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Comments
Um, thanks for the explanation, but why do you say that about her?
Glenn, that's what they tell you is the case, and it might have been true at one time, but it isn't true right now.
It certainly wasn't true of Vietnam, and it's not true of most wars today.
Most wars today are about protecting US interests, or the interests of US allies who'll give the US something in return, and any collateral damage is either disregarded or rationalized away.
For example, in the 1991 Gulf War, how much of the reason for the US going in there was because "Oh no, that madman Saddam Hussein has invaded Kuwait without provocation and that simply cannot be allowed to stand!" (ironic considering the US would invade Saddam's country without provocation twelve years later and expected everybody to see them as the good guys), and how much of it do you think was because somebody said "Shit, if we let this stand then it might make it harder or more expensive for us to get oil! We gotta get Saddam out of there, and the cost in human life be damned!"
There is a similar reason, possibly, for why the US and Russia are involved in Syria. It has absolutely nothing to do with altruism for either country. It's about resources, at least if you believe Robert Kennedy Jr.
I can understand why you might want to take what Robert Kennedy Jr. says with a grain of salt because he is, if I'm not mistaken, an anti-vaxxer. However, what he wrote about the reasons for the US involvement in Syria does not seem like a far-fetched conspiracy theory. In fact, it strikes me as very believable, because it wouldn't be the first time that the US had exercised military force over this kind of thing. So here is the link and the relevant section will be quoted right below:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/02/rfk-jr-why-arabs-dont-trust-america-213601
I'll propose a deal here by asking you to consider the possibility that at least sometimes, when the US does these sorts of things, it is not out of altruism.
It is either about maintaining a status quo that's beneficial to the US (the Shah was installed in Iran for just that reason, to maintain the status quo that the guy he replaced was threatening to upset), or it is about pure greed for things like access to natural resources, or it is about scratching the back of an ally like Saudi Arabia or Israel who would like the US to do its dirty work in return for continued good relations.
In return for you considering that, I will consider the possibility that sometimes the US does act out of genuine altruism, or that at least that some of the people pushing for these kinds of actions have altruistic intentions.
To begin with, I don't agree in general with "ends justify the means" thinking. But even if I did agree with that, your argument would carry more weight with me if American intervention didn't consistently have a reverse Midas Touch. Iraq is still a mess. Afghanistan is a mess. Libya is a mess. Anybody telling me that Syria will NOT be a mess if and when the Assad government falls is somebody I have trouble believing.
How do I know that Syria will be a mess? I suppose I don't know. But how do you know that it won't go the same way that Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan have?
And how do you know that we have not killed more people than Assad would have if he'd been left to his own devices, especially after it's gone on for such a long time with the casualty figures climbing?
(I have to split this into two posts, because it turned out to be so long. Part Two coming up.)
I was speaking about people in general, actually. But on the subject of Ukraine or Crimea, here's a relevant quote from Noam Chomsky in a recent interview on Democracy Now. It should be noted that earlier in the same interview, Chomsky was very critical of Trump for his positions and actions in other areas. What I'm about to quote him as saying here is simply him acknowledging that the proverbial stopped clock is right twice a day:
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/7/27/noam_chomsky_on_mass_media_obsession
Not only is the US guilty of worse than Russia by invading Iraq alone, but--and I only just re-read what you typed and realized that you might know this already, but I'll say it anyway--kicking Russia's ass would not end well, because Russia better armed than most of the countries whose "asses are kicked" by the US, and it has nuclear weapons.
The US is already pushing things by having troops so close to its border. The promises Chomsky refers to are the US assuring Russia that even though they would keep NATO around despite the Soviet Union ceasing to exist, that the troops would not move one single inch (their words) closer to Russia than they currently were. The troops have been moved closer and closer and closer over the years, to their current distance.
Not to excuse the human rights violations committed by Putin here, but let's not pretend that Russia has had absolutely no reason to feel threatened by NATO. They have very good reason to feel threatened by NATO. And this factored into the decision to annex Crimea, a decision that was also wrong in my view, but a decision where I can understand the motive behind it.
I'll answer this one with a quote from Glenn Greenwald in an article he wrote a while back, and the emphasis in here is mine:
https://theintercept.com/2017/04/07/the-spoils-of-war-trump-lavished-with-media-and-bipartisan-praise-for-bombing-syria/
Serocco and I had a falling out, since you mention him. I might be too quick to just cut people out of my life over disagreements even if I've gotten along with them great for years or even if I'm related to them or whatever. That might not be the kind of thing that a normal or well-adjusted person does. It's what I do sometimes, though, and what I ended up doing with him. I won't get into what it was about for now. I may get into it in the future, but I'd rather finish this set of topics first.
Main things I want to say before finishing this post...
1. I'm glad we at least agree that Cuomo's bad.
2. We HAVE to change the Democratic Party. HAVE to. Democrats are indistinguishable from Republicans in many ways. They blindly support Israel; hell, Chuck Schumer was pushing for Trump to move the embassy even SOONER. They are not eager to raise the minimum wage. They are not eager to push for a single payer system. They vote to confirm people like Gina Haspel just like the Republicans do. Back when I supported Democrats, they were anti-war or at least presenting themselves as such with regard to Iraq, but today the typical Democrat is very hawkish.
All or most of this can be chalked up to money in politics, can be chalked up to the fact that they same people who donate fucktons of money to Republicans also donate fucktons of money to Democrats. (There are exceptions, e.g. the NRA seems to only donate to Republicans, but this is usually the case.) Justice Democrats take no corporate donations and no PAC donations. That is the only requirement to be accept as a Justice Democrat, as Cenk Uygur clarified back when was still part of the organization. That eliminates the conflict of interest which exists for everybody whose job it is to make life as good as possible for their constituents but owes their success to big money donors.
Call this simplistic if you want, and I suppose it is, but right now the main differences between the two parties are over how well to treat minorities and women, and whether there should be some kind of gun control. I can't think of much else. Oh right, abortion. I think that's everything, though.
The Democrats should be MUCH more different from Republicans than they are. I'm not content with having a party in control of the legislative branch that's like "We're anti-discrimination and we're pro-life and we're tired of mass shootings. We are totally on board with sanctioning and bombing Iran, though. I mean, OBVIOUSLY the Republicans were right to want to do that. And tax cuts for the rich? Eh, why bother trying to get rid of those? Raising the minimum wage to a living wage when people can't make enough to support themselves? Really not interested in doing that. Single-payer? Aw fuck off with that shit, we gave you the system that the Heritage Foundation cooked up for Mitt Romney to use in his state, and if you don't think that's good enough then you're just asking too damn much. What? You say that you're homeless because you got bankrupted by medical bills? Too bad. You say that you're homeless because you weren't being paid enough to keep up with the rent? Too bad. You say that you're going to die young because you couldn't afford to have your illness treated before it became a hell of a lot more serious, and by the time it got serious enough where they had to rush you to the emergency room your days were numbered? Too bad."
I'm not trying to strawman there. That is legitimately how I believe Democrats like Cory Booker--who notoriously tried to fight Sanders-proposed legislation to import cheaper drugs from Canada--think. Actually, no, that's not entirely right; nobody ever tells them "I'm homeless" or "I have terminal cancer", because nobody can get access to them. They don't need to look at the suffering of their constituents, so they don't look at it, and that makes it easier for them to vote against the interests of their suffering constituents and for the interests of their donors, such as Big Pharma, such as all the rich folks who really would not appreciate having to pay more in taxes and who also would not appreciate having to pay their employees more money.
You're right. And I'm glad there were victories at those levels, believe me. But I'm emotionally invested in getting positive change to happen really quickly, and while I can be told "Some of these people are gonna reach the federal level and affect change there within the next decade or two", my instinctive response is like "Good, but damn it, I hate having to friggin' WAIT that long! I wish somebody who was actually causing trouble at the federal level NOW could be primaried and kicked out of office right NOW."
They're important, yes. Sometimes you don't even have to wait for them to pay dividends, because I saw a headline about California passing some kind of legislation to save Net Neutrality there. Awesome.
It's just, I'm frustrated, and the waiting game sucks. (Playing Hungry Hungry Hippos only helps so much at reducing the suckiness of the waiting game.)
0. You're getting awfully darn close to sounding like a conspiracy theorist, in saying stuff like "that's what they tell you, but it's not true!".
1. There can be multiple reasons for one thing.
2. It is arguably a (legitimately logical) US interest in having an open and democratic government in a foreign country, and not just for idealistic purposes -- it's just easier to do business in a country that isn't being a dick to its citizens.
0. I didn't know he was an anti-vaxxer, but thanks for informing me of that I guess.
1. The US isn't even all that involved in Syria.
2. Of course, US involvement doesn't necessarily mean smart US involvement, even aside from ethical considerations, but still, US involvement at present is basically akin to trying to move a car by pulling it with one's fingers.
I'm not sure why making a "deal" is involved here; we're just discussing our opinions (in the form of judgements on the intentions and results of policy actions).
And all I'm saying is that altruism is part of the picture. It is certainly not all of the picture, but nor is it none. To argue that it is all is excessively idealistic, but to argue that it is none, correspondingly requires an excessively cynical look at things. People aren't entirely like either -- they consider both "selfish"/financial/political interests AND ethical/altruistic/aspirational concerns, alongside logistical/implementational needs. The mix is never constant either -- it is highly fluid, and greatly dependent on the on-the-ground circumstances which themselves changes over time.
By the way, "Arabs" themselves are quite a diverse lot of people, with their own opinions on things. This would apply even for "Arabs" as in people from Saudi Arabia, but given that the term is clearly being used to refer to such things as the "Arab Spring" which refers to popular movements across large swaths of land from North Africa through the Middle East and other parts of southwest Asia...this is an immense number of people, many of whom are substantially different from each other culturally, religiously, politically, economically, and in many more ways.
Summarizing things with a broad brush like... ...is seriously oversimplifying the picture.
I'm not sure why you're bringing this up as this wasn't a point I was making.
1. Syria was already a mess.
2. Once again, you're building your moral judgement solely on number of deaths. I'm not saying you're wrong to apply this meterstick of moral judgement, but I'm simply saying you should be aware that that this isn't everyone's moral meterstick, particularly when some of said civilians themselves are explicitly or implicitly expressing a "live free or die" attitude toward the situation.
I fully agree that some of the things Trump says are legit good ideas, albeit in the stopped-clock way, yes, and the general point of desiring friendlier international relations between the US and Russia is a good one.
Do note that the trigger for the shit that's been happening in Ukraine is not Ukraine getting an offer to join NATO but Ukraine considering joining the EU.
The problem with your answering with quotes of other people is that -- well, first, you look like you're passing off the responsibility of answering, to others, but second, more importantly, you risk finding answers that are inapplicable to whatever you're answering.
Case in point: 0. I've never made this about the media.
1. I never said we just needed to "do something" about Syria. In fact, I said that we should have done something specifically militarily about Syria a long time ago, but as time has worn on, that picture has become much more muddled.
2. I have never said that the U.S. military -- nor even the U.S. in general -- "can and should solve every world evil". In fact, as you noted, I specifically opposed military intervention in multiple cases.
You and he both seem like hardcore ideologues -- clearly far more than myself, at least. People with opinions this strong (and the willingness to express them as readily as you seem to) tend to butt heads more easily, so I'm not too surprised this would have happened. I guess I can hope you and he mend fences at some point...?
So FWIW here's an example of how I'm less of an ideologue.
I don't like US support for the Netanyahu regime (or more generally the dominance of hardliners in Israeli politics), so, having heard very, very little about both candidates in the Dem primary in my state house district, and given that the local paper says the primary challenger is challenging the incumbent over state law that bars the state from doing business with companies that publicly boycott Israel, I voted for the primary challenger over the incumbent. The incumbent won anyway, though, likely for very much unrelated reasons (there was a possible religious dimension, but a 78-21 win is likely not explained solely by a difference of religion here in west Broward). Right now, said incumbent is being mentioned as a possible Lt. Gov. pick for Dem candidate Andrew Gillum, and my reaction is, "well, do whatever reasonable steps you need to win", and I'm ready to support the ticket even if he's on it -- despite voting against him earlier.
I guess the difference is I don't feel "married" to any particular issue as far as my enthusiasm to support candidates is concerned. I certainly care more about certain issues than others -- I have my own pet issues, particularly climate change. (And even so, I voted Gwen Graham rather than Phil Levine -- though that's a moot point now.) Except I sorta see this as a "larger game", where my strategy right now is to support electing more and better Democrats in general, in order to increase opportunities and viability for progressive policy ideas in general. (And in particular, I find state-level contests particularly crucial for this goal.)
What about everything else I mentioned in my issue list?
Particularly my pet issue, climate change. You can pretend it's an issue where there's no significant difference between the parties, but if you were at the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Leadership Summit last year you would have noticed it was a glaringly obvious general understanding that Democrats can be trusted to help with this issue while Republicans can't. Republican officials who were attending had to go out of their way time and time again to express their agreement on the policy goals being discussed there, and people in general had to go out of their way to speak of how it's a bipartisan issue.
I know you wrote up a bunch of things here and I'm not intimately familiar with all of the issues mentioned, but I should point out that there was a general "conventional wisdom" among Dem policymakers at the time Obamacare was being considered that abstractly "watering-down" progressive policies and bring on "conservative ideas" to make them less abstractly "liberal" would somehow make them less unappetizing conservatives, and said conventional wisdom was basically shattered already in the 2010 elections, and has recently been gradually supplanted by a more boldly liberal perspective.
My take on this is that they should have done this at the start and just sold it as conservative.
They happen all the damn time -- like, for a little while, we were having like special elections watch parties every Tuesday or every other Tuesday. And that's not counting Tennessee Thursday or Louisiana Saturday or Connecticut Whenever shenanigans.
Also, it's not about "these people are gonna reach the federal level in a decade". It's about "state leges and state courts and state executive posts are where actual policies are ALREADY being made and implemented, NOW."
And elections stuff is happening there even in regular elections. Heads have been rolling left and right for Republican legislative careers even in Oklahoma primaries, as (pro-education) teachers themselves have gone and run for office and knocked out a bunch of incumbents, fed up with the wholesale dismantling of the state's school system by current Republican leadership.
Well, what she wants is not the kind of thing they have in Venezuela. I'm not sure why this isn't obvious.
When somebody says that, you shouldn't dismiss it because they "sound like a conspiracy theorist".
If somebody told you that the government was lying to you about WMDs in Iraq, would you have been wise to write them off as a kook?
If somebody had told you that the primary in 2016 was rigged in favour of Hillary and that the people saying she won fairly were being dishonest, would you have been wise to write them off as a kook?
If somebody had told you that the NSA was spying on Americans despite their claims that they were doing no such thing, would you be wise to write them off as a kook?
The government is not straight with you. They lie. Sure, sometimes they tell the truth, and on those occasions anybody saying that they're lying will be wrong.
But I took your statement there to mean "You're telling me that the official government narrative when it comes to wars is lies? You sound like a conspiracy theorist."
I think I sound like somebody who's aware that the official government narrative when it's come to wars in the past has often been complete horse shit. You shouldn't put it past them to be feeding you more horse shit in the present, just like they did in the past.
I'm cynical.
True, and I'm aware that the opinion among Arab-Americans and people of Arabic descent elsewhere in the world on whether the lesser evil in Syria would be Assad continuing to rule or him being replaced is not unanimous.
I don't think that it's oversimplifying things to say that the US acts primarily to help itself, that helping itself often comes at the expense of people in other countries who never lifted a finger against the US, and that any positive consequences which result from US involvement are side effects. I believe that.
Excellent.
I may be mistaken, but it looks like you might have taken me quoting Greenwald's piece as asking you to read the entire article, some of which was inapplicable to our discussion here. If you felt like reading the whole thing then great, but I wanted to focus on just that one section.
I agree with him that there are times when doing something really does make things worse, and that we've seen military intervention make things worse instead of better on many different occasions. That's all I was saying.
I don't see you as somebody who thinks that it is always the solution. You made it clear you weren't. It's my belief, though, that it is very, very rarely the solution. (I don't know if Greenwald feels exactly the same. I can't speak for him.) It seems to be your belief that it is sometimes the solution. I have a hard time thinking of the last time that was the case. WW2?
I suppose so. I suppose we'll see.
Climate change? Look at Joe Manchin's record. He's no environmentalist, but there he is being welcomed with open arms by the Democratic Party. Hillary was (and still is) a fan of fracking. The fact that Republicans are worse, as in flat out denying climate change even happens, doesn't mean that establishment Democrats can be counted on to really fight HARD to do something about it.
I wanted to see if there were examples besides Manchin and Clinton, so I Googled it and found this. I was focused on writing this post first, so I pretty much just skimmed it. I might have missed something important. But my takeaway is this: it looks like a lot of Dems can't be bothered to do much of anything, and aren't getting behind the ones like Sanders, Merkley, Gabbard, etc who DO want to fix this and are proposing legislation to that end. Meanwhile, this guy Whitehouse wants to try and talk Republicans into cooperating, which is an exercise in futility.
https://theintercept.com/2017/10/23/democrats-are-letting-the-climate-crisis-go-to-waste/
While that's a problem, it isn't the same as if they were all saying corporations could pollute as much as they wanted to and it would be fine, so I'll concede that the typical Democrat is not exactly the same as the typical Republican when it comes to their respective stances on climate change. Being better than the typical Republican, however, does not translate to actually doing anything to fix the problem.
Flint still doesn't have clean water, and if we could count on the majority of Democrats to not only be less bad than Republicans but to also protect the planet, then the majority of Democrats would be pushing to get clean water to Flint and to other communities like Flint. If they have been doing so, I've been unaware of it.
There also wasn't very much Democratic opposition to DAPL, as I recall.
The cynic in me says that the influence of the health insurance industry affected exactly how much the Obama administration with a supermajority the first two years was willing to push for at the time.
Whether it's appetizing to conservatives or not shouldn't have mattered, whether we're talking about the conservatives in Congress or conservative voters.
The conservatives in Congress didn't deserve to have a say. Their party had spent eight straight years fucking everything up, and it was high time to start fixing things. I mean REALLY fixing them, like looking at all of the problems with a car and repairing every last one. As opposed to just replacing some of the broken parts and not bothering to do anything about the rest of the broken parts.
The conservative voters didn't deserve to influence whether or not the Democrats did the ACA or made single payer their goal. For one thing, their guy lost pretty convincingly. For another, we already agree that those particular voters should not get a say on some things.
Do they not like that abortion is legal? Tough; it should be legal, so it's gonna stay legal regardless of how they feel about it.
Do they wish segregation was never ended? Tough; segregation should have been ended, so it was ended and they just have to make their peace with it.
For the exact same basic reason, any conservatives in the United States who were opposed to single payer back then and/or are opposed to it now should just be forced to accept a single payer system. Because so long as the government does what they want by not implementing single payer, other people suffer and die due to the lack of single payer. It is not any more acceptable for people to suffer because there's no single payer system than it is acceptable for people to suffer if there are no legal abortions or if they aren't allowed to be in certain places because of their race.
The short answer is that I'm not a big fan of any of them. Now I'll start thinking about how to phrase the long answer.
I feel like I should lampshade what might be contradictions here. At the same time that I'm saying the US shouldn't be killing civilians, I hold a belief that civilians are gonna be killed sometimes and that there's not really anything that can be done about it without making the problem worse and killing even more. And at the same time I can get mad as hell about people telling me to accept the lesser evil in elections and saying we shouldn't settle for the lesser evil, I can look at a situation like the one in Syria where I weigh what I know (or what I think I know) about both sides and conclude which side would be the lesser evil for the people living in Syria.
I don't know what that says about me.
I'm honestly not very knowledgeable about everything Ghaddafi did. I thought that they way he was killed was pretty monstrous, the kind of death that nobody deserved, and I didn't like how Hillary said about it "We came, we saw, he died" and laughed. On the other hand, Ghaddafi may have caused people to suffer the same kinds of monstrous deaths during his years in power. I hear he could be pretty brutal.
Saddam Hussein was pretty brutal too.
Assad is brutal. He helped the US torture "enemy combatants" for one thing, during the Bush years. The woman in the video I posted earlier, Rania Khalek, went to Syria to report on it a year or two ago. She recalled how when she was in Damascus, she talked to people who were anti-Assad. She said that she had to talk to them in private, because it was dangerous to talk in public; Assad's Syria is a police state, you see. Saying negative things about Assad in public could have gotten those people arrested and dragged off to God-knows-what horrible fate.
So by Rania's account, these people told her all about why they hated Assad, but even they did not want to see the rebels win and replace Assad, because they felt that the rebels would be worse. Some of the rebels are ISIS. Some are other types of jihadists. There was a fear that the vacuum left by Assad being ousted would be filled by one of those groups, and that Syria would go from bad to worse as a result.
I guess the one thing I'm absolutely sure I'm consistent on is this: I don't have much patience for war criminals, for people who commit human rights abuses. Whether we're talking about Assad, or Putin, or Netanyahu, or the Saudi King, or George W. Bush, or Barack Obama, or Donald Trump, I want them all to be held accountable. I want them all to be tried in the Hague.
(There are some people out there who will tell you that Assad is an angel, or Putin is an angel. That they have no innocent blood on their hands. I don't agree with those people. Not at all.)
Much as I hate these people, though, if you asked me "Do you think it would be worth it to conquer Israel in order to bring Netanyahu to justice, to inevitably kill or maim countless innocent people in the process?" then I would say no.
And if there was a risk that after regime change had been done in Israel, that Israel would end up becoming either more authoritarian or a more dangerous place to live after Netanyahu was out of the way but as a direct result of taking action to get him out of the way? Then I would EMPHATICALLY say no.
I'll spare everyone another anti-communist rant (especially if it's in a mostly unrelated thread), you can read these somewhere on IJBMer Updates or my Venezuelan politics thread. And yes, all of that is applicable to her, with a negligible amount of exceptions it's applicable to all communists everywhere.
No, it is not applicable to her because she is not a communist.
I live in a country with free health care, Canada. I like it fine. I am 100% okay with the tradeoff of paying more taxes than I might pay in the U.S. so long as it means not having to pay at least as much in insurance premiums or medical bills.
If I lived in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, or another one of the Scandinavian countries, where even more things are socialized, I am positive I would like that fine too.
What they always say in places like Fox News is that "They have socialism in Venezuela! You want the U.S. to be a hellhole like Venezuela?! Look at Venezuela!" In fact, that's what Meghan McCain said on The View a little while ago, prior to her father's death, asking where socialism of any kind has ever worked, and Joy Behar came back at her with the Scandinavian countries I mentioned.
Communism =/= socialism =/= democratic socialism =/= social democracy. And it actually pisses me off that you would say a country like Denmark is COMMUNIST in the same way as the USSR under Joseph Stalin was.
You did me a favour once so I'm trying to control my temper, but when I hear or read shit like that controlling my temper isn't easy at all.
I tried making that same point to him -- that "socialism" means a different thing here in the US -- but he insisted. I think at that point he got deeper into the details than I care to go.
I'm not dismissing it. I'm acknowledging the possibility that multiple reasons may be relevant.
I think the difference between you and me is:
* me: "The statement may be inaccurate."
* you: "The statement is probably horse shit."
Yeah, I agree it's fair to say the US does aim to serve its (or our, since I live here) interests, though said interests can and have been a various mix of priorities, from economic/resource priorities to national security interests to aspirational goals and even occasionally vengeance. Not to mention that these priorities aren't even necessarily served effectively -- sometimes the US does bumble through things.
Oh I'd love to get someone who's progressive on climate issues out of West Virginia. The question is whether enough people there would support such a candidate. If such a candidate can satisfactorily sell the idea of moving past the fetishization of a coal-based fantasy -- preferably through a combination of a vision of practical economic development measures with the charisma to convince others that that's the way forward, dispelling the Republican-fanned mass malaise of the decline of coal country...yes, please.
Meantime, most of us recognize that progressivism on climate issues is not going to result simply from beating people over the head with a political-issue stick. There are real economic challenges that need to be solved. Sort of a "hierarchy of needs" kind of thing.
Note that Sen. Manchin isn't exactly being "welcomed with open arms" by all Democrats. Seeing people grumbling about him and the positions he takes is quite common -- even amongst elections geeks who pride themselves on pragmatism.
FWIW, dunno if this sidenote is particularly relevant here, but your use of "pollute" seems kinda like a usage that doesn't reflect the way CO2 isn't quite the kind of pollutant in a more traditional sense. This is probably just me nitpicking, given my own science background, but this background also informs other terminological choices of mine -- such as preferring "climate change" over "global warming", not because it's "watered down", but because it is more rigorous and relevantly applicable.
Yeah, I'm not. But fair enough.
That said, I put this quote out of order, because upon reflecting on stuff you said about alleged Democratic policy failures, I guess you could more specifically say that I'm somewhat of a "optimistic fatalist". There are things I care a lot about, but very few of them are things I actually can do much about -- no amount of internet-petition-signing is gonna alone block stuff like national-level pipeline legislation in a far-away state, for example, no matter how much I may hate it. But what I can do is focus on local issues, and work on influencing local decision-making.
2. That's a function of the issue at hand, not the voter.
1. To say that a voter shouldn't have the ability to give input on something that affects them is rather diametrically opposed to a fundamental principle of democracy.
0. You don't win voters by saying these things.
You may feel it's a fool's errand in the short run, but in the long run, what needs to be done is to bring people on board, to convince them that ideas regarded as "progressive" today are the most prudent way forward -- not "my way or the high way", but actually changing their mind. In other words, fundamentally making the idea more socially acceptable, rather than just winning a tug-of-war.
They are increasingly better at PR (in that order), but otherwise they're identical. The first two are (when referring to ideologies) synonyms and the last one is just dressing up the first one. In the end, it's all about the socialization of the means of production.
Social-democracy is something else altogether. Case in point, in Scandinavian countries the economy is predominantly driven by private hands, one in which the proletariat are exploited by having their surplus value expropriated by the capitalists through wage labour, and kept in that position through bourgeois concessions. I think that's a wonderful thing but in socialist terms that's what called a far-right fascist state.
This is the part where I say something to the effect of "you know, you can like universal healthcare and free education all you want, I do it myself (see "wonderful thing" above), but if you go from that to supporting the socialization of the means of production or those who do, we're going to have problems" and that's what you're doing when you link these things together, making the ideology more palatable for those who don't know better. Doing so has done a lot of damage to a lot of people, you know.
Also, you seem to be under the impression that I'd disagree with that statement about Venezuela's crisis being caused by (the implementation of) socialism, or that I'd agree with that other statement contradicting that (assuming it was supposed to be a contradiction). I do neither. Did you think I would? If so, why?
Well, you're going to have to get good at controlling it, you're talking to someone who's been extremely patient towards the ideology in question, if I may say so myself.
You know, I actually edited my comment earlier to change "socialism" to "communism". But ehh, it never works.
Anyway...
I really don't feel like diving into yet another post in detail (no offense meant to you specifically), but I'll just summarize my thoughts:
You're basically saying that:
* ideologies are motivators of policies.
* this ideology is the same, regardless of degree.
* this ideology is bad.
My responses:
* on a practical level, ideologies are merely labels for groups of policy ideas.
* whether different labels are the same depends on your definitions of labels, which aren't always the same.
* the devil is often in the implementational details.
So basically, I'm seeing Ocasio-Cortez as "this person is offering some policy ideas that are not as often discussed", while you're seeing her as "this person represents a cancerous ideology taking hold".
Since there are indeed plenty of people in West Virginia for whom coal is their livelihood, I understand that it could be a hard sell even if Manchin and his former primary opponent, Paula Jean Swearengin, had equal money and media coverage.
What I feel is worth noting, however, is that in one of the first speeches I saw Swearengin give, she talked about being from a coal family.
She talked about what working in the industry had done to the health of either her grandfather, her father, or both (I forget, but I know that at least one of them got black lung or something).
She talked about how the beautiful mountains she remembered as a girl were being blown up.
She talked about how the clean water she remembered as a girl was now running black and orange, and she said that her children and everybody's children deserved better than to drink that water.
She can't be the only person in that state who sees the environmental damage done by industry running amok and doesn't care. She can't possibly be. If she'd gotten more of a signal boost I think she could have won.
I don't know if that's naive or not, but here's something I think Barack Obama was right about when he said it: there aren't red states and blue states, not the way we see them anyway.
I used to believe that all the people in the states that kept going red election after election were conservative and thus no good. I don't believe that any more. I mean, I was gonna bring up how there was a teachers' strike in a red state recently and cite that as proof that people in red states care about workers' rights too, but I forgot which state it was, so I had to look it up. Turns out there was more than one, but as it happens, one of them was West Virginia.
That suggests to me that although certain progressive policies might be hard sells in that state, others aren't
If a majority of Americans had no say, that would be correct. But the majority of Americans had spoken, Obama had a mandate, and I wish he had used it. The minority of Americans could write to their representatives all they wanted, but they would still be in the minority.
What's more, that minority would be asking the government to screw over the majority who liked everything they heard from Obama as a candidate. A request like that should be ignored.
Also, no, they certainly wouldn't be won over by telling them "you don't get a say", but there'd be no need to actually say that publicly.
I've often said that I wish Obama had taken the same kind of approach that George W. Bush did, albeit toward entirely different goals. Just ram that legislation through and ignore anybody protesting it. And if there were really too many people in Congress standing in the way of said legislation, then go to the bully pulpit over and over to tell everybody how Congress needed to pass the legislation and how everybody in the majority that voted for him needed to put pressure on Congress to pass that legislation. It worked when Bush did it. It should have been at least given a try by Obama.
I sort of agree with you, because there are some people who can hear what these progressive policies are and say "You know what? I consider myself a conservative, but these actually sound like good ideas when you put it like that."
There are also, however, other people who you can try to persuade until you're blue in the face and who will never be on board. They'll either never change, or it'll be a long time before they change.
As somebody who cares about climate change, I think you'll agree with me when I say this: time is running out.
We can't afford to wait for these people to see the light.
So long as a majority of voters get on board, that's all that's needed to fix things. And if the minority of voters want to keep the current broken system as-is, it would be a mistake to wait for them to come around before fixing it. If I've once again misunderstood you and you aren't suggesting waiting for them to come around, my bad. But a "my way or the highway" approach is sometimes what's needed.
And you have heard Alexandria describe it that way? I sure haven't. And I'm positive that Bernie has spoken favourably about those countries.
Once again I'm gonna go to the Vonnegut well:
Also, here's a video which you can watch or ignore or listen to in the background while you do something else, as you choose. Kyle Kulinski here is one of the people who founded Justice Democrats, of which Ocasio-Cortez was a member from day one. He explains the difference between democratic socialism and social democracy, and that when people like Ocasio-Cortez or Bernie say they want democratic socialism, they are using the wrong term because if you listen to their speeches where they talk about what they want, what they want is actually social democracy.
If he whitewashed Putin's crimes then he was wrong to, yes. I haven't seen what he put out, so I don't know.
But what people who do praise the Putins of the world (hell, there are even people who pine for the days of the Soviet Union and will tell you that Stalin did nothing wrong) fail to understand is this: the enemy of your enemy is not always your friend. That Russia opposes the US doesn't mean it's a utopia where all people are treated fairly and cared for. That communism is the opposite of capitalism doesn't mean it can't be incredibly harmful just like capitalism has been.
I think they're the same to approximately the same degree, but other than that detail you're spot on.
But there's only so many times something can fail before you start wondering if the problem is the implementation and not what is being implemented.
You haven't and you won't, because that'd be unpalatable and her job is to make people stop abhorring the idea of a communist state, but make no mistake, if she could turn all these countries into communist police states, she'd do so in a heartbeat.
And Bernie Sanders is not a socialist, no matter how much he labels himself as one.
And I can't watch videos, not without consuming my precious bandwidth.
Addendum-after-reading-your-edit: You'll see that my opinion on Sanders is more or less the same, but I'm unconvinced about Ocasio-Cortez, she should know the distinction and is critical of capitalism while being a member of an organization as bare-bones socialist as it gets.
You're assuming a hell of a lot there. You can't read her mind any more than I can.
And yes, I'm prepared for the possibility that she may not turn out to be the person I believe her to be. She's already disappointed me and a lot of other similar-minded people by kind of gushing over John McCain. Here's what I had to say about that, and I was kinder to her about it than others who had problems with McCain:
If you can't watch videos, I'll go to the trouble of transcribing part of this one for you.
It begins with MSNBC describing what "democratic socialism" is, and in response to that segment Mr. Kulinski has this to say:
There's more, but you should get the idea.
We are not talking about people who are openly pushing for a system like Joseph Stalin and his shuttered churches and his secret police here, and I would bet every single dollar to my name that these people don't privately wish for such a system either.
I do wish that there were zero members of DSA who actually DID like communism, though. There aren't. I learned of one particular person like that and had the following to say to her:
I feel, Kilgore, that you're failing to take Stormtrooper's feelings into consideration. He's lived with the real implications of socialism for like, literally ever (as much ever as we can all experience) and so of course he has some very strong and extremely unwavering beliefs on what socialism is. I appreciate his friendship more than I appreciate some hypothetical 'win' on a topic that is best left to serious political science studies than a discussion between friends.
So basically; You will not convince him on this. You can't, it's just not possible. Simultaneously; there are like a billion other things you can discuss with everybody here that don't personally hurt them IRL.
@KilgoreTrout I understand you have rather strong opinions, but..
You are being incredibly wordy about this. Well, about everything, to be honest. I did say that it was okay, and you did apologize, but it's more so that doing that once in a while to get really in-depth on a subject makes sense, but when like every post you make turns out to be a wall of text, that just gets frustrating to respond to or even read -- and like @fourteenwings suggested, a lot of those walls of text are just going to get ignored anyway. You really ought to figure out how to make your points in fewer words. (I admit I can be wordy too, and for that I apologize.)
And furthermore, when quoting/transcripting things, please try to zero in on the parts that are actually relevant to your argument. Don't just transcribe everything word for word and paste it, expecting it to function as a replacement for the source video/audio. (If it does, we're talking about the risk of a DMCA notice against our site in the cases of commentaries/interviews conducted by non-public media companies.) Instead, excerpt the bits that are most relevant and use brackets to indicate where text was omitted.
If your quote is more than like five to ten lines long, you may need to rethink what you've quoted. Maybe 15-20, since I don't want to be a stickler for the way things like scholarly journals do things.
As for @Stormtroper's feelings, I will leave it to him to tell us how he feels, but I gave up a long time ago with regards to changing his mind on this stuff, for what it's worth, and I'm generally in agreement with @fourteenwings that it's probably more prudent to lighten up on this.
Relevant picture though:
That said,...
About the topic, I agree with @fourteenwings that this is basically a discussion of terminology at this point, and furthermore, I still disagree with @Stormtroper based on: This. I'm willing to bet it's more "kleptocratic populism".
He seems to be saying "This system I'm living under, that they call socialism, is hell, therefore anything that they call socialism is hell and anybody promoting something labeled socialism is a 'disgusting piece of shit'." Do I have that right, or wrong?
If I have it right, then it's not a reasonable way of looking at things.
It's as if I only knew one person in my entire life named "Bill", and Bill was an asshole to me, and as a result of that I formed the conclusion "Anybody else who's named Bill that I ever meet is an asshole, guaranteed. I'm just going to assume he's an asshole because his name is the same as the asshole's name."
The "socialism" in Venezuela is not the same as the "socialism" in other places, and it's a mistake to assume that it IS the same simply because of labels.
Or to put it another way, anybody who thinks that Venezuela and Denmark are exactly the same has clearly never been to Denmark, and I don't see how it's hurtful to say as much.
I'll just let the article's title and blurb give the TL;DR.
*Al Jazeera's Fault Lines; American Sheriff (background text).
Ehh, I do appreciate having the video transcribed since I can't watch it, I did read it and wouldn't mind reading equally lengthy texts, although you're right that a summary would've saved everyone some effort (in fact, the summary was already there in Kilgore's previous post).
Anyhows, I had more to say on the matter, but most of it is about Venezuela (because they're replies to things about Venezuela) and that's not what this thread is about so I think I'll retake what I said I'd do at first and drop it, but I do notice a lot of people thinking I'm focusing on the "socialist" label. For the record, I'm not*, I'm focusing on what socialists tend to support and how they support it, and if there's a discrepancy in what they say they believe and what I say they believe, it's because I've seen things that have led me to believe otherwise.
* I don't like it when people like Sanders legitimize it, but ehh, I won't fight over it.
If someone wants to keep going... I dunno. PM thread? Reviving my Venezuelan politics thread? Do nothing?
That helps me understand where you're coming from better. Thank you.
And like I said before, I could be wrong about Alexandria and you could be right, or maybe she's not as bad as you think she is but she's also not as good as I think she is. If either of those things turns out to be true, that will be very demoralizing for me.
I'm sorry for getting as upset as I did before.
https://www.tampabay.com/florida-politics/buzz/2018/09/09/rick-scott-skips-campaign-stop-avoids-beach-access-law-critics/
oh shit, it seems rick scott touched a local sacred cow. (well, local to Walton County, not where I live, basically the opposite end of Florida. but still, a local issue.)
this gon be fun
I mean, it was weird how the whole Ocasio-Cortez thing ended up signalling the hype train considering she was running for a super blue blip in New York of all places.
I read this transcript of a conversation Ocasio-Cortez had on CNN where she failed to properly explain the financing for some of her policy and it kiiiiind of worried me because aside from being the party that doesn't accept racists and homophobes and... well, etc the Democratic party is failing to remember it's also supposed to be the one with some plans in hand even if they are dull and boring (she couldn't have gone over it with a friend in government finance theory like five days after deciding to run for office?).
Also Donald Trump just got laughed at by the UN General Assembly
for saying no we're not playing this game, that was unexpected.Going by this speech I think Donald Trump believes he can get Iran proper North Korea-ed by the international community via "Iran is the worst country in the Middle East because /list most things countries in the Middle East do but the U.S. has ignored/will continue to ignore/."
On that note, the EU doesn't feel like playing ball with the latest sanctions against Iran and is actually doing something about it! Though this specific measure might not go through it's very strong signalling.