Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[Michael Hopcroft]

I find this song very comforting and inspiring at a time like this.

 

 

It goes from stating the problems that result from people and societies giving in to the temptations to hate. But then, in the incredible final verse, it gives one of the best descriptions of agape you will find in popular music. This lyric must have really appealed to Elton John, especially as a member of an oft-oppressed sexual minority. It describes why we need love to make sense of the world and to bring ourselves to action in the face of injustice.

 

The only thing we have to hate is Hate Itself.

[Badger]

I've come to think hate isn't actually a bad thing, if (and likely only if) you limit it to certain actions.

[Kaspar Hauser]

The song is beautiful, Michael. I think that what is happening to me is an intense activation of the flight/freeze response in reaction to a situation I feel at an utter loss to fight...that is, the degeneration of the US into a monstrously corrupt terror state comparable to those it sponsored throughout Latin America in the late 20th Century, and the effect that will have on Canada. If I can figure out how to soothe that prefrontal cortex-bypassing, amygdala-level response, I may be able to survive this.

 

I have been away from this forum for far too long. It's nice to be on a discussion board that hasn't been targeted by Russian Agitprop trolls. If you want to get a sense of what I mean, go to the site I'm about to link to. It's Canada's premiere progressive discussion board. Look for the thread "The New Russophobia". It will creep the hell out of you. http://rabble.ca/babble/active-topics

[TheDarkness]

The song is beautiful, Michael. I think that what is happening to me is an intense activation of the flight/freeze response in reaction to a situation I feel at an utter loss to fight...that is, the degeneration of the US into a monstrously corrupt terror state comparable to those it sponsored throughout Latin America in the late 20th Century, and the effect that will have on Canada. If I can figure out how to soothe that prefrontal cortex-bypassing, amygdala-level response, I may be able to survive this.

 

I have been away from this forum for far too long. It's nice to be on a discussion board that hasn't been targeted by Russian Agitprop trolls. If you want to get a sense of what I mean, go to the site I'm about to link to. It's Canada's premiere progressive discussion board. Look for the thread "The New Russophobia". It will creep the hell out of you. http://rabble.ca/babble/active-topics

It's funny, in a sad way. There's a forum that a friend of mine runs, I have no idea why he still keeps it up, but it used to be well frequented. Anyway, it's turned into about eight guys spouting alt-right nonsense(there used to be hundreds on there at any one time, long ago). I know of three such forums, the common denominator in those was a dead forum gets taken over by these folk, the few remaining members are generally assuming these people are mentally ill, usually they were members before, but now feel that they must speak out, speaking out largely involving posting a lot of youtube videos that make Alex Jones look perfectly reasonable.

 

These sorts of forums had their heyday some years back. Taking them over is high effort with little reward.

 

That said, that forum you posted did reveal this gold in the conversation about the 'new Russophobia':

 

"New Russophobia has 12% more antioxidants."

 

As someone who lives in China, I will say one thing. Propaganda, used blatantly for long enough, works perfectly against itself, and makes the general populace exceedingly able to mock it mercilessly in ways the propagandists can't understand. The Chinese have turned it into high art.

 

Everyone pictures propaganda in the form of Germany in WWII, but the reality is, that's not how it looks later. Later, it becomes a sad affair that no one believes anymore, and cannot directly mock, and so you end up with a million in jokes that the whole country knows.

 

I think the key to this forum is actual moderation to keep the key focus alive. Light moderation is a fool's paradise when there are actually people seeking to disrupt a forum.

[Lord Liaden]

I grew up during the heart of the Cold War. My whole generation lived with the constant fear in the back of our minds that our world could disappear in nuclear fire at any moment. I remember one Sunday morning waking up to a rushing sound building above my house. My first thought was, "The missiles are coming down." (Yes, I realize now I wouldn't hear a falling missile. I had just woken up, cut me some slack.) I hoped I was near ground zero so I would die quickly. Then the sound resolved into the familiar chop of a low-flying helicopter. But that was where our minds were in those days.

 

It didn't happen. It could have. There was a lot of luck, and behind-the-scenes work, behind that outcome, but it didn't happen. We found the wisdom not to destroy ourselves. Climate change is a real and great threat, but most of the world is awake to that threat now, and I believe we'll find a way to survive that too. A small group of ignorant people will not sink all of us, even if we handed them the power to do so. We'll work to not let them.

 

It will be messy, but the human race has been through many messes. The Trump administration won't be as big a mess to clean up as some others.

[Lord Liaden]

It hit me recently that Donald Trump is cinematic Tony Stark, before his origin as Iron Man. Well, minus the genius, wit, and charisma. But his self-centeredness, sense of entitlement, and disregard for the consequences of his actions, are pretty much the same. Although I'll give one other point to pre-hero Tony over the Donald: Stark didn't give a damn what anyone thought of him.

[TheDarkness]

It hit me recently that Donald Trump is cinematic Tony Stark, before his origin as Iron Man. Well, minus the genius, wit, and charisma. But his self-centeredness, sense of entitlement, and disregard for the consequences of his actions, are pretty much the same. Although I'll give one other point to pre-hero Tony over the Donald: Stark didn't give a damn what anyone thought of him.

I actually think that would be a great mock twitter account. Tony Stark, just constantly attempting to give Trump lessons on witty.

 

#notalltrustfunders

[Kaspar Hauser]

The Alt Right movement is profoundly disturbing, but you can see the logic driving it. As economic conditions become more difficult, as hyper capitalism continues to dissolve communities, as the wellsprings of meaning and hope dry up, as people are excluded from higher education, and as stimulus-driven entertainment continues to usurp reality, it makes sense that people will lose access to their nobler potentials and will begin to disintegrate both psychologically and politically. Plato talked about this: personal virtue requires harmony among the appetitive, willful, and rational faculties, which in turn requires a comparable balance in one's society. As that harmony is lost, it becomes harder to aspire to virtue and people become increasingly enslaved to their "master passions," or addictions (taking the term in its broadest sense to include ideological fanaticism). People lost to their master passions create further chaos in their society, leading to more suffering and, ultimately, a yearning for a tyrant to impose order. The tyrant is typically a person utterly subjugated to his master passions, and the order he imposes is pathological, but his psychologically disintegrated subjects are blind to his failings. Maybe it's just my own depressive state talking, but as economic growth rates continue to regress to 19th Century historical norms, and as ecological collapse proceeds and geopolitical chaos worsen, I can only see the problem of brain-dead right-wing authoritarianism getting exponentially worse.

 

The internet seems to accelerate the process by, in Chomsky's words, lending itself to cult formation. No one can really educate themselves on-line, but for people deprived of a decent education and living in an increasingly image-driven post-literate society the Internet and its crazy quilt of factoids and conspiracy theories is all they have with which to design a worldview. And now we have a President who loves Infowars, is skeptical about vaccinations, and thinks climate change is a Chinese hoax. This nightmare is moving really fast.

 

It's like watching a zombie apocalypse erupting all around me. In fact, I wonder if the modern cinematic zombie expresses exactly this peril. The Haitian zombie was a mythological analogue for the hyper-exploited producer, the soulless slave of a monstrous economic machine. The modern cinematic zombie seems to represent the hyper-exploited consumer, the atomized individual bereft of any rational community or psychological harmony, enslaved to his master passions to the point of complete ethical collapse.

 

It's no wonder I'm tempted by such intense panic. I just can't see this getting any better in my lifetime.

[Old Man]

It will be messy, but the human race has been through many messes. The Trump administration won't be as big a mess to clean up as some others.

 

Agreed, but that doesn't change the fact that the Trump administration is a giant unforced error on the scale of the second invasion of Iraq.  I'd like to see way more two-steps-forward and way less one-step-back.

[Kaspar Hauser]

I think that this administration will prove to be far, far worse than the second invasion of Iraq.  I don't think we have anything in our lifetimes to compare this nightmare to. 

[Iuz the Evil]

I think that this administration will prove to be far, far worse than the second invasion of Iraq. I don't think we have anything in our lifetimes to compare this nightmare to.

I don't know, I've had a bunch of truly horrific stuff happen in my lifetime. Older posters would pre-date civil rights in the US (Lynchings, segregation, etc.), the cold war, multiple genocide campaigns (Sudan, Bosnia, etc.), the Great Recession, the Dot Com bubble burst, and more.

 

There is a ton of awful stuff in the world, while I'm confident in the ability of the incoming administration to make things worse. Worst event of my lifetime is a high bar indeed, they'll have to work for it.

[Kaspar Hauser]

The transformation of the US into a terror state resembling Pinochet's Chile would probably do the trick.

[Iuz the Evil]

The transformation of the US into a terror state resembling Pinochet's Chile would probably do the trick.

I don't believe that is possible at this point. A terror state? Maybe a sponsor of terror but we've done that a while.

 

Racism will (has) go up as such individuals become emboldened. Our strategic partnerships will get trashed. Economy will tank. The poor and lower middle income will bear the brunt of the policies domestically. Russia will gain ground globally. Mexico may become a narco state in response to hostile US policy. Civil liberties will be at least somewhat reduced in the areas of race, reproductive rights, and gender equality. Environmental protections will be rolled back.

 

There's a ton of truly awful stuff going to probably go down. But bag men coming in the night for the liberal opposition a la Pinochet? I think that's not on the likely list. They've got plenty of influence just within the rules without going there anyway.

[Lord Liaden]

I still have faith in the inherent decency of the American people as a whole. There's a limit to how much obvious outright injustice they'll tolerate. And one thing's for sure, if you try to push Americans in a direction they don't want to go, they push back. Hard.

[Kaspar Hauser]

I hope so. My fear is that the ones prepared to push hardest are the angry men with computers and guns who form the backbone of Trump's support. I think that they will be the first to go after Trump's tweeted targets with both doxxing and physical violence.

 

I think it is very likely that we will see extrajudicial killings of dissidents and critics in the near future, especially as his asinine policies produce an economic collapse and he imposes martial law to secure his position.

 

Americans may be sturdy people, but physical terror tends to shut down dissent awfully fast. He will have all the means he needs to produce a lot of that in less than 72 hours from now. There's a good reason why Bill Maher is frightened for his own safety.

[Simon]

Enough with the histrionics.  Please read the rules for this thread (and understand them enough to abide by them) before posting again.

[Lawnmower Boy]

I still have faith in the inherent decency of the American people as a whole. There's a limit to how much obvious outright injustice they'll tolerate. And one thing's for sure, if you try to push Americans in a direction they don't want to go, they push back. Hard.

Foreign observer chiming in: The inherent decency of the American people is being heavily underestimated here. "American exceptionalism" is overstated, and the country has been here before, notably under Andrew Jackson. (And remember that it wasn't long ago that people were selling Jackson as one of the great Presidents. I don't think that Arthur Schlesinger was right to do so, but I will point ouot that Jackson, like Trump, gave off all sorts of signals that he wasn't presenting, nor happy with, his birth hair and complexion. Read that how you will.)

 

What I mean by "overselling American exceptionalism" is that, globally, electoral politics show certain trends. Most voters are (self-identified) low-information voters. They do not follow politics, do not feel comfortable with their grasp of the issue, and perceive attempts to remedy that ignorance in much the same terms that they do a used car salesman's explanations of how cars work. Thus they follow certain simple rules in voting. They want to see regular turnover at the top, for example. They try to foresee the likely actions of the   person at the head of the ticke from obvious signs of character, for another. For a third, they drastically punish the incumbent party for economic downturns --pour encourager les autres, as they say.

 

Taking the first and third together, coming into the 2016 election from a long view, it looked like it was a Republican lock. Voters usually turn out the incumbent party at the end of an eight year term, and when they don't, the same-party successor (think Hoover, Bush the elder, Democrat-to-be-named-later in 1968, Truman in '52, with a huge asterisk) has a crippled Presidency. Plus, the next recession is overdue. If it hadn't struck by November of 2016 (goes the smart money), it will in 2016--2020. A Democratic victory in 2016, in other words, might almost be worse than a defeat, especially given redistricting in 2020. It's that context, I think, that best explains the inertial choice of the Democratic party for Hilary. You know, if she really wants it that bad, why not burnish the party's credentials by letting the woman have a turn. Various inscrutable foreigners have been through this. It's hard to tell "turn" from "fall." 

 

Now, another place in which American exceptionalism is overblown is the radicalisation of the Republican Party. Because, honestly, that's what happens with no-hoper parties of the opposition. Knowing that they will never hold the power to actually carry through with their promises, they succumb to the temptation to promise everything, and a pony, too, to their most highly motivated supporters. You see that in your own Green Party for example. Now, the problem here is that the Republican Party, writ large, isn't a no-hoper party. It's the alternating governing party in a two-party system. The trick is, though, that your Constitution disassociates the House of Representatives from the Presidency. The House is non-responsive to the disciplinary constraints of power because it is never going to exercise power. The normal course of American politics is for a new, two-term President to be swept into office on a wave of change that brings along a majority in both houses. The new President launches a signature initiative, gets it done in the first two years, and then gears up to probably lose the House and possibly Senate, after which the President retreats into a veto-wielding, negotiating, executive-power exploiting reactive mode. That's your Obama of the last six years --basically trying to set things up so that the House Republicans transition from "repeal the ACA" to "The ACA is terrible, and the portions are so small!"

 

To the extent that this "normal" process is breaking down currently, or, alternatively that America can't afford "normal" politics right now, the conclusion has to be that the fundamental irresponsibility of the House has to be broken. They have to be made to act like parents, not children.

 

This is the point in this wall of text where I finally brink up my other voting choice signal, the character of the candidate. 2016 was supposed to be the Republicans' year, and the GOp was said to have a "deep bench" going into it. But then there appeared on the scene one Donald Trump, of whom it can be safely said that no American is better known to the American people in terms of character. Apart from the very young and naive, and a few people with particularly strong powers of rationalisation who probably know the truth at some level, there can be no doubt who Donald Trump is. So, what the Heck, America?

 

But here's the thing: schools have a traditional exercise for teaching teenagers what it is like to be a parent. It's that whole have-to-take-care-of-an-egg thing.

Does it work? I don't know! But the American voter has handed the Congress an egg, told them to treat it like a real baby for four years (or however long Trump lasts), and is expecting to see results. 

[TheDarkness]

Lawnmower Boy for the win.

[Iuz the Evil]

Really strong post by Lawnmower Boy, agree on all points.

 

At the risk of smiting for mentioning moderation directly, I also appreciate Simon reminding us (myself included) of the rules. I apologize if I was contributing to any hyperbolic discussion. I appreciate that without a well moderated climate, things degenerate quickly.

[Sociotard]

Looks like Chelsea Manning got commuted, and that's one call Trump can't reverse. If Assange follows through with his offer, that will make for an interesting news cycle.

[Badger]

Well, I would get banned if I voiced what I am currently feeling towards Obama.  Military traitors should never be forgiven.

[Pattern Ghost]

She served far more time than others who committed similar offenses. At this point, time served is plenty IMO.

[Badger]

Well that just tells me we have been far too lenient in the past.

 

In any case, it doesn't change much (except for my view on the outgoing President-who is 2 days away from not having to give a damn)

[death tribble]

Well, I would get banned if I voiced what I am currently feeling towards Obama.  Military traitors should never be forgiven.

Really ?

What did Benedict Arnold do that was so bad ? My country never thought he was a bad guy.....

[Old Man]

Actually they did, when he was kicking ass fighting for the good guys. But then he married a British chick, and some other Americans screwed him over, so he went over to the loser side.