American Politics Discussion Thread

[superdeath]

Sometimes it feels good being an independent.

Other times its just watching the party of No ideas/no change ( republicans ) fight with the party of Bad ideas ( democrats ) It drives me up a wall when someone can defend one or the other fully.

[Commodore]

That the election is The Orange vs. The Vegetable is a clear sign of an empire in decline. I don't think anyone really defends "Ourguy"? It's just easy to slag off on "Theirguy" with all the validity in the world.

[Bobchillingworth]

Sometimes it feels good being an independent.

Other times its just watching the party of No ideas/no change ( republicans ) fight with the party of Bad ideas ( democrats ) It drives me up a wall when someone can defend one or the other fully.

A true American classic; indecision and lazy stereotypes dressed up as independent thinking.


It may shock you to learn that you don't have to fully embrace to politics of a given candidate or party in order to favor them enough to be comfortable supporting them. I, for instance, actually have a fair number of views which not too long ago would have been considered classically conservative. I support the death penalty, scoff at the concept of veganism, and own several guns. None of that is sufficient to outweigh, say, my distaste of treason, open racism, lunatic conspiracy theories, the reflexive dismissal of science, rampant incompetence in government, etc.


You should have enough confidence in your convictions to weigh your options and determine which candidate best suits them, for any given election!


Though it does feel good to be independent in the sense that actually registering as a member of a party is silly. Not sure why I'd want to sign myself up for endless solicitations for cash.

[Bobchillingworth]

That the election is The Orange vs. The Vegetable is a clear sign of an empire in decline.

More parties in decline, I think. The Democrats in particular haven't done a great job in having their Old Guard stand aside to allow younger talent to assume positions of power and prominence.

[T-hawk]

Don't however expect anyone else to give a shit about what most benefits T-Hawk.

When did I say I did? You support your interest, fine. You just don't get to scream at me for supporting mine.

Thing is, Democratic voters are doing exactly the same thing, acting in their economic self interest. Of course parasites want to acquire resources from the successful, in the form of medical services and UBI and whatever other handouts. They just convince themselves that there's some layer of virtue and righteousness to that which somehow justifies unbounded screaming and insulting at the other side. They don't realize that insults and sarcasm doesn't constitute an argument and changes no minds, just makes them give up bothering to argue... but it doesn't budge any votes.

Remember the "blue wave" of 2018 that didn't happen? Same goes again this year. There's a lot more than the 3%-4% cited upthread whom Republican policies serve better, and the Democrats' self-inflicted obliviousness to that is why they can't figure out how to actually make progress.

From 2016, the story was, "how did the Republicans become the party of the working class?" The answer is the Democrats chose to become the party of the nonworking class instead. Like the "we'll put the coal miners out of work" comment and then they lost the coal mining states. I'm no ideologue, if the Democrats can figure out how to appeal to my interests, I'm all welcome for that... but they don't even try.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Don't however expect anyone else to give a shit about what most benefits T-Hawk.

When did I say I did?  You support your interest, fine.  You just don't get to scream at me for supporting mine.

Thing is, Democratic voters are doing exactly the same thing, acting in their economic self interest.  Of course parasites want to acquire resources from the successful, in the form of medical services and UBI and whatever other handouts.  They just convince themselves that there's some layer of virtue and righteousness to that which somehow justifies unbounded screaming and insulting at the other side.  They don't realize that insults and sarcasm doesn't constitute an argument and changes no minds, just makes them give up bothering to argue... but it doesn't budge any votes.

Remember the "blue wave" of 2018 that didn't happen?  Same goes again this year.  There's a lot more than the 3%-4% cited upthread whom Republican policies serve better, and the Democrats' self-inflicted obliviousness to that is why they can't figure out how to actually make progress.

From 2016, the story was, "how did the Republicans become the party of the working class?"  The answer is the Democrats chose to become the party of the nonworking class instead.  Like the "we'll put the coal miners out of work" comment and then they lost the coal mining states.  I'm no ideologue, if the Democrats can figure out how to appeal to my interests, I'm all welcome for that... but they don't even try.

You're calling people from janitors to teachers to factory workers to mailmen to firefighters parasites. That's really rich of you to say - pun intended.

And who's successful? Bezos, who builds his wealth on the labor of people who work more in a day than he does in a year? 

And the non-college educated white working class votes republican because the democrats abandoned their pro-union roots and have done little for the working class, and with the political discussion moving entirely to social issues, of course they're going to vote for fear-mongering conservative demagogues. 

The discussion in the US has moved drastically away from economics since the 1970's. State party platforms have shifted from discussing economics to abortion, gun control, and other irrelevant topics of the day which ought to be sorted out by the courts.

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Pr...2e27c9957f

Both the great depression and great recession were caused by republican pro-business administrations (Coolidge/Hoover and Bush), with the latter exacerbated by the post-Nixon Republican lust to bomb some poor kids in Iraq or Syria or Lybia (oh, I don't deny that democrats suffer from the same affliction, but compare the results).

Democratic administrations brought us civil rights, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, PBS, clean air/clean water acts, the TVA, farm subsidies, I mean the list goes on and on, while republican accomplishments number in the... absolutely nothing. Or do you really believe in the delusion that is survival of the fittest like some Hobbesian?

[Charriu]

That the election is The Orange vs. The Vegetable is a clear sign of an empire in decline. I don't think anyone really defends "Ourguy"? It's just easy to slag off on "Theirguy" with all the validity in the world.

That is one of the big problems and the only solution to that is a reform of the voting system. The system in place right now will always produce a two-party system eventually and the bad tribalism that comes with it.

[T-hawk]

The discussion in the US has moved drastically away from economics since the 1970's.

Thing is, it hasn't. It's trendy to talk about the social issues, but at the end of the day people vote their own interest more than anything else. Jobs if they have one, handouts if they don't. The New York police union just endorsed Trump after the Democrats effectively put their jobs under threat. The Democrats can't figure out that the trendy social signaling doesn't actually swing any votes.

while republican accomplishments number in the... absolutely nothing.

Only the greatest accomplishment since WW2, in winning the Cold War, by leading by economic example until the Soviet Union fragmented and collapsed.

But the general idea is that republicanism doesn't seek accomplishments. That's not the provenance of government. That is to uphold law and order (which some things like civil rights do fall under) and otherwise get out of the way and let free enterprise work. The computer you're reading and writing on right now, was that invented and manufactured by government action or by free markets?

[GeneralKilCavalry]

The discussion in the US has moved drastically away from economics since the 1970's.

Thing is, it hasn't.  It's trendy to talk about the social issues, but at the end of the day people vote their own interest more than anything else.  Jobs if they have one, handouts if they don't.  The New York police union just endorsed Trump after the Democrats effectively put their jobs under threat.  The Democrats can't figure out that the trendy social signaling doesn't actually swing any votes.

while republican accomplishments number in the... absolutely nothing.

Only the greatest accomplishment since WW2, in winning the Cold War, by leading by economic example until the Soviet Union fragmented and collapsed.

But the general idea is that republicanism doesn't seek accomplishments.  That's not the provenance of government.  That is to uphold law and order (which some things like civil rights do fall under) and otherwise get out of the way and let free enterprise work.  The computer you're reading and writing on right now, was that invented and manufactured by government action or by free markets?

What a childish argument, that’s like telling a peasant under a feudal lord to be grateful for the boots given by the baron. The power dynamic is identical. 

Does the fact you use a phone mean you support the child labour in the Congo? Are you a proud slaver?

What’s more, is that your premise is WRONG.

The computer was invented largely thanks to government action or non-commercial action (the protection of which is only possible thanks to government action), the operating system is open source linux under GNU GPL. The OS it was based on, Unix, was only made possible by tight collaboration between AT&T’s Bell Labs, which only was able to fund research because of its status as a federally-endorsed monopoly (until they broke it up). I note that such research by private corporations does not occur by and large, almost all companies divert far more money to product design and marketing than R&D compared to the 50’s or 60’s. This is simply because of the nature of markets - but an entirely negative development.

Continuing, most of the innovations in software have been thanks to open source practices and the ability of people to share their work openly. 

As for the hardware, while YES it’s production was sanctioned by an American company, it was produced in the state capitalist regime called the People’s Republic of China.

The internet is made possible entirely through the handiwork of the US federal government, and later some multinational organizations which handles DNS protocols and stuff like that. If it was private, you’d be paying a subscription fee to post. HTTP/HTML - thank CERN for that. 

Let’s look at the hardware:

The LCD screen -largely came about at Westinghouse thanks to DoD grants and DARPA - XEROX actually refused to take the project on.

Lithium battery - all thanks to universities and DOE grants, with help from Bell Labs - again, nowadays, there is no private equivalent to bell labs. Neither amazon nor apple nor google nor Microsoft nor Tesla fund science on the scale, significance, or practicality. 

Silicon semiconductor chips - once again Bell Labs in collaboration with and funding from Airforce, DoD, NASA. The more modern version was made possible thanks to the Strategic Computing Initiative and SEMATECH.

I can go on but I hope you get the point. My computer is very much a public invention, with private branding and flair. Nothing else.

On a related note, the success of the US in the Cold War was thanks in large part due to the ability of the military to share its technology with civilian universities and other sectors, while the Soviet Union was running the military separately from the civilian production sector. If they wanted to make a new CPU, it would have to come in separate varieties for each branch of the military, while the civilian manufacturer had to be an entirely different entity, and would end up working with substandard parts. Attribute it to the failures of “state planning” if you want, but you see something similar in the post-9/11 US military, which has become a strain on the national budget and human capital to the point where scientific progress suffers (too many physicists are lured by the siren call of places like JHU APL where they are stuck inventing new ways for drones to bomb civilians). The decades-long embargo of the USSR by most of the world wasn’t helpful either. Imagine if the EU and China embargoes the US for violently treating its citizens on the streets, shutting down protests, setting of concentration camps for illegal immigrants where they are treated in subhuman conditions, as well as its flagrant disregard for the rules of war, destabilization of the Middle East, chunks of Africa and Latin America? If that embargo came into effect, the US would manage even worse than the Soviet Union, a county which lost a huge amount of its population to the aggression of the west.

[Amicalola]

 That's not the provenance of government.  That is to uphold law and order (which some things like civil rights do fall under) and otherwise get out of the way and let free enterprise work.  The computer you're reading and writing on right now, was that invented and manufactured by government action or by free markets?

This is one of my favourite rhetorical questions from Free Market Champions, because they're actually wrong. The majority of our computing electronics were invented thanks to US government funding, not entirely private companies.

Edit: GeneralKilCavalry basically has a post explaining this in far more detail, whoops.