American Politics Discussion Thread

[ipecac]

the separation of families at the border

Understanding the other side is important. How much do you understand? 4 questions:

1) What was the rationale for this policy?
2) If completely true, to what extent does the rationale justify the policy?
3) To what extent is that rationale true in reality?
4) Based on 3), to what extent is the policy actually justified?

[DaveV]

"Mexican judge" comment was also not racist, btw. A factual claim, very probably an accurate one

No collusion, no obstruction.

Racism, noun: the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.

Trump said that the judge has a conflict of interests in a case where Trump was a defender because of his Mexican heritage. I don't see how having a conflict of interest would make the judge somehow "inferior". Also, I think it is very obvious that Trump couldn't possibly mean that all Mexican judges are intrinsically conflicted, he just wanted to say that there is a conflict in that particular case. If you seriously believe that Trump is hostile to Mexicans, this should be not just non-racist for you but trivially true. It is the same thing as to say that a Jewish judge would be probably biased if he ever had to judge a Nazi.
Seriously, I get how people who are willing to call everything racist can believe that it was a racist comment but I am genuinely curious how someone who subscribes to a dictionary definition of racism can possibly call it racist.

So: all Mexicans hate Trump, therefore this judge can't make a fair decision? And another (i.e., white) judge would rule more fairly? Seems pretty cut and dry to me.

[Gavagai]

democrats have started to push for things that are considered perfectly mainstream in so many other countries, like free healthcare.

I need to point out that all these other countries also collect a substantial national VAT tax which, basically, turns the idea of the welfare state into a giant fraud. It has not been yet anywhere demonstrated that it is possible to fund an efficient free healthcare system in a large country without VAT. And no one in the US (except Andrew Yang) proposes to introduce VAT because it would be politically suicidal (and rightly so). And it is beyond me anyone could be willing to pay VAT but unwilling to pay medical insurance.
Also, the United States is possibly the most successful nation-state in the history of humanity. It is understandable that its people are reluctant to imitate practices of foreigners

[ipecac]

The thing with factual claims is that they can be described as true or false and this description completely dominates their description as racist or non-racist. If you have shown that the claim is false, you have already stripped it of any of the power - there is no need to additionally show that it is racist. On the other hand, if the claim is true, then being racist doesn't make it any less true. This is why applying descriptions like "racist" and "non-racist" to factual claims makes little sense (same with sexism). Usually, it is made in an attempt to discredit the claim without challenging its accuracy which should be frowned upon, I think.

Unfortunately, in reality rhetoric trumps veracity. Therefore such epithets make 'sense' because they're so effective as rhetorical ad hominems.

Logical ad hominems follow the schema 'your statement is wrong, because you're a [epithet]', rhetorical ad hominems skip the first half - they do not discuss trueness or falseness at all- and are pure name-calling.

[Charriu]

I have to agree with you about the Nazi comparison. This comparison was not fair to most people in the past, like McCain, which you have mentioned. Still as a non-US citizens, and therefore an outside observer, I have to say, it frightens me to see Trump rallies and the vicious frenzy you can see at those rallies.

So one thing I quickly wanted to clarify about my comment about Trump rallies. What frightens me are not the normal republicans and GOP members, but rather the fanatical Trump followers, who blindly trust in every word he says.

the separation of families at the border

Understanding the other side is important. How much do you understand? 4 questions:

1) What was the rationale for this policy?
2) If completely true, to what extent does the rationale justify the policy?
3) To what extent is that rationale true in reality?
4) Based on 3), to what extent is the policy actually justified?

So as far as I remember things were as followed:

The rationale for the policy was that too many people crossed the border illegally. Therefore it was to decided to separate underage children from their parents, so as to scare people from crossing the border illegally. I can't justify such a policy, because underage children are punished for a "crime", which they did not commit. Their parents did if any. The children are underage and can't know these things and therefore should be under special protection.

[RFS-81]

democrats have started to push for things that are considered perfectly mainstream in so many other countries, like free healthcare.

I need to point out that all these other countries also collect a substantial national VAT tax which, basically, turns the idea of the welfare state into a giant fraud. It has not been yet anywhere demonstrated that it is possible to fund an efficient free healthcare system in a large country without VAT. And no one in the US (except Andrew Yang) proposes to introduce VAT because it would be politically suicidal (and rightly so). And it is beyond me anyone could be willing to pay VAT but unwilling to pay medical insurance.
Also, the United States is possibly the most successful nation-state in the history of humanity. It is understandable that its people are reluctant to imitate practices of foreigners

No one's going to convince anyone here, but acting like this is some slippery slope towards gulags, like T-hawk does, is completely bizarre.

[Gavagai]

Here is the thing about Trump's "unfairness" claims: they are true. Media have treated him extremely unfairly which can be easily confirmed by tons of statistical evidence. Like, I literally don't remember when I last saw a positive material about Trump in any major media outside of Fox News. You can call this claim "childish" all you want but, as I have said, the single most important characteristic of factual claims is their accuracy. If someone draws attention to any other characteristic, using epithets like, childish, racist, naive, etc. this is usually an attempt to conceal the inability to challenge the claim in a serious way.

I question this statistical evidence. It's not the job of the free press to pat the president on the head and tell him what a good job he's doing, but to do independent investigation and present well-researched documentation to the public. Trump is a new kind of president, who has absolutely no regard for the truth. While the media at large has been debating whether to come right out and name his "alternative truths" as lies, a sizable chunk of the public has been lapping up what he's been spewing out, and Fox has been enabling his deceptions and feeding him new ones in a sinister feedback loop.

The press has printed things about Democratic presidents that they didn't like (e.g., Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky, off the top of my head), but those presidents didn't respond by questioning the integrity of the reporters and encouraging attacks on them and their organizations.

1) I understand that you question my evidence but I don't really see a way to change your mind on that - it would require an amount of googling I am unwilling to do. But just now I have watched NBC's coverage of Mueller's testimony and it is very obvious that they just as much a partisan outlet of Democratic Party as Pravda was a partisan outlet for USSR Communist Party. There are two conflicting narratives in respect to Mueller's work: Democratic one and Republican one. NBC hosts clearly see their job as supporting and reinforcing Democratic narrative while Republican one was totally silenced. One of the hosts mentioned Republican "false statements" a couple of times but never explained what those statements were, why they are false and what was the Republican interpretation of the event at all. If you seriously believe that this is how the press is supposed to function then, I think, Russia is very close to your ideal because this is pretty much the same thing I could observe every day in my own TV when I lived in Russia if I bothered to watch it.
2) In respect to Trump "lies" - I do not think you are the right person to sling this particular accusation because I think (didn't check, so may be wrong) every single of your comments here contains at least one false statements. In fact, you started out with a "lie" by claiming that Trump has attacked "four targets". As a matter of fact, however, it is unclear from Trump's tweets to which exact individuals he refers and, to my knowledge, he never clarified that. My personal hypothesis is that he had in mind Omar and Tlaib, mistakenly believing that the latter one is an immigrant, but this is just my speculation. Later, with respect to Mexican judge issue, I presented you evidence that there was nothing racist about Trump's words. You pretty much ignored the evidence and misconstrued Trump's words once again to fit them into your narrative. A charitable conclusion from that would be that you do not have the cognitive skills necessary to reliably tell truth from falsehood. So, if it seems to you that Trump is telling "lies", then maybe you should not rely on your judgment too strongly. My own observation is that every time Trump is accused of lying or saying something outrageous, his words underwent a lot of creative reinterpretation. And when the very same people who have done this reinterpretation call Trump "a habitual liar", I dismiss it as an exercise in projection.
3) My own impression is that Trump is one of the most honest politicians whom I have observed. Truth to be told, he is not an eloquent speaker and the meaning of his words is often unclear. On top of that, he has a habit of boasting, exaggerating and generally bullshitting and quite agree that you probably don't want to see such habits in a president of a superpower. It seems that during his relatively carefree life he got used to very charitable and lenient audiences. In that respect he is a direct opposite of, for example, Clintons - both Hilary and Bill learned the hard way to formulate their words with comical precision. If someone does not care about fairness and has an intent to frame Trump as a fool and liar - he has plenty of material for that. Yet, to my knowledge, Trump never lied about important and consequential stuff, like, the content and consequences of his policies - and this immediately puts him in stark contrast to Obama who was proven to lie to the public about the consequences of his healthcare reform. In contrast to Hilary, he never destroyed evidence while being under investigation - all that Mueller had on him for obstruction case is a few clumsy and ineffectual attempts to fire Mueller through intermediaries (which, if you think of it, remarkably little, given the extent of Trump's power). This is why I would rate Trump's honesty substantially higher than the one of typical politician - of course, with the caveat that Trump has been in this business for only few years.

[Gavagai]

democrats have started to push for things that are considered perfectly mainstream in so many other countries, like free healthcare.

I need to point out that all these other countries also collect a substantial national VAT tax which, basically, turns the idea of the welfare state into a giant fraud. It has not been yet anywhere demonstrated that it is possible to fund an efficient free healthcare system in a large country without VAT. And no one in the US (except Andrew Yang) proposes to introduce VAT because it would be politically suicidal (and rightly so). And it is beyond me anyone could be willing to pay VAT but unwilling to pay medical insurance.
Also, the United States is possibly the most successful nation-state in the history of humanity. It is understandable that its people are reluctant to imitate practices of foreigners

No one's going to convince anyone here, but acting like this is some slippery slope towards gulags, like T-hawk does, is completely bizarre.

I don't think I mentioned gulag anywhere or that T-hawk did. To the contrary, I have raised a very specific in limited in scope concern which you have ignored and instead preferred to attack a gulag strawman. So, I count it as a win for me.

[RFS-81]

democrats have started to push for things that are considered perfectly mainstream in so many other countries, like free healthcare.

I need to point out that all these other countries also collect a substantial national VAT tax which, basically, turns the idea of the welfare state into a giant fraud. It has not been yet anywhere demonstrated that it is possible to fund an efficient free healthcare system in a large country without VAT. And no one in the US (except Andrew Yang) proposes to introduce VAT because it would be politically suicidal (and rightly so). And it is beyond me anyone could be willing to pay VAT but unwilling to pay medical insurance.
Also, the United States is possibly the most successful nation-state in the history of humanity. It is understandable that its people are reluctant to imitate practices of foreigners

No one's going to convince anyone here, but acting like this is some slippery slope towards gulags, like T-hawk does, is completely bizarre.

I don't think I mentioned gulag anywhere or that T-hawk did. To the contrary, I have raised a very specific in limited in scope concern which you have ignored and instead preferred to attack a gulag strawman. So, I count it as a win for me.

T-hawk mentioned "communism disguised as equality" with regards to the Democrats, so he either thinks that their policies will lead to Soviet-style atrocities, or that many communist countries were allied with the USA during the cold war. I thought that this was what Adrienler was pointing at. Here's a gold star for winning.

[Gavagai]

Separately in respect to Mexican judge - this is really a very simple case. The extent of what Trump said can be summarized in the following simple inference:

P1. Mexicans have reasons to dislike Trump.
P2. The judge is a Mexican.
C. The judge has a reason to dislike Trump.

Which element is false here? Which is racist?
Of course, Trump also makes an implicit inference, that C constitutes grounds to give him a different judge which obviously false. If it were true, the parties in court proceedings would have an effective power to choose their judges by irritating the judges they dislike. As funny as it is, I don't think any functioning legal system could possibly recognize it. But this is the matter which has nothing to do at all with matters of skin color. The extent to which Trump's claims pertain to skin color is covered in the inference above.
(A fun fact. The first time I learned that "Latino" is a race and "Mexican" could be understood as racial epithet was from reading American press. It looks like you, guys, have constructed a whole racial pseudo-science, totally unrelated to anthropolgy, replicating the earlier success of Nazi Germany. My congratulations with that.)