|
Post by Slam_Bradley on Oct 11, 2016 12:06:35 GMT -5
If you think there is a monolithic far left in the U.S. then you really know absolutely nothing about politics and political science. The left in the U.S. would be center to center-right in any other country on Earth.
|
|
|
Post by Prince Hal on Oct 11, 2016 12:49:06 GMT -5
Kessler and Klein are notorious far-right spewers of unsourced, speculative screeds against the Clintons and Obamas. Don't confuse either one with a journalist or historian. Not even a good try. And it ain't garden-variety vulgarity that's making people vomit into their mouths when they see the Trump tape (or any number of other of his pronouncements). If the vulgarities that Trump spewed are making people "vomit in their mouths", then why exactly are figures like JFK and Bill Clinton held in such high regard among democrats? I think you're making a blanket statement here. JFK and Clinton, I would suggest, are not held in high regard as models of good behavior, just as Babe Ruth isn't. However, in their fields, each succeeded. In the case of JFK, he served as president in a time when for the most part, the press still observed the line between a politician's private and public lives. There is a great deal of hero worship still of JFK, just as there was with FDR. In the case of both men, a more reasonable and mature assessment of their characters, their achievements, their failures, and their effects on the body politic have shown them not gods, but fallible men, like the rest of us. Historians debate just how successful JFK was a President, using the facts. Was there overcompensation because of the events of November 22, 1963? Of course, just as there almost always is upon the death of any leader. Witness the lionizations of Reagan and Nixon and Ted Kennedy, all of whom were vilified at times during their lives, and with good reason. But that's human nature. We crave leaders who inspire us. The danger lurks when the "leaders" realize that the craving we feel can be satisfied by appealing to our basest instincts even more easily than by appealing to our noblest. I would bet that many Hillary supporters regard her husband's presence in the campaign as a mixed blessing at best. In the harsh light thrown by fact and law, however, he is not guilty of the many "crimes" of which he has been accused, from the outlandish, like the murder of Vince Foster and the Mena Airport drug deals, to the sleazy, like the rape of Juanita Broaddrick. A moral exemplar? Hardly? A criminal? 'Fraid not. had anyone been able to prove him culpable of any of the crimes that consumed millions and millions of taxpayer dollars and countless hours of fruitless, politically motivated investigations, he would have been run out of Washington on a rail. Clinton's roguish Southern charm always served him in good stead; he still is consistently looked upon with favor by the majority of Americans. But the chickens have not come home to roost with him and Hillary; they never flew away to begin with. She has unfairly borne the burden of his scarlet letter. And as for the difference between, say Trump and JFK or Trump and Clinton, I would say that even the most egoistic unprincipled politicians inevitably are concerned with their legacies and therefore will, at crucial moments, realize that self-interest and national interest often converge. Trump, like Joseph McCarthy and Newt Gingrich, to name just two, is willfully and defiantly ignorant of history, culture, and tradition, and is guided not even by venal, Machiavellian self-interest. Like McCarthy and Gingrich, he thrives on disorder. Trump is an empty vessel, a whitened sepulchre full of rotting bones, a confraglation fed by ignorance and resentment. Choose your metaphor. He knows nothing of the better angels of our nature whom Lincoln extolled and begged us to release in order to allow them touch the mystic chords of memory and save the nation from the cataclysm of civil war. Trump is a creature who thrives on discontent and foments it to keep himself viable, an agent of chaos for whom order and tradition and the lessons of history are shackles. He wants to release the worser angels of our nature to lay waste to all the intangibles that underpin our society and the compact between citizens and their government. Melodramatic? Maybe, but in this day and age, in a tiny world with little room for elbow-spreading and big-sticking, Trump is the proverbial existential threat. And that's how he likes it. Think Cagney at the end of White Heat, Iago in Othello, and yes, offered without hyperbole, Hitler: rage, resentment, ego unhindered by conscience. He is an Id monster unleashed, and he cannot be truly happy. Trump is living proof that all evil springs from a selfishness that derives from discontent with oneself; he wants the world to pay for his inabilty to be happy when the key to happiness is putting at leat one other human being's interests above your own. If oyu haven't you might want to read Waletr Wangerin's superb novel, The Book of the Dun Cow, for a superb analysis of what evil is and how to keeep it at bay.
|
|
|
Post by Spike-X on Oct 11, 2016 14:23:17 GMT -5
I realize the vast majority of posters here lean towards the VERY left end of the spectrum, but I'm not sure why Trump is constantly demonized while stuff like this gets brushed under the rug. Because it's bullshit that was debunked ages ago.
|
|
|
Post by Spike-X on Oct 11, 2016 14:25:34 GMT -5
October 9, 2016 If you think Donald Trump’s comments are vulgar, check out Hillary’s potty mouth It's not the language he used that people are objecting to*, it's the creepy, predatory behaviour he was describing. * The only objection to the actual language I've seen was from a Trump surrogate who was trying, and failing, to defend the indefensible actions of the Angry Talking Shart. And it wasn't his usage of the word she objected to, but somebody quoting him verbatim and attacking him for what he said.
|
|
|
Post by Spike-X on Oct 11, 2016 14:27:23 GMT -5
Shax is right, we have a politics thread. Can we please take this discussion over there? Sorry, jumped ahead before I'd read the whole thread.
|
|
|
Post by Roquefort Raider on Oct 11, 2016 15:29:55 GMT -5
Shax is right, we have a politics thread. Can we please take this discussion over there? Sorry, jumped ahead before I'd read the whole thread. No worry; like Sphinxor in the Marvel Universe, we move stuff around when required!
|
|
|
Post by Roquefort Raider on Oct 12, 2016 9:15:27 GMT -5
"How do you know a politician is lying?" "His lips are moving". Okay, I understand that it's not an easy thing to fact check each and every thing politicians say... but come on, the low hanging fruit should be easy picking, right? The Washington Post reports this : Whether authoritarian power would be a good thing for the US is a matter of debate. (I really don't think it would be a good idea, but it's an idea among many others). However, the governor also claims that the country is "slipping into anarchy". Where does that come from? Was he shocked by the scenes of violence that followed several innocent people being shot by cops? Well if that's the case, we all were... but while these events are important and deserve attention, they do not reflect the state of the nation as a whole. Crime has been going down and down and down, and that's not what president Obama's staff claims; that's what the FBI reports. The trend is not solely attributable to the Obama administration, since it clearly began before his first term. However, it is dishonest to pretend that things stopped getting better (or even got worse!) under his watch. It is a misrepresentation of reality. It is the opposite of what is factual. It is a lie. year | violent crime | robbery | aggravated assault |
---|
1994 | 713 | 237 | 427 | 1997 | 611 | 186 | 382 | | | | | 2001 | 504 | 148 | 318 | 2005 | 469 | 140 | 290 | | | | | 2009 | 431 | 133 | 264 | 2013 | 367 | 109 | 229 |
(Rates are per 100 000 persons).
I heard Newt Gingrich utter the same outlandish things a few weeks ago, and when a CNN anchorperson corrected him, he dismissed the FBI numbers as "the theoretical concepts of intellectuals" or words to that effect. Newt knew the truth, see; the truth being whatever people feel is true. That's a very scary way to look at reality, and no way to run a country.
|
|
|
Post by Prince Hal on Oct 12, 2016 10:10:00 GMT -5
"How do you know a politician is lying?" "His lips are moving". Okay, I understand that it's not an easy thing to fact check each and every thing politicians say... but come on, the low hanging fruit should be easy picking, right? The Washington Post reports this : Whether authoritarian power would be a good thing for the US is a matter of debate. (I really don't think it would be a good idea, but it's an idea among many others). However, the governor also claims that the country is "slipping into anarchy". Where does that come from? Was he shocked by the scenes of violence that followed several innocent people being shot by cops? Well if that's the case, we all were... but while these events are important and deserve attention, they do not reflect the state of the nation as a whole. Crime has been going down and down and down, and that's not what president Obama's staff claims; that's what the FBI reports. The trend is not solely attributable to the Obama administration, since it clearly began before his first term. However, it is dishonest to pretend that things stopped getting better (or even got worse!) under his watch. It is a misrepresentation of reality. It is the opposite of what is factual. It is a lie. year | violent crime | robbery | aggravated assault |
---|
1994 | 713 | 237 | 427 | 1997 | 611 | 186 | 382 | | | | | 2001 | 504 | 148 | 318 | 2005 | 469 | 140 | 290 | | | | | 2009 | 431 | 133 | 264 | 2013 | 367 | 109 | 229 |
(Rates are per 100 000 persons).
I heard Newt Gingrich utter the same outlandish things a few weeks ago, and when a CNN anchorperson corrected him, he dismissed the FBI numbers as "the theoretical concepts of intellectuals" or words to that effect. Newt knew the truth, see; the truth being whatever people feel is true. That's a very scary way to look at reality, and no way to run a country.
Paul Lepage is Gingrich in a bad suit, one more disgrace let out of the basement by the years of corrosive right-wing attacks on the principles of a democratic republic. RR, you hit it on the head. They simply refuse to accept facts. Trump has taken the Republican party to a political Jonesboro, but he will not drink the Kool-Aid himself. A TV network and/or a third party are next and the GOP will be left in the jungle in his wake. They went along with him and now it's too late for them to do anything to prevent their own destruction. They won't be gone for good, perhaps, but they may well have lost ther chance to influence, let alone control, the Supreme Court, energy policy, foreign policy and so much else.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 12, 2016 13:59:49 GMT -5
Trump has taken the Republican party to a political Jonesboro, but he will not drink the Kool-Aid himself. Jones town, I presume you mean. (And also Flavor Aid, though probably they don't mind seeing Kool-Aid cited in that context, as is almost always the case.)
|
|
|
Post by Prince Hal on Oct 12, 2016 15:39:46 GMT -5
Trump has taken the Republican party to a political Jonesboro, but he will not drink the Kool-Aid himself. Jones town, I presume you mean. (And also Flavor Aid, though probably they don't mind seeing Kool-Aid cited in that context, as is almost always the case.) Must have been thinking of that school shooting... You are right, of course.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 12, 2016 16:45:41 GMT -5
Ah, yes -- Westside. As you can well imagine, when that one happened it was all hands on deck in the newsroom. Jonesboro is about 2 hours from Little Rock, & we sent a stream of people over there. If memory serves, this was back when school shootings were a lot more unusual than now, & you'd think the world was on the brink of ending. Columbine lay about 13 months in the future.
|
|
|
Post by the4thpip on Oct 15, 2016 3:17:41 GMT -5
So this is quite the story in Germany: It's stunning how a guy who had been willing to die as a suicide bomber wasn't put on a more effective suicide watch. He should have worn paper clothes, not a shirt he could hang himself with. But so good on his heroic countrymen who took personal risks to defend their new home country and capture this guy.
|
|
|
Post by the4thpip on Oct 16, 2016 3:52:34 GMT -5
"How do you know a politician is lying?" "His lips are moving".
I am worried that it's partly that attitude that led to "might as well be Trump, at least he is an outsider." I know a bunch of local and state level politicians who work their asses off for their constituents. Like, contact the HIV counseling center I manage in my free time and ask us if they can do anything for us. And even at the pinnacle of power, like the US presidential elections - if you look at the fact checking, the only thing they found as a lie was that the recovery since the great recession has only benefited top earners - which she herself contradicted when she, at another point in the debate, pointed out that incomes have been going up for all groups recently. Whereas Trump lied almost constantly.
|
|
|
Post by Roquefort Raider on Oct 16, 2016 8:57:47 GMT -5
"How do you know a politician is lying?" "His lips are moving".
I am worried that it's partly that attitude that led to "might as well be Trump, at least he is an outsider." As with everything, voters must refrain from adopting extreme attitudes. Disenchantment with the political sphere and most of the people who make their career in it should be an incentive to consider voting for outsiders with fresh ideas (or even insiders with fresh ideas, as was the case with Sanders), but definitely not for outsiders with absolutely no qualification, class, decency or honesty.
|
|
|
Post by Roquefort Raider on Oct 16, 2016 14:45:38 GMT -5
So this is quite the story in Germany: It's stunning how a guy who had been willing to die as a suicide bomber wasn't put on a more effective suicide watch. He should have worn paper clothes, not a shirt he could hang himself with. But so good on his heroic countrymen who took personal risks to defend their new home country and capture this guy. Absolutely!!! I find it unfair that newspapers don't have the headline "TERRORIST ATTACK THWARTED BY SYRIAN REFUGEES", because it might help counter the wave of suspicion that these refugees face pretty much everywhere. (Well, the papers did report it, but nowhere near as loudly as they report an actual terrorist attack).
|
|