General Politics Discussion [ARCHIVED] • Page 39

Your privilege is what confers upon you this belief of working through the system. You can feel good that you voted for Hillarh and skip over the stories on Huffington Post about her bombing civilians or another unarmed person of color being shot.

 

Which side is Clinton on in this chart?

And, also:

And it doesn't just apply to SSM

 

So tired of being called privilege because I don't want to be complicit in the oppression and murder of my people.

 

Essentially the same stuff happened here with the Labour leadership election, and people are still trying to argue that candidates other than Corbyn would've done a better job of opposing stuff that at the time they didn't rule out advocating for if they thought it'd make them seem more ~electable~.

 

sooo ready for hillary to abandon the equality act bc its 'not realistic' gonna super fun for people to continue to be subject to housing & employment discrimination. also super fun to be called privileged for not buying in to liberal ideologies of inclusion and assimilation

 

I am confused. Who and why are people being called privileged?

 

Because people won't vote for Hillary against Trump. We are throwing other oppressed groups under the bus, even if we ourselves are in those groups.

 

That's coming from both sides, Trump isn't going to be better somehow there

I really do think they're in this together still, they're basically the same person. Except one sends a much more dangerous, extreme message to their supporters.

 

I don't see "the police are the most mistreated group" trump being better in either of those areas. It's not about feeling good about voting for Hillary, it's about feeling good I did my small part in stopping Trump

 

I'm honestly perplexed by the liberal argument. Trump is worse and Hillary will be better. I got that much. Is it just vulgar math? As in, less will be murdered? Or is it a matter of the racism being sublimated such that it still exists, but it isn't overt, so the liberal heart doesn't have to break at its sight? Methinks it is the latter. Trump constitutes what you represent; Hillary represents the cover you present to the world as tolerant, whilst you cross the street to get away from the "shady" (brown or black) man walking towards you.

 

It isn't fucking about you. It is a lesson you've never learned. You feel good; oppressed groups still die. The psychological wage you receive means nothing to those people.

 

Unless the socialist revolution is happening this year (and we assume such a revolution would be a good thing for minorities), preventing Trump from becoming President is going to be the best thing that can be done for minorities on the national electoral politics level in 2016.

And yes, that includes a Clinton presidency. You can try and twist it any way you want to, the policies of 2016 Clinton are not those of 1996 Clinton. The lengths that people assume she goes to in "lying" (aka she'd have to pull literal 180s on a lot of things if she were to do what people in here are suggesting she will as President) are way overblown based on the Clinton reputation.


You can not like Clinton and still understand those facts, BTW.

 

oppressed groups will still die either way. All I can do is pick the option that will lead to less oppression, and I believe that option is Clinton

 

I guess the racism of the 2008 campaign doesn't matter either. What is the exact amount of years that need to pass before you stop holding someone accountable? Like, to you folks, is it enough that someone says the magic words and actually do nothing to make you forget the past?

Real question: if it were Rahm Emanuel vs. Trump, are you voting for the former?

 

No, it leads to something more subtle. But, I'm glad your conscience is clear.

 

Not to mention the option that is literally campaigning on changing laws to attempt to correct these things, and would face immense backlash for changing her mind when the far more progressive part of her party sends her those bills to sign. I.e. if the Senate signs her a justice reform bill to sign and she vetos (which she literally wouldn't do but people seem to be convinced she would), Lizzie Warren would hang her in effigy on the Senate floor and on social media, and the person we assume is power hungry enough to do anything to stay in office would pretty much seal up her fate as the first one term president in 24 years.

That being said, I still don't see what any sitting president is going to be able to do to stop racism at the local police level. Clinton is vindictive enough that she'll use the DOJ to prosecute police when possible since they didn't support her.

 

probably. I haven't looked to w much into just how bad Emanuel is, but I'd almost certainly vote for one or the other, assuming they are polling within 5-10% of each other and no one else is close. Only reason I wouldn't is if I thought the two were equally oppressive

 

He covered up the murder of a black man by a police officer.

 

do you disagree with the notion that he (or Hillary) would be less oppressive than Trump, disagree with the notion that voting for the less oppressive of the two leading candidates is the right move, disagree that oppression can be enumerated, or something else?

 

None of your scenario takes into consideration the efforts to secure republicans and position herself as less radical. It also laughably assumes the democrats would propose such a bill.

I'm wondering when the time will come when liberals actually vote for something. Since I've been voting, the same trope of terrible republicans has been trotted out to secure votes; the same insults or insinuations and the same ignorance and cognitive dissonance persist. At a certain point, the perspective, the structure and the people that constitute it are the problem, not the political realities. In actuality, these arguments and practices reinforce ideological realities, therefore enshrining the status quo.

 

It's not laughable--it's literally been a pet project of Corey Booker's for months now. About the only reason why it hasn't been proposed on the floor yet is because of how useless the GOP senate is right now. I still think it may be Obama who ends up signing the bill, but it's at least 50/50 that the next president will be the one it's presented to. But I really don't think Trump signs it at this point considering his rhetoric on crime and criminals.

Either way, it doesn't matter how much she positions herself as "less radical", she never positioned herself as that radical in the primaries. Even her shifts to the left were very measured to ensure she didn't end up saying anything that she had to walk back in the general race. Her general election rhetoric will probably not be all that different than what it was during the primaries, and she'll probably be concentrating on the very real differences on certain issues that her and Trump have.

The problem is, "since you've been voting" has encompassed...what, 3 presidential elections? The "structure" as you call it has shifted monumentally numerous times in the country's history--there's no reason to believe the next monumental shift can't address certain issues you continue to insist it can't or won't. I.e. I'm guessing many people in 1850 didn't think we'd have a president declaring slavery over in 13 years time. People in 1920 probably didn't forsee the still relatively new income tax leading to a government that raised tax rates to 94% in 15 years, along with payroll taxes introduced to fund a social security program. Southern Democrats in 1950 certainly didn't see the party they voted for signing the Civil Rights Act into law 14 years later. Assuming these huge shifts can't or won't happen based on your time as a voter completely ignores history. it's quite apparent that it is political realities that rule the day and not "the structure" (aka not the socialist system you want), as huge shifts have occurred within "the structure" in the past and will probably continue to do so in the future. We just happen to be living in a time where one political party has very publicly and admittedly attempted to shut down how government works altogether, which certainly can give the impression that it's impossible under the current "structure" for anything to get done.

 

The imaginative calisthenics that must be performed to seriously predict some of these Clinton scenarios is really funny.

 

All three are racists. I think the argument of less or more oppression is futile. Oppression cannot be aggregated in that way. Oppression is constituted in relations that invoke collective practices that signify your position within broader society. Your position conveys the notion that sexism, for example, is not a part of the structure, that it is less active on our institutions and subjectivities when any given person is president. In fact, as it is a part of the structure, it finds itself manifested in overt or covert ways, but does not cease to exist. For example, Obama has deported hundreds of thousands of undocumented workers, the majority of whom were non-violent and children. He has deported more people than any other president. Is he more or less oppressive than his republican counterparts? Or are they to blame for actions he took? It seems more appropriate to say that he agrees with a seemingly neutral belief (protecting borders), then expresses that in policy, which in content and form is explicitly racist.

 

The structure I'm referring to is the Democratic Party structure. I mean, yes, three elections have passed since I've been of age, but history is a thing one can read about and the same tactic recurs. To your point of monumental shifts, these didn't occur because of the party, but despite it. Democrats tried as much as they could to avoid passing the civil rights act; slavery ended because of a seismic shift in a mode of productions, as well as the work of abolitionists; FDR acted because of the radicalizing working class efforts. Can things change? Yes, but all of your examples miss one considerable point: they shifted, not because of loyalty to a party in the face of worse people, but because people were organizing outside of the party apparatus. Of course, this whole argument rests upon a misguided notion that any given party apparatus is static, as are political phenomena. My contention is that the rise of neoliberalism and its effect on parliamentary politics has yielded political parties that are oriented, more than ever, in opposition to public opinion and this separation is unreversible because party politics are intrinsically linked to the necessities of the market. Even prior to citizens United, this was the case. It is so effective that liberals mistake any government action as "left", which misunderstands how politics actually works. No one thinks that a socialist revolution is going to happen tomorrow. I know you like to throw that out repeatedly, despite being told that this isn't the case. What we can do, however, is organize outside of party politics and utilize the crises of legitimacy that have arisen in the form of Trump and Sanders to cleave open a space for radical politics that isn't tethered to voting for Hillary, that is for organizing communities to fight for their own rights and not hold their nose and hope for the best. All you have on offer is someone who is less racist and will preserve the status quo; we're doing the work of blowing up the status quo. That, and your tactical endorsement of racist people/parties, is the difference.

 

And the same conversation that has been had several thousand times begins again.