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[wierd]

But you dont want to appear WEAK ON CRIME do you Reelya!?

/s

Seriously, the degree of litigiousness that our society engages in for its sense of moral superiority is just straight up absurd.

[stabbymcstabstab]

Sounds about right. It's still pedophilia, but now the children aren't also criminals.

So, yes, it made it "legal" in the sense that children can no longer be prosecuted for child prostitution. It's still illegal due to the substantial legal overlap in that area, but now the children aren't additionally criminals.

If someone tosses me a link to the bill I could probably do more explaining, though I doubt it'd be necessary.

It's also a necessary patch on the absurd situation where a minor gets charged more harshly than an adult would because they trafficked in a minor (themselves).

There's a different type of case where e.g. a 16 year old boy and girl were sexting each other nude pics of themselves. Now, they've charged the boy as an adult, and is charged with sexual exploitation of a minor (himself), and possession of child pornography (himself and herself). So it's a bizarre situation where a 16 year old minor who snaps nude pics of themselves can be charged with felony child pornography of themselves - because they're a minor - yet the felony law says they are legally an adult as well.

Also If they're legally a adult in the eyes of the law, how can they also be considered a minor? shouldn't one take precedent, like either it's a legal adult taking pictures of themselves and sending it to a minor (still bad but vastly better for both kids), or they should be tried as a minor and still be screwed over, but still have a much better life and chance of freedom then before.

[Lord Shonus]

It is the inevitable result of legislating based on the public mood. Something Bad happens, people panic and demand that There Should Be A Law, the law gets thrown together to satisfy the Will Of The People, and the law passes. Because the law came direct from raw spontaneous public pressure rather then months or years of debate, it gets put together quickly, and not enough attention is given to papering over the inevitable cracks and flaws before it enters into law, let alone the interaction with other laws passed under similar circumstances.


At least these laws aren't based primarily on movies.

[wierd]

Yes and no... It is that, coupled with the typical fear politicians have of "looking weak on crime", since the attack ads will without fail, paint them as pedo loving bastards that like to see children get raped, for being 'lenient'. (Nevermind that the specifics are exactly as Reelya pointed out- where the defendent is in actuality the victim of disgusting behavior from another party, (for actual child prostitution), or simply were sexting or otherwise playing doctor, but are being tried like as if they were a 40 year old pervert in a van loaded with puppies and candy.

It's totally the moral superiority thing. "I feel so good about myself for not giving those pedos an inch! I am such a good person!" 
combined with the "Oh noes, my constituency will think I am an accessory to child predation if I dont pass this horridly written POS immediately, and then I wont get re-elected!"

[Lord Shonus]

There's no conflict between what I said and what you're saying. What you're describing generally happens (unless congresscritters spot a fatal crock or sneaky addition in the bill and kill it, providing their opponent in the next election with ammunition) when the legislature starts trying to plaster over the cracks caused by the shoddy legislating I was talking about.

[Antioch]

He just went full fascist

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/832708293516632065

NEVER GO FULL FASCIST

Trumps entire crusade against "fake news" are the words of someone literally out of touch with reality.

[wierd]

Fake news *IS* a thing, however-- what Trump considers fake news, is not what people who specialize in objective reality consider to be fake news.

In other words, Trump considers the likes or Breitbart to be "legitimate news", and actual peer reviewed journalism to be "fake news".

[martinuzz]

He just went full fascist

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/832708293516632065

NEVER GO FULL FASCIST

Trumps entire crusade against "fake news" are the words of someone literally out of touch with reality.

Well, yeah, anyone that would have said a year ago what Trump is saying now would have been considered an extreme mental case in the category tinfoil hatter.
I just can't wrap my head around what the fuck happened with people's sanity in such short time.

* martinuzz tightens his tin foil hat to protect against the alien mind rays

[Antioch]

"The leaks are real, but the news is fake"

WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN.

[wierd]

Do you want the truth, the sad truth, or the unvarnished truth?

The truth is that it was a long time coming, and that we deserve it.

The sad truth, is that we deserve it by culturally deriding intellectualism, and promoting jingoism.

The unvarnished truth is that our nation vilifies and casts scorn and pejoratives on educated people, embraces backward superstition, and has been simultaneously talking out both ends about this. (On one hand, we say that the intellectual elite are right, and everyone else is just wrong-- and on the other end, we deride the "ivory tower" and embrace things "the way GOD intended!"-- with both ends of the political spectrum pulling the populace further and further apart for selfish, short-term election purposes. (And NO, it really *IS* both sides on that.) One side shouts about how 15 genders is too few-- while the other regales us with how horrible it is that a penis can go into an anus, and how it makes baby jesus cry. Any voice in the middle is derided universally by both extremes, and the result is less and less reason, more and more division, more and more tribalism, more and more idiocy on both sides. It took us the better part of a century to get here, and WHOOP-- Here we are.

We carefully cultivated a society where a huge percentage of the population is fucking bugnuts crazy-- and finally we got a moron in office that they could "relate" with.

The proverb is that we reap what we sow.  Trump is our bumper crop.  Many are just dissatisfied that we didnt elect a transgender heterophobic female (note, this is not a slam against hillary. Rather, this is a purposeful strawman against the 'ideal' liberal candidate), who champions for abortions for everyone, with free contraceptives at every street corner, universal basic income, and abolition of all drug laws aside from the FDA, gets rid of all immigration controls completely, promises free college education, etc---  instead of an orange misogynist who lives in a paranoid 1960s cold war fantasy, who believes yellow rag journalist stories over actual reality, preaches Jingoism and nationalism, consistently fails to accept personal responsibility for his own misconduct,  has a history of fraud a hundred miles long, has quid pro quo allegations in the first month in office, and is the very image of conflict of interest, and incompetent ruler who preaches about religious freedom when they really mean religious domination and persecution.

It was going to be one of those two.  Both sides were hitting that pendulum as hard as they possibly could, and it just got stuck on the conservative axis instead of the liberal one, and much wailing and gnashing of teeth was heard.

Both sides abandoned reason over a decade ago.  Here we are, with no middle ground, just as we deserve.

[Reelya]

Well, yeah, anyone that would have said a year ago what Trump is saying now would have been considered an extreme mental case in the category tinfoil hatter.
I just can't wrap my head around what the fuck happened with people's sanity in such short time.

They were probably there all along. There's something to the view that there's a narrow "elite" consensus. It's what Noam Chomsky calls the "political class". More broadly, it's all the white collar professional classes who, between them, basically control the national conversation.

Basically, the elite classes whitewash all the views that don't fit their consensus, no matter whether they're from the right wing or left wing. They dictate the range of views that are represented in the media, so they dictate the bounds of "normal" conversation. All other views are held to be outliers not worthy of comment. But those "outlier" views are often held by the working classes, who outnumber the elite. Any time there's an outpouring of any form of sentiment against "elite consensus" views the media just writes it off as unimportant. But that's like saying a locust plague will go away if you write enough articles explaining how it's not a problem.

So Trump is against the "fake new" mainstream media not because they write things about him but because their core constituency are the white-collar classes, whereas Trump has resonated with marginalized segments of the working class / blue collar industries. So it's a class thing, which is typical of a populism, and not dissimilar to fascism.

[Frumple]

Uh. Do remember the GOP core is still the white mid+ income demographic. The blue collar chunks of that as well, of course. They don't usually do that well with folks that are actually marginalized (which is unsurprising, considering most of their platform consists of fucking them over). Near as I can recall having just woke up, neither did trump.

[Starver]

"You are being marginalised by the people you like to marginalise" is a compelling message to spout...

[Reelya]

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/09/09/who_are_trumps_supporters.html

In terms of demographics, Trump’s supporters are a bit older, less educated and earn less than the average Republican. Slightly over half are women. About half are between 45 and 64 years of age, with another 34 percent over 65 years old and less than 2 percent younger than 30. One half of his voters have a high school education or less, compared to 19 percent with a college or post-graduate degree. Slightly over a third of his supporters earn less than $50,000 per year, while 11 percent earn over $100,000 per year. Definitely not country club Republicans, but not terribly unusual either.

In other words, he swayed the blue collar end of the Republican base: older workers who lack degrees, especially. So they are outside the elite "bubble" where most people have degrees.

So it's a bunch of old folks who never went to college, who want to Make America Great Again through bringing antiquated industries back. Proper industries which aren't full of young fancy-pants upstarts with a college degree.

[Sergarr]

I don't know if I should really read into these numbers, because as current polls indicate, Trump has almost 90% support among Republicans (higher than Reagan had right after his inauguration).

Oh wait, that's an article from September 2015. Yeah, it's already outdated at this point. Nearly all Republicans are now Trump supporters.