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Author Topic: AmeriPol thread  (Read 4226958 times)

The Ensorceler

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #25605 on: November 13, 2018, 01:47:32 am »

SalmonGod's take was fairly reasonable. Didn't call out people for being Hitler, or even Nazis, just boring quiet (specifically not card-carrying) racists who'll vote for even worse people than themselves. That was immediately called an extreme take because it encompassed too many republicans.

Not trying to change the group that voted for the current crop of Republicans in office means they won't change. You can still beat them by numbers, but if you aren't allowed to point out what they've done the ones who'll care will never notice. If telling the truth won't help, do it anyways. Lying to them and saying they haven't done evil is what they do for eachother, and it has made things a lot worse.
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Trekkin

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #25606 on: November 13, 2018, 01:55:40 am »

Ok, so you're doubling-down on calling half the country Nazi-lite. Then wonder why they don't listen to other things you have to say.

Yes, with the caveat that my point is more about how insidious fascism is than how extreme that half of the country is. Republicans hate Nazis too, but the Nazis they hate are not the ones they risk becoming. They hate the Schutzstaffel, not the country of really quite normal people whose leader was behind their camps.

That said, I'm not actually wondering; not everyone but you is wandering around mystified at what look to you to be obvious truths. Some things we accept; I accept, for example, that I probably shouldn't be put in charge of Democratic messaging any time soon, in part because I'm not willing to compromise in pointing out how easy it would be to build internment camps here again to thunderous applause and so I'm not going to be winning the hearts and minds of the right.
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Reelya

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #25607 on: November 13, 2018, 02:00:38 am »

If it's valid to campaign against the right-half of the nation because things could end up like Nazi Germany, why aren't right-wingers equally valid with the extreme left / Soviet Union analogies?

EDIT: it's not that far fetched, given that both right and left wing dictatorships have been, and still are, widespread, and a vast number of people live under left-wing dictatorships even now. If one extreme should be feared, so should both, and a left-wing dictatorship is no more fanciful than a right-wing one.
« Last Edit: November 13, 2018, 02:08:01 am by Reelya »
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Trekkin

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #25608 on: November 13, 2018, 02:11:38 am »

If it's valid to campaign against the right-half of the nation because things could end up like Nazi Germany, why aren't right-wingers equally valid with the extreme left / Soviet Union analogies?

Did I say they aren't? They're quite right to point out the dangers of going the wrong kind of too far left and embracing autocracy that way, and I for one value their function as watchdogs. I happen to think they're completely wrong at present, but I still listen, because when they start sounding more reasonable we're probably doing something dangerous and sometimes our rectitude alone doesn't tell us when to stop.

You seem to think everyone thinks of politics exclusively in terms of campaigning and winning votes and elections, but politics is odd in that what could be grandiosely called grand strategy is to a tiny degree everyone's business, and the question of where we want to go as a nation is much harder to answer concisely and confidently than the more mechanical matter of how we get there once we've decided.
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SalmonGod

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #25609 on: November 13, 2018, 02:28:28 am »

This isn't about doubling down on moral condemnation to squeeze every drop of righteousness out of the opportunity.  It's about acknowledging the material consequences of large numbers of people making passive alliance with a smaller number of people who are actively fascist.

Because the dangerous thing about evil is not in how it expresses itself.  It's in the creeping banality of how it actually achieves its aims.

And we may not have yet achieved the same gravity of events that Nazi Germany did, but there are enough similarities and dangerous potentials right now that the comparison is frighteningly relevant.

Think about how many people had a vague, uncomfortable idea that something bad was happening to the Jews, but didn't know much in the way of details or scope.  So they found it easy to maintain their support for the Nazi party due to their stances on other issues.  Or they bought into the anti-Jewish propaganda of the time and were simply content to know that something was being done about them, and blissfully spare themselves the details.  Think about how many people participated directly in the cold-blood killing of Jews with their own hands in concentration camps vs how many likely didn't see themselves as murderers because all they did was show up to work every day to engage in all the other steps - transportation, paperwork, etc.  But the whole process wouldn't have worked without their cooperation.

Now compare that to the immigrant concentration camps we have now, just as one example from our current political climate.  They may not be extermination projects, but they're still large scale violation of human rights.  The same principles are in effect.  I don't believe that the majority of republican voters want things to be handled in specifically that mean a fashion.  But I think the majority do carry anti-immigrant sentiments and want something to be done.  They're probably content to spare themselves the details.  Think about how many people show up to work every day knowing to some degree that their work is a part of the structural fabric that is doing some bad stuff... but they're not putting children in cages with their own hands, so it's easy enough to just keep showing up to work every day.

This is how it works.  This is how actively evil people get everyone to work for them - through the auspices of law & order, through the normalization of their propaganda in public discourse as just another political opinion, and relying on the majority of participants and political allies being some degree of separation from the human suffering at the far end of what they collectively mechanize.

And you sure as hell don't stop it by refusing to talk about it for fear of offending people.  If a decent person is accessory to the infliction of suffering, they should want to know about it.

Edit:

If it's valid to campaign against the right-half of the nation because things could end up like Nazi Germany, why aren't right-wingers equally valid with the extreme left / Soviet Union analogies?

EDIT: it's not that far fetched, given that both right and left wing dictatorships have been, and still are, widespread, and a vast number of people live under left-wing dictatorships even now. If one extreme should be feared, so should both, and a left-wing dictatorship is no more fanciful than a right-wing one.

We don't have dictatorship, but we do have the right doing its variety of really bad stuff anyway.  We don't currently have the same on the left.  So it's rather disingenuous compare call-outs of the left based on hypotheticals with call-outs of the right based on current realities.
« Last Edit: November 13, 2018, 02:35:16 am by SalmonGod »
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Trekkin

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #25610 on: November 13, 2018, 02:50:54 am »

We don't have dictatorship, but we do have the right doing its variety of really bad stuff anyway.  We don't currently have the same on the left.  So it's rather disingenuous compare call-outs of the left based on hypotheticals with call-outs of the right based on current realities.

I'd call it more a difference of urgency than of category. The nice thing about being out of power is that you can afford to wreck countless hypothetical lives in considering unusual things; there's more of a duty to be cautious when you're governing real people and your policies are affecting people as they're being debated. That still doesn't mean we can flirt with things we know we won't like.
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Max™

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #25611 on: November 13, 2018, 03:05:26 am »

God... we could have had Romney.

Instead we're numb to white supremacist dog whistling, active detachment from reality, open adoration of strongman dictatorships, financial crimes galore, and can't even muster up a shocked gasp behind our hand after hearing about actual porn stars being paid to keep silent with possible campaign funds.

We had a ranting frothing pile of entitled rich kid testifying about being a virgin in school, liking beer, and not having a single instance of rape in his calendars... which he brought to the senate hearings before later being seated on the supreme court.

Little kids in cages, nazis with torches, too many shootings to count, and the answer when we look to the highest office in the land?

Good people, the best people, I knew this guy who went to a shithole country, and I've achieved more than anyone in history by myself... just me and the 400 million dollars my daddy gave me to keep me afloat because it's hard to succeed when the media is against you and you don't need to look into my taxes because you couldn't understand it anyways, covfefe, sad!
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smjjames

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #25612 on: November 13, 2018, 03:35:39 am »

He didn't run in 2016, so, no, we couldn't have had Mitt Romney.
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PTTG??

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #25613 on: November 13, 2018, 03:54:32 am »

Trekkin: Ok, so you're doubling-down on calling half the country Nazi-lite. Then wonder why they don't listen to other things you have to say.

The point being: you're using this rhetoric mainly to justify why you shouldn't have to do any outreach to try and win any of them over, then act like it's their fault for not falling in line with your doctrine.

Were you asleep for the month where Trump was keeping children in camps?

If someone still supports Trump after he started a "zero-tolerance" policy knowing full well it would be a humanitarian crisis, what will they care about?

PS you'll separate me from California when you pry the rocks out of my charred and smoking hands.
« Last Edit: November 13, 2018, 03:56:18 am by PTTG?? »
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Reelya

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #25614 on: November 13, 2018, 04:13:39 am »

Month? A quick google reveals the same thing was happening during Obama, and an Obama official accidentally tweeted Obama-era photos of children in cages under the belief that they were from the Trump era.

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/migrant-children-in-cages-2014-photos-explained-2018-5?r=US&IR=T

Quote
Several former Obama administration officials took to social media and news outlets last month to explain a gallery of years-old photos that showed immigrant children sleeping in shoddy conditions at a government-run holding facility in Arizona.

The images, which the Associated Press first published in 2014,resurfaced recently for reasons that remain unclear, and quickly prompted viral outrage on Twitter. One particularly disturbing image showed two children sleeping on mattresses on the floor inside what appeared to be a cage.

A number of prominent liberals – and even a former Obama administration official – shared the photos, mistakenly believing they depicted the Trump administration’s treatment of immigrant children who were forcibly separated from their parents.

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/08/trump-deportations-behind-obama-levels-241420

Quote
From Feb. 1 to June 30, ICE officials removed 84,473 people — a rate of roughly 16,900 people per month. If deportations continue at the same clip until the fiscal year ends Sept. 30, federal immigration officials will have removed fewer people than they did during even the slowest years of Barack Obama's presidency.

In fiscal year 2016, ICE removed 240,255 people from the country, a rate of more than 20,000 people per month.

"Children in cages" in the USA isn't exactly a new thing, considering that the Feds did something similar during the golden Obama era. While Trump's things are shitty, I don't really buy that they're the line between Hitler and Not-Hitler.
« Last Edit: November 13, 2018, 04:25:05 am by Reelya »
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Max™

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #25615 on: November 13, 2018, 04:46:17 am »

He didn't run in 2016, so, no, we couldn't have had Mitt Romney.
Yeah, he gave up before that, and he was awful... but a respectable kind of awful. So was McCain, and even when Dubya was being a mook he was entertaining... none of them were half-assed villains, even a piece of shit like Reagan had some sense of decency.

Trump isn't just impossible to respect, he's actively vile, and so much of a fuckup he can't even consider the idea that he's ever at fault.

Dammit if we must have villains, can't they be well-written? This guy isn't plausible, he heard they were gonna have him jump a shark and he showed up in a monster truck...

...which he promptly drove straight into the water and needed to be rescued from. It's not even a good ratings grab, what the hell is the point?
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The Ensorceler

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #25616 on: November 13, 2018, 05:31:54 am »

Quote
Obama wasn't perfect either.
We can find or create even better presidents than Obama in the future, Obama forever is not a realistic political stance.

Maybe not enough people, but some payed attention to the bad things that happened under Obama and pushed back. He didn't always respond to it (drone program, oh boy the drone program, immigration stuff including caging people), but he did good in a lot of places too. Trump is worse everywhere Obama did good, and monstrous anywhere he focuses, and ignores all pushback unless it can get on TV for weeks straight. He holds rallies to egg on the people egging him on to be even worse. It doesn't make sense to round everything down to "neither one's perfect" and pretend that makes them the same.

If you want the line between not Hitlerish and Hitlerish, it's glee. He lives for the cruelty. He despises the people he hurts, and asks his staff to find legal ways to make them suffer. This is not a normal way to govern.
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scriver

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #25617 on: November 13, 2018, 05:38:33 am »

Quote
Obama wasn't perfect either.
We can find or create even better presidents than Obama in the future, Obama forever is not a realistic political stance.

Of course not. Sooner or later he'd have to be inherited by Malia. We will forge a dynasty to last the ages! Obamanids forever!
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Loud Whispers

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #25618 on: November 13, 2018, 06:30:38 am »

Of course not. Sooner or later he'd have to be inherited by Malia. We will forge a dynasty to last the ages! Obamanids forever!
These Abbasid dlcs are getting out of hand

sluissa

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #25619 on: November 13, 2018, 07:17:51 am »

This isn't about doubling down on moral condemnation to squeeze every drop of righteousness out of the opportunity.  It's about acknowledging the material consequences of large numbers of people making passive alliance with a smaller number of people who are actively fascist.

Once again, my argument is that that passive alliance didn't exist, at least not in significant numbers, until it was forced to exist by the divisive identity politics wedge that was forced down the middle. Granted, Fox News and similar organizations can take a lot of blame for that, but the left has done it as well with their attitude (That you've shown blindingly well in your last few posts) of "If you're not with us you're against us."

You've got people who wouldn't have stopped the injustices you speak of. But also wouldn't have stopped you from directly trying to stop it either, now caught in the middle. Instead of just walking by the ones not helping you're shoving them out of chairs, saying "HELP ME!". And instead of wanting to help, they're now angry at you for shoving them out of their chair.

Does this excuse their passivity? No. But it explains their anger and their willingness to be a little less passive and a little more active against you now. It explains the idea that they're willing to ally with reprehensible people. Those people never shoved them out of their chair or called them evil simply for wanting to sit in it.

And you can't just pull out an MLK quote and expect to win. Things have changed so much from MLK's day. Those strategies which were vital to getting a foothold toward justice and equality are not the strategies to use to try to gain the last few inches.
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