US Politics-2022

[Mischief]

If it is truly in the public interest then there should be no trouble funding it, if only a few people want it done then clearly it's not that important for the community, and if people can not reach an agreement on how it will be built then they can have a vote, since it will probably be beneficial to the community either way, most people will still find it even if they don't fully support how it's being done.

And what you are describing is government and taxation.

 

[Mischief]

I wasn't talking about the motives - I was talking about the consequences and how it's unclear that they were more bad than good.

I don't think that justifies the invasion, however. In fact, even if the consequences were now uniformly agreed to be more good than bad (which is certainly not the case) you could still say the invasion was immoral. There seems to have been, as far as I can tell, a mix of motivations from ensuring access to oil to Bush Jr getting Saddam for his Daddy mixed in with the desire to remove a dictator. So sure, the motives were not at all clean.

The other thing that's noteworthy is that the Iraqi people were not consulted. It ought to be possible for Western governments to find a way of surveying the people discreetly to see if they agree or not with an invasion to remove a dictator, but this never takes place. Imagine if the US had conducted a survey of 1,000 Iraqis using telephone calls and street surveys and then published the results showing that a majority of people agreed with a US invasion to remove Saddam, that might have been a different story. Of course, there are a number of difficulties with such an approach, but they are not insurmountable, and it's telling that the West never does this kind of thing.

Also, thanks for telling me about Elon not qualifying for President. I meant to double check that before posting, actually, but I forgot. That may rule him out of politics altogether I suspect. He's probably too much of a big head to ever settle for a lesser political position

No matter how bad the conditions in a country, I think most people resent having their country subjected to a military invasion.

 

[anarchist100]

Killing regulations is what led to the bacteria in the baby formula. Regulating food and drugs is a good thing

Maybe if there weren't so many regulations, 90 percent of the baby formula wouldn't be produced by one company.

trump preached about bleach, sunlight and dewormers,

I'm fairly certain that he was joking about bleach, but if anyone did actually inject bleach because of that comment he made, then humanity is probably a lot better off genetically now, maybe if there weren't so many stupid people, people would know that they can make baby formula at home easily, and it wouldn't be a problem if there is a shortage like this one. Is he wrong about sunlight? It gives people Vitamin D, which helps the immune system, as for dewormers I assume that you're talking about Ivermectin, which does in fact have some benefit when it comes to fighting covid. A five-day course of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19 may reduce the duration of illness - PubMed

not the safety of vaccines

He did talk about that, he actually got booed at one of his rallies for doing so. Trump renews praise for Covid vaccines, 'one of the greatest achievements of mankind'

You need to stay out of Bitchute, your tin foil seems a bit too tight.

I'll do whatever I want.

 

[anarchist100]

And what you are describing is government and taxation.

No, it's not taxation if it is voluntary, no one would be forced to fund anything, I'm just saying that if it's in the public interest then they will probably do so voluntarily.

 

[anarchist100]

So, if your appendix exploded, you'd be O.K. with the doctor and hospital refusing to treat you. Good to know.

That would not be nice, but it certainly wouldn't be murder.

In fact, it's perfectly O.K. for someone to give you something that may or may not kill you. No problem there.

Trump never gave anyone anything, he simply refused to force people to do what would prevent them from dying.

 

[Mischief]

That would not be nice, but it certainly wouldn't be murder.

Trump never gave anyone anything, he simply refused to force people to do what would prevent them from dying.

For someone who claims to be an anarchist, you sure are fond of authoritarians - Putin, trump, Musk....

 

[Lou]

trump is the only president who tried to overturn the results of an election and incited a violent insurrection. That qualifies him as the worst president all by itself.

The War in Iraq which was started from false pretenses killed at least 100,000 Iraqis. Some think it was over 500,000. The war in Afghanistan cost 2 trillion dollars. these wars were needless, purposeless, and pointless. but certainly not inevitable.

President Jackson and Van Buren were collectively responsible for tens of thousands of Native Americans losing their homes and thousands dying.

Not sure how many thousands of American lives could have been saved if Trump was a better president. although I have seen estimates of hundreds of thousands, too. Trump did other damage too. And his judicial appointments will take a generation to repair. so maybe He Is Worst Ever.

 

[Lou]

Yes. If your only criterion is the number of innocent civilians killed, have you looked at the number of deaths from covid that could have been avoided if trump et al. hadn't decided that they didn't need to take mitigation measures because initially blue areas were hardest hit, and that would just increase their voter advantage?

Oh. just saw this. good point.

 

[Mischief]

That would not be nice, but it certainly wouldn't be murder.

Trump never gave anyone anything, he simply refused to force people to do what would prevent them from dying.

And, by definition, deaths caused by war are also not murder. Morality is not equal to legality.

 

[Mischief]

That would not be nice, but it certainly wouldn't be murder.

Trump never gave anyone anything, he simply refused to force people to do what would prevent them from dying.

trump spread a lot of misinformation and he did it intentionally, and it cost hundreds of thousands of lives. GWB is small potatoes in comparison.

 

[Jamie in Chile]

Not wanting to denigrate people based on their gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation , etc. = being woke.

I think being woke is a good thing. I'm sorry you don't.

I was talking about what I think is strategically best. I want the Republicans to lose.

Those that think a competition for moral superiority is the way to get voters to your side haven't been paying attention.

I disagree with your definition of being woke as being not wanting to denigrate others. In my view it goes beyond not wanting to denigrate people and includes a level of awareness of your own situation or others. A black person in the US suffering from past or present racial inequality but not even realizing it is not woke, according to one way of thinking about it. A white person standing by and watching another white person insulting a black person and turning a blind eye and not realising their own white privilege and thinking "it's no big deal it's just a harmless insult" is not woke regardless of the fact that they themselves are not denigrating others. This is how woke was mostly used some years ago, say 2015.

Yes, in that sense, by that explanation, of course woke is a good thing.

But that is only the half of it. Some people, including some conservatives, have for some years now being pushing an alternate definition of woke to mean the people who are, regardless of whether their agenda is correct or not, are shoving it down your throat too much. The woke are the cancel culture people who want to get someone fired because they said something offensive on twitter. The woke to them are the people who want to teach school children that we all live in a system of white supremacy and all white people, even children, should feel guilty about it even if they as individuals haven't done anything bad. In that sense, woke can be a bad thing and it's that side of it which I mean if and when I criticise the term in the future. And to be honest the people pushing this way of defining the word are winning. The dictionaries may not have caught up to the fact yet, but this way of defining woke is more common in many circles in 2022.

You falsely saying "I think being woke is a good thing. I'm sorry you don't" is exactly the kind of excessive wokeness, the kind of sanctimonious judgement that I'm talking about. The fact that there are so many progressives/liberals jumping on people like that, in forums, on social media, in the work place, and elsewhere, for the slightest perceived imperfection, is, in my view, damaging to both the democratic party and the broader liberal/progressive cause. It annoys people.

Trump won partly because he was a response to precisely that. #224 - The Key to Trump’s Appeal explains it better than I can (8 minutes long podcast). Basically people hate preaching moral superiority including in politicians. It shouldn't be that way but it is. People get an emotional reaction to it.

I'm talking about how best we beat the Republicans and instead of joining me in the strategic debate you jump in and try and be holier than thou. And then you probably wonder why people vote Republican.

 

[Jamie in Chile]

No matter how bad the conditions in a country, I think most people resent having their country subjected to a military invasion.

Probably true in most cases.

The only exception I can think of is the British going into Sierra Leone in 2000 to kick the bad guys *** and being loved for it.

Sierra Leone: one place where Tony Blair remains an unquestioned hero | Sierra Leone | The Guardian

www.theguardian.com

A successful military intervention praised by the local people!

The success of this might have laid the way for the Iraq invasion.

At the time of the Iraq invasion, you had three examples of perceived successful interventions: Sierra Leone , Afghanistan (not now but at the time it was prematurely thought a success: the Taliban were defeated, and a positive future seemed plausible) and Yugoslavia as well could have been argued as positive success in removing a dictator (this last one is disputed).

That´s also part of the reason the Iraq war happened. At the time, the balance of recent evidence seemed to suggest a strongish argument that removing dictators with international forces might lead to better outcomes for the country.

But in reality it rested quite a bit on the Sierra Leone case as the only undisputed success and quite a small war at that. Hard to think of any undisputed success on a larger scale.

 

[anarchist100]

And, by definition, deaths caused by war are also not murder. Morality is not equal to legality.

Whether it's murder or not, Bush did something that he knew would kill people, while Trump simply refused to do something that would have saved people, one is not obligated to save others unless it's their fault that the person needs saving. One is however obligated to not do things that they know will harm others.

 

[anarchist100]

trump spread a lot of misinformation and he did it intentionally, and it cost hundreds of thousands of lives. GWB is small potatoes in comparison.

Isn't that mostly the fault of the people who believed him? No one forced them to follow his advice, they did it voluntarily, the people in Iraq really didn't have a choice as to whether their houses and families got blown up, the US just showed up and started doing it.

 

[anarchist100]

For someone who claims to be an anarchist, you sure are fond of authoritarians - Putin, trump, Musk....

I don't like Putin or Trump, I just don't like it when you lie about them, and Elon Musk is not an authoritarian.

 

[Jamie in Chile]

What makes you think Musk is a centrist?

He personally identifies as centrist and has basically said so on twitter (implicitly).

Musk´s views are mostly non-political and he hasn´t declared an affiliation, which makes him a centrist.

You can´t really call him right as a strong supporter of action on climate change.

Elon Musk - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

His views are not really right wing, but they seem to align with the right a bit more in terms of where the right is at at the moment in culture wars - if you read through the above link

 

[Mischief]

I was talking about what I think is strategically best. I want the Republicans to lose.

Those that think a competition for moral superiority is the way to get voters to your side haven't been paying attention.

I disagree with your definition of being woke as being not wanting to denigrate others. In my view it goes beyond not wanting to denigrate people and includes a level of awareness of your own situation or others. A black person in the US suffering from past or present racial inequality but not even realizing it is not woke, according to one way of thinking about it. A white person standing by and watching another white person insulting a black person and turning a blind eye and not realising their own white privilege and thinking "it's no big deal it's just a harmless insult" is not woke regardless of the fact that they themselves are not denigrating others. This is how woke was mostly used some years ago, say 2015.

Yes, in that sense, by that explanation, of course woke is a good thing.

But that is only the half of it. Some people, including some conservatives, have for some years now being pushing an alternate definition of woke to mean the people who are, regardless of whether their agenda is correct or not, are shoving it down your throat too much. The woke are the cancel culture people who want to get someone fired because they said something offensive on twitter. The woke to them are the people who want to teach school children that we all live in a system of white supremacy and all white people, even children, should feel guilty about it even if they as individuals haven't done anything bad. In that sense, woke can be a bad thing and it's that side of it which I mean if and when I criticise the term in the future. And to be honest the people pushing this way of defining the word are winning. The dictionaries may not have caught up to the fact yet, but this way of defining woke is more common in many circles in 2022.

You falsely saying "I think being woke is a good thing. I'm sorry you don't" is exactly the kind of excessive wokeness, the kind of sanctimonious judgement that I'm talking about. The fact that there are so many progressives/liberals jumping on people like that, in forums, on social media, in the work place, and elsewhere, for the slightest perceived imperfection, is, in my view, damaging to both the democratic party and the broader liberal/progressive cause. It annoys people.

Trump won partly because he was a response to precisely that. #224 - The Key to Trump’s Appeal explains it better than I can (8 minutes long podcast). Basically people hate preaching moral superiority including in politicians. It shouldn't be that way but it is. People get an emotional reaction to it.

I'm talking about how best we beat the Republicans and instead of joining me in the strategic debate you jump in and try and be holier than thou. And then you probably wonder why people vote Republican.

What has happened with the word "woke" is the same thing that has happened with terms like "liberal" and "feminist." Opponents started using them as insults, and then people started buying into that and refused to apply the terms to themselves because they were afraid of being sneered at.

The number of times I had other women say to me, "I'm not a feminist, but I think women should be paid as much as men" or "I'm not a feminist, but I think women should be able to choose to have an abortion", etc. There were decades during which I was the only person I knew who was willing to state out loud that I am a feminist, that I am a liberal, that I am an atheist, etc.

I think that people eventually started to learn something from the gay rights movement, and that is to take back the language we use to define ourselves. And it works. " Liberal" has list its sting; now the rude have to resort to 'libtard.' I rarely hear the word "feminist" used as an insult anymore, and that's because it's lost its sting.

So, yeah, when I hear/see someone use "woke" as a derogatory term, I'm going to address it. I'm giving you the basic respect of assuming that you mean what you say.

As for the whole "cancel" thing:
Do you remember what the right did to the Dixie Chicks when they dared to criticize GWB? Do you remember when they renamed french fries when France didn't want to join in the invasion of Iraq? Do you know who is getting books banned all over the U.S. (including where I live)? Do you know which party is expelling its elected officials and members who dare to criticize the former president or state publicly that the 2020 election was not 'stolen'? And on and on....

If you're going to parrot right wing talking points, then it's really rich if you get offended by being called on what you say.

And then you probably wonder why people vote Republican.

Something about this sounds strangely familiar. Oh, I know: "A vegetarian was rude to me, so I'm going back to eating meat." We've all heard that excuse, I suspect.

 

[Mischief]

He personally identifies as centrist and has basically said so on twitter (implicitly).

Musk´s views are mostly non-political and he hasn´t declared an affiliation, which makes him a centrist.

You can´t really call him right as a strong supporter of action on climate change.

Elon Musk - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

His views are not really right wing, but they seem to align with the right a bit more in terms of where the right is at at the moment in culture wars - if you read through the above link

You missed it. He has declared an affiliation.

I don't know anyone who describes themselves as right wing. In fact, KKK members locally insist they are not racist.

 

[Jamie in Chile]

When I said he hasn't declared an affiliation I mean that he hasn't formerly stated that he sees himself as a Republican, or that he is joining the member of the party. I know he said he would vote Republican once (I didn´t miss that, it was me that posted that news at the top of page 7), but he has also said he voted Democrat many times, so I'm not sure he counts as affiliated yet.

 

[Jamie in Chile]

It is true that the right will sometimes bemoan cancel culture and then use it to their advantage, but I still think cancel culture is a problem for the left.

I am supporting the far left (although if it wasn´t for climate change, I might prefer centre left). I voted for Jeremy Corbyn in the UK and donated to that campaign and I voted for Gabriel Boric 3 times in Chile and I also even worked for his campaign a bit and gave plenty of money to it.

But yeah a minority of my opinions are more right than left. In my view if you hold every opinion exactly the same as the others in your tribe that is just tribal dogma. I can´t believe that the left is completely correct on all of the issues and the right wrong on all of them. And anyone that thinks that way to me is likely not a fully independent intellectual thinker but someone whose opinions have been coloured by friends, family, tribal acceptance, who you look up to etc. So sure I´m not afraid to have some opinions that agree with the right.

As I read what you put "So, yeah, when I hear/see someone use "woke" as a derogatory term, I'm going to address it" I wonder if you´ve still missed the point that I wasn´t really criticising wokeness so much as criticising the democrats strategy (or lack of it) in focusing on wokeness as the heart of their agenda. I think social justice is the heart of the democrats ideology today with racial justice an especially sensitive issue as its core. I agree with the agenda for the most part but the question is should liberals be also focusing more on other things as well as that.

My thoughts are that everyone from Joe Biden down to me and you should be thinking strategically about how to win.

If having the moral high ground was the strategy to win, then Trump could not have been President, and Putin could not be as popular as he is (in Russia). So that clearly isn´t the answer.

I´d like to hear the democrats talk more about reducing crime, openly opposing illegal immigration, helping with cost of living issues, and supporting the police. These are not only vote winning policies but they are common sense. And yet the left globally just more or less ignores some of these. OK the left is doing OK on cost of living actually but a lot of the left are scared to oppose illegal immigration or support the police incase that somehow makes that seem racist or something? It´s nuts.

Once we win we get the power to actually create more racial and social and climate justice. But first we have to win.

Gabriel Boric in Chile was a couple of points behind the far right Jose Kast after the first round and then in the final head to head between the last two candidates he belatedly talked a bit about crime and immigration and changed his tune a bit. I personally wonder if that was part of the reason he surged ahead and won easily in round two. I wouldn´t be surprised.

In the UK in the 1990s Tony Blair said "tough on crime, AND tough on the causes of crime". A left winger who would actually say "tough on crime". It´s not a coincidence that he won by a landslide and is the only left wing politician to become leader of the UK in the last 40-50 years since all those with the exclusively far left, social justice agenda like Corbyn, Ed Milliband were soundly beaten.