American Politics 3.0 - Back to Brunch

[afc wimbledon]

Originally Posted by BoLevi

White nationalists are not mainstream.

One of the scum got elected President, that's pretty mainstream

[BoLevi]

Originally Posted by KootenayFlamesFan

AOC is an extremist? Hmm learn something new every day.

She sure is.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by BoLevi

We've seen significant gains in social issues on the left. We've seen a massive "industrial complex" of social justice, funded by billions of dollars gain significant political influence. We've seen a massive expansion of gov't and gov't influence. We've seen "defund the police" calls from the left that aren't laughed off outright. We've seen extremists like AOC and her Squad get significant airtime. We've seen massive media institutions like the NYT, CNN, Washington Post, etc get co-opted by woke activists.

I could go on.

Extremists like AOC. Haha ok. Like I said, you're a deeply unserious person. There's really no reason to engage you further.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by KootenayFlamesFan

AOC is an extremist? Hmm learn something new every day.

Almost as extreme as Lauren Boebert, Andy Biggs, Mo Brooks, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gozar, and Matt Gaetz. Our local troll is going to have his work cut out for him trying to explain these "patriots" away, especially when the DoD is taking action to weed out people who ascribe to their their messages and leadership. The DoD doesn't want these loons in their ranks. That says a lot. Can't think of when the DoD, or any other organization, tried to expel people with AOC's perspective from their ranks?

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

There isn’t a single Overton window anymore. There are completely different ones for various siloed groups of people. You basically get to pick your own Overton window, with the only requirement being that it be really obnoxiously preachy.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

There isn’t a single Overton window anymore. There are completely different ones for various siloed groups of people. You basically get to pick your own Overton window, with the only requirement being that it be really obnoxiously preachy.

Well, no, there is still only one Overton Window, the concept has just been hijacked by preachy obnoxious dicks who want to try and spin a well known tool to their advantage. It would be like suggesting there are multiple iterations of the Venn diagram, when in reality it is just dicks messing with the Venn diagram to spin their information. You can still apply the original Overton Window to come to reasonable conclusions.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by Lanny_McDonald

Well, no, there is still only one Overton Window, the concept has just been hijacked by preachy obnoxious dicks who want to try and spin a well known tool to their advantage. It would be like suggesting there are multiple iterations of the Venn diagram, when in reality it is just dicks messing with the Venn diagram to spin their information. You can still apply the original Overton Window to come to reasonable conclusions.

You could argue that there are two; one for social policy, and one for economic policy, but I think the advancement of social issues has sort of inched to the left, whereas global economic policies (outside of some EU countries and recent South American elections) have rapidly accelerated towards extreme neoliberalism.

[Lanny_McDonald]

And I could accept that argument, but also make an argument against it. It's still a bastardization of the Overton Window and used to track different subjects, which it was not actually designed for. But I get where you're going.

[rubecube]

AOC is the real extremist though.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...sm-legal-phase

Despite its radical start, the Nazi party dramatically increased its popularity over many years in part by strategically masking its explicit antisemitic agenda to attract moderate voters, who could convince themselves that the racism at the core of Nazi ideology was something the party had outgrown. It represented itself as the antidote to communism, using a history of political violence in the Weimar Republic, including street clashes between communists and the far right, to warn of a threat of violent communist revolution. It attracted support from business elites by promising to smash labor unions. The Nazis portrayed socialists, Marxists, liberals, labor unions, the cultural world and the media as representatives of, or sympathizers with, this revolution. Once in power, they bore down on this message.

The Nazis recognized that the language of family, faith, morality and homeland could be used to justify especially brutal violence against an enemy represented as being opposed to all these things. The central message of Nazi politics was to demonize a set of constructed enemies, an unholy alliance of communists and Jews, and ultimately to justify their criminalization.

Violent militias occupied an ambiguous role between state and non-state actors. The SS began as violent Nazi supporters, before becoming an independent arm of the government. The message of violent law and order created a culture that influenced all the Nazi state’s institutions. As Yale historian Timothy Snyder writes in On Tyranny, “for violence to transform not just the atmosphere but also the system, the emotions of rallies and the ideology of exclusion have to be incorporated into the training of armed guards.”

In the US,#the training of police as “warriors”, together with the unofficial replacement of the American flag by the thin blue line flag, auger poorly about the democratic commitments of this institution.

[KootenayFlamesFan]

Oh please no.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1473843051948920832

[CliffFletcher]

Biden Won Big With a Bad Hand

…Relative to its strength in Congress, the Biden administration has proved outstandingly successful. In 11 months, Biden has done more with 50 Democratic senators than Barack Obama did with 57. He signed a $1.9 trillion COVID-relief bill in March 2021: $1,400-per-person direct payments, $350 billion in aid to state and local governments, an extension of supplemental unemployment-insurance benefits and subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. He signed a $1 trillion infrastructure bill in November. He signed some 75 executive orders, many of them advancing liberal immigration goals. He’s also won confirmation for some 40 federal judges, more than any first-year president since Ronald Reagan, and twice as many as Donald Trump confirmed in his first year with a 54-vote Senate majority…

… Instead of fulminating against Manchin for calling quits when he did, Democrats might want to reflect on how much of their agenda got enacted only thanks to the team spirit of a senator from a state that Trump won in 2020 by 39 points.

Anybody can win a poker game with a good hand. It takes a real maestro to play a bad one.

Biden won a bigger pool with worse cards than any Democratic president ever. He won that pool because Manchin gave Biden more loyalty under more adverse conditions than the moderate Democrats of 2009 gave to President Obama.

Perhaps it’s not the nature of Democrats to appreciate the glass half full. But half full it is.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...agenda/621085/

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Biden Won Big With a Bad Hand

Did a Biden spokesperson write that? Most of those things were done in the first few months of office and it's been mostly broken promises since then.

EDIT: Ah nevermind. I see it's noted war crimes enthusiast, David Frum.

[Slanter]

Originally Posted by rubecube

EDIT: Ah nevermind. I see it's noted war crimes enthusiast, David Frum.

Can you explain that?

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by Slanter

Can you explain that?

He was a speechwriter for W, most notably writing speeches to justify the Iraq war, and to this day defends the war.

[Maritime Q-Scout]

Originally Posted by rubecube

Did a Biden spokesperson write that? Most of those things were done in the first few months of office and it's been mostly broken promises since then.

EDIT: Ah nevermind. I see it's noted war crimes enthusiast, David Frum.

Originally Posted by rubecube

He was a speechwriter for W, most notably writing speeches to justify the Iraq war, and to this day defends the war.

Honest question: Editorializing aside, was the information itself incorrect?

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by rubecube

EDIT: Ah nevermind. I see it's noted war crimes enthusiast, David Frum.

The same David Frum who’s one of the most passionate denouncers of Trump in American media, and who has commented that 21st-century conservatism has “delivered much more harm than good, from the Iraq war to the financial crisis to the Trump presidency”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...bush-axis-evil

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by Maritime Q-Scout

Honest question: Editorializing aside, was the information itself incorrect?

It's technically correct. If you want to focus on the first six months of the Biden presidency and completely ignore the last six months, then yes it's been a roaring success.

The judges thing is also incredibly misleading. The reason Biden has been able to appoint more judges than Obama did is because McConnell removed the 60 vote requirement in the Senate so that Republicans could pack the courts.

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

The same David Frum who’s one of the most passionate denouncers of Trump in American media, and who has commented that 21st-century conservatism has “delivered much more harm than good, from the Iraq war to the financial crisis to the Trump presidency”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...bush-axis-evil

Yeah, this guy:

https://twitter.com/user/status/750649573245329408

A neocon zealot who still can't see that Trump is the disease, and not simply a symptom of 50 years of bad economic policies, which he still largely supports.

[Slanter]

Ok, so definitely not a Biden spokesperson though, right?

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by Slanter

Ok, so definitely not a Biden spokesperson though, right?

That was something that people who don't take everything super literally call "a joke."

[driveway]

This is a spot-on perfect example of the “poisoning the well” logical fallacy. Instead of engaging with the ideas presented in an argument, the party committing the fallacy attacks the source of the ideas instead.

This is particularly egregious when the complaints about the source have nothing whatsoever to do with the ideas in the argument.

“Dave said that this restaurant isn’t good because they don’t use quality ingredients.”

“Yeah, well, Dave is an Oilers fan, so what the hell does he know?”

“David Frum argues that Biden has accomplished a significant amount in his presidency. He’s passed 3 trillion dollars worth of legislation with only 50 senators.”

“Yeah, well, David Frum supported the Iraq War, so what the hell does he know?“

In both cases, it’s clear that the complaint against “Dave” and his ideas has nothing to do with the claims made or supporting evidence thereof, but is entirely unrelated to the discussion and serves only to distract from the topic and stir up useless argument (how bad was the Iraq war and how bad are the Oilers, obviously the answers are “bad” and “worse”). These conversations progress us nowhere towards answering the questions “where should we eat” or “does Biden deserve more praise than he’s getting.”

Rubecube, if you were one of my middle school debaters and you tried to pull this poisoning the well move at practice, I’d have you out in the hallway doing re-runs of your constructive with a pencil between your teeth so fast it’d make your head spin.


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