Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[Ragitsu]

There are times when I get the feeling that this thread is an optimism vampire .

[unclevlad]

1 hour ago, Ragitsu said:

There are times when I get the feeling that this thread is an optimism vampire .

 

it's not this thread, it's US politics.

[Lord Liaden]

As much as Canadians have always complained about the annoying, frustrating, inexplicable things Americans do, we've always been grateful to have the United States as our neighbor. We considered Americans to be dependable friends, partners and allies. We felt safe with them. The prospect of that changing is deeply unsettling to us, and if it becomes reality we'll be facing a profound paradigm shift in how we think and live.

[Old Man]

41 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

As much as Canadians have always complained about the annoying, frustrating, inexplicable things Americans do, we've always been grateful to have the United States as our neighbor. We considered Americans to be dependable friends, partners and allies. We felt safe with them. The prospect of that changing is deeply unsettling to us, and if it becomes reality we'll be facing a profound paradigm shift in how we think and live.

 

It's pretty unsettling to us too, believe me.

[DShomshak]

Just heard on All Things Considered: Ukraine expert Alexander Vindman (whom you might remember from Trump's first impeachment) ponders what Russia might attempt in Ukraine, what Putin's goals might be, and what the US and its allies might do to deter this.

 

https://www.npr.org/2022/01/10/1071896624/vindman-discusses-u-s-options-on-russia-ukraine-tensions

 

Dean Shomshak

[DShomshak]

This weekend, the New Yorker Radio Hour interviewed political scientist Barbara F. Walters about the prospects for civil war in the US, based on her recent book How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them.

 

https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/a-new-civil-war-in-america

 

Walters was part of a CIA group that studies civil wars in other countries and the factors that precede them. She was unnerved to find those factors emerging in the US.

 

One important note: Robust democracies don't have civil wars. Robust autocracies don't have civil wars. It's the countries in between thaqt tend to have civil wars. So the de-democratizing of the US is especially worrying.

 

One possibly hopeful note: A major sign of imminent civil war is the appearance of militias, on more than one side. The US has its right-wing militias, but so far we don't see corresponding left-wing militias. (Well, there's Antifa, but it seems very much smaller.) People on the left seem generally not to have lost faith in the regular military and legitimate government. If the far right rebels, we've got insurrection, but the machinery of government has shown how quickly it can bring the hammer down (as, say, after the Oklahoma City bombing). If left-wing militias emerge, or the military and security forces themselves fracture, we've got a much worse civil war.

 

Dean Shomshak

[unclevlad]

They brought the hammer down fast after OKC, but that was 1995, and neither side supported the action.  That would be suicide, considering a daycare center with 19 kids was part of the carnage.  MAYBE, someone might claim it was a false flag operation, but even that would, I think, be scoffed at.  

 

Flip side:  going after the January insurrectionists has been rather slow.  So it's not clear to me that the left feels the government can bring the hammer down *now*.  This is exacerbated by the inconsistent (at best) punishment of the police.  This also points out:  the black or Latino portions of the left are VERY much worried that they won't face right-wing militia...they'll face radicalized police.  (And I do mean radicalized, not simply racist.  Cops who've been taught "it's you or them, so damn sure make it them".  Regular thread followers have, I'm sure, seen the training materials to which I refer.)  I believe it was CNN today that offered the dichotomy:  the right wing media is pushing that right-wing actions are patriotic, and only left-wing actions are insurrectionist.  Right-wing protesters get arrested;  left-wing protesters risk getting shot.  Not with rubber bullets, either.

 

So the failure for a left-wing militia to arise isn't necessarily that positive a sign.

[Iuz the Evil]

2 hours ago, DShomshak said:

This weekend, the New Yorker Radio Hour interviewed political scientist Barbara F. Walters about the prospects for civil war in the US, based on her recent book How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them.

 

https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/a-new-civil-war-in-america

 

Walters was part of a CIA group that studies civil wars in other countries and the factors that precede them. She was unnerved to find those factors emerging in the US.

 

One important note: Robust democracies don't have civil wars. Robust autocracies don't have civil wars. It's the countries in between thaqt tend to have civil wars. So the de-democratizing of the US is especially worrying.

 

One possibly hopeful note: A major sign of imminent civil war is the appearance of militias, on more than one side. The US has its right-wing militias, but so far we don't see corresponding left-wing militias. (Well, there's Antifa, but it seems very much smaller.) People on the left seem generally not to have lost faith in the regular military and legitimate government. If the far right rebels, we've got insurrection, but the machinery of government has shown how quickly it can bring the hammer down (as, say, after the Oklahoma City bombing). If left-wing militias emerge, or the military and security forces themselves fracture, we've got a much worse civil war.

 

Dean Shomshak

Antifa and some of the more militant BLM protests look an awful lot like left wing militias. Antifa in particular.

 

I’m thinking that left wing militias have emerged, albeit not as organized and heavily armed. The right wing militias have affiliation with public safety (or law enforcement if you prefer), which poses a real and credible threat beyond the anarchic behaviors of their counterparts. But that doesn’t exonerate the behaviors exhibited by them, a lesser evil is still evil.

 

 Again, my perspective as I’ve said before is the use of violence to advance political aims is not acceptable. When a riot erupts from a protest, it’s a mark against any movement that fails to condemn it.

[assault]

Comparing Antifa with right wing militias is totally silly in my opinion. Sure, I'm on the other side of the world, but it's actually pretty easy to spot posers.

[Iuz the Evil]

Must depend on where you live, this is “a thing” in a lot of areas. Body armor, batons and other crap like that tends to show up.

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/US/year-protests-portland-residents-waning-patience-antifa/story%3Fid%3D77511470

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests_in_Portland,_Oregon
 

They all look pretty bad to me. And that’s acknowledging as I did before the right wing militias are more organized and dangerous. Certainly more worthy of Federal law enforcement attention (which they actually do receive). I’m not going to be supportive of anyone using these tactics to advance an agenda or take advantage of “righteous anger”. The agenda differs, but the behavior isn’t significantly distinct.

 

As it pertains to the civil war concerns, I think we’ve got militias on the left and the right. One set is just more significant

[TrickstaPriest]

4 minutes ago, Iuz the Evil said:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests_in_Portland,_Oregon

 

I have been wondering about the amount of people involved in the GF protests - the only estimates I found were only off wikipedia, based on surveys sent out.  15-27 million Americans, which seems high.

 

I'm not a fan of political violence either - it far more often collapses a country than 'saves' it.

[Cancer]

I am not certain if I've seen or heard of a plausible threat of violence or actual violence from a left-wing domestic US group this century.  Individual loonies don't count as groups, and any use of Marxist rhetoric more or less automatically invokes the threat of violence due to the core nature of Marx & Engle's rhetoric, but I haven't seen any such use that I consider plausible in a quite a long time.  The Unabomber was caught in 1996, but even he was an individual, not a group.  The George Floyd violence was directed against police and police culture and long-established patterns of practice, and the protests were aimed specifically at police and not against government generally.  I still regret being too old -- and knowing too much about epidemiology so I wanted no part of COVID risk in June 2020 -- to have participated personally in the demonstrations here in Seattle.

 

Frankly, I consider most things claiming to be Antifa are just posers, clueless wannabees, or false flag structures which are show puppets set up by right-wing individuals or (more rarely) groups.  There's no left wing threat here in the US.  Its existence is asserted to give the right wing a bogeyman to scare people with.

[Ragitsu]

There is no "far left" worth mentioning; anyone bringing up "the far left" is either engaging in social engineering (i.e., fearmongering) or severely ignorant/limited in their political exposure.

[Old Man]

44 minutes ago, Ragitsu said:

There is no "far left" worth mentioning; anyone bringing up "the far left" is either engaging in social engineering (i.e., fearmongering) or severely ignorant/limited in their political exposure.

 

Yeah, let me know if anyone overhears a serious discussion about seizing the means of production and collectivized distribution of goods and wealth.

[DShomshak]

 

Well, Seattle has Kshama Sawant, a City Council member who is (Wikipedia tells me) the only member of the Trotskyite group Socialist Alternative ever to be elected to anything in the US. She advocates nationalizing large companies such as Boeing, Microsoft and Amazon, and confiscate the "Millionaire's Row" of fancy old houses in the neighborhood she represents. However, the Capitol Hill neighborhood she represents is *the* most liberal neighborhood in a quite liberal city.

 

In 2020, her neighborhood also saw the CHOP -- Capitol Hill Organized/Occupied Protest -- which the cops and city government briefly abandoned to its own devices. What I heard on local public radio sounded more laughable than menacing -- watch out, the neo-Marxist/anarchist radicals are painting murals and holding drum circles, that racist, patriarchal capitalist tyranny is gonna FALL! At least until a third-string rapper showed up with a few guys with guns and declared himself the "warlord" of the CHOP, and somebody got shot. Then the police swept back in and broke up the whole thing. So much for the revolution.

 

Really, the far right is better off keeping its left-wing bogeymen imaginary. If the CHOP was any evidence, America's real Radical Left can't find its ass with both hands.

 

(And from what I hear, the violence at 2020's BLM/George Floyd protests was deeply suspect. An expert on All Things Considered talked about the FBI's belief in a long-standing "Black Block" of serial rioters who show up at political protests, the way European soccer hooligans show up at games. They aren't political; they just use the protest as cover for their property destruction and general violence.)

 

Dean Shomshak

[TrickstaPriest]

37 minutes ago, DShomshak said:

(And from what I hear, the violence at 2020's BLM/George Floyd protests was deeply suspect. An expert on All Things Considered talked about the FBI's belief in a long-standing "Black Block" of serial rioters who show up at political protests, the way European soccer hooligans show up at games. They aren't political; they just use the protest as cover for their property destruction and general violence.)

 

 

That's interesting.  I had been watching some interviews during the protests and riots, and there were definitely people who traveled to the area who barely understood what the protest was about.  My take, at least, is that with 15-27 million potential protestors... well, that's a huge concentration of possible problems.  But that's assuming that 'density of protestors' somehow maps to 'possibility of damage'.

[Iuz the Evil]

I suppose it depends on where anarchic violence lands on the political spectrum. Maybe need another axis besides left/right.

 

Violence is unacceptable, whether targeting just the public servants in law enforcement, or more broadly against government in general. When you harm someone or destroy their property in rejection of the rule of law, you have lost any moral integrity in your argument.

[TrickstaPriest]

14 minutes ago, Iuz the Evil said:

Violence is unacceptable, whether targeting just the public servants in law enforcement, or more broadly against government in general. When you harm someone or destroy their property in rejection of the rule of law, you have lost any moral integrity in your argument.

 

Unfortunately in extreme cases, such as literal slavery, you don't really have any law supporting you.  Those authorities often don't respect anything but money, power, and the ability to inflict violence.  Those unfortunates have nothing, will always have nothing, and will never be recognized as having more than nothing, let alone the law.

 

Of course, slave revolts also almost always fail.  Those few that succeed often are proceeded by very trying, difficult times for the whole country.  The same goes for many other kinds of revolt.

[Iuz the Evil]

46 minutes ago, TrickstaPriest said:

 

Unfortunately in extreme cases, such as literal slavery, you don't really have any law supporting you.  Those authorities often don't respect anything but money, power, and the ability to inflict violence.  Those unfortunates have nothing, will always have nothing, and will never be recognized as having more than nothing, let alone the law.

 

Of course, slave revolts also almost always fail.  Those few that succeed often are proceeded by very trying, difficult times for the whole country.  The same goes for many other kinds of revolt.

 

I do not believe that example applies in modern United States society, as this is not such an extreme case. I’m unaware of any literal slavery in America today. Attempts to harm life and property should be met with force, if necessary, by legitimate authority.

 

Violence in an elected Republic is a problem, not a solution. If violence is good for one side, then it’s good for the other and it’s just a matter of what flavor you prefer. That’s unappealing to me at a foundational level. Of course I have a preference between any two groups with strongly held beliefs, and may find one more reasonable (or less insane) than the other. That does not give them the right to harm persons or property in pursuit of their agenda.

 

 Others disagree with that philosophy, whether attending a protest turned violent or storming the Capitol. They do organize for that purpose, and I fully agree that right wing organizations do so more effectively and violently. That does not mean, in my estimation, that their opponents are exempt from the same criticisms when they engage in that behavior.

[Ragitsu]

3 hours ago, Old Man said:

 

Yeah, let me know if anyone overhears a serious discussion about seizing the means of production and collectivized distribution of goods and wealth.

 

I've often heard how - in the United States - right-wing politicians keep bringing up a better/more ideal left-wing movement than the actual left-wing.

[TrickstaPriest]

10 minutes ago, Iuz the Evil said:

 

I do not believe that example applies in modern United States society, as this is not such an extreme case. I’m unaware of any literal slavery in America today. Attempts to harm life and property should be met with force, if necessary, by legitimate authority.

 

Violence in an elected Republic is a problem, not a solution. If violence is good for one side, then it’s good for the other and it’s just a matter of what flavor you prefer. That’s unappealing to me at a foundational level. Of course I have a preference between any two groups with strongly held beliefs, and may find one more reasonable (or less insane) than the other. That does not give them the right to harm persons or property in pursuit of their agenda.

 

 Others disagree with that philosophy, whether attending a protest turned violent or storming the Capitol. They do organize for that purpose, and I fully agree that right wing organizations do so more effectively and violently. That does not mean, in my estimation, that their opponents are exempt from the same criticisms when they engage in that behavior.

 

I don't disagree, but as someone who's watched the inevitability of global warming to crush all human civilization continue almost literally unabated, I wonder at what point do we admit that a system that results in the death of its entire species and possible end of the viability of the planet for life may not be working.  At what point do we wait for to change things?

 

There's very limited examples of slavery in modern day, such as the criminal enterprise broken up in Cali recently?  It was only a handful of people.  Certainly that is not political violence.

 

Is political violence equivalent?  I think the question isn't whether there's an ethical similarity, but a pragmatic question that treating them as different may tear society down.  In that respect I agree with you.

 

In the respect of how current politics is literally ending our species, and no method has changed that nor will change that before our 'society of plenty' crumbles to dust?  I'm not sure if that is an acceptable answer.

[Ragitsu]

Just now, TrickstaPriest said:

 

I don't disagree, but as someone who's watched the inevitability of global warming to crush all human civilization continue almost literally unabated, I wonder at what point do we admit that a system that results in the death of its entire species and possible end of the viability of the planet for life may not be working.  At what point do we wait for to change things?

 

Wow. You just beat me to the punch. It's the difference between fending off an evident attack and defending yourself from a slow poisoning where not everyone in power is in agreement over the definition of "poison".

[Dr. MID-Nite]

I will note that The American Revolution was...in effect....doing exactly what people seem to be railing against now. It's easy to support the status quo when it either benefits you or harms you minimally in comparison to others. The system we have in place has been corrupted by those in power and continues to become more corrupt on a daily basis. And...let's be realistic...if there are no consequences for the harm our current system causes, why would those in power ever change it willingly? If the threat of violence is off the table, what other alternatives are there? Work within a system that is so controlled by big wealth that there's no chance of significant change in a dozen lifetimes? Vote? We're seeing the answer to that. Gerrymander voting into irrelevance. Those in power LOVE peaceful protests....because they can safely ignore them. Protests without the threat of consequences is like a shark without teeth. Strikes are a potential middle ground, but again...our system has effectively weakened organized labor for decades and it's only now starting to have any semblance of a recovery. I'm not advocating violence. I abhor it. But....like the French and Russian Revolutions of previous eras, I can't see the establishment giving up any kind of power without some type of forceful coercion.

[Iuz the Evil]

It’s interesting to hear the exact same arguments being produced by those aforementioned right wing militias regarding the American Revolution and political change come up around climate change and social justice issues. 
 

I’ll pass, personally. But it’s all hypothetical in this thread anyway - I’m currently figuring out how to respond to emergency medical needs during a pandemic for our community and just glad we aren’t managing yet another disaster. Someone’s got to do it, and it’s generally the government. 

I do the local trauma response to various violent behaviors response too. Haven’t personally seen politically motivated aggression do anything positive, at least not in the last decades, but who knows? 

[TrickstaPriest]

I wouldn't trust political violence to ever 'go well'.

 

We are making progress, again, in some areas.  It's easy to forget that MLK did exist in an era of riots, property damage, and more.  The 'tea party' was exactly that.  So I can be sympathetic to people's message despite what they do.  I do not automatically invalidate it because of what they did.  But I do not recommend advocating for political violence.

 

In terms of the survival of our species, however, the conditions will not wait for us to 'progress'.  In actuality, even if we made major political advancements tomorrow and accomplished incredible bursts of technology, the very requirements to build and spread and incorporate those tools and advancements, I do not believe it would be soon enough to prevent widespread shortages to the American population.  When you add the lag time on the symptoms of climate change from the causes of it to the time to incorporate any new technologies, it will be thirty to forty years for it to even slow down.