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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
I recall reading that the Michigan elections commission straight up admitted that some of their voting machines were completely nonfunctional on Election Day. That's one state settled...
...oh wait, mandate.
I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiot@Julian: When it comes to voter perception, trajectories are more important than the absolutes of their condition; for the inhabitants of middle America, they see nothing but continuous decline and stagnation for their way of living in the future, and don't trust the offers of alternatives from politicians after seeing such promises fail to materialize time and time again. I should note once again that I'm trying to alleviate voter apathy more than I am trying to turn Trump voters, though there is absolutely is a segment of those voters who might be open to this sort of appeal. Those people are presumably the ones who are already regretting their choice after seeing his cabinet of plutocrats and strongmen coming together.
It's not fair that they refuse to vote with so much at stake for other Americans who look or act differently from them, but reality is neither fair nor just; without power, you can do nothing.
edited 13th Dec '16 9:30:15 AM by CaptainCapsase
@Blkwhtrbbt: We can't use a class action lawsuit over voter suppression against the man because although he dogwhistled to hell and back, he didn't actually engage in voter suppression himself. There's enough degrees of separation that, well, you just can't sue the man over it. If you want to actually bring a lawsuit against anyone, you're going to have to find the people who performed or organized the action itself. There's kind of a high legal standard about how much what any one person says that encourages actions that his spouting off about bullshit isn't actually prosecutable.
It's the sort of thing that could be used in an argument to deny his legitimacy as president, but you can't sue him over it.
So we should keep our mouths shut and pretend that America is not imperialistic, not parasitic, not the biggest obstacle in the world against concentrated action against climate change, not a country that is built on looting, theft and rape of other lands and people. Because all of that is absolutely, irrefutably, true. There is nothing toxic about the truth. It is also true that America has had moments of redemption, that it had a tradition of free speech and free expression, some excellent artists, and Lincoln and Grant in the American Civil War and Reconstruction was a time when you really could have had a "new birth of freedom". I would say it was nearly the only time when America was not an imperialist land-grabbing nation. I mean even the Civil Rights Movement and LBJ was made possible because Lyndon Johnson prosecuted Kennedy's Vietnam War, and many African-Americans activists such as Bayard Rustin and others either tacitly supported it or kept silent to help their cause. That doesn't make them culpable because I can't judge people without power by the same standards I judge people with power.
The fact is that the good doesn't wash out the bad nor the bad the good. The bad parts of America and American history are as true and representative of its society and its people as the good parts. That's why Fidel Castro is not a monster. He was a villain to his victims, but a hero to Nelson Mandela and many others in Africa, and several others in Cuba. To deny Castro's heroism is to deny America's villainy. The good doesn't wash out the bad, nor the bad the good.
In the real world there ain't no f—king Captain America or Superman to help the little guy, and those creations suggests that America want to be seen as the country that helps the little guy, but in actual fact they have rarely done that. Castro for all his manifest flaws, did do that and which I, as an anti-colonialist and anti-racist, can't take away from him. Remember, the worst crimes happening in Cuba these days is that little piece of land US stole from them in the Spanish American War, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba's main natural harbour which denies them a port and hampers their economy and trade, and what do the US build on it...their own Gulag, on which they have tortured individuals in manners that is sickening and disturbing.
I think it's important not to lose hope, but I still have to remind people - this isn't a normal situation. I know, pretty much everybody here knows that by now, but it's even less normal than we initially thought. Trump isn't just an buffoonish, bigoted, authoritarian crook - he and his campaign are actually agents of a foreign power (wittingly or not). Forget Trump - we're effectively under Putin's heel now.
Is it hopeless? No. But the normal rules no longer apply. Reasonable predictions based off previously established political models simply aren't applicable anymore. We don't just need to throw off the GOP, we need to throw off a foreign superpower.
"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."Also, political parties have come back from worse from where the Dems are now. And a comeback is possible when you consider that A) the didn't lose in a landslide, and B) that Trump's Cabinet picks demonstrate that good governance is not on their to do list.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.Julian, no one is saying that anyone needs to shut up and not talk about the bad things. You've deliberately misinterpreted that entire damned post. What we want is for people who want to engage in a serious discussion to refrain from wallowing in pessimism and going "we're all doomed" and "things will never improve" because that bogs down the thread and basically doesn't actually help things at all. We want a productive conversation here, not one that is basically everyone talking about how shit everything is constantly. You wallow in pessimism as much as Crimson was, despite that second paragraph's attempt at balance in representation.
The basic point is this: If all anyone has to contribute to a conversation is how much everything sucks and talking about how we will never, ever get better, how are they helping to improve things? We don't need a fucking Superman or Captain America, we need people who'll do something other than whine about how bad things are.
@Julian
What Aceofspades and Mio said, as well as what Draghinazzo said last page. I was not rebuking criticism of the US, I was rebuking an attitude of extreme fatalism and pessimism that's so excessive as to be antiprogressive. It's also something which you are guilty of from time to time as well. Don't twist my words like that. It's very disingenuous.
edited 13th Dec '16 10:49:02 AM by AlleyOop
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Exactly. If someone's so convinced that this is The End (TM), and that there is absolutely nothing we can do to so much as literally survive even the next year, (which as has been said has been nixed time and time again in this thread for reasons that do in fact make sense and aren't just wishful thinking,) then why are they even still doing anything short of holding a gun to their head and pulling the trigger?
edited 13th Dec '16 10:46:46 AM by kkhohoho
I am just taking offense with the idea of the "toxic anti-imperialist West", and the idea that acknowledging that the likes of Castro and others might have a point is somehow seen as supporting everything they do, which is this ridiculous Orwellian shibboleth liberals have constructed. I say Orwellian because George Orwell started that whole tradition and this whole pernicious policing by Liberals on the Left (which is in itself the origin of the tendency now known as "politically correct"), and he's been elevated to a liberal saint despite the fact that we now know he is a liar and distorter of facts, incredibly self-absorbed, a homophobe and an anti-semite who once wrote a list of suspected communists for the British govenrment, including among it Paul Robeson who he branded as "Anti-White". Yep the man who wrote against surveillance in 1984 was a snitch, a stoolie and perfectly willing to enable surveillance when it suited his cause...the Edward Snowjob of his day and a guru for the similarly contemptible Christopher Hitchens. And needless to say, all three of them are nowhere close to being fit to touch the hem of the great Robeson, an authentically exceptional (and exceptionally handsome) American.
Vladimir Putin is not a good leader by any objective standards but he did have real grievances and American expansion of NATO eastwards (which from a purely psychological perspective affects most Russians as any reading of their history will tell you) and their interference in Ukraine where they helped to topple an elected President, led to the Crimean situation and a new government in Ukraine that is disturbingly friendly to its own alt-right which earlier this year renamed a street after Stepan Bandera a Nazi collaborator of killer of Jews and Poles
. Create Your Own Villain is a trope after all, and America truly excels in creating villains, and turning potential friends into enemies. And yes Putin could have been America's friend. So he violates human rights, but then that didn't bother them when Saudi Arabia did it, when Turkey did it, when they sold that gas to Saddam to use against the Kurds and they condemn in Putin the same traits they admired in Singapore's plutocrat Lee Kuan-Yew (who Putin also admires), the suppression of press, one-party dictatorship and general contempt for democracy, and use of Bread and Circuses in place of strong institutions.
There's nothing accelerationist in pointing this out or pointing out that yes America has interfered in other nations elections and destroyed more democracies than the USSR ever did. It doesn't make it right that Putin hacked these elections (which I am finally ready to accept really did happen and I have to say its an insane move that will ultimately hurt Russians very badly). It's merely putting what happened in a certain tragic clarity: The erosion of Democracy abroad finally led to a weakening at home. That's what happened during the American Civil War, where the imperialist land-grabbing of the Mexican-American War led in turn to the rise of the Confederacy, an imperialist faction that wanted to expand slavery to New States, conquer South American nations (including Cuba) and extend slavery there as well.
So who wants to bet that the new Exxon pro-Russia pro-TPP So S ends up using a private email server?
Disgusted, but not surprisedDude, you're the one bringing Castro into the conversation, for what point I am not even sure. (Dude was a fucking tyrant to his people, and no amount of friendship with Mandela is going to smooth that over.) And this thread is not full of people who will deny that America has done some shit. Thanks for ignoring the fact that we did acknowledge that. Also that entire post, while interesting, was REALLY GREAT at ignoring all the things we were saying to you. So, you win this round, I guess?
They'll probably all end up using private email servers because they don't give a fuck. And no one will mention it because who cares? Honestly that'll be the least of the problems we have with this cabinet.
edited 13th Dec '16 10:55:47 AM by AceofSpades
I wonder what would happen if a Panama Papers situation were to play out with the emails if that were really the case. D'ya think that someone vehemently opposed to the Republicans on principle go to some leak websites that almost certainly are Russian influence ops... I think I spoke too soon on that.
I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiotAlley Oop mentioned "toxic anti-imperialist Left" and mentioned Castro, as my first excerpt pointed out. When I wrote the post I saw that and was responding it, I was going to respond last night but I feel asleep with the dialog box still open and i woke up and got back to it, and I guess the thread went on after that.
To me describing anti-imperialism as "toxic" is truly equivalent to the Republican attitude, a short-hand is incredibly disrespectful and myopic, as if the Left in America should be concerned first and foremost only with its domestic issues and not the foreign policy. That we shouldn't understand why Putin hacked these elections and why is it that most people around the world look at America with contempt when they talk about Democracy and see Trump's rise generally with a sense of schadenfreude, or why Castro is not seen as a monster by other countries and is in fact highly respected by a good number of them.
I know that the world was better of with Obama and his N-Deal, and Cuban Thaw and I appreciate that he killed fewer people in office than any other President would have but that doesn't mean that I am not going to work for the day when Obama's drone-strikes and other policies will be the black mark on his legacy that the Japanese internment camps and barring of Jewish refugees to America are on FDR's record, that the Vietnam War is on LBJ and others.
edited 13th Dec '16 11:04:33 AM by JulianLapostat
...Raise your hand if the first thing that came to mind when you read that was this:
edited 13th Dec '16 11:08:20 AM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprisedJulian if it makes any difference I have some in-laws who escaped Castro's regime and my own family are refugees from the tyranny of Mao and the CCP. Had any of us stayed we would've literally died, whether it's from starving to death or being brutally tortured because they looked at someone the wrong way. And some of my relatives were indeed beaten and tortured by the Communists for being married to the wrong people or being, guess what, intellectuals, the people you claim to love so much.
So yes we have every right to consider these people monstrous, and to find it disgusting when people try to dismiss their indisputable crimes, or people to use the tired excuse of "false consciousness" to make it seem like my parents were at fault for leaving instead of staying and fucking dying. And I have no idea how Orwell even comes into this, other than because you always have this insatiable hateboner for him that makes you launch Author Tracts against him every so often regardless of whether it's even relevant or not. I honestly don't give a shit. And if you think it's fundamentally wrong for the Left to self-police itself or to criticize its own then congrats, despite all your posturing you're not any better than the far right.
And again with the fucking misinterpretation of my words. I'm not fundamentally against anti-imperialism, I've made lots of posts criticizing imperialism in the past. I mean "anti-imperialist left" in the same sense as Ambar does, to describe a particular brand of far left extremist in the vein of Cold War intellectuals like Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky who would actively whitewash Communist dictators like Stalin, Mao, Minh, and Castro simply because they wanted to stick it to the West, or who view Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda as freedom fighters out to save the Middle East from the tyranny of the West "because America is fundamentally evil".
It's strawmanning, and makes it seem like you're not interested in a proper conversation so much as soapboxing and trying to beat down into agreeing with you through disingenuous means. And I'm clearly not the only first person you've been doing this to in this thread.
edited 13th Dec '16 11:33:29 AM by AlleyOop

I wasn't so much talking about this election so much as future voter suppression laws that might be implemented while Trump is in office.