Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[Lord Liaden]

May I ask why the federal government should have a department of education? What does it do better than individual states when it comes to education? I'm not trying to be hostile and I don't have strong opinions one way or the other it's just that I keep hearing how vital it is to have a deprartment of education but not really any reasons other than a) of course we do and b ) we have to keep certain states in line.

 

States are not independent countries (even if some state governments would like to be). All citizens of a state are also citizens of the wider federation, and the federal government has a responsibility to ensure that basic education standards and curricula are comparable across all states. Not only for the principle of inherent fairness and equal opportunity; but so that the labor force has the mobility to go where the work is, with reasonable assurance by both the worker and employer that their qualifications are transferable from state to state.

 

Personally, I believe in the principle of oversight, as a balancing factor to help catch mistakes and abuses from lower levels of government. I don't see it as a philosophical distinction between state governments' and federal government's right to deliver education. I mean, what inherent reason is there for a state to dictate to cities, counties, etc. what their local education policies should be?

[Kaspar Hauser]

I think that if you want to understand Trump's appeal, you need to understand the psychology of right wing authoritarianism.

 

 

Robert Altemeyer, the world’s leading researcher on the subject, states that right wing authoritarians score highly on the “Dangerous World scale.” The scale measures the degree to which a person sees the world as hostile and unsafe. Altemeyer writes that right-wing authoritarians are more frightened than most people. They live in terror of social chaos, and that fear dominates their thinking. He believes that they learned this fear from their parents, who constantly warned them that the world was on the brink of collapse. They were taught to perceive people different from themselves—people like homosexuals, radicals, atheists, and pornographers—as the harbingers of total societal disintegration. For authoritarians, every departure from traditional norms is a sign that perversion and corruption are dragging the world into total chaos.

 

Altemeyer has found that a person’s fear of a dangerous world is the best predictor of authoritarian aggression. The fear that non-authoritarians feel during national crises like the 9/11 terrorist attacks is something authoritarians feel all the time. They are in a constant state of suppressed panic even during times of relative peace and security.

 

Altemeyer’s research indicates that people who score high on measures of right-wing authoritarianism share three traits: a high degree of submission to the established, legitimate authorities in their society; high levels of aggression in the name of their authorities; and a high level of conventionalism, or adherence to traditional norms and values.

 

Authoritarians do poorly on tests of logic. If they agree with a conclusion they assume that the reasoning supporting it is valid, regardless of the quality of that reasoning. They have difficulty evaluating empirical evidence, and they often believe that utterly ambiguous facts conclusively prove the truth of their positions.

 

They have highly compartmentalized minds. Their ideas are poorly integrated with one another, they don’t scan for self-consistency as much as other people, and so they hold contradictory positions.  This compartmentalization leads to double standards: since their ideas don’t interact with one another, it’s easy for them to make use of any idea that can justify, after the fact, whatever they’ve decided to do and whatever position they’ve chosen to hold. Unsurprisingly, authoritarians are hypocrites. For example, they harshly condemn non-authoritarians for trying to use “political correctness” to silence free speech, but they themselves rarely hesitate to silence other people’s opinions. Authoritarians are blind to their own failings, which, of course, they can compartmentalize and avoid dealing with.

 

Despite their belief that they’re very honest with themselves, they’re quite defensive and steadfastly avoid unpleasant truths. They are also extremely ethnocentric. They’re constantly dividing people into members of in-groups and out-groups, and while they are extremely distrustful of and hostile towards out-groups they’re quite gullible towards people in their in-groups. Authoritarians have a deep need to belong, they value loyalty and group cohesion above almost all other considerations, and they treat those who question their leaders, for whatever reason, as traitors. Finally, they’re dogmatic: they possess an unchallengeable, unjustified certainty about their beliefs. The fact that they are often unable to defend those beliefs with convincing arguments means little to them, since they usually adopted their beliefs from trusted authorities, rather than having developed them on their own through a process of rational deliberation. 

 

Altemeyer asks, “Can you also sense from these items the energy, the commitment, the submission, and the zeal that authoritarian followers are ready to give their in-groups, and the satisfaction they would get from being a part of a vast, powerful movement in which everyone thought the same way? The common metaphor for authoritarian followers is a herd of sheep, but it may be more accurate to think of them as a colony of army ants.” These ants have the numbers to form very large colonies: Altemeyer estimates that between 20 and 25 percent of Canadians and Americans qualify as right-wing authoritarians.

 

Authoritarians are typically led by people who score high on measures of social dominance. Social dominators are intimidating, ruthless, and vengeful. They have nothing but contempt for compassion, and would much rather be feared than loved. They’re intoxicated by power, including the power to hurt other people in their drive to the top. Authoritarian followers, in contrast, aren’t terribly interested in acquiring power for themselves. Social dominators rarely have the kind of cognitive flaws seen in authoritarian followers, and so they’re very good at manipulating these followers, especially if they’re among the five to ten percent of dominators who also happen to score highly for right-wing authoritarianism.  Altemeyer calls such people “double highs”.

 

He writes, “When social dominators are in the driver’s seat, and right-wing authoritarians stand at their beck and call, unethical things appear much more likely to happen. True, sufficiently skilled social dominators served by dedicated followers can make the trains run on time. But you have to worry about what the trains may be hauling when dominators call the shots and (authoritarians followers) do the shooting. The trains may be loaded with people crammed into boxcars heading for death camps.

 

“And of course this lethal union is likely to develop in the real world. Authoritarian followers don’t usually try to become leaders. Instead they happily play subservient roles, and can be expected to especially enjoy working for social dominators, who will (you can bet your bottom dollar) take firm control of things, and who share many of the followers’ values and attitudes. The ‘connection’ connects between these two opposites because they attract each other like the north and south poles of two magnets. The two can then become locked in a cyclonic death spiral that can take a whole nation down with them.” 

 

You can find Altemeyer's book in its entirety at this link:

 

http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/TheAuthoritarians.pdf

 

If you want to understand the playbook that Bannon and Trump are working from, check out Naomi Wolf's “The End of America”, in which she outlines the steps in the shift from authoritarian but relatively open societies to autocratic and closed societies. The techniques for forcing this shift have evolved over the last century and are now studied by aspiring tyrants the world over. These methods are even part of the formal curriculum in places like the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, previously known as the School of the Americas, in Fort Benning, Georgia, where thousands of Latin Americans have been trained by the United States government in the most savage techniques of insurgency and counterinsurgency.

Fascists use ten basic strategies to shut down open societies. They invoke an external and internal threat in order to convince the population to grant their rulers extraordinary powers. They establish secret prisons that practice torture, prisons that are initially few in number and only incarcerate social pariahs, but that quickly multiply and soon imprison “opposition leaders, outspoken clergy, union leaders, well-known performers, publishers, and journalists.” They develop a paramilitary force that operates without legal restraint. They set up a system of intense domestic surveillance that gathers information for the purposes of intimidating and blackmailing citizens. They infiltrate, monitor, and disorganize citizens’ groups. They arbitrarily detain and release citizens, especially at borders. They target key individuals like civil servants, academics, and artists in order to ensure their complicity or silence. They take control of the press. They publicly equate dissent with treason. Finally, they suspend the rule of law. It's still an open question whether the regime will be able to achieve these goals in the United States in the face of the courts and concerted opposition from both the streets and the halls of power, but so far the signs aren't terribly hopeful. 

 

Or, if you want a more poetic take on the subject, you could check out "Where The Wasteland Ends" by Theodore Roszak, in which he writes, “A despairing humanity is not merely an unhappy humanity; it is an ugly humanity, ugly in its own eyes—dwarfed, diminished, stunted, and self-loathing. These are the buried sources of world war and despotic collectivism, of scapegoat hatred and exploitation. Ugly hates beautiful, hates gentle, hates loving, hates life. There is a politics of despair. Out of despair, people rush to the counterfeit community of the totalitarian state. Out of despair, they invent themselves fantastic enemies that must be punished for their own failure. Out of despair, they grow burdened with moral embarrassment for themselves, until they must at last despise and crucify the good which they are helpless to achieve. And that is the final measure of damnation: to hate the good precisely because we know it is good and know that its beauty calls our whole being into question.”

[Nolgroth]

Or maybe he's just compensating for something. He sure seemed to take issue with his "hand" size during the campaign.

 

Seriously. I have heard this same rhetoric, from both sides, whenever an opposition leader gets elected. When Bill Clinton was in office, the Right was up in arms about how he was going to destroy America. Instead he had sexual encounters with his staffer and got rich afterwards.  When George W. Bush was in office, the Left was all running around, waving their hands about he was simultaneously the stupidest man on Earth and yet somehow orchestrated the massive 9/11 attack in order to invade the Middle East. While there was a 9/11 and we did invade two sovereign nations, George W. Bush ended up getting rich. I hear Obama's net worth is a lot higher than when he stepped into office as well.

 

Trump is not Hitler. He doesn't have popular support (the vote tells us that), the courts are fighting him, Congress is leery of him and will support him only in matters that benefit their vision of the world, and the press (aside from Fox news which, again, is off/on in its support of him) is doing its level best to invalidate his entire presidency. Worst case scenario? Trump does a lot of damage to government structure, trashes the economy and pisses off a lot more people of foreign nationality. Four years go by and we get a Democrat in the White House because Trump soiled the good name of Republicans in the public eye and, depending on how vigorous Congress keeps Trump in check, we either get a loss of Republican seats across the Senate and House or we have a Democrat President alongside a Republican Congress.

 

Oh and Trump? His net worth will go up for what little time left he has before the Reaper comes a knockin'.  At least his family will have more money. He will probably even cinch the WPE (in the eyes of the Left) title from George W. Bush.

 

Not saying you shouldn't be watching out for bad things. I'm far more worried about Pence than I am Trump though. I actually pray (inasmuch as an atheist prays) that Trump lives through his term. Something seems very off about our current VP. 

[Old Man]

That's because our VP is a Dominionist. He's also put together an impressively far right record of governance. As I said during the primaries, Trump was far and away the least bad of all the GOP candidates. Though admittedly that was before the Russian ties came to light, it still holds, since Trump isn't also trying to impose a theocracy on the country.

[Lord Liaden]

One difference I see between Trump and Pence is the difference between unpredictable versus calculated. We don't know what Trump will do, because I believe he doesn't know himself. We may guess at what Pence will do based on his history as a governor; but IMO he's too slick to let us see what he's doing until it's too late to stop it. It's a matter of opinion as to which is potentially more dangerous.

[Joe Walsh]

It was telling to me that after Pence left Indiana the Republicans started undoing his policies. If that lot think he's goofy, then that's saying something!

[megaplayboy]

There's a photo circulating around the Internet that would shed some light on the vice president's position on LGBT rights and support for conversion therapy...if legit.

 

Spoiler: it's not. But it is amusing.

[Tom]

And the obligatory testing by North Korea...

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-38947451

 

(that didn't take long)

[Lord Liaden]

 

Trump is not Hitler. He doesn't have popular support (the vote tells us that)...

 

Hitler didn't have popular support, either. The Nazis never won over the majority of the German electorate. Hitler became German Chancellor as part of a coalition of minority parties. The circumstances under which someone gains power are less important than how they use it once they have it. That's what we need to be vigilant for.

[megaplayboy]

Trump's more like Kim Jong Un than Schickelgruber.

[aylwin13]

Trump's more like Kim Jong Un than Schickelgruber.

 

It's the hair, right?

[Nolgroth]

 

Hitler didn't have popular support, either. The Nazis never won over the majority of the German electorate. Hitler became German Chancellor as part of a coalition of minority parties. The circumstances under which someone gains power are less important than how they use it once they have it. That's what we need to be vigilant for.

 

My first response to this was very long-winded and ultimately agreed with you. Honestly I am just tired of all the "Chicken Little" op-ed pieces and non-stop media firestorm. There are checks and balances in place and they seem to be working just fine. As long as we keep an eye on things to make sure it stays that way, then I am not so worried about swastikas and jack-booted thugs parading down Main Street. But that same vigilance applies to any president IMO. Anybody that wants that office has to be part megalomaniac to begin with.

 

As far as the social upheaval that surrounds this presidency, I'm not 100% certain that it wasn't coming anyway. Trump certainly hasn't done much to play peacemaker, but he doesn't bear the sole responsibility of our contentious division either. I'm not sure where to lay blame or even if that is productive. What I do know is that we are splitting along ideological/political fault lines and I very much fear that much blood will flow before we in the US remember how much civil conflict sucks. I hope we can avert that but my hope is faint.

 

It could also be that I had a root canal and other dental work done today and the pain is dulling my wit (even more than usual). 

[Lord Liaden]

Root canal aside (for which you have my sympathy) , I don't think you're wrong. IMO President Trump is only a symptom of the unrest among the American public in recent years. He could never have succeeded in his bid for the office except as the culmination of contentious, confrontational, extremist politics which has been building up over this whole millennium, and has interacted synergisticly with the deep fault lines which have always existed throughout American society.

 

I don't anticipate outright civil war, but I won't be surprised if we see Vietnam-scale upheavals before things settle down. It may be that kind of catharsis is needed periodically.

[Kaspar Hauser]

I think the difference between the Vietnam era and today is the rapidly growing divide between rich and poor and the commensurate immiseration of the working class. In the Vietnam era there was at least some realistic hope of economic security and that your children would have a better life than you have enjoyed.  That's all gone now, especially since the Great Recession and in the face of environmental degeneration, an ever-growing refugee crisis, automation, the dissolution of real journalism and the ascendance of propaganda-laden Internet trash journalism.  I think the world looks a lot more like it did in the 1930s following the 1929 stock market crash, minus the vast unused productive capacity that era had waiting in reserve.  As the election of a kleptocratic porn-president demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt, the world is being strip-mined of its moral capital as thoroughly as its natural capital.  

 

For a long time liberal democracy seemed to be the best political environment for capitalist expansion, but the Asian models strongly suggest that isn't the case anymore.  If anything resembling an equitable and democratic social order comes out of this, it will be due to forces outside the limited boundaries of my intellect and imagination, because I just can't see it right now.

 

On the bright side: thank God for effective anti-depressants.  My apologies for my preceding histrionics: I was in a deep depressive state and I wasn't thinking rationally.  Sorry for subjecting all of you to that.

[Iuz the Evil]

I thought it might be interesting to look at the 2017 marchers compared to their 2009 counter parts. Really speaks to the polarization noted earlier in this thread, similar in some ways, different in others, but large groups of folks who feel disenfranchised can be a real problem for a majority party, whoever that might be.

[Pariah]

Great thoughts, Nolgroth, Lord Laiden, Kaspar Hauser, and Iuz. I think you gentle have a pretty good handle on what's happening in the country today. Probably a better handle than most of the people who are actually making the decisions on the country today, which is a scary thought.

 

I've been trying to figure out how it got to be this bad. When did we shift to this paradigm of "I'd rather do nothing at all, or something actively destructive, than work with the other side"? It seems to me it didn't used to be this way.

 

To my mind, it began in earnest when House Republicans decided to press forward with an impeachment of President Clinton that they knew they had no chance of winning. This irritated Democrats, of course, and along with the feeling they'd been cheated out of the 2000 election, energized the Party to oppose GWB whenever possible. The feeling they'd been conned into supporting invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan certainly didn't help. This is where the inter-Party name-calling really began to intensify, I think.

 

Then President Obama came along, campaigning on "Change" and "Hope", and carrying the implicit message that the Republican Party were warmongering profiteers that no linger cared about the common people. He promised at his inauguration to unite the country again, but followed up with a raft of policy decisions that further alienated anyone who didn't already agree with him. The Tea Party midterm victories in 2010 fouther cemented the divide between the Left and the Right, and Republican obstructionism became the norm. Obama turned to his phone and his pen, leaving some to feel that he no linger had any interest in healing the country, but only in protecting his agenda and his legacy.

 

Sadly, all of this left us so screwed up that we, as a nation, decided it was a good idea to elect someone like Donald Trump as President--helped, no doubt, by the perception that the only other viable option was to elect someone like Hillary Clinton. And there we have it: an election where everyone loses.

 

That's how I feel about it, anaway. It's possible that I'm completely off base here. I'm an actual scientist, not a political scientist.

 

In any case, I'm not sure how we fix it. But fix it we must--of that I am absolutely certain.

[Nolgroth]

There were many factors involved. You don't get messed up this bad with just one instance. The Tea Party and far Left opposition are symptoms of a larger problem. Now, I am not the most politically deft person on these boards. I freely admit that. All of my observations are simply "common horse sense" kinds of observations. I also may be looking at the past through some serious rose tint, but as I recall, the world got angry somewhere around the mid-1990's and that anger has been simmering and building pressure since then. It might have existed before then, but I didn't notice the sense of underlying tension until I was halfway through my Army enlistment. I could go through and suggest reasons but ultimately, the cause is less important than a solution.

[Old Man]

...

[dmjalund]

...

Gesuntheit

[BoloOfEarth]

In any case, I'm not sure how we fix it.

 

 

Ripley:  I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure. 

[Kaspar Hauser]

I've often thought that the best metaphor for our social order is methamphetamine addiction. Trump's election has only reinforced the connection.

 

Consider that crystal meth use and industrialization are simply strategies for pursuing unlimited productivity within limited living systems.  The difference is one of scale: whereas crystal meth is meant to increase the productivity of the human brain, industrialization targets the planet’s biosphere.  In both cases, the enhanced productivity is an illusion created by accounting methods that selectively focus on the acceleration of narrow domains while ignoring degeneration in the overall system. 

               

Crystal meth, the demon is a powerful stimulant.  It gives users a burst of euphoria and energy while reducing hunger and fatigue. Besides numbing the pain of the human condition, the drug lets users get more done in a day, bolsters their concentration, and helps them lose weight.  In our highly competitive world, crystal meth promises an edge that’s hard to come by elsewhere.

               

Unfortunately, this edge carries a severe price.  Tolerance develops quickly, so users have to constantly raise the amount they put into their bodies to achieve the desired results.  Prolonged use damages nerve terminals in the dopamine-containing areas of the brain.  This produces anxiety and confusion, as well as psychotic symptoms like paranoia, aggression, delusions, and auditory hallucinations. There’s evidence that the drug can trigger schizophrenia in predisposed individuals, and strokes aren’t uncommon among chronic users.  Wrapped up in crystal meth’s delights, by the time users notice the price they’re paying they’re probably already hooked.

               

The deeper that hook sinks, the more time the addict spends wriggling.  Users find themselves spending all their energy getting their next dose and managing their growing misery.  Their lives fall into disrepair.  They stop learning new skills, and begin losing their old ones.

               

If they give up the drug, they have to go through a period of vicious withdrawal and exhaustion.  The longer they put off this reckoning, the worse the reckoning will be, and there’s no guarantee of a full recovery.  Injuries inflicted by this drug may not heal, and the strength it steals—strength desperately needed by the recovering addict—may never return.

               

In trying to escape their limitations, these addicts soar briefly before plunging into the abyss.  The higher they fly, the deeper and wider the chasm opens beneath them.

               

The pattern is similar with industrialization.

               

Pre-industrial societies distrust surplus production, and strive to avoid it.  For example, the practice of sacrifice in traditional agrarian societies usually had less to do with winning the favour of wrathful deities than with eliminating the surpluses produced by unusually bountiful harvests.  Potlatch ceremonies served a similar purpose.  By avoiding surpluses, traditional societies taught their members that free lunches simply don’t exist, and that short-term bursts of productivity tempt long-term costs—costs that are often initially hidden from view.

               

In contrast, industrial economies depend upon surplus production.   We take it for granted that our economies need to “grow”—that is, to increase their surplus production each year.  This growth depends on rapidly advancing technologies, expanding markets, highly differentiated labour pools, and feverish consumption.  Each of these requirements increases our collective resemblance to the crystal meth addict.

               

Our dependence on technological development and market expansion encourages us to dig blindly into fragile, finely-tuned ecosystems for the resources needed to feed the engine of consumption.  Just as the energy crystal meth steals from the user’s brain is returned as toxic levels of dopamine, we return industrially processed resources to the planet in the form of ecologically poisonous waste. 

               

Labour differentiation may build our skills in certain areas, but only by reducing the incentive and time needed to develop overall competence.  In the same way that the crystal meth user’s time and effort is lost in service to the drug, ours is lost in service to the industrial economy. We’re just as incompetent and immature in comparison with our pre-industrial counterparts as chronic crystal meth users are in comparison to non-addicts.

               

Finally, our enflamed desires, without which consumerism would collapse, resemble the euphoric delirium of the methamphetamine high.  The delirium’s worst among the wealthy.  Their position in the economic order inflates their egos beyond all measure and lets them enjoy pleasures most of us will never know.  The less-wealthy, from the middle classes down to the most impoverished, vicariously participate in this indulgence through immersion in a torrential stream of media-driven ideology and fantasy.

               

This generates what can only be called a mass psychosis.  To keep our desires boiling, our economy encases us in a media universe designed to exploit our dreams and nightmares, our yearnings and terrors, in increasingly sophisticated ways.  Our infinitely-layered media institutions are like a psychological maze of funhouse mirrors.  We apply much of our ingenuity to enlarging and complicating this maze, ensuring that more and more of us will become lost inside it.  All of us, to one degree or another, are now trapped by our own distorted reflections.

               

Knowledge of these dynamics would threaten our self-esteem.  To keep awareness at bay, we use defence mechanisms familiar to every addict.  Though scientists tell us that we’re responsible for inciting our planet’s sixth mass extinction, that we’re disastrously altering our climate, and that we’re exposed to mounting levels of toxins in our daily environment, we steadfastly deny there’s a problem.  We teach ourselves to dissociate from our emotions and physical sensations, numbing ourselves to the damage our economy’s inflicting. When the world we’ve created becomes too painful to dismiss or ignore, we find scapegoats to project our fear, anger and guilt onto. 

               

We also spread our addiction to other societies, stooping to seduction, corruption, and brute force to get them hooked, and thereby keep them from reminding us that there might be lifestyles healthier than ours.  We turn their gardens into deserts, and their souls into wastelands more barren than even our own.  To feed and defend our addiction, we use our military and economic might in ways that make us the most dangerous pushers in human history.

 

We're electing far right leaders because by now we're all late stage meth-heads.              

​

[Sociotard]

Heh, made me laugh: Donald Trumps tweets as a early 2000's emo song.

 

[Old Man]

On today's scandal menu we have:

 

- Trump is a jackass when it comes to handshakes (and was pwned by Trudeau)

- Mike Flynn's Russian ties preventing NSC from functioning

- Trump conducted sensitive state business with Shinzo Abe in the open at Mar-a-Lago

- Newly confirmed education secretary Betsy DeVos can't spell

- Trump's nominee for labor secretary, fast food CEO Andy Puzder, encountering opposition in confirmation hearing

 

Perhaps not a complete list.

[st barbara]

Recently on twitter somebody brought up the President Luthor storyline from DC Comics.  He mentioned that when Lex Luthor became President he divested his company and released his tax returns.  This doesn't really have much to do with actual politics of course, but I thought it might give everybody a chuckle.

Obviously the U S should have elected Luthor instead of Trump.

[Twilight]

Obviously the U S should have elected Luthor instead of Trump.

Ain't it the truth.  Hell as President, Luthor was even able to restrain his natural urge to kill Superman.  Sure that only lasted, I believe it was a couple years in story but it was way longer then Trump was able to resist his base urges.