Folly and fakery have always been with us... but it has never before been as dangerous as it is now, never in history have we been able to afford it less. - Isaac Asimov
Every damn thing you do in this life, you pay for. - Edith Piaf
The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. - Orwell
No amount of belief makes something a fact. - James Randi
Yeah, this is where a lot of you folks seem to stumble. You can agree with some or all of a person's political beliefs and still think badly of them for other reasons.
Their 'leftism' isn't too extreme for me because chances are I've been attending Labor meetings since they were in short trousers, what rankles me is the fact that they're grifters.
Originally Posted by Marjane Satrapi
https://www.thedailybeast.com/shaun-...here-it-goes-3
Not too "extreme", but definitely too shady. Which is why I was never happy that Sanders saddled up with him.
I agree that the best we should feel is cautious optimism - never assuming anything until the state tallies are certified. However, polls are nice to see as a "how is it looking and are we all totally fucked" kind of check-in. So @Milchshake keep 'em coming, but with every poll we see, let's work even harder - because sure as shit the GOP is.
In that I care about the messenger and the message, yes. I find Shaun King to be a terrible "messenger" here.
My point was that he's not "too extreme" in the slightest, and there are plenty of reasons to view him with skepticism and not as someone to look to for actually good information.
I mean, remember that time he tried to dunk on a Hawaiian member of Congress for not supporting M4A? And the Congressman reminded King that he was a co-sponsor of the House bill? Because that's Shaun King's brand of "activism", it's tailored for social media and aimed at "gotcha" bullshit, not aiming to make actually systemic change and address the problems he complains about.
My link was to provide context for why, showing that the actual efforts of his to make his activist dreams a reality have largely fallen apart, and reportedly due to his own inability to effective manage any of the organizations he creates and effectively use the money he raises.
That's a really good point. I think we saw that path start in Massachusettes with Romney's plan for the state, coming from the GOP, it should have had traction for national implementation. IIRC, that was what the original ACA was modeled after - to get bipartisan support. But of course McConnell (and I'm sure others) had to fuck it up.
It will be interesting to see if bipartisanship exists after the 2020 election. McConnell has to go for that to be a real thing. Trump, too - obviously.
- - - Updated - - -
In regards to Shaun King and those like him, it seems that's all some of the radicalized GOP members are capable of doing, in part because of personality faults, but also because that seems to be what it takes to win some of these House seats. Pulling on a previous thread, dramatically increasing the House would have an effect of diluting any one member, and might just make it easier to run on issues instead of gotchas.
CNN ran this editorial today that pretty much lays out my feelings on the matter.
Basically, all the logic, evidence, facts and numbers are against Trump. That would matter if people voted rationally, but they don't. Trump is the personification of rage and hurt feelings, and those emotions are at an all time high right now. Think of him like the Sha of Anger. The more anger around him, the stronger he gets. He is basically just a hate elemental.
Yes, the polls look bad, but there remains a vast number of people that want the racial social order to be preserved, and are quite happy that someone is willing to brutally put down the protestors. These people don't want to say it out loud, because that would make them look racist, but they do want it. There are a huge number of people that will vote for the person that is telling them the things they want to hear, like Corona-virus is going to disappear, and they will all get their jobs back, and they will be able to wave confederate flags at NASCAR again. None of those are true, but they like hearing them anyway.
Will Trump get the coal miners vote, after failing them for 4 years? Almost certainly. Will farmers who have been devastated by his irrational trade "policy" vote for his reelection? Yeah, I suspect most of them will. They might not say it on a poll now, but they will in November.
One of the hardest things a rational person can do is recognize the limits of reason, and the power of emotion. Trump is a being of pure emotion, you can't beat him with facts. And Biden doesn't have the emotional punch that Trump does.
Wait, are we allowed to talk about BErnie Bros now?
- Bernie says, "Vote Biden!"
- Noam Chomsky says, "Vote Biden!"
- Climate Scientists says, "Vote Biden!"
- Angela Davis says, "Vote Biden!"
Any reasonable left-ally has already been persuaded.
The holdouts are simple private school socialists and their fanbois. No convincing them.
Government Affiliated Snark
Something people seem determined to forget is that fascism and hate are like a drug. They provide a "high", and they are addictive. They attract users.
They are, ideologically speaking, heroin.
Saying "heroic is bad" doesn't make a heroin addict stop using heroin. It just makes them hide it. It doesn't mean no new users won't turn to heroin; it still provides that high.
Asking these addicts to not vote for Trump in 2020 is like asking a smack user to go straight. They might smile and nod to you, but they're lying, and they're going to back to injecting that shit into their veins the first chance they get. Not because of some external force, but because they want it.
We act like "everyone knows" fascism and hate are "bad". And they do. But a lot of people are going to say they have it under control, that they want the high and can handle the negative side effects, that you're not the boss of them, whatever.
You're never going to debate them into giving up their addiction. They have to want to. And if they don't, the only thing you can do is to cut them out of your life and hope that if/when they OD, they don't hurt anyone but themselves.
Pretty much this. Trump's win flew in the face of all conventional wisdom, logic, and pretty much rationality. Because many of the people who elected him didn't do so because of a rational, considered, informed choice, but as an emotional response.
And Biden doesn't have the charisma and energy to come close to matching what Trump brings, plus he won't play in the sewage like Trump will which riles up the emotions even higher.
Trump is a wild card, conventional wisdom and logic doesn't work in a game of blackjack when Trump is laying down a full house and claiming victory to the cheers of his fans that think he's actually won despite sitting on 43.
The last thread I recall having a Matt Taibi article as the basis the response was to point out how full of shit Taibbi's argument was, and then, to point out that Taibbi has a history of such bullshit, which calls into question why anyone would take his flavor of horseshit seriously.
They aren't taking issue with Taibbi because he's Taibbi, but because he's lying and propagandizing, and users who link his shit are gullible enough to regularly fall for it.
You're doing the reverse of what you were projecting; you're engaging in blind, unthinking support of Taibbi, regardless of the merit (or lack thereof) of what he writes.
Edit: Here's a really good breakdown of one of Taibbi's articles and why it's basically just a densely-packed set of misrepresentations and right-wing talking points; https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/...-lost-its-mind
Just by way of example.
Last edited by Endus; 2020-06-19 at 05:40 PM.
That's the thing. The self-proclaimed Resistance on this forum seem mostly disinclined to boost Biden's positives.
I get it, Biden is mine and everyone's 5th choice. But they seem more interested in covering their own asses or preserving their brand as "Very objective guy".
Even now they're just copy pasting Chris Cilliza hot takes; "Biden is sleepy", "Biden has no emotion". Take some time out your busy shitposting schedule and watch Joe Biden content first hand. Stop being lazy and relying on twitter or CNN takes.
Biden has way more emotion that Trump. Trump's is mostly ego driven. Joe's is more empathy driven.
Thats kinda the key. Too many of the LEft's new online allies struggle with empathy. It's why they spent the first 25 years of their lives being a Ron Paul fan, or soft republican. Maybe they're ashamed they ignored the obvious cruelty of Reagan's GOP for decades. Or a bad case of late blooming emotional development.
Or they dont want to become overly invested in Biden in the chance he loses the EC.
But that's just cowardice.
Government Affiliated Snark
This is kind of the shifting metric of the electorate Dems haven't really grasped yet. Clinton won on "It's the economy, stupid." And Hillary pushed all sorts of great policies. Policies which would have benefited coal miners.
But the electorate is far more emotional now than it ever has been. It wants a candidate that connects to them, a candidate who either inspires (like Obama) or stokes the flames of, like Trump. People are voting more and more against their interest by the day. If you put up Republican and Democratic policy positions side by side and asked voters to pick which ones they want, and the candidate with the majority policy wins won the elections, Democrats would win every election. It's what happened with the ACA - people claimed to hate "Obamacare," but then when questioned on the individual policies it enacted, professed how much they loved that idea, and that that's what the government should implement - not realizing Obamacare had done just that.
You're not having a discussion. I have you a lengthy article explaining multiple issues with a particular Taibbi article, and you hand-waved that away to repeat a bunch of the bullshit Taibbi had stated and which was already debunked as nonsense. You're demanding everyone agree with you, and not attacking their points in any way whatsoever.
You, and Taibbi, seem obsessed with presenting the rantings of random Twitter nobodies as if they're descriptive of every single voice on the left wing. It's a bullshit argument. I know it's a lot easier to attack a straw man you've built, but that doesn't actually make it an argument.