General Politics Discussion (VI) [ARCHIVED] • Page 350

In high school I had a good friend who we would actually have a lot of good debates and discussions about politics. He supported Rubio in the primaries, and being completely honest, I give credit to him for getting me on board with legalization of marijuana. I had thought of it as a dangerous gateway drug but he changed my mind on that.

But after Rubio dropped out and Trump became the nominee he just got so toxic. Defending him every which way, even going so far to saying that nationalism was good and arguing that Putin was a good guy. It was mostly that (but also the fact that all he wanted to do was go out to parties and smoke and drink) that made me stop hanging out or even really talk to him. I graduated high school in 2017 and haven't talked to him once.

 

Wouldn’t want to alienate that vital demographic of Fox News viewers!

 

Honestly yeah the best way to lose friends is to just purposely separate yourself from them lol. It can so easily happen “naturally”

 

Yeah, one of them is four years older than me and we worked together for a couple of years basically everyday. The relationship I had with him is what I’d always wanted to have with my brother and couldn’t have so that one is especially hard. But he shared a video the other day titled something like “why sluts do need to be shamed” which used all this biological pseudo-science. My friend shared it saying “a lot of informative stuff in here” and I’m just like ...for real? It’s easy to ignore because he lives outside of Seattle and I’m in Michigan so I don’t see him and we don’t talk much but when we do catch up I actively try to avoid politics. But he’s looking to move back to Michigan ASAP and I can’t pretend it’s not a problem. He falls into the Sam Harris/Richard Dawkins circles and feels like he’s a stone’s throw away from Jordan Peterson or Ben Shapiro and it’s so disheartening.

Thank you for these. I’ll check them out!

 

I feel that. I’m about to turn 33 and a lot of my friends are wrapping up phd programs and I’m mildly panicking for when they move away. I can’t be 35 working in a young-ish persons industry and try to make new friends.

My friend reaches out and can be pretty proactive about catching up when we don’t talk for a while. And as shitty as his opinions are, I can’t just dodge him until he gets the point. Dude helped redirect my life into a positive direction and I wouldn’t be here today without him.

 

I really don't understand this state sometimes. We just voted out Walker, and now this. Based on the numbers, it sounds like a good portion of Milwaukee didn't show up for yesterday's election. Not sure why.

 

It's annoying that you're putting me in a position to defend Bill Maher because I generally don't like his show or the more inflammatory areas of his politics. Yet here we are.

To me, his questioning of making an issue prominent isn't inherently dehumanizing trans people. He said, "You have eight minutes here.... we're talking about how do we win back those people, I don't know if that's the thing we want to accent. It's a fair issue." I don't disagree with that premise; there are conversations every day about the main messaging points to drive electability. If anything, it should make you happy that a rising star in the 2020 Dem presidential primary is focusing on trans rights as part of his stump speech and prominently pushing back against people telling him not to do so.

Your preference isn't reality, unfortunately. Maher's show is good exposure.

 

Maybe because it's on a Tuesday. Also, does Milwaukee have any sort of early voting?

 

Yeah, that was the exact same gateway I saw ... it went from the "Pick Up Artists" and "New Atheists" to Peterson/Shapiro to 4Chan like shit. Very quickly from talking about shit like getting "FriendZoned" and how to be an "alpha male" to sexist, racist, jokes and just weird fucking shit.

Men looking for answers and finding all this toxic shit is a real problem.

And the thing that I realized was I didn't wanna keep arguing about it. I tried at first, but then I got to the spot where I didn't wanna spend 3 hours talking about why "friend zone" is a ridiculous idea and that yes men and women can be friends, without even getting into the gross transphobia and other bullshit. That was when I was like, for my own sanity I can either pretend I don't see the Facebook posts or comments, and that kinda worked for a while, but then it started being in real life, out in public, and I was like I can't do this anymore for my own well being and that was when I realized I needed to pull away. There wasn't any real moment, it was just more a slow thing, and then all of a sudden I realized he had moved and had a house warming thing with other people I used to be friends with and hadn't seen or talked to in years either and then it was like ... oh yeah, we're just not friends anymore.

 

I'm sure some of my old friends are like that and thankfully I am unaware of it and don't talk to them anyway

Deactivated Facebook three and a half years ago and it was such a great decision

 

These numbers are interesting but skewed.

98% of donations = 213.6K donations

If we assume that every donation is $200 (though the average is likely closer to the mean of $100), $200 * 213.6K donations = $4.27M

This means that more than $5.1M is coming from 4400 donations, at an average of $1159 per donation. That's obviously not PAC money, but it's interesting to see that the majority of his $9.4M opening haul is coming from people donating $1K+ at a time.

 

I am getting appointed to my city's Parks and Recreation Commission so if I get any funny stories from that experience I will definitely have to share. Also it will be my first ever experience in local government so I am excited. Might be the start of my political career lol

 

Then don’t defend someone who normalized Milo’s transphobic views, has said numerous offensive jokes about Caitlyn Jenner, etc. Maher is an awful person and, IMO, it takes an awful person to think “the basic rights of trans people are important but not THAT important that I put it front and center,” the way bill suggests.

Pete’s answer is great. And the ACA was politically toxic, but it got great polling numbers not from being ignored until in office, but by continually talking about it. I think it’s morally wrong to not include basic human rights front and center in a platform and I don’t think that bills question is all that valid, the more I think about it.

 

I used to spend a lot of time interacting with a small, nearby city's council and public works officials. You'll find both the most dedicated public servants and the laziest, most vile people you'll likely ever meet. Politics are strange.

 

Congrats! After you've had your fill of parks and rec apply for the planning commission next. A good portion of council members have experience on their city's planning commission. You get to network with developers and business owners in your city and it gives you experience acting in a quasi-judicial role during public hearings, taking testimony, reviewing exhibits and public record submissions and public comments, etc. So, if you thought people upset about broken swing sets or yelling at you because parks staff didn't mow a field when it rained yesterday and the grass is still wet, wait until you sit in on a public hearing with slimy entitled capitalists kissing the city's ass and v rightfully angry residents for hours on end.

 

oh good

 

Thank you for the advice actually on where to go next if I decided to keep going. I knew there were some folks in here who had city government experience.

One of my goals for this role is to help facilitate a concept I experienced at the city I lived in previously. They built two of these mini soccer fields (LED lit, have boards around them, and have nets behind the goals) that do such a great job of bringing different communities to and help bridge gaps between the various communities. Really want to see something like that done where I live now so I thought this would be a good place to start to get an understanding of the process needed to make that happen.

 

why

 

WOO! NEW FONT!

 

OOO YEAH FONT ME DADDYYYY