General Politics Discussion [ARCHIVED] • Page 228

All I know: The tweet storm from Trump after this election is going to be horrific no matter what.

 

From Reagan to equating the concern of black families to that of cop's ugh ugh ugh

 

Better ways in your opinion. After assessesing the way government works in this country, it is apparent you need allies elected in government to get the things you want done. One thing is for sure---unless you're a hell of a public speaker, or have one hell of a respected background, not many people will listen to you or follow your cause and take it seriously. But elected office? That gets morons like Steve King and Michelle Bachmann taken seriously by 10s of thousands of people, and people like Trump taken seriously by 10s of millions.

So I'd definitely take my chances with elected office if ever given the opportunity.

 

The logistics for staging a popular socialist revolution and not being embarrassingly exposed are dizzying.

I've literally been waiting for this event since he announced his candidacy.

 

It could be worse. I could be a charlatan/aspiring careerist that is intellectually dishonest and consistently uses whatever means available to distort history and exonerate the actors of the party to which he's dedicated himself. A person who so frequently impresses upon others the dangers they face, but continually makes excuses for the millions who have lost their lives as a result of the same political party he so adores; a person for whom party politics is all and actual, working-class people of color are merely votes to be gotten, so that, at some point, maybe, they'll provide us with crumbs. This a person that hates the left. He represents the decaying nature of both liberal discourse and its apparatuses. Whew. Boy, am I glad I'm not that sort of person. That would be fucking terrible.

 

I think you might underestimate the corrupting influence of elected office. I have seen first hand what it does. The only man I've ever met who didn't let politics ruin him is David Gill, and he just had his career ruined by the Democrats because he wanted to run as an Independent for a congressional seat instead of as a Dem. They audited his 10,000 signatures and attempted to poison all of his connections.

The older I get, the more amenable I am to private property damage as a vital means of communication for future leftist causes.

 

Jesus Christ, what a speech by Obama

 

I don't care who you are, Obama just gave the best and most important speech of his presidency

 

Before I forget, since there are 4-5 St. Louisans that occasionally visit this thread, please vote in the primary and support Cori Bush for Senate. She's a Berniecrat pastor, nurse, and Ferguson activist. She's fighting an uphill battle with regard to funding, etc. and can use all the support she can get.

 

I have a few friends who work in politics now (one of them is in the delegation for our state down there actually, pretty cool to see her during the roll call on TV), so I get a lot of the stories from them. I agree that it can tear down even the most well intentioned people, but I also think we need to draw the finest of lines between corruption and giving up ground on one issue to get another done. Logrolling is a bitch that often makes people relent on a policy goal to get another, and vote for shit they otherwise probably wouldn't vote for, but I don't think that always means corruption.

I also think lobbying $$$ plays a huge part in the corruption, and getting a SCOTUS that will end the nonsense that is Citizens United will help somewhat.

As for myself personally, as much as I'd like to maybe hold office one day on a local level, I don't know if it'll ever happen. I like teaching a lot and unless my friend gets elected and hires me as her staffer, I probably would never want to put in the years of grunt work as a staffer for a politician I barely like/don't like at all that a lot of these politicians do. But I am confident that I'm a stubborn SOB who wouldn't let the money and the corruption get to me. I'd be more worried about a Gill type situation, and that is by far the thing I hate most about the political parties. They're stupid as shit and would rather get a party person in there instead of an independent that will caucus with them on pretty much everything. That dumb shit has cost Maine a decent governor and almost cost the Indy runner in Kansas in 2014. I mean, it's not like that guy was a left winger or a liberal or anything, but he was a hell of a lot better than the guy he was running against, and the Dems waited forever to drop their candidate, if I remember correctly.

I don't deny that stuff like "private property damage" is vital--I get screamed at on facebook all the time trying to explain to people why the people who do that stuff think it's necessary, and why it has shown to be an effective catalyst for change in the past (I love when people bring up MLK and I point out that their history classes never told them about how he would "threaten" by saying his people would pack up and leave and the more extreme actors would be coming into town next). But I do take issue with people who deny involvement in electoral politics as also necessary.

 

Noted, I'll be sure to look for her on the ballot.

 

I dare you to go look at the comments on the Fox News FB page right now, I DARE YOU

 

At this point, I can't even look at comment sections on FB without going blind with frustration.

 

lol at "intellectually dishonest and consistently uses whatever means available to distort history"....that's one hell of an example of projection if I've ever saw one.

Also lol at you thinking it's "my party" and that I've "dedicated myself" to it. I feel like I'm talking to a right winger here. Pointing out the fallacies, hyperbole, and logic holes in another's argument =/= agreeing with or liking or totally supporting the other side.

I don't hate the left, but I do hate when people push narratives about how they're better than others for not supporting an apparatus that they constantly demonize as being "responsible for the murder of millions", while simultaneously pushing a political agenda that they have admitted (very quietly, and never very often) will result in the murder of millions, including the very people they're purporting to be fighting for. That part always gets left out of the posts about why your revolution will be better for the poor, the laborers, people of color and, eventually, society as a whole. At least I can admit the dumbass system I don't want to completely tear down in a bloody revolution is responsible for horrible shit done to people I want to help. You shy away from the fact that yours will do the same and instead concentrate on the harm that will come to certain peoples that people who are sympathetic to your cause will at least partially be okay with, i.e. cops, rich white people, etc. You gloss over the millions of poor and POC that will die in your war. Because it's not good press for the cause.

 

Well a dare is a dare.

Update: Well, that was fun. I have a headache now. Thanks

 

As a recent immigrant to the US with very little knowledge of US politics, could you explain this? What is a better way of changing the government?

 

Throughout history, a lot of our major changes came due to immense social pressure brought on my social unrest via violent protests and riots and, going a little further back, all out war. Ending slavery, for example, took a 4+ year long war and over half a million lives (in war, a bunch more elsewhere) to end, despite whatever Lincoln's intentions were. A lot of the Civil Rights advancements in the 1960's happened after a decade+ of protests that would often get violent (and often because the police made them so)

Some around here believe the system of government these days is just too corrupt and too far gone and needs to be torn down and rebuilt completely. A few of them are ardent socialists who don't think that's even possible without the end of capitalism and a capitalist society and instead one rebuilt on socialist and/or communist values. Both arguments have elements that I agree with a lot, but there are obviously some differences, which is where this current form of an argument that has happened a dozen times comes from.

Usually it doesn't get so personal, but passive aggressive snark got the better of us tonight.

 

This election has gotten my grandma into politics for the first time and it's cool to see. This is the first year she's ever watched the conventions before. She was sucked in by the cartoonish nature of trump (she doesn't support him just finds him fun to hate I guess) and is finding politics interesting now. Tho she just said Obama shouldn't bring race into it and now I kinda see where my dad gets that mentality from. The quest to assimilate to whiteness is real and it bums me out.

Anyway carry on!

 

I refer to it as your party because you've seen fit to defend it. It makes no difference to me, quite honestly. The actual point is that you are simply an apologist for whatever liberals do when they're in office. At one point, you justified mass incarceration by saying it was the spirit of the times or so such bullshit. This is par for the course. There is never a point at which the democrats are no longer an option and there is never a point at which electoral politics is not the ultimate strategy, regardless of the actual politics. It is, in other words, unprincipled. You make claims regarding Clinton being left and when rebutted, you defer to the argument that one has to face the political realities of America. When asked about how to change this seemingly eternal conservatism that is endemic in the country, you say, well, vote for candidates that are liberals on a local level. In other words, remain inside the party system, even when, as we've seen on multiple occasions, they've actively undermined leftist candidates. This is why I consider you both a charlatan and intellectually dishonest, because, whilst I generally find your form of liberalism ignorant, I cannot believe you are ignorant of the actual dynamics within the party. I also think this internalization of party politics and feckless liberalism is the bases of your hatred and animosity towards the radical left. One need look no further as the way in which you wield the idea of "purity" or this sense that we feel as though we are better as a bludgeon with which to bash positions that simply refuse to engage on the terms you consider legitimate. To your point regarding the millions of lives lost, we are speaking of facts and things that actually occurred. Did mass incarceration not lock up millions of people? Was this not a bill democrats endorsed? Did welfare reform not throw millions into abject poverty? Was the new Jim Crow not enhanced by democrats? Did Bill Clinton's foreign policy not cause the deaths of five hundred thousand Iraqis? The answer to all of these is yes. As to my position, I've made no efforts to hide the fact that revolutionary struggle is often brutal. The brutality, however, rarely comes from a revolutionary upsurge, but a counter-revolution by those that stand to be deposed. So, if your argument is that, as a result of a struggle for power, the parties of restoration will attempt and may successfully kill groups associated with radical struggle/marginalized populations, I agree. That, however, is an argument against the ruling class that refuses to cede power. You are effectively arguing that people should not seek liberation, because it may cost them their lives, even if the system makes their lives increasingly unbearable and unlivable. This is an argument for resignation, which, if we want to truly grasp what you are saying, is the allowance of the world to continue on as it is because, hopefully, we will get more democrats in office to make changes to a system that benefits them substantially. Lastly, I find it laughable that you actually care anything about the lives of others. We've had many conversations in which you've acknowledged that our foreign policy, for example, will get more hawkish, but that is the price one pays for preventing a Trump presidency. It is merely a matter of numbers to you. The genocide against the Palestinians does not matter; the innocents killed by drones do not matter; what happened to black Libyans doesn't matter. Spare me this idea that you care about innocents, particularly of color, because you've never expressed any sort of solidarity with them; you have said explicitly you care more about Americans than those abroad. So then, if not deaths, what is it that motivates you? It is a combination of things, all of which are related to investments in the state of affairs as they exist now. Which is fine, I guess. Simply do not lie about it. Just parrot what Hillary says: "America never stopped being great."

 

Are we sure he even wants to win?

 

I've (half-jokingly) suggested this before to friends, but between stuff like this, his primary staffer saying they were told to finish a "respectable second" or something, and his alleged pitch to Kasich for veep, it doesn't sound too far-fetched to say he doesn't actually want to be the president and is doing this because he's in too deep and his ego won't let him out of it now.

 

I don't think he wants to be the president, he just wants to be in charge. He wants to be "the most important person in the world"

 

So, today I had an Indian friend post the following screenshot as a vague reference to my political disposition on the following election. As I am a white person and she is a person of color, is there an appropriate response? Is it just a matter of saying, "yes, I am that white"?