Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[Badger]

What you just did was list a bunch of criteria for diagnosing Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I think it did ring alarm bells, but a lot of people thought "Oh, the alarm's gone off, so we don't need to call the firefighters," and proceeded to neglect to vote.

 

 

 

 This is probably true. Doubly so if you define "benefits for himself" as "increases my chance of reelection", whether their base motivation for reelection was the pure joy of being In Charge or the fervent and honest wish to be able to continue to do the best for the country as they see it.

 

 

 

Like most absolutes, this holds little water. Many politicians, possibly even a large majority just want to be In Charge, but there are certainly some who are trying to make the world a better place (however much you disagree with their definition of "better"). That they have to play the political game doesn't alter their motivation, though it does tarnish their image.

 

Yeah, I shouldn't say EVERY.  But, I wouldn't exactly say it is even a significant minority either.  From what I can tell, DC influence seems to have a remarkable corrupting influence on first-termers.  ANd unfortunately, it does seem one of the things required to get voted in for many, is to have selective timing on one's morality and ethics.

[Doc Democracy]

You know, my biggest concern is that somehow it has become accepted that we should consider all, or oven most, politicians to be venal and/or corrupt.  It is a dangerous situation and it means that politicians have very little incentive to strive to be better, noone would believe them.

 

If all our politicians are venal and/or corrupt then who is to blame?  In a democracy the ultimate blame must rest with the electorate, it is they, after all, who elect these venal and corrupt people.  The problem is that we cannot be bothered to actually engage with the process, we want a vote or two every five years to be enough.  It is not.

 

I think there is also the problem that we flock to rumour and half-truths about our politicians, holding them to higher standards than we hold ourselves, feeding a scandal hungry media more ready to challenge personal failings than with policy failings.

 

the biggest problem with an acceptance that all politicians lie is that when one really does simply say whatever is most personally beneficial then there is not the outrage there should be about a politician that blatantly lies to the electorate.

 

It would behove us all to demand our politicians are truthful, that they are held to account for lying and that we are more circumspect about what we call a lie.  We all need to accept that we get the politicians we deserve and that simply sounding off on the internet is not engaging with the political process and does not strengthen democracy...

 

Doc

[TheDarkness]

Soooooo, decided to read up on 'cultural marxism' last night since it is the go-to snarl word for a lot of people right now.

 

First off, it's conspiracy theory, of that it is plain. Without a shadowy group of people enacting it, it becomes just "people changing culture", which is what every person alive has always done every generation one might care to research.

 

Second off, don't do a google search on it, for your own sanity's state. The first page that came up for me had one interesting article written by some guy who clearly is a marxist that apparently would not have shown up anywhere near the top except that rational wiki and another site sourced off his article, which drew the crazies to the comments section to argue poorly against this person.

 

However, the first page had, if memory serves correctly, something like four clearly white nationalist frequented pages, though not overtly so in the sense that they were labelled as such, but clearly so the moment one read the comments and the author's responses to those comments.

 

And, the first page had stormfront.

 

Additionally, urban dictionary also had their page on the first page of the google search, it surprised me how many downvotes any definition got that mocked the conspiracy theory basis of most usage of cultural marxism.

 

So, a sizable proportion of the first results for a search on 'cultural marxism' is closely tied to white nationalism, and yet this phrase is being used everywhere now.

 

I feel like I'm living in the twilight zone, and, like a man in the Rod Serling classics, I need a scotch.

[TheDarkness]

I really need to stop informing myself.

 

So, a short list of things that us liberals are conspiring, undoubtedly with the Jewish Banking Elite(the ever present JBE, or Jews Behaving Evilly) and, of course, the Marxists. I'm not sure where the Rockefellers fall in all this, there's apparently a chart.

 

It's important to note that this is all possible, the entire cultural marxist conspiracy theory, because of the near absolute power of liberals, despite, you know, almost always not actually controlling all of anything, including the media.

 

• Destruction of the family
• Decline of small towns
• Destruction of Christian Values
• Multiculturalism
• Feminism
• Anything they might see as sexual depravity in culture, see destruction of the family

The main problem is, first, the Frankfurt school, who did talk a lot about this sort of 'cultural marxism', were viewed as largely ineffectual, and were. Yes, ideas of theirs had some traction, but not their cultural marxism, as in, deconstruction of the culture as a plot to execute.

 

The whole theory depends on their supposed strangle hold on academia, something they didn't even have in their own time, and certainly don't now. Hell, my degree is related to China, I had a lot of Chinese professors, and the number of avowed marxists in my field is not many at all, and for the few I can think of there is strong reason to doubt were actually communists in any real sense of the word, but more Chinese nationals or Chinese immigrants who, for practical purposes related to family back home, expressed some nationalism.

 

Outside of my department, the marxist presence is negligible. Seriously negligible.

 

In seven years, I never once had the much claimed professor who demands some brand of political thought(of course, it must be leftist thought, because you know, we control the world) and punishes other brands. In fact, every professor, which included numerous political science professors, international business and finance professors, history professors, philosophy, every one went far out of their way to encourage debate of different views and went far out of their way to not make their view even part of the class, only presenting the information that could be relied upon and arguments and counter-arguments of all sides.

 

The problem with the idea of cultural marxism, any claim of a movement of political correctness(and it's worth noting that after the Civil War, politicians were rather upset that they couldn't run campaigns based in part on the n word because it became socially unacceptable), is that they ascribe the cause to social changes to a conspiracy and ignore all other potential causes.

 

So, affirmative action is a cultural marxist conspiracy to enslave minorities on welfare and destroy white culture, instead of being a counter to the Jim Crow era and conditions in the North for blacks that meant that they had historically had education and property routinely denied them or taken away through a variety of means, and so a mere affirmation of their rights would mean abject poverty for many and a continuation of their exploitation on a grand scale.

 

There is no room in the mythology of cultural marxism for the idea that such a result could have come from people believing in the rights of all Americans and seeking to implement those rights in a way that was actually effective.

 

There is likewise no room in that mythology to realize that the opposition to affirmative action, it's very mores and arguments, came almost wholesale from the pro-segregationists. And that school of thought is never treated the same way as the Frankfurt school, any shared idea with the Frankfurt school, according to the idea of there being a cultural marxist conspiracy, is proof of the conspiracy, but any shared idea with pro-segregationists IS NOT proof of a pro-segregationist conspiracy. This inconsistency is throughout the whole conspiracy theory.

 

The cultural marxist conspiracy must be pushing gay marriage, because there is clearly no foundational political document that states that everyone has the same rights. On this end, they are further stuck with their static interpretation of some traditional culture that was uniform, consistent, and largely unchanging, in short, a culture that never existed anywhere, ever* when they attempt to enforce a definition of marriage that is not the same as any era, and that omits important imbalances within many previous forms of marriage that were acceptable to many during those times, but totally at odds with the Constitution.

 

It is not possible that it is not a conspiracy, but a predictable pressure between having a Constitution that says all have the same rights, and moving from a culture that disagreed. It is not possible that there are economic advantages to different groups having those same rights. Other, reality based answers are thrown to the side in order to accept a conspiracy.

 

The death of small towns. This one is especially annoying. Globalism, not meaning some conspiracy, but the simple fact that technology has made it so that economic relations with other countries as producers and consumers drives much economic competition, means that a developed country is not going to be the manufacturing center of the world. Further, the move to corporate farms, and their dominance, which is most certainly not populated by leftist marxists, meant a drying up of opportunities, loss of farm land to economically powerful entities, etc.

 

It saddens me, to be honest, because what these people are offered politically and economically is little from the democrats, and nothing more salient than culture wars and conspiracy theories by the Republicans, neither of which solves their issues, because both parties, and the tea party, and the alt-right, have absolutely nothing to offer, but the Dems avoid the issue and offer pork spending, while the others offer pork spending and 'they're trying to destroy your culture'.

 

Trump and his ilk are unwise to seek to exploit them further. There will come a time where culture wars do nothing for them. My time in China has taught me that propaganda has a diminishing return. Tiananmen Square is something many Chinese can tell most Americans more about than the Americans know. They just pretend not to know.

 

The idea of cultural marxism, an idea espoused by an ineffectual group whose ideas were accepted by very few wholesale, requires ignoring all other factors having any role in those changes in culture, in flagrant disregard that such changes have always happened. They ignore that long before the Frankfurt school, politicians and public speakers had to parse their words, and so, magically, political correctness is somehow different than post Civil War leaders not being able to run campaigns on "black people are coming for the women!" (And, post reconstruction, returning right back to doing so).

 

They omit any economic causes for multiculturalism, instead and again putting on a conspiracy theory. (It's important to note here, Slavery and the Jim Crow era hurt the South economically, the first by trapping the region in a cycle of buy land, buy slaves, buy more land and slaves that dropped wages for non-slaves, which made the North more attractive for workers wishing to build a life, which led in part to the industrial superiority of the non-slave states, the second by making the region unattractive for industry so that it could not attract a lot of investment, and again, the pitiful wages offered black southerners drove down wages, which again made moving there unattractive).

 

*For an example of culture always changing, Confucian China is considered by many to be the longest running, most stable conservative culture in history. Any examination of the culture itself, however, shows constant change throughout.

[Old Man]

[Armitage]

Congress voted to put their outside ethics monitor under their own control.

 

 

 

House Republicans voted 119-74 Monday night in favor of a proposal that would gut Congress' outside ethics watchdog and remove its independence.

 

Republican Virginia Rep. Bob Goodlatte's proposal would place the independent Office of Congressional Ethics -- an initial watchdog for House members but without power to punish members -- under oversight of those very lawmakers.

 

The proposal would bar the panel from reviewing any violation of criminal law by members of Congress, requiring that it turn over any complaint to the House Ethics Committee or refer the matter to an appropriate federal law enforcement agency. The House Ethics Committee would also have the power to stop an investigation at any point and bars the ethics office from making any public statements about any matters or hiring any communications staff.

And the ethics office would no longer be able to accept or investigate any anonymous reports of alleged wrongdoing by members of Congress.

[DasBroot]

REM should come out of retirement and perform one last time at the inauguration.  Not sure if they should close with "Everbody Hurts" or "It's The End of the World As We Know It".  They just have to say they're going to perform "Shiny Happy People" beforehand.

 

Poetic justice since he likes to use their music without permission anyways

 

(In all seriousness I hope he's a good president.  The fact he hasn't been able to keep his hands off twitter after the election, like he said he would, isn't a fantastic start.)

[TheDarkness]

Given his cabinet, the best hope would be that he's an ineffectual president.

[DasBroot]

New Republican Congress reverses ethics move after outcry

 

An interesting development.  Trump told them to find something better to do in a twitter rant and they dumped it.

 

We know from campaigning that he's not afraid to go against his party (he's a RINO anyways - Republican in Name Only) - but is this a hint that his social media rants may have pull with them?

[Old Man]

“These smug pilots have lost touch with regular passengers like us. Who thinks I should fly the plane?”

[Old Man]

New Republican Congress reverses ethics move after outcry

 

An interesting development.  Trump told them to find something better to do in a twitter rant and they dumped it.

 

We know from campaigning that he's not afraid to go against his party (he's a RINO anyways - Republican in Name Only) - but is this a hint that his social media rants may have pull with them?

 

Only if it threatens to have real consequences for the GOP Congress.  I expect Hair Furor to mostly rubber stamp whatever Congress attempts to do over the next two years, except for occasional Twitter outbursts like this one.

[BoloOfEarth]

I had to Like Old Man's post, if for no other reason than Hair Furor.   Hadn't heard that one yet.

[Pariah]

New Republican Congress reverses ethics move after outcry

 

An interesting development.  Trump told them to find something better to do in a twitter rant and they dumped it.

 

We know from campaigning that he's not afraid to go against his party (he's a RINO anyways - Republican in Name Only) - but is this a hint that his social media rants may have pull with them?

 

This actually gives me some hope. It seems just barely possible to me that Trump's as sick of the current GOP agenda as the rest of us, at least in some points. Time will tell.

[Lord Liaden]

Love them or hate them, Trump's tweets garner immediate widespread public attention, which politicians ignore at their peril.

 

To me, this just reinforces what I realized during the election: nobody has any solid idea of what a Trump presidency will entail. "Unpredictable" is an understatement for this man. All I expect is that the times will be interesting. In the sense of the old Chinese curse.

[Armitage]

This actually gives me some hope. It seems just barely possible to me that Trump's as sick of the current GOP agenda as the rest of us, at least in some points. Time will tell.

 

 

Well, the impression I got was that he was fine with them doing it...later.  He wants their first priority to be tax reform and health care, i.e. tax cuts and repealing Obamacare.

[TheDarkness]

If he's fine with doing them later, which is what I also think is the message here, does this mean he's now going to think before he speaks, or would that let down the "he says what everyone thinks" crowd?

 

For the record, I've looked everywhere for my inner Hair Furor, and can't seem to find him anywhere.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Well, the impression I got was that he was fine with them doing it...later.  He wants their first priority to be tax reform and health care, i.e. tax cuts and repealing Obamacare.

"Listen, Congresscritters, I'm the lion and you're the jackals. After I devour my fill of the country, you get to gnaw what's left of the rotting flesh off the bones."

[Pariah]

It occurs to me that maybe this was just Congressional Republicans' way of assessing the length of their tether--just how far can they go before even Trump calls them out on it? Before this, they had no idea, because nobody really knows what's in Donald Trump's head. Now, at least, they have some idea how much is too much.

 

I'm reminded, for some reason, of an exchange from the musical Chess:

 

Molokov: The man is utterly mad! You're playing a lunatic!

 

The Russian: That's the problem. He's a brilliant lunatic. You can't tell which way he'll jump. Like his game, he's impossible to analyze. You can't dissect him, predict him -- which of course means he's not a lunatic at all.

 

(It's also possible that I'm just overthinking all of this, too.)

[csyphrett]

There was a huge out cry to go with Trump's tweet. Maybe they did it because he said something, maybe they did it because a bunch of watchdogs, Dems, and others said What is wrong with you

CES

[BoloOfEarth]

I do find it worrisome that one of the first moves by the Republicans, in anticipation of controlling both the White House and Congress, was to try removing the ethics watchdog independence.  It's like someone who, before leaving on a cruise with his wife, decides to double her life insurance policy.  Makes me wonder what's planned for the near future.

[Hermit]

Damn you, Congress! You made me agree with Trump!

 

Darn you all to heck!

[Kaspar Hauser]

Hello. I used to post here years ago under my own name, but for privacy reasons I've chosen a new handle. Anyway, while I disagree with the implied fatalism regarding voting in this article, my own experience resonates with the author's comparison of what many Americans (and many others around the world) are going through in the wake of the Trump presidency to a collective psychotic break: http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/01/03/stripped-of-false-realities-americans-political-psychotic-break/

 

While the material consequences of the new regime will likely be too ghastly to contemplate, I think that there is also a profound psychological threat posed by this mutation of American politics. I think that it will be important to understand this threat and to commit to working with one another to restore a sense of meaning, hope, and personal and collective power. Despair and panic are profound temptations, and they can easily be exploited to push through vicious policies that people would organize quickly to resist in normal times. The only effective remedy to these feelings, I think, lies in the hard, gruelling machinery of compassion: in an age of triumphant and bipartisan cynicism and contempt we need to relearn the skills and virtues that separate compassion from mere sympathy and that instill courage in hearts stricken by horror.

 

I've found this book to be helpful in my own attempts to wrap my head around compassion: https://www.amazon.com/Twelve-Steps-Compassionate-Karen-Armstrong/dp/0307742881

[womble]

So Ford are rethinking their decisions on where to manufacture cars, at least partially because of the anticipated favourable business environment in the US under The Trump.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38497898

 

Is he going to be able to perform the miracle of returning industrial capacity to the States? 700 jobs doesn't seem like many. Is $1million invested per job a reasonable return or is Ford gettin' all poh-liddical?

[Old Man]

I do find it worrisome that one of the first moves by the Republicans, in anticipation of controlling both the White House and Congress, was to try removing the ethics watchdog independence.  It's like someone who, before leaving on a cruise with his wife, decides to double her life insurance policy.  Makes me wonder what's planned for the near future.

 

The GOP is the party of Shock Doctrine.  Trump's cabinet includes people who have publicly called for the dissolution of the very departments they now control.  His Treasury secretary personally profited from illegal foreclosures on ordinary homeowners during the housing crisis.  I think repealing the ACA and ending Social Security are the bare minimum of what these guys are going to try. 

 

tl;dr: Bend over and prepare your ____: Congress is coming in dry.

[Kaspar Hauser]

So Ford are rethinking their decisions on where to manufacture cars, at least partially because of the anticipated favourable business environment in the US under The Trump.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38497898

 

Is he going to be able to perform the miracle of returning industrial capacity to the States? 700 jobs doesn't seem like many. Is $1million invested per job a reasonable return or is Ford gettin' all poh-liddical?

 

I think he's lying about his role in this decision. http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trump-keeps-claiming-credit-jobs-he-had-nothing-do