Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[Ragitsu]

7 hours ago, Hermit said:

In fact, I think we lost most of Europe!

 

That is precisely what quite a few of them believe.

[Hugh Neilson]

12 hours ago, Hermit said:

 

What gets me is that if policies like Universal Healthcare , affordable college and the like ARE socialist, and socialist can never be democratic...

well, NATO's got a LOT of Commie tyrannies! Le Gasp. In fact, I think we lost most of Europe!

 

The challenge here is addressing the misperception that "socialism" (or even communism) is incompatible with "democracy".  Perhaps it is time to rename the terms.  Socialism is tainted.  So find a new name for policies like universal health care and affordable education.

 

We live in a buzzword-based society.  The term "socialism" has been buzzworded away from what it actually means.  So create a new term.  Reframe the debate.  "Universalism" - everybody should be equal and have access to health care and affordable education.  "Elitism" - only the Wealthy 1% are entitled to health care and education - the rest should just toil away in illness and ignorance to enrich them.  Wow, who can argue in favour of elitism?

[Ragitsu]

 

51 minutes ago, Hugh Neilson said:

Socialism is tainted.  So find a new name

 

We live in a buzzword-based society.  The term "socialism" has been buzzworded away from what it actually means.  So create a new term.  Reframe the debate.

 

This is something we should address. If every honest debate runs the risk of being demonized/unfairly characterized because the at least initially opposing participant is strongly ignorant and/or gullible (and likely already manipulated by someone higher up the economic ladder with a vested interest in maintaining a preexisting social disparity), then I consider that a poor state of affairs. We will not grow as a species so long as snap-judgements are seen as perfectly acceptable substitutes for rational thinking in relaxed settings.

 

Also, humility is a virtue that has been sorely neglected. "I don't know.", " I will have to look into that." and "I'd like to revisit this discussion later." should not be intrinsically linked to weakness.

[Ragitsu]

 

[death tribble]

13 hours ago, unclevlad said:

Just try to avoid sinking down here....the Jules version, NOT the Darko version, I might add...

 

All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere
Their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow
And I find it kinda funny
I find it kinda sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very, very mad world, mad world

The Jules version is the Donnie Darko version.

 

The original is by Tears for Fears and is one of my favourite songs ever.

[unclevlad]

33 minutes ago, death tribble said:

The Jules version is the Donnie Darko version.

 

The original is by Tears for Fears and is one of my favourite songs ever.

 

You're right, my bad.  

[DShomshak]

Yesterday, All Things Considered talked to an actual Capitol Police officer and asked why there was not more attempt to arrest the Capitol invaders. The officer replied that their first duty is to protect the members of Congress. So, they tried to get the people who threatened Congress out of the Capotol as quickly as possible. Trying to make arrests would have been slower, and increased the danger.

 

Okay, that's fair. And given that so many of the people involved left social media trails a mile wide, possibly not a serious impediment to eventual arrest and prosecution.

 

Dean Shomshak

[TrickstaPriest]

 

Hey look, literally what I've been ranting about.

 

At a second look, this is from the rally, not the protest/riot/insurrection.  My line below still stands, even if we don't have direct video of it

 

He said they were going to all 'walk down to the Capitol and fight to take their country back' and then he promptly ****ed off and went to watch it on the telly.

[TrickstaPriest]

Just found this
 

 

On 1/8/2021 at 1:01 PM, TrickstaPriest said:

 

DJT sent them at armed guards at Capitol Hill, either anticipating there wouldn't be sufficient protection for congress (!) or expecting there was, meaning he was expecting his supporters might get shot at.

 

Which puts it into perspective when he said, or started to say "I'll be there with you!" and then never showed up

 

I WONDER WHY

 

Giving myself another pat on the back

[TrickstaPriest]

31 minutes ago, TrickstaPriest said:

Hey look, literally what I've been ranting about.

 

He said they were going to all 'walk down to the Capitol

 

That video might be from the protest pre-party after all.  Hard to tell from the screens

[Iuz the Evil]

4 hours ago, Ragitsu said:

 

That’s fantastic, I love the sentiment he closes with and the personal story (and the fact he actually brandishes the sword from Conan). I didn’t care for him as our governor, but that’s good stuff right there.

[Cygnia]

These Black Capitol Police Officers Describe Fighting Off "Racist-Ass Terrorists"

[archer]

5 hours ago, Hugh Neilson said:

 

The challenge here is addressing the misperception that "socialism" (or even communism) is incompatible with "democracy".  Perhaps it is time to rename the terms.  Socialism is tainted.  So find a new name for policies like universal health care and affordable education.

 

We live in a buzzword-based society.  The term "socialism" has been buzzworded away from what it actually means.  So create a new term.  Reframe the debate.  "Universalism" - everybody should be equal and have access to health care and affordable education.  "Elitism" - only the Wealthy 1% are entitled to health care and education - the rest should just toil away in illness and ignorance to enrich them.  Wow, who can argue in favour of elitism?

 

"Conservative", in the context of American politics, has also been buzzworded away from what it used to mean.

 

In the 2016 Republican primary debates, Trump was asked what "conservative" meant because he was claiming to be conservative while his policy proposals were outside the mainstream of American political conservative thought. (And his politics aligned with the Alt-Right which was explicitly formed to be an alternative to the American political right.)

 

 The media and the public at large made fun of Trump in two different debates because he couldn't even give an answer to what "conservative" meant. In one of those debates, I think the later one, the answer he gave (if it had been true) would have classified Hillary Clinton as being a conservative.

 

Trump was openly mocked, at length, over this.

 

But now he's the poster boy for everything conservative even though none of his political positions have changed.

 

 

I don't think one word political labels are helpful.

 

1) Most people don't know what the one word label means.

 

2) The people who "do have enough knowledge to know what those labels are supposed to mean" aren't honest and/or consistent enough to use the labels properly each and every time they use the label.

 

3) There's always some politician who is going to grab the label for his own. Trump wasn't the first one to do this.

 

In the 1996 presidential election, Bob Dole re-labeled himself as being a "conservative" even though he was infamous in Washington for how much he detested conservatives. But because of Reagan, you needed to call yourself a "conservative" in order to be successful in Republican presidential politics so Dole re-labelled himself.

 

George W. Bush won the governorship in Texas by pointing out that he wasn't a conservative but was rather a moderate who could reach across party lines to work with Democrats in the state legislature because he didn't have an ideological bone in his body. And he governed that way. When he ran for president, he told a different story. 

[unclevlad]

According to CNBC, Amazon has decided to suspend providing cloud services to Parler because their unchecked calls for violence constitute a violation of Amazon's terms of service.

 

Finding an alternative will NOT!!! be easy.  There are very few companies that offer large-scale cloud services, and spinning up to offer that level of capability on private systems is neither easy nor cheap.

 

2 hours ago, DShomshak said:

Yesterday, All Things Considered talked to an actual Capitol Police officer and asked why there was not more attempt to arrest the Capitol invaders. The officer replied that their first duty is to protect the members of Congress. So, they tried to get the people who threatened Congress out of the Capotol as quickly as possible. Trying to make arrests would have been slower, and increased the danger.

 

Okay, that's fair. And given that so many of the people involved left social media trails a mile wide, possibly not a serious impediment to eventual arrest and prosecution.

 

Dean Shomshak

 

This was my take even on Wednesday.  The problem wasn't in how the officers on the ground generally behaved or their choice of response, it was a planning failure.

[Pariah]

If you tweet in the forest and nobody can read it, are you still the President? 

[TrickstaPriest]

1 hour ago, unclevlad said:

This was my take even on Wednesday.  The problem wasn't in how the officers on the ground generally behaved or their choice of response, it was a planning failure.

Exactly.  I don't blame the officers that were there... except for the ones breaching it

 

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/benking/capitol-dc-riot-trump

 

[

While some of the images from that day appeared to show officers standing by to let the mob into the Capitol building, the veteran officer said that they had fought them off for two hours before the attackers eventually gained access. The officer said that many of the widely spread images of smiling marauders, wandering the halls dressed in absurd costumes, had the effect of downplaying how well prepared some of the rioters were to overtake the building, and even to capture and kill Congress members.

“That was a heavily trained group of militia terrorists that attacked us,” said the officer, who has been with the department for more than a decade. “They had radios, we found them, they had two-way communicators and earpieces. They had bear spray. They had flash bangs ... They were prepared. They strategically put two IEDs, pipe bombs, in two different locations. These guys were military trained. A lot of them were former military,” the officer said, referring to two suspected pipe bombs that were found outside the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee.

The officer even described coming face-to-face with police officers from across the country in the mob. He said some of them flashed their badges, telling him to let them through, and trying to explain that this was all part of a movement that was supposed to help.

“You have the nerve to be holding a Blue Lives Matter flag, and you are out there fucking us up,” he told one group of protesters he encountered inside the Capitol. “[One guy] pulled out his badge and he said, ‘We’re doing this for you.’ Another guy had his badge. So I was like, ‘Well, you gotta be kidding.’”

Another officer, a newer recruit, echoed these sentiments, saying that where he was on the steps to the Rotunda on the east side of the Capitol, he was engaged in hand-to-hand battles trying to fight the attackers off. But he said they were outnumbered 10 to 1, and described extraordinary scenes in which protesters holding Blue Lives Matter flags launched themselves at police officers.

“We were telling them to back up and get away and stop, and they’re telling us they are on our side, and they’re doing this for us, and they’re saying this as I’m getting punched in my face by one of them … That happened to a lot of us. We were getting pepper-sprayed in the face by those protesters — I'm not going to even call them protesters — by those domestic terrorists,” said the officer.

]

[Sociotard]

An analysis of QAnon by a game designer.

https://medium.com/curiouserinstitute/a-game-designers-analysis-of-qanon-580972548be5

[Ragitsu]

2 hours ago, Iuz the Evil said:

That’s fantastic, I love the sentiment he closes with and the personal story (and the fact he actually brandishes the sword from Conan). I didn’t care for him as our governor, but that’s good stuff right there.

 

I disagree with his assertion that DT is the worst President; the honor goes to George Bush Jr.

 

--- --- ---

 

https://www.motherjones.com/2020-elections/2021/01/trump-enablers-shallow-morality-gaslighting/

 

The only way to heal is to first draw the poison out of the blood.

[Lectryk]

51 minutes ago, Ragitsu said:

 

I disagree with his assertion that DT is the worst President; the honor goes to George Bush Jr.

 

--- --- ---

 

https://www.motherjones.com/2020-elections/2021/01/trump-enablers-shallow-morality-gaslighting/

 

The only way to heal is to first draw the poison out of the blood.

Defend your assertion - I'd like to know how Jr was worse than Trump, in your view.

[unclevlad]

Worth a read if you can get to it...at least it made me feel somewhat better...

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/us/politics/capitol-arrests.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

 

Notes the charges in several cases.  Mostly I think it's arrests we knew but there's some new stuff:

 

--The WVa representative who was arrested has resigned his seat.  

--You might've seen the Capitol officer backing up the stairs;  the individual threatening him has been arrested.

--a QAnon guy who sent a text threatening to execute the Speaker on live TV.  And yes, he had several guns.

 

 

Side note:  Trump refused to order the flags to be flown at half-staff for the officer killed Wednesday until today.  Such a classy guy to come through in the clutch....

[csyphrett]

1 hour ago, Ragitsu said:

 

I disagree with his assertion that DT is the worst President; the honor goes to George Bush Jr.

 

--- --- ---

 

https://www.motherjones.com/2020-elections/2021/01/trump-enablers-shallow-morality-gaslighting/

 

The only way to heal is to first draw the poison out of the blood.

I have to disagree, Rag. Trump is objectively the worst president. He is worse than Bush Jr, Coolidge, Jackson, Buchanan, and Taft. He has gutted the executive branch in a way that has never been done before in my opinion. He has engaged in graft, malfeasance, corruption, human indecency in such a way that it is likely that he will be facing charges once he is out of office unless he can pardon himself for all the crimes he has committed.

 

I mean Bush Jr still has a charitable foundation helping people. That's something Trump doesn't have since he can't even run a charity.

 

Donald Trump is an example of a human being that is the worst at everything he ever did and the only reason he is considered successful is the fact that his dad propped him up and he stole the rest of his family's inheritance to keep his shoddy businesses going and half of them had to change their names so they didn't have to deal with the image problem he presented with his government style if you can call it that.

 

CES     

[Ragitsu]

12 minutes ago, csyphrett said:

I mean Bush Jr still has a charitable foundation helping people. That's something Trump doesn't have since he can't even run a charity.

 

He also paints and makes the occasional appearance on Ellen. Is it en vogue to blank out the second Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, the Patriot Act and the hideously protracted aftermath of all his bad decisions because of Trump's more recent evil?

[csyphrett]

1 minute ago, Ragitsu said:

 

He also paints and makes the occasional appearance on Ellen. Is it en vogue to blank out the second Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and the aftermath of all his bad decisions because of Trump's more recent evil?

That's not what you said. And as much as I hate to say it about a 20 year police action, that is nothing compared to the four years that Trump has been in office. Bush conceded when he lost, he didn't try to get his vp killed with an armed insurrection just for starters.

 

Let's put it like this the eight years Bush was in office almost 7k servicemen were killed, maybe as many as 200k civilians (no one knows the actual number).  

 

Trump killed that many people in a month

CES

[archer]

2 hours ago, TrickstaPriest said:

Exactly.  I don't blame the officers that were there... except for the ones breaching it

 

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/benking/capitol-dc-riot-trump

 

[

While some of the images from that day appeared to show officers standing by to let the mob into the Capitol building, the veteran officer said that they had fought them off for two hours before the attackers eventually gained access. The officer said that many of the widely spread images of smiling marauders, wandering the halls dressed in absurd costumes, had the effect of downplaying how well prepared some of the rioters were to overtake the building, and even to capture and kill Congress members.

“That was a heavily trained group of militia terrorists that attacked us,” said the officer, who has been with the department for more than a decade. “They had radios, we found them, they had two-way communicators and earpieces. They had bear spray. They had flash bangs ... They were prepared. They strategically put two IEDs, pipe bombs, in two different locations. These guys were military trained. A lot of them were former military,” the officer said, referring to two suspected pipe bombs that were found outside the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee.

The officer even described coming face-to-face with police officers from across the country in the mob. He said some of them flashed their badges, telling him to let them through, and trying to explain that this was all part of a movement that was supposed to help.

“You have the nerve to be holding a Blue Lives Matter flag, and you are out there fucking us up,” he told one group of protesters he encountered inside the Capitol. “[One guy] pulled out his badge and he said, ‘We’re doing this for you.’ Another guy had his badge. So I was like, ‘Well, you gotta be kidding.’”

Another officer, a newer recruit, echoed these sentiments, saying that where he was on the steps to the Rotunda on the east side of the Capitol, he was engaged in hand-to-hand battles trying to fight the attackers off. But he said they were outnumbered 10 to 1, and described extraordinary scenes in which protesters holding Blue Lives Matter flags launched themselves at police officers.

“We were telling them to back up and get away and stop, and they’re telling us they are on our side, and they’re doing this for us, and they’re saying this as I’m getting punched in my face by one of them … That happened to a lot of us. We were getting pepper-sprayed in the face by those protesters — I'm not going to even call them protesters — by those domestic terrorists,” said the officer.

]

 

I'm not sure where to start.

 

< emotion: frustration >

 

Officials in these situations always seem amazed that people in the civilian population have military training. Well, yes they do. We as a society actively recruit civilians and train them in the military. Then when they're done with their time in the military, they return to civilian life.

 

People don't miraculously forget what they've learned in the military just because they've returned to civilian life. And being in the military doesn't turn you into some paragon of virtue who would never do anything questionable once you return to civilian life. It just makes you a civilian who's had military training.

 

These radicalized groups recruit people who have a military background for the same reason that many police departments recruit people who have a military background: it's easier to train someone who is already at least partially trained and who has experience in following orders.

 

Now as far as the bear spray, pepper spray, tear gas, two way radios with earpieces, zip ties, and guns go: for many people that qualifies as a list of random items which people keep within arms reach of their computer rather than unusual gear.

 

I do research as a hobby. 

 

One of the things I've researched is survivalist and prepper culture (I've likely had conversations with at least some of the rioters.)

 

For one thing, the topic is interesting (Antibiotics for the fish in your aquarium are much the same thing as antibiotics for a person but are available widely at a variety of places without a prescription. I wouldn't use fish or animal antibiotics to treat myself at the moment. But in a world-ending emergency, it's nice to know.) For another thing, it's helpful in planning post-apocalyptic gaming and fiction to know what a survivalist might have at his place and know just how he'd be prepared.

 

A lot of it is very simple. A lot more of it is very complex and nuanced. The simple part:

 

How do you protect your property if there's no police and no prospect of there being police? Gun. 

 

What if there's two of you? Guns plus two way radio with earpieces (noise from a radio will give away your position and most people can't shoot accurately in an emergency with a handgun in one hand and a radio in the other).

 

What happens if you stop someone breaking into your home and you don't want to kill them outright? Pepper spray and zip ties.

 

People have those things around right now. Even many of the ones who aren't complete nuts are people live in rural areas where it might take the law more than an hour to respond even in the most dire of emergencies. So they either own something to take care of themselves or cross their fingers and hope they never have any emergency which would need a response from law enforcement.

 

There's 4-9 million people who self-identify as a prepper of some sort according to what survey you believe. A lot more than that live in unincorporated rural areas with spotty law enforcement capabilities.

 

Heck, I've got pepper spray (which my wife insisted we purchase), zip ties (left over from various handyman projects), and a second-hand gun (which was my high school graduation present at a time when my parents had a gun but no money for presents). And I'm not even radicalized, collecting weapons, preparing to make trouble, or living in a rural area.

 

There's been stories in the mainstream media over the last 10 years that street gangs and terrorist groups are intentionally sending their members to join the US military because it's the cheapest and best training that they can get.

 

So I'm frustrated at officials and officers who are supposed to have widespread general knowledge of the threats which might be out there expressing "OMG, they had military training and items which are available for unrestricted sale to the general public at reasonable prices!" 

 

< /frustration >

 

Now about the Capitol Hill invasion itself. Below I posted a video taken by a reporter who started out in the Senate gallery and came downstairs to see what was happening when the noise got loud enough that it was clear that the rioters had come into the building.

 

As he gets down the stairs, we first see the baton which the officer left on the floor some distance back from the doorway. This is pretty good planning since if he got disarmed in the doorway he can pick up a weapon during his retreat.

 

But notice the officer is the only officer present and in the initial picture, there's at least ten people visible coming in and it sounds like there's a heck of a lot more of them out there.

 

As the rioters make their way into the building, they've got a choice of directions to go. They can follow the officer up the stairs to their left. They can go straight which appears to be an unopposed path forward into the building. Or they can go up the stairs to their right, which also appears to be an unopposed path forward into the building.

 

Instead of taking either of the unopposed path, they choose to pursue the officer. In effect, they're herding the officer and making sure they have control of the building rather than spreading out at random and not knowing what parts they were going to be controlling and where officers might be gathering.

 

At each choice of direction to go, they consistently continue to herd the officer. And they continue herding the officer until he finally falls back to the gallery where there were several other officers.

 

The intruders, still with superior numbers, face off with the officers and keep them pinned in place while you can see in the background other intruders going deeper into the building after they'd finally succeeded in corralling the officers.

 

It's tough to tell if there was an actual plan for that to happen. Or if the first couple of people just decided to herd the officer and the rest of the mob just happened to follow along.

 

But either way, it effectively gave them control of a large part of the building while not letting them lose track of where the opposition was or what it might have been doing. 

 

 

 

[unclevlad]

20 minutes ago, Ragitsu said:

 

He also paints and makes the occasional appearance on Ellen. Is it en vogue to blank out the second Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, the Patriot Act and the hideously protracted aftermath of all his bad decisions because of Trump's more recent evil?

 

Second Iraq War, perhaps, but the Afghan War was forced on him by 9/11...as was much of the Patriot Act.  Even the 2nd Iraq War had *some* justification.  I didn't like Jr, don't get me wrong, but....

 

Trump incited a movement that has a strong chance to turn into a full-on domestic terrorism movement.  He targeted the core principles of democracy throughout.  His irresponsible dismissal of the coronavirus from the start has probably cost a good 100,000 lives.  The aftermath of his actions will extend DECADES...admittedly, in part because the roots have been there, but he's responsible for feeding, watering, and transplanting all the noxious weeds to make sure they flourish.

 

Trump is not merely the worst President;  he will go down as one of the worst freely chosen leaders ever.  He's not #1;  that's Hitler, hopefully forever;  that is, of course, Hitler.  For US Presidents, IMO he adjusted the scale, the gap between him and anyone else is that big.