friends in the US are mostly wealthy culturally and economically conservative Chinese engineers. Growing up, my parents’ friends include priests, missionaries, historians, schoolteachers, labor organizers, bookshop owners, small businesspeople, artists, scientists, factory workers, farmers, shepherds, politicians, activists, musicians, etc.

One of my favorite professors in college was a leading Republican political philosopher, one of the godfathers to the neoconservative movement. Another favorite professor became a member of the US Communist Party in the 1990s after the break-up of the Soviet Union (well after the point it was a pointless organization).

I have friends who work for investment banks in NYC and Hong Kong, and friends who work for non-profits serving the needy in the rural US South or protecting victims of domestic abuse. I am friends with both ardent promoters of nuclear power and ardent environmentalists. I have friends who are communitarians, friends who are hippies, friends who are libertarians, friends who vote straight-ticket Republican, friends who believe in pure hedonism, and friends who are punk anarchists. I have friends who live in mansions in swanky neighborhoods, and friends who were long-term homeless.

I studied a variety of fields in college, both technical and non-technical. (Mathematics, physics, computer science, economics, French literature, photography, Latin American history, philosophy, and ultimately ended up as a political science student.)

I have read widely in philosophy and political theory, and recently have sympathetically (to the extent possible) read a nauseating number of opinion pieces, magazine articles, and books by prominent Republicans and Republican boosters, both pro- and anti-Trump.

Believe it or not, I have considered, studied, and care about a wide range of people’s social preferences, political opinions, and policy outcomes. Frankly, I have thought and worried about these questions more than just about anyone I know.

so immersed in ultra left wing politics and their publications

I guess the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR, The Atlantic, etc. now count as “ultra left wing”? (lol) In the immortal words of Stephen Colbert, “reality has a well-known liberal bias”.

I guess in the context of Trump, everyone barely sane (e.g. willing to say “this guy is unqualified, incompetent, and dangerously unhinged”) becomes “ultra left wing”. Even, say, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, the National Review, the Pope, George HW Bush, Glenn Beck, or a list of hundreds of career GOP officials, ex-generals, ex-CIA officers, ex-diplomats, etc.

From the beginning of his Presidency, President Obama refused to work toward bipartisan solutions. His refusal to meet with minority GOP leaders in the early years, the Pelosi Reid stranglehold in the house, the deceptive tactics used to pass the unpopular ACA, all set the stage for a hostile working relationship in Washington.

This is all sheer nonsense.

Let’s start with “refused to work toward bipartisan [...] refusal to meet with minority GOP leaders [...]”.
http://swampland.time.com/2012/08/23/th ... uct-obama/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/2 ... 52899.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/ ... residency/
That’s right, the Republicans decided in the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression that they would be intransigent and relentless in punishing Obama to the extent possible for any attempt he made to deal with the crisis. Obama tirelessly worked to negotiate with the GOP, and met with nothing but stonewalling. (To the extent that Democrats were totally fed up with Obama continuing to waste time trying to work with the GOP and getting repeated run-arounds even after it was clear to everyone that the GOP would never give an inch and weren’t negotiating in good faith.)

Now to the ACA:

The ACA was largely a Republican plan (devised by the fucking Heritage foundation in the 1990s albeit partly as a marketing token and foil for Democrats’ plans) modeled on the MA plan touted by Governor Romney, chosen because Obama didn’t think he had the votes to pass anything further to the left.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X61J-5sW288#t=27m38s
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240 ... 0920152366
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240 ... 1144786448


If you remove the word “Obama” from discussion of the ACA, the actual content of the law gets very wide support among surveyed Americans, including Republicans. In most of the US, the ACA has been a successful and popular program. (Unless you ask people about “Obamacare”, in which case the Fox News watchers remember they’re supposed to be reflexively opposed to it.)

The Democrats would have vastly preferred a plan with a public option (e.g. Medicare for all) or even a full single-payer system, modeled on just about any other industrialized country in the world. Or even under an ACA-like system, Democrats wanted to push back much more strongly on prescription drug prices. They went for the ACA in its current form because it’s all they could get arch weasel Joe Lieberman to vote for. Many Republican politicians (in both House and Senate) are privately supportive of the ACA, but for political reasons decided to oppose it en masse, so they could construct a fantasy narrative about “dictator Obama and the out-of-touch Democrats” (or whatever) to use it as an electoral bludgeon (and they were right that it would be an incredibly effective political tool for the GOP).

The “deceptive tactics” you are talking about is presumably figuring out a way to get the House to just pass the Senate bill as-is, instead of reconciling them in committee, because after the death of Sen. Kennedy the Democrats only had 59 Senate votes for a reconciled bill instead of the 60 they needed to avoid an obstructionist filibuster. The Democrats scrambled a bit to get the House’s preferences on the ACA into law by putting some of the changes into a separate budget reconciliation bill. This also led to some of the sloppy writing mistakes in the bill which should have been corrected. The passage of the ACA was not “deceptive”.

(Speaking of filibusters, the tool was originally used as a weapon of last resort, but the GOP decided to just have a running filibuster of every piece of legislation, flouting basic Senate norms. If the Democrats weren’t spineless turkeys they’d have forced the Republicans to actually get up and perform their filibusters for days at a time. Instead they just didn’t bother bringing forward legislation that they didn’t have at least 60 votes for; the whole runaround was a complete subversion of basic democratic processes. The “nuclear option” was triggered because the GOP otherwise refused to even consider a wide variety of Obama’s executive/judicial nominees, even entirely uncontroversial ones, for no other reasons than “fuck you, Obama” and wanting the government to be as dysfunctional as possible. Blaming Reid or Obama for that is ludicrous.)

The places where the ACA has run into difficulties are mostly GOP-controlled states which refused to expand Medicare as the ACA originally intended, because Republicans sued and got the Supreme Court to write a 5–4 decision obtusely misinterpreting the law based on slightly ambiguous wording even though the intent of the legislation was crystal clear to everyone watching on both sides, and had been widely written about at all stages of the law’s drafting. If the Republicans cared as much about the country as they care about sticking it to Obama, those ambiguities could be easily fixed by a bipartisan bill making minor fixes to the ACA. But of course, the GOP doesn’t want the ACA to work better, because they’ve now staked years of political effort on opposing it.

Even so, the ACA has been largely a success. The way insurance companies previously cut people’s insurance once they actually needed care based on obscure technicalities in their contracts was an extremely sleazy bait-and-switch. The ACA has extended healthcare coverage to a huge number of people, has largely contained costs (well below projections of costs without the ACA, though of course such projections are always a counterfactual question), and has mandated a number of extremely popular improvements to the US health insurance system.

The Republicans (at least the vaguely responsible ones) now are totally lost, because they have absolutely no plan for what to replace the ACA with, and they know it. All the endless repeal votes during Obama’s presidency were pure grandstanding that they never expected to need to back up. Now that it comes down to actual consequences, they’re in a big jam. If they cut out the funding for the ACA or the individual mandate, then all the popular parts of the bill will be completely unsustainable. But if they cut out all the popular parts of the bill, then all their supporters who didn’t really understand what was going on will be livid when their healthcare suddenly goes away or healthcare prices skyrocket.

The US healthcare system (even post-ACA, but especially pre-) is a disgrace. Every other industrialized country in the world gets better healthcare for lower costs. The GOP has tirelessly carried water for corporate interests at the expense of citizens or the society, and deserves the bulk of the blame. The Democrats have often had poor political marketing and poor strategy, but for the most part they’re at least acting in good faith and working to build something functional, for the sake of helping people even when it costs them politically.

* * *

Here, Obama can probably make the argument clearer than I can:

lot_lizard wrote: Obama did well aside from forcing a flawed healthcare policy that honestly had no chance.

I will say that flawed is better than none. By the time he got it through, it had been, to a large portion, neutered of any teeth it originally had. But no healthcare available has killed more people that I know that I'd like to dwell on, and more people that I don't know than I'd like to even know. So therefore, getting it through at all was a major accomplishment. Is it perfect? Well, that's like saying am I rich just because I have money in my pocket, when others have none.

Kurplop wrote:
Has it ever occurred to you that other people can have a point of view of a situation from a different vantage point and see the same reality in a different way? I don't mean this in a condescending way or as an insult,

But you do mean it in a condescending and insulting way. Every time I start to accumulate some scrap of respect for your ideas, you come out with something like this.

Your "responses" are vapid and devoid of content, and Jacobolus's rejoinders are thoughtful and logical, and he provides strong and legitimate back-up for his stances.

Your paragraphs, while long, sounded to me mostly like a collection of right-wing talking points (complaining about "problems" that your heroes had themselves created and nurtured, then blamed on others) strung together as if they actually meant something.

Of all the issues that inflame the ultra-right, Affordable Health Care seems to top the list. The bill, as it was passed and enacted, is pretty much the same structure that nearly every Republican president since Nixon has advocated. And it has been a spectacular success by any metric that you choose to apply to it.

And yes, I just got my health insurance bill and my rate is going up 22% next year after being pretty stable for the 2 previous years. However, I believe that the main reasons for this are two-fold: first, insurance companies have seen an opportunity and pounced on it, and second, I live in one of those regressive states where the legislature has rejected the plan and is continuing to feel the mounting consequences.

The american healthcare system is a joke.

As a society america should be ashamed of itself.

fohat wrote: Jacobolus's rejoinders are thoughtful and logical

To be fair, I’m happy to call Trump a wannabe fascist with a severe psychiatric disorder, and say that Trump supporters and cowardly GOP appeasers have failed their country. If I really wanted to convert anyone, I could be a lot nicer about it / less insulting. But I’m ashamed and pissed off at the country for electing this buffoon, and don’t really feel like making excuses for people. This is the internet, and the internet was made for flamewars.

jacobolus wrote:

fohat wrote: Jacobolus's rejoinders are thoughtful and logical

To be fair, I’m happy to call Trump a wannabe fascist with a severe psychiatric disorder, and say that Trump supporters and cowardly GOP appeasers have failed their country. If I really wanted to convert anyone, I could be a lot nicer about it / less insulting. But I’m ashamed and pissed off at the country for electing this buffoon, and don’t really feel like making excuses for people. This is the internet, and the internet was made for flamewars.

If you got that much steam to blow off, start a political blog. Although I do enjoy the wall of text at times, as an ardent encyclopedia reader.

jacobolus wrote:
Trump supporters and cowardly GOP appeasers

This is where I am completely flummoxed.

Donald Trump has been a laughingstock and a caricature of the world's most obnoxious rich asshole - for decades.

He is an entertainer and he is doing his job - entertaining. He would not be out of place on a comedy TV show.

But how could any adult human being who is not retarded, insane, or delusional take a single word that he says seriously?

And "I will drain the swamp" certainly tops the pyramid of deceit.

“Drain the swamp” means getting rid of the climate scientists at NASA, getting rid of the alternative energy research funding from the Department of Energy, getting rid of the preservationists at the National Park Service and the environmentalists at the Environmental Protection Agency, getting rid of the women’s rights advocates at the State Department, getting rid of the economists at the Treasury Department and the Federal Trade Commission, getting rid of the doctors and nutrition experts at the Health and Human Services Department, getting rid of the workers rights advocates at the Labor Department, getting rid of the housing experts and low-income housing advocates at the Housing and Urban Development Department, getting rid of the consumer advocates at a variety of agencies (e.g. defanging the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and making sure the Federal Communications Commission abolishes its “net neutrality” stance as the first order of business and starts allowing any and all telecom mergers), getting rid of the voting rights advocates at the Voting Section of the Department of Justice, etc. etc. etc., and replacing them all with a grossly unqualified mix of lobbyists, long-term Trump donors/buddies, and industry insiders.

It’s like the Bush Administration (which if you all remember was embroiled in numerous scandals caused by mismanagement and horrible crisis response because the people in charge didn’t know what they were doing) on steroids. It’s the modern GOP modus operandi of irresponsibility, incompetence, and intentional failure taken to its most extreme form.

By contrast, the Obama Administration has been the most scandal-free and generally competent Administration maybe ever in US history, or certainly in well over a century.

He would not be out of place on a comedy TV show.

Every Trump show is a comedy show. Now we’re just bringing that to the world stage, and upping the consequences until everyone switches from laughing to crying/screaming.

Michigan GOP-controlled state legislature prohibits cities from regulating plastic bags (following GOP-controlled Idaho, Arizona and Missouri).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ene ... 6d07da895a

Republican Party: “We believe in small government and local control... oh wait, we’re in charge and you disagree with our campaign donors? Well fuck you, fuck your cities, and fuck your environment too.”

jacobolus wrote: Michigan GOP-controlled state legislature prohibits cities from regulating plastic bags (following GOP-controlled Idaho, Arizona and Missouri).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ene ... 6d07da895a

Republican Party: “We believe in small government and local control... oh wait, we’re in charge and you disagree with our campaign donors? Well fuck you, fuck your cities, and fuck your environment too.”

You forgot little old Indiana! http://www.indystar.com/story/news/poli ... /82183114/

So the GOP is all about states' rights at the moment, but they don't give a crap about rights for lower units of government. This has been show to be true with environmental regulations in the state of Indiana, along with other types of regulations (Ironically, this year it is likely that a law will be enacted that prevents the state from setting stricter environmental regulations than the federal government. I thought we were about states's rights and distrusted the federal government?). The GOP is interested in power and control of every aspect of American society. Hypocrisy at it's finest.

Cities are fighting back, though. Cities will drive us forward, not states. In fact, that may always have been the case.

You will hear a lot of BS about states' right over the next four years. States' rights is a euphemism for we want to reduce federal control over land, regulation, and other assets so we can sell them off to corporations and the wealthy. It has very little to do with local control. Simply put, states do not have the finances and resources to engage in many of the activities currently led by the federal government, such as land management, climate change research, chemical regulation, food and drug regulation, etc. Because states lack the resources, the management of these institutions will be captured by whatever people, corporations, and organizations have already captured the state government.

Some of you will not believe me, but Indiana is a microcosm of what the GOP wants to do with the rest of the country. Individual rights here are put on the backburner, unless it concerns those with money or power. Regulation is a dog-and-pony show. Corporations call the shots, while any citizens movements are completely ignored. Voter turnout is among the worst in the nation because overly burdensome voter ID laws, people know the government doesn't care about them, and the GOP will always win because they have gerrymandered the state so effectively. Job numbers might look good, but the wealth gap grow, wages are stagnant, and people leave the workforce altogether. That's not representative democracy, it's a fuckin kleptocracy.

The state budget is consistently balanced these days, so I'll give credit for that. Meanwhile, the tax structure has been modified so local budgets always are in crisis, and forced to sell off more assets with what seems like every passing year.

By the way, if you are interested in learning something from the perspective of Black America, this article is phenomenal: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... ck/508793/

Mr. Coates explains how Barack Obama is an exemplary black man. Great speaker, intelligent, educated, accomplished, inspiring, clean looking, wealthy, a wife that is his equal in nearly every aspect, beautiful and healthy children, a story of rising from less than ideal circumstances. On paper, he checks nearly all the boxes for a great leader. President Obama is the only type of black man that America would elect. It remains to be seen whether America will ever elect another black American as president.

Herman Cain and Ben Carson, despite their individual impressive accomplishments (shit, can you be a brain surgeon or billionaire businessman?), did not appear nearly as polished as President Obama for the Republican electorate. In no way would a woman or black man that acts like Donald Trump would be elected in modern day America. Not a chance. There are CLEARLY different standards for different types of people. Trump gets away with being rich, white, male, bombastic, vulgar, a pathological liar, inarticulate, utterly non-analytical, potentially psychologically disturbed, extremely self absorbed, thrice divorce with multiple affairs, authoritarian...the list of things that we usually condemn in presidents goes on and on. He was a reaction to Obama.

If that isn't a perfect example of a double standard, I don't know what is.

Trump is living proof that in the eyes of a large proportion of white Americans, the absolute worst rich old white man (the embodiment of every negative stereotype you might see in a poorly written cartoon villain) is still considered better than the best woman or the best black man. “Oh, there was a black man as president, and a woman running to replace him? Better tear the whole country down to rubble than keep going as we are, it’s clearly broken beyond repair.”

Best woman? Either that or they rather have Trump than that nasty cunt of a Clinton. Best black man? He turned out to be a big disappointment, and a war monger. All the supporters of those nasty people can think of is play the tired and sick racist/sexist rant. "You didn't vote for my favourite fascist? Oh you're a racist/sexist". Right. You weren't looking pretty supporting those people, you aren't looking pretty now you lost to the orange buffoon. If you'd like to win the next election, don't point at the orange guy, but point within, and fix the democratic party.

jacobolus wrote: Trump is living proof that in the eyes of a large proportion of white Americans, the absolute worst rich old white man (the embodiment of every negative stereotype you might see in a poorly written cartoon villain) is still considered better than the best woman or the best black man. “Oh, there was a black man as president, and a woman running to replace him? Better tear the whole country down to rubble than keep going as we are, it’s clearly broken beyond repair.”

Sadly I'm sure this played some role to quite a few voters.

webwit wrote: Best woman? Either that or they rather have Trump than that nasty cunt of a Clinton. Best black man? He turned out to be a big disappointment, and a war monger. All the supporters of those nasty people can think of is play the tired and sick racist/sexist rant. "You didn't vote for my favourite fascist? Oh you're a racist/sexist". Right. You weren't looking pretty supporting those people, you aren't looking pretty now you lost to the orange buffoon. If you'd like to win the next election, don't point at the orange guy, but point within, and fix the democratic party.

Again, true but more difficult to "fix".

They are both racists. The democrats are racists too, bombing weddings, causing many deaths of innocents, and their fans keep voting for that, looking the other way. Because the lives of those innocent people is inferior and not important for them. And they love the super stasi, just like the republicans, and keep voting for that. The mind boggles that they dare to proceed and keep up this morally superior stance while pointing fingers. They are the dark as well.

What if Russia is looking for terrorists, thinks some are in the US, and proceeds to bomb to hell out of your cities? Is it ok?

What if China thinks you have some nice oil, invades the US and overthrows your government, to be replaced by their men. The US way.

The last thing you could do, is complain.