Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[Pariah]

2 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

 

The one concerning attention-grabbing headlines/titles -> 

 

 

Oh yes, negativity sells, and quite well too. Fear trumps hope every time, I'm afraid.

 

But I choose hope anyway.

[L. Marcus]

"There is no reason to look to the future with hope. Therefore, we must, for no reason, look to the future with hope."

 

Or words to that effect.

[Lord Liaden]

8 hours ago, Pariah said:

Strategically, it's a solid move. Control what future voters are allowed to hear, and you can lock down power for a generation.

 

Gov. Ron DeSantis charts new political path for GOP as he takes the unusual step of endorsing school board candidates that vow to back his education plans

 

"We are not going to surrender to woke," said DeSantis, whose political committee donated to the school board candidates. "We are going to prevail and Florida is the state where woke goes to die."

 

"Woke" has been around since before DeSantis was born, as everyone who's paid attention knows. It will be around long after he's gone and forgotten. Over time, progress inevitably wins.

[Old Man]

1 minute ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

"Woke" has been around since before DeSantis was born, as everyone who's paid attention knows. It will be around long after he's gone and forgotten. Over time, progress inevitably wins.

 

"Woke" has been around since before DeSantis was born, as everyone who's paid attention knows. It will be around long after he's gone and forgotten. Over time, progress inevitably wins.

 

Sure, but I'd just as soon not have to live through one of the numerous painful setbacks that occurs before the "inevitable" win.  DeSantis frightens me more than Trump.

[unclevlad]

5 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

"Woke" has been around since before DeSantis was born, as everyone who's paid attention knows. It will be around long after he's gone and forgotten. Over time, progress inevitably wins.

 

Progress has never been under attack from every direction simultaneously before.

[Lord Liaden]

3 hours ago, unclevlad said:

 

Progress has never been under attack from every direction simultaneously before.

 

Look, I'm not saying things aren't bad, and there isn't danger they could get worse. But there's nothing new here, just more old men trying to leverage fear and hatred to gain power. We know where this ends precisely because the world has been down this same path before, time after time. Same tactics, same rhetoric with only some of the names changing. Same eventual, inevitable collapse. OTOH,

 

3 hours ago, Old Man said:

 

Sure, but I'd just as soon not have to live through one of the numerous painful setbacks that occurs before the "inevitable" win.  DeSantis frightens me more than Trump.

 

Yeah, the two-steps-back part is usually really nasty. The US has certainly had its share: a Revolution, a Civil War, two World Wars, a Great Depression, a Cold War and "Red Scare," Civil Rights protests and violence. Sucks majorly when you're in them, but they all subsided, and progress did follow. It has been argued that such traumas are necessary for nations to grow and mature. Even if the fascist path is avoided this time, I expect all this to force Americans to take a hard look at who they are and who they want to be.

 

[unclevlad]

1 minute ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

Look, I'm not saying things aren't bad, and there isn't danger they could get worse. But there's nothing new here, just more old men trying to leverage fear and hatred to gain power. We know where this ends precisely because the world has been down this same path before, time after time. Same tactics, same rhetoric with only some of the names changing. Same eventual, inevitable collapse. OTOH,

 

 

Not the same tactics.  They've never had a Supreme Court that's not only stacked in their direction, but tied to a such an extreme literalist interpretation basis.  There's never been as much effort, I think, to indoctrinate.  Liberty University's stated goal is to build conservative leaders for the next generation...and do you realize they have 100,000 students?   It's not just old men, either;  DeSantis is 43.  They've got 3 Supreme Court justices under 60.  Boebert.  Greene.  OK, to a point these 2 might be the next Palin...loud, noisy, essentially meaningless in the long term, but they're SO extreme...and still got elected.  

 

Plus, we probably don't have the time to play through the cycle, even if it does change.  I don't think we're at the bottom yet...I'm more worried we're not close.  2022 isn't looking great for Congress, the Republicans will have largely completed their purge, and whether it's Trump, DeSantis, or someone else, every 2024 Republican Presidential candidate looks to be another disaster...WITH Congressional control.  How many environmental rollbacks will there be?  Everything suggests we can't avoid serious damage *now*...and we have to move forward quickly to mitigate things because any such measures will take a long time to work.  And as problems grow, societal pressures will do nothing but increase.  Progress becomes far harder when simply getting by becomes much more difficult.  

 

And we've never had the media that creates, then reinforces, polarization.  The reach has never been this great, this pervasive, this easy.

 

No, the collapse is not inevitable.

[TrickstaPriest]

 

Warning for language.

[Ragitsu]

"The most pointed is V's belief: "People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people." I am not sure V has it right; surely in the ideal state governments and their people should exist happily together. Fear in either direction must lead to violence." — Roger Ebert, reviewing V for Vendetta

[dmjalund]

39 minutes ago, Ragitsu said:

"The most pointed is V's belief: "People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people." I am not sure V has it right; surely in the ideal state governments and their people should exist happily together. Fear in either direction must lead to violence." — Roger Ebert, reviewing V for Vendetta

pale grey is hard to read on a white background

[Ragitsu]

1 minute ago, dmjalund said:

pale grey is hard to read on a white background

 

It's pale grey? Sorry, I didn't notice that text's color.

[BoloOfEarth]

1 hour ago, dmjalund said:

pale grey is hard to read on a white background

 

Agreed.  But I just highlighted the text, and it became much easier to read.

[Lord Liaden]

19 hours ago, unclevlad said:

 

Not the same tactics.  They've never had a Supreme Court that's not only stacked in their direction, but tied to a such an extreme literalist interpretation basis.  There's never been as much effort, I think, to indoctrinate.  Liberty University's stated goal is to build conservative leaders for the next generation...and do you realize they have 100,000 students?   It's not just old men, either;  DeSantis is 43.  They've got 3 Supreme Court justices under 60.  Boebert.  Greene.  OK, to a point these 2 might be the next Palin...loud, noisy, essentially meaningless in the long term, but they're SO extreme...and still got elected.  

 

Plus, we probably don't have the time to play through the cycle, even if it does change.  I don't think we're at the bottom yet...I'm more worried we're not close.  2022 isn't looking great for Congress, the Republicans will have largely completed their purge, and whether it's Trump, DeSantis, or someone else, every 2024 Republican Presidential candidate looks to be another disaster...WITH Congressional control.  How many environmental rollbacks will there be?  Everything suggests we can't avoid serious damage *now*...and we have to move forward quickly to mitigate things because any such measures will take a long time to work.  And as problems grow, societal pressures will do nothing but increase.  Progress becomes far harder when simply getting by becomes much more difficult.  

 

And we've never had the media that creates, then reinforces, polarization.  The reach has never been this great, this pervasive, this easy.

 

No, the collapse is not inevitable.

 

I have to wonder if it's perhaps an element of the American psyche to look at its history and unconsciously equate it with all history. I look at Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, Maoist China. All mobilizing every arm of the State, all organs of the media, to a single purpose: to control and transform the minds and hearts of their populace, to assure their eternal power. But they're all gone now. Yes, the pendulum swings back, but each time it swings forward a little farther.

[unclevlad]

44 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

I have to wonder if it's perhaps an element of the American psyche to look at its history and unconsciously equate it with all history. I look at Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, Maoist China. All mobilizing every arm of the State, all organs of the media, to a single purpose: to control and transform the minds and hearts of their populace, to assure their eternal power. But they're all gone now. Yes, the pendulum swings back, but each time it swings forward a little farther.

 

These are your counters?

Italy:  possibly.  I don't recall that aspect that well, but the Italians were turning against Mussolini, and overthrew him.

Germany:  ok, so all we have to worry about is ethnic genocide, and the solution is leaving the country a smoking wreck, with another 5 million or so dead from the conflict  

Russia:  Stalin's "credited" with killing about 700,000 political opponents, and thousands more...artists, writers, etc....were sent to the gulags, with many thousand more dying.  And...how have things changed?  Stalin died in '52.  The Hungarian Revolution was crushed in '56.  Czechoslovakia, '68.  The occupation of Afghanistan.  Chechnia.  Georgia.  The current action in the Ukraine.  Doesn't seem "gone" to me.

China:  Mao's Great Leap led to a famine that is estimated to have killed 30 million people.  It doesn't look like there are particularly good estimates relating to deaths of politically unreliable people, but it's in the millions.  And even post-Mao, again, it's rather difficult to say the Chinese have relaxed their grip on the people.  RATHER the opposite, in fact.

 

So far, you're batting .250 at best.  

[Lord Liaden]

What is Germany today? Not a smoking wreck. Putin in recent years is emphatically a step backward for Russia, but listen to ordinary Russians tell you what their lives were like between now and when the Soviet Union fell, in terms of freedom and opportunity. Chinese society is unrecognizable compared to under Mao, and while the Communist (nominally) Party remains in power, the return to cult-of-personality under Xi is fairly recent.

 

I don't know if we look at these events through the same lens, but it isn't my desire to try to change your thinking to mine, so I'd like to leave my part here and let readers decide for themselves. 

[csyphrett]

I wonder how this new bill will affect the supreme court if it passes

CES

[unclevlad]

4 hours ago, csyphrett said:

I wonder how this new bill will affect the supreme court if it passes

CES

 

Which bill is that?  

[1corpus christopher]

• "Old Man Trump" is a song with lyrics written by American folk singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie in 1954. The song describes the racist housing practices and discriminatory rental policies of his landlord, Fred Trump. Although the lyrics were written in 1954, it was never recorded by Guthrie. In January 2016, Will Kaufman, a Guthrie scholar and professor of American literature and culture at the University of Central Lancashire, unearthed the handwritten lyrics while conducting research at the Woody Guthrie Archives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. [From Wiki]

 

• Trump skipped a planned appearance outside the BOK Center in Tulsa, Okla., that campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh blamed on “radical protesters, coupled with a relentless onslaught from the media,” who “attempted to frighten off the president’s supporters” with their warnings about the pandemic risk….

 

• …Some Republicans involved in the reelection effort said they feared an internal backlash over the snafu. The president has long been known to take his crowd sizes seriously and had viewed his Tulsa rally as a turning point. “You are warriors!” the president told the crowd as he began his remarks. “We had some very bad people outside. They were doing bad things.”  The thousands of people in the arena, many of whom lined up days earlier, erupted in what felt like a primal scream of pent-up excitement and emotion, months in the making.

[from POLITICO, 6-21-2020,"Trump Blames Protesters for Disappointing Turnout at Rally" by Eugene Daniels]

 

• Trump's impeachment came after a formal House inquiry found that he had solicited foreign interference in the 2020 U.S. presidential election to help his re-election bid, and then obstructed the inquiry itself by telling his administration officials to ignore subpoenas for documents and testimony. The inquiry reported that Trump withheld military aid and an invitation to the White House to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in order to influence Ukraine to announce an investigation into Trump's political opponent Joe Biden and to promote a discredited conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind interference in the 2016 presidential election. [From Wiki]

 

• dem·a·gogue. /ˈdeməˌɡäɡ/

 

• See definitions in: All Politics History

 

• noun: a political leader who seeks support by appealing to the desires and prejudices of ordinary people rather than by using rational argument. "a gifted demagogue with particular skill in manipulating the press"

 

• Similar:rabble-rouser, political agitator, agitator, soapbox orator, firebrand, troublemaker, incendiary, tub-thumper

 

• verb: rhetorically exploit (an issue) for political purposes in a way calculated to appeal to the desires and prejudices of ordinary people.

• "he seems more interested in demagoguing the issue in media interviews than in dialogue"

 

…Why are we still talking about this man having a sane chance as being a '24 presidential candidate after what we went through with him? Not even including some of his of outrageous tweets. I mean seriously.

[Old Man]

Comicsgate: How an Anti-Diversity Harassment Campaign in Comics Got Ugly—and Profitable

 

tl;dr: People have discovered that there is considerable money to be made in harassment of female, minority, and LGBTQ comics writers and artists. 

[Ragitsu]

LBJ was right about contempt being profitable.

[csyphrett]

7 hours ago, unclevlad said:

 

Which bill is that?  

There is a bipartisan bill that seeks to put in place penalities for Supreme Court Justices doing stupid things. I don't know if it has passed yet, or if it will in the middle of election season.

CES   

[unclevlad]

6 minutes ago, csyphrett said:

There is a bipartisan bill that seeks to put in place penalities for Supreme Court Justices doing stupid things. I don't know if it has passed yet, or if it will in the middle of election season.

CES   

 

Mmm...can't seem to find what you're talking about.  There's a bill related to leaking information, but that isn't limited to the Justices per se, and it's rather more specific than general "stupid things."  AOC is trying to push for the impeachment of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh for perceived lies during confirmation...but that's AOC, who's about as partisan as it gets, and still doesn't seem to fit.... 

[Lectryk]

3 hours ago, unclevlad said:

 

Mmm...can't seem to find what you're talking about.  There's a bill related to leaking information, but that isn't limited to the Justices per se, and it's rather more specific than general "stupid things."  AOC is trying to push for the impeachment of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh for perceived lies during confirmation...but that's AOC, who's about as partisan as it gets, and still doesn't seem to fit.... 

 

This:  https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/5140, maybe?

https://hankjohnson.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/rep-johnson-introduces-supreme-court-justice-term-limit-measure-restore - but it doesn't talk to stupid things, specifically.

 

 

[Lectryk]

5 hours ago, 1corpus christopher said:

• …Why are we still talking about this man having a sane chance as being a '24 presidential candidate after what we went through with him? Not even including some of his of outrageous tweets. I mean seriously.

 

Because politics is a popularity contest, not a rational choice contest.  Because most of your post posistion appeals to a large segment of a certain class of voter, and the guy is first a foremost a showman - give the people what they want.  And the parts of the post that are definitions... well.. again, that fits the mood that his crowd want.

 

I completely get the disbelief and disconnect that prompts your statement.  But.  He's giving his people what they want, the party structure is punishing those who dissent (cf Cheney), certain actors are using the chaos he is creating for their own ends (at least until he turns on some of them, as well - cf his tirades about disloyal people that were bosom buddies up until the tirade)...

 

Everything you are seeing as a bug of his presence, is a feature to others.

 

 

Style over substance, thy name is Trump.  The guy is a living exemplar of the '..fool some people all of the time...' saying.

 

 

[csyphrett]

3 hours ago, unclevlad said:

 

Mmm...can't seem to find what you're talking about.  There's a bill related to leaking information, but that isn't limited to the Justices per se, and it's rather more specific than general "stupid things."  AOC is trying to push for the impeachment of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh for perceived lies during confirmation...but that's AOC, who's about as partisan as it gets, and still doesn't seem to fit.... 

https://fixthecourt.com/2022/04/bicameral-bill-bring-real-accountability-third-branch-introduced/

 

Though work on the 21st Century Courts Act of 2022 began at the start of the 117th Congress more than a year ago, and though several sections mirror the 21st Century Courts Act of 2020, this legislation is expanded and takes on new urgency in the wake of revelations last month that Justice Thomas’ wife Ginni sought to overturn the election results while Thomas was ruling on several 2020-related cases.

Legal scholars and FTC believe Thomas should have recused from these cases and a recent Jan. 6 Committee case since, among other reasons, Ginni had a stake in the outcome and since text messages she wrote to Mark Meadows imply she may have discussed her efforts with her husband.

Among the bill’s more impactful proposals, it would:
— Require the justices to finally write and abide by an official code of conduct;
— Require a brief explanation whenever a judge or justice recuses from a case or petition;
— Create a process in the lower courts by which a party may submit a motion for recusal that would be reviewed by judges from other courts;
— Create a process at the Supreme Court by which a party may submit a motion for recusal that would be reviewed by all nine justices; and
— Expand the federal recusal law to require disqualification when a judge or justice has received within the previous six years income, travel reimbursement or a gift from a party or their counsel.