America - The Official Thread

[EngieDiesel]

The Republican party is, I believe without question, actively and wilfully destroying the United States of America.

It's pretty clear that the few people who could have steered the party back to a semblance of sanity are either being forced out or are walking away while they still have a political career. All that's left are the incompetents that would have been normally overshadowed by their more useful contemporaries, and the scumbags who are taking advantage of the chaos to grab what they can before it all collapses.

If there was ever a time for a third political party to establish itself as a legitimate alternative and not just a fringe element, this is it.

 

[Danoff]

If there was ever a time for a third political party to establish itself as a legitimate alternative and not just a fringe element, this is it.

The stakes are too high. How can I vote third party to protest some of the liberal policies when the republicans are outright seeking to destroy the country? I absolutely do not care about the difference between a third party and the democrats when the apocalyptic republicans are trying to win elections. My vote should reflect that clearly.

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

The stakes are too high. How can I vote third party to protest some of the liberal policies when the republicans are outright seeking to destroy the country? I absolutely do not care about the difference between a third party and the democrats when the apocalyptic republicans are trying to win elections. My vote should reflect that clearly.

My plan is to keep voting for the Democrats until they have amassed a sufficiently large majority that they could break in half without just giving all the power to the Republican party. In this ideal future, there would be a "Liberal" party and a "Moderate" party fighting over 85% of the electorate, and a nutbag "Conservative" party screaming their way into oblivion. Now, if only the electoral college didn't exist to sustain the nutbaggery...

 

[Danoff]

If I can draw a comparison for a second. In 2008, Obama ran against McCain. If I'm sitting on Earth, and the libertarians are on the moon. Obama is Saturn and McCain is Jupiter from my perspective (in retrospect, is it reversed? hard to tell). My vote speaks clearly when I vote for the moon. The difference between Saturn and Jupiter might be substantial, but from where I'm sitting on Earth, they're both pretty hard to see compared to the moon.

In 2021, I still consider myself on Earth. The libertarians have moved to Mars (and possibly to the asteroid belt). The Democrats are still sitting at Saturn, and the Republicans are at friggin Sagittarius A, a supermassive black hole trying to suck the fabric of reality out of the universe. Saturn, Earth, Mars, the entire solar system is a single point by comparison.

 

[Tornado]

I'm in about the same spot. If Republicans are going to keep going scorched Earth at anyone who dares speak out against Orange Man as his request no matter how heinously his actions were, I'm just going to keep voting Democrat across the board until he dies. I still have limits about the amount of Democrat douchery I'd be willing to put up with in a candidate; but especially after moving 750 miles South it's not like I'm going to be voting directly for the next AOC any time soon anyway.

 

[TheCracker]

Trouble with the Democrats and the Republicans, and the same with Labour and the Conservatives in the UK (and probably in other nations too) is that the whole political landscape has shifted substantially to the right in the last 15-20 years or so. The right is just shifting further right and the lefts are spreading ground to cover that retreat. The left now covers such a sway of ground L to R on the political compass, from Bernie (and Corbyn in the UK) to Biden and Starmer - who's party policies now would have been considered right-wing 20 years ago. That might seem like a great dragnet for them but the left covers so much ground now that those parties have to involve such concepts as genuine socialism all the way through to neoliberalism. The parties end up with such divisions within their ranks that those voters on either end of the spectrum just feel alienated from or unrepresented by 'their' party. The right has been condensed to the extent that they increasingly feel oppressed by anything even remotely left wing. They are circling their wagons and preparing for a threat that doesn't really exist. The left is too busy fighting within their own ranks.

 

[Danoff]

Trouble with the Democrats and the Republicans, and the same with Labour and the Conservatives in the UK (and probably in other nations too) is that the whole political landscape has shifted substantially to the right in the last 15-20 years or so. The right is just shifting further right and the lefts are spreading ground to cover that retreat. The left now covers such a sway of ground L to R on the political compass, from Bernie (and Corbyn in the UK) to Biden and Starmer - who's party policies now would have been considered right-wing 20 years ago. That might seem like a great dragnet for them but the left covers so much ground now that those parties have to involve such concepts as genuine socialism all the way through to neoliberalism. The parties end up with such divisions within their ranks that those voters on either end of the spectrum just feel alienated from or unrepresented by 'their' party. The right has been condensed to the extent that they increasingly feel oppressed by anything even remotely left wing. They are circling their wagons and preparing for a threat that doesn't really exist. The left is too busy fighting within their own ranks.

All those politicians, and the voters they represent, agree on something though - that fascism is bad*.


* mmmmkay?

 

[TheCracker]

All those politicians, and the voters they represent, agree on something though - that fascism is bad*.


* mmmmkay?

They used to do. That was pretty much a given, on the whole, since certain events in the late 30's and early to mid 40's. But seems as if collective memories have started to forget those lessons we thought had been learned by western populations and the warning signs are now being ignored.

 

[Danoff]

They used to do. That was pretty much a given, on the whole, since certain events in the late 30's and early to mid 40's. But seems as if collective memories have started to forget those lessons we thought had been learned by western populations.

Sorry, I meant that wide swath of people encompassed by the "left" political party all agree that the facist right is bad. So it may be a big voting group with lots of differing opinions, but they're unified against the minority right.

 

[TheCracker]

Sorry, I meant that wide swath of people encompassed by the "left" political party all agree that the facist right is bad. So it may be a big voting group with lots of differing opinions, but they're unified against the minority right.

Oh for sure, but i think the term "fascism" is perhaps over and incorrectly used by the left now. Which will ultimately be counter productive. Labelling some homely small 'c' conservatism values as facist isn't likely to help anyone in the long run, even if it's seen as a fashionable thing to do now.

 

[Danoff]

Oh for sure, but i think the term "fascism" is perhaps over and incorrectly used by the left now. Which will ultimately be counter productive. Labelling some homely small 'c' conservatism values as facist isn't likely to help anyone in the long run, even if it's seen as a fashionable thing to do now.

I'm definitely not labeling every position or "value" held by conservatives as fascist. But, at least in the US, the Republican party is openly fascist. I don't think there's much argument on that point. There are dissenting voices within the party, but they're not the position of the party.

 

[TexRex]

I regularly think not so much about where we are right now (though I certainly do think about that) but how we got here, and how things may have been headed toward a cliff for a long time but it was still a ways off, then something came along to give it all a good, hard push over the edge.

I don't think it was Trump. That's easy but I don't think it's accurate. He's just a symptom. When I think about this, I find myself repeatedly coming back to Obama. Obama broke the GOP. I don't think it's purely racism (though Birtherism was certainly steeped in racism*), rather that he was charming and compassionate and could speak to people instead of at them, which hadn't been observed consistently in a very long time (W had his moments, particularly in the immediate aftermath of 9/11), and Republicans felt ineffectual and even impotent in the face of this ability.

*I don't even think the aim of Birtherism was racist, rather it was merely an attack on the opposition--an effort to keep a Democrat out of the White House--but the racist sentiment was there, like the McCain (probably the last true statesman) town hall in which he immediately shot down an audience member's accusation that Obama was an Arab.

Oh for sure, but i think the term "fascism" is perhaps over and incorrectly used by the left now. Which will ultimately be counter productive. Labelling some homely small 'c' conservatism values as facist isn't likely to help anyone in the long run, even if it's seen as a fashionable thing to do now.

Just as I say of alleging racism above, it's easy. Compare to the right and "communism."

 

[sirjim73]

Random fact while there is mention of John McCain...

I was visiting Washington in 2015 with friends and we sat and watched Senate proceedings one morning. Bizarrely it's easier to arrange if youre an overseas traveller than from the US as you just have to queue up and show your passport to get a pass (subject to availability).

You carry your passport with you permanently because you need ID to get in every single bloody museum and building in DC as they all have security and scanners...

Actually the Senate wasn't in session that day.

We didn't know about it beforehand, but it was the day that Russia first bombed the Syrian rebels. And Mr McCain was the only person present - he was giving a speech to camera reacting to the bombing which was extremely scathing of Obama, he was basically saying that his inaction was responsible for allowing the bombing to happen.

So I'm the only person on this forum who found out about the Russia bombing directly from John McCain!

It did feel that our visit was on a day of historical significance as it was clear that Russia's intervention was a game changer. It could be argued that the position with Syria now and for the foreseeable future traces back to that day.

As a side note, we missed the filming of Jason Bourne by less than a month. We were there October 2015 and the filming was shortly after. The scaffolding was still on and in the Capitol at the time.

I think it's fair to say looking at what has happened to the US since, strange days are back again...

 

[VolkswagenX]

I hope you guys are safe

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

Really hope the concept of rolling coal hasn't escaped America yet.

A Teenager Hit Six Cyclists While Trying To Roll Coal

I remember being the victim of "coal rolling" way too many times when living in Texas for...driving a small car? I'm not sure exactly. Even without the whole "running over people" part, considering how toxic super rich diesel exhaust is, this should be classified as assault.

 

[TexRex]

$4.7 trillion is a staggering figure, but unless you're a stripper, it's weird to talk about its thickness in singles. To better put it into perspective, $4.7 trillion is a whopping 60% of the national debt increase under Trump.

 

[TB]

$4.7 trillion is a staggering figure, but unless you're a stripper, it's weird to talk about its thickness in singles. To better put it into perspective, $4.7 trillion is a whopping 60% of the national debt increase under Trump.

More intern hands.

Also, holy crap, they got the math right!

((4,700,000,000,000 * .0043) / 12) / 5280

 

[Keef]

this should be classified as assault.

What I think of when I think of "country" is aggression. People in the country feel the need to aggressively assert their masculinity and it's pathetic, but you can't really challenge in because they want you to and they're prepared.

 

[EngieDiesel]

So a sizeable amount of data belonging to the Oath Keepers was leaked and made public recently, including among other things a supposed membership list with about 160 government and military email addresses. It's not proof that those people were involved with the Capitol riots in any way or even that they are active members, but it's probably going to raise a lot of questions regardless.

And two weeks prior a web hosting company that catered to a large number of far-right websites, including Oath Keepers, Parler and the Texas GOP, was hacked by Anonymous and 180GB of data was flung into the open, but from this description I can't say that's a surprise:

A Linux engineer tasked with conducting an impact assessment on behalf of a client who uses Epik’s services told the Daily Dot that the breach was one of the worst he had ever seen. The engineer did not have permission to speak about the breach by his employer and was granted anonymity by the Daily Dot.

“They are fully compromised end-to-end,” they said. “Maybe the worst I’ve ever seen in my 20-year career.”

The engineer pointed the Daily Dot to what they described as Epik’s “entire primary database,” which contains hosting account usernames and passwords, SSH keys, and even some credit card numbers—all stored in plaintext.

The data also includes Auth-Codes, passcodes that are needed to transfer a domain name between registrars. The engineer stated that with all the data in the leak, which also included admin passwords for WordPress logins, any attacker could easily take over the websites of countless Epik customers.

If you can't even be bothered to encrypt your main database in this day and age, you can't be surprised when you eventually get what's coming to you.

 

[TexRex]

Redistricting.

If you can't even be bothered to encrypt your main database in this day and age, you can't be surprised when you eventually get what's coming to you.

The allure of a service provider that's perceived to be less biased is stronger than that of one that offers more protection.

Are freedumb.

 

[TexRex]

 

[Keef]

Redistricting.



The allure of a service provider that's perceived to be less biased is stronger than that of one that offers more protection.

Are freedumb.

I guess we'll find out if Texas is a lost cause. I've already got several friends planning to move out, progressives and libertarians among them. I don't blame them.

 

[Pupik]

The allure of a service provider that's perceived to be less biased is stronger than that of one that offers more protection.

"Do your own research."

If I can draw a comparison for a second. In 2008, Obama ran against McCain. If I'm sitting on Earth, and the libertarians are on the moon. Obama is Saturn and McCain is Jupiter from my perspective (in retrospect, is it reversed? hard to tell). My vote speaks clearly when I vote for the moon. The difference between Saturn and Jupiter might be substantial, but from where I'm sitting on Earth, they're both pretty hard to see compared to the moon.

In 2021, I still consider myself on Earth. The libertarians have moved to Mars (and possibly to the asteroid belt). The Democrats are still sitting at Saturn, and the Republicans are at friggin Sagittarius A, a supermassive black hole trying to suck the fabric of reality out of the universe. Saturn, Earth, Mars, the entire solar system is a single point by comparison.

I concede any more descriptions about the political landscape until we're all forced to some dim planet on the end of a galactic arm.

 

[TexRex]

 

[Danoff]

It's so easy.

I grew up with a Dad that was not racist. In fact, he and my mom had a big falling out with her parents over racism. But my Dad listens to people like Tucker Carlson, and he's definitely on the path toward white supremacy. It's not rooted in the belief that white people are somehow superior, but that's being cultivated.

If you buy in to the conspiracy that democrats are allowing illegal immigrants to vote - either because you honestly do not know what it takes to be able to vote in the US, or because you think that democrats are sneaking illegal immigrants through the door in a vast, evidence-lacking, conspiracy about voting fraud, then you can get on board with this "replacement" theory. Democrats regularly oppose identification at the polls (which is not a great position to take), and generally push for immigration and naturalization. So it's an easy step to take to think that the democrats want immigrants because they think they'll vote democrat.

Maybe you realize that those immigrants can't vote, but you incorrectly think that children will obey their parents political parties. So you think that all of the children born of these immigrants will vote democrat because you presume that their parents (who cannot vote) would tell them to. We're getting into the weeds here, but this is not a difficult view to hold if you don't try to think about it too much. One of the underpinnings of this is the belief in American exceptionalism. The idea that Americans have a stranglehold on the concept of freedom, and so anyone from just about anywhere outside of America would naturally vote for oppression.

It's not really that difficult to imagine a person who is not racist buying into just about everything I wrote above, and that's what my Dad is doing. But if you're mentally lazy, it's so easy to break this down further by race. The brown people seem to favor democrats in the US, as do black people. White people less so, and Asians are perceived as somewhat mixed. So let's not worry too much about Asian immigration, worry a lot about brown or black immigration, and we don't really care about white immigration. And since a lot of countries are much more racially uniform than the US, we can generally assume that immigrants from any particular country will follow those lines based on the color of skin we associate with that country.

That's really all it takes to get someone to walk through the white supremacy door, and it's just about where my dad is today. It's crazy, of course. Immigrants can't vote. They don't come from a country with democrats and republicans, so they don't have a political party. Many of them are willing to work very hard, and expect very little. Their children will not necessarily align with them politically. And of course there is not some widespread voter fraud initiative within the democratic party.

The crux of all of this, without actually being said, is that the republican philosophy (not that there really is one these days) is best, and only evident to white people. Why don't they actually try to appeal to people instead of circling the wagons on this? You don't think your political philosophy can win over immigrants? Maybe there's something wrong with it.

 

[McLaren]

There was a really interesting discussion on I saw on a subreddit a while back, that discussed how Dems sometimes fail to appeal to Hispanics in the US by approaching them as one. It highlighted that many Hispanic voters are sort-of, 1-issue voters, touching on how Cubans in Florida possibly relate well to Republicans b/c of the strong anti-communism stance conservatives often preach. Another was that many Hispanic families are very religious and dislike any discussion of abortion, leading to them to consider it a huge priority when it comes to voting.

It lead to a conclusion that Republicans would be shocked to find many Hispanic immigrants might actually favor voting their way because similar beliefs (esp. around family/religious topics) if the Republican party didn't constantly villainize them.

 

[Danoff]

There was a really interesting discussion on I saw on a subreddit a while back, that discussed how Dems sometimes fail to appeal to Hispanics in the US by approaching them as one. It highlighted that many Hispanic voters are sort-of, 1-issue voters, touching on how Cubans in Florida possibly relate well to Republicans b/c of the strong anti-communism stance conservatives often preach. Another was that many Hispanic families are very religious and dislike any discussion of abortion, leading to them to consider it a huge priority when it comes to voting.

It lead to a conclusion that Republicans would be shocked to find many Hispanic immigrants might actually favor voting their way because similar beliefs (esp. around family/religious topics) if the Republican party didn't constantly villainize them.

Shhhhhhhhh! Don't tell them that!


Imagine being so insecure about your political ideas that you think that the children of someone who has other ideas cannot be persuaded by anything you say.

 

[Keef]

There was a really interesting discussion on I saw on a subreddit a while back, that discussed how Dems sometimes fail to appeal to Hispanics in the US by approaching them as one. It highlighted that many Hispanic voters are sort-of, 1-issue voters, touching on how Cubans in Florida possibly relate well to Republicans b/c of the strong anti-communism stance conservatives often preach. Another was that many Hispanic families are very religious and dislike any discussion of abortion, leading to them to consider it a huge priority when it comes to voting.

It lead to a conclusion that Republicans would be shocked to find many Hispanic immigrants might actually favor voting their way because similar beliefs (esp. around family/religious topics) if the Republican party didn't constantly villainize them.

It's true, particularly Cuban Americans. They're so anti-communist that they're willing to sacrifice their own people to destroy Cuba's regime. They vote to punish that country into oblivion while their own family members suffer the actual consequences. It's complete nonsense. They will unironically demonize refugees and other asylum-seekers, seemingly unaware that they did the exact same thing just a couple decades ago.

 

[TexRex]

J.D. Vance Says Government Should Seize Assets of Political Nonprofits

Plus: Fusionism, OnlyFans, and more...

reason.com

This week in the Republican-descent-into-bat****-authoritarianism beat: U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance tells Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the federal government should seize money from nonprofit organizations and redistribute their wealth.

The proximate cause of these brain farts is the fact that a fellow with the Ford Foundation—a nonprofit organization dedicated to social justice—got into an argument with some of her fellow students at Arizona State University over a "Police Lives Matter" sticker. For daring to associate with someone who would commit this heinous transgression, Vance suggests that the Ford Foundation should have their assets seized and redistributed.

"Why don't we seize the assets of the Ford Foundation, tax their assets, and give it to the people who've had their lives destroyed by their radical open borders agenda?" Vance asked on Carlson's show last night.

In the past, conservatives and libertarians have freaked out—with very good reason—at the idea of the IRS or any other government agency targeting tax-exempt groups based on these groups' beliefs. To have charities, think tanks, grant-making foundations, activist groups, and other nonprofit organizations subject to the whims and will of each passing political administration would be antithetical to free speech, free markets, and the civil liberties of these groups and their donors.

Republicans—including Tucker and Vance—would surely be horrified if the Biden administration started taking any action against conservative nonprofits, let alone seizing their assets and handing it over to causes liberals support.



I know, I know—Carlson and Vance are not principled torchbearers of conservative ideology but people who routinely espouse whatever outrage-mongering nonsense will get them attention and rile up their audiences. Still, they have huge audiences among conservatives and the influence that goes along with that.

And last night's segment is a good reminder of the kind of anti-conservative, anti-liberty, authoritarian logic they employ.

Throughout the segment, Carlson and Vance try to portray nonprofit groups as an exotic Democratic Party plot and the whole idea of tax-exempt status as some sort of left-wing conspiracy. Carlson complains that groups like the Ford Foundation can "completely change the country, non-democratically, using their tax exemption" and acts aghast that politicians like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) aren't calling for taxing "openly partisan" nonprofits. Vance called groups like the Ford Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and the Harvard University endowment "fundamentally cancers on society."

But Carlson and Vance probably wouldn't like it if Democrats came after the Heritage Foundation, Turning Point USA, the Independent Women's Forum, and other GOP-friendly groups that enjoy tax-exempt status, too.

As with arguments about social media, a policy requiring "nonprofit neutrality" wouldn't actually make anyone happy.

Edit:

 

[UKMikey]

Aren't churches tax exempt too? Even the right wing ones?

If guys like Tucker allowed any right of reply so many of their points would be wiped out in an instant. But he and his audience aren't interested in robust political debate.