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General politics thread (was: General U.S. politics thread)

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Comments

  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    Schroedinger's Socialism: when it (what passes for in context) works, it's a good example of socialism in action, when it doesn't, it was never socialist in the first place.
  • edited 2021-07-15 00:51:22
    Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    Well, anyway, this was the article about tankies that someone posted on a political Discord chat.

    https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/tankies
    lrdgck wrote: »
    Schroedinger's Socialism: when it (what passes for in context) works, it's a good example of socialism in action, when it doesn't, it was never socialist in the first place.
    [Dracula voice] "The same could be said of all ideologues' opinions."
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    [Dracula voice] "The same could be said of all ideologues' opinions."

    Yeah, well, it was high time I wrote something like this, you guys were like losing your faith in me, heh.

    This article already sets the diagnosis for the USA, but I think the phenomenon is not limited to America. I'd say the other factors are that it's been thirty years since the dissolution of the USSR, and some ten years since this whole wave of neo-fascism. Meaning, there is a whole generation of folks who have never had a personal reason to associate soviet communism with anything negative, but were aggravated by literal fascists just going about like they owned the place. As a rebound, some among leftists also went in the extreme direction.

    Like I said, I think the phenomenon is not limited to America, though what I had in mind was not so much literally tankies, but rather that the self-identifications as "socialist", "Marxist", so on seem to be coming back into fashion among leftists. (The anarchists were always around, because anarchism registers as "cool" and "edgy", just the right fit for a musician or artist.) Tankies being a rather particular subset of that trend.
  • edited 2021-07-15 08:36:06
    [Dracula voice] "The same could be said of all ideologues' opinions."
    I 'unno, I've never heard someone claiming that Queen Elizabeth wasn't a true monarchist, that Chile under Pinochet was private socialist or that feudalism has never been tried. Normally, people pretend their failures didn't happen or aren't failures, but not that they're something else altogether.
    Socialists are the ones I've seen with a clear bent on dissociating purported goals from actually-existing outcomes.
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    To be honest anarcho-capitalists and the related free market radicals also have a tendency for "it was not real capitalism/free market/whatever". (Ironically enough.) Socialists also have this odd dissociation based on what seems to be pretty much semantics. Like, they have a definition. It's never quite met in practice, but since it is there, they can always claim it wasn't their thing because their definition was not met. But apart from that, yes. I'd compare it to arguing that no such thing as a circle ever existed. (Because in nature you can never have perfectly x^2 + y^2 = R^2, now, can you? Eh guys? Eh?)
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    Yeah, well, it was high time I wrote something like this, you guys were like losing your faith in me, heh.
    lol, I just posted it because I thought it was an interesting read
  • edited 2021-07-15 14:56:53
    Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    [this was posted in the wrong thread]
  • ^^^ True that, there's those that dismiss failures of the free market because they don't adhere to some platonic ideal of their views, though in their defense that usually doesn't follow years of supporting it. Maybe that short-lived objectivist camp in Chile I 'unno.
  • edited 2021-07-24 01:46:29
    Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    https://www.nola.com/gambit/news/the_latest/article_eda80870-ebe0-11eb-90f1-1fd24ddc42d4.html

    in news regarding Things That Fourteenwings Might Flip Out Over

    (This wasn't the only thing that the Louisiana state legislature couldn't override the governor's veto of. Here are two others: https://www.nola.com/gambit/news/the_latest/article_cb263f5c-e98c-11eb-bcaa-3b99c779ec87.html . Note that Gov. John Bel Edwards is a Democrat while both houses of the state legislature are dominated by Republicans.)
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/07/who-actually-gets-to-create-black-pop-culture

    posting this here so i can read it later; seems like an interesting article
  • edited 2021-08-04 06:55:03
    Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    Today (or yesterday) marked the conclusion of an unexpectedly contentious and controversial primary election in Ohio, specifically parts of Cleveland and Akron (and some points in between).

    In short, former Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH-11) was appointed to the cabinet by President Joe Biden, and so a special election was called to replace her. In this heavily Democratic (PVI D+30) and also majority-black district, the Democratic primary was between several candidates, the most notable of whom were Nina Turner and Shontel Brown. Somehow the campaign managed to turn into some sort of nationalized drama-fest. From what I've heard, the two of them split various local endorsements, but sparks started flying when some national-level organizations and politicians started entering the race.

    Turner, a former Cleveland city councilor and state senator, Turner supported Dem presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in 2016 and and even co-chaired his campaign in 2020, and didn't like Hillary Clinton. She also had some...less than charitable things to say about the Democratic Party in general and even Biden in particular (apparently once equating him to Trump), and was criticized for her disloyalty, with people questioning whether she even voted for Biden in 2020 (which she declined to answer, which probably didn't help; note that we have a secret ballot system so it's not even possible to tell who she actually voted for, beyond the fact that she did vote in 2020). It probably didn't help that one of her surrogates (as in the people a campaign uses as allies to help drum up support) apparently antagonized Jim Clyburn, the current House Majority Whip (a leadership post in the House's Democratic Caucus) and a pretty prominent member of the Congressional Black Caucus (for demographic reference, both Turner and Brown are black women). Still, early on, she consolidated some establishment support from congressional Democrats, and was also seen as a more favorable choice by progressives.

    Brown, on the other hand, is a current Cuyahoga County councilor (Cuyahoga County contains the city of Cleveland, for reference), who (from what I can tell) seems to have gradually made a come-from-behind effort (she was down a lot in early polling) by consolidating various people and groups whom Turner didn't mend fences with, including Clinton and Clyburn. Democratic Majority for Israel also started spending on her behalf, introducing the Israel/Palestine issue as an additional dimension of conflict.
    On the other hand, Brown's comments that apparently misgendered a trans person (followed by a non-apology of some sort) got some LGBTQ activists up in arms against her. I've also heard of some corruption issues involving Brown, with county contracts going to a relative, or something like that.

    While some pundits identify Brown as the more "moderate" candidate and Turner as the more "progressive" candidate for her association with Sanders, I'm not sure there was clear ideological cleavage, as much as just different factions lining up on different sides as the race became nationalized.

    In the end, both candidates had raised and/or spent (I forget exactly which) in the millions of dollars, and lots of internet arguments were had, to the point where some elections geeks regarded this as a dumpster fire of a topic and a campaign. And Brown won (by current estimates with most of the votes counted), by a few thousand votes out of over 70000 total votes cast.

    And, late in the vote counting, this happened:

    unknown.png

    FYI the winner of this special primary election is heavily favored to win the special general election, which will be held on election day in November.
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    Meanwhile:

    https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/03/trump-spending-millions-gop-candidates-502233?cid=apn

    TL;DR
    Six months since leaving office, former President Donald Trump is sitting on a $102 million war chest.

    But having whipped his supporters into a frenzy with pledges to overturn the election and promises to support Republican candidates in the midterms, he is not spending his campaign money on either.
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    Ran across this interesting piece.

    https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-tale-of-two-suburbs/

    And here is some @lrdgck bait: the article features a photograph containing the following text: PACZKI ≠ doughnut
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    Kinda like an article I've read, which I also incidentally thought about posting here:

    https://www.economist.com/special-report/2021/05/14/the-souls-of-white-folk

    When you stop loading the page at just the right moment, you can read it all.

    More on the topic of the bait, what little I know of a Polish community in the USA/Polish Americans tells me that it's quite a messy story. Directly proportional to how irrelevant it is in comparison to any other community of similar numbers, feels like. Feuds back from the old country, insularism, superiority-inferiority complexes, matters involving assimilation into the broader American background, all the related drama.
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    You actually have to hold Esc to read the whole thing, or else it actually late-loads the coverup ad.

    And I think that some of those things occur in any multigenerational immigrant experience. There're always varying degrees of affinity for their former home that immigrant parents instill in their children, for starters...
  • edited 2021-08-05 05:32:10
    Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/08/pandemic-american-shoppers-nightmare/619650/

    TL;DR the service industry in the U.S., which arose in tandem with the rise of suburbs and office work, has cultivated a cultural understanding where the customer has an expectation of being pampered by inferiors, and it's the ultimate cause of the widespread phenomenon of customers being jerks.

    (To be fair, I'm not sure how much I agree with this take.)

    Incidentally, the article notes that the "virtue signaling" that fourteenwings decried about brands is part of this bigger problem.

    On a sidenote, I was about halfway through this article and was wondering what the article's author would think about maid cafés, since they're like, an even more extreme and fetishized version of "the customer is pampered by inferiors". Though they're also an extremely niche part of the service industry, at least in the US.
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    wondering what the article's author would think about maid cafés, since they're like, an even more extreme and fetishized version of "the customer is pampered by inferiors"

    You know, now that you mention it I kinda wish to hear about a "Massa's cafe" where black folks, who of course own and run the place, pretend they're your, ahem, house Negroes. That would deliver some interesting sociological data.
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    Oh, and here:

    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/09/blame-the-bobos-creative-class/619492/

    A long article on the divisions and classes in a modern society, stuff I had some interest in. And a pinch of Biden praise at the end, in case you'd like it to be pointed out right here.
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    Interesting article. I feel like it's a curious mix of thing I agree with, things I don't agree with, and some other curious thoughts.

    I appreciate the point about residential areas being segregated by occupation, though this phenomenon is not at all new.

    I think some of the behavior he associates with the "bobos" is actually just what some of my fellow elections geeks (and other acquaintances) would call "very online". There definitely exist are complex social situations where the rules are unwritten, and some of them are these idea-discussion-spaces where social currency is measured in the ideas that one espouses or subscribes to or even just seems to support by implication. And I think it's interesting to point them out. I've run afoul of some of them before myself. Though I think this isn't at all distinctive to the world of "bobos". Those "very online" spaces, for example, are occupied by people who aren't "bobos" as well. (Furthermore, these "very online" spaces tend to be a misrepresentation (but not necessarily consistently) of real life, and its participants also have a weird tendency to self-cannibalize by way of arguing over basically anything.)

    And similarly, while Brooks associates the "bobos" with this hipsterism that looks artistically grungy and stuff, the "bouboors" also like that stuff too.
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/20/apple-takes-on-state-legislatures-georgia-506299?cid=apn

    example of an issue on which I agree with Republicans: hating on big tech and its outsized influence
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    Weren't Republicans the ones perfectly fine with big companies doing edgy shit? Funny, that.
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    Probably depends on what sorts of edgy shit. So, yeah, what sorts of edgy shit are you talking about?
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    Eh, you know what sort. Cutting down on employees' pee time is all fine. "Outsized influence" sounds like it could be about the media in general, but they have their own, so they don't mind. But big tech? They don't have a hand in them, so suddenly they're against.

    Also: over 50% of Americans accept theory of evolution
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    Ah.

    And yeah I think they've tried setting up their own big tech companies various times, with more or less blackjack and hookers depending on who's doing it, but they haven't met with that much success in this regard for whatever reason.
  • I know it's my fault for paying attention to internet twonks, but I've been surprised at the amount of pro-Taliban posts on Reddit/Twitter I've seen (not anti-US, pro-people-of-Afghanistan or what have you).
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    I haven't checked Reddit's political spaces, and I've largely avoided Twitter too aside from when some people on this elections Discord server link tweets.

    I would surmise that some people are just contrarians for the sake of it, but...who knows.
  • "you duck spawn, refined creature, you try to be cynical, yokel, but all that comes out of it is that you're a dunce!!!!! you duck plug!"
    I've spent a few minutes over the last week or so looking at Pakistani subreddit (long story), and folks over there seem to have a complicated relationship with pro-Taliban posting. Other places, I dunno.
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    https://www.vox.com/2021/8/24/22640424/supreme-court-remain-in-mexico-trump-biden-samuel-alito-immigration

    I don't know the details of this case so can't comment on its merits, but I just thought this might be an interesting discussion of the arcaneness of a recent decision.
  • Creature - Florida Dragon Turtle Human
    So I wanna post something stupid here, but it feels like if I just do that then that's cheap and I ought to pay my dues for being able to post something stupid here.



    So, first, the substantial thing.

    I'm not sure if you may have heard about this if you're not in the U.S., but this is a quick explanation of a new law in Texas criminalizing abortion (and then some; I'll explain).

    A newly-implemented law, abbreviated "SB8" (for "senate bill 8"), does two things, in short:
    1. It makes abortion illegal 6 weeks after the individual's last menstrual cycle. (There are no exceptions for rape or incest.)
    2. It allows private citizens (not the government) to sue people who have performed or aided in an abortion, with a minimum $10,000 reward if the suit is successful.

    The first thing is a big problem because pregnancy is hard to even detect during that time. And I shouldn't need to say why not making exceptions for rape and incest is a problem.

    The second thing, however, is the real new kicker. So, instead of the state government enforcing the abortion ban, this empowers random people to be vigilantes. And indeed, internet communities started popping up with people basically appointing themselves bounty-hunters, trying to make money doing this. And this also includes some people who have specifically gotten others pregnant and are now looking to collect money related to their sexual partners getting abortions.

    Also, the law is open-ended enough that one can potentially sue anyone for arguably aiding in an abortion. Someone pointed out, in a particularly disgusting example of what's possible, that a father could rape his daughter, hire a rideshare driver to drive her to get an abortion, then sue the driver. In fact, Uber and Lyft did put out official statements saying that they would cover any legal costs that their drivers might face as a result of this law, in addition to statements indicating their opposition to the law itself.

    Given the very serious problems this law poses, there have been a number of legal challenges, of course, and emergency requests to issue a stay on the law had reached the Supreme Court of the United States.

    People waited. The law was set to go into effect. SCOTUS...did not issue a stay. (They may still rule it unconstitutional later, but...there's a problem now, of course. And also even more lawsuits.)



    Okay, now that I've paid my dues, here's the entirely unrelated stupid thing I wanted to dunk on.


    Usher, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, and Julianne Hough will host competition series ‘The Activist’.

    Activists go head-to-head in challenges to promote their causes, with their success measured via online engagement, social metrics, and hosts’ input.

    (https://t.co/Oe2u8Aobxc)

    This is a stupid premise.
  • edited 2021-09-09 21:38:06
    And indeed, internet communities started popping up with people basically appointing themselves bounty-hunters, trying to make money doing this.
    Glenn, I expected better from you.
    It's one of the things that prompted me to post this.
    But yeah, the suing part is downright weird. I assume the whole thing will get brought down at some point by the Supreme Court?
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