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[Lord Shonus]

It did, to get Gorsuch confirmed. Which was really, really stupid for the Democrats to force, since most didn't even bother to pretend that their stonewalling was anything more than retaliation for Garland.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Interesting this has only ever been the second time it has been used, and the only other time was just four years ago.

[Neonivek]

What is the Nuclear option anyhow?

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

What is the Nuclear option anyhow?

An official change in a precedent within the Senate, through a simple majority vote, to reduce required votes on a topic from the supermajority of 60 to a simple majority of 51.  Was used in 2013 to weaken the filibuster on Executive and Non-judicial appointments, and this one expanded it to the Supreme Court appointments.

[Dunamisdeos]

Both sides seem to hate it vehemently... when the other side uses it. The ends justify the means so long as it furthers your side's glorious political vision of the future.

[Sergarr]

Both sides seem to hate it vehemently... when the other side uses it. The ends justify the means so long as it furthers your side's glorious political vision of the future.

When have the ends not justified the means? Especially in politics, where the means are mostly artificial social constructs created to achieve said "ends".

[MetalSlimeHunt]

It did, to get Gorsuch confirmed. Which was really, really stupid for the Democrats to force, since most didn't even bother to pretend that their stonewalling was anything more than retaliation for Garland.

Had to be done. You can't just not react to the other side taking obstructionism to the point of government breakdown, that's not even game theory, that's just plain.

[ChairmanPoo]

Both sides seem to hate it vehemently... when the other side uses it. The ends justify the means so long as it furthers your side's glorious political vision of the future.

When have the ends not justified the means? Especially in politics, where the means are mostly artificial social constructs created to achieve said "ends".

The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end

[smjjames]

Bill "arrogant bastard" O'Reilly is out at Fox News.

This will probably make Fox News ever so slightly more respectable, but they'd have to get rid of those like Hannity if they're ever going to be centrist and all that.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Holy shit. I never thought I'd see the day. I grew up watching his nativist rage on TV.

The world is cold and empty now.

[SalmonGod]

Seriously, if your dudes are represented by masked thugs whose legitimacy comes from ambushing people because they asked for it, you're taking every lesson America learned in how to radicalize the middle east and applying it to the home. This is so retarded and if you guys ruin the greatest country in the world I will slightly die inside, but my sides will be in orbit. Seriously wtf
American right wing has its fucked up bullshits, but I'll give their rank and file the credit in that they show their faces when they march because they don't march with the intent to break the law and grab the scalps of their enemies as our fine antifa wanted.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This on the other hand is just ugly plain and simple, people whose purpose from the start was to assault normal people and put them in hospitable for having a different opinion. I'm thinking: If these guys, the American right wing retaliate, will it just be against antifa? Not likely, it will rapidly descend into Napoleonic retardation and we'd have American spring 2017, rule of law flying out the window

Imagine if this head injury killed this man. How would you calm the angry mobs from waging civil war? US news doesn't report on this shit much, but information control like this is not possible without shutting down the internet, more news of this will come out every time it will happen. When it does, left and right need to be of one mind in calming people down and not letting extremists like antifa lead the rhetoric by calling for the death of their enemies - if we are at the sad state where morality matters not anymore, and the right are now subhumans to be killed, then there is a simpler argument to be made that if violence escalates, the right wing will win and will likely descend into extremism the longer the conflict rages. Don't start it, take every effort to maintain peace, I'm probably preaching to the choir and all but for posterity this is so retarded. If you see nothing morally wrong with attacking your fellow countryman, then surely it must dawn that you must not make an enemy of the better organized, better armed and better trained!

I know I'm late to this, but I can't let it go.

Why all this focus about aggression being a radicalizing influence on the right, without any nod to why the left would respond in such an extreme manner in the first place?

Like you understand that the state of society where black/LGBT/etc people being subhumans to be subjugated or killed was standard is still in living memory, right?  And has never been successfully ended in many places, even in the USA?

If some street scuffles are all it takes to radicalize the right, then how can you not also see basically all of modern history in the west as being a radicalizing effect on the left?

I mean, you can argue that the actions are counter-productive and strategically unwise.  That's a totally legitimate thing to say.  But to look at a vast swath of society who, at least in the case of LGBT, had legitimate reasons to fear for their well-being if they admitted who they were in public until 10-15 years ago, and now have serious reasons to fear that we're returning to that.  To point to those people and say "You fools!  You're going to radicalize THEM." 

I mean... I just don't know what to say.  This is an issue involving very legitimate fear for hundreds of millions of people.  Some of those people are going to do really stupid shit as a result.  I just think the condescension should be put in perspective a little bit.  Or maybe I shouldn't look at it as condescension.  I mean you clearly have extra high expectations of people who have had suffering inflicted on them for forever, in order to expect that they're enlightened enough to worry that their methods of self-defense against people who are trying to re-establish their institutional rights to inflict suffering on them again will only radicalize them further.

Edit:

I think the question is:  How can those of us who are opposed to bigotry, but enjoy the luxury of not being under direct threat of victimization by the cultural resurgence of open bigotry, play an effective role in preventing continued escalation of this conflict?  Because making fun of frightened overzealous university kids sure as hell isn't going to help anything.  They read stuff like this about how they need to calm down or they're going to anger their would-be oppressors, and I'd expect them to just interpret that as being on their own.

[sluissa]

@SalmonGod

You MIGHT have a point if you saw a ton of middle afed and older LGBT people out there. But antifa is almost entirely school aged kids who never knew that sort of oppression. Nor is there much evidence that LGBT people are out there in significant numbers. There's a reason this keeps happening on college campuses almost exclusively.

These are troublemakers stealing the cover of a popular flag and running with it for their own purposes.

Don't try to defend the people who go out and take their aggressions out on poor trash receptacles and get their butts kicked when someone stupidly decides to throw a pepsi at someone else.

[SalmonGod]

That sort of oppression still exists in many places, and those that haven't suffered it themselves are still highly likely to know someone that has.  In my own state of Indiana, bigotry is still incredibly dominant outside of the Indianapolis metro area.

And I'm not defending them.  I'm saying that criticizing them for not being more concerned about how their aggression against a cultural movement that is trying to re-establish an institutional right to be aggressors above reproach is just ridiculous.

[TempAcc]

Here's the thing, everyone understand how the US had a pretty bad phase in regards to minority rights, yadda yadda. But lets get real now, do we really see the right wing organizing riots, comming out with fireworks, tear gas, pepper spray and edgy makeshift masks and hoods, marching through the streets breaking shit for the porpuse of distrupting peace, all the while hitting people and breaking proprierty that barely has anything to do with their perceived opressors? When was the last time that happened? Has it hit national news? Was it something that overtook a major part of an important city?

Lets get real here, one can drag out the dead victimhood horse and keep beating it to a pulp, sacrifice the remains to satan and invoke the ugly ghosts of the past to throw it at whoever's today acceptable target outgroup, but I'm gonna need some enlightenment here: where are the opressors of the left nowadays? Where are the deathsquads? Where's the KKK and the burning crosses? Where's the nazis that beat people up murder them?

Sure, nazis are a thing, they have shitty haircuts and dress kinda like industrial band vocalists and ww2 reenactors and make shitty speeches, but are they beating LGBT, black people and etc over the head nowadays? I sure don't see that as an actual national phenomenon. There's also the silly MAGA people with the ugly caps, but they just tend to make weird noises and dank memes and the best side exploding conspiracy theories on this side of the world.

What we see on the left? Antifa literally hurting people on the streets, bystanders and perceived enemies alike. People attempting to violently censor their would be enemies, and an autistic, near constant call for conflict from the very same people who were actualy cartoonish enough to chant "he will not divide us" to Shia Lebouf, the living meme.

Its a self fulfilling propecy. The opressors aren't gone, but they certainly aren't nearly as powerful or present as before, cultural warfare is a thing and needs to be used for such things to be controlled. Being a dweeb breaking shit on the street is NOT cultural warfare, its giving people reason to ask the people in charge to put you down and think of you as an enemy. I'm not saying you need to ignore the fact there's shitty right wing people out there, I'm saying the left needs to stop silently nodding away and being conivent with people calling for violence AND practicing violence against their perceived enemies. Sorry kids, punch the fash is not a reasonable thing, if you think so then you are summoning your own enemy, an enemy that is far more capable of murdering you and your friends then you are of harming them. Its like being a kid and getting joked about a large guy in a bar: if you walk away or joke back in style, he'll just be seen as a shitty drunk everyone should laugh at, if you hit him, he'll steamroll the shit out of you because his fist is larger than your head, and even if you invoke your inner bruce lee and beat him up, you're under arrest. Its not a fight you can win, even if you somehow beat your enemy.

Look up at what makes up antifa, its certainly not a minority support group, not in the US, not in europe, not anywhere. Who is carrying your flags for you nowadays? The people that are actualy capable of productive change, or the people who will squander all your effort and set you back a few decades? I know its hard to be a victim, but a victim needs to be able to get real and remove avenues for victimization as well. The world is not a hugbox, do not expect acts of grandeur out of other people, even if you think you're worthy of them, so monitor the people who are representing you out there, and if they fuck up, renounce them.

EDIT: I tend to overuse "you" in my arguments a lot to make it more personal to the reader, but it may cause people to think this is directed at someone in particular. Its not, even the leftiest and righttiest of you guys tend to be very level headed, which is why I like this forum.

[SalmonGod]

"A bad spell"?  Really?  I have 2 trans friends who are in their 30s and only decided they felt safe coming out about it a couple years ago.  You're calling the entire history of the country "a bad spell".  And radical conservatives are still the #1 source of violent domestic terrorism, iirc.  If you're seriously telling me that radical left college kids engaging in a couple street brawls are the primary aggressors in culture war, you've got some major confirmation bias going on.

Hell, police can still openly murder black people in the streets, and get rich off donations for what they did while the justice system bends over backwards to avoid punishing them.