PGT: President-Elect Donald J Trump

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

Trump supporters think he's the ultimate #### and love making fun of how short he is. He's in political no mans land right now.

No, that would be alt-right Trump supporters, not Trump supporters in general. He's a die hard republican who didn't vote for Trump because Trump has some very traditionally non-republican political goals.

Watch the video, he's just not that smart and tends to cater to the lowest common denominator. He took a quote from Sanders that revolved around how the Dems focused too much on the rich and forgot about the working class and tried to spin it as "passing the blame to Trump" and took another quote that revolved around how Trump won by avoiding policy and talking down Hilary, says "Dems are just saying that Americans are racist, bigots, and homophobes" and then turns around and admits Trump won because he makes Americans feel better about themselves.

He's just kind of see-through. He makes his share of good points but he's super desperate to push the anti-left agenda.

His whole point is that the left is mean and passing the blame, and the only quote that he didn't have to twist to get there is Bill Maher saying the same thing.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

He's just kind of see-through. He makes his share of good points but he's super desperate to push the anti-left agenda.

Well, that's not surprising, is it? He's anti-left. That is his agenda. Ben Shapiro is basically a good barometer from what we'd be hearing out of the GOP if Ted Cruz had been the nominee rather than Trump (minus the religious aspect). Basically, he's the type of guy who hates that Trump is President but is absolutely pumped that Mike Pence and Newt Gingrich are in power.

I don't recall ever having agreed in principle with him on anything except his disdain for Trump, but he's still worth listening on occasion to for the five minute version of "what would someone with a deep ideological commitment to right wing principles say about this topic?" Gives you a better understanding of what the other side is telling itself, even if it's unconvincing. For example,

Spoiler!

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Gives you a better understanding of what the other side is telling itself, even if it's unconvincing.

Absolutely, I watch him to get a better understanding of people on different points in the political spectrum, but it's just funny when someone posts a Shapiro video and says "OMG he's so right! he knows democrats!"

No, he knows a very hunkered down right-wing view of whatever he's talking about. He's debatably an idiot if you're looking for anything beyond that. He's worth a laugh.

That aside, it's kind of funny watching each side blame the other for this win. Like, not even republicans are taking ownership, it's basically "the left's fault" while part of the left is like "oops, we screwed up" and the other part are "HOW DID WE LET THIS HAPPEN?"

Literally nobody seems to be giving the right credit, not even the right.

[photon]

Congress already working to limit Trump's trying to reset the relationship with Russia

As President-elect Trump talks normalization of relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Republicans in Congress are moving to stake out a tough stance against Russia.

The effort started with the House passing a bill to sanction anyone who supports the Syrian government in the ongoing civil war there. And a range of lawmakers — including Trump allies and other Republicans — are preparing other possible measures, arguing that the United States should be taking a harder line against a country and a leader they view as a dangerous threat.

“[Trump] wants to reset with Russia. Maybe he can do it, but here’s my view about Russia: They’re a bad actor in the world, they need to be reined in,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Tuesday, adding that it would be up to Congress to let Russia “know the rules of the road pretty early,” even under a friendlier Trump administration.

“I think [Russia] should pay a price heavier than they’re paying now for what they’re doing in Syria and in eastern Europe,” Graham added. “I will consult with my colleagues what there is appetite for.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...ump-on-russia/

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Literally nobody seems to be giving the right credit, not even the right.

First, I think there is a general acknowledgment that racism played a pretty big role here, and the right has played a role in stoking those fires. But when you let in a bouncing puck from center ice, it's only natural to start looking at how you managed to screw that up, and not spending a bunch of time focusing on what an excellent dump in the other guys made.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Classical liberals believe people should not be discriminated against. Classical liberals believe identity should play no role in how people are treated by the law or by our institutions.

Classical liberalism says a lot of things that are great in theory, but fail miserably in application. Here in lies the problem when trying to apply political philosophy to a complex system. Those who ascribe to a particular philosophy are locked into that belief system and see problems that don’t comply with that particular ontology. I hate it when people try to apply philosophical positions to complex issues and problems, because solutions to these problems affect and contradict all those positions in some way. Stick your philosophy back in the book and get into the real world where the vast majority of people don’t understand the difference between grades of gas let alone the contrast between classical and social liberalism.

It's the color-blind approach to society, the one championed by Martin Luther King. It was the foundation of the Rights Revolution in the 60s and 70s, when Western legislatures and courts greatly expanded civil rights and civil liberties.

The reality is that the color-blind society never developed. For that to have happened you would have had to burn the whole thing down and cull the herd of several generations. The reality is that you work with what you have, and what we have is not a color-blind society. Find solutions that can work in a culture where biases exist, because we all have them and will only move forward when we find solutions that address the flaws in our personal biases.

This approach was rejected by academics in the 80s, who wanted to use the Marxist approach to class struggle and apply it to race, gender, and sexual identity. They rejected color-blindness, and the core liberal principles of individual freedom and tolerance. It's an authoritarian credo, which hopes to use the power of the state to impose radical egalitarianism on society, in contrast to the classical liberal approach of leaving people alone to live as they please.

I once thought this, but after greater exposure I disagree with this. Academics didn’t reject anything. In the United States most institutions completely embrace classical liberalism, but the reality is that we live in a multi-cultural world where your customers (nee students) come in with very different expectations. These students have biases passed onto them by their parents or social environment and those academics are forced to try and open their eyes to that color-blind society. When you attempt to expose people to information that does not comply with their preconceptions you get major pushback. You also see it at institutional level when bodies like the College Republicans, write complaints against you as being an activist faculty member, putting your career at risk. Colleges and universities are caught in the culture war the conservatives started and are trying to put an end to liberalism all together. Try existing in a system where you have interests like David Horowitz publishing the illiberal Academic Bill of Rights, political bias publications aimed at academics just doing their jobs, and then identifying some of those very academics as the “most dangerous” academics in the country, like common criminals. Since when is getting students to apply critical thinking skills is a crime?

Classical liberalism covers all those things: Leave people alone to do as they please. Do not treat people differently because of their race or gender.

Except our systems aren’t set up that way. Unless you are prepared to burn down the whole system and start all over again, this philosophical belief is not possible. One of the things that is not identified in this whole ideal, nor your comments, is the concept of the dollar and its impact on the classical liberal view. Like it or not, money plays a big part in our world, including on college campuses, completely turning the classical liberal philosophical position on its ear. It changes the dynamic and is inline with the philosophy, per se. Frankly, all students are one color: GREEN. But those with more green have greater latitude, which is also reflective of our society as well. I guess your ideal of a colorless society has been achieved to one extent, in a very twisted sort of way, but the illiberal aspects you observe in our culture are a result of this single color perspective.

What's going on at college campuses is inspired by a anti-capitalism and anti-western ideology. Individual rights and individual freedoms are subordinated to the group struggle, where class has been replaced with race and gender. Freedom of expression is suppressed. All political and social struggles are seen through lens of race and gender, and the moral and political high-ground are inversions of the existing patriarchal power struggle formulated by radical leftists. In recent years that has spread out of campuses and into mainstream media and politics.

This may be the way it is in Canada, but not in the United States. Colleges and Universities have gone just the opposite way – being turned into profit centers. You seem to have this belief that universities and colleges are getting an endless supply of cash from the government to operate. You are so far from the truth. In our state we survive on what funds we can raise through tuition and user fees. State funding was cut years ago, so we are sink or swim. This is capitalism at its finest, and everyone is involved in the process. A customer is our lifeblood. Their enrollment means we can continue to operate and keep instructors employed. Students are green and they are all treated as being special. It has got so bad in education that you can’t afford to hold students to the same rigor they once were held. You can’t fail someone. You can’t expel someone for just cause, because the student is the revenue stream. This is the viciousness of the market economy in action.

Some states are different, but the funding strings are tighter than they have ever been. Even in ultra-liberal California you are forced to see students as green, not white, black, yellow brown or pink. My experience across multiple institutions, and hearing the same issues at gatherings like Educause, tells me this is the world academics now live in. It sucks, and it wasn’t what most of us signed on for, but it is the system we have to accept and try to make work.

All driven by classical liberalism, not identity politics. Again, if you think people should not be treated differently owing to their race or gender or sexuality, then you're defending classical liberal principles.

As I mentioned, those ideals don’t work in our society because of the complex nature of it.

Identity politics have been around for about 30 years. Before that, all those causes were championed on the basis of classical liberalism.

I’m not sure this is accurate in any form. You need to read “Why We Can’t Wait” to see that identity politics has been in play for a lot longer than you suggest, and employed by Dr. King himself.

Now THAT'S identity politics. It says the validity of someone's opinions derives from their race or gender. It's the same arguments that were once used by conservatives to keep women out of professions like law. It's poisoning the well - a way to delegitimize someone else's opinion.

You mean like when someone champions one particular flawed political philosophy, claiming it, and its followers, superior to others?

When you go from the classically liberal position that nobody should be discriminated against, and that we should treat everyone as unique individuals - principals on which there is broad agreement if not consensus in Western society today - to the identity politics credo that all politics are a struggle between groups and we should regard people first and foremost as members of their group, then yeah, you're going to cause division. And not just the kind of division you want to imagine, between righteous people and evil oppressors. You're going to get - you are getting - a division among liberals between the classical liberals who believe in treating everyone as individuals and putting the highest premium on freedom of expression and open debate, and the regressive political left, who believe in using group identity to impose a new political model on society, and in silencing any speech that questions or challengers that new model.

And I will repeat, that our society is not set up this way. We are a clash of cultures, ideologies and philosophies. The expectation that all are to ascribe to one philosophy, or its behaviors, is unrealistic. That to me sounds more Marxist than anything in the social liberal philosophy. We need to find the philosophical commonalities and build systems from that than try and have people comply with any one particular philosophy.

The upshot is that if women and minorities and people of non-CIS orientation mobilize as political groups fighting for their collective interests*, you're going to get males, whites, and straights mobilizing as political groups to fight for their collective interests. Which is fundamentally illiberal, and a very bad thing - especially for minorities.

* We should recognize that most of the people who belong to the gender and minority groups do not subscribe to the credos of identity politics. Most want to be treated as individuals like everybody else. There's a reason only a quarter of Canadian women self-identity as feminists.

I might be missing your point here. So fighting for a collective belief, is a bad thing? Conflict can lead to quicker and better resolution. When two sides are fighting for their beliefs, and can effectively articulate those beliefs, I think it is much easier to find commonalities and identify things that everyone can agree upon, regardless of ideology or philosophy. When they don’t participate then we end up in what we just experienced. We can’t break down walls until we know there is a wall in place, no?

Probably late the party with this, but oh well.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by New Era

Probably late the party with this, but oh well.

Great post regardless. Touched on a lot of truths that are too often ignored are undervalued.

[GirlySports]

you have to give people a helping hand but then have to let go at some point. or else they will always depend on that hand.

there is an argument to be made that the former can't happen yet. but eventually that staged has to be reached... as was discussed with photon, how do we measure that?

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

you have to give people a helping hand but then have to let go at some point. or else they will always depend on that hand.

there is an argument to be made that the former can't happen yet. but eventually that staged has to be reached... as was discussed with photon, how do we measure that?

This is your poor understanding of race relations in the United States.

Blacks and other minorities, but mostly blacks, are still being actively persecuted and disenfranchised by governments elected to represent them.

There is no 'helping hand'. There is the bare minimum acceptable under the constitution and that is constantly and consistently being challenged.

There were 13 states who actively suppressed black voters in the lead up to this election.

This myth that blacks have been receiving handouts from the government for long enough is just a myth. Blacks are still actively being targeted by their government, the guy who was just elected president advocates unconstitutional search and seizure fer crissakes.

You're out of your element here. I would happily help point you in the direction of some resources to read if you want to try to understand things better, but questions like whether or not affirmative action should be reversed in 50 years if things are equal is so abstract that it's borderline fantasy. The answer is obviously yes, and the metric for deciding whether it's happened is so far in the distance it would be impossible to say what that would actually look like.

[PsYcNeT]

I laughed.

[photon]

"A conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect" NSA chief on WikiLeaks

Video:
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/798647324687929344

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Aren't Sperrys pretty much the whitest shoes that ever whited?



Even the black couple in that ad are white. You know, honorarily.

[Senator Clay Davis]

Can't disagree with Oxford's choice for word of the year (although bigly...)

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by New Era

Classical liberalism says a lot of things that are great in theory, but fail miserably in application.

It hasn't failed. It's responsible for the enormous gains in freedom and tolerance that we've seen since the Enlightenment. In every possible measure the world is more free and tolerant than it was 200 years ago, or 40 years ago. Why? And why has the West led the way and not Egypt, China, or Brazil?

Because of liberalism. Because of a culture that deliberately reduced the important of religion, of race, of gender. Protestants and Catholics used to be at each others' throats. Wars and oppression and bigotry. Why aren't they still at each others' throats? Because of liberal individualism. Because we said the most important thing about a person is their unique personal characteristics, not the fact they are Protestant or Catholic.

This what is missing in liberal education today - any recognition of the progress we've actually made. Steven Pinker's Better Angels of Our Nature provoked fierce criticism from the left for having the audacity to point out that the world - and especially the West - is getting less violent in every way. It's a surpassing irony that there's nobody today more reluctant to recognize progress than a progressive.

Liberalism works. History shows it works. Has it brought utopia? Nope. And no ideology ever will. Humans are flawed by their nature. All we can do is reduce our worst traits. As we have been for the last 100+ years.

On the other hand, there is no historical precedent for a sustainable society build on the premise of a power struggle between inborn identities. None. One identity will gain supremacy over the others and subordinate or snuff them out. And all the people who just want to be regarded as individuals - which is most people - will get caught up in the inferno.

Originally Posted by New Era

You mean like when someone champions one particular flawed political philosophy, claiming it, and its followers, superior to others?

Liberalism means challenging everyone's beliefs, all the time. You don't get to say 'safe space' in a liberal society. You don't get to hide behind religion or your identity or your hurt feelings. It's all out on the table for everyone to question, challenge, poke, or reject.

But rejecting beliefs isn't the same as rejecting people. Play the ball, not the man. If you're too fragile to handle someone challenging your beliefs, then a liberal society isn't for you. A conservative, conformist, theocratic society is a better fit for those who don't like to be challenged. Who crave security. And I honestly believe that's the strongest appeal of the illiberal left credo today - like its mirror-image on the right, it offers emotional security and comfort. None of this tiresome need to reason and defend and challenge and compromise. No frustrating complexity or nuance. Just Right and Wrong. It's the new religion.

Originally Posted by New Era

And I will repeat, that our society is not set up this way. We are a clash of cultures, ideologies and philosophies.

Liberalism invites a clash of cultures, ideologies, and philosophies. It's a way to ask questions, not a fixed credo of answers. What it does insist on is:

• The most open arena of ideologies possible.
• The insistence that we hash them out using reason, and not tradition or sacredness or any other closed value.
• The recognition that all citizens have their own inherent worth that is not prescribed by gender, race, birth, etc.

[Lanny_McDonald]

^^^Liberalism yes, but not classical liberalism, which was your frame. Liberalism has evolved and is best designed to deal with our cultural differences so long as we are not too rigid in our observance of dogma and orthodoxy.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Liberalism invites a clash of cultures, ideologies, and philosophies. It's a way to ask questions, not a fixed credo of answers. What it does insist on is:

• The most open arena of ideologies possible.
• The insistence that we hash them out using reason, and not tradition or sacredness or any other closed value.
• The recognition that all citizens have their own inherent worth that is not prescribed by gender, race, birth, etc.

Seems oddly illiberal then to shut out the value of identity politics because it includes some bad apples and doesn't follow closely enough to "traditional" liberalism.

Standard IP strives for those exact same things. Your broad-stroke "safe space" version of it (while a version of it, not the definitive one) might not, but it seems like we're not having an honest conversation if we can't first admit that the "special snowflake" version of IP isn't representative of the whole.

[corporatejay]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

I laughed.

That's a funny retort. Nevertheless, New Balance, who made that comment in regards to Trump being anti-TPP is taking a lot of crap from left wing idiots assuming they are all about being racist now.

[troutman]

At least Wikileaks brought us this. A funny conversation between Podesta and Abedin about Pitchfork’s “Top 50 Shoegaze Albums of All Time”:

http://decayfm.com/news/news/wikilea...shoegaze-list/

[Red Slinger]

Originally Posted by troutman

At least Wikileaks brought us this. A funny conversation between Podesta and Abedin about Pitchfork’s “Top 50 Shoegaze Albums of All Time”:

http://decayfm.com/news/news/wikilea...shoegaze-list/

Lock them up!

[photon]

Breitbart got basically as many interactions with articles on Facebook as CNN did. And more than any other online news except Fox, which crushed everyone. Fun!



http://qz.com/831383/the-articles-on...ing-with-them/

EDIT: Fake news outperformed real news too:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilver...ws-on-facebook