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
"It's weird but Republican Presidents, first Ulysses Grant and then Nixon, have been more helpful to Native Americans than Democrats (at least until Obama asked the Army Corps to investigate/deep six the DAPL)."
That's because most of the history of the Democratic Party was shameful, and not just with respect to Native Americans. The Democratic Party that we all know is a product of a post-LBJ world. And the GOP of Grant was left-wing for its time, so that it was relatively helpful to First Nations isn't surprising.
edited 5th Dec '16 11:33:06 AM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."I remember reading this article
about the Jefferson-Jackson annual dinner and the controversy about the names since both Jefferson and Jackson are now villains. Jefferson is literally a bad guy in Hamilton.
I think Modern-Democrats see FDR as My Real Daddy, since he ended Tammany Hall and made them the party of Big Government and while he did some shady stuff in his time (Japanese Internment) but he did support decolonization. His civil rights record was spotty but he did pass this important anti-racist executive order
and it was during his time that African-Americans started to shift from Republican to Democrat, or rather North Republican to North Democrat.
But you know I think it's good to lead by example and the Democrat Party should condemn its past, because if there's an example of the nazis turning into moderate anti-heroes, it's them.
edited 5th Dec '16 11:42:51 AM by JulianLapostat
I must admit that I find it rather strange that Nixon apparently did a lot for the rights of Native Americans, yet from what I understand he was very racist towards black people, and definitely seemed to try to screw them over.
edited 5th Dec '16 12:01:56 PM by KarkatTheDalek
Oh God! Natural light!Nixon was a complicated man...
He was part of the conservative anti-communist wing but he got the support of the Liberal Rockefeller wing (which was pro-union and pro-civil rights) and he adopted that platform. Then he became President on the Southern Strategy, a racist dog-whistle campaign that made the South into a republican bloc.
Yet once he became president he continued LBJ's policies and oversaw desegregation of schools. He was personally racist in the way all political men of his time were, in the way even Lyndon Johnson was, but he didn't do many things to target or roll back civil rights (except for the time he tried to appoint an anti-segregationist SCOTUS judge that got rejected). I mean Bill Clinton's administration was more predatory to African-Americans than Nixon was.
Foreign Policy, aside from the deal with Mao, he was a nasty imperialist. Though I would put that blame equally on that overrated hack Henry Kissinger (another pseudo-intellectual like Bannon mistaken as a pundit). And I condemn him for Chile, for Cambodia, for East Pakistan/Bangladesh. But that's on his head as well.
I actually think Burr should have been President that election. I always liked him a lot. I mean he was also a slaveowner but he actually bought slaves and freed them, one of his illegitimate kids Jean Pierre Burr
was an abolitionist badass and he was way more pro-immigrant than Hamilton. And he was pro-women's rights and he was a brilliant soldier in the American Revolutionary War and A Father to His Men.
And Hamilton was responsible for that duel and his own death anyway. He brought the pistols and put a hair-trigger in it giving every visible intention of wanting to kill Burr. His own political career was finished at the time, so he decided to take Burr's down with him like a good suicide bomber.
Nixon was an actual Supervillain.
◊ Just figured I should put that out there.
So Trump's tweet about flag-burners excited an FN member to tweet something similar about the French flag. Except, as it turns out, it's already illegal in France, and penalised with a freaking hefty fine of 7.500 EUR. In the USA, the Supreme Court struck down any such attempts as unconstitutional as per Amendment 1.
So, you know, I hope the USA keeps that Amendment, they're gonna need it.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.Combine all that with a massive propaganda wing, deep authoritarianism/xenophobia in the culture of many states that rejects anyone straying from the traditional consensus, severely limited education, some very genuine problems with inequality/poverty, and a media so obsessed with making money that they will always equate brazen lies and right-wing extremism with truth to find a very powerful engine for self-destructive denial.
That's not even getting into the classic totalitarian tactics of demonizing education manufacturing new, scarier "Enemies" to fight as justification as we've seen so many times in Republican-ruled eras. This is a group of highly manipulable people that will always be preyed upon by parasites like Trump or other corporate hacks, so their outsized influence is just too valuable for those oligarchs to ever risk getting a clue. The lies are only going to grow more brazen from here on and they will be desperate to keep these people too angry to think.
Me too. Luthor at least sincerely wants to advance humanity (and he has a lot of good ideas for that); he's just very egocentric about it (hence why he spends most his time trying to bring down Superman, whom he sees as a stubborn obstacle in his path to hold the spotlight), and also extremely amoral (though pragmatically so) in his methods. That said... Depending on the Writer.
edited 5th Dec '16 3:06:08 PM by MarqFJA
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
Exactly. Because Depending on the Writer, he ends up being no better than Trump.
edited 5th Dec '16 3:07:43 PM by kkhohoho
You and I must have been reading different comics. Lex Luthor is insane. In Superman's absence, he pointedly does not come up with a cure for cancer, until Superman taunts him into it
. No, Luthor only cares for one thing: beating Superman. Everything, even his own self-preservation, comes second to that. It is not a means to an end.
Now, Nixon, he may have been a paranoid crook, but he was mostly sane, had sincere beliefs, and he did some good things in his time.
edited 5th Dec '16 3:13:54 PM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.Depending on the Writer, like everything in comics (except the fact that Batman's parents and uncle Ben are dead.)
1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KVI got a better idea: Doctor Doom as POTUS over Trump. The man turns the entire Earth into an eutopia in the few alternate timelines where he actually gets his way, even if he rules said world as a totalitarian dictator... and in at least one case, this victory actually resulted in Took a Level in Kindness happening to him!
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.Why I Will Not Cast My Electoral Vote for Donald Trump {NYT}
A Texas elector explains why he has decided to not vote for El_Facista. Maybe Texas could still flip.
Edit: Since it's the Times, here's the article:
Fifteen years ago, as a firefighter, I was part of the response to the Sept. 11 attacks against our nation. That attack and this year’s election may seem unrelated, but for me the relationship becomes clearer every day.
George W. Bush is an imperfect man, but he led us through the tragic days following the attacks. His leadership showed that America was a great nation. That was also the last time I remember the nation united. I watch Mr. Trump fail to unite America and drive a wedge between us.
Mr. Trump goes out of his way to attack the cast of “Saturday Night Live” for bias. He tweets day and night, but waited two days to offer sympathy to the Ohio State community after an attack there. He does not encourage civil discourse, but chooses to stoke fear and create outrage.
This is unacceptable. For me, America is that shining city on a hill that Ronald Reagan envisioned. It has problems. It has challenges. These can be met and overcome just as our nation overcame Sept. 11.
The United States was set up as a republic. Alexander Hamilton provided a blueprint for states’ votes. Federalist 68 argued that an Electoral College should determine if candidates are qualified, not engaged in demagogy, and independent from foreign influence. Mr. Trump shows us again and again that he does not meet these standards. Given his own public statements, it isn’t clear how the Electoral College can ignore these issues, and so it should reject him.
I have poured countless hours into serving the party of Lincoln and electing its candidates. I will pour many more into being more faithful to my party than some in its leadership. But I owe no debt to a party. I owe a debt to my children to leave them a nation they can trust.
Mr. Trump lacks the foreign policy experience and demeanor needed to be commander in chief. During the campaign more than 50 Republican former national security officials and foreign policy experts co-signed a letter opposing him. In their words, “he would be a dangerous president.” During the campaign Mr. Trump even said Russia should hack Hillary Clinton’s emails. This encouragement of an illegal act has troubled many members of Congress and troubles me.
Hamilton also reminded us that a president cannot be a demagogue. Mr. Trump urged violence against protesters at his rallies during the campaign. He speaks of retribution against his critics. He has surrounded himself with advisers such as Stephen K. Bannon, who claims to be a Leninist and lauds villains and their thirst for power, including Darth Vader. “Rogue One,” the latest “Star Wars” installment, arrives later this month. I am not taking my children to see it to celebrate evil, but to show them that light can overcome it.
Gen. Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s pick for national security adviser, has his own checkered past about rules. He installed a secret internet connection in his Pentagon office despite rules to the contrary. Sound familiar?
Finally, Mr. Trump does not understand that the Constitution expressly forbids a president to receive payments or gifts from foreign governments. We have reports that Mr. Trump’s organization has business dealings in Argentina, Bahrain, Taiwan and elsewhere. Mr. Trump could be impeached in his first year given his dismissive responses to financial conflicts of interest. He has played fast and loose with the law for years. He may have violated the Cuban embargo, and there are reports of improprieties involving his foundation and actions he took against minority tenants in New York. Mr. Trump still seems to think that pattern of behavior can continue.
The election of the next president is not yet a done deal. Electors of conscience can still do the right thing for the good of the country. Presidential electors have the legal right and a constitutional duty to vote their conscience. I believe electors should unify behind a Republican alternative, an honorable and qualified man or woman such as Gov. John Kasich of Ohio. I pray my fellow electors will do their job and join with me in discovering who that person should be.
Fifteen years ago, I swore an oath to defend my country and Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. On Dec. 19, I will do it again.
edited 5th Dec '16 3:48:33 PM by IFwanderer
1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KVNixon is a villain in the same sense Richard III is. We may not know if Richard III killed those princes in the tower but damn did he pass a lot of pro-peasant legal reforms in his time, including giving the poor the right to a bail and converting all pre-existing French laws into English.
Or maybe Nixon is like Robespierre, another famous paranoiac. Robespierre was an anti-racist, who supported votes for minorities (Jews, protestants), abolished slavery but he also sent his friends to the guillotine when they started to criticize the government (and got involved in stock market fraud).
Fact is a lot of real-life villains, with the exception of Hitler and a few others (who are rightly hated), are a fair bit more complex and nuanced. Many start out as heroes, or in Nixon's case start out as villain and then once in office, starts doing more good than anybody had any reason to expect him to do. Not for nothing does Noam Chomsky
call Nixon "our last liberal president".
I doubt that too many more electors will find their consciences at this point, even with new stories daily on Trump's corruption and utter incompetence, but at this point, I'll be happy just to spite him a little more.
"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all" Futurama, Godfellasif another 36 GOP electors make the same decision, it could matter! Though it probably won't.
Though, I mean, not counting the times the guy they were supposed to vote for died, it does look like we're looking at the largest electoral college revolt in 180 years, once you count the others we've heard about.
(One really hopes that we'll end up with more than 23 faithless electors, because I don't want to say it's the biggest electoral revolt since the time they took a stand against interracial affairs).

And people said Looten Plunder was an unrealistic villain.
Hugging a Vanillite will give you frostbite.