The New American Politics thread

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by corporatejay

Your post is insanely terrifying. Like legitimately terrifying and borderline fascist.

How so? You mean expecting people to use their afforded rights in a responsible way is fascist? You think anyone should be able to say anything they want at any time? You think there should be no responsibility in any shape or form? That's ####ed up. That is everything that is wrong with the United States right now. The individual has more power than the collective.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by sworkhard

Sound like you think society should be one big cult where your opinion of good and upright is the only moral opinion and any other should result in immediate casting out unless the opinion is expressed on bended knee while begging for forgiveness from the great high priest of the cult of New Era. The use of ridicule, mockery is to be banned unless it is used against an opinion or idea that New Era believes is not good and upright, and only with the purpose of making the persons that expressed that opinion an outcast.

Honestly, this is terrifying and reeks of fascism.

And they wonder why the US is becoming so polarized

Yeah, that's exactly what I said.

So we have some ####### like Donald Trump saying that it is alright to violently accost people at his rallies, that it is okay to punch them in the face. That's okay to you? We have the same idiot saying he thinks that a foreign power should influence our elections. That's okay to you? We have BLM inflaming protests by chanting kill cops. That's okay to you? These are the things that we shouldn't say, as a collective, that these behaviors are not okay and this is not how a civilized culture acts? What about the rights of the people that have to live in the environment this hate speech creates? Or does that not matter?

[corporatejay]

Originally Posted by New Era

How so? You mean expecting people to use their afforded rights in a responsible way is fascist? You think anyone should be able to say anything they want at any time? You think there should be no responsibility in any shape or form? That's ####ed up. That is everything that is wrong with the United States right now. The individual has more power than the collective.

Well 50 years ago promoting LGBTQ equality would have been considered extremely irresponsible to the point of promoting a lifestyle fundamentally detrimental to society. Should we have shamed and punished those people?

I cannot believe you are serious with this. Using speech responsibly is so subjective you can't possibly enforce it effectively.

[sworkhard]

Originally Posted by New Era

How so? You mean expecting people to use their afforded rights in a responsible way is fascist? You think anyone should be able to say anything they want at any time? You think there should be no responsibility in any shape or form? That's ####ed up. That is everything that is wrong with the United States right now. The individual has more power than the collective.

Most definitely, on this matter the individual should have more power than the collective. The idea that the individual should always be submissive to the collective is completely ####ed up. You might as well join a conservative, anti democratic form of Islam. It would undermine the a critical component of all the progress we've made, would prevent us from ever finding out if we are headed in the wrong direction as it would quell any unpopular dissent.

So yes, people should be able to say whatever they want, whenever they want, and should expect to have to deal with the consequence of having other people respond to it with speech of their own, reputation effects, etc.

There is a difference between mere speech and actions. When you act on a decision using speech, your are being punished for that action, not the speech itself. This is why discrimination laws and libel don't constrain freedom of speech despite having legal consequences. Hate speech laws do constrain freedom of speech; but I'm opposed to those too.

[evman150]

Originally Posted by Buster

All of the above weaken democracy, they don't strengthen it.

I found this an interesting comment. I wonder what you mean by "weaken". Do you mean less democratic? Or do you mean it undermines democracy per se?

If it is the latter, I disagree. If it is the former, I think you have to realize that democracy is not something to be maximized, but to be optimized. Increasing the democratic nature of something is not necessarily good. It is often good, but not necessarily so. Take gay marriage, for example. Such a human right should in no way be subject to popular vote. Yet a referendum on such an issue "increases" or perhaps "strengthens" democracy.

Free speech is exactly like democracy. Both are good in reasonable doses; both are horrific when taken too far. This is the crucial point that free speech zealots fail to grasp.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by corporatejay

Well 50 years ago promoting LGBTQ equality would have been considered extremely irresponsible to the point of promoting a lifestyle fundamentally detrimental to society. Should we have shamed and punished those people?

50 years ago, they were. That was the cultural norm. But norms evolve, and do so through civil discussion.

I cannot believe you are serious with this. Using speech responsibly is so subjective you can't possibly enforce it effectively.

And what is wrong with civility? What is wrong with expecting people to behave and communicate like rational adults? My perspective has changed quite a bit on this subject since SB1070 was passed in Arizona, which basically made Hispanics a targeted class of people. Some of the absolute nasty things that people say, and get away with because they know the Hispanic cannot do or say anything in return, is just sickening. Seeing this stuff first hand made me realize that free speech isn't free, that there is a cost associated with it, and unfortunately not for the person exercising that right. But please tell me how we should continue to allow racist idiots the right to offend at every turn, and put down people for no other reason than the color of their skin, their accent, or where they were born. Screw civility and screw doing what is right.

[sworkhard]

Originally Posted by New Era

Yeah, that's exactly what I said.

So we have some ####### like Donald Trump saying that it is alright to violently accost people at his rallies, that it is okay to punch them in the face. That's okay to you? We have the same idiot saying he thinks that a foreign power should influence our elections. That's okay to you? We have BLM inflaming protests by chanting kill cops. That's okay to you? These are the things that we shouldn't say, as a collective, that these behaviors are not okay and this is not how a civilized culture acts? What about the rights of the people that have to live in the environment this hate speech creates? Or does that not matter?

I know it's not what you meant, but it's very much a reasonable way to read what you wrote, and the sentiment itself about casting people out very much reminds me of cults and the worst of religion.


Is what trump is doing moral? No, I think not.
Should he be allowed to do it without intervention by the state? Yes, definitely.

Same for the rest. I'm fine with BLM activists chanting kill all cops. However, anyone that actually attempts to should be arrested immediately. If someone is bound to carry out your orders, then you are culpable for that action. Not because of the words themselves, but because of the action of giving an order. The same thing is true of Libel and defamation. It's not the words, the act of speaking that's the issue, it's the deliberate spreading of misinformation with the intention of causing harm to that person that's the crime.

I think the person that acts on it should go to prison. I think it should be legal for Trump to say that and I think the correct response is to use our freedom of speech to condemn him for saying these things, and to explain why that's wrong. I don't think we should then make him an outcast; rather, I would advocate keeping him out of a leadership position, keeping him away from power, and not voting for the guy. Keeping someone like trump from a position of power is not the same thing as what you proposed.

Freedom of speech is not the same as freedom from consequences. People are free to remove their support, condemn you, mock you, and so on for what you say. You don't have to provide a platform for the person, you don't have to go to their speech, and you can boycott their business. Nevertheless, we should expect the consequences to be proportional to to the speech. The idea we should kick people out of society because they say something wrong is just incredibly dangerous and is massively disproportionate.

[wittynickname]

To try to break the cycle of the last few pages of ridiculousness, I heard the author of this New York Times piece on NPR earlier this week, and it was a really interesting segment.

Basically, the GOP has been a lot of intelligent, educated people playing down their worldly ways in order to cater to the "average Joe," going against intellectualism and elitism.

After decades of that, finally they have a candidate that embodies all of this. He's not educated in the affairs of the world, the affairs of the country, he has no real grasp of how politics work at all. The GOP finally has their actual anti-intellectual candidate.

The rise of Trump is essentially their own fault for celebrating feeling over fact, emotion over education.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/01/op...ald-trump.html

The Republican embrace of anti-intellectualism was, to a large extent, a put-on. At least until now.

Eisenhower may have played the part of an amiable duffer, but he may have been the best prepared president we have ever had — a five-star general with an unparalleled knowledge of national security affairs. When he resorted to gobbledy#### in public, it was in order to preserve his political room to maneuver. Reagan may have come across as a dumb thespian, but he spent decades honing his views on public policy and writing his own speeches. Nixon may have burned with resentment of “Harvard men,” but he turned over foreign policy and domestic policy to two Harvard professors, Henry A. Kissinger and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, while his own knowledge of foreign affairs was second only to Ike’s.

The trend has now culminated in the nomination of Donald J. Trump, a presidential candidate who truly is the know-nothing his Republican predecessors only pretended to be.

Mr. Trump doesn’t know the difference between the Quds Force and the Kurds. He can’t identify the nuclear triad, the American strategic nuclear arsenal’s delivery system. He had never heard of Brexit until a few weeks before the vote. He thinks the Constitution has 12 Articles rather than seven. He uses the vocabulary of a fifth grader. Most damning of all, he traffics in off-the-wall conspiracy theories by insinuating that President Obama was born in Kenya and that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the Kennedy assassination. It is hardly surprising to read Tony Schwartz, the ghostwriter for Mr. Trump’s best seller “The Art of the Deal,” say, “I seriously doubt that Trump has ever read a book straight through in his adult life.”

[photon]

In political news, Trump endorsed Ryan and McCain tonight.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/05/politi...yan/index.html

[nik-]

Originally Posted by wittynickname

Basically, the GOP has been a lot of intelligent, educated people playing down their worldly ways in order to cater to the "average Joe," going against intellectualism and elitism.

After decades of that, finally they have a candidate that embodies all of this. He's not educated in the affairs of the world, the affairs of the country, he has no real grasp of how politics work at all. The GOP finally has their actual anti-intellectual candidate.

There was a lot of talk about this during the Primaries and even prior going back to the Palin phenomenon and the Tea Party rise. A party playing the rubes for their votes and it finally backfired on them.

[sworkhard]

Originally Posted by wittynickname

To try to break the cycle of the last few pages of ridiculousness, I heard the author of this New York Times piece on NPR earlier this week, and it was a really interesting segment.

Basically, the GOP has been a lot of intelligent, educated people playing down their worldly ways in order to cater to the "average Joe," going against intellectualism and elitism.

After decades of that, finally they have a candidate that embodies all of this. He's not educated in the affairs of the world, the affairs of the country, he has no real grasp of how politics work at all. The GOP finally has their actual anti-intellectual candidate.

The rise of Trump is essentially their own fault for celebrating feeling over fact, emotion over education.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/01/op...ald-trump.html

The party has been an unholy union of appeals to uneducated intuitions over what seems to them to be always changing scientific facts and a group of the very elites the claim to eschew promoting a particular form of capitalism. So yes, I think anti-intellectualism is a big part of it. However, I wonder how much of it is anti-establishment, how much is a push back against what is perceived as social marginalization, and how much is anti-intellecutalism.

[wittynickname]

Originally Posted by nik-

There was a lot of talk about this during the Primaries and even prior going back to the Palin phenomenon and the Tea Party rise. A party playing the rubes for their votes and it finally backfired on them.

And yet they can't seem to grasp how this could have possibly happened. How could decades of playing to the uneducated (who are proud to be such, who shun knowledge as if it were a sin) and misinformed (on purpose, using Hannity and Limbaugh and the like to spread just flat out lies about the state of the world) and terrified (because of Fox News' War on Christmas, War on Men, War on Christians, etc, etc scare tactics) could possibly lead to this loose cannon candidate...they honestly don't understand it at all. It takes a special kind of cognitive dissonance.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by sworkhard

Most definitely, on this matter the individual should have more power than the collective.

Yet it is the collective that affords the individual that right in the first place. Without that collective you would have not protections of that guaranteed right.

The idea that the individual should always be submissive to the collective is completely ####ed up.

Where did I say submissive to the collective. The individual should be respectful of the collective and comply with the norms and standards of the collective.

You might as well join a conservative, anti democratic form of Islam. It would undermine the a critical component of all the progress we've made, would prevent us from ever finding out if we are headed in the wrong direction as it would quell any unpopular dissent.

So you're suggesting that change only comes from the actions of #######s then. Change doesn't come from people having rational discussions and working within the system. Who had more traction again? Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X? I know, different strategies and such, but the point is that you get a lot more support if you are respectful and pleasant than being a disresctful and a ######.

So yes, people should be able to say whatever they want, whenever they want, and should expect to have to deal with the consequence of having other people respond to it with speech of their own, reputation effects, etc.

It's more HOW they say what they want to say more than anything. Civility and respect in communication goes a long way to solving problems rather than exacerbating them.

There is a difference between mere speech and actions. When you act on a decision using speech, your are being punished for that action, not the speech itself. This is why discrimination laws and libel don't constrain freedom of speech despite having legal consequences. Hate speech laws do constrain freedom of speech; but I'm opposed to those too.

And to me, that's messed up. That removes all potential responsibility for those who wish to use inflammatory rhetoric as their primary tool of discourse. There has to be a balance, and I believe that balance comes from treating your fellow man as you would like to be treated. Hey, we all have slip ups, and those can be forgiven if your have a record of civility and respect. But you can see why people would take a dislike to Donald Trump and people that support or encourage his bad behaviors.

Originally Posted by sworkhard

Freedom of speech is not the same as freedom from consequences. People are free to remove their support, condemn you, mock you, and so on for what you say. You don't have to provide a platform for the person, you don't have to go to their speech, and you can boycott their business. Nevertheless, we should expect the consequences to be proportional to to the speech. The idea we should kick people out of society because they say something wrong is just incredibly dangerous and is massively disproportionate.

Which was exactly my point, even though I have found out I'm a fascist for suggesting that people have the right to react to your speech and use those reactions as a mechanism to correct your behaviors. If you want to act like a dick society has a right or a responsibility to treat you like a dick, and if that behavior continues, to ostracize you if required. You know, like has been going on for decades in cultures around the globe. But man, I'm such a fascist. Where did I put my brown short and jack boots again?

Originally Posted by evman150

Free speech is exactly like democracy. Both are good in reasonable doses; both are horrific when taken too far. This is the crucial point that free speech zealots fail to grasp.

Well said. Right on the money.

[MarchHare]

Even a stopped clock, etc., etc...

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...51796354269184

@realDonaldTrump
The global warming we should be worried about is the global warming caused by NUCLEAR WEAPONS in the hands of crazy or incompetent leaders!
9:53 PM - 7 May 2014

[nik-]

Originally Posted by wittynickname

And yet they can't seem to grasp how this could have possibly happened. How could decades of playing to the uneducated (who are proud to be such, who shun knowledge as if it were a sin) and misinformed (on purpose, using Hannity and Limbaugh and the like to spread just flat out lies about the state of the world) and terrified (because of Fox News' War on Christmas, War on Men, War on Christians, etc, etc scare tactics) could possibly lead to this loose cannon candidate...they honestly don't understand it at all. It takes a special kind of cognitive dissonance.

Well that's the thing, they did grasp it. Their self audit in 2012 was actually quite on the button. The problem is their voter base is totally out of their control now as a result of the Tea Party leap to the right. They can't keep their moderates elected because money backing more extreme candidates gets them voted out. In the end re-election trumps long term strategy. Really the two year cycle is a big part of the problem here. Way too short.

The "right of centre big tent" GOP is a dying party. Until they get this fixed up (if they even can), I wouldn't be surprised if they never sit in the White House again.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by photon

In political news, Trump endorsed Ryan and McCain tonight.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/05/politi...yan/index.html

Huge capitulation on The Donald's part. The intervention must have gone down and he was told what he was going to do to try and get back into this race. Not sure either matters. Ryan should stomp his primary challenger and McCain will probably lose to Kirkpatrick.

[Buster]

Originally Posted by evman150

I found this an interesting comment. I wonder what you mean by "weaken". Do you mean less democratic? Or do you mean it undermines democracy per se?

If it is the latter, I disagree. If it is the former, I think you have to realize that democracy is not something to be maximized, but to be optimized. Increasing the democratic nature of something is not necessarily good. It is often good, but not necessarily so. Take gay marriage, for example. Such a human right should in no way be subject to popular vote. Yet a referendum on such an issue "increases" or perhaps "strengthens" democracy.

Free speech is exactly like democracy. Both are good in reasonable doses; both are horrific when taken too far. This is the crucial point that free speech zealots fail to grasp.

replace democracy with "western democracies" in my post.

[sworkhard]

Originally Posted by New Era

Y
Which was exactly my point, even though I have found out I'm a fascist for suggesting that people have the right to react to your speech and use those reactions as a mechanism to correct your behaviors. If you want to act like a dick society has a right or a responsibility to treat you like a dick, and if that behavior continues, to ostracize you if required. You know, like has been going on for decades in cultures around the globe. But man, I'm such a fascist. Where did I put my brown short and jack boots again?

What you said is that they should be made outcasts. This is what I take issue with, not the basic idea that there are consequences.

Originally Posted by New Era

Punish that person or group by making them an outcast. A little shaming can go along way to correcting negative behaviors. Also, the authorities should be curtailing this stuff by dropping a hate crimes charge every now and then.

This is the part the reeks of fascism and is scary. This is the part the is cult like. This is what I am fundamentally opposed to. Can you provide a single example of where shaming has changed a person's mind, rather than just building resentment? How about a group? It will cause people to be compliant for a while, that's true. However, compliance and agreement shouldn't be confused. Donald Trump is a great example of what can happen when you get people to be compliant without changing their minds.

Regarding other parts of your post, I agree the community as a whole agrees to give the government the power to give individuals rights. However, the necessary consent of the people in giving these rights doesn't mean I have to think that therefore individuals should be submissive in all things. I want to live in a society where dissent is common, where disagreement is normal and encouraged rather than under the tyranny of the majority. I think a society that denies such a right to individuals is ####ed up.

I definitely think that effective discourse is civil, but I have seen satire, ridicule, and even forms of trolling contribute to changing minds. I see no reason to enforce an arbitrary level civility; I think the appropriate amount of civility in communications will be determined by what's effective; I'm not convinced the same amount of civility is appropriate in all cases.

[Buster]

Originally Posted by nik-

Well that's the thing, they did grasp it. Their self audit in 2012 was actually quite on the button. The problem is their voter base is totally out of their control now as a result of the Tea Party leap to the right. They can't keep their moderates elected because money backing more extreme candidates gets them voted out. In the end re-election trumps long term strategy. Really the two year cycle is a big part of the problem here. Way too short.

The "right of centre big tent" GOP is a dying party. Until they get this fixed up (if they even can), I wouldn't be surprised if they never sit in the White House again.

Many people (I might include myself in this), consider Trump's destruction of the GOP as a long-term good for the country. The old party wasn't very good.

It might allow the party to re-form around a winning set of ideas. If they can adopt a big chunk of the Johnson/Weld platform, they will be a much stronger party.

The first party - and this goes for Canada too - that determines that fiscal conservatism and socially liberal policies are very popular, will turn into a dynasty. Nobody can seem to get out of their own way to make it happen. And when Johnson/Weld do it, the voters are too scared to go 3rd party. So the GOP will have to reform around those ideas.

[Cube Inmate]

Originally Posted by Buster

Many people (I might include myself in this), consider Trump's destruction of the GOP as a long-term good for the country. The old party wasn't very good.

It might allow the party to re-form around a winning set of ideas. If they can adopt a big chunk of the Johnson/Weld platform, they will be a much stronger party.

The first party - and this goes for Canada too - that determines that fiscal conservatism and socially liberal policies are very popular, will turn into a dynasty. Nobody can seem to get out of their own way to make it happen. And when Johnson/Weld do it, the voters are too scared to go 3rd party. So the GOP will have to reform around those ideas.

Now this I can agree with. My apologies for calling you out by name earlier, but three pages of news-less pedantry was getting irritating when there's so much substance to discuss and ridicule.