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General politics thread (was: General U.S. politics thread)
Comments
Hillary and her voting record(EDIT: misremembered -- that one was over Obama, though the attitude is the same). I'll disagree but can respect if someone actually agrees with Hillary without being in willful denial of the stuff she's done, but that dude is drinking the punch like water.Fuuuuck the forums. Remember Luminosity? The Russian Bernie supporter? He was banned from the OTC for saying "Paul Krugman is lying" about the big banks.
I am dead serious. I expect such nonsense from Republicans, but NEVER from Democrats. Yet when it's the Clintons, people throw up their hands and adopt Republican talking points ("Not even the appearance of corruption!") to defend them.
I just can't. I'm astonished at just how quickly liberals and Democrats turn into sycophants for the Clinton dynasty.
The part that honestly disturbs me is their silence when Hillary said Henry Kissinger, the Butcher of Cambodia, is her idol and mentor on foreign policy. The man who caused the deaths of actual millions of people, and she hails him as an elder statesmen whose ideas and opinions are somehow worth a damn. AmbarSonOfDeshar, over on the OTC, hates Kissinger, but doesn't talk at all about how Clinton pegs him as her foreign policy adviser.
It's this wilful blindness that irks me so goddamn much from Democrats and liberals.
This election took that partisanship and made it ten times worse, because there are so many liberals who are willing to completely ignore any and all legit criticism of Hillary Clinton, pretty much just 'cause they want a woman President. That's really how it all boils down. If you had a male presidential candidate with Clinton's record, he would have been demolished by Bernie, easily.
You have people saying Bernie's plans are unrealistic. Yet, Clinton will have to deal with a Republican Congress as President, and her policies somehow more realistic? They claim "Oh, they'll work with her," when her husband was impeached for having a blowjob, and she's being targeted by the REPUBLICAN Director of the FBI for an email scandal? Excuse after excuse. You have AmbarSonOfDeshar, for instance, saying Clinton and Sanders are the same on 93% of issues while also saying Bernie is an egomaniac who drank his own Kool aid. You have Bernie being accused of sexism, you have Clinton supporters (like Tactical Fox) saying Hillary treated him with kid gloves, you have Clinton supporters saying Bernie got a free pass by the media (which dismissed and slandered him throughout the primary).
Suddenly, it's now mainstream to defend the big banks, thanks to Paul Krugman or Barney Frank doing so. You have Barbara Boxer claiming that "Establishment" is just a slur from Bernie Sanders that he uses to demonize anyone who disagrees with him - and not understanding that she's the establishment he's fighting against. You have, as Benjamin Dixon noted, neoliberals using identity politics to destroy the progressive faction of the left wing.
I never thought I'd live to see the day when Democrats and liberals largely turn into the Republicans. The DNC is like an abusive spouse at this point - "I can stab you anywhere I want, and you'll always come back, because you have nowhere to go."
The only solace I can take is that, if it's President Clinton, you will see her turn into exactly the neoconservative, neoliberal hack that she is very quickly. All the shit Obama got away with, she will not, because this is why she lost to Obama in 2008. She can't hide it this time.
This in spite of Cenk outright saying he will vote for Clinton over Trump because he cannot allow himself to put a fascist in the White House.
The only ones who even count as Bernie Or Bust are Kyle Kulinski of SecularTalk, TYT COO Steve Oh, and Jimmy Dore, and even then, not really, because they both want people in swing states to vote for Clinton over Trump.
What's even worse is that, like the trolling accusations above by KilgoreTrout, it's now very easy for Clinton to say "Sexist!" as a catch-all insult to hide from legit criticisms of her policies.
As anemic as Obama has been, he never did that. He never accused his critics of being racist. If anything, all the problems we have with Obama were kept strictly at policy and politics. He never used his rhetoric to claim that his critics were somehow bigoted or trolls, which is what Clinton has done.
Rhetoric is important. Rhetoric is powerful. Clinton's rhetoric has very dangerous political implications for the future, while Trump's rhetoric has led to outright incitement of violence from his supporters and opponents. As bad as his record has been, Obama NEVER tried to influence public opinion like that.
It goes like this: is Hillary Clinton worse for the left wing than Donald Trump? Those who say yes believe Clinton's center right record and rhetoric will cause half the left wing to follow her lead, which will keep progressives from getting anything done while the Republicans win in 2018 and likely 2020. I've even seen many socialist-leaning websites like Counterpunch say Trump is at least paying lip service to non intervention, while Clinton has a proven record of hawkishness.
On the other hand, Trump is a clinical narcissist and a possible psychopath. What happens when you let someone like that in charge? You don't have a left wing anymore, as Erdogan in Turkey has proven.
That's even before you get into Trump's actual fascism (registering a minority for their religious beliefs, glorifying and advocating for violence, scapegoating entire groups of people whenever convenient, personality cult cultivation, advocating for deportation squads, speaking out in favor of internment camps, outright authoritarianism in his disdain for the press alone).
I fully sympathize with people who hate the status quo and fear Clinton will, at best, continue it. I fully sympathize with people who say Clinton's more conservative record than Obama will cause half the left wing to basically turn conservative themselves, since Democrats will have to fight both the Republicans and the Clintons. I know that and I really hate how we've come to that.
But anyone who's studied fascism knows exactly what you'll get with Donald Trump. If you think it's bad with Clinton, remember how it was with Bush, and how liberals had to claw just to get people to understand climate change is real? That's tame next to what you'll see from Trump, whose rhetoric has already caused bullying in schools to skyrocket. You cannot allow that in the White House.
Or to put it more simply, Clinton would only ever become President if her enemy was a monster like Donald Trump, even though Clinton's policies in the 90s helped lead to the rise of Donald Trump.
Fascism is so inherently destructive that you'd honestly rather a theocracy (see Ted Cruz), because at least a theocracy is a functioning government. But fascism only ever actually has a chance at developing when the socioeconomic conditions of a society start to collapse. The Democrats turning right wing in the 70s, 80s, and 90s helped that right along, which is the ultimate fuck up of the Obama presidency, because we had a shot at changing that, and we didn't take it.
Trump immediately took to Twitter to say "Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terror!"
Honestly, pledging allegiance to Daesh in the middle of an incident that one is perpetrating seems more like checking off one more box for getting attention than anything else.
Much as I criticize Obama, he won because he was more liberal than Hillary. If she wins, would that be seen as a step back for the country?
Granted, Obama's almost the exact same, so it'd really be just a continuation of the status quo rather than Clinton turning the party more right wing - it was always right wing.
(Though on a more serious note, try not to assume that the other side's common folk is anything but a normal citizen.)
Anyhows, courtesy of the TVT thread: