I'm a Clinton supporter. I don't intend to argue about it, but here are my opinions below so that you can think about them, I guess, and so you can see that it's not just "people being unfamiliar with Bernie."
My biggest personal issues are Having a Non-Fascist Government, abortion rights, Guantanamo Bay, and income equality (especially reworking the federal minimum wage), in that order. After that there's a lot of other things like climate change, carcerality, no more drone wars, trans rights, and stuff.
It's true that she's a credentialed candidate, which is another way to say that she's developed support with established institutions. She's established in some ways, not in others. I don't think that any woman with Bernie's "maverickhood" and lack of polish would have a prayer of getting into the White house. Any woman who has any kind of chance is going to be an "establishment candidate." Period.
I do not think that Bernie Sanders is diplomatic enough to deal with the likes of Vladimir Putin. I'm not even talking about his lack of experience in foreign policy; I'm just talking about his directness and lack of subtlety, which are excellent in a renegade senator, but not so great in a president. Biden would have been a terrible president in terms of foreign policy.
I also think that Clinton has been smeared a lot by the media circus, usually in misogynistic ways. The media is getting a big kick out of Trump saying outrageous things. I am sure that she has many flaws. However, I have not yet seen any arguments against her that were not, in large part, made of misogyny. I don't feel comfortable considering any argument that on its foundation deals with her being shrill, unlikeable, scoldy, too loud, whatever, or which seems to treat her like a monster. So far these are all of the arguments I have seen. For me, a precondition to considering someone's argument against her is that they attack her policies, rather than using sexist dogwhistles. The statements that she's too pro-business are, I think, very legitimate criticisms--not because she takes money from corporations, which I think is reasonable, but because I'm not sure she'll actually start taxing the snot out of rich people, which I would like for her to do. I'm also not sure that she'll be able to be tough enough on corporations when it comes to climate issues. Again, that safe fracking thing... >_>
On the other hand, Bill ran a budget surplus, so I'm hoping that she'll raise taxes.
Damn straight. People are forgetting that when Obama needed something done on the world stage in Libya or Ukraine he went to Clinton to get it done, and her Benghazi scandal she recovered in remarkable time with dignity and composure. And instead of attacking her policies, people say she is nothing more than a puppet for her donors; can it not be that a woman seeks donors for her policies, and is not just an extension of wealthy multinational men? One thing I would say is that I think Clinton is giving up real power by seeking to become president, as anything that goes wrong will become blamed on her (thanks Obama) but best of luck you know, she is certainly a competent executor of foreign policy (even if her advisors like Kissinger will need replacement).
I remember that when Obama came into power, there was a sudden increase in the number of ads featuring black families. The discourse immediately changed. I don't feel like Obama has a fantastic record on every issue, and I feel like he's appeased the tea party more than I'd like; but he's done a lot, quietly, for marginalized people, he's working on Guantanamo Bay (another one of my red-button issues) and Obamacare has honestly saved my butt. Another Obama sounds pretty good to me. Not great, but good.
One of the interesting criticisms that runs about is that these politicians only ever use identity politics to shield from real criticism with more "it's the current year" platitudes that consume public dialogue. That may be, there's big cheese going down in Israel for example with LGBT who furiously believe they are being used as a shield for military operations, and Obama started his LGBT campaign when Snowden went public - but the whole marriage equality thing, even if it was being used as a shield it worked didn't it? If you enact good policy even if only for a shield you've still done good, for example Israel is no Saudi Arabia on LGBT issues.
Abortion is an extremely serious concern for me given how much it has been eroded lately, especially as a person who has been raped and who is currently very low-income, and I think that Clinton is likely to work with it well. I don't think that any other candidate will address that concern meaningfully, at all.
I do not think you have to be a woman in order to care about and argue for abortion rights, for women's rights, but I have been severely disillusioned by Obama and his "wives, mothers, sisters" rhetoric and his leaning on the Lily Ledbetter act. I can tell you personally that I have seen institutional misogyny on the rise in an absolute absurd fashion, and I don't say this as a matter of rhetoric, as a matter of Being a Feminist, as a matter of talking points (I don't even "identify as a feminist," whatever the hell that means. I'm just trying to act in my own self-interest, which includes having a paying job, because my value on the marriage market is not high; assuming I'll just be a house wife and take care of the kids will not work). It's getting really bad right now, guys. It's getting scary.
How can Clinton tackle that? Sounds like a chasm to bridge
Sanders is a single-issue candidate who doesn't seem to have any concrete policy plans outside of "being really popular." I agree that income inequality is the absolute greatest concern for this particular country today, without a doubt. I'm very glad that he's in the playing field, not because I see him as "moving anyone leftward," but just because it's good that somebody is saying the things that he's saying. However, when your single issue is poverty, it is really important to understand that, for example, the single greatest element that sways women's ability to stay out of poverty is control over their reproduction. I don't feel like he cares about that very much.
To be fair this is also the num num who said the 19 million Americans living in poverty are physically incapable of experiencing poverty because of their race
He marched with King, and was arrested. This is important. However, I'm actually the child of a former activist, and I can tell you that it doesn't take that much bravery or knowledge of someone's situation to march somewhere and be arrested, especially when doing these things was somewhat popular, as it was during the 60s. Being arrested does not, in itself, help anyone. It does not even necessarily signal one's true commitment to a cause. Hell, I had a student who marched with Black Lives Matters and got hit with tear gas, the poor SoB, but constantly said horrible shit about poor people. It can be meaningful, but to me it's like one of those resume-stuffers that all of the rich white college girls have. "I helped children in Africa this one summer. They were suffering so much." You need to have more than singular, dramatic acts. You need to have boring nuts-and-bolts policy all in place, ready to go.
Aye, showing up to activist marches because you're bored and getting attacked by police because they don't ask you whether you believe in whatever cause is being marched for before assessing you are part of the giant mob in front of their thin blue line. Though fair on him he was not just a participant, dude was organizing the protests, which should go more towards showing commitment as before social media appeared starting marches required some effort.
However, in the event that it's President Sanders or President Trump, I want President Sanders. Without a doubt.
Trump appears to be a fascist, which concerns me. I can't comment on or consider any of his other policies in the wake of his suggestion to register religious minorities, and his apparent appropriation of the Hitler salute, and his treatment of dissidents. I am personally threatened by his point of view, as are my family members. I very much hope that he is not elected.
I've also never been able to forgive him for what he said about John McCain.
And we return to the void of Godwin
I'm surprised you don't register religious minorities already, though that might be because the UK wrote the (Domesday) book on recording the fuck out of everything and is obsessed with social control on a level only China has us beat on, though that might just be because the control is very subtle.
That is a reasonable argument, which I appreciate. I'll be thinking about what you've said.
(I'm not especially interested in arguments about tone of voice. Due to some difficulty understanding auditory information I get all of my data from transcripts. But, point taken.)
On the topic of Trump, it's really about his supporters actually going and beating people of color and Sieg Heiling and stuff like that. I had a step-grandmother in the Hitler Youth, which has strongly informed my point of view on these things. I'm not using the datapoint "Hitler" as Maximum Evil (godwinning), I'm trying to use it as... literally Hitler. The neo-Nazis are flocking to him. That is really, really gross. There's other gross people out there, but dude, Nazis.
There's other fascists out there, other oppressive regimes, other horrors. But when I am talking about Trump and Hitler, I actually am trying to make a comparison to Fascist Germany in particular, which is a data point that we should avoid. We should also avoid anyone similar to Chairman Mao or Stalin, but I frankly don't know as much about the features of these people's dictatorships.
So, if there's another historical figure that you think Clinton reminds you of (Margaret Thatcher, Merkel, etc.), then I can agree that we should say "hm, we've done that before and it was a bad idea."
But I have very strong feelings about a certain set of behaviors, having seen some of the aftermath close up with my own eyes.
I've not seen that, I've seen the neo-nazis hate him because of his Jewish and Russian family, and his policies being inclusive of all Americans instead of exclusive to white Americans. I've seen ethnic nationalists and outside of Africa, the ME and East Asia, where the common uniter is poverty and instability, the only place in the Western world it's dangerously close to seizing power is Greece, united by poverty and instability. This is very different, Trump is a sovereign nationalist capitalizing on the disaffected people who live in the most powerful nation on the planet yet see everyone else taking advantage of them or cowing to PC narratives so needlessly. And I'm not talking Democrats in particular, only in general, for the Republicans what have they achieved despite being voted again and again for by their constituents? Nothing. Utter waste. One thing I am glad about is that ethnic nationalism is very much dead, and ironically I think cultural marxists and sovereign nationalists killed it together. One of the interesting things about that old "I can tolerate anything but the outgroup" thing that gets tossed around every now and then is the issue of how ideological belief separates more than race, leading to that most MOISTURIZING of situations where our progressive left tried to enact ethnic changes as a policy believing that by creating new immigrant underclasses they would create a solid powerbase from which they'd be unchallenged, when in reality they brought in massive immigrant conservative groups who in turn linked up with the sovereign nationalists who in turn robbed support from the ethnic nationalists from people who wanted something less extreme. And I'm all for that, I'm seeing all these various white far-right groups finally giving up their dogmatic notions of supremacy with this hilarious decay where they'd be ok with buggery, druggery, thuggery and degeneracy as long as it was white. Now? After the rise of problem hair and great decay (a fair bit of cultural enrichment no doubt remiss) they're finally maturing and realizing if their country descends into decrepit wastes being white is no consolation, whereas if their country becomes great again not being white is little of value lost; it's just an expressed allele. Sovereign nationalists have been the nail in the coffin for ethnic nationalists in Europe, I want to see that happen in America too, racial purity fails if all it makes in the pursuit of it is pure shite. Make a good country where everything is prosperous, the people aren't beheaded by jihadis or their children sticking opium in their veins and shots in their eyes, the government isn't trying to dictate and indoctrinate and you create god damn heaven on Earth.
The mindset of Mao or Stalin's dictatorship is also quite easy to grasp as it's just Marxism-Leninism and Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, framing everything in class struggles, mobilizing the peasantry into destroying bourgeoisie scum, only to find out after killing 180 million innocent people you fucked up (well, you just kill some patsies and say they fucked up). MLM maintains that even after socialism has won, one must have strong centralized government to control people to root out "corruption" and "bourgeoisie elements" through supervision and revolutionary mass mobilization. I always find it funny that Stalin removed whole races of people he thought unloyal successfully whilst Hitler failed to remove one. Purges, expulsions, forced displacements, imprisonment in labor camps, manufactured famines, torture, mass murder and massacres all to remove dissident elements, Stalin solved the USSR's overpopulation issue far more efficiently than Hitler ever did, with 2 million dead a year, even during peace time. It is incredibly painful to me how China in 10 years of "cultural revolution" did more irreparable damage to their culture, people and country than the century of humiliation when Western and Japanese powers dictated the fate of the Empire of China, a state of powerlessness that had not been seen since the Mongols invaded. Most worrying of all is how much of it was driven by really enthusiastic students, the red guard, who banded together to criticize authorial figures and destroy anything of cultural value as "bourgeoisie". Religion, philosophy, literature, academia, history, students were used to destroy any opposition to the leadership and they did it from the ground level up, believing they were fighting oppression they delivered the most terrifying eradication of Chinese culture and when the killings and torture began, Chinese people. Anger at foreigners was also expressed in less than articulate ways. So I see today where bands of students die their hairs and maintain their own cultures and religions are ideological evils that must be banished to destroy capitalism, rich kids destroying war memorials, attacking Jews, Turks and Arabs for the crimes of their governments, "deconstructing" Western science and culture - and I see we're back in that box again. I see white people calling black Americans a stupid race because some of them voted for Trump or calling Latin Americans race traitors for voting him in Nevada and I see we're back in that box again. There is nothing I fear more than a person who destroys with a smile on their face with an inability to look in the mirror, though that must be my genes speaking. My family aren't descended from fascists, they're descended from liberals and communists, one of whom was a Maoist official who was about to be purged when he caught wind of it and fled, the gov wrongly believing he had died. And on the liberal side one of them nearly got KGB'd. State security bureaus are not as much of an existential threat though as wiping out the oppressive elements. And the oppressive elements? I mean, I'm looking at this topsy turvy world in the UK where rich aristocrats and bureaucrats laugh at working class men or gang rape victims because they're low on the progressive stack, the cognitive dissonance is painful. For this reason I only support communists when I want accelerationism and I don't buy feels = fire, because tone policing is yet another weapon to destroy people for things they are not.
We saw the same thing at Obama rallies.
It's just a simple, effective way to get the crowd pumped up and involved. Building energy at these things is good.
OBAMA NAZIS indeed
Author
Topic: Murrican Politics Megathread 2016: There Will Be Hell Toupée (Read 1571202 times)