TVTropes Now available in the app store!
Open

Follow TV Tropes

Following

The General US Politics Thread

Go To

Nov 2023 Mod notice:


There may be other, more specific, threads about some aspects of US politics, but this one tends to act as a hub for all sorts of related news and information, so it's usually one of the busiest OTC threads.

If you're new to OTC, it's worth reading the Introduction to On-Topic Conversations and the On-Topic Conversations debate guidelines before posting here.

Rumor-based, fear-mongering and/or inflammatory statements that damage the quality of the thread will be thumped. Off-topic posts will also be thumped. Repeat offenders may be suspended.

If time spent moderating this thread remains a distraction from moderation of the wiki itself, the thread will need to be locked. We want to avoid that, so please follow the forum rules when posting here.


In line with the general forum rules, 'gravedancing' is prohibited here. If you're celebrating someone's death or hoping that they die, your post will get thumped. This rule applies regardless of what the person you're discussing has said or done.

Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM

Draghinazzo (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: I get a feeling so complicated...
#160151: Dec 2nd 2016 at 9:51:24 PM

It's true from a "certain point of view".

Half-truths are even stronger than lies in a post-fact world.

edited 2nd Dec '16 9:52:05 PM by Draghinazzo

TacticalFox88 from USA Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Dating the Doctor
#160152: Dec 2nd 2016 at 11:17:31 PM

If there's one silver lining in this election, for me, personally, is that it challenged a lot of my beliefs on a practical and real world manner. I thought I was pretty damn liberal 18 months or so ago.

Now?

LOL. Keep those guys far away from government as possible.

New Survey coming this weekend!
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#160153: Dec 2nd 2016 at 11:32:35 PM

I used to think I was liberal too. I realize now that I'm more of a centrist. I suppose it depends on what "liberal" actually means.

edited 2nd Dec '16 11:34:49 PM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised
MadSkillz Destroyer of Worlds Since: Mar, 2013 Relationship Status: I only want you gone
Destroyer of Worlds
#160154: Dec 2nd 2016 at 11:57:51 PM
Thumped: This post was thumped by the Stick of Off-Topic Thumping. Stay on topic, please.
MadSkillz Destroyer of Worlds Since: Mar, 2013 Relationship Status: I only want you gone
Destroyer of Worlds
#160155: Dec 3rd 2016 at 12:02:52 AM

I sitll don't know the difference between a liberal and a progressive though.

JulianLapostat Since: Feb, 2014
#160156: Dec 3rd 2016 at 12:09:50 AM

In America, progressive means taking a more inclusive view of society, you know LGBT and other issues.

My own views are close to Europeans, Thomas Piketty and others. I think wealth redistribution and progressive graduated income tax on inherited wealth is necessary to close income inequality.

I also agree with Ta-Nehisi Coates and his case for reparations, and passing John Conyers bill. I think that could be something that helps get rid of white revanchism..

TacticalFox88 from USA Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Dating the Doctor
#160157: Dec 3rd 2016 at 12:12:57 AM

I don't want reparations.

Not because I don't think they're owed, (clearly they are), but for the sole purpose of what happens afterwards.

Okay so we have reparations....now what? How is that going to solve the systemic issues? Any form of racial violence will be met with "Oh we gave you blacks reparations, you should shut up now."

New Survey coming this weekend!
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#160158: Dec 3rd 2016 at 12:16:50 AM

[up] Reparations sounds a bit too much like blood money to me. Or weregild.

Kind of seems like the way some people think of rich minority people in America. "You're a rich celebrity, so why are you whining about the system!"

edited 3rd Dec '16 12:17:26 AM by M84

Disgusted, but not surprised
JulianLapostat Since: Feb, 2014
#160159: Dec 3rd 2016 at 12:19:11 AM

TNC is not asking reparations for slavery, he's asking for reparations for Jim Crow, for redlining and racial housing and so on. He's saying white supremacy has enriched itself at the expense of unfree black labour (a point I believe is incontestable) and by asking for damages and passing it, you as a society are making an acknowledge of crimes and restitution, and a small move to justice, a "more perfect union".

Reparations were given by Germany to Israel after World War II and later on many corporations have given restitution for their crimes. Today Germany is a liberal place and an inspiring example of a new kind of self-critical nationalism. It's not perfect and not without problems yes, but it does create a more just society.

FluffyMcChicken My Hair Provides Affordable Healthcare from where the floating lights gleam Since: Jun, 2014 Relationship Status: In another castle
My Hair Provides Affordable Healthcare
#160160: Dec 3rd 2016 at 12:22:11 AM

Progressives from my experience seem to be associated with the more extremist, radical, and or activist liberal elements. At its height during the Interwar years, the progressive movement culminated in Prohibition and eugenics theories.

TacticalFox88 from USA Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Dating the Doctor
#160161: Dec 3rd 2016 at 12:23:34 AM

[up][up]

Germany owned up to their actions.

America still hasn't/won't.

New Survey coming this weekend!
JulianLapostat Since: Feb, 2014
#160162: Dec 3rd 2016 at 12:25:18 AM

The old progressives at the start of the early 20th Century did support some weird ideas. Like William Jennings Bryan started creationism, or at least greatly legitimized it. Bryan never had anything tangible to say against racism and Jim Crow.

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#160163: Dec 3rd 2016 at 12:26:24 AM

[up] Wasn't he a populist too?

Disgusted, but not surprised
JulianLapostat Since: Feb, 2014
#160164: Dec 3rd 2016 at 12:31:14 AM
Thumped: This post was thumped by the Stick of Off-Topic Thumping. Stay on topic, please.
rmctagg09 The Wanderer from Brooklyn, NY (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: I won't say I'm in love
The Wanderer
#160165: Dec 3rd 2016 at 12:32:01 AM

The thing about most of the early 20th Century progressives (Folks like Jane Addams excepted) was that they were ambivalent at best towards issues of race if not actively racist themselves.

Basically they had some ideological similarities to those today who think economic issues take primacy over everything else, without much intersectional thinking involved.

edited 3rd Dec '16 12:39:41 AM by rmctagg09

Hugging a Vanillite will give you frostbite.
JulianLapostat Since: Feb, 2014
#160166: Dec 3rd 2016 at 12:43:23 AM

The Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) were the first to break that mould. They were big on both racial equality and economic equality, and they saw both as inter-related. Because racism kept the poor whites from acting on their interests, forcing them to serve the capital class while African-Americans were naturally revolutionary and tended to understand economic-political issues intuitively while white folks were slower on the uptake. CPUSA also proposed schemes and practised Affirmative Action, which is not surprising because Vladmir Lenin himself introduced those ideas in USSR.

They went down south in the 30s and organized African-American communities, and they introduced desegrated social gatherings and despite their small and marginal status would chuck out anyone voicing racist epithets from their ranks. They also contributed a lot in the Union movement brought attention to police discrimination in the Scottsboro boys case. Unfortunately for them, all this good work meant following the Comitnern party line and supporting Josef Stalin and that ruined and divided the American Left in 1945. Then there was the pass of Taft-Hartley, HUAC, the Smith Act Trials and Communists got thrown out of the unions and huge setbacks on the American Left. Then the 60s came and more or less you see the Modern American Left there, different issues based groups start out at the same time, some of them allied on common issues but being kind of independent...you have the Civil Rights Movements, the feminist movement, the anti-war crowd, the free-love folks. MLK himself was moving from anti-racism to economic inequality towards the end and he was talking about reparations as well, and Dr. King alienated quite a few by taking an anti-war and anti-imperialist statement before it became fashionable.

rmctagg09 The Wanderer from Brooklyn, NY (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: I won't say I'm in love
The Wanderer
#160167: Dec 3rd 2016 at 1:34:36 AM

I'd say that it was less that Dr. King moved from anti-racism to economics and more that he started to combine both.

Hugging a Vanillite will give you frostbite.
Mio Since: Jan, 2001
#160168: Dec 3rd 2016 at 4:25:03 AM

MLK's economic message has not really survived has part of the historical narrative of him, largely because left economics and "socialism" were discredited by the 1970s energy crisis, the success of Thatcherism/Reganism, and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

TheWanderer Student of Story from Somewhere in New England (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: Wishfully thinking
Student of Story
#160169: Dec 3rd 2016 at 6:05:04 AM

In America, progressive means taking a more inclusive view of society, you know LGBT and other issues.

In my experience, progressive became an alternate word for liberal once extreme conservatives and regressives started making liberal a dirty word. If there's any actual difference, (and this is purely anecdotal observation) it's that people who feel strongly about labelling themselves progressives rather than liberals are more fervent in pushing for accelerated/more sweeping change, and less willing to settle for more gradual and incremental changes, even if that is still along the lines of the changes that they say they want.

| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |
pwiegle Cape Malleum Majorem from Nowhere Special Since: Sep, 2015 Relationship Status: Singularity
Cape Malleum Majorem
#160170: Dec 3rd 2016 at 6:38:45 AM

TNC is not asking reparations for slavery, he's asking for reparations for Jim Crow, for redlining and racial housing and so on. He's saying white supremacy has enriched itself at the expense of unfree black labour (a point I believe is incontestable) and by asking for damages and passing it, you as a society are making an acknowledge of crimes and restitution, and a small move to justice, a "more perfect union".

You know, to a certain degree, I can almost sympathize with the white supremacists — but before you get out the tar and feathers, just hear me out.

Any talk about reparations leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It's one thing to offer compensation to someone if they personally were hurt in some way (such as the Japanese Internment during WWII). But to pay reparations to blacks because their ancestors (six or seven generations back, mind you) had been slaves, is quite another. There was a black secretary at my father’s workplace who used to say, "I been persecuted for four hundred years!" To which he'd reply, "Really? I didn't know you were that old." Despite the sincere grievances of some, others will simply be looking to cash in on this.

Also, certain SJWs are entirely too eager to lay a guilt trip on everybody they encounter who isn't a minority. I'm a straight white male from the North; to the best of my knowledge, I've never oppressed anybody, and neither have my ancestors. So I resent being painted as Satan Incarnate when I regard myself as personally blameless in this matter. (In fact, some of my ancestors were Irish, so I might be able to claim repressed status myself, if I were to buy into this nonsense.)

By the way, I voted for Hillary.

This Space Intentionally Left Blank.
Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#160171: Dec 3rd 2016 at 6:42:16 AM

I think that's the logic of focusing on Jim Crow and like instead of slavery, there will be plenty of living people who have suffered under Jim Crow laws so it makes sense for them to get reperations.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
TacticalFox88 from USA Since: Nov, 2010 Relationship Status: Dating the Doctor
#160172: Dec 3rd 2016 at 6:44:29 AM

What's up with everyone using SJW unironically these days?

New Survey coming this weekend!
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#160173: Dec 3rd 2016 at 6:49:32 AM

[up][up][up] If it makes you feel any better, slavery seems to be focused on less these days. Now it's all about cops killing black people.

Disgusted, but not surprised
Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#160174: Dec 3rd 2016 at 6:51:18 AM

It is a handy shorthand for the angry social media based left who tend to be incredibly aggressive in their pursuit of 'justice', to the point of dozing, internet lynch mobs and death threats.

Thing is, unlike the-Neo-Nazis-formally-known-as-the-alt-right they don't have any political influence and are just shouting angrily into the void.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Karkadinn Karkadinn from New Orleans, Louisiana Since: Jul, 2009
Karkadinn
#160175: Dec 3rd 2016 at 8:05:01 AM

The anti-SJW thing is more complex than you'd think at first glance. It's the enemy of the left's 'common sense' standards of respect for others, but it's also somewhat fueled by frustration with religious fundamentalism and even the ruthlessly-enforced blandness of profit-seeking media that hates the unpredictability of creative self-expression. There are a lot of different factors feeding into it.

However they came about individually, there are a lot of angry white men who feel that the only palatable identity for them is to be anti-PC, so we have hundreds of them knee-jerk overreacting for every genuine or even vaguely debatable incident of politically correct-driven authoritarianism. Since the movement isn't based on factual oppression in the first place, but feelings of frustration with the overall environment, the key to dismantling it is to address those feelings, not the facts. The facts are just distractions. What these people want is a team that makes them feel good that they can root for.

edited 3rd Dec '16 8:05:52 AM by Karkadinn

Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.

Total posts: 417,856
Top