OK, so the transition from Make America Great Again slogan to Make America Decent Again (and Better) reality is inevitable and welcome. It is easy to get overjoyed by results of the U.S. Presidential Election (and some celebration certainly is in order).
Uniting the country is definitely a commendable goal, though it is easier said than done. The election results across all levels clearly illustrate just how divided and polarized this land is. Thus, it will take quite a lot of time and effort to see a reasonable progress on this front. We all can play our part in it by a polite and constructive dialog with opponents and first finding common ground on such pressing and all-encompassing issues as coronavirus pandemic, environmental protection, social justice and health care reform.
In the meantime, let us not forget that, in order to restore the heavily damaged moral fabric of this country, relevant measures should pass through the Congress. And while Democrats retain control of the House, the opposing party might retain control of the Senate. Which most certainly will lead to a significant gridlock in moving forward with the democratic and, in some cases, progressive agenda unless Democrats retake control in the Senate. Remember, winning a battle is not a guarantee for winning a war. That is why the U.S. Senate run-off elections in Georgia to be held on January 5 (https://georgia.gov/vote-2020-runoff-elections) are crucial.
My experience talking to the other side during this administration is that they are completely unable and often unwilling to consider any argument or information that conflicts with their views. How do you debate with people who don't care about facts or reason?
In addition their leadership appears to be completely unwilling to act and good faith and the rank in file appear unwilling to hold them accountable for that fact.
I would love to be able to see some way to find common ground, but It seems to me that doing so would just be playing the sucker.
Some policies, when detached from political partisanship, could be appreciated by voters on both sides.
For instance, for those who believe in human rights and social justice (a supposedly 'left' concern), there's good cause for opposition to China. In terms of jobs and national security, wresting some of China's high-tech manufacturing capability back within US borders would be a boon for employment across 'middle-America' (a supposedly 'right' concern). More importantly, I think both the concerns of human rights, and the employment of your fellow citizens, should not be a partisan issue.
I think most people want the world to be a better place to live, with better human rights, and a wage. Allowing China to gain leverage on the world, despite a track record of human rights abuses, and building a trade deficit with them, isn't really in the general voters interest.
And this is just one example. I'm sure there's more common ground if you look just at policy.
> More importantly, I think both the concerns of human rights, and the employment of your fellow citizens, should not be a partisan issue.
McConnel has already demonstrated that he will make it a partisan issue by ramming through a Supreme Court justice and recessing the Senate without even giving the appearance of considering a second round of COVID relief.
> And this is just one example. I'm sure there's more common ground if you look just at policy.
It won't force bad faith actors to cooperate, regardless of any common ground between voters because they, as the GP said, won't hold their politicians to account. Acting as the opposition even when they're in power is built into the party at this point, as demonstrated by the President's many legislative failures starting with the ACA repeal. It's just wishful thinking and I'm hoping enough people are done with the feel good woowoo.
You've missed my point entirely. I'm not talking about one legislator, I'm talking about an entire nation. At the end of the day, the one leverage you and I have over our policy-maker overlords, is the vote.
> It won't force bad faith actors to cooperate [..] as the GP said, won't hold their politicians to account.
The only way you can hold this belief, is to also believe that voting behaviour doesn't change over time, and that you don't have a part to play in that. What else could motivate you to speak with such passion if it were only futile?
> It's just wishful thinking and I'm hoping enough people are done with the feel good woowoo.
You miss every shot you don't take. A platitude, maybe, but also a falsifiable proposition, which is clearly true.
For instance, there's nothing magical about taking your vote to any of the independents with much better policies. Sure, their pitch for the white house is impossible, but they might make headway into the senate, and each % point that goes to an independent provides a signal to the established Red/Blue teams that maybe they should adopt some of those policies.
Nothing magical about organising with like-minded people, creating and crowd-funding a lobby group. Or even taking part of one that suits your interests.
There is bipartisan agreement that China needs to be confronted and contained. How it is accomplished may be debated, but that is tractable.
There is almost no agreement on the rest of the agenda, though. Democrats and leftists want green initiatives and universal healthcare, which both have zero support from Republicans. The leftist wing of the Democratic Party will be emboldened by their successes this election and will hijack the agenda, forcing America to smack the new administration (and Congress) back into doing nothing by putting in Republicans during the midterms.
Republicans have much more discipline as a party and will work to obstruct, because that's what wins them votes. Why should they cooperate with a party that spent the majority of the past four years trying to impeach a legitimately elected President? In fact, they might start a similar effort, because the saga of Biden's ne'er do well son Hunter has barely begun. Trump is not going away, neither is Steve Bannon. They have a lot more time on their hands to team up again, possibly bringing Donald Trump Jr. into the fold, to build a grassroots opposition campaign to stymie the Democrat agenda. Remember that Trump has already made the Republicans' long-sought wish of a Conservative Supreme Court (for almost a generation) a reality. He has also given the Republican party a good number of wins in the House (+5/6 for Republicans vs +1 for Democrats). So from their perspective, it may make sense to ride the Trump wave some more, because it has delivered for them.
I’ve seen the impeachment described as illegitimate somehow. It was political sure, no doubt about it. But he tried to use his office to coerce a foreign government to take down his political opponent. That should be a fireable offense. He only escaped it because of purely political defense.
The Obama administration used its office to take down a political opponent, on the basis of improbable claims of collusion with Russia, backed by an opposition research report funded by the Clinton campaign.
Is any of this good? Of course not. Both sides have been abusing their office in a similar way. I am struggling how people can get comfortable with “when my team does it it’s justified, but how does the other team dare to do it!”.
> The Obama administration used its office to take down a political opponent, on the basis of improbable claims of collusion with Russia, backed by an opposition research report funded by the Clinton campaign.
The opposition research was initialy funded by the RNC.
Right. When he does it, it's so "obviously" a joke. And yet something tells me he would have no problem accepting help from anyone, legally or otherwise, if he thought he wouldn't get caught. I submit that maybe there are some things that presidential candidates should not even joke about, because even the whiff of impropriety should be anathema to decent, serious people.
This is at the level of people who claim they saw Sarah Palin say "I can see Russia from my house". If it really happened, and "we all saw it", it should be trivial for you to produce a video of Trump asking Russia to hack the Democrats.
While he was running for president as the candidate of the Republican party? Yes of course!
Does your argument really come down to trying to parse a difference between Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party?
I'd note the "hack the Democrats" was the OPs characterisation of what happened. If you'd prefer to claim that Trump asked Russia to hack Hillary Clinton I'm not going to try to argue that point.
I think "Trump asked the Russians to find Hillary Clinton's emails" is entirely uncontroversial. Saying he asked the Russians to "hack" the "Democrats" involves two inferences and seems like a statement designed to maximize discord. The Russians are not in Donald Trump's chain of command, there are other ways to find her emails than hacking, and Hillary Clinton is not "the Democrats".
This will be my last post on the topic because it reminds of the "blue dress/green dress" thing someone posted way up thread. I'm sure you're posting in good faith, and I assure you I am too, but it is just not at all obvious to me why someone would say "Donald Trump asked the Russians to hack the Democrats" instead of "Donald Trump asked the Russians to find Hillary Clinton's emails".
Elsewhere you've asked people to prove that Trump made the statement, which people did. Please now prove that this was "obvious political riffing," whatever that means.
He violated campaign finance laws, but there was not enough evidence to support the charge of misuse of office in a treasonous manner.
You may personally be convinced of the President's wrondoing, but to try a sitting President for what is a grave offense, there are much higher standards of evidence and procedure.
The whole impeachment was an exercise in power from day one, but Democrats made a huge fuss about a similar exercise in power by Trump: appointing a Justice t the Supreme Court in an election year. Both were actions that where the actors were entirely within their rights (The lower house has the right to impeach, and the upper house has the right to try the President; similarly, a President absolutely has the right to appoint a Justice of the Supreme Court for as long as he is President.), but the President made no bones about what the whole thing was, while the Democrats tried hard to couch their act in moral and ethical terms. Judging by the way the election went (razor thin margins at almost every level with 70+ million popular votes for Trump), the public were having none of it.
> You may personally be convinced of the President's wrondoing, but to try a sitting President for what is a grave offense, there are much higher standards of evidence and procedure.
Some of us remember the good old days when a (Democratic) president almost got impeached for lying about getting oral sex from an intern, so I'm not really convinced about your argument here.
There are tapes of Trump sounding like a two-bit mobster. The GOP did not dispute the evidence, they just refused to convict because it wasn't "serious" enough.
If Trump had backed down that might have made sense, but instead it emboldened his lawlessness. We're now at the point where his undermining of the voting process is entirely expected and hardly even noteworthy.
Disputing the vote and questioning results is very common in elections. Don't pretend like Trump is the first to do this, or the first to insinuate that fraud has influenced the result. It's pretty run-of-the-mill politicking. Here's Hillary doing the same thing, except she's blaming nefarious foreign actors instead of the local machine:
The simple fact is that Hillary simply couldn't believe she was defeated, and did as much or more disputing of results. That doesn't make her an enemy of democracy, and neither does Donald Trump's caterwauling. But if you read the recent news reporting or watched the current President-elect's speeches, you would think that the very foundations of Democracy are shaken. Utter hogwash.
It was not campaign finance laws that’s incorrect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_of_Donald_Trump?wp... Charges were abuse of power and obstruction of investigation. That Democrats were itching to impeach him doesn’t change the reality that he abused his office to advance his own political interests.
We will never know whether any of Trump's wrongdoing rises to the level necessary to convict, because the Senate decided not to call any witnesses or subpoena any documents.
I think the Supreme Court Justice issue is way more complicated than that. When going down the nuclear option, both Reid and McConnell knew this was going to happen, it was just a matter of who ended up on top.
There was always going to be a scramble for one side to change the rules, get a leg up, and pull the ladder up behind them. I suppose that's endemic to a 2-party system, but that's what happens when hard-earned consensus is destroyed. Not blaming Dems/GOP here, I'm just saying this was the inevitable consequence and it's more complicated than you're letting on.
> Why should they cooperate with a party that spent the majority of the past four years trying to impeach a legitimately elected President?
Because effective government of the country depends on that, or them not having the votes to matter.
Also, the impeachment power presupposes that anyone subjected to it will hold office legitimately but be abusing that office; someone who does not legally hold office doesn't need to be impeached, as their pretense of exercising the authority of the office is a legal nullity.
Biden is pretty centrist and is not willing to go for universal healthcare, whereas the Bernie side of the spectrum explicitly campaigned for this. That's one of the examples.
A very clear majority of Americans support universal healthcare every time they are polled about it. This isn’t the radical agenda that you seem to be claiming it to be, it’s about bringing the US system to be closer in line with what every other first world nation has already had for decades.
A majority of Americans also reject tax increases on their incomes, and this program is very expensive: A majority Republicans and Republican-leaning voters reject the notion that the Government should provide overall coverage. Roughly 37% overall do not want this at all.
Interestingly, Pew only asked the question of what the public wants, but not how much things cost and how they will be paid for. As always, the devil is in the details: Roughly 53% do not support raising income taxes on incomes above 250,000!
It's clear that when we are asked whether we want something and then also asked if we want to pay for it via higher taxes, we have balked. Ultimately, if folks are not willing to pay for something, they can't have it! And if they are unwilling to pay for something, they're effectively saying they don't want it.
They can tackle it in other ways. US government can setup hospitals and employ doctors. It can be free of cost.
Build more nuclear plants, no one from the right will oppose it.
Yes, there is a ton of common ground with 99% of the people on the "other" side, whichever side that is from you.
If one big problem facing U.S. politics right now is that everything is distilled down to a binary either-or with no room for nuance, its sibling problem is assuming that everyone on the "other side" from you is the same, i.e. that the crazy extremist you see on TV is a prototypical example of everyone in that group. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.
That's what I used to believe, but these aren't people I see on TV, these are people I actually spoke to. When they ignored the facts I asked them what facts would change their mind and was told point blank that there were no facts that would change their mind.
You engage by not going in with the intent to change a person's mind. Instead, you go in with the intent to understand their position. Just because someone's conclusion seems ridiculous or wrong doesn't mean there aren't underlying facts that, when seen from a certain perspective, and with a certain context, make that conclusion seem reasonable.
There are real, legitimate, reasons why Trump voters believe what they believe. That many get caught up in the rhetoric of their "side" or don't know how to have a discussion with a goal other than "win" doesn't mean they don't see real problems that are urgent and important problems that need to be fixed.
Their "facts" include gems like pedophilia rings run out of nonexistent basements below pizza shops, the Q-anon conspiracy (Trump's going to take down the evil cabal any day now!), and millions of illegal voters and criminals around every corner. Zero evidence for any of it. These aren't fringe views as many of us can attest to - this is crap millions have to listen to every day coming from their closest friends and family.
Two decades ago the Republican party acted as a bulwark against rapid change and as the yin in the yin-yang of individual vs collective. Not no more; we don't have another two decades for our education system to bring us back from the brink.
I honestly think that if Biden does nothing else, engineering an environment where people accept basic common facts has to be somewhere at the start of it. As you say, once your base facts about reality differ there's really no hope for reconciliation about things at a higher level than that. And for all the healthy spirit of "both-sides-ism" in this thread, I will put it out there that there is one side that has egregiously allowed it and its supporters to become detached from reality. Note I'm not talking about "bias" here which both sides certainly exhibit, but concrete basic verifiable facts of reality. I really don't see how much can be achieved if we can't repair that. And as much as I want to encourage a new spirit of unity, I fear that if that becomes an excuse to not confront this problem, then it will actually just make things worse.
I agree. I don't think the vast majority of conservatives are intransigent, just so emotional wrapped up in their beliefs that they're completely unable to distinguish fact from fiction. I don't think it's a coincidence that it happened to the party that Barry Goldwater referenced in this prediction: "Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them." It's not a coincidence that the qanon conspiracy is chock full of rhetoric about satanic rituals either.
> And as much as I want to encourage a new spirit of unity, I fear that if that becomes an excuse to not confront this problem, then it will actually just make things worse.
Here's why I have absolutely zero faith that a spirit of unity will work: this "situation" has been festering since the founding of this nation and every time "unity" prevailed, the can was just kicked down the road. We wanted "All men are created equal" and got the 3/5ths compromise. We tried to save the Union, only to give up on Reconstruction before it could even really begin while institutionalizing slavery in the 13th amendment. Instead of letting general Sherman raze the south, we paid for their rebuild on the backs of "free" African Americans and let them institute Jim Crow laws to continue the oppression. When the Civil Rights movement and desegregation finally came home to roost, it caused the biggest political realignment in this country's history taking us up to this point.
We wanted the best, but it turned out like always.
Nothing demonstrates more the acceptance of basic facts than pretending, when launching a campaign, that it is motivated by Trump calling white supremacists “fine people” when anyone can look at the transcript of that speech and see that a few lines below Trump explicitly condemns white supremacists.
It is unfortunate but lying openly about facts has become the only common ground in US politics, and so many people seem to be completely blind to the lies of their own camp.
I completely agree with you. I have winced about that being thrown at Trump ever since the incident - I think it was horrendously poor wording, but it was actually him in his own way attempting to unify people.
However at the same time I want to clarify that I'm talking here about a level of facts even more basic than that. That is still an interpretation of what he said but at least he said it. We have an even deeper problem right now where people believe things that are completely totally untrue. Things that are provably not true without any need to bring any interpretation into it.
For example, how do we have a reasonable discussion about how to fix social justice if one side believes most of Portland has been taken over by anarchists burning cars and smashing windows of every shop and the other things it's a peaceful hippie commune covering a block and a half? Somewhere in there is an objective truth. If we can't get to that, we're never going to have a productive discussion about the underlying problems.
He didn't call whites supremacists white people, if you listen to the rest of the sentence, he was referring to the protesters from BOTH sides that they are fine people. And then said that he condemns neo Nazis and white supremacists. I only came across this this morning btw, and I too believed he really did call them fine people..
EDIT: watch this whole thing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmaZR8E12bs
"you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. [...] And you had people -- and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists -- because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly."
What president in modern history has waited for the electoral college vote to make a victory speech? Given that Trump isn't likely to ever concede, I'm not sure what he's supposed to wait for, besides all the networks calling it. (Which they were very cautious in doing, waiting until PA was clearly out of reach.)
I suspect you're lying because Pew research shows the vast majority of Republicans don't even know what QAnon is. More Democrats know about QAnon than Republicans (28% vs 18%).
I'm lying about my personal experience with my family?
18% of Republicans is at least ten million people, if not tens of millions, which is an order of magnitude more than I thought. Pizzagate and the illegal voters was the party line from Fox including Hannity and Carlson and is easily accessible with a [whatever you prefer] search.
The time for rhetoric and comity was a year ago when COVID didn't kill hundreds of thousands. Now is the time for action.
That is a ridiculous argument to be honest. 100% of Americans have heard of Nazism. Does that mean 100% of Americans are Nazis? By your logic, more Democrats are QAnon believers (28%).
Fair point, but the Democrats aren't the ones literally espousing Qanon and Nazi rhetoric. The number is somewhere in the middle, enough so that all the major networks utter the name on a regular basis.
I just did a Google search for QAnon for Tucker and Fox News. The news on QAnon are labeled under "conspiracy" on foxnews.com. I see no promotion of the QAnon theory anywhere.
I didn't say that Tucker/Carlson/Fox promoted qanon (I referenced them in the context of pizzagate/illegal votes), I implied that some Republicans did, far in excess of their opposites.
For what it's worth, AFAIK qanon has only been mentioned/displayed in passing on Fox [1] and while I haven't been on Fox specifically, I've never been prepped or had my wardrobe reviewed on other national broadcasters' programs so I assume they don't exert editorial control either. I'm too tired to do a deep dive for pizzagate so I will admit I may be confusing it with the Seth Rich conspiracy. It's hard to keep track this deep into the abyss.
The democrats love to trot this out, the fringe group that somehow is a massive threat. Meanwhile they act suspiciously silent about the riots we had with BLM, which caused actual and serious damage. Not much about Philadelphia at all.
Looking at the survey it asks "How much, if anything, have you heard or read about QAnon?" I'd be interested to see how many are aware of QAnon conspiracy theories but don't necessarily know the origin.
Do you believe otherwise? It's very clearly the case; the whole QAnon conspiracy theory is built around Trump being some kind of savior and democrats being a ring of child molesters. Of course it's believed by more Trump than Biden supporters. That doesn't mean the majority of them believe it of course, but some high profile ones certainly do, including Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is now a member of congress.
This approach right here is why things are getting worse.
Do you know Tylenol can cause horrible death where you have all your skin fall off and veins explode? Do you talk about this when you have take that simple medication?
Try to find common ground. See what you can work together on, see what you can agree upon, rather than point to the most stupid and extreme points of the other side and giving up completely or ignoring all their concerns.
> Try to find common ground. See what you can work together on, see what you can agree upon, rather than point to the most stupid and extreme points of the other side and giving up completely or ignoring all their concerns.
They're not even the most extreme, that's why there's no common ground! The most extreme would be the honest to goodness neo-nazis like the ones marching through Charleston a few years ago, several other flavors of white supremacists and "nationalists" like the NatCons and Bugaloo Boys, religious extremists like Pence, their crazier brother the dominionists like Bill Bar, and outright authoritarians (all of the above).
I'm all for finding common ground, but I don't care for the liberals putting in the extra effort anymore, just to have bad faith actors take advantage of it. It's time for the conservatives to "find common ground" by getting their house in order. Get rid of the Nazis, get rid of the supremacists, get rid of the extremists, and undo all the damage that Barry Goldwater predicted the preachers would do.
While this view is potentially applicable to the party as a whole. I still maintain that the best way to engage with an individual is to try to understand, from their perspective, why they've come to the conclusion they've come to. Even when they say there's nothing to understand. Even for those with extreme, reprehensible views. You can understamd without agreeing, but it takes effort to fight down the "cast out the evil other side" feeling that is super easy to fall into.
Most people aren't that one-dimensional, even when they've wrapped themselves up in a one-dimensonal identity. There is nuance and context to how each person arrives at the conclusions they do, even when they'd struggle to explain or remember it.
If you refuse to empathize, you're making things worse.
You definitely won’t find common ground if you think the Republicans accept or even tolerate Nazis and white supremacists. They have about as much to do with them as the democrats have to do with the KKK (which was started by democrats).
When I say "facts", I don't mean the politically charged "facts" that people argue with. I mean the ones about their life experiences that led them to the dark place they find themselves in. You don't exit the womb a neo-nazi, you get there over time, through (bad) experience, and (questionable) learning. If you can't answer the "why do they believe what they do?" with a genuine, i.e. not rhetoric, not othering, answer, you don't have the facts.
There are truly horrible people out there, but the vast majority of people that voted Trump are normal people with boring everyday lives. Treating every individual in that group like its extremists serves only to divide and polarize. It makes the problem worse. IF your goal is to effect positive change, you need to take a different approach. However, if you goal is to feel superior and good and like you're "on the right team", feel free to keep hating.
Trying to understand first is futile when there is no good faith way to see 'real, legitimate, reasons ... believe what they believe'
Th 'rhetoric they get caught up in' is so wildly insane it's like looking at a falling apple. Except half would go wow look at that gravity! the other half would say, oh that's a secret sign from Q about an underground pedophilic sex ring funded by selling pizza.
that may seem like an extreme example, but part of my state elected a CONGRESSWOMEN who believes this.
I can't attempt to understand first - because it's absolutely bonkers and detached from reality.
And that's just one of the more extreme examples I could spend all night typing more
> when there is no good faith way to see 'real, legitimate, reasons ... believe what they believe'
That's exactly my point. There is. It's not impossible to come to understand the life experiences that led a person into a dark place where they feel attacked and choose to wrap themselves in fantasy to feel empowered.
> I can't attempt to understand first
While it may make you feel good and superior to reject these people outright, by refusing to do so, you become part of the problem.
> And that's just one of the more extreme examples I could spend all night typing more
I can't stress this enough: WHAT they believe is basically irrelevant to my point. If your response to what I say involves "extreme examples", you've missed (accidentally, or purposefully) my point.
> Just because someone's conclusion seems ridiculous or wrong doesn't mean there aren't underlying facts that, when seen from a certain perspective, and with a certain context, make that conclusion seem reasonable.
What about things like taxes where it’s all cold hard math? There’s no nuance when a poor or middle class person thinks they need to worry about (for example) an inheritance tax.
There is nuance for why a person who, in practice doesn't need to worry, thinks they need to. Why does that scare them? Why does it motivate them? Why is it so important to them?
This can, and will, vary subtly from individual to individual, and unless you're spending millions on TV airtime, you're only interacting with individuals.
Who you tax and what you spend tax revenues on is entirely based on a point of view. Calculating taxes is cold hard math, but deciding taxation and spending policies is not.
I did. It didn't get me anywhere. Let me explain why:
Most of the people in my extended family are right-wing Republican Mormons.
They believe that anything that could be labeled "socialism" is literally evil, and will literally lead to the "destruction" of our country, because Eisenhower's Secretary of Agriculture said so, and they literally believe that man was a prophet of God.
I'm not exaggerating here.
A significant portion of these people get their news from Rush Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson, and Glen Beck. They might be a little wrong once in a while, but for the most part, these are "smart men" who "know what's going on behind the curtain".
A significant portion of those people actually believe QAnon. Hell, we have congresspeople who believe that conspiracy theory.
So how did they get there?
They are in a cult. I'm not going to pull any punches: Mormonism is thoroughly falsifiable. It insulates its members from the faith-destroying facts about its history.
Cults work. The belief these people have is so deeply heartfelt that they refuse to even consider the possibility they might be wrong.
Cult members have a lot of practice. If they can ignore reality to preserve their religious faith, they can reject reality to defend their political ideology.
Cult members are vulnerable. Anyone who convinces a cult member that they promote the cult can manipulate most cult members into supporting them.
I know my perspective is only a small part of America, but everything I know about Trump's political base has the same hallmarks. Cults are not a small or isolated problem in America.
I have tried to appeal to them with the overtly socialist agenda of New Testament Jesus. That simply isn't the deity they worship. Most American Christians worship Supply Side Jesus. Conservatism has become a deep-rooted part of their personal ideology.
There are no underlying facts. There is instead underlying fiction. There is no reasoning these people out of their delusion.
> They believe that anything that could be labeled "socialism" is literally evil, and will literally lead to the "destruction" of our country, because Eisenhower's Secretary of Agriculture said so, and they literally believe that man was a prophet of God.
What qualifies (to each of them) as "socialism"? What kind of "destruction" will befall the country, and when? It sounds like they want to protect something. What is that something? Why is it important to them?
> A significant portion of these people get their news from Rush Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson, and Glen Beck. They might be a little wrong once in a while, but for the most part, these are "smart men" who "know what's going on behind the curtain".
So? Why do they want these people to be right? What part of their value structure make these comfortable conclusions for them?
> [Stuff about cults]
Cults are a terrible thing, no argument here.
> There are no underlying facts.
Of course there are, you've stated some of them here. I don't means the "facts" of rhetoric, I mean the facts about their lives.
Several people have responded to me and explained how "ridiculous" the things the things these people believe are. Which misses my point entirely.
> Conservatism has become a deep-rooted part of their personal ideology.
Why? This is a question whose answer can, and will vary subtly from individual to individual. People aren't robots, and beliefs don't have an off switch. A dozen people can believe the same thing for different reasons and to different degrees. Others will say they believe something, while actually only believing that they should say they do for some other, unsaid reason. Yet others still will think they believe something, but certain experiences might unmask the cognitive dissonance within.
People are complicated bundles of personal history, not mannequins with an R or D sticker on them.
Does that really matter when the distance traveled is zero?
You said earlier:
> You engage by not going in with the intent to change a person's mind. Instead, you go in with the intent to understand their position.
Having done the latter (I was in the very same position only a few years ago), I was trying to do the former.
> What qualifies (to each of them) as "socialism"? What kind of "destruction" will befall the country, and when? It sounds like they want to protect something. What is that something? Why is it important to them?
Anything that can be labeled Socialism. Single payer healthcare. Higher taxes for anyone, including billionaires. Minimum wage.
> What kind of "destruction" will befall the country, and when?
It doesn't really get less vague than that. This is where belief in a cult's narrative gets abused by the right-wing political narrative. For Mormons, it's the "Second Coming of Jesus Christ".
There is actually a significant intersection with the right-wing political narrative and the Mormon one. His name was Ezra Taft Benson. He was Eisenhower's Secretary of Agriculture, then the President of and Prophet for The LDS Church. He preached that God himself was against communism and socialism. He called the Civil Rights movement a "Tool of Communist Deception".
> It sounds like they want to protect something. What is that something?
The status quo. The world as a reflection of their ideology. Their delusion. The Republican Party. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
> Why is it important to them?
Cults demand importance. They are told constantly that if the world doesn't reflect their ideology that society will literally fall apart. They are taught in Mormonism that all throughout history, God himself felled cities like Sodom and Gomorrah because the people became "prideful and immoral" and refused to listen to the warning of Prophets. They are told by right-wing talking heads like Rush Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson, Glen Beck, etc. that our society is losing its moral footing, and that anyone who thinks differently is stupid and malignant.
> > [Stuff about cults]
> Cults are a terrible thing, no argument here.
The stuff about cults is vitally important. It informs a pattern of thinking that is open to abuse. That is the root of the problem here. The stuff about cults cannot be separated from the rest.
> > There are no underlying facts.
> Of course there are, you've stated some of them here. I don't means the "facts" of rhetoric, I mean the facts about their lives.
What these people believe to be facts about their lives have no basis in reality. The very foundation of these alleged facts is rhetoric.
> > Conservatism has become a deep-rooted part of their personal ideology.
> Why? This is a question whose answer can, and will vary subtly from individual to individual. People aren't robots, and beliefs don't have an off switch. A dozen people can believe the same thing for different reasons and to different degrees. Others will say they believe something, while actually only believing that they should say they do for some other, unsaid reason. Yet others still will think they believe something, but certain experiences might unmask the cognitive dissonance within.
Why? Because they are in a cult. Their personal ideology has literally been replaced by external narratives. They do differ on small details (rejecting what they personally know to be false), but the greater picture is always the same.
> People are complicated bundles of personal history, not mannequins with an R or D sticker on them.
Well, that's how it should be. Unfortunately, many are convinced that being a mannequin with an R next to their name makes them an excellent political candidate, and that anyone with a D next to their name is an evil socialist actively destroying our society. Does it make sense? No. It's not about sense. It's about keeping everything in line with the ideological and cult narratives.
Sure, I don't disagree with you on that point at all - but for every 1 of those there are 10 (100? 1000? more?) who aren't like that but who, given what was effectively a binary choice, voted the same way that they did.
The die-hard (blind) fanatics on either end of the spectrum don't make a big enough group to win an election, but the assumption that they are representative of everyone in that group is incorrect and - maybe more important - counterproductive.
I don't see how that can be the case when nearly 50 percent of the country still supported Trump despite Biden running on a centrism and reconciliation platform. If this matchup wasn't enough to get Republicans to cross the aisle then I'm not sure I believe that anything is.
It's pretty obvious that the democrats failed to demonstrate that their goals were rather close to the center of the spectrum: Down-ballot, the Dems did worse than Biden, and I suspect that the statistics will show a lot of split ballots.
Both on foxnews and on WaPo, there were more news about the more leftist actors. Bernie, AOC, etc. The Dems did not manage to show that these are not the mainstream democratic goals.
The pictures of rioters, combined with "defund the police" scared a lot of people, and if you start out skeptical, you might not look close enough that this doesn't mean "get rid of the police", but "descope the police, let them do their job, and find other people to do the things which are not their job".
> It's pretty obvious that the democrats failed to demonstrate that their goals were rather close to the center of the spectrum
tldr; Republicans did not even attempted to demonstrate that their goals were rather close to the center of the spectrum. Why is that the democrats are supposed to reach to center both when they won and loose?
I don't think so. When you are closed in right wing bubble, Biden is hardcore socialist, nearly progressive communist about to destroy American capitalism. Literally. He is also sleepy Joe in clear early stage of dementia. This has zero to do with what democrats demonstrated. This is made up, because making it up is good for "our side". It does not matter what Biden is or demonstrates.
Frankly, it is like relationship with narcissist. Dont let him/her gaslight you into thinking you are at fault for whatever was done to you. It is overall unfair and biased toward right wing. You dont fix relationship with narcissist by going out of your way further and further trying to prove made up accusations are false. It does not work, the middle just shifts constantly and abuse just escalates.
Republicans did not demonstrated the Trump along people he appointed, proud boys are not what the party is. You want left to stop pursuing their own policy goals, with threat that right wing will go crazy if they dont. But that is abusive logic, right wing is responsible for right wing does. And left wing is responsible for left wing does.
Trunp didn't, but many other Republicans did. Or let me phrase it a different way: The Democrats made it stick that the right wing fringe = Trump, but they didn't make it stick for down-ballot races. It was the other way around for the Republicans, I think.
So you can either take your ball and go home, or you can try to pierce the bubble. Hoping for them to come out of the bubble on their own seems pointless.
I do agree with ball analogy, but disagree that it has anything to do with trying to move further and further to the right to accommodate people who don't listen to you.
> It's pretty obvious that the democrats failed to demonstrate that their goals were rather close to the center of the spectrum
IMHO this is just something people say to push Democrats to the center and then further and further right ... because the evidence shows that the current Republican party won't support any Democratic policy, basically.
These folks we're talking about will not be convinced by anything.
If you read closely, you will notice that I do not make an argument that the Democrats should be more centrist, but that their strategy was to be centrist, and that they failed to sell it as such. That leaves to options for the future: Not be so centrist, because you can't sell it anyway, or be centrist, but actually sell it. But being centrist and looking leftist seems like a lose-lose, whether you prefer a more leftist or more centrist approach.
That being said, it might be interesting to look at Germany, where Merkel moved the CDU left from a center/right position to the center. This secured the CDU a rather long stretch in power, essentially spelled doom for the center/left SPD, but also gave rise to a more hard-left Die Linke and, worse, an ultra-right AfD, whicht started as a conservative party, but essentially was taken over by neo-nazis.
I may have misread your previous comment -- thank you for the clarification.
I do agree with you that it's tricky to try to sell being centrist when you are not, and, in some ways, better to just be out-and-out left.
TBH I'm not sure Biden really tried to sell himself as something he is not. He's been pretty clear about wanting to address systemic racism, the green new deal, a science-based response to covid, valuing international coalitions, etc.
If anything I'm kind of anticipating him walking back his pledges on those things when in office. Though I hope not.
Let's also bear in mind though that, while we can armchair-quarterback, his strategy succeeded.
I think the question of if moving to a more aggressively Progressive agenda would bring in voters hungry for change who are otherwise turned off by Democrats, or if moving more to the center to bring in voters turned off by a more Progressive agenda, is an extremely vexed question to which I have no answer.
That is interesting about Germany though.
And at the end of the day my own belief is that we are living in a time of change, and that it's important to offer policies I believe to be right (mainly Progressive policies) to address that change.
Or otherwise the void will be filled, as you pointed out about Germany, by something else.
At the same time we haven't seen that approach be successful on a national level in US politics yet. So I don't know.
I do think Biden stayed true to what he believes. I think he might not have pushed the green new deal so hard by himself, maybe. My point is this: For somebody sympathetic to the Democrats, Biden appears as a rather centrist person. He isn't advocating for abolishing private health-insurance for example. But if you ask a Republican voter (not even a Trumpist), I'm not sure they would say the same. Or they believe that the party would force him to be more left.
I'm not so sure with regard to the votes. 2016, yes, I believe many people on the left were not happy with Clinton and did not vote. This time, we had record vote participation, and I believe that's from both sides, so the result should reflect the true political will in America. It's likely that the coasts would prefer a more progressive candidate, but I think on average, the US is somewhere between Biden and Romney.
I like the picture of the pendulum. While Obama was quite centrist, the USA made great advances in personal liberties. Gay marriage and so on. The world was changing too fast for many. Or they felt that their problems weren't in the focus as much, or at all. So the pendulum swung back, and we had Trump. We need to dampen the swinging to make steady progress, and I think Biden might be good at that, maybe especially because of his age.
Personally, I am somewhat wary of some of the more progressive ideas. I'm not a big fan of single-payer healthcare, seeing the results in England. I generally think that a market-run system is better than a government-run, but that markets need firm rules set by the government. ACA was pretty good, but long term, America has to get away from the employment-coupled insurances. And covering preexisting conditions necessarily means mandate (or mandate through the backdoor).
> It's likely that the coasts would prefer a more progressive candidate, but I think on average, the US is somewhere between Biden and Romney.
You might be right. Let's also bear in mind, though, that even with all the people voting this year that's still I think less than half of all eligible voters.
Other countries which have national voting holidays or making voting mandatory (which tbh I kind of like; you're a citizen, it's your duty, you can go vote for no one but goddamnit you have to vote) see much higher turnout.
This means that votes alone don't currently present an entirely accurate picture of the view of the country.
There is also the vote surpression which is nontrivial and hard to measure. Probably not a massive difference but perhaps more than a tiny one.
Lastly I'm actually not a fan of Biden's age. I'd like to see more politicians under the age of 50.
By the way although I'm sharing my disagreements I thought your comments were thoughtful and insightful and appreciate our conversation : ).
I, too, enjoyed our discussion. Thoughtful exchange with people who are not of the same opinion is so much more rewarding than the echo chambers we often find ourselves in.
It would be quite interesting to hear from those not voting why they didn't vote. My suspicion is that these people would almost never vote, or maybe only vote for so extremely perfect candidates that it's just not realistic. But yeah, maybe there is a large group of people who would vote if the candidate would just be a little bit more progressive. But honestly, in a situation like this, with the knowledge of the last four years, I just can't understand why you wouldn't vote, at least if you are left of center.
I also cannot understand why election day isn't on a Sunday, or a holiday. It should be the highest holiday the US has. Any democracy has, actually.
Biden is also somewhat too old for my taste, but no candidate is perfect. Age does bring experience though, and he has long-lasting relationships with people on both sides of the aisle. That will help. Personally, I really liked Buttigieg, and I'm happy to see that he'll like have a role in the Biden administration.
> He's been pretty clear about wanting to address systemic racism, the green new deal, a science-based response to covid, valuing international coalitions, etc.
Those are all standard centrist neoliberal goals - aside from the green new deal, which Biden already explicitly said won’t be anything nearly as radical as what AOC/Bernie were shilling.
All of which, even if inadequate are better goals than the dark authoritarian visions of the far-right : ).
Systemic racism has been danced around by centrists until now.
And yeah I agree we have to wait and see what the Biden administration actually does.
But as a Progressive I'm heartened because now there's an opportunity for Progressives to push the Biden administration. With Trump, there was zero chance of that.
As the FDR quote goes, "You’ve convinced me. Now go out and make me do it."
I don't think any Progressives have idealistic visions of a Biden administration. What they are hoping for is a degree of influence and an opportunity to exert political pressure or leverage.
> He's been pretty clear about wanting to address systemic racism
In case folks haven’t clued in yet, using this phrase is probably the single most important contributor to why the democrats almost lost the election and lost so many seats. The house is absolutely going red in 2022 if they don’t clue in and drop the identity politics nonsense. There is no “systemic” racism, and this is an unnecessarily divisive narrative.
It's funny, because if you talk about gun control, most Republicans think the same thing about Democrats. The difference being they've been burned over and over by compromise and the fact once something is passed it never gets reviewed or sunset for relevance.
It cuts both ways. People disagree, and where they disagree is the most likely place for both sides to hold the other side to account for previous behavior.
It's part of why I was so disgusted about fast tracking the Supreme Court nomination after McConnell set a precedent the Presidency before.
In terms of game theory it just cemented that the other side couldn't be trusted.
What I don't understand is, Bernie is painted as this rabid socialist, but what are his positions that people don't actually like? He wants single-payer healthcare. So do most Americans. (And as a Canadian I can tell you, it sure is nice not having to worry about cost every time I need to visit the doctor, or if I were to have an accident and need to go to the hospital.) If not that, then what?
For one thing, people don’t like the impossible price tag associated with his ideas. They don’t like throwing good money after bad. They are in fear of having their life depend on a system that might function similar to other organizations like the DMV or the VA or USCIS. And generally speaking, if you have insurance, quality of care is much better than Canada. So even compassionate people who understand why it’s a problem for people who can’t afford care still have some reluctance to an irreversible commitment that carries so much risk. It’s purely rational on their part, and it’s hard to criticize people for acting rationally.
I'm not sure it's actually true that the quality of care is much better than Canada. The one negative I see to the Canadian system is that it's true people can wait months for elective (but still very important) surgeries like joint replacements. It's not true, as some propaganda states, that we wait months to see the doctor, can't get prescriptions, or die in the hallways of hospitals waiting for a room. In fact we can go to any walk-in clinic when we need to see a doctor, or to any hospital when we have an emergency, and be seen without an appointment. (You can also make an appointment with your family doctor if it's non-urgent). To me that seems far superior to having to choose from those covered by your insurance, and then sometimes being unsure of what will be the cost to you until after the fact.
I will agree with you that the standard of care for those with the best insurance in the US is probably better than the Canadian system. But the standard of care here is still very good, and even as someone who could afford that good insurance, I wouldn't want to switch. Also, the US already spends more public money on healthcare than Canada does per capita despite not having single payer, so it appears there's a lot of efficiency to be gained.
Edit: please don't down vote my parent in disagreement. They answered my question in good faith and helped illuminate that viewpoint. Shouldn't be punished for that.
I have a lot of exposure to both countries systems, including close people with chronic and terminal illnesses, major and minor surgeries, etc. And yes there’s a reason that it’s not rare for wealthy Canadians come to the US for medical treatment.
Regardless, I’m answering the question that was asked. You didn’t ask which health care system is better, you asked what people don’t like about Bernie’s policies. I’m attempting to offer some clarity into why people hold those positions. And do keep in mind that even if governments in other countries manage to run a decent health care system, that does very little to boost the confidence of opponents that the US government will be equally as functional in their implementation, or how long it will take them to sort it out. They have provided too many examples of poorly run institutions for some people to just disregard.
But your question wasn’t only about health care. When I say impossible price tag, I mean everything:
Thanks, those are fair points; I do appreciate the thorough answer to my question. And for what it's worth, I'm Canadian, but I'm pretty happy with the moderate dealmaker Biden as the eventual nominee (and President-elect). I agree with you that given the existing situation, a public option as opposed to a complete replacement of the existing system is a more realistic path to providing healthcare to everyone, with less room for catastrophic error. Unfortunately it seems unlikely that even that will happen now, but who knows.
As for the rest, some aspects of it do look a bit unrealistic to me. Others look ambitious but morally right, and something I'd like to see up here too, like a real focus on basic housing as a universal right, and a corresponding push to end homelessness. Regardless, you did help me see the opposing point of view; thanks.
This fact doesn’t change the price of what he has been proposing. Also, I wasn’t only referring to health care. He has a lot of ideas. Free college, guaranteed free housing for all, medical debt and student debt forgiveness for all, free child care for all, increased social security, etc.
Nordic countries say hi! Those are all standard over here. We pay more taxes yes but we don't have to worry about the extra costs of the above, so it's a clear (to me) net win.
It's an impossible pricetag only because we don't tax the rich.
Billionaires have taken $50 trillion from the poor and middle class. The poor and middle class are afraid of taxes because they have nothing left to give.
Poor and middle class Americans are afraid of higher taxes because they don't have enough money.
Where did all the money go? To 400 billionaires.
50 of them now control as much wealth as the poorest 165 million Americans.
Tens of millions of Americans are in poverty, and what do we do about it? Pray to Bill Gates? Jeff Bezos?
What do I have to convince them to give their wealth to me?
Tens of millions of Americans are in poverty. 10% of Americans hold 70% of wealth, and they are all getting richer. Their income comes either from the rest of us or from inflation.
When I hear single-payer healthcare, I don't think about the Canadian system, but the English system, which is terrible, compared to the quality of care you get in Germany, or most people get in the US.
Which brings me to another reality: Most people in the US have access to a very good healthcare standard. It's not so much that they don't want all people to have that, but they do wonder if that requires a complete change of system for them.
So, I don't know much about the English system, but I do know the NHS is very popular in England. Are you sure it's actually terrible? Or could there be an element of the same propaganda I see in the US about the Canadian system, like people waiting months to see a doctor, etc.?
"defund the police" means "defund the police", it is a clear and unambiguous sentence. If you mean "let the police do their job", don't run on "defund the police". It's not that people didn't look close enough at the slogans (and by the way we have seen many cities actually defund their police depts so it doesn't help the idea that the slogan means anything else).
I don't think that Biden himself holds leftist views but he also did nothing to distance himself from this fringe, and if he is not neutralised by a republican senate, I think there is a legitimate concern that he will be held hostage by the left wing of the democratic party and apply many of those policies (not the least because Kamala Harris would if he steps down for health reasons).
I think many people are still failing to see the real split.
The split is not "Democrat VS Republican". That always was a bit of an artificial construct, at least within my living memory.
There would be debates, at the end everyone would shake hands and life went on. Nothing substantially changed in policy. Bush said XX, did some stuff, Obama said XX, did pretty much the same stuff and on it went.
But then people got sick of that game.
The left wanted real change. Not forced payments to insurance companies for health care while corporations went right on doing what they do. Real action on climate. Real addresses to the problems of generational poverty and race issues instead of a few token figures and some talk.
The right also wanted real change. An end to globalist policies. An end to unfettered immigration. And an end to meaningless foreign wars (which the left also should have been in on but for some reason were not so much). Judges that would uphold their religious values. And they managed to elect a president that actually started to do some of this much to the dismay of the old guard of both parties.
So now here we are.
The Joe Bidens and Mitt Romneys of the world think they can put Humpty Dumpty back together again and it will be back to business as usual, a few drone strikes, some trade deals and big companies growing ever more powerful. But I suspect not this time. If Biden actually is certified and elected I think he will greatly disappoint the left and the more radical wing will become increasingly hostile. Meanwhile the right, believing the election to be stolen by "communists" through voter fraud will become increasingly conspiracy minded. None of this is a recipe for reconciliation.
My feeling is we need to move beyond facile political posturing and step back and take a hard look at globalism, at nationalism, at the role of federal governments.
We can't deny globalism is here. It's not going away. Capital and information and product and even jobs are going to cross borders. There are many issues we can only solve globally. But if it's not done in a way that protects the livelihoods, dignity, traditions, cultural preferences and aspirational wishes of people there are going to be problems, and probably even bloodshed. People must get most of what they want or at least feel it's possible.
The "right" and the "left" as they are commonly understood in the US are not as far apart in this as it first appears. They both feel they are engaged in a struggle against oppression and for human freedom.
The alarming part is, in order to maintain order (and of course the system which much chug along) the paranoia about authoritarianism from both sides might be realized soon enough.
>It’s possible that many Republicans did cross the aisle, just like many Democrats (such as myself) did so as well.
It's possible. But the numbers don't bear this out.
In every state that was close where Biden won, his margin of victory was less than the number of votes that Jo Jorgensen (the Libertarian candidate) received.
That tells me that enough R-types were disgusted enough with Trump that they voted Libertarian for President and R for everyone else.
Check out the numbers for yourself[0]. Just click on each state and it will break down the vote totals for each candidate. And in every. single. case. the margin of victory for Biden is less than the number of votes received by Jo Jorgensen.
Jo under performed Gary Johnson from 2016, so I do not believe your correlation is very valid
In Some States, Like Nevada, the number of people that choose "NONE OF THESE CANDIDATES" for president more or less matches the number of people that voted for Jo...
Further an over all Analysis shows there were almost as many Split Biden votes, as there were Split Trump Votes
This idea that "3rd party spoils the election" or changes the election has been dis-proven often, as absent the 3rd choice most people that vote 3rd party simply do not vote at all, or choose no one in that particular race (which is an option most people for get, you do not have to pick a person in every race on a ballot, blank is a valid choice)
The history of how gun control came to become such a sharp and reliable wedge issue is well worth understanding. It's a relatively recent thing.
Something I've found worth thinking when I hear that, to paraphrase a random sentiment you might hear, "Democrats need to understand that people need to feel secure, that's why gun control matters" is this: who is telling these people that they should be scared?
> who is telling these people that they should be scared?
Life in general? If you have an idea that this country is safe, then great! But the reality is it’s not, not for many. And to take someone’s method of defense because you can’t see a reason why doesn’t do well for relations. And as the sibling post here said, the left hasn’t tried to understand guns enough to enact gun control that doesn’t sound laughable.
Again, this comes back to an underlying message people are being sold. Two, actually. The first is "It is reasonable to expect to need to defend yourself with lethal force, and a gun is a reasonable tool for doing so." The second is "Feeling the need to defend yourself such that it is a day-to-day concern is a reasonable social position."
People will vote on fear before they'll vote on the abject failure of social policy that creates situations where that fear might be justified. That's just how humans are wired: we're not rational. It shouldn't be a matter of taking someone's means of defense, it's trying to address why they feel they need it in the first place. But even then, guns just aren't a particularly good investment if what you want to do is successfully defend yourself from crime. The stats just don't bear it out. So again, who is telling people that they should have one? Who does it suit for large amounts of people to believe that this specific form of mitigation makes sense?
Unfortunately, gun control is such a hot-button issue that it's actually outside the Overton window for an entire political faction. If you bring it up at all, even if you're talking about meta-issues like this, the conversation tends to shut down instantly. This is why the response is always "the Dems need to understand" not "the Republicans need to propose." The fear it represents, and the self-image that any conversation around it challenges, are so fundamental that attempting to approach it from any direction is seen as a personal attack. Again, this is not accidental; it is worth understanding when and how this happened, and who was involved in it.
Well the other side of the second amendment, and one the left shuts down when it's brought up, is protection from government. Then there's the idea of militia's. Both of these are also reasons for people to have the "scary black rifles" in their house, and a central idea to the 2A. So add these to the questions: "Is it reasonable to believe the US may need a militia", "Is it reasonable to force citizen to provide this militia", "Will the US gov ever violate human rights such that the citizens of the US would have to defend themselves against this gov".
Then lets also consider that when you talk about self defense, and the possible loss of life, should we be forced to play the "just enough" game with defensive force? Who exactly likes gambling with their life?
To the first questions, you do have a point, those are questions that are worth asking. And it all hinges on "which government?", "is the militia well-regulated?", "is it feasible to constitute a modern militia such that it could realistically resist modern state forces?" and so on. Randomly scattering black guns into people's bedroom wardrobes does not a militia make, so if a militia is what we want, what are the processes we need to go through in addition to providing the tools to make sure that such an organisation could be effective if it was needed? What would the command structure look like? Training? Membership eligibility? And not incidentally, how does it avoid being classed as a terrorist organisation from the moment it breaks cover, rather than a constitutionally relevant political body? All that's in the mix. And that's a reasonable set of questions to pose. I don't have the answers to many of them, but critically, that's not how the second amendment is politically framed today. The prevailing interpretation of the second amendment is in support of individual rights, not collective. And again, that is an intentional framing created by specific people for a specific purpose.
> Then lets also consider that when you talk about self defense, and the possible loss of life, should we be forced to play the "just enough" game with defensive force? Who exactly likes gambling with their life?
That's exactly the situation in most of the West. It's just not normal to have to expect to be both in a life-threatening situation, and for the correct response on your part be to kill someone. That's a social and governmental failure right there.
> Randomly scattering black guns into people's bedroom wardrobes does not a militia make
Actually it does, and in some countries this is required by law. Here is the definition of militia: "An army composed of ordinary citizens rather than professional soldiers."
This is a last resort army, and in fact every able body citizen able to take up arms is already a "member".
And what will training do? If you train someone crazy who wants to kill people, this doesn't take their desire to kill people away does it? Dems keep leaning on that training as if it's a silver bullet but in reality it will do nothing. The democratic politicians holding, how come they've never been seen at a range if training is so important? This sounds like the dems saying everybody but them needs some training again. Not likely to get traction.
> organisation
organization
> That's exactly the situation in most of the West. It's just not normal to have to expect to be both in a life-threatening situation, and for the correct response on your part be to kill someone. That's a social and governmental failure right there.
What west? The US? or the Western US? This is pure opinion. It may not be normal for you, but every California politician has a conceal carry permit. Some 500k lawyers do as well. It very much is normal, just not for you.
One serious look at Feinstein and other's proposed legislation is enough to convince every gun owner I know that Democrats don't know the first thing about guns.
We need reform, not absurd threats to ban AR-15's while keeping Mini-14's. Not arbitrary tax stamps and wait times for suppressors and short barrel rifles.
I personally haven't seen gun control legislation proposed in America that isn't totally laughable. It's a deep-rooted thorn in the foot of progressive American politics.
And the underlying problem is that gun owners are populous enough that this objection is a serious political blockage. Why do so many Americans own guns? Who is telling them that this is reasonable, desirable, necessary? In most developed countries, gun control is a political footnote. Why is it different in the US?
In the context of self-defense... yes? It's just not a very good return on investment.
> I disagree. Guns are tools. Guns are toys.
> The overwhelming majority of firearm use is safe and recreational.
Right, so that's the other half of gun owners, who don't say they have a gun for self-protection, which wasn't the context of this thread. That's fine, though.
> Gun ownership is not correlated with gun violence[1].
I mean, it clearly is. You get less gun violence in countries where there are fewer gun owners. That's trivially true. And you'll have to forgive my cynicism, but I can't take wikipedia seriously as a reference on this topic. It's too well-funded a concern for that page not to be pulled in every direction under the sun.
> The problem with guns isn't that there are a lot of them. The problem is that they are, in very rare cases, used to do serious harm.
The CDC says 39,740 firearm deaths in 2018. Four or five weeks of COVID, at that rate. Whether that counts as "very rare" is subjective, I suppose. That's the cheap bit, though: because the US seems to have a congenital inability to prevent people from going bankrupt over medical bills, you've also got to factor in the same again (to a tolerable approximation) in hospitalisations, according to the NIH.
At some point you've got to look at that situation and think "Is the fun of making things go pop worth it?"
It's not just the direct harm. In supporting a culture that normalises making things go pop for fun, you get an extensive infrastructure that also benefits people who end up being a serious problem. Yes, that includes school shootings which, yes, are rare, but they're also fairly unique to the US in scale and regularity. Saying "they're rare" doesn't absolve anyone of the need to question why that is, or what can be done to make them less lethal. They make headlines - or used to; they're frequent enough now that they're less news-worthy, which in itself points to a really deep issue - out of proportion to the number of people directly affected because of the combination of the innocence of youth and the extremity of the violence, but now all the schools need to have active-shooter drills because, as a society, the behaviour of the US shows us that it prefers making things go pop to making kids safe.
Look at gun deaths per 100000 in MX. Guns are very controlled in that country, you can only own a 22LR or a 38 revolver. Gun deaths are still right on par with the US. And of those quoted 39k deaths, 13k of the were homicide, with suicide taking the majority.
> At some point you've got to look at that situation and think "Is the fun of making things go pop worth it?"
So again, you are taking your opinion and projecting it onto others. You may think removing guns solves gun crimes. Mexico stands blatantly against that. You may think violence stops when guns disappear, then you see knife and other brutal attacks. You are stating you don't need them, so nobody else does. The second you the victim of some violent crime, or lose a family member you'll change your tune, as you see tons of democrats doing now.
Guns are notoriously out of control in Mexico. That's part of their problem. But it's interesting that you would pick a country with a long-running inter-cartel drug war, rampant police corruption, extremely weak enforcement, and less than a quarter the average household income as somehow directly being comparable to the US. The more remarkable question we should be asking is, with all that going on, how on earth is the US struggling to do any better than Mexico?
Try that comparison with literally any of the other G7 nations.
> You may think removing guns solves gun crimes. Mexico stands blatantly against that.
No, what Mexico shows is that gun control legislation is pointless if you can't enforce it. I'm not arguing that gun control legislation alone is some panacea; that would be absurd. It needs to have teeth.
> You may think violence stops when guns disappear, then you see knife and other brutal attacks.
Yep. That's a reasonable tradeoff. Apart from anything else, it means the police can de-escalate themselves from assuming that they might get shot during any encounter to assuming that if they don't get close enough to get stabbed, they're less likely to be in immediate danger. That's a good thing.
> The second you the victim of some violent crime, or lose a family member you'll change your tune
It seems reasonable to you that your position requires me to undergo an experience so traumatic as to prevent rational thought? Think I'll pass.
How did it get this way? There's laws in place to prevent it. Buying an AR in MX is impossible. How do they get in the country? They should be stopped at the border. Just like hard drugs should be stopped when coming across the US border. Proof that even import controls don't work. We're also in the age of 3d printing and home fabrication. Guns are not going to disappear from criminals hands, only law abiding citizens.
> But it's interesting that you would pick a country with a long-running inter-cartel drug war, rampant police corruption, extremely weak enforcement, and less than a quarter the average household income as somehow directly being comparable to the US.
So two questions here, how did it get corrupt in the first place? What has stopped corruption in the US? If the Mexican citizens wish to end this corruption, how can they? I'm going to disregard the poverty claim because it's just senseless to imply poor people are violent.
> The more remarkable question we should be asking is, with all that going on, how on earth is the US struggling to do any better than Mexico?
Great question! Perhaps violence is just as out of control here as in Mexico?
> No, what Mexico shows is that gun control legislation is pointless if you can't enforce it. I'm not arguing that gun control legislation alone is some panacea; that would be absurd. It needs to have teeth.
What does the legislation having "teeth" entail?
> Apart from anything else, it means the police can de-escalate themselves from assuming that they might get shot during any encounter to assuming that if they don't get close enough to get stabbed, they're less likely to be in immediate danger. That's a good thing.
So then if the police are overly violent, or if they were to take control, then what? Wasn't a majority of the left just rioting over police being too violent? You want to throw your trust entirely into the hope that they are sane?
> It seems reasonable to you that your position requires me to undergo an experience so traumatic as to prevent rational thought? Think I'll pass.
How is the desire to defend one's self irrational? This just seems like pure opinion, and slightly scary. Again, for those in immediate danger how do they defend themselves? You clearly lack experience in any traumatic event, and are now running around saying that because of your lack of experience, nobody should be able to defend themselves with firearms. Really?
Where is the abolishment of private healthcare? Universal basic income? Election reform?
Centrism is always a relative concept. Just because the right wing has radicalized over the past 30-40 years doesn't mean the left can't also radicalized, moving centrism to different places
Biden's branding during the primaries revolved around not being as extreme as candidates like Sanders and Warren. Then during the election his branding predominantly revolved around healing America's partisan divides. He was definitely running as a centrist.
Politics here stopped being about policy so now it's just a very unproductive culture war battlefield. Absolutely nothing will ever be achieved in that state.
There are enough policies that both sides overwhelmingly support to keep this congress busy - marijuana legalization being the lowest hanging fruit from what I can see. Some kind of a federal minimum wage hike is another one.
What's an example of some common ground you see, and very roughly how does it happen? For example, we all agree that X is bad, so we will pass a bill to do Y.
Obviously, that example is hypothetical. Any common ground will not involve legislation as the explicitly stated and (very successfully practiced for 6 years) position of one party is a hard-stop on any legislative cooperation.
Consider pretty much any issue and there is big fat core of common ground, but typically the debate is around how to best address that issue - what is the best approach, do we tackle this problem now or do we tackle that other problem first, will this path lead to bad unintended consequences, etc.
Immigration. Most people have a pretty favorable view of immigration and immigrants - pretty much everyone has an immigrant story in their background. The debate is more on the requirements to be let in, especially in cases where there is an established legal process and someone doesn't follow that process.
Taxes. Few people want to pay more than is needed. Everyone wants taxation to be fair. It's not hard to get people to admit that they see a lot of good can come from the proper use of taxes. The debate is more about tax rates, where taxes should be spent, etc.
Abortion. A huge majority of Americans do not like the idea of completely restriction-free abortions and quite a few people have concerns that, pre-birth, that thing inside the mother is a person to some degree or another. Simultaneously a huge majority of Americans do not like the idea of the government exerting control and getting involved in people's lives any more than it should.
Gun control, the economy, national defense, education, the climate. It goes on and on - name any issue and there's a ton of common ground. For people who are interested in progress and solving problems, it's ripe with opportunity.
> Immigration. Most people have a pretty favorable view of immigration and immigrants - pretty much everyone has an immigrant story in their background. The debate is more on the requirements to be let in, especially in cases where there is an established legal process and someone doesn't follow that process.
I used to think this, but after speaking with trump supporters over the last few years (consisting of both friendships IRL as well as inflammatory people online) I'm hearing more and more the rhetoric that immigrants are just bad - keep the foreigners out
Ok, well, anecdotally I'm hearing the opposite. :) Everyone I talk to recognizes the value of immigration generally and is focused entirely on illegal immigration.
I'm not just sharing anecdotes. Trump cut the number of refugees admitted to 18k in 2016, from 110k the year before. The focus is absolutely not just on curbing illegal immigrants, but also on limiting viable legal options.
So if the US immigration policy became "everyone seeking to immigrate gets a visa, pending a quick background check", they would be OK with such a policy? If the argument is just to end illegal immigration, then make all immigration legal. Otherwise, the problem is not just they're coming across the border without dotting i's and crossing t's. It's something else about immigration.
This may be a surprise, but there is 'Common Ground' on almost all of the issues, even the most difficult, like abortion.
85% of Americans believe there is racism in America. If it were not political, reform in the prison system could absolutely be achieved.
The vast majority of Americans would accept reforms to Healthcare if each law were not hugely politicized. For example, some Republican voters accept or reject literally the same policy when it's presented by different sides of the aisle.
Americans would overwhelmingly accept some kind of Amnesty for children of migrants, and 'some kind' of program for others if - on the other side of the aisle - there were serious reforms and enhancements to ensure border integrity. Any attempt to offer amnesty would probably be weaponized by Republicans and Fox for political points.
The majority of Americans believe that fetus/babies that are viable in the 3rd trimester (i.e. could be born premature) should not be up for abortion. But that 'the day of conception' isn't really tantamount to life. But the extremists won't allow for any common ground.
Even on business tax, income tax - if you actually put numbers together, there are plans that are very popular, but rejected by one radical side or another.
Left wing Governor Cuomo, and Far Left Wing Mayor Deblasio pushed hard for the Amazon deal for NYC, but AOC et. al. really pushed to kill it even though the majority of her constituents (ever people of colour) wanted it. Amazons investment in NYC, while controversial, was quite popular - but killed by more radical voices.
Popular political systems tend to promote and highlight the more extreme views, this is amplified in the press with arguing talking heads.
AOC, Donald Trump get huge attention for the loud, bombastic, contrarian positions they take. In politics 'attention' is everything, that's their currency. They are not incented to 'govern well' they are incented to 'get >50% of the votes' which they do so by making a lot of noise, and spinning everything their opponents do against them.
It takes a lot of maturity, a lot of credibility in systems to get away from that.
Go ahead and have a look at the politics of Germany, they have some English language sites. They have some actual Nazis over there, and yet, somehow, the news and debate is still deftly boring. It's really amazing. Angela Merkel, possibly my favorite politician, has to be the most 'opposite' to Donald Trump imaginable. Coalition governments have a lot to do with that as well.
> This may be a surprise, but there is 'Common Ground' on almost all of the issues, even the most difficult, like abortion.
There's no middle ground on abortion when there's a number of people that won't even accept the abortion of a fetus that is already dead. There's no middle ground when a significant number of people believe that a fetus should have the same legal protections as a human, so any abortion is murder and make no exceptions for rape, incest, or even when the pregnancy is threatening the life of the mother.
> Americans would overwhelmingly accept some kind of Amnesty for children of migrants
Eh not really. I know this is merely anecdata, but I personally know someone who firmly believes that an immigrant overstaying their visa has committed a crime, is now a criminal, and they (and their family) need to be deported immediately.
"There's no middle ground on abortion when there's a number of people that won't even accept the abortion of a fetus that is already dead."
You're missing my argument here.
You are highlighting an example of an 'extremist' view - this doesn't in any way indicate there is 'no common' ground.
Maybe own views on abortion might have triggered you to miss this (?) and that there are extremists on the 'other end of the spectrum' - there are those who believe that a baby, near the point of being born, possibly even 'past due' is merely a 'fetus' and should have no rights.
3rd trimester abortions are quite rare, but they do exist and there are some who push for them.
The point is that abortion, which is a really difficult moral issue with extremism on either side, actually does have a huge common ground.
The vast majority of Americans, outside of hyperbole, would essentially accept 'early abortions' as fairly unambiguously acceptable. Beyond that, it would be more contentious.
The 'hard anti-abortion' camp would obviously not like that, and the 'hard fetus is only a fetus' camp would be livid that there were restrictions on later abortions.
But the 'centre ground' would hold, at least in terms of popular acceptance.
Of course it won't happen because the 'far sides' war with each other on it. We may, over decades, arrive at some kind of result that looks like that, we mostly already have.
"I personally know someone who firmly believes that an immigrant overstaying their visa has committed a crime, is now a criminal, and they (and their family) need to be deported immediately."
Again - this kind of misses the 'centre ground' argument.
That you know someone who thinks 'any overstay should be aborted' only indicates that there are people who feel strongly about it.
It says nothing about the 'common ground'.
Here is the evidence [1]. Even a majority of Republicans support DACA.
I'd encourage everyone to spend a lot of time in Pew Research, it's amazing. There are a lot of surveys in there with respect to so many issues that one might find surprising.
It is frankly Pew Research that has made be understand how much common ground their is, and my OP is really based on quite some time perusing that data - I should have probably referred to it - but on every one if the issues I highlighted, there's Pew data to support it.
Okay, I think I see your point now. Basically, the extremes will never be pleased, but solutions exist that will please the majority of the population.
> If one big problem facing U.S. politics right now is that everything is distilled down to a binary either-or with no room for nuance, its sibling problem is assuming that everyone on the "other side" from you is the same, i.e. that the crazy extremist you see on TV is a prototypical example of everyone in that group. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.
This is why I’m an independent. The quicker people realize the solution isn’t blue or red, but instead in the middle, the quicker we can actually resolve issues.
I resisted associating with a party for a long time, but Trump changed that. I was legitimately afraid for my family, who were at the time green card holders from a Muslim-majority country.
Trump tried to cancel green cards, along with other visas, without any warning a week after his inauguration. People who had lived, worked, paid taxes in the United States for years and followed every legal process were nonetheless stranded away from their homes and families.
That was really the point of no return. Trump supporters are the enemy; no reconciliation is possible.
They are the enemy because they are trying to protect jobs at home? Which country do you come from? How difficult is it for a US citizen to become a full citizen? Is it as easy as what you’re asking for here? Do you think that by having a green card you are taking a job from someone here?
I’m sorry but the idea that a political opponent is an “enemy” is just childish. If your country is trying to kill you then apply for political asylum, otherwise realize a great majority of people here think you have side channeled your way into this country.
I am and was a US citizen. All US citizens are full citizens; we don't have second class citizens here.
There is a legitimate way to debate immigration policy. It's the intentional infliction of cruelty and dehumanization that makes this situation irreconcilable, not any desire to change policy.
> My experience talking to the other side during this administration is that they are completely unable and often unwilling to consider any argument or information that conflicts with their views.
This absolutely goes both ways; that is the biggest problem.
One of the most destructive trends in recent political discourse is the tendency to seek out the worst, rather than the best, arguments from the opposing side.
Instead of engaging with articles from The National Review or Mother Jones, we just dunk on the most outrageous morons and trolls we can scour on Twitter or Reddit.
Yup, this is exactly the problem with modern politics. Take the absolute worst of the other side and project it to all of them. You like Republicans? You can't be anything other than a neo nazi racist white supremacist extremist. You leaning left? Then you have to be a communist shill who wants to tax every remotely financially successful person to death and take all liberties away from everyone ever. It's really tiring.
This argument would have more weight if "the worst" was rightfully repudiated by Republicans instead of reelection, pardons, denialism, or blistering conspiracy theories. There are outrageous acts on both sides but only the Left consistently calls out the missteps of their own.
This is just lazy. It took sub-1 second to google for this information.
"However, after George Floyd’s death, Joe Biden repeatedly condemned violent protests. In a May 31 post on his blog shortly after George Floyd’s death, he wrote, “Protesting such brutality is right and necessary. It’s an utterly American response. But burning down communities and needless destruction is not. Violence that endangers lives is not.”"
oh really? So this election had historic turnout and Biden more votes than anyone else in history because they had no effect? historically red states switching to blue?
you don't think that the dem's loved people rioting in the streets because of racism while Trump was president (hint, they like it more than they would if it was under them!)
Not sure what you’re referring to. Failing to condemn white supremacists? That’s a talking point which is more about taking Trump’s erratic speech patterns out of context than it is a reflection of his actual statements or personal views. https://youtu.be/RGrHF-su9v8
If intransigence is justified by any violent idiocy among the opposition, we will have mass intransigence indefinitely.
We cannot reasonably ask for peaceful daytime demonstrations to be considered separately from after-sundown looting and arson if we aren't willing to make likewise considerations.
On the contrary, this type of "both side-ism" is exactly what sabotages honest discussion. The sides are not anywhere near equal in their willingness to use violence to achieve their means.
One side has leftists rioting in the streets and looting storefronts. The other side has conservatives plowing their cars through liberal protestors at full speed and murdering them.
One side has leftists setting police cars on fire. The other side has conservatives plotting to kidnap and/or murder mayors and governors.
One side has leftists throwing milkshakes at so-called "independent journalists". The other side has political candidates bodyslamming real journalists.
No, it's the concept of "sides" that sabotages honest discussion. It's just extremists who are very loud and amplified by others. They do not represent the majority in the middle.
There is no group with better humans. It's a failure of context, nuance and understanding if you think so.
Exactly. Side-ism — or the uncritical oversimplification of the complexity that is American politics and American demographics - is about as useful as racism. Honestly, what’s it good for?
No there absolute is: it's the side which hasn't ongoingly and repeatedly attempted to murder members of the other.
Property is not lives, and your "but the middle!" is meaningless: the middle if it exists is a group of people going "well, someone's dead, but also what about that vacant Wendy's?"
Nobody really thinks that way. Better to discuss individual policies which will show that the vast majority of people comprise a complex mix of perspectives.
I'm not going to engage with you in this violence score-keeping exercise, but I will say that it should be apparent to anyone capable of popping their media bubble that you are cherry-picking.
The first one is a good example. The second one is about a mentally ill British man whose "assassination attempt" never had any chance of success.
Should we count as political violence the plot to kill Barack Obama with a "death ray"? I think there's a distinction to be drawn between political violence and crazy people being crazy.
Interestingly, reading the pages you linked and dredging up the Death Ray link induced me to notice that (1) the previous shooting of a Congressperson was by a right-wing terrorist, and (2) that page about Obama recounts something like 6 very real plots to kill him mixed in among a bunch of variously mentally ill people being delusional. I think it's pretty clear which way the wind blows here.
How about the high level democrats literally creating a list of "Trump Supporters" with the express purpose of "ejecting them from polite society" aka canceling them socially, and economically,
Goodness me. I hate talking politics but let's not make the mistake of getting into false equivalency.
The Trump presidency has gathered a cesspool of supporters and sycophants who:
1. Have at best maintained prosperity and growth (mostly by keeping interest rates low and patching economic holes with deregulations and/or short-term protectionist policies). The BBC(1) had a nice collection of charts showing -- essentially -- that the rate of change in the well-being of the economy did not deviate when Trump took office.
2. Have increased spending and absolutely ballooned our national debt (see "short-term" policies) (2). While I do not mind spending money to solve structural economic problems (automation removing jobs, the transition from polluting industries to cleaner ones), much of the funding went to solve problems the Trump administration created themselves!
3. Have absolutely demonstrated a complete dearth of moral and ethical values. This is an absolute killer in my book. From forcibly creating orphans (3) or allowing an enemy state to promote the hunting of American soldiers, it's clear that the administration has no moral qualms regarding their actions.
When it comes to COVID, the United States has a per capita COVID death rate that is insanely disproportionate when compared with other developed countries. The US has a per capita COVID death rate that is 66x Japan, 18x Australia, and almost 6x Germany. While the rallying cry has been, "But saving the economy is more important than saving lives!", this is absolutely unsupported by data. The delta in GDP between the end of Q1 and the end of Q3 is roughly a loss of 9% in the United States (5). In Germany, that same period of time resulted only in a loss of 2.5% (6). The willful spread of lies and misinformation have caused much death not only in the United States, but in many other countries which historically have looked towards the United States as being a bastion of truth and information. Trump and his cronies have enabled many other leaders around the world by normalizing an unethical and immoral response to a crisis.
Beyond the reduction of some federal taxes (which has admittedly saved me some money) and a stronger stance against IP theft (which I think is better for the United States but perhaps worse for the world), I struggle to come up with cases in which the Trump administration has improved America, the American people, or society as a whole in any meaningful manner.
For four years, Trump and his assembled cohort causing a regression in American ethics, integrity, world standing, and education. They have done this intentionally. From the beginning, they've approached the governance of America like a popularity contest where the end goal was to satisfy sycophants and fill their own pockets. I am not calling all who support Trump racist or evil, but Trump and many of those he associates with have absolutely promoted hate, demonstrated unethical behavior, and upheld the highest levels of greed and degeneracy.
If these people were my acquaintances in my personal or business life, you would not fault me for "ejecting" them from my life. I would imagine that if you had a friend who cheered when five hundred children were not only ripped from their families, but then kept in fear and isolation away from anyone they knew, and then were told that they would never see their parents again...you would not want to be associated with them at all. The fact of the matter is that there were people who did cheer this type of degenerate behavior and there were people that actively enabled the destruction of American integrity. Those people should absolutely be excised from "polite society" as pariahs to set an example so that others do not tread on the path of wickedness. Becoming socially undesirable is not even in the same realm as enabling the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans, allowing American soldiers to be killed, accepting foreign bribes to influence the American government, creating concentration camps where children are made to be orphans, fanning the flames of racial tensions, and so on.
Goodness me, it seems you love to talk politics and a decided one side view of them as well.
There is alot to unpack here most of it twisted and filled with incomplete or out right false information from a liberal bias that completely ignores a lot of recent history
lets start with the most obvious, child separation. While I oppose this, and absolutely oppose the use the fenced in cages. Lets not pretend that Trump's administration created this from thin air, these policies and these buildings / cages where in place before Trump took office, and while you should and can criticize him for not only failing to stop the policy, and by all accounts allowed immigration to ramp up the use of it before outlawing it completely due to public backlash... These policies where not started by Trump.
If you want to proclaim some kind of moral superiority, do you really want to point to Drug warriors Biden and Harris as people of moral fortitude.
The War on Drugs has cost the lives, directly and indirectly, of many many millions of people, upended families, put millions people of all races (disproportionate number of minorities) in cages, and separated them from their children, created orphans, etc..
Biden and Harris where right there not only cheering that on from the side lines but where ACTIVE participants in this process, they personally sent people to those cages.
Where is your moral outrage for those children? for those parents? for those victims?
To be clear, I am not a Trump supporter, but I am also not a Biden supporter. Though I would have preferred Trump over Biden for about 11 Trillion Reasons... My politics are libertarian, I am Anti-War, Pro-Gun, Pro-Free Markets, Pro-Free Trade, Open Borders, Anti-Social Welfare and Pro-Legalize Drugs... Biden is bad on all them, Trump is bad only a few of them.
I am sure we are going to disagree on most public policy, including COVID Response which I do not believe can or should be a Federal responsibility but should continue to be a State level response, with at most Federal Resources (aka money / supplies / personnel) when needed / requested. I also believe when the final accounting is done a LARGE part of our covid death rate was down to several irresponsible governors mandating COVID positive people be sent to Elder Care Facilities, this was something unheard of in other nations (and not something Trump was responsible for, or could have prevented) and I am still grappling with the logic of that, even in the early days where information was limited
However none of that was the point of my comment, the claim was that only Republicans / Trump Supporters are "completely unable and often unwilling to consider any argument or information that conflicts with their views"
That further devolved into claims that Trump supporters want to kill Biden supports, with a link to some wack job.
Now you have charged that is false equivalency the point that many democrats also are "completely unable and often unwilling to consider any argument or information that conflicts with their views" to the point where they are creating lists of Trump supporter
I do not believe this to be a false equivalency at all, and the fact that you attempt to justify it either by being willfully ignorant of history, or attempting to spread incomplete or outright false information further proves my point
I see that I may have been a bit snarky to start off my response and in an effort to be clear, I'll see if I can refrain from coming across as an asshole.
>Goodness me, it seems you love to talk politics and a decided one side view of them as well.
I mean, not really. If you look at my (sparse) comment history on HN, I mostly don't even comment. I'll also point out that in my previous reply to you, I avoided making any assumptions about your belief systems or any conclusions (as I don't know you from Adam) -- I find that arguing the argument is typically a better way to come to a clear conclusion.
>There is alot to unpack here most of it twisted and filled with incomplete or out right false information from a liberal bias that completely ignores a lot of recent history
Sure, I'm happy to go through your response line by line and see what I have perhaps presented incompletely or falsely. I'd also like to remind you that I had three factual points about the Trump administration: that they did not cause economic growth beyond baseline average, that they increased our nation's debt by 36%, and that they caused or participated in immoral and inhumane treatment of humans. It was specifically on this last point which I drew my line in the sand to say that I would have problems working with people who to this very day continue to behave in an unethical manner.
>lets start with the most obvious, child separation...
First off, I'm glad that you outright state that you are against child separation and oppose fencing people in cages. I agree too!
Let's be clear. I never alleged that Trump's administration created these detention centers from thin air. According to USA Today, the cages were built during the Obama-era to temporarily house children so that they could be relocated to safe child-care within the United States. They were not built to house people for any extended length of time and they were not used as such (1). There's also an interesting discussion as to the Trump Administration's role to inflame an existing situation (a lot of migrants want to come to the US) and making it inhumane and worse (2). So there were policies in place before (which might have been not great), but Trump's administration turned the knob up to 11 here and crossed over to immorality.
But hey, I never even talked about cages or whatever, but what I did link to was specifically speaking about forced family separation and forcibly turning children into orphans (and remember, these are decidedly "non-combatants" -- as far as I'm aware, we are not at war with any of the countries to the south of the US). That is something no president has done in recent memory, but please correct me if I'm wrong here.
>If you want to proclaim some kind of moral superiority, do you really want to point to Drug warriors Biden and Harris as people of moral fortitude.
I mean, if claiming that orphaning children is bad somehow makes me more morally superior to everyone else, then...then I don't quite know where the baseline is. I feel like I'm just being rather rational in my assessment of the situation. I also don't really want to engage in strawman arguments because like ad hominem, they don't actually provide a clear argument for us to agree/disagree upon. But hey, you brought it up, so I'll respond.
I not once claimed that Biden/Harris/anyone else were morally superior or more ethical. I, in fact, never even mentioned them by name so I don't see how you can claim that I pointed to "Drug warriors Biden and Harris".
>The War on Drugs has cost the lives, directly and indirectly, of many many millions of people...for those victims?
Hey, I agree with you too! I think that Nixon's War on Drugs is likely one of the stupidest policy moves in recent American history. Several economics professors I know start Econ 101 by talking about supply and demand in the context of the War on Drugs. Essentially, attacking the supply side (DEA, invading South America, etc) has been shown to have no real effect on demand and therefore, should cease because it's a giant money sink (3). The real way to "fight" drugs is reduce the demand (through education, rehabilitation, etc). Beyond just being a dumb idea, the War on Drugs was a popular idea and unfortunately, many people tied their political success to funding/expanding a popular idea.
If you had asked, I would have absolutely criticized anyone who continued to promote the ridiculous War on Drugs -- especially after the awful ethical knock-on effects became well known. Yes, this includes Biden and Harris.
Here's the thing. Both Biden and Harris today have learned and understood that perhaps, they did make mistakes and though it was considered widely to be the right move twenty or forty years ago, today, we know better! In fact, Biden publicly apologized, and expressed remorse for his mistake (4). To connect your strawman back to Trump's administration. Trump and his crew are still doing awful, unethical things. They cannot claim to be doing the "popular" thing or "ignorance" because literally the majority of the country, journalists worldwide, leaders of countries and religions, and even his former cabinet members publicly and vociferously tell him and anyone who will listen that doing obviously unethical things is...unethical. This is how I know that Trump and people who may agree with the unethical policies he has put into place, are...unethical.
>To be clear, I am not a Trump supporter, but I am also not a Biden supporter. Though I would have preferred Trump over Biden for about 11 Trillion Reasons... My politics are libertarian, I am Anti-War, Pro-Gun, Pro-Free Markets, Pro-Free Trade, Open Borders, Anti-Social Welfare and Pro-Legalize Drugs... Biden is bad on all them, Trump is bad only a few of them.
Cool! I am an independent voter and have voted for Republicans and Democrats historically. I try to stay away from generalized "buzzwords" because I prefer to deal in specific policy. For instance, I'm for the legalization of drugs, but believe that they should be regulated very tightly because like anything addictive (gambling, alcohol, etc) the societal impact on others can be highly detrimental. I don't mind if you want to get wasted every night, but if you get wasted and drive a car into my wife, I'll be pretty pissed.
While also not on topic, I disagree with your statement that "Biden is bad on all [policies]" and "Trump is only bad on [a few policies]". I at least know that Biden has seriously considered many questions and has publically written very thoughtful policies out for people to read and think about. One such policy favors the federal decriminalization of marijuana and I also know that Trump is staunchly against decriminalization of marijuana. So, since you write that you are "pro-legalize drugs" I don't quite understand why you claimed to agree with nothing Biden presented.
>I am sure we are going to disagree on most public policy, including COVID Response...information was limited
Uh, I also didn't talk about state vs federal responsibility regarding COVID. I merely pointed out that Germany (and pretty much every other developed country) was doing significantly better than the US. Sure, states have their own rights and their own mechanisms for doing their own things, but we are Americans. As our president, as our leader, as the highest officer in the land, it is his responsibility to take care of his people and Donald Trump did not do that.
Also, do you really believe that somewhere between 238k and 324k people (6) who have died due to COVID were mostly elderly people who were forced to live with other sick elderly people? Do you have reputable analysis that shows that this claim has any merit?
>However none of that was the point of my comment, the claim was that only Republicans / Trump Supporters are "completely unable and often unwilling to consider any argument or information that conflicts with their views"
I feel like the response to the OP was that looking to find a center was problematic fundamentally because one side (Trump and his band) are willing to constantly subvert ethical, moral, pro forma, and per se rules so you cannot treat them in a good-faith sort of way. I generally disagree with their assertion because if you don't come to the table, then you have no agreement ever. So I rather explain my logic, point out flaws, and see if we can agree on some shared ideal.
>That further devolved into claims that Trump supporters want to kill Biden supports, with a link to some wack job.
Well again, I don't think this "wack job" is inconsistent with their representation. In the past few weeks alone, you have had people arrested for planning to kill the Gov of MI, to kill Biden, and to attack voting counting centers. In fact, before these things even took off, right-wing terrorists were linked to the majority (67% of domestic terror plots and activities in the United States (7). So we should call a spade a spade, no?
>Now you have charged that is false equivalency the point...proves my point
Well yes, creating lists of people who have done morally repugnant things is very different to making a list of people to shoot! And refusing to work with people who are unethical is just good business sense and is likely personally healthier for yourself. Do you see what the difference is here? It's not a crime for me to say that someone is immoral and that I wouldn't work with them nor should any of my friends hire this person who might be a liar, cheater, and potential murderer. What is a crime is for me to plan, buy weapons, and execute a domestic terror plot. Can you see where I might be coming from in this case?
You set a person who declared murderous intent equal to someone who wanted to make sure that those who participated in potentially unethical actions were publically on record. Can you see where perhaps there is a false equivalence that you have made?
> Biden and Harris where right there not only cheering that on from the side lines but where ACTIVE participants in this process, they personally sent people to those cages.
Absolutely, and this might be an interesting point if they continued to support those policies now, or if anyone voted for them due to those policies. Instead, you see the opposite: Biden and Harris have admitted that those policies that put people in cages were mistakes and that they'd act differently now. On the other hand, Trump has doubled down on putting more people in cages.
You can't claim that Trump is superior if he's the only one actively doing it. This of course doesn't mean that he gets a free pass, but Biden will, without a doubt, be better about domestic policy and putting people in cages than Trump will be. Trumps populism depends on caging people his base sees as the outgroup.
Like can you explain this argument better, as best as I can tell it's "Hey we know our candidate is actively doing a bad thing, and refused to stop doing it despite pressure to stop, but the other candidate did a similar bad thing a long time ago, and has recognized the mistake and no longer supports that policy. These are equivalent, so ultimately the choices are the same on this issue."
> Where is your moral outrage for those children? for those parents? for those victims?
Yeah it exists. But I can't fix it now. And again, I would be stupid and uncaring to punish the people currently being put in cages because I disapprove of something a politician did before I was born.
> Biden is bad on all them, Trump is bad only a few of them
There is no universe in which Trump is better than Biden on Open Borders or Free Trade. You might be able to make that argument with Trump vs. Sanders, but not with Biden.
> I also believe when the final accounting is done a LARGE part of our covid death rate was down to several irresponsible governors mandating COVID positive people be sent to Elder Care Facilities
As far as I know, that happened in exactly one state and is responsible for, at most, a few thousand deaths. Unacceptable certainly, and NY and NYC absolutely deserves criticism for that mistake. But we're currently seeing similar numbers of deaths weekly, and we have been for the past 20 weeks, and no longer due to the actions of any single state, but due to inaction by governors of many states, in part because those governors have been afraid to go against the president. Even if you believe that policy should be set per state, you should support the president not peddling misinformation and lying about the scope of the pandemic.
> Now you have charged that is false equivalency the point that many democrats also are "completely unable and often unwilling to consider any argument or information that conflicts with their views" to the point where they are creating lists of Trump supporter
That's okay, it's clear that you're not willing to consider any argument or information that conflicts with your views ;)
Less snarkily, there's no equivalency, false or otherwise, between refusing to work with a person, and refusing to consider a position. Suggesting that a politician who lies and claims that 1000 deaths a day aren't happening is the same as a political who says "hey the guy who lied about the 1000 deaths a day should face political consequences for lying" aren't similar, at all.
Perhaps, in 20 or 30 years, when they've proven that they've moved on from those policy positions and demonstrated that they've actually changed, perhaps then they might have redeemed themselves. But on Feb 1? Nah.
So you admit that you are completely unable and unwilling to consider any argument or information that conflicts with your world views
If I do not agree with you, if I have a outlook on the world that is different from your then I have "shitty ideas or opinions" and thus is ethical, moral and just of cancel me economically and socially?
So you are admitting that the Democrats do no really want reconciliation or compromise, they want victory and subjection of their perceived enemies (republicans, conservatives, libertarians)
Disagree. When Obama was elected, the Republicans in congress swore to never support any of his policies, regardless of whether they agreed with them. (Eric Cantor and others admitted this in interviews.) This severely degraded the relationship between the parties beyond repair.
uh no. you're talking about pelosi refusing to go below 2.2 trillion. they stopped working weeks before just so that Trump wouldn't pass anything before election day. where have you been?
Sorry, should have said 'were' rather than 'are'. I don't agree with your framing, but thinking about it more it probably would be fairer to say that both sides can't agree in this case, rather than that one side is obstructing.
I'm sorry but it would be most correct that one side refuses to go below a certain value and thats the value they've decided is worth it. And you know which side it is.
I can't afford a 25k used vehicle. I can afford a 15k used vehicle. lock me up tempstn. I'm clearly a fascist against the community. shame on me for not meeting your budget requirements!
I’m excited and eager to have discussions with people who don’t share my political position on the issues. However, I am not at all eager to have a discussion with people who are arguing in bad faith or staking their position on lies and falsehoods.
What’s the point in having a discussion on the best ways to combat the effects of climate change when one political party has taken the position that anthropogenic climate change doesn’t exist?
What’s the point in having a discussion on the best way to fix the broken US healthcare system when one political party not only refuses to acknowledge that it’s broken, but is trying to undo what minor improvements we’ve been able to make in the last 12 years?
The GOP has marked itself as an opponent to everything that Democrats suggest and has painted itself into the stupidest possible corner, where they need to fight tooth and nail against their own policies because there’s a Democrat administration.
The way you have framed conservative positions on these issues seems like you’re imputing bad faith to them and assuming no reasonable person could hold those views.
With climate change, one doesn’t have to deny the science at all to hold a position that the optimal policy choice should be to do nothing, or to wait several decades before taking action. The science predicts some real but finite amount of harm in the future from global warming. Mitigations would also be very painful, eg carbon taxes that make air travel unaffordable to all but the very wealthy.
And in terms of healthcare, everyone agrees the system is broken. In fact, one of Trump’s biggest campaign promises was to fix the US healthcare system. The difference is that conservatives see the government intervention in the healthcare industry as the main problem. (The Federal government pays 2/3 of all healthcare spending in the country, so our system is pretty “socialized” already.) Trump’s first step was an attempt to repeal Obamacare and start to return the healthcare system to more market-based solutions. However Congress was not willing to go through with it so we haven’t had any progress on healthcare since.
Conservative views are not simply a bunch of people arguing in bad faith.
There are some reasonable conservatives, and many completely insane trump supporters. I believe there are more insane trump supporters than reasonable people on the right these days, and denying the existence of this very vocal group that has a stranglehold on the zeitgeist is not helpful at all.
That basic idea is basically correct. Reality is more nuanced than that, but from a birds eye view republicans are actually bad, and democrats are actually good.
I don't believe in God. I think people should be able to take whatever drugs they want. I think there should be a basic safety net and what we have now isn't doing it.
I believe in evolution. (I don't however believe climate change models are good enough to predict what will happen and I don't think C02 will turn out to be the predicted tragedy. I do agree humans are affecting the climate).
I believe people should be entitled to the fruits of their labor and taxation of labor or capital isn't a good idea (I'm a land and resource tax proponent). I don't think society has an innate claim on the labor or talents of anyone.
I think people should be able to defend themselves and possess deadly weapons. I don't go to church but I think people should be able to worship as they wish. I think churches should be somewhat restricted in what they can claim (for the same reasons I think peddlers of nutritional supplements should be restricted in what they can claim) but this is pretty loose and outright fraud is what I have in mind.
I think racism is stupid. I think slavery and communism are both horrible ideas for society and for the victims. I believe in representative constitutional government. I abhor monarchies, dictatorships, dynasties and anything resembling those.
Am I bad in your opinion? If you think so I feel it's not me that's the problem.
Of course I understand you may not agree with all my positions and that's fine. I don't think you are bad for disagreeing. Unless you are a slavery proponent or advocate of non representative form of dictatorship and then ya, you likely are bad. Otherwise you probably just have a different opinion.
For what it's worth, I don't think you're bad based on what you wrote above; I even agree with you on much of it, with the severity of climate change being the major exception. What I can't see is how a reasonable person could vote for Trump based on positions like those. Because to me his behavior was so egregious, divisive, and even dangerous that any reasonable person should have voted against him, with both Clinton and Biden being far better alternatives even if you don't share all their views.
He was real change in wilderness of more of the same.
Particularly involving the oversea conflicts and increased outsourcing.
Neither Biden nor Clinton were credible in my view. Both were corrupt. Both were sold out and more of the same. Both were involved in "regime change".
So I forgive a little carnival barker behavior (I, and many others don't care for it either but we understand). It helped bring in a large group of people that don't usually listen to guys in suits.
Not sure if you'll still be checking this thread, but I wanted to respond since I really think it's valuable to try to understand people with very different views from one's own. That said, I do kind of feel like we're operating from very different origins, not just in priorities and beliefs (which might not be all that different), but in understanding of the state of the world. That said, in case you're interested I'll do my best to lay out how I see these things.
I can respect the position you laid out. I agree that minimizing wars is a laudable goal. The Iraq war in particular was catastrophic, and Trump indeed didn't start something like that. He did do things that I felt made the world more dangerous, like the 'little rocket man' taunts, and pulling out of the Iran deal, but I can understand the sentiment of supporting less foreign involvement. That said, it just doesn't seem like we're sharing the same baseline worldview in terms of what constitutes corruption, or what behavior is excusable in a public figure. I haven't seen any evidence that Clinton or Biden is corrupt; Trump has said it a lot, but has he produced actual evidence? On the other hand, there seems to be plenty of evidence of Trump profiting from the presidency, such as scheduling events at his properties. Not to mention more serious offenses, like encouraging foreign leaders to investigate his opponents.
Much of what you call carnival barker behavior I see as divisive and immoral, from birtherism to calling into question the whole electoral system without apparent evidence. It basically seems like he's willing to say literally anything if he thinks it will rile up support, even if it's entirely made up, deeply insulting, or incredibly divisive. To me the harms done by those actions and behaviors greatly outweigh the potential benefits, unless perhaps you believe that Clinton or Biden would have started another Iraq, which I don't. I guess we'll see over the next few years. But we've already seen the harms, both domestically and abroad; I can tell you for instance that the US's Canadian allies feel a lot less warmly toward not just Trump but the US as a whole after his attitude toward our country.
I actually wrote another couple paragraphs, but I really don't want to be argumentative; I'm just trying to similarly lay out my point of view (if you're even still checking this thread). I truly do want to understand the perspective of people who have a very different worldview than my own, especially when they seem reasonable and willing to engage. I realize my own guttural negative reaction toward Trump's behaviour probably biases me against his actions and supporters as well, so I do try to guard against that.
Didn't even get to climate change. To be honest, that's maybe the one issue where I would consider (although likely reject) supporting a Trump-like figure on the left, if they seemed likely to advance the goal, since the evidence I've seen really does suggest it's a catastrophe in the making. I'm curious whether your belief that it won't be that bad is more of a feeling based on past overreactions, or whether it's based on evidence or expert opinion that I haven't seen. I'd certainly be happy to be convinced it indeed won't be bad, but to be honest I can't see how that could be, given what I see as pretty concrete evidence of both the fact and trajectory of climate change. We're already seeing impacts on more frequent extreme weather events, and on shrinking habitat for polar and ocean wildlife, like polar bears and coral to name just a couple.
Anyway, I appreciate your reply, and conversations like this one do give me some hope for a less antagonistic future.
Hey no offense and no worries. I also appreciate the discussion. I understand people have different opinions or see the world different ways. I'd also like to try to understand that. I agree that's really important.
I think there is often a tendency to see the other side as somehow brainwashed or ill informed and maybe that can be fixed. But maybe it's less of that and more just different priorities.
From my perspective #1 was the removal of the neocon war machine. I don't care about stupid, nonprofessional or offensive comments that offend "nice" people (well I do but not very much). I think some people even go a step further and actually like that. I think it's a selling point to a certain crowd.
What the liberal prime minister of Canada thinks of the US, what nice people in Canada in offices engaged in upspeak and office talk think of the US is just not that important to me. Perhaps that is a personal failing but it's just not. I have other higher priorities.
What is important to me is anyone who voted for the Iraq War, anyone who was a prosecutor in our justice system, anyone that has neocon "democracy" building tendencies or agendas to change the social fabric of the country through various engineering schemes is not given the levers of government. I regard both of those efforts as harmful and doomed to fail. So that's first on my list.
There's a lot more I could say, and I will. Let me read through your post again and think. Again, appreciate the chance to express myself without the flame-baiting. I actually had to close my real HN account just after the 2016 election the hatred was so intense. It looks like one can almost admit in polite company now though :)
I'm not sure I understand the comment about prosecutors. Why does any involvement in the justice system disqualify one from public office? Surely some crimes are worth prosecuting?
Also, what are these agendas to change the social fabric of the country through engineering schemes? I don't know what that means.
How do you feel about Trump's attempts, with support from others like Lindsey Graham, to undermine confidence in US elections? ISTM that encouraging the public to doubt the foundations of democracy is pretty dangerous. (And I we can agree that this was his plan all along if he appeared to be losing, as it was in 2016, and that he doesn't actually have evidence of widespread fraud, or obviously he would have shown it by now.)
It looks like I'm going to get downvoted, and this probably isn't the right place for political conversations so I'm going to bail on the discussion. Apologies for not getting to all your points. If you leave any last words in the thread I'll read them.
Just in closing
1)In my view (to re-iterate) the other side isn't necessarily low information or brainwashed. They sometimes just have different life experiences and priorities. We usually don't just "straighten them out" with real talk. Sometimes at best we get them to reconsider things. Usually not even that.
2)We should keep an open mind, but we usually don't because we have motive. We should look at our motives. Sometimes we don't understand them as well as we should.
3)Beware the military industrial/intelligence complex.
4)Prediction: 24 months before boots on the ground in Syria. Could get much wider but hopefully not.
Being a prosecutor doesn't disqualify anyone from office.
However I'm not happy with one like Harris being president. It's not illegal. I just don't like it and voted accordingly. I believe that type of person has a certain mindset. Entirely subjective.
The Iraq war proponents I think speaks for itself. Not interested in boots on the ground in Syria.
Second amendment rights, progressive taxation changes, not a fan. Who knows what other types of affirmative actions or different treatments based on race are planned in an effort to achieve this or that. Hints are: maybe. Don't care for it. I don't believe that works. Subjective, but since you asked. I actually believe Biden/Harris do have a better healthcare plan then Trump who obviously has none.
As for the last part, there is pretty clear evidence at least "some" fraud occurred. Every election of this size has that.
Statistically I find the entire thing a bit suspicious. Gains in house but not Trump? Unlikely. Differences between similar ethnic groups in swing states and not swing state big cities? Possible. Suspicious. The 11'th hour timing and stop count? Suspicious. This kind of thing: https://twitter.com/APhilosophae/status/1325593635996512257? Suspicious. None of this is proof. We will see what the courts say and what is able to be proved. Just... suspicious.
These big rust belt cities have had a lot of fraud. People have been indicted. A bunch. Philly? Detroit? I don't think I need citations on this. So I'm supposed to believe after the past 4 years of shrill hatred and weekly allegations from the left now they don't just this one time?
I hope my point is clear. It's not Trump that undermines the process. It's the way that it went down. He is supposed to just go along with what he thinks is fraudulent? Ignore possible threats to the democratic process?
I hope my point on that is clear anyway, that's how I feel about that.
Re prosecutors I didn't mean legally disqualify; I was asking why you wouldn't consider voting for anyone who'd been a prosecutor. Understood now.
Some minor irregularities occur in every election, yes. Most of those are not fraud, but honest mistakes. You see this in recounts shifting votes by a few hundred one way or the other. However, I have yet to see any evidence of widespread fraud. If I recall correctly most of the issues with the 2016 election were Russia spreading misinformation to cause people to vote differently, not them actually casting fraudulent votes. There was some concern of them having changed or having had the ability to change voter lists, but not to actually change votes. People were upset with what interference did go on, but mostly people were upset that someone they (and I) saw as dangerously unqualified and ill-suited for the job had won. Most did not disbelieve the results themselves. (Not all, of course; there are always those with extreme beliefs. But you notice Hilary or others in the Democratic leadership didn't promote these lines of thinking!)
Anyway, I don't see any of what you described as suspicious. Plenty of people agree with your views on many of the issues (and so vote R down ballot), but find Trump distasteful and/or dangerous, and so voted against him personally. I mean if anything the split results are evidence against widespread fraud; if Democrats were willing and able to fraudulently alter the election results, why wouldn't they cheat on the house and senate races too?
I'm not even sure what you mean by the 11th hour timing and stop count. Trump was ahead in a number of states. Then Biden caught up as mail ballots (which favored him for obvious reasons) were counted, at which point he easily caught up in PA, barely caught up in GA, and slightly fell short in NC. This isn't suspicious; it's just how counting works. They stopped counting when all the ballots were counted. (Or in the NC they will; they don't actually have all the mail ballots yet.) The networks called PA once Biden was ahead by a sufficient margin that, given remaining ballots were expected to continue favoring him, it wasn't realistic for Trump to mount a comeback. Some of them probably called AZ prematurely, but that was a mistake, not fraud. And regardless, as Republicans keep pointing out recently, networks don't decide election results; voters do. Occasionally networks do project wrong, but once all the votes are counted, that's the result that matters. In enough states to win the election, those final results favor Biden.
But just taking a step back, let's look at the sequence of events: back in 2016 Trump was already talking about election fraud. Why? Because polls had him way down and he expected to lose, so he wanted an excuse. At that point he didn't have access to any information beyond what the general public did, so there's really no other explanation. This time, it was exactly the same thing. He was talking about mail ballot fraud before the election even happened, and didn't produce any actual evidence of widespread fraud, just assertions. If he had real evidence, wouldn't he have provided it by now? Or better yet, if he was aware of a specific mechanism for fraud before the election, why didn't he explain it? He simply talked about people in living rooms filling buckets with ballots or whatever, but that makes no sense, because it ignores all the measures states have in place to prevent such things. Each ballot is tied to a registered voter; you can't just cast a bunch of fake ballots. The much more logical explanation, looking at his behavior for the past 4 years, is the same as it was in 2016, that he expected to lose, and so he sought to invalidate the process itself.
Of course no one wants illegal votes to count. The problem is, when Trump claims there was widespread fraud or illegal voting without real evidence, and then he and his allies point to these normal events as supposedly suspicious, it sows doubt. That doubt causes people to lose faith in the democratic process itself, which is dangerous, because some then believe they have to take steps outside that process to achieve their goals.
Anyway, I understand you're not planning to respond. I'm probably done too anyway. But I hope you'll at least entertain the possibility that the election was fair, and Biden is a decent person who is going to do the best job he can for the American people and the world.
No I don’t think you’re bad. I was giving a generalization. I believe there exist good people (whatever that means) in both aisles. I think there are many deeply destructive warrior republicans. I believe there are many delusional, stupid republicans. I believe there are some thoughtful, sensitive, and smart republicans, but I don’t believe there are very many of them. I believe the republican leadership has abandoned the pursuit of compassion and dignity, and ceded power to the delusional and the warriors.
I disagree. There are more reasonable/compassionate dems, and the party has retained truth and compassion as core values. The Democratic Party is better than the Republican Party.
I would love to be pointed to the detailed climate policy plan from the GOP or a GOP politician that explains how climate change is real, of anthropogenic origins, and that we need to take action to stop it starting in a few decades.
I am not aware of any such plan, or any GOP politician espousing such views.
What I will say is that there are those are reflective of their viewpoint, will question and review their choices, and change their mind about things in light of new information...
And then there are those who are not and won't; those who act out of tradition and pride, those who believe in conspiracy theories, those who let themselves be played like marionettes with simple trigger topics, etc.
There is a difference; but it's not left or right, conservative or liberal, it's reflective or not reflective.
True. The ACA was after all, literally the republican plan straight from Mitt Romney, but Democrats were unwilling to negotiate or compromise. (Yes this is sarcasm, ACA was literally the Democrats meeting in the middle when they didn't even have to)
Everytime someone like you makes this claim I ask the same question: show some examples. "both sides are the same" is a weak excuse for supporting bad behavior. The Republicans haven't acted in good faith since about the early 90s.
Err, you meant Republicans were unwilling to compromise, right? Because the Democrats bent over backwards to introduce 160 Republican amendments to the ACA and even delayed votes to have more Republican voices heard during debate.
I think this is a bit of historical revisionism. Yes there are some amendments in the bill from Republicans because Dems wanted a "bipartisan" bill even if they only got a handful of GOP reps (they ultimately got none).
But the Democrats couldn't have gotten a bill more left-wing through the senate. They tried, but various Dem senators stripped out both lowering the Medicare age and the public option.
It goes both ways, if you don't consider that one side has a leader calling out his people to be vigilant and prepared and in fact two men father and son have been arrested yesterday in Philadelphia armed of ar-15 with hundreds of rounds, the other has leaders thanking the volunteers of all sides and talking about reuniting American people
Perhaps a better question would be: Consider two parties starting out relatively reasonable. Over time, members of both parties claim the other party is becoming unreasonable or outright crazy. This could be true in the following to scenarios:
(1) Both parties have become crazy. Both parties would be correct in their claims but of course also guilty of having gone crazy.
(2) Party A has stayed reasonable and party B has become crazy. Party A would be correct in their claim and party B's claim would be part of them being crazy.
How do you distinguish between (1) and (2) from the outside?
No, no that didn't. Just because someone denies an adverse position doesn't mean that they are fanatically denying evidence, it can easily be the case that the adverse position is false, and that they are open to seeing it proven true but haven't seen it.
Wait what?! Doesn't one side want to take the guns away? Doesn't the other side want teachers with guns in schools?
Well, it turns out the majority of Americans not only agree on the need for better gun controls, they actually agree overwhelmingly on certain specific controls as well.
It's a classic wedge issue though, and FUD is deployed to drive that wedge between both sides which prevents most major cooperation on the matter. Unless there is a crisis, and then both sides will make an easy sacrifice to look like they are doing something. Like bump stocks. Nobody really gives AF about bump stocks, so they banned them.
I sincerely believe that there is definitely some common ground. Otherwise I would not have posted that thought.
Is it easy to find that common ground? Of course, not. Will it take a lot of time and effort (from all sides)? Absolutely. But, in the end, it is certainly worth trying, at the very least. That is why I have listed the areas, which I think represent some aspects that I hope we all could easier agree on than some other aspects.
Finally, I think that it is important not to generalize people, based on our own (limited) experience. Some people on other side(s) are more flexible than others. Moreover, I believe that people can change, including their point of view on various issues. If we will dismiss the idea that others are or can become open minded, we will shut the door to a potential dialog, which could bring us even more trouble.
The USA seems bound for "illiberal democracy", a la Orbán in Hungary, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Erdogan in Turkey, Kaczyński in Poland, and Modi in India.
(If you are a Republican, assume a Democratic autocrat, and if you are a Democrat assume a Republican autocrat.)
Democracy in general has the weakness that the party in power can constrain the ability of the opposition to compete. We don't yet know how to stop the slide into illiberal democracy from happening.
Hi, I'm from Australia. Voting is mandatory here! Turn out in our elections is 99.x%. You are not obligated to make a choice, but you are obligated under pain of a $30 fine to be registered at a polling station on election day. You can avoid the fine if you present a valid reason for not voting after the election when notified. Such a reason would definitely include "I was prevented from voting" or "I was threatened if I voted", and would be registered with the AEC and investigated seriously.
Our Electoral commission is the most trusted government body in the country, and has maintained a culture of independence and accuracy. We don't have any form of electronic voting, but generally have election results on election night.
Our system has multiple viable political parties! Factions on both the left and right of the spectrum at multiple government levels have successfully won and lost seats over the years depending on their ability to poll within the electorate. This has not resulted in them being regarded as "spoilers" to the main political parties, and has acted at times as an effective check on government policy since it encouraged cross-party negotiation through multiple avenues.
Is our system perfect? No - no system is. But come election night, our representative government actually represents the people. If you got 51% of the vote, then 51% of the population, through some means, selected you as a preferred candidate.
I'd say you lobby for preferential voting like we have here as the first step. You write numbers in boxes for your 1st choice, 2nd choice, etc until you're done.
They put all the ballots in piles by everyone's first choice. The smallest pile (e.g. least voted for candidate) then loses, and their ballots get sorted onto their second choices. Repeat until you have a candidate with a clear majority, and you have a winner.
This allows people to say, "I want Rubio, but if not, then Cruz, and if not then Jeb" etc. I suspect if this system were in play in both parties now, we'd have different nominees, and they'd be the candidates that the majority can live with instead of being the candidates that most excite the extremes. And the people on the extremes can see that their candidate lost even with people being able to vote for them without 'wasting' their vote.
Yes, in our senate this gets a bit crazy with tablecloth sized ballots (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Victoria...), and the first time I voted here I allocated every single preference down to about 160 something with pride. You don't have to obviously, but I chose to.
In most cases you're likely just engaging in rhetorical volleys with the other person.
Until someone trusts you to handle their concerns and vulnerabilities with care, you aren't going to get anywhere.
The relationship is paramount in communication, and it's the one thing that social media (and the pandemic) has most effectively eliminated from our daily lives. In this particular case I think we all need to 'act local and think global'...stop sparring on the Internet and try to make inroads to mutual understanding with those that you can see and hear.
That's right, on the same ballot where Florida solidly selected a republican president, republican legislature and republican house delegation, they went >60% on a $15 minimum wage.
Progressive legislation is popular. Progressives are not, because of branding and demagoguery (and no small amount of bald-faced lying).
That's common ground. It may not look like it, but it's there.
Politics is all about uncommon ground. People hardly ever can have one, as the word suggests the tragedy of commons follows quickly upon reaching it. Mutually beneficial status qua don't last as somebody always want to get more of the benefit than others, and exploit the situation.
People are not born equal, tribes are not equal, nations are not made equal. There are always the weaker, and stronger.
Politics is how you get along, and live another day with all above concerned. How somebody weak can live along somebody strong, without having the later kill him simply because he can. Same way, how a strong one can live with peace of mind knowing that if he lets the weak leave, they may well live to grow big, and surpass him in the future.
> Is there really any common ground?
There can be. On an individual level, where there's mutual trust. At the right time, better not in the heat of this moment.
I remember having a very fruitful discussion with a Trump/Pence supporting friend, somewhere in the middle of Trump's presidential term.
My friend's background as a conservative evangelical is _very_ different from mine. He is a decent and caring man, and I am 100% sure he'd describe me in the same way.
It started with hearing the news together. A few discussion points were Trump's pussy grabbing video, his anti-intellectualism, and the environment. The discussion also meandered through science and religion, religion as a fertile ground for symbolic language and ended up with virtue signaling.
We were able to come to the conclusion that this Trump-evangelicals alliance would damage them for years to come. How it would be better for them to ally with decent people instead, whatever their view on religion.
Try to assume their views, and then work from there. What would you believe if you start out with the opposite's viewpoint? What is the easiest acceptable modification of their believe system? Move them step by step.
No. “Common ground” is a false peace flag... a friendly sounding phrase meant to play on liberal preoccupation with “a fair system”
If you’re unfamiliar with how conservatives do business, it’s worth investigating. Start here: https://youtu.be/MAbab8aP4_A
Regarding common ground, I believe so. Just as several people were shy to admit voting for [candidate name redacted] those are the same willing to seek common ground.
I worry more about those for whom politics is a team sport, and who ignore whom they marginalize in their quest for ideals.
harimau777 asks:>Is there really any common ground?<
First one must ask whether there is "common ground" within the factions of the Democratic party itself.
Once victory has been declared and legislators and executives ensconced in their offices, a feeding frenzy will ensue within the Democratic Party. Each faction will demand that their agenda be pursued first with the most money, time and effort. Unfortunately resources are limited (in particular time is limited to 4 and, in some cases, 2 years). Political infighting amongst these factions will increase to a level so intense that people may long for the return of Donald Trump.
My experience talking to the other side during this administration is that they are completely unable and often unwilling to consider any argument or information that conflicts with their views. How do you debate with people who don't care about facts or reason?
Your comment about "facts or reason" is sort of odd given your post gives no details concerning what you consider these to be. I mean, I could fill in some but it seems like without you giving a clue as to what you're referring to, people can only shout for you or against you.
Here's an example. My facts, which I think are shared by almost all people for at least hundreds of years (at least anywhere there has ever been a plauge):
1) Sometimes human spread illness to each other via spit, like when they talk
2) A piece of cloth in the path of spit will probably block some or all of the spit
That is the entire argument for wearing masks. Wearing a mask costs almost nothing, and you know it might help save lives if you believe 1 and 2. I live in a state where not wearing a mask is very common. Most people don't even have them on in something like a gas station. People are dying here at 2x the national average.
My neighbors, whom I have known for a decade, told me that my personal wearing of a mask was a politically-motivated attack on their beliefs. Millions of people have similar beliefs.
This is the thing that truly drives me crazy about the political deadlock, and the replies to this comment are a good example of it: Democratic politicians propose a common-sense, obvious measure that would be objectively good for society (e.g. healthcare; slowing down climate change; addressing a global pandemic ravaging our country; providing money to the people now out of work due to the economic recession caused by the pandemic). In turn Republicans (politicians and right-wing pundits, that is; not referring to constituents), respond by fighting tooth and nail opposing it, using nonsensical buzzwords and ad hominem attacks on whomever sponsored the bill, and make it one of "The Issues" for political points, further subverting any real, meaningful discussion on policy issues. I've watched the GOP degenerate from "kind of annoying, but valid counter-points" to "blatantly obstructionist" staring with the Tea Party during the Obama Admin, and only getting worse from there.
Today there's the "Let's actually do our jobs and keep the country running" party and the "Let's destroy our country and blame it on the other side because corporate lobbyists pay us to do so" party. And somehow we need to find common ground and unity when the other side is more interested in bullying and obstructing the Democrats than it is trying not to kill another 200K people. There's compromise, and then there's calling a spade a spade.
To be clear, I won't pretend the Dems are fine (and if there were a way to vote third party without throwing away my vote, I would do so in a heartbeat). But the Democrats aren't even particularly progressive anymore. Bad-faith concession after bad-faith concession to the GOP over the course of decades has slowly dragged the Democrats to the center, while the GOP's actual extremists making a mockery of our democracy have the gall to label providing healthcare as the real extremism.
Have you forgotten that we couldn't buy masks or other medical equipment for months because of China, and everyone, including WHO, Fauci, Obama, etc. were advising people against using masks due to shortage?
- January 14, WHO: Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China🇨🇳(https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152)
- January 31, Trump suspends travel from China: Proclamation on Suspension of Entry as Immigrants and Nonimmigrants of Persons who Pose a Risk of Transmitting 2019 Novel Coronavirus(https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation...). A move condemned by many, including WHO and Biden.
- February 1, Biden: We are in the midst of a crisis with the coronavirus. We need to lead the way with science — not Donald Trump’s record of hysteria, xenophobia, and fear-mongering. He is the worst possible person to lead our country through a global health emergency.(https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1223727977361338370)
- Feburary 2, Health Commissioner of New York City: As we gear up to celebrate the #LunarNewYear in NYC, I want to assure New Yorkers that there is no reason for anyone to change their holiday plans, avoid the subway, or certain parts of the city because of #coronavirus.(https://mobile.twitter.com/NYCHealthCommr/status/12240431558...)
- Feburary 24, Pelosi: You should come to Chinatown. Precautions have been taken by our city, we know that there's concern about tourism, traveling all throughout the world, but we think it's very safe to be in Chinatown and hope that others will come.(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAEfSHeH4Lc)
- Feburary 29, U.S. Surgeon General: Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!(https://twitter.com/Surgeon_General/status/12337257852839321...)
- Feburary 29, WHO: Travel bans to affected areas or denial of entry to passengers coming from affected areas are usually not effective in preventing the importation of cases but may have a significant economic and social impact.(https://www.who.int/news-room/articles-detail/updated-who-re...)
- March 3, Bill de Blasio (NYC Mayor): Since I’m encouraging New Yorkers to go on with your lives + get out on the town despite Coronavirus, I thought I would offer some suggestions. Here’s the first: thru Thurs 3/5 go see "The Traitor" @FilmLinc. If "The Wire" was a true story + set in Italy, it would be this film.(https://twitter.com/BilldeBlasio/status/1234648718714036229)
- March 8, Fauci (Director of NIAID): People should not be walking around masks. There's no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you're in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little better, but it's not providing the perfect protection people think it is, and often there are un-intentioned consequences(https://youtu.be/PRa6t_e7dgI)
China brought up medical equipment all over the world, which is why you couldn't buy any masks and other medical equipment for many months. This was not just a result of Daigo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3gNQ9JnJ90), but rather, China had its overseas companies send their employees all over the country to buy up all the medical equipment they could find:
- Chinese property developing group Greenland scoured Australia to purchase bulk medical supplies - including masks, gloves and thermometers - which were flown to China. "Basically all employees, the majority of whom are Chinese, were asked to source whatever medical supplies they could," one company insider told the Herald. This exercise went on for weeks through January and February, he said. The entire accounts department, contract managers, the human resources team and even receptionists were sent on a mission to find bulk supplies of surgical masks, thermometers, antibacterial wipes, hand sanitisers, gloves and Panadol. According to a company newsletter, the Greenland Group sourced 3 million protective masks, 700,000 hazmat suits and 500,000 pairs of protective gloves from "Australia, Canada, Turkey and other countries."(https://www.smh.com.au/national/chinese-backed-company-s-mis...)
- Sydney-based Mr Kuang, former officer in the People's Liberation Army, imported 35,000 sets of protective medical suits, 200,000 pairs of gloves and 10 tonnes of disinfectant from Australia to China.(https://www.smh.com.au/national/former-chinese-military-man-...)
If Biden/the democrats were interested in uniting the nation then perhaps they should’ve united with Trump against China instead of pushing CCP propaganda to attack Trump and blame him for everything. Perhaps they should’ve been honest about why they didn’t want people to wear masks for the first many months. Accept responsibility for the fact that USA is so heavily reliant on China, largely thanks to the likes of Biden. Perhaps they should acknowledge that they were wrong to encourage people to gather, wrong to attack Trump for limiting flights from China.
Literally everyone has a little piece of cloth they could put over their mouth, and literally everyone should if it has a a reasonable chance of saving a life, to say nothing of many lives.
The fact that there’s any controversy about this at all leads me to believe that many have abandoned all reason.
>literally everyone should if it has a a reasonable chance of saving a life
This is a moral judgement and not everybody shares the same values as you, especially regarding what a "reasonable" chance is. Some people don't believe they should inconvenience themselves just because it would contribute to a tiny decrease in deaths. There's also an absence of data: given we've got months of data on death rates and mask usage rates in different areas, it should be possible to quantify exactly how strong the correlation is, but nobody's even done this.
- humans can spread viruses to each other just by breathing,
-a piece of cloth won't stop the aerosol particles you exhale! Even a mask won't stop them.
Furthermore there is no good experimental evidence that masks work for anything other than surgery (for which they were intended, designed and tested).
What DOES work? Distancing, e.g., keeping away from each other.
Distancing is about disease; masks are an exercise in political theatre and political control.
> However, the size and concentrations of SARS–CoV-2 in aerosols generated during coughing are unknown. Oberg and Brousseau (3) demonstrated that surgical masks did not exhibit adequate filter performance against aerosols measuring 0.9, 2.0, and 3.1 μm in diameter. Lee and colleagues (4) showed that particles 0.04 to 0.2 μm can penetrate surgical masks. The size of the SARS–CoV particle from the 2002–2004 outbreak was estimated as 0.08 to 0.14 μm (5); assuming that SARS-CoV-2 has a similar size, surgical masks are unlikely to effectively filter this virus.
...and that's the least problematic part of the study.
The study is done on a sample size of n=4 (!!), and tests the immediate effects of masks against coughing. It does not test the longer term effect of staying in a non-ventilated room (like a mall or a train) with non-coughing (normal breating) infected people.
I'm sorry, but we've known that masks work for literally a century. They were also recommended during the 1918 pandemic. There is a wealth of literature on this topic; it is scientific consensus.
It's great that you're thinking critically about the ways that this individual study might fall short, but trying to poke holes in a study here or there does not undo the (literally) century of research underlying the efficacy of cloth masks in preventing the spread of airborne illnesses (or epidemiology in general).
This article clearly shows evidence that masks reduce the spread of covid.
In your critique you've changed the question you are debating (again) to 'does a surgical mask filter particles of the size we assume covid to have'. Because the answer 'not flawlessly' and the critique 'sample size 4' (when there were <100 cases in the country at the time!) support the answer you already had before your even read the article.
This is the conservative (and to be fair most people's) response to information that disagrees with whatever narrative hold.
Coupled with the amplification of a conspiracy presented with no evidence "masks are an exercise in political theatre and political control" and you have the right's playbook on pretty much every issue these days. Climate change, abortion, economics, disenfranchisement - experts say one thing, the right pulls out slivers of factoids "what about volcanoes and methane from cows" "what about pregnancies that have gone to 24 weeks" "what about communism", all micro-facts with almost no relevance to the overall discussion, designed to distract, enflame and stall in order to preserve the status quo.
On the left, there are similar issues, but at the end of the day, the left acknowledges and defers to experts on the subjects. The right has propagated such distrust and anti-intellectualism we have reached Trump as the ultimate demonstration of idolizing agreement over effectiveness.
This response shows exactly why Trump won, and more generally what the problems with today's society are. People cannot separate discussion from politics.
When I have to use public transport, I wear a N95 respirator. I avoid getting out as much as it is feasible. I have gifted many N95 respirators to friends and family. On a social level, I have been involved with arguing for, and implementing stronger measures against COVID-19. Specifically, getting the damn face shields and chin guards banned. And somehow you have managed to think that I am a COVID-19 conspiracy theorist because I dare to point out the flaws of what people think are solutions against the pandemic.
I’m confused about what your disagreeing with - fundamental physics? you’re saying that when you cough, covering your mouth with your hand or arm does nothing? The aerosolized spit and mucous leaving your mouth passes through your hand unaffected by matter? If so, what are you doing wasting your time on HN? You have singlehandedly disproved vast swaths of scientific research, go claim your Nobel prize!
The claim is only that a little piece of cloth in front of your mouth will block some moisture. Less bodily fluids expelled into the environment means less risk of transmitting disease. It’s not perfect but it cost almost nothing and will save peoples lives. Even if it’s only very marginally effective, why would you not suck up the very very small personal discomfort if it would save even a few lives?
To be fair, a lot of reasonable people would say "no witness could change my mind" if I asked them "what witness testimony would convince you that politicians are secretly Lizard People from the planet Venus?" So I don't think this is really about rejecting facts & reason... it's more about having really strong priors that the rest of us don't share.
Yeah, the mainstream Democrats in particular engaged in crap arguments like the dubious, hyper-partisan impeachment effort. Impeachment just distinctly wounded the anti-Trump efforts and only Trump's fumbling Covid was enough to get it back on track.
But the super mainstream Democrats are one of 3-4 distinct factions who want Trump out. Those actually even the mild left were only partially on this train.
So to cover what you're washing over here: The US President and his subordinates attempted to use the office of the President's powers to compel a foreign country to "discover" evidence against the President's domestic political opponents, under the auspices of denying military aid for the defense of that country from invasion by one of the US's global antagonists.
That's what you're covering under "hyper-partisan". You know, just so we're all clear on that.
There’s a slate star codex post that describes research demonstrating that conservative Americans can predict the responses of progressive Americans to political questions, but the converse is not true. It’s not that conservatives are “unwilling to consider” conflicting ideas; in fact, they do a much better job of modeling conflicting ideas than progressives do!
Most of the difference is, I think, not based on factual disagreement, but based on principal disagreements on issues like the personhood of fetuses.
> There’s a slate star codex post that describes research demonstrating that conservative Americans can predict the responses of progressive Americans to political questions, but the converse is not true.
All this demonstrates is ideological consistency on the part of Liberals.
> It’s not that conservatives are “unwilling to consider” conflicting ideas; in fact, they do a much better job of modeling conflicting ideas than progressives do!
Citation needed.
> Most of the difference is, I think, not based on factual disagreement, but based on principal disagreements on issues like the personhood of fetuses.
A fetus isn't a person in the eyes of the US government. It never has been. This is an orthogonal issue to how to handle abortion in America. Conservatives believe that those who seek and provide abortion should be punished, but we know that this does not result in fewer abortions. Liberals believe that we should take steps to limit the need to seek the abortion in the first place.
Suppose class mobility is good for poorer people. Canada has more class mobility than the US. Canada also has universal healthcare (like most developed countries) which helps people take risks like starting their own business which helps with class mobility.
Why do poor republicans in the US keep voting against universal healthcare?
They probably still hate those conservatives though. Even now you can see the hate being directed to Blacks or Hispanics that may have voted for Trump.
One must consider the major confounding factor here that Republicans have made a substantial effort to publicly taunt and insult liberals from positions of power[1], and that being the target of that kind of thing can easily override what would otherwise be more compassionate interaction.
This is because the heuristics low-IQ conservatives use are actually better than the low-quality first-order reasoning midwit liberals use. Policies that immediately enrich poor people at the expense of economically productive people are bad for poor people in the medium-long run. Low-IQ conservatives do not explicitly understand this, but their inherited heuristics encode it.
Correct and it appears that even though Trump lost, Trumpism allowed most Republican Senators to keep their seats and they even won more seats in the House, and didn’t lose a single Statehouse.
This election has been a repudiation of Trump but not Trumpism.
I can get along with people from a different political camp, no problem. My gf is liberal, I'm conservative. We have lively debates about it, but we respect each other and never let politics get in the way of the relationship. It's as simple as that.
But over the last few years friends called me a nazi and a racist, coworkers ostracized me for having unfashionable political views, many people cut contact entirely under the premise that I "support" white supremacy. This isn't some shit you easily forgive, and it isn't something you ever forget.
This wasn't just about politics, or teams, or policy preferences, or red vs blue or whatever. This is people denying your humanity on no grounds whatsoever, and when you point it out they say "well, minorities have always felt this way, so shut up and take it." That's fair enough, but it isn't about groups of people oppressing other groups of people. It's about Bill and John and Sally-- people who used to be friends and colleagues-- treating me like I'm a monster for no reason whatsoever other than a mass psychosis. That's not something you can ever come back from.
> This is people denying your humanity on no grounds whatsoever, and when you point it out they say "well, minorities have always felt this way, so shut up and take it."
Here's where they are coming from: Donald Trump was denying people's humanity on the grounds that they came from south of the border. He was literally separating children from their parents to scare others away.
When I have explained that to Trump supporters, they immediately gaslight me; telling me it wasn't that bad, or Trump's fault.
> It's about Bill and John and Sally-- people who used to be friends and colleagues-- treating me like I'm a monster for no reason whatsoever other than a mass psychosis.
They don't mean to. Really, they don't. The trouble is, they just can't find a reason.
The only reason I can think of is that Trump supporters really don't know what's happening. That they don't believe it. It looks a lot like mass psychosis.
It looks even more like a cult. I would know: I grew up in one. If I can come back from that, you can come back from this. The first step is empathy.
Are you certain that you aren't in the "group of people oppressing other groups of people"?
I know it can be hard to confront that question. I did it about a year ago. When I did, I found out the answer was "no".
I dug a little deeper, and realized it wasn't a soft "no", either. I was an instrumental part of an institution that tears families apart and drives children to suicidal ideation. I always knew there were issues, but I had plenty of excuses for those issues and the institution's part in them.
If you really aren't a Nazi or a racist, then will you reconsider your support for the GOP? Bill, John, and Sally didn't just pull that out of their asses. What they said to you was disrespectful and dehumanizing, but it didn't come from nothing.
> Here's where they are coming from: Donald Trump was denying people's humanity on the grounds that they came from south of the border. He was literally separating children from their parents to scare others away.
To put it precisely, the child separation policy is in clear violation of the fourth Geneva Convention, the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, which also governs the rights of aliens in times of peace. Specifically, Article 38 §5:
children under fifteen years, pregnant women and mothers of children under seven years shall benefit by any preferential treatment to the same extent as the nationals of the State concerned.
The US has been no stranger to Geneva Convention violations but this is a particularly egregious example within our own borders thats also arguably a violation of the Geneva Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide [2].
Coming from a country that lost tens of millions of its people to the war machine that inspired the Geneva Convention, I feel physically sick that people support someone who would intentionally enact such policies. The last four years of gaslighting has made it incredibly difficult to interpret that support as anything but a complete dereliction of empathy.
Anyone read a practical 20 year plan to decrease divisiveness in the US (say, to 1990s levels)?
Or: Ignoring funding, what would you do?
An example year 1 goal: "Get X million people to watch 10 hours/year of strangers who they would normally not encounter or agree with, and to see them as real people."
To do that, produce and televise + stream a long-form TV show, like a version of Braver Angels' Red/Blue Workshops[1] that's actually fun to watch. Imagine a well-produced show with deep participant profiles - a cross between a reality TV show and a HBO/Netflix long-form movie.
It would humanize the participants first, then after viewers care about them, their lives, and their families, the actors gradually explain their backgrounds and opinions - some of which a viewer will disagree with. Viewers would "meet" people they may not interact with regularly. (Sarah Silverman's "I Love You, America"[2] is the closest I've seen to this, and it's not all that close.)
This would need to be a multi-decade plan, probably with philanthropic and public funding.
I think any plan that neglects ratcheting down high-stakes issues to more local levels is fighting against strong headwinds.
In other words, we can avoid winner-take-all dysfunction by allowing more diversity in governance. If we make every issue national, it makes it too important who runs the national government.
Within reason, we should find ways to let California be California and Alabama be Alabama. Alabama and California shouldn't have to struggle against one another as much as they do.
The only way that I could see that working is if we allowed states to impose tariffs embargoes and on each other. There would need to be some way for states to protect themselves from other states' negative externalities or a race to the bottom.
When there is an externality, of course the federal government can get involved. But does the majority of federal regulation really happen in domains where there would be inevitable externalities without it?
The fundamental flaw is that a lot of things can only be accomplished at the Federal level. 50 plans for global climate change not only doesn't make sense, it would result in direct violation of the interstate clause.
Climate change is just one thing, though. National defense and military activity may be another.
But do you really think it is not the case that most forms of regulation and resource distribution cannot be administered effectively, with some creativity, at the state level? I don't see any reason that 70% of issues can't become local or state issues. (Ignoring the lack of a political will to make that happen, I mean.)
Do you think you could name some of these topics you're thinking of? 70% seems like a substantial overestimate. As a back-of-the-envelope estimate, using budget as a proxy for "regulation and resource distribution", ~70% of government spending went to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Defense. You've called out national defense as something that should remain at the Federal level. Social Security spending consists literally of distributing money to individuals. Medicare and Medicaid in a roundabout way are essentially the same, and America's poor and elderly are certainly not uniformly distributed among the states. This leaves only a maximum of 30% of resource allocation that could even potentially be pushed back to the states.
Abortion. Education. Controlled substances. Publicly funded media. Certain categories of environmental policy (polluted soil crosses state lines less than polluted air). Various subsidies for special interests. Labor issues like parental leave requirements. Housing issues.
Yes. Some of those are somewhat state issues now, but I'm talking about divisiveness in culture and discussion. People in political discussions should be OK with saying, "That's an important issue, but best solved at the state or local level."
Social safety nets is an interesting counterexample, but it seems like a hybrid approach should be doable in many cases, especially when it comes to funding externalities like retirees moving disproportionately to certain states.
Abortion is very tricky to push back to the states, because some states want to criminally prosecute the doctors and sometimes even the patients involved. Accepting a patient from a different state could lead to a doctor having committed a crime in that state and having in future to avoid traveling to that state or to any state that would extradite the doctor to that state. This would be a mess.
Education is already largely controlled below even the state level, by local school boards. The Federal government hands out a lot of money for the purpose, largely to even out the quality of education between wealthy and poor areas of the country, but it’s pretty hands-off.
Controlled substances is another place where criminal law differing state to state creates a legal mess. The more the law differs, the greater the mess. Delivery of drugs from states where they are legal to states where they are not has not yet blown up into a huge issue because the Federal government regulated interstate commerce and still considers the substances illegal. If the Federal government takes a hands-off approach and Amazon starts selling cocaine it’ll get messy fast. This sort of mess already exists due to patchwork laws about firearms, but in that case the problem is substantially mitigated by (a) the Federal department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and a constitutional right to at least have firearms in every state, even if the nuances differ.
Publicly funded media seems like a niche topic? Voice of America is a State Department effort aimed at influencing foreign policy. NPR gets most of its funding from donations. I can’t think of any other examples.
I could see certain classes of environmental issues being pushed back to the states, but it would be tricky and probably a mess. Polluted soil is likely to become an issue for other states if it’s in the drainage basin of the Mississippi, less so if it’s out on a salt flat somewhere in the desert west.
Labor issues, housing issues, and subsidies are already things that states have a lot of involvement in or control over. Housing activities by the Federal government mostly consist of welfare spending like subsidizing housing for the poor and underwriting mortgages for homebuyers. Another issue where the Federal government gets involved mostly for the purpose of shuffling money around between rich states and poor states.
You keep hand waving about messes. The current political climate seems to be heading toward more than just a mess.
If there were consensus about some issues not being national issues, your points about currently local issues would be stronger. But the fact is that it's still a minority, if not niche, view that all these issues should stay local indefinitely. I suspect the gridlock is protecting federalism more than principle or even court rulings are.
What do you think is being administered at the Federal Level that isn't 1) really just a way to distribute money to the states and 2) should be administered strictly by the states themselves that won't violate the interstate clause?
But we're not even trying. Why is the minimum age for consumption of tobacco and alcohol a national issue? Why does the national government need to get involved in housing policy at any level of detail?
Compulsory national service to prevent people from living their entire lives within the bubbles into which they were born. Compulsory service erases geographic distance along with racial and class divides.
1. Separate opinion journalism from reporting journalism.
Opinion journalism can be w/e. Reporting journalism has to be fact checked. Masquerading as reporting journalism should be a big bad. You gotta disclose opinion journalism up front, like you gotta put a Surgeon General's warning on cigarettes.
2. Mandate non-partisan districting boards and do away with "safe" districts.
This would lose majority-minority districts, which are responsible for a big proportion of our Reps of color. But safe districts skyrocket partisanship; politicians in safe districts can wander super far from the mainstream--think Steve King for example. And actually they oftentimes have to become radical in order to survive primaries. There's only so much you can do here with the current system but, a little would help a lot.
3. Empower state and local governments by repealing balanced budget amendments and term limits.
State governments have really hamstrung themselves with these policies, and as a result the federal government has to do a lot. This creates a perception--right or wrong--that a far away government is telling you how to live your life. If the federal government has secured rights for all and managed federal concerns, it should be reasonable for say, Oregon to have one set of gun regulations and Illinois to have another.
4. Make voting compulsory, make Election Day a holiday, expand early voting, establish same day registration everywhere.
The majority of Senators (and in midterms, the majority of Reps) are elected by a minority of people who are much more partisan than the mean. This pushes politicians out of the mainstream.
5. Federally finance elections, shorten the length, and amend the Constitution to obviate Citizens United.
Campaigns and their ads are super polarizing. Special interests run messaging campaigns on wedge issues (abortion, immigration, gun rights) in order to pass bills like SOPA or subsidies for fossil fuel energy companies in the night. Campaign finance reform disarms all this.
6. Limit the terms of Supreme Court Justices to 18 years and enact jurisdiction stripping.
The stakes of Supreme Court nominations are so high that it drives us all crazy. We should limit their terms so that 2-term presidents get to nominate 2 Justices, and we should limit the power of the Supreme Court on the basis that it's a deeply undemocratic and unaccountable institution. Pro-lifers feel this every day, as do progressives. We all agree it's bad; let's change it.
7. Enact affirmative action for mortgage companies, fund housing assistance, and reform public schools.
The US has a huge de facto segregation issue due to generations of discriminatory practices by mortgage companies, and the sky high cost of housing in neighborhoods with good schools. This creates fertile ground for bubbles and othering, not just in adults but also in children.
8. Re-establish affirmative action for colleges, and make it free.
The partisanship gap in the US now largely traces the education and income gap.
9. Establish clear boundaries on religious freedom.
Religious freedom is a fundamental part of the fabric of the United States, but so are personal liberty and individual rights. We need to give people the ability to live out their beliefs, but also establish a pluralistic society free of discrimination towards _and from_ the religious. Fighting a culture via religious freedom debases us all.
> 2. Mandate non-partisan districting boards and do away with "safe" districts.
This is critical, and if it can be done (and then move US presidential electors to be 1 per district) and you make things very, very different and the American people can decide what they want from there.
I don’t think this can be done without altering social media algorithms to revert back from the “engagement-maximizing” firehose of vituperative extremist polarizing political sludge they pump into everyone’s feed these days.
The thing is, any reasonable, evidence based discussion is going to end up concluding that the 90% of GOP talking points are lies, so right leaning people would claim the show is left biased.
It seems to me that the left is the side supporting freedom right now. I don't think someone is free if they don't have the material resources to make their own decisions. That's to say nothing of minority rights and ending the war on drugs.
>I don't think someone is free if they don't have the material resources to make their own decisions.
So who is the one who is to be forced to provide them with said material resources ? They don't just magically appear. The vast majority of people with material resources have worked very hard to aquire them, very often by working very hard at producing material resources.
>That's to say nothing of minority rights
What rights are being denied to minorities ?
As someone who always saw myself on the left, being a proponent of universal healthcare and focused on class issues, I can no longer recognize myself on the left with them going all in on identity politics, dividing people not by economic class, but by immutable characteristics like race and gender.
Your first point is a sentiment that I hear very frequently. I think the reaction that your hard-earned material wealth is rightfully yours is completely fair. However, it's worth pointing out that other people may also work hard and still live in poverty. Poverty can be systemic, in that things you're born into can limit your opportunity. Further, people are sometimes faced with unexpected situations such as health problems or pandemics that can make them unable to work. Many people have proposed plans that pay to distribute more wealth to these people by taxing corporate profits and the super wealthy. Some people will make a personal sacrifice to do this, but these people may actually have a better life experience if the majority of those around them are suffering less.
> What rights are being denied to minorities ?
Until recently, the right to get married or adopt children, among other things. I see your point though: people of all skin colors are theoretically equal in the law. If by "dividing people" by "race and gender" you mean movements for criminal justice reform or to end police brutality toward minorities, I disagree that these movements should be divisive. They become divisive when non-minorities take offense at them, which can happen due to poor messaging from particular individuals. It can happen due to a lack of clarity about the actual goals of the movement. Some more extreme leftists might simply have views that I would also disagree with. But ultimately, "the left" doesn't hate non-minorities. When a movement is focused on minorities, it is to reaffirm that they suffer discrimination which they should not under the law. These movements focus on minorities not to say that others don't struggle too, but to bring attention to societal issues that continue to affect some types of people just because of their "immutable characteristics".
> So who is the one who is to be forced to provide them with said material resources?
Billionaires.
They took $50 trillion from the rest of us[1]. They are beyond capable of affording it.
> What rights are being denied to minorities?
Safety. Marriage. Financial stability. The list goes on.
> dividing people not by economic class, but by immutable characteristics like race and gender.
It isn't the left that did that. Race and gender were divided into economic classes by racists and sexists. Acting like that didn't happen only serves to perpetuate that oppression.
> Help your fellow man. Do not force others to do it for you at the point of a gun.
An alternative is that we could stop enforcing property rights at the point of a gun. What is more important; property or people? A selfish person in a society that provides for all may feel slighted but they will live comfortably. A selfish person in a society with strict protection of property can cause another person to die without lifting a finger. Frankly, if it's ethical to allow some individuals to die from neglect (thus losing everything of value) then it's at least as ethical to allow redistribution of some personal property (losing less than everything).
I don't see any practical difference between not being free to live life on your terms because of a government restriction or because of poverty.
The whole purpose of society is that people work together for the common good. When resources are not distributed such that that happens then I don't see anything wrong with redistributing them.
Of course there are other ways. I don't understand this myopic perspective.
Society has a problem: poor people exist. There are a UNIVERSE of possible solutions. Charitable organizations, churches, help from family - the list goes on and on and on.
Yet here you are, saying "I can't think of anything we can possibly do except point guns at not-poor people, take their money, and give it to poor people."
The crazy thing is that I believe you when you say it; I think you're saying it in good faith! I just can't fathom how you reached that conclusion. It's utterly nonsensical to me on its face.
> Charitable organizations, churches, help from family
Those "solutions" are as old as the problem.
They didn't work.
> I can't think of anything we can possibly do except point guns at not-poor people, take their money, and give it to poor people.
The gun pointing happens as a last resort, not first.
What you are telling me is that we should just wait around for the greediest people in the world to charitably give enough back.
That's just not going to happen. We all know it.
So what you are telling me is that we should just continue the status quo, because doing something about it is technically immoral.
Meanwhile, the wealthiest 50 Americans collect as much wealth as the poorest 165 million.
Tens of millions of Americans are in poverty[1]. Is that not immoral?
Approximately 14.3 million households had difficulty providing enough food for all their members due to a lack of resources[1]. Is that not immoral?
You are so obsessed with the threat to inconvenience people who have more wealth than you will ever see that you are willing to keep millions in poverty. Get off your high horse. Children are starving.
Absolutely not. I am saying that property, as it is right now, is not ethical, as all property in its current state was originally, or derives from something that was originally, stolen.
As a result, accepting the current order of property can only be justified by utilitarianism, which also dictates that there is no issue with redistribution if it is helpful.
In essence, private property is theft, but there is no feasible alternative (for now), so let's still have private property in a limited sense.
It can absolutely be reasoned away, pretending it's a absolute fact is dogma, not logic. Look at any of the many shady things Nestle has done with water rights and tell me that's ethical.
Pretending that property rights somehow are more real than human need is an unethical action.
The enforcement of property rights is literally the reason why the state was implemented. All property that one owns is theirs and not someone else's (or no one's) ultimately because of unjustifiable violence.
On this basis, property rights are not much more than a social construct and redistribution is not a problem if society deems that it is favorable to do so.
One can easily follow this all the way back to medieval Europe, at least in the Western world: early post-Roman European kings were just well-organized warlords, and for a very long time any idea of 'legitimate governance' was just a thin papering-over of the realpolitik involved in armies based on personal loyalty.
No, like the founders of the USA, I believe in natural rights. The right of people to be secure in their persons and their property being one of those rights.
If you and I get marooned on an unclaimed island and I construct a spear for hunting crabs, you have no right to my spear. I am within my natural rights to defend my property should you try to take it by force.
There is no natural right to private property. There is only something close to a right to your own labour.
You can make a claim to that spear, of course. It's the product of your labour, you would get to own it, and you made it with freely available resources. One would call this "personal property".
However, imagine this scenario. You and I get marooned on an unclaimed island. I claim the island before you get the opportunity. Because of my claim on this land, which now becomes my private property, I force you to give me that spear.
This is exactly what happened in all of the globe. People laid claim to land, resources and capital that they did not build, and this is precisely the base of all private property beforethen. If I were to get any object I own, I could trace my ownership of that object to someone that, at some point, violently decided that some land is theirs, and based on the idea that the land is theirs seized the product of the labour of various people who had no choice but to work it or die.
So, unless you agree that seizing land that was not yours violently is a reasonable way of generating ownership, you come to the conclusion that the ownership of essentially everything in our society is illegitimate, and can only be motivated for utilitarian reasons.
If you do, then you agree that I have a right to your spear :)
If you and I get marooned on an unclaimed island and I construct a spear for hunting crabs, you have no right to my spear. I am within my natural rights to defend my property should you try to take it by force.
The comment you are replying to says nothing about redistributing wealth...only that people should have the material resources they need. To your point, however, when people are not being payed appropriately for their productivity and executives are making excessive amounts of money than what one could ever need in a lifetime that is the truly fraudulent redistribution of wealth.
The left is abandoning enlightenment principles of individualism in favor of skin color. They define people based on external features rather than their actions or thoughts. That doesn't smell like freedom to me.
Ala, I am racist because I am a white person who is not racist.
I don’t know you do I’m not going to pretend to understand your beliefs based on a couple of comments in this thread.
Instead I wanted to try and reframe this in a way that is a lot more inline with how many people on the left talk about this issue which is in my mind fundamentally different from how I read your comments. I hope it offers a less inflammatory way to consider what often gets thrown under the umbrella of “identity politics”.
When trying to understand the root causes of problems and outcomes in society it’s often helpful to cut the data in certain ways to identify where patterns might be emerging or have existed for a long time.
This is basically the attempt to try and apply the scientific method to issues that simply can not be controlled in a lab environment.
If you were to take an issue like poverty or incarceration rates for example and then attempted to break those issues down through the context of education for example you might start to notice some interesting correlations.
However, there is nothing about this approach that does or should stop researchers from also looking at the data in the context of immutable traits either.
A big part of the conversation that is happening around these topics is that certain groups keep appearing again and again in ways that very few other groups do. The follow up question to that is obviously why?
This commonly gets reduced to comments such as the one you made like “I am racist because I am a white person who is not racist.” which is not at all what is being said.
I too am in the straight white male group and I’m not unaware of how often it can feel like that label is thrown around to the point where it can feel like a dirty word but I would beg you to put aside that initial knee jerk reaction and maybe consider that we as a society (not necessarily you personally) do in fact have some pretty serious issues that are going to overlap with immutable traits like gender, sexuality and race.
Critical race theory and its sister anti-racism reject liberalism by assigning blame, power, guilt, victimhood, privilege, etc., to individuals based on their race.
DiAngelo’s thesis [White Fragility]: All white Americans are racist. All white Americans are a product of white supremacy and are actively or unwittingly complicit in maintaining this power structure. If you say you are not racist, that is only proof that you are racist. If you believe you are not racist, same thing. Black people exist in America only to be oppressed by whites. In DiAngelo’s worldview, any progress black Americans have made is because white Americans have allowed such growth as pacifiers.
I think it's not controversial that employer provided health insurance is a silly mechanism. But animosity prevents significant progress away from the status quo.
It's disingenuous to claim that this is purely because of animosity. It is a calculated decision that some people decided that the status quo is better for them that what could be, and in various ways decide to enforce it.
Otherwise, how could you explain Obama (for all the ills he committed) taking Romney's healthcare plan, and then the entirety of the Republican magically turning against the plan that they themselves generated? It's not animosity, it is certainly calculated.
I am certainly not disingenuous. I don't know why you want to impugn my motives in this discussion.
I think there are a multitude of smaller problems to solve and smaller steps to take that would be utterly uncontroversial to the wider public. But they will not be considered because both sides are pushing for their big thing and locked into combative attitudes.
Same goes for immigration reform for that matter. There's plenty of low grade nonsense to clean up with legislation but the culture of controversy derails trying to find where consensus actually exists and acting on it.
A good positive example would be how criminal justice reform was actually attempted recently.
I don't think your motives are wrong, I have certainly myself refrained from facing reality in exactly such matters because the implications are grave.
Now, the main thing is this:
>But they will not be considered because both sides are pushing for their big thing and locked into combative attitudes.
This is not true, as per what I mentioned before. Obama took a Republican healthcare plan, and it was still gridlocked and framed as extremist.
The truth is that there are real interests in this country that actively don't want problems to be fixed, and that's the reason why there is so much low grade nonsense that gives you the idea that it's because both sides are intransigent, but past experiments show that trying to collaborate with the obstructionist party just leads to the ratchet effect [0].
In effect, there can never be consensus because the purpose of some is simply obstruction and dysfunction, which is made evident by what happened to Romney's healthcare plan. The only solution is to use an electoral breakthrough, pushed by a not-so-moderate message, to create a new fait-accompli and change the political landscape, otherwise you either fall prey to the ratchet effect or to gridlock.
I am not so sure that they like the freedom to do that but they see no other way to provide for themselves and their families. Such realities make it rather difficult to prioritize what is better in the long term over the more immediate need to eat.
While that's true, there's still some number of people who would genuinely rather have freelance and 'gig' jobs for one reason or another if they weren't dependent on the healthcare provided by a 'real' job.
The same goes for people who would attempt being entrepreneurs if all they had to worry about losing was money.
Here in the UK we pay literally half as much per person for healthcare for similar outcomes, and everyone gets covered with no cost at the point of use, no medical bankruptcy.
No one is talking about a free lunch, they are talking about a better, more efficient way of doing it.
No; the budget is going into insurance companies' budgets and pharma benefits budgets. There's a trillion-dollar industry that exists in the US solely to take money from people needing healthcare. That's where the money is going - look to the thing that doesn't exist elsewhere.
No, but some things are more efficient than other things. We aren't expecting health care to not cost anything.... we already spend more money than anywhere else on health care, and we get less!
We are saying "it is much more efficient and fair to have single payer health care"... it is not a free lunch... it is a cheaper, healthier lunch.
This is not true, and keeps getting brought up as if it were.
The rest of the developed world has _universal_ healthcare. In many countries it is provided through single-payer, in some it is through mandatory private insurance, in others it is a mix.
Where the United States stands alone is not the lack of a universal government program, but that we have many millions of people not covered by any health insurance system at all.
While it’s certainly true that America is not the most free country in the world, it’s still inside the top 50. What freedoms are you trying to exercise but are being stifled?
> Uniting the country is definitely a commendable goal
This is hard and may backfire in a deeply divided country. To me, instead of trying to achieve a common ground (which, in the current situation often means forcing 49% to the position of the 51%; with the chance of a swap in 2-4 years) we should learn to live, share space and collaborate with folks who hold different political views.
We can disagree on politics, but it should not prevent us from working as a team on software or sharing a beer after work. We are not at war with the other half of the country. We should respect their opinions and avoid unnecessary confrontations. My 2c.
The problem here is that treating politics as 'just politics' is the realm of people privileged enough that they have never directly suffered because of those politics.
Transgender rights, for example, are never 'just politics' for me: they are a basic moral issue that deeply affects the life of one of my close friends.
I was agreeing with you until your next to last sentence. Sometimes you cannot respect someone else's opinions.
I believe the fundamental dichotomy is that, for some of us, our opinions are not who we are. We can change our opinions and remain the same people.
For others, their opinions ARE who they are. They cannot separate out their beliefs from themselves, so when you question their opinions, they feel you are attacking them personally.
There are just some issues, though, where it's extremely difficult to find middle ground.
Look at gay marriage. There are large percentages of people in the US who would like to return to a time when gay marriage was illegal. If you were married to a same sex spouse, do you think you'd be able to say "oh, that's OK, I respect your difference of opinion." No, you'd do everything in your power to protect your family from being attacked.
I mean, just imagine how straight people would react if the government tried to invalidate their marriages.
If you were married to a same sex spouse, you may feel personally atacked if your opinion that same-sex marriage should be legal is questioned.
I thought the parent comment suggested that the opinions of those who cannot separate out their beliefs from themselves, so when you question their opinions, they feel you are attacking them personally, are less respectable.
Not if their opinions are of the flavor of: female genital mutilation is acceptable; there was massive election fraud in the US Nov. 3 election; the earth is flat; etc.
I misunderstood. I though the problem was related with people feeling attacked when their opinions are questioned. That can also happen with acceptable opinions.
Please don't assume that 'one side' has the unilateral moral authority to 'make things better and less divided'.
This implication directly contradicts the part about 'unity'.
'One side' having the run of the system will absolutely lead to greater divisions.
Trump is gone, I think most reasonable people will take solace in that. Now that he is gone, having regular checks and balances is a 'good thing'. Having the 'other side' with a narrow, 1 vote majority in the Senate is probably a really reasonable check on power, as Senators often break ranks with the party so there's plenty of room for a 'really good bit of legislation' to get through if the Dems want to push for it.
I don't make any assumptions about any unilateral moral authority on issues. That is why I call for a constructive dialog at all levels and across all groups of our society.
As for your argument on checks and balances - yes, generally, it is definitely a very good thing. However, when one side uses their position of chamber majority not to collaborate and compromise, but to throw a wrench into "wheels of democracy" and gridlock the Congress (especially, considering the voting record of the current majority in the Senate and essentially zero breaking ranks history), which might be extremely unproductive and even damaging to the lives of the American people, that IMO does not represent the "checks and balances" that you're talking about.
I don't see one side looking to 'collaborate' other than if they had to and I object to the notion that only 'one side' tries to stonewall deals.
Senate votes [1] are almost never perfectly partisan (52-48 in current form). They are all over the place. Romney, Fluke others have bounced on some big votes for Republicans, and frankly, we don't always see the 'break ranks votes' because they are usually foregone: Senate Whip won't take it to the floor if he knows there are a handful of stragglers so those 'broken ranks' are not as visible.
There is some truth to what you're saying. However, regarding your non-partisan voting argument, I can say - and that's what I meant in my previous comments - that non-partisan voting was pronounced during previous congressional terms. Unfortunately, the current Congress, with some notable exceptions (like the ones you mentioned as well as the CARES Act), almost always votes across party lines~. Let's see what happens in this regard after January 20th.
~) Also consider @Steltek's point (comment below): "it's hard for Senators to break ranks if bills are never brought to a vote".
How often do senators break ranks? The Hastert rule and Senate majority leader rules have effectively neutered both chambers to rubber stamps for deals and bills negotiated out of public eye.
The playing field need to be leveled here so that party leadership doesn't have a stranglehold on what comes to a vote via backroom deals. Legislators need to have skin in the game, with real debate and actual votes to show where they stand.
If the Democrats win both Georgia elections (or one GA, and NC), and it ends 50:50, with the VP having the tiebreaker vote, do the Democrats become speaker?
Don't we first need to undo the damage that Trump has done? I can see getting to a point where neither side acts unilaterally, but only after things have been balanced to actually be in the center between the sides.
It was not inevitable that Biden would win. The electoral college is a major hurdle to overcome — he still came pretty close to losing a few key states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania which would have made it much much less likely for him to win. It took hard work, lots of money, and historically high turnout to get here. Incumbents rarely lose. This was pushing a boulder uphill. But it happened. Biden 2020.
It will help to have an Executive administration that doesn't have its heel on the wedge for the next four years gleefully driving it deeper for adulation and ratings.
The election of the Senate is as representative of the country as election of the president. The idea they have to vote in accordance with your opinion on issues in order to 'restore the moral fabric of the country', whatever that means, is condescending and self-righteous.
I am not alone in arguing that the Senate is not representative of the country, just as the electoral college is not. And it will increasingly become less and less representative as more and more people move to a few cities in a few states.
I don't think that my post promotes an idea senators have to vote in accordance with my opinion on issues. The point I was trying to make is that there is a very real threat of gridlock in the Congress (especially, considering the voting record of the current majority in the Senate), which might be extremely unproductive and even damaging to the lives of the American people.
It drives me nuts that so much order of business is controlled by a majority leader, no matter the party. These rules stifle any legislation to a predetermined show for the most part where votes and "debate" is just scripted for pundits and news.
If legislation could hit the floor for actual debate and votes without being filtered through partisan leadership I think we could see a lot more progress on things that are popular and bipartisan. Or at least legislatures would have to put their names to a vote on an issue. Minimum wage hikes, marijuana legalization, criminal justice reform, redistricting and campaign finance reform have all faced great support when put to ballot initiatives around the country. But good luck ever seeing that in Congress.
Gridlock is a feature, not a bug. Only the most important issues to American people pass through to law, whether or not you agree on those issues, which you clearly lay out in your OP in the name of "repairing moral fabric" -- empty rhetoric.
This is a crippling problem for the United States. In the absence of effective governance by Congress, control of the country slips ever increasingly into the hands of an Imperial President and an unelected Supreme Court. While Congress debates "only the most important issues" Presidents have taken to ruling by decree through executive orders and policy-setting Federal agencies, pushing the line as far as the Supreme Court will tolerate , politicizing the court and damaging national trust in impartial justice in the process. Recall that the Supreme Court granted to itself its most important powers in Marbury v Madison. It's a castle built on sand, and the only things that binds a President to respect its decisions are tradition and the belief of the American people in the idea of the court as a non-partisan institution that should be respected.
And then every 4-8 years the President changes parties, scraps all major ongoing efforts of their predecessor, repeals their decrees, replaces all of the experts and advisors they have brought into the government, and reverses their foreign and domestic policies.
This disfunction has been highlighted within the Chinese Communist Party as the main reason why China will eventually (soon) eclipse the United States in world significance. A country that is governed in such a schizophrenic manner cannot compete long-term with a country capable of planning on time horizons or more than 8 years (and sometimes only two!).
Regardless of whether you call gridlock a feature or something else, I think that it should be used to the benefit of the people. Unfortunately, too many times it is used not to the benefit of the relevant constituents, but for playing political games, catering to interests of some financial donors and sometimes even due to an outright lack of responsibility. As for "repairing moral fabric", this has nothing to do with the gridlock issue. I don't know why you even mentioned that in this context.
Believe it or not, politicians not messing up the system more than it is already messed up is an actual benefit to the people. To parent's point, it is a feature that benefits everyone. Doubly so at times where country is almost evenly split over what to do.
Edit. Also, they DO cater to their real constituencies. If you do not believe it, check the votes immediately after 2016 elections. What was the priority? Lower taxes for the already well to do.
What some classify as "messing up the system", others might classify as "progress" or "benefit to the people". So, it's a moot point.
"Their real constituencies" (emphasis mine) - I assume that it's a sarcasm. Otherwise, I don't see how wealthy people comprise a majority of relevant party representatives' aggregate constituency. The trickle-down economics is a myth.
Eh, I am worried that I am not expressing myself accurately. "Their real constituencies" was definitely not sarcasm. I am not sure how that could possibly be misinterpreted as such.
The example I gave, post 2016 election tax reform benefited said real constituencies. If you do not believe me, look back what threats were lobbed and by whom at republicans if they do not deliver to said constituency. It is not trickle down, but he with the gold makes the rules. And they -- the real constituency -- happen to pay the bills.
In that context, I am not sure I understand the point about "wealthy people [don't] comprise a majority of relevant party representatives' aggregate constituency". They don't, but we don't live in a democracy. In the best of times, assuming you subscribe to taking things as they are written, we are republic ( you know, protection from the tyranny of the majority ). At worst, we already past oligarchy.
So... what does trickle down have to do with anything?
> In that context, I am not sure I understand the point about "wealthy people [don't] comprise a majority of relevant party representatives' aggregate constituency".
It is quite simple. "Around two-thirds of registered voters in the U.S. (65%) do not have a college degree", with relevant numbers for Democrats plus Democrat-leaning voters and Republicans plus Republican-leaning voters being 59% and 70%, correspondingly [1]. For simplicity, let's use education, which, as we know, has a direct correlation with net worth, as a proxy for wealth. Thus, as I've argued earlier, the aggregate constituency of congressional representatives largely consists of non-wealthy people. Therefore, by reducing taxes on businesses (especially big businesses, which are mostly owned by wealthy, including the "top 1%") and high-income people, the post-2016 tax reform disproportionately benefited a very small segment of said constituency ("socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor" [2]).
> So... what does trickle down have to do with anything?
Trickle-down economics is directly related to taxes, as it is based on the notion that "taxes on businesses and the wealthy in society should be reduced as a means to stimulate business investment in the short term and benefit society at large in the long term" [3]. And your example was referring to post-2016 tax reform. Hence the connection that I have mentioned.
The following definition that was shared by someone on Quora is quite good, though a bit academic. Moral fabric is "a metaphor for the flexible but still assured structure of virtue that forms the basis of integrity and holds society together".
To put it simpler, I would define moral fabric as a set of foundational moral principles (common moral ground) that most people in a particular society agree on and recognize as guidelines throughout their daily lives. These principles form a cohesive environment of values, which is referred to a moral fabric.
Generally I agree with your statement here. But realize you said “we need to find common ground” then went on to say the dems need total control to progress their agenda. These conflict. This attitude is a reason for the division, and are just plain one sided. If you wanted common grounds you’d want the two parties to work together, not one have total control of the entire gov.
Well, let me literally reproduce my other comment in this thread, which was a reply to another person. It is not that easy to find, so, for your convenience, I'm reposting it below. While it talks about "checks and balances" point, I think that exactly the same argument can be made about "common ground". I hope that it makes sense to you.
As for your argument on checks and balances - yes, generally, it is definitely a very good thing. However, when one side uses their position of chamber majority not to collaborate and compromise, but to throw a wrench into "wheels of democracy" and gridlock the Congress (especially, considering the voting record of the current majority in the Senate and essentially zero breaking ranks history), which might be extremely unproductive and even damaging to the lives of the American people, that IMO does not represent the "checks and balances" that you're talking about.
But again, this is only stopping progress from your point of view. From the other, it’s stopping damage. You are implying that your side is right and must have 100% to implement it. Anything short of that is damaging. It’s still one sided.
And then go on to say you need total control. You can’t collaborate and compromise if the one party controls the entire gov. Nobody will believe the lie that democrats will work with republicans.
The control is needed at this particular time, because the history clearly shows that the current Republican majority and their leader are not only unwilling to collaborate with Democrats, but are simply stonewalling the process (see comment above by @thomastjeffery). When we will have a non-obstructionist Republican fraction in the Senate, the total control will not be needed.
I don't see how this can be made any more obvious. What you call stonewalling one side calls preventing damage. It's from your point of view that it's progress. The stonewalling actually serves a purpose. If both sides can't agree, nothing happens. The gov is essentially frozen. You want control to force through policies that the other side doesn't want. You claim the right doesn't want to work together, but this is opinion. There's clearly evidence of them working together. Your complaint is you don't have full control, therefore bad. "But we should work together."
Just admit it, the dems don't want to work together or compromise at all. Nanci Pelosi made this very clear recently.
> the dems don't want to work together or compromise at all
This is such a ridiculous statement that I even won't bother replying to it beyond this comment.
> If both sides can't agree, nothing happens. The gov is essentially frozen.
Well, if you see a stalemate as a positive thing and think that there is no way out, then why don't we just close Senate for the time being, furlough senators and save quite a bit of taxpayers' money?
Uniting the country is definitely a commendable goal, though it is easier said than done. The election results across all levels clearly illustrate just how divided and polarized this land is. Thus, it will take quite a lot of time and effort to see a reasonable progress on this front. We all can play our part in it by a polite and constructive dialog with opponents and first finding common ground on such pressing and all-encompassing issues as coronavirus pandemic, environmental protection, social justice and health care reform.
In the meantime, let us not forget that, in order to restore the heavily damaged moral fabric of this country, relevant measures should pass through the Congress. And while Democrats retain control of the House, the opposing party might retain control of the Senate. Which most certainly will lead to a significant gridlock in moving forward with the democratic and, in some cases, progressive agenda unless Democrats retake control in the Senate. Remember, winning a battle is not a guarantee for winning a war. That is why the U.S. Senate run-off elections in Georgia to be held on January 5 (https://georgia.gov/vote-2020-runoff-elections) are crucial.