General Politics Discussion [ARCHIVED] • Page 191

I really enjoy and find myself becoming more informed as the result of most of your posts, but as a liberal, this post paints a picture of liberals as blind to world politics. I do believe Trump will put Muslims and all immigrants (such as my family) in a dangerous position. That doesn't mean that I (again, as a liberal myself) don't realize the horrors the US government is carrying out in the Middle East. If your goal here was to inform people of the civilian blood on the hands of our government, great (already knew about it though). Liberal views on Trump have nothing to do with that at all except to hopefully prevent it from worsening at the hands of someone who unabashedly claims Muslims have no place in our country.

 

Since you're among the best logicians here, it's sad to see how awry your logic goes when it comes to this.

 

The generic liberal in the above post, in my mind, is aghast at the Islamaphobia that Trump has ridden to the the Republican nomination, but remains silent when it is a democratic president that is currently murdering Muslims abroad. This does not look to be abated under a Clinton presidency. Rather than painting liberals as ignorant, my perspective is that they become so focused on the "evil" of the other side that it erases the continuity of violence and surveillance deployed against Muslim communities across parties. To speak of Trump's prospective violence as beyond the pale in the face of violence that is actualized in the form of the national security state, headed by a democrat, then, makes little sense because whether innocent Muslims are killable already has bipartisan consensus. That isn't to say that they are the same or that one is worse than the other, but they are linked and, in order to truly address the problem, both parties need to be held to account. Sadly, given that Hillary is the nominee, and the defeat of platforms explicitly aimed at protecting Palestinians, for example, I doubt that will occur. Most will be glad that Trump didn't win, while the Muslims are killed abroad and subject to violence at home, because racialization is a necessary component of the imperialist agenda in the Middle East and it simply doesn't go one way; it is filtered throughout the sociopolitical body.

 

Who will they be voting for?

 

See above. But, if you care to expand on anything, I'm more than willing to read them. Of course, you aren't entitled to tell me anything, nor do you need to justify the methods you see fit in ensuring the safety of those around you. I disagree with those you've outlined on previous occasions and prefer a different method for fighting racism and for progressive change, particularly if the former involves voting for those who helped the mass incarceration state and made Alton Sterling, Philando Castille, and the numerous other black folks who were murdered by the state, possible.

 

Poor woman probably never asked for this kind of exposure. It's shitty that the campaign threw her out to the media wolves like that. It's shitty that the media is devouring her.

 

A friend of mine confronted Steve King (the guy who said white people gave the world it's best civilization) at convention. He is also an amazing rapper you all should check out.

 

This shouldn't be surprising. Given the platform..would a poc want to intern with the GOP?

 

You lost me

 

Alright, I see where you were going with that now, but I don't think Chorus is the right place for it. There are liberals here and I might be optimistic in my assessment of the way Chorus is moderated, but directing your opinions of ignorant liberals to all liberals isn't fair when it's not representative of the majority of users here. You're appealing to a lowest common denominator that while widespread, doesn't seem to be around to listen. I also wonder why you would consider all liberals to be so ignorant of Democrat wrongdoing when the party is so clearly dividing over Hillary and her trigger happy war policies.

 

Listening to Cruz speak is making me thankful he didn't get nominated. I know Trump is a huge (yuuuge?) problem, but Cruz is by far the scarier prospect.

I suspect by the time he gets a chance to run again, enough baby boomers will have passed away as to make him irrelevant.

 

Ted Cruz sincerely scared me more than Trump, because his bigotry was codified

 

It isn't so much ignorant democrats, it is democrats who ascribe to the politics of lesser evilism. Part and parcel of the decision to vote for democrats is ostensibly to reduce racism and so forth, yet they agree on the basic premise that some innocent Muslims are going to have to die. At that point, it is simply a matter of numbers, i.e., we accept the premise, but such and such person will kill less people. I agree that most of them are not ignorant, and for many, this is a tactical decision, but election season seems to dull critical analysis in favor of trying to suppress whichever conservative is being put up against their candidate. It isn't even the case that this will provide a space in which to build an anti-racist left, it is simply settling for the least racism out of them all. This is a long-running disagreement I've had with a number of liberals on this site, so that post should also be read in that context as well.

Edit: in an effort to provide full-disclosure, I do not think liberalism goes far enough and, as it pertains to the DNC, is headed toward a dead-end because the party itself is in a process of degeneration that cannot be arrested at this particular stage of liberal democracy.

 

Ted Cruz is the first Republican to praise diversity when it comes to states' rights

 

Gun to my head if I had to choose between Trump or Cruz to choose the next 2 SCOTUS seats, I choose Trump every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

EDIT: don't know too much about Mike Pence, is he worse than Cruz?

 

Cruz is legitimately dancing on the grave of a dead cop and exploiting his daughter, fucking dick head. Unbelievable but not really.

 

Pence and Cruz are about equal
This is who Donald Trump has reportedly selected to be his VP

 

I'll give Cruz credit for not endorsing Trump and sort of underhandedly insulting him. But he remains horrible for invoking that poor girl and her dead father.

 

I'll take a look at this shortly. Thanks for the resource!

 

It actually brings to mind some of your posts, I can't remember if it was in this thread or not, about what happened in Dallas and the idea that cop deaths and violence against cops is justifiable if it is what finally puts an end to police brutality and racism in policing. We know that innocent cops or at the very least, cops with clean records, have been killed since. I draw the comparison because the core of it is violence used in order to end a conflict or stop more violence, but I want to clarify that choosing to be a cop and getting killed on the job is very different from being a citizen of Syria and dying for it. I think the comparison stands because (as I believe you've pointed out), historically, violence has been used to end violence and there have historically always been innocent deaths. Because I'm against innocent deaths, I'm disgusted by the actions of our government and the Democratic party overseas and I'm having a very difficult time deciding what to vote come November, but yeah, the idea of a lesser evil is absolutely coming into play because I don't think independent, libertarian or Green Party candidates have a fighting chance and I think voting for an ideal government instead of what's feasible given the short amount of time before elections is irresponsible considering Trump's racism extends past the scope of Muslims in the Middle East when he threatens deportation to any illegal immigrants and even legal Muslim immigrants, splitting families apart and sending them into unstable territories. That makes Hillary, just by numbers, a lesser evil, but it's an evil that hasn't happened yet vs an evil conducted by our government and the Democratic party right now in Syria. This precarious political situation is exactly why I think it's unfair to insinuate that liberals are turning a blind eye to it. Just because we're considering our homeland first doesn't mean we endorse wrongdoing elsewhere.

 

I'll throw this article out there just for good measure because come on

That time Mike Pence said 'Mulan' shows women shouldn't serve in the military

 

It is a philosophical disagreement. I am a Marxist. By definition, I am an internationalist that argues for solidarity against oppression across borders, because I see them as intertwined. To that end, I see US intervention, not as a means to stop violence, but as violent and illegitimate as the enemies it claims to be fighting. This is why I think your comparison does not fit with my belief that police officers should be met with violence. To my mind, there is no such thing as being an innocent officer because of their structural role in black oppression, just as America's role in Syria cannot be seen as innocent or humanitarian. To the point about the Green Party and other associated parties, I agree they've no chance of winning. I am not an idealist by any means. However, my position is to build the conditions for the viability of a third party and, more importantly, organizing independent of electoral politics as a means to change the idea of what is politically possible, eg, the black lives matters movement has significantly shifted the parameters of the debate about racial justice. Organizing, therefore, is the responsibility I willingly take upon myself as a means to effect change, not voting. As I said, one can choose to do whatever they like, but I am reject responsibility for Trump's election. It is the aforementioned concessions to various forms of racial, sexual and gender oppression on the part of liberal elites that made Trumpism a possibility, from their assistance in mass incarceration, to NAFTA to don't ask, don't tell to the continuation of the war on terror to the hundreds of thousands undocumented workers that have been deported under Obama's watch. From my perspective, the evil is currently being undertaken in a systemic and covert way, as opposed to the gratuitous and explicit way the Republican Party prefers. And, again, this isn't to say both parties are the same, but that they operate on a continuum of agreed upon forms of common sense that end up hurting the most marginalized groups of people. Moreover, this isn't to say that liberals are ignorant or dumb, that they've just been fooled; rather, this is an ideological difference, as well as methodological. Voting isn't the best means of political engagement, in my mind, nor is it constructive to vote for a party that is structurally welded to the status quo. Others believe that the party can be changed from within. There was a point at which it may have been true, where even radical social democratic reforms could be implemented, but I think the terrain on which we are operating is so fundamentally different in this historical period, as a result of the neoliberal weakening of representative links in the political structures, that one would be dealing with a case that is terminal and decomposing at an increasingly rapid rate.

 

Mike Pence is an asshole. He is one of the most backward members of Congress I ever dealt with. Not to mention the bullshit since he's been Gov.

The difference in my mind is Pence wasn't as good at grandstanding as Cruz, which made him slightly less dangerous. I'm willing to say now they're probably equal.

 

I never considered not casting a vote until I read this post, haha. My thinking is damage control right now. The election is way too close for the two party system to be dismantled and while I agree that simply voting is no way to effect real change, I do think it's the absolute bare minimum to contribute to political change that the general population can engage in. The fact of the matter is we as a nation will have to decide on a president come November and we really only have these two to choose from since no changes were made to the way we elect leadership beforehand, hence my focus on damage control. If we elect the lesser evil now, both presidents are very much impeachable in the future, but impeachment takes time and I do think it matters who is in office during that time. The president may not have as much power as most tend to believe, but the presidential election will reflect to other countries what the US's population believes in regardless how long they're in office. It's my belief that Trump would do far more damage as president in terms of foreign relations than Hillary would (but that's up for debate since he's not the one endorsed by the man who's leading these air strikes). Electing a president is not the end of the work that needs to be done, but the beginning. This election has really opened my eyes to American politics and I think the way we elect leaders needs serious review and reform, but now is too crucial of a time in world politics to not take the presidential election seriously.

 

@Dominick would you say that Trump potentially being elected is a "necessary [potential] evil" of voting third party? that is to say, even if we do hold that a vote third-party makes Hillary one vote weaker, his election might be a casualty that accompanies attempting to subvert the two-party system?