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[Flying Dice]

There's a huge difference between internet arguments and shooting five BLM protestors. There's a huge difference between a 4 million strong peaceful protest and a few dozen anarchists crashing a different peaceful protest against an actual fascist. Please tell me about any civil wars and rebellions you know about, by the way. Right now the same people are passing around California succession things as always, and about as seriously. 

And really, how did you turn the platform of social liberalism into people telling you what to think? Is it because I or people like me have posited that scientific evidence should be used in government? Is it because people are asking for 'silly things' like equality before the law?

Do you have a practical plan to remove judges from the... uh, judicial system? I guess we'd just call it the system after that. If not, are you proposing overthrowing of the existing system to eliminate Judges? Like those scaaaaary liberals?

I have no idea where you're trying to go there at the beginning, but Calexit is a thing. Polls suggest a ~32% in favor thing thus far up from 20% in pre-Trump era polls. Crazier shifts in opinion have happened.

Extreme left social liberalism is all about forcing people to think alike. I'm against the extreme ends in both directions. It's just that extreme left is now BLM and Anarcho-feminists and extreme right are now Westboro Baptists. Nobody takes Westboro seriously. The other side? Well... yeah...

As for the judicial system, no plan. It's broken though.

I'm an extreme left social liberal. You can think whatever you damn well please so long as you respect the rights of others to do the same. Care to provide an example of the extreme left telling you to think something?

The ostrich impression is getting rather old. A nice case study of how SJWs operate and why any liberal with stuff between their ears should despise it. Which took a grueling three seconds to find via search engine.

[Max™]

Devil's Advocate time: does Trump deserve to be impeached, really?

Not just keeping assets in his control, but actively doing things to worsen the conflict of interest, repeatedly and consistently choosing in the face of any opposition to go around any of the "polite and traditional" blocks on presidential authority/abuse of power, I mean that's a pretty good reason by itself.

When the crazy conspiracy theory has become "maybe he's pulling some crazy Xanatos chess gambit" instead of "maybe he's going to just flat out ignore the rules and start helping his buddies and himself" because he's actually ignoring rules and helping his buddies... well, you gotta really hope there's some sort of brilliant mastermind pulling strings here, and there's no way that it's Bannon.

More plausibly, Bannon is using Trump like the big orange muppet that he is, and Trump is going along with it because all he cares about is getting attention.

[Hanslanda]

The one with the Japanese pilot obliterating all higher government but the Secretary of Defense or whatever he was, who subsequently becomes President? I think it was Executive Orders that started on that note, and... God, what's the name that ended with it?

[Strife26]

Debt of Honor ends with the suicide attack and Executive Orders is the one based around President Ryan, although the stuff he did remains important in the lesser books that follow.


Red Storm Rising is the best of Clancy's work and all the one's written by people other than him are pretty terrible.

[Reelya]

Devil's Advocate time: does Trump deserve to be impeached, really?

Well he doesn't respect the independence of the courts, also he's gutted the state department, thus allowing his inner circle to basically write doctrine without any input from existing foreign policy experts, and all the executive orders have not had any vetting or feedback from the various organizations authorized to carry them out. None of that is normal. He also removed the military from having any input in the NSA, while his senior advisors also float the idea that he gets his own personal secret police unit. So basically, they're cutting out all the upward flow of information and basically trying to be dictators who rule by fiat / decree, with the monkeys expected to merely carry out orders without question.

"Deserves" to be impeach? Fucking definitely deserves it.

[Strife26]

Other than the respecting the courts line (which is too fuzzy to be determined), none of those are particularly impeachable offenses.

[Reelya]

But they're all a dangerous erosion of the machinery of democracy itself. Basically he's cutting off all bi-directional information flow and making Bannon into a guy who rules by fiat without listening to anyone. A lot of the executive orders are clearly not drafted properly and have huge glaring issues in them when compared to the actual law. Normally this is avoided because the draft orders are presented to the various departments, who give feedback and alert the Whitehouse of any problems, so they bounce back and forth a couple of times before being issued. This isn't happening with Trump at all, and the cowboy attitude to legal issues is in fact opening up the Executive branch to vast numbers of future lawsuits.

[Strife26]

Great. Democracy running as intended. Set your watches for four years minus a few days, vote for the upcoming midterms, generally pester your congresscritter to act like they should, then vote someone else into the highest office.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I'm not familiar with the legal scholarship on the subject, but I would err towards saying that persistent refusal to appoint a functioning staff to the executive departments qualifies as not fulfilling basic Presidential duties and would be grounds for impeachment.

But it's still early for that in spite of the mass firings. I guess we'll see this summer how it looks, around then I'd start thinking of it.

[Strife26]

I'm not familiar with the legal scholarship on the subject, but I would err towards saying that persistent refusal to appoint a functioning staff to the executive departments qualifies as not fulfilling basic Presidential duties and would be grounds for impeachment.

But it's still early for that in spite of the mass firings. I guess we'll see this summer how it looks, around then I'd start thinking of it.

Legally, it's vague enough that the House could do it for whatever they want.

"The President, Vice President, and all civil Officers of the United States shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors."

High Crimes and Misdemeanors is the wild card here.

[Reelya]

Legally, it's vague enough that the House could do it for whatever they want.

"The President, Vice President, and all civil Officers of the United States shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors."

High Crimes and Misdemeanors is the wild card here.

The two most likely triggers are if a valid conflict of interests is found, e.g. TrumpCo getting kickbacks based on decisions that Trump made, or legal challenges, e.g. if Trump overrides the judiciary then he's threatening the independence of the judiciary, and they will move against him rather than allow that precedent to hold. Yes that's "political" but not in the sense of two-party politics, but about one of the arms of the separation of powers moving to protect it's sphere of influence: that's why you're seeing Judges working together to fight him, regardless of Republican/Democrat appointments. But I'd argue that type of "political" move is actually healthy, since it reinforces the separation of powers.

[PTTG??]

I'm an extreme left social liberal. You can think whatever you damn well please so long as you respect the rights of others to do the same. Care to provide an example of the extreme left telling you to think something?

The ostrich impression is getting rather old. A nice case study of how SJWs operate and why any liberal with stuff between their ears should despise it. Which took a grueling three seconds to find via search engine.

You act like trigger warnings and safe spaces are #1 and #2 on Bernie Sander's policy tree. Those are not social policies! They are academic and philosophical issues. Nor are they at all widespread or influential. We have a neofascist in the white house and people are saying it's because teenagers are self-righteous and annoying; well, I bad news...

I agree that your stereotypical SJW is both annoying and nonfunctional. But that stereotype doesn't represent the academic or foundational ideals of social liberalism, nor any significant fraction of the socially liberal population, or even the majority of actual SJWs. Nobody in any power greater than a university student council has a... shall we call it mysandrogynous agenda. Saying that they scare you isn't so much a criticism of them as it is an admission that you neglected to investigate political positions you're criticizing.

It's rather like if someone had asked me "what don't you like about Trump," and I said "mainly the thick rind and lack of flavor, and it's so expensive out of season." Sure, pumpkins suck, and it is certainly possible to confuse Trump for a pumpkin with a rotting piece of hay balanced on top....

[EnigmaticHat]

The ostrich impression is getting rather old. A nice case study of how SJWs operate and why any liberal with stuff between their ears should despise it. Which took a grueling three seconds to find via search engine.

I don't think that article is as compelling as you think it is... the core thrust is that liberals live up in their ivory towers but the people they claim to represent live down in the mud.  Not wrong, but not new either.  Everyone remembers the Communist Manifesto, no one remembers the academic essays...

I mean its not a bad piece but you posted it as if its a factual answer to an easily Googled question?  Whereas actually its an opinion piece based on the personal experiences of a person who provides concrete details on neither herself nor her experiences.  It hardly seems like the end all be all of a debate.

A lot of the examples the author provided sounded like they were all about the same incident or incidents, and I was actually really curious as to what happened.  It sounded like at some point(s) someone (possibly herself) said something that set off a shit show within some kind of organization or social group.  But then she never said what was said or who pissed off who or what happened as a result, kinda disappointing really.

[Reelya]

I don't think that article is as compelling as you think it is... the core thrust is that liberals live up in their ivory towers but the people they claim to represent live down in the mud.  Not wrong, but not new either.  Everyone remembers the Communist Manifesto, no one remembers the academic essays...

That counter-example might not be as "counter" as you think. What was Marx's exact profession, and was he a factory worker? yet he did claim to speak for all factory workers, despite never being a manual labourer.

So who was Karl's dad, a staunch working class man? Nope, a wealthy lawyer. The "grassroots" story already unravels before Marx is even born. Let's not even go there to his educational background, he earned a doctorate in Philosophy by age 23, then went on to edit a liberal newspaper. Basically Marx had zero connection to the working class whatsoever.

We do in fact remember the academic essays, because the writer of the Communist Manifesto did in fact have a cloistered privileged upbringing then straight into academia without ever having worked for a living.

[Descan]

Honestly, just the fact that you, FD, use the term SJWs kind of makes you seem like you're either lacking information or have an agenda. It's a anti- buzzword that doesn't really have a meaning beyond "leftists that I don't like," so one can throw it at pretty much anybody to shut down a discussion remotely related to that sphere. The only times people describe themselves that way are for the same reason people call themselves n****r, f****t, or queer, to reclaim it. Or when they're the same 5% of loonies every critical mass of people gets, like the "kill all men" crowd. But it doesn't like, provide any information on what they mean when they call themselves SJWs, and it SURE as hell doesn't provide any information when someone uses it as a slur that way.

It gets annoying when edgelords roll in, drop "S-JEWS!!" shitty "lol triggered" jokes, or stupid shit of that nature, on anything related to social inequality or social justice (or just a non-traditional look, or even just a woman with short hair sometimes) and roll away again, leaving a bunch of people who've never heard the term Troll to argue with a phantom :V That's the kind of company you seem to be enrolling here.