American Politics Discussion Thread

[Jowy]

There is a huge huge gulf between the opinions of "guns do more harm than good" and "the government should forcibly impose banning guns for everyone."

This is what's wrong with the left and how they go too far as superdeath was saying, when they take any idea that they favor and jump straight to wanting forcible imposition of it on everyone.  Gun bans, mask and vaccine mandates, environmentalist restrictions, soak-the-rich, everything the left wants involves forcibly compelling everyone to go along with them.

Not that the right can't do that too - particularly on abortion, but other than that the right's platform is mostly "butt out and leave me alone".  Even on LGBT issues the right has mostly gotten to reluctant tolerance.

What all of those things have in common is that they lead to millions of people dying if no action is taken. That's why you can't just "leave people alone" if you value human life.

Are you an anti-vaxxer T-Hawk?

[T-hawk]

It is not the government's job to maximize lives saved. Certainly not by destroying personal freedom anytime you get scared into some baseless "millions" number by the media.

If it were really about lives, we would ban alcohol and tobacco and impose obesity passports for access to McDonald's.

Freedom includes freedom to make bad choices. That's what the left doesn't get and apparently never will.

I'm not a scientist or microbiologist to have any credible opinions about vaccines. Neither are you. I am anti-mandate in every possible way.

[Jowy]

It is not the government's job to maximize lives saved.  Certainly not by destroying personal freedom anytime you get scared into some baseless "millions" number by the media.

If it were really about lives, we would ban alcohol and tobacco and impose obesity passports for access to McDonald's.

Freedom includes freedom to make bad choices.  That's what the left doesn't get and apparently never will.

I'm not a scientist or microbiologist to have any credible opinions about vaccines.  Neither are you.  I am anti-mandate in every possible way.

Alcohol use, tobacco use and obesity, are actually things that at least my government tries to tackle with laws and support systems. Don't know if it's the same in the US.

The problem with gun violence, contagious diseases, climate change and poverty, is that the death and misery that these cause are not only limited to those who are okay with it.

If a drunk driver kills your family, is it just his freedom to make that bad choice? Society does not function if everyone has the freedom to do everything they want.

All the time in your life you are trusting scientists and other professionals to be correct. What you eat and drink, what medicine you take, where you live, what you drive etc.

You are anti-mandate but not anti-vaxx, so I take it you took the vaccine?

[Krill]

One could argue that a democratic governments role is to reflect the will of the society it represents, therefore it could hold a role to make decisions to achieve any number of goals, from saving as many lives from an immediate threat, to commiting genocide. And if you look at government through this lens, you just see just how fractured a society is.

Doesn't apply to autocratic regimes though. Not sure the USA could be considered democratic either.

[Bobchillingworth]

I'm against guns ... but I'd buy a gun if I lived in the US.

Again, your gun is far more likely to be used against someone in your family than against the PCP-addled predator in the NRA commercials. And in the event of such a home invasion, would you be able to use the gun? I don't think I, personally, could shoot someone in cold blood; in an emergency, my hand  would probably be shaking so much I'd be more likely to shoot my dog than the intruder. If you hear a noise in another part of your house (or your front door being broken down, like Breonna Taylor's boyfriend), will you just start blazing away? If you yell, "I have a gun," the intruder is alerted that he needs to shoot first.

You should not purchase a firearm if you are suicidal, live in a household with persons who pose a threat to your physical well-being, suffer from psychosis, have criminally violent ideation, and/or cannot be trusted to secure your weapons properly in the presence of children and guests. You should also seek professional help if dealing with any of the aforementioned.

As I've mentioned before, I own several firearms. Primarily they're for target shooting, which I'll happily argue is as legitimate a recreational activity as any sport or game of skill. I also find them mechanically interesting and just overall cool. Self-defense is a part of it too, of course, and it extends past the desire to protect myself in a home invasion scenario; some of my ancestors were forced to flee their homeland for fear of pogroms and eventually genocide, and I refuse to intentionally deprive myself of the means to resist that sort of violence. Those who think it can't happen here are fooling themselves, and I suspect more than a little privileged.

Shooting someone "in cold blood" is simply murder however.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Since July 2020, for over a year now, the United States has been de facto completely Open, no restrictions on movement. You could at any time stuff your gullet with all the delicious treaties you want. And for that the country has been wracked with wave after wave of virus, killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of worker nodes and consumer nodes. The business class that runs America wants all those worker and consumer nodes alive and active and producing goods and consuming resources and making the numbers go up up up.

So in the absence of the political will to implement robust non-pharmaceutical interventions to counteract the death and destruction wrought by a deadly airborne virus, pharmaceuticals are all you can rely on. And these petulant imbeciles refuse to partake in either NPIs or pharmaceuticals. What the fuck do you dipshits want?

[Amicalola]

Yeah SD, as to the history rewriting thing. If you're a history major, then you should know that most (21st century) history rewriting as far as public education and culture is done by nationalist and/or conservatives, to prevent critical discussion about idealised people/events. The "civil war was about states rights, not slavery" is a good example, of easily identifiable bullshit that gets taught anyway.

When it comes to people like Christopher Columbus, no one on the Left is seriously suggesting "delete him from history." They're saying "let's critically teach and analyse the good and the bad." Whereas the Right just want to remove the latter half of the equation and celebrate Columbus with a crudely idealistic picture (simultaneously celebrating the displacement of an entire people). It's pretty easy to tell that one side cares more than the other when it comes to telling and learning from genuine history.

As far as gun control, as Jowy said your position and the Democrats' aren't that far off. The idea that they want to take away everyone's guns in America is a hysterical falsehood, peddled in bad faith by Republicans.

[CFCJesterFool]

Since July 2020, for over a year now, the United States has been de facto completely Open, no restrictions on movement. You could at any time stuff your gullet with all the delicious treaties you want. And for that the country has been wracked with wave after wave of virus, killing and maiming hundreds of thousands of worker nodes and consumer nodes. The business class that runs America wants all those worker and consumer nodes alive and active and producing goods and consuming resources and making the numbers go up up up.

So in the absence of the political will to implement robust non-pharmaceutical interventions to counteract the death and destruction wrought by a deadly airborne virus, pharmaceuticals are all you can rely on. And these petulant imbeciles refuse to partake in either NPIs or pharmaceuticals. What the fuck do you dipshits want?

What deadly airborne virus? If the mortality rate for under 70 years old is less than 1%, that is not deadly. Ebola has a ~70% mortality rate. I would say Ebola is deadly.

[CFCJesterFool]

Yeah SD, as to the history rewriting thing. If you're a history major,  then you should know that most (21st century) history rewriting as far as public education and culture is done by nationalist and/or conservatives, to prevent critical discussion about idealised people/events. The "civil war was about states rights, not slavery" is a good example, of easily identifiable bullshit that gets taught anyway.

When it comes to people like Christopher Columbus, no one on the Left is seriously suggesting "delete him from history." They're saying "let's critically teach and analyse the good and the bad." Whereas the Right just want to remove the latter half of the equation and celebrate Columbus with a crudely idealistic picture (simultaneously celebrating the displacement of an entire people). It's pretty easy to tell that one side cares more than the other when it comes to telling and learning from genuine history.

As far as gun control, as Jowy said your position and the Democrats' aren't that far off. The idea that they want to take away everyone's guns in America is a hysterical falsehood, peddled in bad faith by Republicans.

Yeah, Beto was just lying when he said "Hell yeah, we are going to take your guns." I paraphrased but just go watch the actual video (Dem primary debates.) It is on YouTube. So unless Beto is really a radical Republican, there you go.

[Bobchillingworth]

Beto's position wasn't exactly mainstream within the party, and probably sunk his already floundering candidacy.

That said, Democrats in general are all over the place when it comes to the specifics of gun control, and in my opinion are too focused on banning "scary" features and models based on appearances and portrayals in fiction, rather than coherent and practical rationales. I'm to the right of most Democrats on the issue, but also not a single-issue voter.