American Politics Discussion Thread

[BRickAstley]

Can we take a brief time out?

I am not going to post my political beliefs on here, even during this turbulent time in American politics. Frankly there is enough division and vitriol in real life, that I don't need it on a niche gaming forum too.

What are we hoping to accomplish here? I highly doubt that anyone's opinion is going to be changed by any of the discussion within, and it isn't building the community up either. If you have strong political opinions, your local community is the best place to work those out and to advance your values, not on here. Exercise your vote if you're in a position to do so, and focus on your sphere in influence.

I'm not banning this thread because it doesn't seem appropriate at this time. But I strongly encourage people to tone things down, if there are more continued vitriolic attacks on other users I will issue warnings and temp bans.

My personal preference would be to not have any political discussion on here altogether, but I am trying to not let my personal preference be the primary dictator of  actions here. This is the second time that I have felt things get bad enough that I need to step in though. Which has never happened anywhere else on this site. So that is food for thought.

[mackoti]

Empires and democracies rarely go from peak to ruins governed by dictators. Empires rise and fall over time. Systems slowly weaken to the point of collapse. The failure of an elected body to stand up to a leader when that leader only cares about their power has been the downfall of more than 1 democracy. Never take freedoms for granted and assume nothing can happen.

I'm not saying Trump will end up a dictator, but the pattern of a president pushing his power with impunity is not a good precedent. It may not be today, but blatant attempts at voter suppression and pure tribalism is not a good sign. Neither is using power to try to get other countries to help influence your rule.

I would say this forum has more history nerds than most political conversations. We all know things change.

Remember when Obama said I have a pen? thats pushing power...And I see that  many people see the request for ID and beeing and american citezen like voter suppresion, and is blatant because democrats say (they say trump killed all covids, which is not true) at least were i live everyone of us in the day of vote we go to the pols with our ID's and vote.

What power used Trump to influence his rule? Rusia? well even the Rusia colusion was true, Trump wasnt in power then. Yes the times are chanching and after 8 years of a democrat president there was a republican one, and the dems talked about impeach even before he was invested, that you can call hatred.

 1.Why are you so invested into trump? What do you know about trump?

2 Do you know how many people have been detained in concentration camps on the border with mexico?

3 How many right-wing militias have been emboldened by trump?

4 Trump is the physical representation of all of the worst qualities of America.

I will answer to GKC and this will my last answer here, because I see he is civil not like my long friend Bob which uses personal atacks even he doesnt answer to any points I make.

<BrickAstley snip>Racial Slurs are not tolerated</snip>

So...
1.I am not invested at all , I just read here and threre and usualy I like a good debate because i want to see what people think so I think as you was free to say alots of things I can say something without beeing invested. Second part of the question . I know mostly what the left is saying about Trump and I read alot about his history.

2. I dont know alot but i remeber a picture with a child in cage and they said is Trump fault and that picture was Obama legacy. I supose now is necesary like before to check the people which get in the country , because even many democrats saying USA is not great people are flocking to get in.

3. Well I supose there are alot and are burning down the big cities under democrat leaderships.Must be the right wing, why else they burn bussines owned by minorities...

4. Trump is a product of the left, remember he was a democrat till 2009 big donnor for Clinton campaign(if I remeber right) and he fights with the weapons left uses and because of that the left hates him. I never heard Bush saying a thing about Obama presidency , and Obama has so many opinions even spying on Trump campaign so you see left realy hates what left does and when happens to them they cry this people bad  , hurt me , this guy answering back, me dont like that I like jst me talking.

[Charriu]

Empires and democracies rarely go from peak to ruins governed by dictators. Empires rise and fall over time. Systems slowly weaken to the point of collapse. The failure of an elected body to stand up to a leader when that leader only cares about their power has been the downfall of more than 1 democracy. Never take freedoms for granted and assume nothing can happen.

I'm not saying Trump will end up a dictator, but the pattern of a president pushing his power with impunity is not a good precedent. It may not be today, but blatant attempts at voter suppression and pure tribalism is not a good sign. Neither is using power to try to get other countries to help influence your rule.

I would say this forum has more history nerds than most political conversations. We all know things change.

Remember when Obama said I have a pen? thats pushing power...And I see that  many people see the request for ID and beeing and american citezen like voter suppresion, and is blatant because democrats say (they say trump killed all covids, which is not true) at least were i live everyone of us in the day of vote we go to the pols with our ID's and vote.

What power used Trump to influence his rule? Rusia? well even the Rusia colusion was true, Trump wasnt in power then. Yes the times are chanching and after 8 years of a democrat president there was a republican one, and the dems talked about impeach even before he was invested, that you can call hatred.

 1.Why are you so invested into trump? What do you know about trump?

2 Do you know how many people have been detained in concentration camps on the border with mexico?

3 How many right-wing militias have been emboldened by trump?

4 Trump is the physical representation of all of the worst qualities of America.

I will answer to GKC and this will my last answer here, because I see he is civil not like my long friend Bob which uses personal atacks even he doesnt answer to any points I make.

<BrickAstley snip>Racial Slurs are not tolerated</snip>

So...
1.I am not invested at all , I just read here and threre and usualy I like a good debate because i want to see what people think so I think as you was free to say alots of things I can say something without beeing invested. Second part of the question . I know mostly what the left is saying about Trump and I read alot about his history.

2. I dont know alot but i remeber a picture with a child in cage and they said is Trump fault and that picture was Obama legacy. I supose now is necesary like before to check the people which get in the country , because even many democrats saying USA is not great people are flocking to get in.

3. Well I supose there are alot and are burning down the big cities under democrat leaderships.Must be the right wing, why else they burn bussines owned by minorities...

4. Trump is a product of the left, remember he was a democrat till 2009 big donnor for Clinton campaign(if I remeber right) and he fights with the weapons left uses and because of that the left hates him. I never heard Bush saying a thing about Obama presidency , and Obama has so many opinions even spying on Trump campaign so you see left realy hates what left does and when happens to them they cry this people bad  , hurt me , this guy answering back, me dont like that I like jst me talking.

Seriously <BrickAstley snip>racial slur</snip>. Are we really down to that level now?

[darrelljs]

Genuinely curious, has there ever been a dictator that was a cause, not a symptom? Not saying that the system isn't capable of throwing one yet, but it won't be a septuagenarian.

Does Madura count?

Darrell

[BRickAstley]

After sleeping on it, I think i need to be more specific.

mackoti: I will not tolerate racial slurs on here, end of discussion.

Bob and T-Hawk: "As a moderator", do not be lording over others with your moderator status when you are just as deeply a participant in what is going on here.

Bob: Those admittedly creative but nasty insults do not have a place here, those need to stop.

(For the record, I have already had very good private conversations with T-Hawk and Bob about the last day or so on here, I'm just repeating the core of the discussion for transparency.)

Jowy: You have been toeing the line of unacceptable behavior. I'm not calling out anything specific now but encourage you to think twice about what you are posting moving forward.



I am sure there's been some other nasty or rough stuff further back in this thread that I am not addressing here, but I haven't been active for most of it and I'm not spending my Saturday going through 500 posts of this muck to call people out. Do better moving forward or choose to opt out of the discussions here.

[Jowy]

That's fine I'll just leave. My closing statement.

You have a president who:
- Threatens the democratic process with voter suppression targeted at people who would vote against him.
- Refuses to state that he will transfer over power if he loses the election, already has a strategy in place to sieze power.
- Refuses to denounce white supremacy. Orders his boys to stand by and urges them to go to the polls to intimidate and stop people (read: brown peope) from voting.
- Has concentration camps for immigrants where women are raped and children are separated from their families and people die just from how badly they are treated.
- Refuses to follow experts on COVID, letting hundreds of thousands and counting die, downplaying it every step of the way and encouraging people to do the wrong things like drink bleach. COVID deaths so far are equivelant to over fifty 9/11 disasters.
- Is a criminal who will go to jail as soon as his immunity is gone, despite his best efforts to fire investigators coming after him.
- Is a conman who's hundreds of millions of debts with failing businesses, abuses his presidency for personal gain.
- Refuses to address Russian hits on American soldiers because he's a Russian puppet. Has secret meetings with Putin. Received Russian help to get him elected in the first place.
- Amount of hush money paid to his prostitute: 130.000$. Amount of federal income tax paid: 750$.

There's probably way more that I can't remember off the top of my head. Remember the good old times when "building the wall" was something absolutely bonkers? Now that seems downright reasonable compared to everything else he's done. THIS is the guy that his followers see and go "hell yeah, that's my boy!"

The point I want to make is that this is barely even politics anymore. If I held conservative values I still would want to get rid of Trump. I hate using the word "evil", but that's what it is.

Quick sources so mods don't ban me:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020...rom-voting
https://theconversation.com/trumps-encou...ion-147234
https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-t...?r=US&IR=T
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020...t-rhetoric
https://www.propublica.org/article/ice-g...awyers-say
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/lik...on-center/
https://www.npr.org/sections/latest-upda...1729852362
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/...y-did-911/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_in..._elections
https://theintercept.com/collections/all...ts-crimes/
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54319948
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/4/4/...mpeachment
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47983489
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-campa...s-profits/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...stan-putin
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-pu...d=63967271
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-t...SKCN1UD18D

[Charriu]

Just read that the senate only convene mid October due to Covid-19. Am I right in that if for example 4 republican senators are ill and can't participate on the vote for the supreme court, then the Republicans can't confirm the nominee?

[Gustaran]

What are we hoping to accomplish here? I highly doubt that anyone's opinion is going to be changed by any of the discussion within, and it isn't building the community up either. If you have strong political opinions, your local community is the best place to work those out and to advance your values, not on here.

What? Everyone in my local community already knows that Trump is [the devil] / [America's last hope]. I find it absolutely necessary to convince everybody on the internet (which basically means the whole world) of my superior opinion!

I'm not banning this thread because it doesn't seem appropriate at this time.

Haha, empty threat! I know you Americans can't do that. It's against my rights and the constitution and the freedom!

but I am trying to...be the primary dictator of  actions here

I knew it! You were in with the [Democrats] / [Republicans] from the beginning. Dictator! Censorship! Quick, someone call [MSNBC] / [Foxnews]!


/s


But you are probably right. I think we can safely say that most points concerning the candidates have been made and at least no forum member is trapped in a filter bubble anymore.

[T-hawk]

What are we hoping to accomplish here?

You have a politics forum or thread on a site like this, because what happens if you don't is that the echo-chamber sneaks in anyway.  Like this in the Werewolf thread; it's tongue-in-cheek and role-playing, but his opinion is clearly there.  What happens if you can't discuss politics is that subtly only the "proper" opinions get slipped in to be allowed and reinforced, with "no politics" used as a hammer to terminate wrongthink and dissent.

My own goal is to reduce hostility, by showing that there are rational and reasonable positions to support the current President of the United States and his administration.  The left is so hasty to throw every such supporter under the "racist" and "xenophobic" bus that they blind themselves to any possible rational discussion.  I'm here to work on Trump Derangement Syndrome deprogramming.

So I'll continue with these relevant and reasoned points:

What do you suggest people who cannot wait do? For example, I have worked as a volunteer with homosexual asylum seekers from Iran and Syria, who have been forced to seek asylum and move quickly, without the required paperwork, because they will be killed/imprisoned by either their government or local militias. Some of them are forced to leave partners, parents, or even their own children behind. It is a very difficult decision to leave these people, and asylum seekers would not do it if the danger was not real and imminent. Should they instead just accept their fate? I am sure there are similar situations in America, for example central-Americans fleeing powerful cartels.

This is all true, and tragic for them... but this is all not the United States' problem.  It is not the obligation or responsibility of the United States to use the resources of the United States and its taxpayers for everyone having problems anywhere in the entire world.

What about countries in which the US' actions have negatively impacted citizen's freedoms, liberties, and quality of life? There are a lot of these. For example, in Operation Condor, the US officially backed and funded a series of right-wing coups and dictatorships that as a general rule significantly lowered the quality of life for their citizens, and were hugely repressive; political torture, no freedom of speech, etc. Does the US not have a responsibility, even indirectly, to care for the millions of people who were impacted and displaced by these coups?

I'm not going to either justify or condemn that (it may have seemed like, or even actually been, a good idea at the time to defend our interests against communism.)  The relevant question is how would you propose going about that?  Find and figure out who was affected 45 years ago and pay them and their descendants reparations?  I wasn't alive 45 years ago, how did I incur some kind of responsibility and my taxpayer dollars to that?

This is an example of the broader divide between the conservative and liberal sides.  Liberals see every unhappy situation as being the domain of government to forcibly fix.  Conservatives understand the reality that unhappy situations will always exist and that resources aren't unlimited.

However, it is not true with regard to the separation of children from their families: that is an explicitly new practice that began in 2018, after Jeff Session's 'zero-tolerance' policy was announced, and is a purely Republican (or at least, Trumpian) policy.

Ok, I hadn't known that.  The original point stands though -- if you don't separate families, the other options are to incarcerate innocent children with their criminal parents, or let and implicitly encourage the parents to exploit their children as a get-out-of-jail card.  Both of which approaches happened under Obama, as I understand it.

Besides all that, here's what you don't see.  For the vast majority of these children, Border Patrol authorities do succeed in finding other placements for them.  Does the media ever tell you about the genuinely upstanding workers and those they legitimately help?  No, you just see the outlying cases and the worst few authority abusers for the scare and shock value.

And that all said, here's one more point even further: I don't even necessarily need to defend the practice.  I don't have the best answers for how to handle this situation.  I merely need to establish enough doubt that it's not a dealbreaker for rationally supporting Trump and his administration.

I dont see why we dont just have Open Borders.

Because the United States does not have unlimited taxpayers and unlimited resources to take care of everybody in the world.

[T-hawk]

I'll respond to these too, also all reasonable points that merit discussion:

- Threatens the democratic process with voter suppression targeted at people who would vote against him.

This I do not support... but the president actually doesn't have power here.  In the US, it is the states that set voting procedures and requirements.  It's true that Trump is pressuring the states, but ultimately the authority rests with the states and your argument is with them.

- Refuses to state that he will transfer over power if he loses the election, already has a strategy in place to sieze power.

I do not believe this will happen.  I believe this is bluster to keep up his image as a strong-man that his base wants to see.  I don't believe Trump will keep power if he legitimately loses the election.  Even Republicans ultimately care more about the rule of law and order than about Trump himself.

Ask yourself this: Which side is going to riot and burn if their candidate loses a close or questionable election?

- Refuses to denounce white supremacy.

"Let me be clear again: I condemn the KKK. I condemn all white supremacists. I condemn the Proud Boys. I don't know much about the Proud Boys, almost nothing, but I condemn that."

- Has concentration camps for immigrants where women are raped and children are separated from their families and people die just from how badly they are treated.

As mentioned: This started under Obama.  The "camps" are the last resort after all other attempts at placements are exhausted.  Raping women is not a policy that has anything to do with the president, that would be a few bad actors that should be and are individually prosecuted.  (Or should we defund the police that would do that?)

And overarching all: if you do not want to be subject to this, the very very simple way to do so is do not enter or remain in the United States illegally.

- Refuses to follow experts on COVID, letting hundreds of thousands and counting die

The same experts that said Sweden was headed for 96,000 deaths, who are currently at 5k after minimal restrictions?  Who never closed schools at all, yet the US is heading for a dystopia of destroying years of essential education out of fear and hysteria?

The same experts that the rest of Europe followed, only to see just as many total deaths as the US and is even now seeing more surges than the US?  Lockdowns never stop the virus, they only kick the can down the road until it happens anyway.  The reckoning comes no matter what.

The same experts that said "New York needs 40,000 ventilators!" and then four weeks later shut down the never-used field hospitals?

The facts are that the death rate has a LOT (like 20x) more to do with things like vitamin-D, age (why Africa has minimal deaths), and treatments like HCQ, than it does with any amount of government lockdowns or lack thereof.  The job of government here is to stay out of the way, preserve liberty, and let society keep functioning.

And finally, the experts you are talking about are the CDC experts.  Of course they only care about contagious disease and will advocate lockdowns forever; it's not their job to care about deaths from starvation or depression or other problems with medical care.

Let me be extremely clear here about my extremely personal stake.  My own mother was just diagnosed with cancer several months delayed because routine medical care was shut down from the hysteria.  Opening everything is now ABSOLUTELY F*CKING PERSONAL for me.  There is a very real possibility that the hysterical pandemic overreaction is going to kill my own mother.

encouraging people to do the wrong things like drink bleach.

Do you really think this happened?  This is the TDS deprogramming I need to talk about.  This is absolutely false.

https://www.statesman.com/news/20200713/...oronavirus

Read the actual words.  Trump was talking about UV light as a disinfectant procedure, and got a bit carried away with some muddled phrasing.  BIDEN twisted that into "Trump said drink bleach".  The fake news believed and repeated Biden who just made that up.

At any rate, this was a nothingburger anyway.  Exactly zero policy happened because of this.

- Is a criminal who will go to jail as soon as his immunity is gone, despite his best efforts to fire investigators coming after him.

This remains to be seen, I'll acknowledge... but this is a man who's had the entire western media piling on every possible detail of his life for four years and found absolutely nothing.  Even the Democrats in the House realized the impeachment was a sham.  I'd be very surprised if anything actually turns up.

- Is a conman who's hundreds of millions of debts with failing businesses, abuses his presidency for personal gain.

It is not illegal to have failing businesses.  He has many more successful ones than failed anyway, that's how you become a billionare in the first place.  Abusing the presidency for personal gain is possible, I acknowledge, but again there's been millions of eyes on that for years and nothing has come of it.

- Refuses to address Russian hits on American soldiers because he's a Russian puppet. Has secret meetings with Putin. Received Russian help to get him elected in the first place.

Trump is friendly with Russia and Putin, sure.  Even if Russia worked to swing the election, all the probes found no culpability among Trump and his campaign.  I suppose it's not impossible that Trump is still managing to suppress some kind of wrongdoing, but the burden of proof is on the accusers for these accusations.

- Amount of hush money paid to his prostitute: 130.000$. Amount of federal income tax paid: 750$.

What is illegal about either of those?  The first is a voluntary transaction by both parties, and the second has Trump fully complying with tax law (that was enacted by the Obama administration.)  Your argument there is with tax law, not Trump.