2020 US Election

[BobDobalina]

16 minutes ago, ignatius said:

ESPN Instant Classic

[Rubin Farr]

[may be rude]

trump seems to be doing it again, trying to overthrow the government. 

really bad stuff we can see coming. hopefully with enough time and enough light shone on it we can mitigate the threats but this is brainwormed and coopted useful idiots in a coordinated assault on american democracy that has already iterated and is refining their attack on the country's weak points. 

one way to avoid awkwardness and violence is to resoundingly defeat the republicans and trump.

Edited August 7 by may be rude

[Rubin Farr]

 

[Hail Sagan]

You are all pretty excited about that decision they made for you. It’s the same fucking administration you’ve been crying about for 4 years. Now it’s undemocratically force fed to you with lipstick in some supposed fight to save democracy? You have taken your orders very graciously, I’ll give you that. 

[ignatius]

7 hours ago, Hail Sagan said:

You are all pretty excited about that decision they made for you. It’s the same fucking administration you’ve been crying about for 4 years. Now it’s undemocratically force fed to you with lipstick in some supposed fight to save democracy? You have taken your orders very graciously, I’ll give you that. 

was there a different choice to make? 

currently, i think the group think is "we need to get passed this big orange obstacle so winning is most important" and i hope that the dems actually prevail.  people think differently about all of this and know that both parties are shit but one is w/o a doubt better on many things and trump is such a black swan type potential event that it'd be best to avoid that. 

i typically just do a harm reduction analysis when voting since i don't really think electoral politics is going to solve our problems but might make life less painful for some people both at home and afar.  but no doubt american politics has been captured by the billionaire class and corporate class. but even within that scenario there's the possibility to scratch back some of the gains that have been taken away in the last 30 years and we have a better chance of doing that with one party in power vs the other one. 

as far as how this all went down.. yeah.. it's a bit weird that there was no mini primary to allow people to actually choose Harris as the candidate but honestly i think it would have been chaos and too fatiguing for america and everyone is happy to just get on with it because a lot of people are fucking exhausted by this shit. 

shrug. it is what it is. the election is going to be a crazy one w/all kinds of law suits and challenges to every election result certification. i'm not looking forward to it. that being said, democrats uniting behind harris walz is a good thing and it's kind of amazing that we ended up here as usually the dems totally shit the bed and make one bad decision after another. so, hopefully they don't shit the bed tomorrow or the next day and we get to progress toward the election w/o someone driving it all into a ditch. 

 

[decibal cooper]

7 hours ago, Hail Sagan said:

You are all pretty excited about that decision they made for you. It’s the same fucking administration you’ve been crying about for 4 years. Now it’s undemocratically force fed to you with lipstick in some supposed fight to save democracy? You have taken your orders very graciously, I’ll give you that. 

lol yes, she was installed because the big donors shut off biden's fundraising so that he would agree to drop out of race, then the donors and party bosses force fed her to us, to use your phrase.

She is potentially much worse than biden imo because she will most likely be ten times more easy to manipulate than him by the various puppetmasters who want nothing less than constant warfare abroad. her whole campaign so far has just been an aggressive marketing campaign with no substance, and she has not released any info on what her platform is, has not answered any tough questions by journalists or voters, has not done any town halls or even received any votes from citizens from the primary process because she was just installed by wealthy donors.

Fundamentally anti-democratic. Honestly do not see the democratic party or the people on their ticket as any better or worse than trump. Same shit. Cosplaying as being concerned public servants defending democracy, meanwhile behind closed doors its the same bloodthirsty, feckless, and dangerous-for-the-world-and-for-peace foreign policy.

 

 

[cern]

6 minutes ago, decibal cooper said:

Fundamentally anti-democratic. Honestly do not see the democratic party or the people on their ticket as any better or worse than trump. Same shit. Cosplaying as being concerned public servants defending democracy, meanwhile behind closed doors its the same bloodthirsty, feckless, and dangerous-for-the-world-and-for-peace foreign policy.

Exactly wholy shit that people don't understand this! 

[chenGOD]

24 minutes ago, decibal cooper said:

Honestly do not see the democratic party or the people on their ticket as any better or worse than trump

This is such a braindead take. Take a look at the list of what Walz accomplished in Minnesota and then compare it to states like Texas or Florida, or wherever the fuck they just made it mandatory to have the Ten Commandments in elementary school classrooms.

Take a look at what Trump has promised he will do if he gets elected, especially looking at tax policy and foreign policy. Look at Project 2025 closely and see what it would mean for the justice system in America - you think it's bad now - it can get a whole lot worse.

Are the Dems perfect? Not by a long shot. Are they better than the christo-fascists in the GOP? Abso-fucking-lutely.

 

[d-a-m-o]

[decibal cooper]

9 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

This is such a braindead take. Take a look at the list of what Walz accomplished in Minnesota and then compare it to states like Texas or Florida, or wherever the fuck they just made it mandatory to have the Ten Commandments in elementary school classrooms.

Take a look at what Trump has promised he will do if he gets elected, especially looking at tax policy and foreign policy. Look at Project 2025 closely and see what it would mean for the justice system in America - you think it's bad now - it can get a whole lot worse.

Are the Dems perfect? Not by a long shot. Are they better than the christo-fascists in the GOP? Abso-fucking-lutely.

 

There are Christian nationalists in the highest reaches of US government and military, and they are the ones making decisions abroad that lead to large scale industrial killing that is wholly unnecessary, and the democrats support them just as much if not more than the republicans (this is just a fact when you consider that dems have been in power over last four years and are completely ineffective in trying to tamp down tensions and bring peace or even a modicum of stability to that area). Their actions have led to more and more escalation even while they wring their hands in public talking about how they want peace there and how they view each civilian death as a tragedy. 4000 marines and more military assets into the mideast this week, and there is no substantive comment about this from biden admin, and it is not even clear that biden knows what is going on or what next steps will look like. It's not clear who exactly is making military and foreign policy decisions. This is so dangerous and does not serve the security of America or Americans abroad in any way, in fact the opposite is true. That mideast area is a powder keg and the people in charge in US have no strategy, they are just playing it as they go and are completely incompetent. Whatever little bit of credibility America had on the world stage has been wrecked under this admin, and there is absolutely no way for US citizens to meaningfully oppose their warmongering policies. Nothing democratic about this imo. You can say trump will be same or worse. Maybe that is true, but the truth is that he was not in office last four years.

 

[ignatius]

6 minutes ago, decibal cooper said:

Maybe that is true, but the truth is that he was not in office last four years.

And you think nothing he did during his administration had an effect on Biden admin/the world?

Trump moved the embassy to Jerusalem escalating tensions. He assassinated high level Iranian military leader. You think those things don’t effect things going forward?

Things don’t happen in a void just because someone wasn’t in charge. 
 

not giving Biden a pass but wtf. History is contiguous. Foreign policy is complex from one administration to the next and actions from one to the next matter. 

Edited August 7 by ignatius

[decibal cooper]

17 minutes ago, ignatius said:

And you think nothing he did during his administration had an effect on Biden admin/the world?

Trump moved the embassy to Jerusalem escalating tensions. He assassinated high level Iranian military leader. You think those things don’t effect things going forward?

Things don’t happen in a void just because someone wasn’t in charge. 
 

not giving Biden a pass but wtf. History is contiguous. Foreign policy is complex from one administration to the next and actions from one to the next matter. 

look I am not going to sit here and argue partisan politics, which are a crass and base matter, with the albert einstein of meme science, a true man of culture, but all the same I do think that you are giving biden a pass. trump moving the embassy to jersusalem and hitting that military leader were obviously disastrous decisions, but those decisions pale in comparison compared with providing unconditional military support and diplomatic cover to a regime that the rest of the world (credibly) sees as carrying out a military campaign with genocidal intent.

[EdamAnchorman]

2 hours ago, ignatius said:

i typically just do a harm reduction analysis when voting since i don't really think electoral politics is going to solve our problems but might make life less painful for some people both at home and afar.  but no doubt american politics has been captured by the billionaire class and corporate class. but even within that scenario there's the possibility to scratch back some of the gains that have been taken away in the last 30 years and we have a better chance of doing that with one party in power vs the other one.

This is why every chance I get I scream at people to by god do your research and VOTE IN THE PRIMARIES, at every level. 

Almost none of the candidates I vote for in the primaries make it onto the ballot because people are generally lazy and vote for the name they've heard the most, which in primary races is usually the "establishment" candidate whose campaign spent the most money.  Not to mention that voter turnout in primaries is probably abysmal at best. 

IMO, if we want to bring about meaningful change, primary elections are much more important than general elections.

[Nebraska]

11 hours ago, Hail Sagan said:

You are all pretty excited about that decision they made for you. It’s the same fucking administration you’ve been crying about for 4 years. Now it’s undemocratically force fed to you with lipstick in some supposed fight to save democracy? You have taken your orders very graciously, I’ll give you that. 

you're phrasing this incorrectly. 

dems didn't want biden and wanted anyone else besides him. kamala was the default option because there is no time to "get" another candidate. her choice for VP indicates she (her staff?) paid enough attention to what polices people wanted and picked walz accordingly.

compare this with trump who picked a VP that only peter thiel "specific donors" wanted and has policies that go against what the populous wants (eg. state-wide abortion ban). how is that not force fed? or is this just another consequence of the anti-intellectualism that has always haunted the right?

Edited August 7 by Nebraska

[ignatius]

5 hours ago, EdamAnchorman said:

IMO, if we want to bring about meaningful change, primary elections are much more important than general elections.

sure and local elections more than federal though federal senate/house elections matter for big picture stuff but yeah.. the system is poo. 

[may be rude]

i for one think the system has a lot of potential. and as far as systems go it's a pretty good system. 

i think the problem is the voters are idiots. and the constituency is tripping on social media the last 15 years. but we are in times of change, it's all in flux. info paths are in flux. we'll figure it out. we're emerging from the dark ages.

democracy is just meant to cycle people out, not produce perfection. in any shared societal system a best case scenario is everyone being mildly dissatisfied

Edited August 8 by may be rude

[BobDobalina]

Corporate media is abject garbage.

Like so... you really want a dipshit that bankrupts casinos (shhh, it's free real estate money laundering) to "run the economy"* instead?

* Ask yourself, do you really want this ship captain running the high seas?

[cern]

I hear u but that is just a letter from a reader to that news.. Could be anyone saying almost anything.
You can write what u said now to that News and they will have it in as an answer to that opinon. 

 

[ignatius]

1 hour ago, may be rude said:

i for one think the system has a lot of potential. and as far as systems go it's a pretty good system. 

i think the problem is the voters are idiots. and the constituency is tripping on social media the last 15 years. but we are in times of change, it's all in flux. info paths are in flux. we'll figure it out. we're emerging from the dark ages.

democracy is just meant to cycle people out, not produce perfection. in any shared societal system a best case scenario is everyone being mildly dissatisfied

i hope one day humans will look back and say "sheesh, that system was dumb af. what were they thinking?" because it's capitalism, as much as anything, that's the problem. 

i think a horizontal, non hierarchical, system is great in theory but it breaks down quickly when there's more than like 150 people. then people need representation because there's just too many people to make it work. 

anyway, "a pretty good system" that got its start by doing a genocide and ethnic cleansing on multiple continents then in the "new world". it's hard to say it's a good system when looking at history and how it was built. but i get it.. the founders, the constitution, the bill of rights etc etc.. 3 branches of government, checks and balances etc etc. but it's in need of a big reality check and american culture is super fucked up about all that and can't bear the thought that america isn't perfect and anything historical about america that makes it look bad is offensive to them.. and they call it america bashing.. but it's just history. america will never grow to what it could be w/o full embracing its past and making some effort to acknowledge it and perhaps sprinkle some reparations and stuff. but there's a snowball's chance in hell of that happening. not any time soon. not that it will matter since the shit is going to really hit the fan over the coming decades w/climate change, climate migration, break downs in civilization due to multiple shocks to the system that come in repetition.  

the pace of change is up for debate but it's coming and it'll be rough. complex societies like modern civilization is going to have a hard time of it i think.. once they start to break down. a certain amount of insulation from events will happen in different places because of local resources but it's all going to change a lot. 

[chenGOD]

2 hours ago, decibal cooper said:

There are Christian nationalists in the highest reaches of US government and military, and they are the ones making decisions abroad that lead to large scale industrial killing that is wholly unnecessary, and the democrats support them just as much if not more than the republicans (this is just a fact when you consider that dems have been in power over last four years and are completely ineffective in trying to tamp down tensions and bring peace or even a modicum of stability to that area). Their actions have led to more and more escalation even while they wring their hands in public talking about how they want peace there and how they view each civilian death as a tragedy. 4000 marines and more military assets into the mideast this week, and there is no substantive comment about this from biden admin, and it is not even clear that biden knows what is going on or what next steps will look like. It's not clear who exactly is making military and foreign policy decisions. This is so dangerous and does not serve the security of America or Americans abroad in any way, in fact the opposite is true. That mideast area is a powder keg and the people in charge in US have no strategy, they are just playing it as they go and are completely incompetent. Whatever little bit of credibility America had on the world stage has been wrecked under this admin, and there is absolutely no way for US citizens to meaningfully oppose their warmongering policies. Nothing democratic about this imo. You can say trump will be same or worse. Maybe that is true, but the truth is that he was not in office last four years.

 

Yeah like I said, the democrats aren't perfect. But they are a long way clear of Trump and his posse of bootlickers.

I don't pretend to know the ins and outs of the US senior administration and its workings, but foreign policy decisions are not made abroad. They are implemented abroad but in general foreign policy decisions are made in Washington.

There are 4000 marines already in the middle east - the US is sending more ships and planes. This is in response to threats from Iran - who were abiding by a treaty until Trump pulled out of that accord and signaled that the US would continue to view Iran as an adversary rather than a state who could be bargained with. Then Trump had one of Iran's top men assassinated.

The Biden administration had a much more nuanced approach to the Israel-Palestine situation previously - it was also much more balanced toward Palestine than the Trump "plan" (by the way, under the Trump administration, the US reversed its position on Israeli "settlements", opening the way for more illegal settlements and further inflaming tensions).

As for the current situation, yes we all wish Biden would tell the war criminal in Israel to fuck off, but the support is not unconditional.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/08/05/world/israel-iran-hezbollah-gaza

Quote

"Mr. Biden has publicly chided Mr. Netanyahu for failing to agree to another truce in Gaza. Senior leaders from Israel’s military and intelligence agencies have also privately grown frustrated with the prime minister for introducing new conditions to the fraught negotiations, according to two Israeli officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter."

"Mr. Biden’s frustration with Mr. Netanyahu is in part related to the assassination [of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader and top truce negotiator], which the U.S. president said had “not helped” the prospects of a cease-fire agreement."

Another article from earlier this year goes into some of the more nuanced approaches of the Biden administration:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-the-biden-administration-defends-its-israel-policy

Whereas Trump...well here's what he had to say about the situation: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-israel-gaza-finish-problem-rcna141905

If you want to oppose your "warmongering policies" (what wars has the US started in the last four years?) then you need to keep voting consistently democrat and keep pushing the Overton window to the left. To quote the old cliche - "...it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." It is slow and at times painful, but the alternatives are much worse.

12 hours ago, decibal cooper said:

I am not going to sit here and argue partisan politics, which are a crass and base matter,

To be clear - is it partisan politics that you think are crass and base, or all politics?

[may be rude]

1 hour ago, ignatius said:

the pace of change is up for debate but it's coming and it'll be rough.

the necessary change could manifest in different ways. the best scenario i can see is dems get firm control of congress and the white house for a while. eventually we could have president AOC, solid majorities, and a decade behind them of people seeing how well things go when dems are in control. then they could do some constitutional convention stuff to make some major changes like do away with the electoral college, reform the supreme court, pass major legislation on things like gerrymandering and campaign finance, some of those deep structural issues. there haven't been the conditions in recent decades when those changes have been possible but throughout american history there have been times when similar major changes were done. 

i think shit will continue to be weird for another decade and it's just hard to predict where people's heads will be just 2 years from now. hard to know where we're heading but i'm seeing that the republican party leeched onto trump because they were weak and needed his carny magic. now he's becoming the anchor to drag them down. they were already feeling their power slipping away. they were already overinflated and then they overinflated on crack with the trump bump. now they may deflate and snap back to that weak point on their trajectory where they would have been without trump, which was so low that it caused them to go along with whatever tf trump says. there's a chance the republicans could do very poorly in the election this year.  

Edited August 8 by may be rude

[decibal cooper]

9 hours ago, chenGOD said:

There are 4000 marines already in the middle east - the US is sending more ships and planes. This is in response to threats from Iran - who were abiding by a treaty until Trump pulled out of that accord and signaled that the US would continue to view Iran as an adversary rather than a state who could be bargained with. Then Trump had one of Iran's top men assassinated.

The Biden administration had a much more nuanced approach to the Israel-Palestine situation previously - it was also much more balanced toward Palestine than the Trump "plan" (by the way, under the Trump administration, the US reversed its position on Israeli "settlements", opening the way for more illegal settlements and further inflaming tensions).

As for the current situation, yes we all wish Biden would tell the war criminal in Israel to fuck off, but the support is not unconditional.

I disagree about your assessment regarding why more US military personnel and assets are now in the middle east. You paint it like Iran is the threat and Israel is the victim. Last week Israel did a political assassination on the Hamas politician who was visiting Iran for a ceremony inaugurating their new president. This was the guy who was in charge of cease fire negotiations, he was hamas lead negotiator. Israel killed him north of tehran, the iranian capital, a strike on another country's sovereign territory. The so called 'rules based international order' that america is always touting, well Israel does not give a fuck about that. No one in American government even acknowledged that israel conducted the attack let alone condemned it. Iran vowed to retaliate, and now americans are there in greater force to protect israel. If we go beyond just shooting down missiles and help israel with pre-emptive or counterstrikes, then we are going to be fighting a war on israel's behalf, looking to the rest of the world like we are fighting to support their war crimes. That fucker lindsay graham has even drafted up the necessary plans for authorizing war. By the way, israel also did targeted killings of hezbollah fighters in Lebanon, another attack on a sovereign nation. in it's behavior israel is acting in the opposite way of what biden admin's stated policy is of a ceasefire and 2 state solution. netanyahu has no interest in that. You make it seem like Iran is a rabid dog about to attack because they hate israel when they are responding to escalatory action that israel has taken.

That nyt article about biden's 'nuanced position' on the issue is also ridiculous in my opinion. Oh, so biden 'publicly chided' netanyahu, huh? Oh gee golly gosh, I hope that this public chiding stops the complete psychos from carrying out a collective punishment campaign on civilians and from doing everything in his power to spark a wider regional war. Fact is that the only way to get them to stop is to turn off the faucet of more-or-less unlimited military and diplomatic support and force them to the negotiating table.

The stories coming out of israel last week of a torture scandal is truly shocking, not to mention the scores of other war crimes. The two main international courts ICJ and ICC have condemned israel's actions and argued that they are doing collective punishment, using control of food supply as a weapon of war, and other things. biden has not done any extended interviews or press conferences where he discusses these issues at length, and he is basically no longer in the public eye at all at this point. harris camp no better. you have some good sources showing that trump would most likely promote the same policy as biden, but you are clouding the issue by bringing those things in the mix imo. trump was not in office and had no control over the situation since oct 7. yes he endorsed west bank settlement expansion, but so does biden. his admin may condemn them from the podium, but idf offensives in west bank and east jerusalem have increased and become more brutal (and better equiped with american weapons) since oct 7.

9 hours ago, chenGOD said:

If you want to oppose your "warmongering policies" (what wars has the US started in the last four years?) then you need to keep voting consistently democrat and keep pushing the Overton window to the left. To quote the old cliche - "...it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." It is slow and at times painful, but the alternatives are much worse.

To be clear - is it partisan politics that you think are crass and base, or all politics?

I know most ppl disagree with me, but I think that america at least 50% responsible for starting war in ukraine. Even if you disagree, that war would be impossible without us military and intel support, and biden admin has no interest of doing diplomacy and trying to get a ceasefire there. I do not see how you could look at the leaked memo from Bill Burns, who was lead american diplomat to russia in 2000s and is now cia director and lead negotiator for biden admin over gaza situation, when he did comprehensive discussions with russia's diplomats and concluded that the russians believed nato expansion to ukraine would be an existential threat to them and would act accordingly. Burns advised that america not expand. Same with israel situation. Yes we did not start the war but we supported it unconditionally and allow israel to continually escalate and kill civilians unchecked.

And for the record, I think that politics is absolutely necessary to human life and human thriving, it's all about finding the best means for organizing a society around common values, values like freedom, peace, and using warfare as an absolute last resort, etc. and giving people an optimal chance to have security and the means to live a meaningful life and make meaningful contributions to society.  I just think that american partisan politics is a mug's game and is (or should be) beneath people. This is just kind of an unrealistic idealism on my part, but this stuff (partisanship) just serves to divide the populace and ensure that they pose no threat to american power centers who act without any accountability. As obama said around the end of his 8 years in office when reflecting upon washington dc, 'this town has a bias toward war' - I honestly think that the rest of the world, the non-nato and non-euro countries, are beginning to become allied in new ways and oppose american policy of war, sanctions, unilateral action, etc. America is no longer a global hegemon, yet with biden admin it continues acting like one and fanning flames of war. If the country is divided over cultural issues or with thinking that 'their side' is somehow the more moral and just one, then it allows these feckless cunts in power to continue wrecking america's reputation abroad and also continuing policies of war that are inhumane and serve no strategic purpose and only wind up creating more chaos and division globally.

[Rubin Farr]

[ignatius]

9 hours ago, may be rude said:

the necessary change could manifest in different ways.

i'm talking about climate collapse, climate change etc.. not pace of change as related to politics and culture. when the shit really hits the fan i don't expect americans to react in a sane way. they'll likely look for some strong man fascist to solve problems for them because that just seems to happen in tough time.. but it really depends on how these climate/overshoot scenarios present and proceed. which thing will come first and how will it be handled. it's already begun though imo. america isn't any less polarized, religious people aren't any less batshit etc.. the fundamentalist christian fucktards are only going to get weirder. seeing the USA collapse into various states/zones of "living in reality" vs "fake news religious fucktardism" is totally a possible future.