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We Can Work It Out - Politics & Philosophy
20 May 2020
11.49am
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Dark Overlord
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50yearslate said

Dark Overlord said
But it doesn’t have to be that way. We also have Jacob Hornberger (Libertarian), Howie Hawkins (Green), Mark Charles (Independent), and many more candidates that aren’t corrupt senile rapists. It’s just that the Republicans and Democrats want you to think that it’s Biden vs Trump because they’re the parties of Wall Street.

Personally, i plan on voting for Jacob Hornberger because while his stance on healthcare and the free market is extremely naive, i agree with him on pretty much everything else and he’s the only major 3rd party candidate that has something for both Never Trump Republicans and Never Biden Democrats. My hope is that he wins at least one state, forcing a contingent election, and hopefully his stance on free market capitalism makes these corporate cronies vote for him.

The fact is it really is Biden vs. Trump. I’ve never heard of Jacob Hornberger in my life. If you’re voting based on principle alone that’s fine and good but none of those people have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning this election. The way American politics work it’s simply not going to happen. I don’t like Biden and I really don’t like Trump, but our president is going to be one of those two (unless maybe one of them dies and is replaced by someone else? I’m not sure what would happen in that situation). It really, really sucks, because they’re both terrible, but I just don’t see any other options.

While it’s unlikely that a 3rd party candidate will win, it’s not impossible. While they didn’t win, Theodore Roosevelt got 27% of the popular vote as a Progressive in 1912 and Ross Perot got 19% of the popular vote as an independent in 1992. And even if he loses, which he likely will, he can receive federal funding if he gets at least 5% of the popular vote and considering Libertarian Gary Johnson got 3% in 2016, i think he has a chance of passing that threshold.

But at the end of the day, i think people should vote for the candidate they want instead of reluctantly voting for the lesser of two evils. So if someone genuinely likes Joe Biden or Donald Trump, then i think they should vote for him but if they hate both candidates but hate Trump even more, then i think they should vote for the 3rd party candidate that aligns most with their views.

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20 May 2020
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Ngl let’s just do some necromancy shit and resurrect Teddy Roosevelt from the dead and make him president 

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20 May 2020
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Ron Nasty said
I just think politics are so extreme in many countries at the moment, be it left or right, that those in the centre can say little without being attacked by members of their own party and the opposition. The truth is that Nancy Pelosi isn’t left enough for many youngsters on the left, and so they will find anything they can to beat over the head with.

I wonder if many would be criticising the statement had Bernie made it…

Unlike Trump supporters, I don’t think Bernie supporters deify Bernie nearly as much or refuse to acknowledge his failings. After all, the whole point of his campaign was ‘Not Me, Us’. Bernie doesn’t resort to insults and is probably the single most policy-focused mainstream American politicians, but if he did make such a statement then I would be confident that his support base would condemn it. 

As for whether their politics is extreme, I think it’s worth remembering that America is generally much further to the right than Europe – policies such as universal healthcare and the like are seen as being common sense in Europe, whereas in America they’re treated as radical authoritarianism. I’d even go so far as to say that the UK Conservatives are to the left of the US Democrats – on social issues they’re about as liberal as one another, and economically the UK Conservatives at least support the existence of the NHS. So it’s not just a case of Nancy Pelosi being just a bit too moderate for the crazy youngsters, the reality is that since she has received millions in donations from pharmaceutical companies, she has a financial incentive to support the existence of a corrupt healthcare sector wherein tens of thousands of people die every year from medical bankruptcy, a concept that would be seen as barbaric in most other countries.

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20 May 2020
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Starr Shine? said
Seems like the Republicans are allowed to name call while the Democrats aren’t. 

If no one cares when trump does it, shouldn’t care when nancy does it. 

Democrats are also allowed to be creepy while republicans aren’t. Anybody else remember when Joe Biden had to “apologize” for being overly touchy with women? Could you imagine if it were Trump being touchy and inappropriate like that?

Also, a fun video of Biden talking about kids touching his leg hair:

 

Does he sound incoherent to anybody else, or is it just me?

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20 May 2020
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Ron Nasty said
I do wonder why American doctors get away with prescribing prescription-only drugs that have no medical benefit. Had a UK doctor prescribed it for Boris just because Boris asked for it they would be struck off, but it seems in America that the rich and powerful can get any drug they demand whether there is any medical benefit or not.

It is absolutely disgusting how easy it is to get a prescription for things people should not have prescriptions for in the US. 

I know of somebody whose doctor prescribed them a drug they were asking for knowing that this person was previously addicted and had ended up in the hospital because of this drug just a year earlier. The doctor said no at first, but after a few more times of being asked, wrote the prescription. To make it worse, this was a primary care doctor who really has no business prescribing benzos to anybody in the first place. And people who don’t get what they want will just go from doctor to doctor until they find somebody willing to prescribe it to them. There will always be one that will. 

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20 May 2020
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On top of everything that’s been said regarding consistency and hypocrisy, i also think it’s worth pointing out that after the Access Hollywood tape leaked in 2016, the RNC was critical of Trump’s comments, with some prominent politicians like John McCain and Paul Ryan even dropping their support of the candidate and requesting that he be replaced whereas the DNC has done it’s absolute best to sweep Tara Reade’s accusations under the rug, accusing her of lying and continuing their support of Biden, essentially causing the suicide of the #metoo and #believeallwomen movement in the process.

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20 May 2020
1.19pm
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The Bush’s didn’t even vote for Trump. He did do and say a lot of things that warranted Republicans not supporting him, but you probably won’t see any big Democrats doing the same to Biden. 

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20 May 2020
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Dark Overlord said

50yearslate said

Dark Overlord said

But it doesn’t have to be that way. We also have Jacob Hornberger (Libertarian), Howie Hawkins (Green), Mark Charles (Independent), and many more candidates that aren’t corrupt senile rapists. It’s just that the Republicans and Democrats want you to think that it’s Biden vs Trump because they’re the parties of Wall Street.

Personally, i plan on voting for Jacob Hornberger because while his stance on healthcare and the free market is extremely naive, i agree with him on pretty much everything else and he’s the only major 3rd party candidate that has something for both Never Trump Republicans and Never Biden Democrats. My hope is that he wins at least one state, forcing a contingent election, and hopefully his stance on free market capitalism makes these corporate cronies vote for him.

The fact is it really is Biden vs. Trump. I’ve never heard of Jacob Hornberger in my life. If you’re voting based on principle alone that’s fine and good but none of those people have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning this election. The way American politics work it’s simply not going to happen. I don’t like Biden and I really don’t like Trump, but our president is going to be one of those two (unless maybe one of them dies and is replaced by someone else? I’m not sure what would happen in that situation). It really, really sucks, because they’re both terrible, but I just don’t see any other options.

While it’s unlikely that a 3rd party candidate will win, it’s not impossible. While they didn’t win, Theodore Roosevelt got 27% of the popular vote as a Progressive in 1912 and Ross Perot got 19% of the popular vote as an independent in 1992. And even if he loses, which he likely will, he can receive federal funding if he gets at least 5% of the popular vote and considering Libertarian Gary Johnson got 3% in 2016, i think he has a chance of passing that threshold.

It’s not impossible that I will receive a letter in the mail containing one million dollars but it is pretty darn unlikely and I shouldn’t plan my finances around this one million dollars or even expect it to come because it is so very, very unlikely, so I’ll just live life assuming that it will never happen because it probably won’t.

I know that analogy is both terrible and confused but I am tired and I Englished myself out on the AP test so I am sorry.

But at the end of the day, i think people should vote for the candidate they want instead of reluctantly voting for the lesser of two evils. So if someone genuinely likes Joe Biden or Donald Trump, then i think they should vote for him but if they hate both candidates but hate Trump even more, then i think they should vote for the 3rd party candidate that aligns most with their views.

  

Well, it depends. Would I rather support candidates whose views I support or would I rather have Trump out of office? (Not that it matters, because I can’t vote…)

lovelyritametermaid said
Ngl let’s just do some necromancy shit and resurrect Teddy Roosevelt Abraham Lincoln from the dead and make him president 

  

cool let’s do it

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20 May 2020
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This Tara Reade stuff has been the nail in the coffin for me with mainstream Democrats and their media cheerleaders. If you’re going to argue the ‘Believe All Women’ thing (a statement which I support within reason – increasing the amount of support and trust offered to victims has a positive correlation with more victims coming forward, and the rates of proven false accusers have always been very low, but then again belief should never been unconditional and should be based on the evidence), then if you’re really being honest with yourself you have to hold Joe Biden to the same standards as Brett Kavanaugh. One rule for me, another for thee. It’s hypocritical and completely transparent. 

It’s even more shameful that people have taken to combing through Tara Reade’s entire life story to find instances of her being dishonest in order to tarnish her credibility. I’ve genuinely seen people bring up, like, parking tickets and people she met that she didn’t get on with as proof that she must be lying about what happened, even after Joe has spent his entire career being publicly exposed for his constant lies. Remember when he claimed that he got arrested for trying to visit Nelson Mandela in jail on Robben Island? That’s been debunked, and he’s since admitted that all that happened was that – under Apartheid rules – he was separated from some of the ANC members at the airport.  Remember when he claimed that he was the first in his family to attend university? Turns out that was also untrue and he’d actually just directly plagiarised a speech from the UK Labour leader at the time, Neil Kinnock. The guy literally cannot stop himself from making stuff up. 

I suppose you could go full-on utilitarian and argue that technically, Trump has probably harassed/assaulted more people than Biden (the guy straight up admitted that he’s walked into female dressing rooms and forced himself on women etc), but when you’re at the stage of arguing which of two rapists is worse, you should probably just take a step back and acknowledge that something has obviously gone horribly 

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20 May 2020
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^that’s very true. I strongly dislike both candidates and it is absolutely sickening that one of them is going to be our next president.

Is it too late to swap Biden out for Bernie?

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20 May 2020
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Voting third party in the US is pointless. There are two options, pick one. 

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As much as hate to say it, the DNC would rather give Trump a second term then let Bernie be the nominee because unlike most politicians, Bernie isn’t easily swayed by moneyed interests and many of the more traditional Democrats wouldn’t vote for Bernie if he won, just like how many Hillary supporters didn’t vote for Obama in 2008.

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20 May 2020
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Both candidates are creeps. Though I rather have the country go more left than right and a biden president will make the country more left. 

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20 May 2020
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I guess we’d also have checks and balances actually being effective with Biden in office– and we wouldn’t have Trump being a freaking idiot and firing people left and right as well as putting people in his cabinet who literally have zero qualifications for what they have been put in charge of. 

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20 May 2020
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Starr Shine? said
Voting third party in the US is pointless. There are two options, pick one.

But isn’t voting for a candidate you hate also pointless and a wasted vote?

Starr Shine? said
Both candidates are creeps. Though I rather have the country go more left than right and a biden president will make the country more left.

While it’s true that Biden’s more left than Trump (although both are right wing), it’s hard to say whether or not a Biden victory would push America further left because if Trump wins, then we have another chance of getting a progressive candidate in office whereas if Biden wins and seeks re-election, he’ll likely get the Democratic nomination in 2024, meaning that either he’ll get 2 terms or we’ll have a Republican victory in 2024 (which could mean another 4 years of Trump in the future).

And even in the off chance that he doesn’t seek re-election (or is impeached, resigns, or dies in office), his VP will likely get the nominee and considering that he’s a right wing centrist, he’d likely pick a right wing centrist like Hillary Clinton or Elizabeth Warren to be his VP, meaning that we could be waiting up to 12 years for another chance of getting another shot of picking a good president.

But to be fair on Biden’s part, he hasn’t picked the VP yet so while it’s likely it’ll be someone like Hillary, he could surprise us with a more likable VP like Tulsi Gabbard.

lovelyritametermaid said
I guess we’d also have checks and balances actually being effective with Biden in office– and we wouldn’t have Trump being a freaking idiot and firing people left and right as well as putting people in his cabinet who literally have zero qualifications for what they have been put in charge of.

Good point.

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Dark Overlord said
As much as hate to say it, the DNC would rather give Trump a second term then let Bernie be the nominee because unlike most politicians, Bernie isn’t easily swayed by moneyed interests and many of the more traditional Democrats wouldn’t vote for Bernie if he won, just like how many Hillary supporters didn’t vote for Obama in 2008.

  

Bernie lost the primaries, if people wanted bernie, would of voted for him

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Exactly, he lost due a combination of the more traditional Democrats and the DNC going out of their way to make sure a more conservative candidate got the nomination.

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Starr Shine? said

Dark Overlord said

As much as hate to say it, the DNC would rather give Trump a second term then let Bernie be the nominee because unlike most politicians, Bernie isn’t easily swayed by moneyed interests and many of the more traditional Democrats wouldn’t vote for Bernie if he won, just like how many Hillary supporters didn’t vote for Obama in 2008.

Bernie lost the primaries, if people wanted bernie, would of voted for him

There’s more to it than that, though. Firstly, the media bias against him and his campaign was blatantly obvious. In fact a documentary is currently being produced on this very phenomenon, called the Bernie Blackout. Most of the media outlets that supported him were smaller, independent outlets whereas all the big publications and networks tended to either ignore his existence or have quite clearly biased coverage. Secondly, the extremely crowded field of candidates was, I think, in large part an attempt to thwart him. Right up until Super Tuesday, he was the frontrunner, had the single largest grassroots movement behind him of any of the candidates, and had managed to out-fundraise them at all despite not accepting any big donor money. Suddenly, every other major candidate s u p e r c o n v e n i e n t l y dropped out and endorsed Biden either straight away or while later, in what was a pretty obvious and co-ordinated response to prevent Bernie from solidifying his lead.

Usually in elections you’re not expected to get more votes than every other candidate put together, right? Elections are based on plurality result, not majority. What happened was very clever – while they don’t necessarily control who chooses to run for president, the DNC and their backers most likely knew that had it become a two horse race between Bernie or someone else too early for their liking, then Bernie would have a pretty solid chance of winning the nomination, particularly against an obviously flawed candidate like Biden. They avoided this by making sure that there were multiple well-funded, high profile more moderate candidates crowding the field to split the votes right up to the last minute, when all of them would fall in line behind the frontrunner, who at the time happened to be Biden.

Now what I’m saying might come across as slightly conspiratorial, given that we don’t know for sure that the DNC was planning what happened, but the point I’m trying to get across is that all of them – the corporate owned media like the NYT, CNN, Washington Post, MSNBC etc, the moderate candidates like Biden, Kloubs and Bloomberg, and the colossal donors and interests that fund them – have a shared class interest in preventing the success of any candidate who poses a real threat to their profit margins and control of society. Just look at the way healthcare stocks jumped after Biden won on Super Tuesday. There are people who profit immensely off all the flaws in the US political system, and to me it’s intuitively obvious that the way the primaries turned out was a textbook example of exactly how a supposedly democratic system can be manipulated to serve a specific political agenda, specifically that of the ruling class. 

(Sorry about the long reply, Starr, I’m not really responding to you so much as using what you said as a launchpad for my own highly opinionated rant)

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QuarryMan said
… we should probably move to the politics & philosophy thread to discuss the topic.   

50yearslate said

Beatlebug said

@50yearslate said

Surely that wouldn’t be constitutional? My brother woke me up last night to tell me about it and I laughed because I thought he was joking…
 

Weeeeeelllllll, it depends. There’s an argument to be made that tech companies themselves have the First Amendment right to publish or not publish whatever they want, but there’s also an argument that they’ve become so ubiquitous they’re more like phone lines or other such platforms, which are themselves bound by the First Amendment (a phone company provides a service that it can’t deprive you of just because it doesn’t like what you’re saying). It’s quite complicated, and I’m sure that neither the president nor his critics acknowledge the nuance of the issue, because when do they ever? ahdn_paul_01

Personally, I’m extremely uncomfortable with the idea of giving the government the ability to regulate these tech companies because what’s worse, private companies regulating your speech or the government? It’s a bit devil-and-the-deep-blue-sea. a-hard-days-night-paul-7  

I mean, I guess, but surely regulating communication platforms is also a violation of free speech and the first amendment? It strikes me as mildly hypocritical and if this was really spawned by Twitter fact-checking one of Trump’s tweets, I also think it’s a little bit of an abuse of power– he’s so mad at Twitter for correcting a false statement that he’s using his power in the federal government to punish them? I could be wrong but that’s how it appears to me.   

Since I made my previous post, I’ve learned more about the executive order and the sequence of events leading up to it, so here it is, to the best of my understanding:

It seems that President Trump tweeted something about election meddling, which I believe would have been considered an opinion rather than a statement of fact, and Twitter decided to “fact-check” this tweet by putting a little box under it that says “We have this information that contradicts the information in this tweet,” which pissed him off — understandably, I suppose; if Twitter is going to do that for his questionable* opinions, then why not those of others of comparably questionable opinionness? Twitter’s rule enforcement seems extremely uneven at the very least, if perhaps not outright biased against conservatives/Trump supporters [not necessarily the same thing]/libertarians/other factions whose opinions they don’t like for whatever reason. Now, you could argue that the president, being the Great and Powerful Head of the Executive Branch of these Glorious United States of MurricaFeckYeah and Leader of the Free World and all that, has a higher duty of responsibility to not spout questionable opinions on Twitter, but, for better or for worse, our president likes his Twitter tirades, and it should not be Twitter’s place to question it, because….

As I understand it (not being a user myself), Twitter was intended to be a platform to which people go to shart their stupid opinions and other bullshit onto the Internet for all to see and smell. President Trump is as fond of doing this as the next person — too fond, some would say. Because it is (or was, I suppose?) legally considered a platform and not a publisher (e.g. the New York Times), is not Twitter’s job to fact-check, edit, censor, or otherwise editorialize the stupid opinions and other bullshit that people shart onto their platform (as long as they’re within the community guidelines, I guess — which are not supposed to be as nebulously enforced as they often are). If it were, according to Section 230 of the Communications and Decency Act, they would also have to be held liable for any particularly slanderous or libellous bullshit that people shart onto their site. On the other hand, a publisher, such as the New York Times can allow or not allow people (their staff journalists, editorial board, people who send letters to the editor) post things in their paper or on their website and can be held legally accountable for anything that they choose to publish because they choose to publish it — it is the New York Times’s speech, essentially. So, as I understand it, what Trump is doing essentially amounts to enforcing laws already on the books. It isn’t really that the government is regulating speech any more than they already have the power to mandate which sets of laws apply to which types of organizations. I read the Constitution the other day, and the Bill of Rights, and while it didn’t say anything about social media companies specifically (boomers, smh), it seems to my cursory knowledge to be within the confines of Constitutional propriety.

And it’s not a new issue, either — it’s been much-talked-about by Trump and especially among his supporters/people to the right of center/some dissident online lefties who are also affected by this for a while now, and many of those types of people are wondering why it’s taken him this long to get around to it. My observation is that it often does tend to take something personal for Trump to take action against someone or something — he’s more reactive than proactive, which can be frustrating as it makes him seem totally self-centered but hey, better late than never.

In the time since President Trump signed the order, Twitter has, for whatever reason, taken it upon themselves to dig themselves deeper into the hole they find themselves in by putting a notice under one of his tweets stating that it went against their community guidelines about glorifying violence (which is quite a reach; he was speaking against the violence of Minneapolis rioters and issuing a warning that the National Guard would be sent in if necessary) but that they deemed it in the public interest to not take it down. Now, I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that they’ve just added fuel to his fire, which is baffling to me as to why they’d do that…

of course, whether the act will work as desired or not is a whole other matter. They say time will tell; I hope that’s true. ahdn_paul_01

Bloody hell I wrote an entire essay a-hard-days-night-paul-10 good night, y’all ahdn_george_05

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30 May 2020
3.45am
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AppleScruffJunior
Sitting here doing nothing but procrastinating...
Apple rooftop
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The President of the US threatened to shoot unarmed US citizens on a social media platform.

 

INTROVERTS UNITE! Separately....in your own homes!

                 ***

Make Love, Not Wardrobes!

                ***

"Stop throwing jelly beans at me"- George Harrison

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