Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[ScottishFox]

2 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

If the status quo was how we got a guy like Trump, I can understand why some people are hesitant to return to that "normal".

 

I would say it was a complete rejection of the status quo that got us Trump.  The public was so sick of politicians that they gave the reality TV star and real estate guy a shot.

 

That is a blistering condemnation of the quality of politician we have been getting lately.

 

Comparing what we've seen the last few elections makes the politicians of yesteryear (Reagan, Clinton) seem like demigods in my very old opinion.

[Ragitsu]

17 minutes ago, ScottishFox said:

 

I would say it was a complete rejection of the status quo that got us Trump.

 

That was my point; people loathed business as usual. T is great at upsetting apple carts, but not so good at maintaining apple carts.

[TrickstaPriest]

37 minutes ago, Ragitsu said:

That was my point; people loathed business as usual. T is great at upsetting apple carts, but not so good at maintaining apple carts.

 

 

 

[Lord Liaden]

9 hours ago, ScottishFox said:

 

I would say it was a complete rejection of the status quo that got us Trump.  The public was so sick of politicians that they gave the reality TV star and real estate guy a shot.

 

That is a blistering condemnation of the quality of politician we have been getting lately.

 

Comparing what we've seen the last few elections makes the politicians of yesteryear (Reagan, Clinton) seem like demigods in my very old opinion.

 

Yesteryear gets far better than Reagan and Clinton: the Roosevelts, Truman, Eisenhower... imperfect but truly great occupants of the Oval Office. That's not even getting into the icons like Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln.

 

The quality of politicians, in America and generally, has been declining for a long, long time. The modern Western political system seems set up not only to foster mediocrity, but to drag even the good politicians down to that level.

[TrickstaPriest]

To continue on this thread though?

2) countries that fail:

 

Take a bit of a read into broken states and dictatorships, and almost unilaterally you'll see a country dragged into ruin by incompetent leadership.  That no matter how they exclaim that a militarily/whatever organized society that listens to them will really make it work, they fail (incredibly so) to account for very basic facts.  They have to actively refuse the existence of those facts to survive, even when it means starving millions of people.

 

Mao let his people starve because he was losing face.  He made the great leap forward to take advantage of the incredibly fertile land China held and grow food - and when basic policy decisions failed to produce the amount of food they wanted, they just took it out of the mouths of their workers.  Middle management did it to please Mao, and because Mao couldn't stand the loss of face.

 

When Enron's leadership couldn't actually balance the books because of disastrously bad business instincts, they cooked the books and created a quick system to massively give bonuses to sales - which lead the floor leadership to actually call their own power plants to illegally shut them down to drive up prices.  See California blackouts.

 

A previous place of employment of mine refused to deal with bad employees/leaders who had multiple complaints against them and their leadership was more concerned about generic 'morale' concerns than addressing the poor pay and bad leadership.  They picked a scapegoat and started to pressure them to get the complainers to shut up.  Then they lost something like 80% of their ENTIRE expertise team in half a year or less.  I don't think they've ever recovered.

 

A president is actively encouraging a civil war to stay in power.  He continually pushes conspiracies and will definitively create political violence in this country.  He's targeted doctors, he's threatened federal personnel on Twitter, he's encouraged threats against actual elected officials (Ilhan Omar is one example, Michigan's governor(?) another).  He's actively stacked the Supreme Court with three of the very people who were responsible for the Florida recount nightmares of 2000.  If you think that's bad, try it now, with four or five states at once.  So yes, he's trying to create actual political violence to stay in power (edit: and quite possibly to strip the very ability to hold an actual election, see: his constant verbal attacks and the legal assaults on that institution)

 

I REFUSE to accept that as acceptable in any fashion.

 

That has never ended in anything other than one of the following: decades long insurgencies, mass executions and arrests near hundred thousand or more, civil wars, world wars.

 

If you want that to become the new political standard.  Take your pick.  You'll get one of them, with this one or another one soon, quite quickly.

 

Bad Leadership, continually making bad decisions, can kill a country.  Or a company.  And if that happens during an actual disaster, the death toll can be millions

[Ragitsu]

1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said:

the Roosevelts, Truman, Eisenhower... imperfect but truly great occupants of the Oval Office. That's not even getting into the icons like Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln.

 

Everyone forgets the little old peanut farmer.

[Dr. MID-Nite]

2 minutes ago, Ragitsu said:

 

Everyone forgets the little old peanut farmer.

 

Perhaps. I do question Reagan though. Ignoring the AIDS crisis, Iran/Contra and Trickle Down Economics are hardly great things to be remembered for.

[Lord Liaden]

11 minutes ago, Ragitsu said:

 

Everyone forgets the little old peanut farmer.

 

I didn't forget him. I always liked Jimmy Carter. I believe he's actually a good man, and perhaps the best ex-President the US has ever had. He's intelligent, thoughtful, and compassionate. But he wasn't a particularly effective POTUS. He wasn't a good manager, tried to be more personally hands-on when he should have been delegating. He wasn't adept at negotiating the political machinery of Washington, apparently thinking that if you explained reasonably why something should be done, people would agree.

 

It's possible to be too good to be a world leader. At times the job calls for you to be a ruthless bastard.

[Old Man]

1 hour ago, Dr. MID-Nite said:

 

Perhaps. I do question Reagan though. Ignoring the AIDS crisis, Iran/Contra and Trickle Down Economics are hardly great things to be remembered for.

 

He also ended the GOP as a fiscally conservative party, though they've kept up the fiction for forty years.

[megaplayboy]

On 10/28/2020 at 11:23 PM, Pattern Ghost said:

 

He walks out on the interviewer. The video linked is 20 minutes, including intro and comments. They also interview the VP candidates. So, not too much Trump time in that one.

 

 

 

It's by post date here.

 

And then there's Boston . . .

What is up with this "Your replies have been merged?" thing? Those were two separate topics that are now irrevocably mushed together.

Make that three. No, four most likely.

 

Yeah, the problem is that SCOTUS may rule that ballots received after election day, even if it's postmarked before election day, don't count, an inconceivable ruling in the Before Time.

[Lord Liaden]

Both Gorsuch and Kavanaugh have already ruled against the position of the President per their understanding of the law, so I don't think it's a foregone conclusion how they'll act in this circumstance.

[Ragitsu]

If we lived in an informed and mature society, all the stuff about decorum - all of it - would be a non-issue. Terrible politicians could be kneecapped on policy alone, with no way to avoid their just desserts. When I think about all the time wasted on the fixation of manners, I feel much frustration.

[unclevlad]

My worst case scenario is that numerous elections are challenged on procedural grounds.  Given the insanity of this year, it's all too possible those grounds do exist.  So...not just the presidential race, but the *entire vote* from several states is rejected.  Presidential, Senate, House, state offices...the whole bloody vote's tossed.  So what happens THEN?  The electoral votes are out the window.  The House...who knows what it'd look like.

 

It'd be a total Constitutional disaster.

 

The encouraging aspect is, I don't see the Supreme Court overturning things THAT broadly because the disruption would be so major.  But it's still a fear in the back of my brain.

[Badger]

3 hours ago, Old Man said:

 

He also ended the GOP as a fiscally conservative party, though they've kept up the fiction for forty years.

Modern politicians have no understanding of economics 

 

I am not really sure modern economists have an understanding of economics for that matter

[Lord Liaden]

4 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

If we lived in an informed and mature society, all the stuff about decorum - all of it - would be a non-issue. Terrible politicians could be kneecapped on policy alone, with no way to avoid their just desserts. When I think about all the time wasted on the fixation of manners, I feel much frustration.

 

I certainly see your point and sympathize with your sentiment. But decorum serves a much more significant purpose than just "manners." It creates a context through which human interactions can be interpreted, meanings and motivations can be recognized and acted upon. Breaching decorum can lead to misunderstanding and offense, sometimes with significant consequences.

 

One fairly recent example which comes to my mind was when Donald Trump attended his first NATO summit with other national leaders from the alliance. They treated him with the deference appropriate to his office, but I believe Trump in his ignorance interpreted that as weakness, because he proceeded to publicly criticize and berate them, like the stereotypical bully he is. But in another example, when Trump had his first meeting with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president kept him waiting forty-five minutes past their scheduled appointment, a classic tactic to establish dominance. And Trump, infamously, practically bent over for him, which you can expect when a pretend alpha male encounters a real one. Putin breached decorum, but unlike Trump understood exactly what he was doing.

[Ragitsu]

1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

I certainly see your point and sympathize with your sentiment. But decorum serves a much more significant purpose than just "manners." It creates a context through which human interactions can be interpreted, meanings and motivations can be recognized and acted upon. Breaching decorum can lead to misunderstanding and offense, sometimes with significant consequences.

 

One fairly recent example which comes to my mind was when Donald Trump attended his first NATO summit with other national leaders from the alliance. They treated him with the deference appropriate to his office, but I believe Trump in his ignorance interpreted that as weakness, because he proceeded to publicly criticize and berate them, like the stereotypical bully he is. But in another example, when Trump had his first meeting with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president kept him waiting forty-five minutes past their scheduled appointment, a classic tactic to establish dominance. And Trump, infamously, practically bent over for him, which you can expect when a pretend alpha male encounters a real one. Putin breached decorum, but unlike Trump understood exactly what he was doing.

 

It has often been used as a way for the opposing party to shirk responsibility and focus on politics over policy. What you've described is a specific important scenario where a lack of political acumen (that indicates genuine incompetency) is a deciding factor; what I had in mind are the endless stories about gaffes Trump has made that have no relevance to the danger that bureaucratic machinations pose (which most United States citizens fail to recognize, because they are both busy and mildly ignorant on such matters). If the media is supposed to be the watchdog of the government, they shouldn't bark every time he says or does something foolish yet otherwise tame...that is how alarm fatigue comes about.

[Lord Liaden]

And I'm very confident Trump does those things with that result in mind, among others. He's ignorant, lazy, and oblivious in many areas, but he's also cunning. He's lasted this long because the tactic works, at least on enough people.

 

But Trump is the President of the United States. His every word and action ripples across the whole world. What he says that seems significant may later be revealed to be pure smoke, while other things that appear ludicrous or trivial at first, can turn out to be crucial. How can the media choose not to cover that? How do they decide what the public should or shouldn't know, which details need to be recorded and disseminated?

[Greywind]

And what ripples would Biden create with his apparent inability to make a complete, coherent statement?

[Ragitsu]

19 minutes ago, Greywind said:

And what ripples would Biden create with his apparent inability to make a complete, coherent statement?

 

C'mon, man.

 

23 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

How can the media choose not to cover that? How do they decide what the public should or shouldn't know, which details need to be recorded and disseminated?

 

I truly wish I could divine the answer to that conundrum. Absent an all-around improved populace (which requires at least one generation of diligent proper education), the chance of substantive change is slim. Any other suggestion feels like a stopgap.

[Pattern Ghost]

33 minutes ago, Greywind said:

And what ripples would Biden create with his apparent inability to make a complete, coherent statement?

 

Watch the two 60 minutes interviews I linked up thread, and tell us which candidate you think is more coherent.

[archer]

Um...

 

Trump's latest addition to his rally speeches is to tell people to not pay attention to the reported number of COVID deaths because doctors are getting paid $2000 every time they count a death as being from COVID.

 

I would really love to be a reporter allowed to question him about that.

 

Is the grieving family writing a $2000 check to the doctor for writing "he died of covid" on the death certificate?

 

Are the insurance companies colluding together to pay $2000 checks to doctors who falsely claim that someone died of covid?

 

Is it the Biden for President campaign which is cutting a $2000 check to doctors for each death they attribute to covid?

 

I mean, Enquiring minds want to know.

 

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/donald-trump-claims-doctors-inflate-22934199

 

There's a video of Trump saying that in the article but I don't know how to move it from there to embed it here.

[archer]

Inside the Hunter Biden hoax.

 

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/how-fake-persona-laid-groundwork-hunter-biden-conspiracy-deluge-n1245387

[Old Man]

It’s always good to get a glimpse into the conservabubble now and then. If all you consume is right wing media and Facebook memes then you might easily believe that Biden is a doddering, demented old man. You would never have seen him go mountain biking or give reasoned, well spoken responses to interview and debate questions.
 

Conservative news is extremely selective with what it presents and fills the rest of the airtime with breathless fearmongering about antifa, immigrants, and socialism. It’s a brilliant marketing tactic designed to keep its viewers petrified in fear and glued to the tube. And once you’ve bought into the “liberal media” narrative, they own you. 

[archer]

Oregon could become 1st US state to decriminalize hard drugs through this November's ballot initiative.

 

Possession of small amounts of heroin, cocaine, LSD and other hard drugs would result in a $100 fine or the person could opt to go into new, free addiction recovery centers which are to be paid for by taxes on marijuana sales.

 

https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-portugal-arrests-elections-oregon-4feaaeb5e60f3a853810ae1853fb22ea

 

I'm excited to see this since it's a variation on the approach I've advocated for years. Portugal, the Netherlands and Switzerland have each decriminalize hard drugs with no uptick in overall hard drug usage in their populations (Portugal with no uptick according to the article, the Netherlands and Switzerland according to my ever-failing memory).

 

When you consider how much the US spends on law enforcement, prosecution, and prisons over drug possession offenses, we could probably instead pay for rehab plus a new house for each drug offender and still come out cheaper and have less of a drug problem.  

[Ragitsu]

5 minutes ago, archer said:

Oregon could become 1st US state to decriminalize hard drugs through this November's ballot initiative.

 

Possession of small amounts of heroin, cocaine, LSD and other hard drugs would result in a $100 fine or the person could opt to go into new, free addiction recovery centers which are to be paid for by taxes on marijuana sales.

 

https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-portugal-arrests-elections-oregon-4feaaeb5e60f3a853810ae1853fb22ea

 

I'm excited to see this since it's a variation on the approach I've advocated for years. Portugal, the Netherlands and Switzerland have each decriminalize hard drugs with no uptick in overall hard drug usage in their populations.

 

When you consider how much the US spends on law enforcement, prosecution, and prisons over drug possession offenses, we could probably instead pay for rehab plus a new house for each drug offender and still come out cheaper and have less of a drug problem.  

 

That reminds me...I still need to vote.