American Politics Discussion Thread

[Gavagai]

Congressional democrats these past 20 years have been rather tame, until recently when "the squad" started being a bit more blunt. While the republicans in congress have been very aggressive : Newt Gingrich changed the tone of US politics in 94.

This is an amusing difference in perspective which, of course, we cannot resolve without some kind of extensive factual research for which we both probably don't have time. As I have said, I just wanted to communicate how Reps feel and where they come from. Reps think that exactly the opposite is true: their leaders were way too civil and "adult" and was failing to properly respond to Dems radicalization until Trump came. It serves as an explanation - not a justification - of Trump's success. Dave starting that by asking how anyone can possibly support Trump and I am trying to give an answer.

[Gavagai]

Charriu, if you seriously believe that anyone who fantasizes about grabbing someone by the pussy is a sexist, you should be horrified by the world you live in. And a minor nitpick - Trump very explicitly said that women would allow him to grab them if he is "a star", so to say that he wouldn't wait for consent is a mischaracterization, even if we take his words seriously at all.

That would be an accurate description of my world
Yes, he mentioned consent. Still there are over 20 claims by women about his behaviour towards them.

To be fair, in today's world it is very hard for me to take sexual accusations against any public person seriously because being abused by someone famous has become fashionable. We have thousands and more such accusations being thrown around, pretty much always without any legal consequences, I need to observe. It vividly reminds a time just after Freud published his works when lots of women suddenly "remembered" that they have been abused by their fathers. A bit later the subject fell out of fashion and an epidemy of child abuses stopped just as mysteriously as it started.

[Charriu]

Congressional democrats these past 20 years have been rather tame, until recently when "the squad" started being a bit more blunt. While the republicans in congress have been very aggressive : Newt Gingrich changed the tone of US politics in 94.

This is an amusing difference in perspective which, of course, we cannot resolve without some kind of extensive factual research for which we both probably don't have time. As I have said, I just wanted to communicate how Reps feel and where they come from. Reps think that exactly the opposite is true: their leaders were way too civil and "adult" and was failing to properly respond to Dems radicalization until Trump came. It serves as an explanation - not a justification - of Trump's success. Dave starting that by asking how anyone can possibly support Trump and I am trying to give an answer.

I think the main issue here is that you basically only have two parties in the US. In such a state both parties are bound to slip into more extreme behaviour or hostility towards their perceived "enemy". But fixing the issues of a two-party-system, would need a change from the "First past the post" voting to systems like the STD voting system.

[Gavagai]

I don't think that the two-party system is specifically the thing to blame here. US had it for two centuries but they didn't have this specific problem with mutual radicalization since Civil War. I rather think that US (and most other Western countries), despite being formally democratic, functioned like oligarchies until recently with ballot access being heavily restricted by various informal and semi-formal mechanisms. In the current age the grasp of elites over voting process has slipped and we are starting to see truly democratic leaders, like Trump or AOC, in all their ugly Athenian colors.

[Mardoc]

I'm sorry, but how can he be the lesser evil if you look at things done under his administration like the separation of families at the border and the situation at these detention centers.

I think you're vastly underestimating the amount of evil done by governments on average, including the US government.  This is neither new or big, in comparison to the overall evils done.  I'm confident that Clinton would have also continued the policy, although maybe she wouldn't have publicized it.

[T-hawk]

From Republican perspective, Democrats of all stripes made a habit from insulting, ridiculing, devaluing Republicans and their values in the meanest, basest ways possible for decades.

Can you cite moments when democratic leadership, or better yet, a democratic president, has done that ?

The one that directly had an impact on voting was Hillary's "We're going to put the coal miners out of work." She literally directly sought to end people's livelihood in the name of virtue-signaling environmentalism. She ridiculed and attacked the very idea of working a job which is about as fundamentally Republican as it gets. The insult is in how casual that statement was, said without any realization that anyone would ever disagree. Jobs have become so far removed from anything the Democratic platform cares about, and the people who work them are dismissed as privileged trash.

The Democratic platform has swung so insanely far left that the default expectation has become to depend on the government for everything. There is no end to liberals' insatiable demand for handouts in the name of communism disguised as equality. Free health care, then free education, then universal income, then housing, and who knows what else. All of which comes by ever escalating taxes out of my pocket. That is why I align with Trump and the Republicans, for holding the line against that.

[Charriu]

I'm sorry, but how can he be the lesser evil if you look at things done under his administration like the separation of families at the border and the situation at these detention centers.

I think you're vastly underestimating the amount of evil done by governments on average, including the US government.  This is neither new or big, in comparison to the overall evils done.  I'm confident that Clinton would have also continued the policy, although maybe she wouldn't have publicized it.

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?

[Charriu]

From Republican perspective, Democrats of all stripes made a habit from insulting, ridiculing, devaluing Republicans and their values in the meanest, basest ways possible for decades.

Can you cite moments when democratic leadership, or better yet, a democratic president, has done that ?

The one that directly had an impact on voting was Hillary's "We're going to put the coal miners out of work."  She literally directly sought to end people's livelihood in the name of virtue-signaling environmentalism.  She ridiculed and attacked the very idea of working a job which is about as fundamentally Republican as it gets.  The insult is in how casual that statement was, said without any realization that anyone would ever disagree.  Jobs have become so far removed from anything the Democratic platform cares about, and the people who work them are dismissed as privileged trash.

The Democratic platform has swung so insanely far left that the default expectation has become to depend on the government for everything.  There is no end to liberals' insatiable demand for handouts in the name of communism disguised as equality.  Free health care, then free education, then universal income, then housing, and who knows what else.  All of which comes by ever escalating taxes out of my pocket.  That is why I align with Trump and the Republicans, for holding the line against that.

Those comments by Hillary are unfair and demeaning. I agree with you about that. I remember a town hall with Obama, in which he handled the topic of "jobs that go extinct" better. The fact remains that some jobs won't remain forever due to progress in technology (automation) and/or cheaper competition. There need to be solutions for people working in those fields.

About the Democratic party as of now, yes it has swung more to the left. But as someone living in a successful state with those things like free healthcare and free education etc. I happily pay taxes, because I know when it gets worse in my life then I don't need to be afraid of things like paying my medical bills.

[AdrienIer]

About the Democratic party as of now, yes it has swung more to the left. But as someone living in a successful state with those things like free healthcare and free education etc. I happily pay taxes, because I know when it gets worse in my life then I don't need to be afraid of things like paying my medical bills.

That's an important thing here : democrats have started to push for things that are considered perfectly mainstream in so many other countries, like free healthcare. In a lot of countries not even the most hardline right wingers would dare propose to end free healthcare, because the system has the advantage of working as designed (keeping people healthy) and making it cheap for everyone (and affordable for everyone tax-wise). But in the US it's considered a far, far left idea, instead of everyone realizing how far to the right the US is.

As for Hillary's comments on coal miners, they were really insensitive. I get how this could be used as a reason to hate her. She's right in that if we want to survive as a specie we need to stop mining coal, and the sooner the better, but you have to propose an alternative to those people (and you need to start the conversation with them with those alternatives, not with an attack on their way of life).

[DaveV]

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.