American Politics Discussion Thread

[Gavagai]

Charriu, here is one fundamental thing you need to understand about Trump supporters: we know that a lot of stuff he says is BS. Some people are bothered by it, many find it cute and entertaining, some don't care at all. But I literally never spoke to a Trumpster who would deny the fact.
Why we still support him? Because we don't believe stuff about which he is saying BS is important. Racial issue is a good example here: most Republicans don't think much about it at all, consequently, all possible "racist" implications of Trump's words get filtered out as white noise. By contrast, Dems is the single most racially obsessed group this world has seen since the fall of South African apartheid regime. They think about the all-important question of skin color non-stop. As an evidence, just recently I watched a truly heart-warming debate on the question of whether Kamala Harris is really black aired by one of American mainstream outlets, not by some fringe Nazi group in a basement. I remember reading the exact same debates hold at the same intellectual level on web-sites of Russian skinheads. My hypothesis is, these people cannot possibly conceive a mentality totally indifferent to the questons of skin color. This is why they believe that Trump talks about skin color all the time and that his supporters agree with him. But things are not at all that scary

[Charriu]

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

To be fair the concept of a nation-state is fairly young in human history, too.

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.

I think we can agree that the press overall has to improve in the US, be it Fox, NBC or others. Of course you definitely need a functioning, independent media. In regards to Mueller it's really sad to see that the good investigative work being done by him and his team is torn apart between factions. Nonetheless the report was important as it established the following things:

• Russia or Russians tried to interfere in the election, which should be concerning to both sides
  
• A lot of people were trialed and/or convicted due to this investigation for their crimes.
  
• Trump personally did not meddle in the election with regards to the Russians.
  
• The obstruction of justice case
  

I want to iterate a bit about that last point, because no matter who's the president at the time or which party he belongs to. This is a serious accusation as we all could witness with Nixon. I only saw parts of the hearing, but I remember that one republican asked Mueller: When Trump would not be president, would you prosecute him for that? And Mueller said yes. From what I have learned Mueller is a man of integrity, therefore I trust his judgment more then those of the media.

Truth to be told, he is not an eloquent speaker and the meaning of his words is often unclear.

Trump: "I have the best words"

Sorry, I couldn't resist quoting him here.

Yet, to my knowledge, Trump never lied about important and consequential stuff, like, the content and consequences of his policies

So would you say that he lied about unimportant stuff? Because he's not a perfect angel when it comes to lies. Like when he said he tried to stop the "Send her back" chants at his last rally. He even said he did stop them rather quickly. I think it comes down to this: Other politicians are more "sophisticated" or subtle in their lies, while Trump is just blunt and a lot more obvious in that field.

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.)

You forgot the important:

P0. Trump began his campaign with some comments about Mexico and its people, which offended Mexicans.

But that's nitpicking. About your points:

P1 True, they have understandable reasons to dislike him
P2 Kinda true. As far as I remember the judge is born in the US therefore is American, but has Mexican parents.
C Can't be proven until any further investigation. I don't know the US legal system that well, but I guess if Trump wanted to, there would be an option to investigate in that matter. Feel free to educate me if the US does not have such a thing.

Charriu, here is one fundamental thing you need to understand about Trump supporters: we know that a lot of stuff he says is BS. Some people are bothered by it, many find it cute and entertaining, some don't care at all. But I literally never spoke to a Trumpster who would deny the fact.
Why we still support him? Because we don't believe stuff about which he is saying BS is important. Racial issue is a good example here: most Republicans don't think much about it at all, consequently, all possible "racist" implications of Trump's words get filtered out as white noise. By contrast, Dems is the single most racially obsessed group this world has seen since the fall of South African apartheid regime. They think about the all-important question of skin color non-stop. As an evidence, just recently I watched a truly heart-warming debate on the question of whether Kamala Harris is really black aired by one of American mainstream outlets, not by some fringe Nazi group in a basement. I remember reading the exact same debates hold at the same intellectual level on web-sites of Russian skinheads. My hypothesis is, these people cannot possibly conceive a mentality totally indifferent to the questons of skin color. This is why they believe that Trump talks about skin color all the time and that his supporters agree with him. But things are not at all that scary

Well those people are exactly the people I meant with regards to normal republicans. You can even see it when you look at the footage of the "Send her back" chants. You can clearly see people in the background that are either bothered by it or find it entertaining.

Also I have to say the discussion here in this thread moves so fast today. I have serious problems keeping up with it.

[Charriu]

I think we can agree that the press overall has to improve in the US, be it Fox, NBC or others. Of course you definitely need a functioning, independent media. In regards to Mueller it's really sad to see that the good investigative work being done by him and his team is torn apart between factions. Nonetheless the report was important as it established the following things:

• Russia or Russians tried to interfere in the election, which should be concerning to both sides
  
• A lot of people were trialed and/or convicted due to this investigation for their crimes.
  
• Trump personally did not meddle in the election with regards to the Russians.
  
• The obstruction of justice case
  

I want to iterate a bit about that last point, because no matter who's the president at the time or which party he belongs to. This is a serious accusation as we all could witness with Nixon. I only saw parts of the hearing, but I remember that one republican asked Mueller: When Trump would not be president, would you prosecute him for that? And Mueller said yes. From what I have learned Mueller is a man of integrity, therefore I trust his judgment more then those of the media.

I just looked at the footage. I was referring to this line of questions:

https://youtu.be/MiIgTGjHTUQ?t=7560

[Gavagai]

Charriu,

1) The concept of nation-state is young, true, but the concept of the welfare state is even younger. Welfare states existed for less than a century and the most successful of them were in a unique position not to spend much on national defense, being under US nuclear umbrella. It is not clear whether they are sustainable long-term.

2) Mueller report could not be said to establish anything because people which it implicates in wrongdoings were not given a possibility to properly defend themselves in a formal setting. Literally, the only evidence for its fairness which we have is Mueller's word and during the questioning Republican representatives indicated a number of cases where Mueller has not chosen to include exonerating evidence into report. When confronted with it, Mueller has chosen to flat out refuse to defend his claims and the fact that he can do it without any consequences undescores the fundamental problem with the report. In fact, this is the main point of Republican narrative which was completely silenced by allegedly unbiased media. And the fact of silencing, as always, reveals that there is no real response to this criticism. Also, from my perspective, the very fact that Mueller has agreed to to participate in this obviously farcial process destroys any credibility he could have.

3) In respect to Mexican judge inference - do you agree that there was nothing racist in Trump's words? Also, the conclusion follows from premises analytically in this case, you cannot possibly accept premises while denying the conclusion. And, as I have already said, I find Trump's underlying legal theory absurd. In fact, it's quite funny that nobody (AFAIK) pointed it out but everyone jumped on the non-existent racism issue. A nice illustration to the level of public debate in modern US.

4) Here is a fun fact: when Trump says that he was uncomfortable with the chant - you can be 100% that he is sincere. Because he has thoroughly established that he wouldn't say something just because it's a PC thing to say. Now - can you name any other politician about whom you can claim such certainty? And what does it say about how we should evaluate a politician's honesty?

[Gavagai]

Actually, there is one thing I want to share. It is about lying on serious matters and is a major reason why I have a lot of respect for Trump, despite all his flaws. A few months ago there was this ugly story when Saudi Arabia murdered a journalist in Istanbul. A very uncomfortable story for any US President: strategic alliance between Saudi Arabia and US is very deep and cannot be broken because of the life of one man. A different President would quietly distance himself from the issue and ask the State Department to prepare some vague, non-committal statement and let the thing quietly drop. A different President in such a situation would also be able to rely on the support of the American press because it is typically very sensitive to American foreign interests (as proof - there was pretty much no reporting on the war in Yemen until Trump was elected). No such support was given in Trump's case because hatred to Trump is more important to American press than loyalty to their own country - this murder was made into a huge story.
And here Trump did something absolutely unprecedented. He issued this statement: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-sta...di-arabia/ in which he defended Sausdi Arabia in a rather clumsy and undiplomatic way. Not only he signed this statement personally - which is already far from normal - but I think he actually has written it by himself and didn't allow much editing. At least, the style of the text is very characteristically Trumpian. I cannot really communicate how unusual this is, politicians of his level never ever write such things. And Trump, in particular, doesn't look like a person who would find much interest in drafting a diplomatic document. For me, this is a very powerful gesture, coming from some totally different era. Because the only way I can interpret it is that Trump was genuinely morally troubled by this whole situation and it was his way to take personal responsibility for the decision he had to make. What is implicit here is a sense of honor totally alien for today's world - I cannot imagine someone like Obama acting like that or even conceptualizing the situation in a way which would allow for such gestures. In that particular case, Trump lied - and lied about a deeply important issue which concerned a human life. He did it because it was his job to lie in that particular case and it is very significant that he did it personally, even though he could have easily transferred the responsibility down the chain of command. All despite the fact that he was very uncomfortable in defending Saudi Arabia here - you can easily see it in the text. It underscores that he understood the importance of the moment really well. And that he knows the difference between tweeting irresponsible but inconsequential BS and lying about serious stuff.
It is very troubling for me that no one has noticed or appreciated this fact, that Trump has written this statement personally. Are people really so shallow, so small-minded, so blinded by their hatred? It seems like most people today just don't have a concept of what it means to take a moral issue seriously and to take up a personal responsibility for it. In that sense I feel like my moral intuitions are more attune with Trump's on that and many other matters. This is why I respect him and trust him.

[Mardoc]

Correct me if I'm wrong but the actual separation of families and by that I mean separating underage children from their parents, started under Trump, right?

No, I'm pretty sure it's been US policy since at least 1985.  And that's when it became worth a lawsuit, it may well have been going on well before that point.  It's just that no one considered it newsworthy until they could blame Trump for it.

It may be the case that Trump increased the scale of the policy, though, by attempting to send every illegal immigrant/asylum requestor through a legal process rather than only some of those caught.

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.

The current law/ 1997 lawsuit settlement is that children may not be detained with their parents, pretty much because they shouldn't be punished for a crime which they did not commit.  They are technically under protection of Health and Human Services, unless a close relative not being detained can be identified to take custody of them.  In order to detain the parents without detaining the children, there is a separation.  Unlike crimes committed by legal residents, it's usually difficult to find someone safe to release the children to.  Relatives are usually either outside the US or illegal residents who don't see any benefit to announcing themselves to ICE.

As a related problem, the number of detainees has increased, without a matching increase in budget, so the detention centers and HHS shelters constructed during the Obama presidency are overcrowded, and the judicial system for processing detainees is not keeping up.  Also some of the organization is slipping, people aren't being treated according to policy due to shortages of staff and stuff.  At one point the Democrats were preventing an increase in budget, hoping that the feds would be forced to release the parents from detention in order to no longer be responsible for the children, but I think the moderate wing of the party defected and agreed to increase funding.  It was recent enough that I doubt it's had any effect yet.

Everything is made even more fun by the fact that a number of the 'parent-child' groups have turned out to be wholly unrelated, probably due to earlier policy that declined to detain adults if they had minor children along.  This does not appear to be a majority, but it's a large enough number to make the enforcement agents doubt everything they're told by the detainees.

Officially, none of this is punishment - everyone is held awaiting trial, not being punished for a crime.  Some will be found to have valid asylum claims and be granted legal residence.  I doubt that makes anyone feel any better about it, though.

[ipecac]

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.

You are badly misinformed. Flores aside, because adults are bringing unrelated children with them, separation is necessary, especially given the prospect of child trafficking.

[Gavagai]

Just to make my position clear - I do not think that the policy of child separation as currently implemented goes far enough. I believe that these children should be permanently separated from their idiot parents and given for adoption to US couples. That would be the best solution for everyone involved.

[Charriu]

Charriu,

1) The concept of nation-state is young, true, but the concept of the welfare state is even younger. Welfare states existed for less than a century and the most successful of them were in a unique position not to spend much on national defense, being under US nuclear umbrella. It is not clear whether they are sustainable long-term.

Well, I was trying to make a joke about your post regarding the United States being the most successful nation-state in the history of humanity. It was not meant say anything about the success of welfare states. Also while you mention the US nuclear umbrella, you also have to admit that the US had a pretty good geopolitical position being protected by two big oceans on both sides.

2) Mueller report could not be said to establish anything because people which it implicates in wrongdoings were not given a possibility to properly defend themselves in a formal setting. Literally, the only evidence for its fairness which we have is Mueller's word and during the questioning Republican representatives indicated a number of cases where Mueller has not chosen to include exonerating evidence into report. When confronted with it, Mueller has chosen to flat out refuse to defend his claims and the fact that he can do it without any consequences undescores the fundamental problem with the report. In fact, this is the main point of Republican narrative which was completely silenced by allegedly unbiased media. And the fact of silencing, as always, reveals that there is no real response to this criticism. Also, from my perspective, the very fact that Mueller has agreed to to participate in this obviously farcial process destroys any credibility he could have.

But people like for example Paul Manafort had a trial and were prosecuted in the correct legal way, if I'm not mistaken. Or do you mean that the public had already judged them before any trial when you say "were not given a possibility to properly defend themselves in a formal setting". This public shaming and "prosecuting" of people is of course a big problem with society at large nowadays.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I read that Mueller is/was legally obligated to show up to the hearing.

3) In respect to Mexican judge inference - do you agree that there was nothing racist in Trump's words? Also, the conclusion follows from premises analytically in this case, you cannot possibly accept premises while denying the conclusion. And, as I have already said, I find Trump's underlying legal theory absurd. In fact, it's quite funny that nobody (AFAIK) pointed it out but everyone jumped on the non-existent racism issue. A nice illustration to the level of public debate in modern US.

I agree with you about Trump's underlying legal theory. About the racism, I have to say I find it racist or at least bigot. First of all the judge is born in the US. Now you would argue, but his parents are from Mexico, too which I have to say, then what constitutes being an American citizen. So Trump is bringing up the judge's heritage and I know you said, that Trump did that because he thinks that Mexicans think bad about him. But then again there are enough other reasons that the judge may have a reason to be angry about Trump. It's not like he was a goodie two shoe before he became president and made himself enemies in the past with his behaviour. Trump could have easily claimed other reasons that the judge is biased against him. He still felt the need to bring up this topic.

4) Here is a fun fact: when Trump says that he was uncomfortable with the chant - you can be 100% that he is sincere. Because he has thoroughly established that he wouldn't say something just because it's a PC thing to say. Now - can you name any other politician about whom you can claim such certainty? And what does it say about how we should evaluate a politician's honesty?

I did not claim that he's not sincere about it, although I personally can't say that I'm 100% sure about that. What I was claiming is that he said that he stopped the crowd from chanting, which he just didn't do. He was standing there for about 12 seconds, said nothing and only started talking again after the crowd finished chanting.

Actually, there is one thing I want to share. It is about lying on serious matters and is a major reason why I have a lot of respect for Trump, despite all his flaws. A few months ago there was this ugly story when Saudi Arabia murdered a journalist in Istanbul. A very uncomfortable story for any US President: strategic alliance between Saudi Arabia and US is very deep and cannot be broken because of the life of one man. A different President would quietly distance himself from the issue and ask the State Department to prepare some vague, non-committal statement and let the thing quietly drop. A different President in such a situation would also be able to rely on the support of the American press because it is typically very sensitive to American foreign interests (as proof - there was pretty much no reporting on the war in Yemen until Trump was elected). No such support was given in Trump's case because hatred to Trump is more important to American press than loyalty to their own country - this murder was made into a huge story.
And here Trump did something absolutely unprecedented. He issued this statement: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-sta...di-arabia/ in which he defended Sausdi Arabia in a rather clumsy and undiplomatic way. Not only he signed this statement personally - which is already far from normal - but I think he actually has written it by himself and didn't allow much editing. At least, the style of the text is very characteristically Trumpian. I cannot really communicate how unusual this is, politicians of his level never ever write such things. And Trump, in particular, doesn't look like a person who would find much interest in drafting a diplomatic document. For me, this is a very powerful gesture, coming from some totally different era. Because the only way I can interpret it is that Trump was genuinely morally troubled by this whole situation and it was his way to take personal responsibility for the decision he had to make. What is implicit here is a sense of honor totally alien for today's world - I cannot imagine someone like Obama acting like that or even conceptualizing the situation in a way which would allow for such gestures. In that particular case, Trump lied - and lied about a deeply important issue which concerned a human life. He did it because it was his job to lie in that particular case and it is very significant that he did it personally, even though he could have easily transferred the responsibility down the chain of command. All despite the fact that he was very uncomfortable in defending Saudi Arabia here - you can easily see it in the text. It underscores that he understood the importance of the moment really well. And that he knows the difference between tweeting irresponsible but inconsequential BS and lying about serious stuff.
It is very troubling for me that no one has noticed or appreciated this fact, that Trump has written this statement personally. Are people really so shallow, so small-minded, so blinded by their hatred? It seems like most people today just don't have a concept of what it means to take a moral issue seriously and to take up a personal responsibility for it. In that sense I feel like my moral intuitions are more attune with Trump's on that and many other matters. This is why I respect him and trust him.

Yeah, the whole Khashoggi would be a nightmare for any president. I did not envy Trump in this situation. It's one of those situation, where you can only decide between two wrong things to do and you will be critized either way. Also and this is totally unrelated to Trump. I always find it interesting that Saudi Arabia, one of the least democratic countries in the world, is an ally in the middle east, while Iran, a country that is at least more democratic then Saudi Arabia and some other countries in the region, is the bitter rival. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to judge the US here and I understand the historic circumstances that lead to this. It's just one of these strange historic quirks similar like the US and USSR being allies in WWII.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the actual separation of families and by that I mean separating underage children from their parents, started under Trump, right?

No, I'm pretty sure it's been US policy since at least 1985.  And that's when it became worth a lawsuit, it may well have been going on well before that point.  It's just that no one considered it newsworthy until they could blame Trump for it.

It may be the case that Trump increased the scale of the policy, though, by attempting to send every illegal immigrant/asylum requestor through a legal process rather than only some of those caught.

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.

The current law/ 1997 lawsuit settlement is that children may not be detained with their parents, pretty much because they shouldn't be punished for a crime which they did not commit.  They are technically under protection of Health and Human Services, unless a close relative not being detained can be identified to take custody of them.  In order to detain the parents without detaining the children, there is a separation.  Unlike crimes committed by legal residents, it's usually difficult to find someone safe to release the children to.  Relatives are usually either outside the US or illegal residents who don't see any benefit to announcing themselves to ICE.

As a related problem, the number of detainees has increased, without a matching increase in budget, so the detention centers and HHS shelters constructed during the Obama presidency are overcrowded, and the judicial system for processing detainees is not keeping up.  Also some of the organization is slipping, people aren't being treated according to policy due to shortages of staff and stuff.  At one point the Democrats were preventing an increase in budget, hoping that the feds would be forced to release the parents from detention in order to no longer be responsible for the children, but I think the moderate wing of the party defected and agreed to increase funding.  It was recent enough that I doubt it's had any effect yet.

Everything is made even more fun by the fact that a number of the 'parent-child' groups have turned out to be wholly unrelated, probably due to earlier policy that declined to detain adults if they had minor children along.  This does not appear to be a majority, but it's a large enough number to make the enforcement agents doubt everything they're told by the detainees.

Officially, none of this is punishment - everyone is held awaiting trial, not being punished for a crime.  Some will be found to have valid asylum claims and be granted legal residence.  I doubt that makes anyone feel any better about it, though.

Ok thanks for educating be about that. I did not know about the historic background. Still the point you brought up, that under Trump it the scale of the policy was increased, remains.

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.

You are badly misinformed. Flores aside, because adults are bringing unrelated children with them, separation is necessary, especially given the prospect of child trafficking.

Just to make my position clear - I do not think that the policy of child separation as currently implemented goes far enough. I believe that these children should be permanently separated from their idiot parents and given for adoption to US couples. That would be the best solution for everyone involved.

I have to disagree with you two. Yes, there may be adults, bringing unrelated children with them, but by separating everybody, you also hit true families. I also don't think that the parents are idiots for trying to enter the country. The USA was built up to a large degree by immigrants, who had the same ideas that people nowadays have: To have a better life for their children, flee from hunger, crime and/or political persecution in their countries of orign. Are those people idiots, too? But I agree with you that adoption to US couples is at least a better solution then leaving those children in the camps.

[DaveV]

you started out with a "lie"

A charitable conclusion from that would be that you do not have the cognitive skills necessary to reliably tell truth from falsehood

Stooping to personal insults doesn't mean you win the argument; quite the contrary, usually.

As you said, Trump's language is very imprecise. I don't see why your interpretation of his ellipses is automatically correct, where mine is stupid or malicious, especially since we said nearly the same thing:

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

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

Except, of course, that your version doesn't work logically: Some cats are white. Garfield is a cat. Ergo, Garfield is white.

With respect to "the squad": the reporting I heard said that Trump called out all four individually in his "send her back" rally.