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MarqFJA The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer from Deserts of the Middle East (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
#266126: Jan 8th 2019 at 4:15:17 PM

Dictionary definition of malice is a desire to cause harm
I'm seeing it being defined as that but with the indispensible qualification that it is done "in an illegal or immoral way". You might be right on grounds of it being "illegal", but then I'd be calling into question the enforcement of the relevant law(s) in the specific circumstances.

and having the moral high ground doesn't add an exception for causing further unnecessary harm when people are already paying for it. Kicking them while they're down etc.
Then this is a matter of whether or not one believes that "doing harm to people in retribution for their wrongdoings when they're already paying for it", "kicking them while they're down", etc. should be absolutely rejected no matter the horribleness of the crimes of the targets (including ones they're "merely" guilty of by proxy).

Edited by MarqFJA on Jan 8th 2019 at 3:15:32 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
TroperOnAStickV2 Call me Stick from Redneck country Since: Dec, 2009 Relationship Status: is commanded to— WANK!
Call me Stick
#266127: Jan 8th 2019 at 4:18:26 PM

Whatever it takes to make the lesson stick.

... am I even on the same wavelength as others here. I'm referring to Trump supporters hurt by the actions of his cabal.

Edited by TroperOnAStickV2 on Jan 8th 2019 at 7:34:29 AM

Hopefully I'll feel confident to change my avatar off this scumbag soon. Apologies to any scumbags I insulted.
DeMarquis (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#266128: Jan 8th 2019 at 4:19:18 PM

Well, to be fair, we should confirm who they were referring to, rather than just deducing it. I mean, for all we know, they meant serial killers. Unlikely, perhaps, but you never know.

I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.
MarqFJA The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer from Deserts of the Middle East (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
#266129: Jan 8th 2019 at 4:24:04 PM

Very unlikely indeed. At this point, it's far more reasonable to assume they're guilty of willful racism until proven otherwise.

Note that I detest the idea of forgoing "innocent until proven guilty". I have enough first-hand experience with being assumed guilty by default from my mothernote . It's probably telling how much I hate the racist segment of Trump's supporters that I'd be willing to entertain that approach.

Edited by MarqFJA on Jan 8th 2019 at 3:25:39 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
Oruka Since: Dec, 2018
#266130: Jan 8th 2019 at 4:24:51 PM

If one believes in postmortem divine or cosmic retribution, that everyone will get theirs eventually, then wrath, vengeance, seeking any form of punitive or retributive justice, becomes unnecessary at best and immoral at worst.

Instead, one should focus on actions that make the world a better place for the good people in it, a place where doing good is encouraged and facilitated, while doing harm is discouraged and hindered. 'Breaking' people not only misses the point, it can actively be counterproductive, by taking resources away from helping people, and is, therefore, itself evil.

I'm not suggesting, however, that one should abstain from establishing who did the bad things, and what bad things they did. Earlier someone here suggested that US interventions were benevolent and morally executed, saying that the main issue was the mismanagement of nation-building. That's a questionable narrative.

Over 15,000 civilians dead and almost a million reported cases of cholera. 17 million people unsure of where their next meal will come from, including 7 million on the brink of starvation. Nearly 3 million people internally displaced. Hunger, disease, and bombs. That's what the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the U.S. have wrought on Yemen.

After almost three years of wanton destruction by U.S.-supported Saudi bombing campaigns and, most recently, a total land, air and sea blockade, the vast majority of Americans still haven’t heard much about the dire circumstances facing the people of Yemen. They've heard even less about how the United States is enabling, facilitating, authorizing, aiding and abetting this slaughter.

By and large, the media has almost entirely ignored the decimation of Yemen and its civilian population. When it is touched upon, America's central role in the conflict is often omitted, as is––even more inexplicably––Saudi Arabia's. The violence is routinely referred to as a regional "proxy war" between Gulf monarchies and Iran or Sunnis and Shias, rather than a U.S.-backed massacre.

On this episode, Adam and Nima, joined by Dr. Sheila Carapico and Dr. Greg Shupak, look back at the media’s coverage of this tragedy, why it let Obama off the hook for it, how the typical “cycle of violence” framing is used to obscure U.S. responsibility, and what can be done to lay blame where it belongs moving forward. With guests Dr. Sheila Carapico and Dr. Greg Shupak.

Please inform yourselves. There's a lot more where that came from.

Edited by Oruka on Jan 8th 2019 at 4:28:20 AM

MarqFJA The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer from Deserts of the Middle East (Before Recorded History) Relationship Status: Anime is my true love
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
#266131: Jan 8th 2019 at 4:30:08 PM

[up] Punitive/retributive justice serves the purpose of scaring off those would-be committers of the atrocities being punished over that don't believe in the afterlife/hell but still care about this life that they'd rather not suffer so much as a consequence of indulging their selfish desires. That there would be still people who would decide it's worth the risk for one reason or the other is unfortunate, but does not take away from the aforementioned purpose.

... And I do not have enough facepalms for my feelings over my country's incumbent regime's actions. Seriously, I hope all the guilty among them die horribly.

Edited by MarqFJA on Jan 8th 2019 at 3:31:48 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
RainehDaze Nero Fangirl (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
Nero Fangirl
#266132: Jan 8th 2019 at 4:43:35 PM

"I think that because your vote has caused harm, you deserve to have everything you love destroyed before your eyes" is more than a little over the line. Also a large degree of hypocrisy in castigating people for making a decision based on tribalism and group entities and then using that as your justification for saying "they deserve to suffer".

Oruka Since: Dec, 2018
#266133: Jan 8th 2019 at 4:50:12 PM

It totally does, Marq. Study upon study shows that punitive action does not deter crime nearly as much as softer methods. Counterintuitive, but logical. Vengeance comes too late to save anyone, and while onlookers cheer for the villain's pain, they expect they will be smart or privileged enough to get away with it. No one commits a crime if they expect they would be caught.

Hell, even when they beoieve they will be caught, it doesn't stop them. Religious, faithful humans have consistently failed to stop themselves from sinning since God put a Forbidden Fruit in the middle, and the first sibling relationship ended up in murder at a time where conversations with the Lord were still a casual affair. The sincere God-Fearing Christians who support Trump...

Excuse me, the very thought gives me nausea.

What I mean to say is, people are not straightforward and there's more to doing good on Earth than Pay Evil unto Evil.

Edited by Oruka on Jan 8th 2019 at 5:06:46 AM

DingoWalley1 Asgore Adopts Noelle Since: Feb, 2014 Relationship Status: Can't buy me love
Asgore Adopts Noelle
#266134: Jan 8th 2019 at 4:50:58 PM

Agriculture Secretary, Sonny Perdue, declares that Food Stamps will be funded (somehow) through February, but there is no way to keep it going past that point due to the Government Shut Down.

Now hopefully by Mid-February Trump loses and the Shut Down ends, and it's good that people who need food stamps will get them up to March 1st.

Corvidae It's a bird. from Somewhere Else Since: Nov, 2014 Relationship Status: Non-Canon
It's a bird.
#266135: Jan 8th 2019 at 4:52:01 PM

Punitive/retributive justice serves the purpose of scaring off those would-be committers of the atrocities

That might be the stated intention, but I have yet to see a convincing study showing a correlation between harsh punishments and low crime rates.

As I see it, there's no reason for retributive justice beyond whatever personal satisfaction you might get out of it, and I think that's a pretty terrible justification for hurting people.

[nja]

Edited by Corvidae on Jan 8th 2019 at 1:52:42 PM

Still a great "screw depression" song even after seven years.
TroperOnAStickV2 Call me Stick from Redneck country Since: Dec, 2009 Relationship Status: is commanded to— WANK!
Call me Stick
#266136: Jan 8th 2019 at 4:57:10 PM

Another thought I had about that is that it would open the opportunity to kill them with kindness, to undo the damage tenfold, once Trump and his gang are out of power.

Hopefully I'll feel confident to change my avatar off this scumbag soon. Apologies to any scumbags I insulted.
Oruka Since: Dec, 2018
#266137: Jan 8th 2019 at 4:57:52 PM

It’s Not a Government Shutdown. It’s a Right-Wing Coup.Programs designed to help the vulnerable are gutted, while institutions designed to serve the rich and powerful remain unscathed.

By Adam H. Johnson

APRIL 28, 2017

    The Nation.com 

A tourist gazes up toward the dome of the US Capitol in Washington, DC. (Reuters / Kevin Lamarque)

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You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here.

Just as they did in October of 2013, the media is uniformly calling the selective starving of government by Republicans in Congress a “government shutdown.” It is anything but. The term “government shutdown” gives the public the false impression that the entire government is being shut down, when in reality, only a small percentage of the government gets shut down—and for starkly ideological reasons.

What we are really facing is a liberal government shutdown—which is to say programs designed to help the vulnerable and poor are gutted, while institutions designed to serve the rich and powerful remain unscathed.

If the last “shutdown” is any guide, the military, Trump’s luxurious vacations, soft power, our bombing of seven Muslim-majority countries, NSA bulk surveillance, agencies that prop up the oil and gas industry, the CIA’s arming and funding of Syrian rebels, and the FBI’s entrapment regime will remain entirely untouched. The parts of government that serve the poor and working class, however, will be first on the chopping block: libraries, tax collection, national parks, labor and safety regulators, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (which oversees the derivatives market), environmental regulators, financial regulators, welfare, and WIC will all be axed. Indeed, the one time the government got remotely close to undermining, even briefly, a pillar of the right-wing state, the powers that be arbitrarily decided to leave the Defense Department virtually untouched.

In principle, the criteria of what is and isn’t “essential” is determined by unelected agency and department heads using guidance issued by the Office of Management and Budget based on a Department of Justice opinion authored in 1980 by then–Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti. That determination, according to Mc Clatchy, defines “essential” activities as those that “protect life and property”—a fundamentally reactionary (and curiously unexamined) criterion that elevates property over justice, feeding people, and protecting the vulnerable.

At the height of the 2013 (manufactured) crisis, the DOJ and NSA used the “shutdown” to justify delaying work on civil-rights cases and post-Snowden reforms. When “property” is at stake, boutique, trivial concerns like combating racism and civil liberties are apparently expendable, while the urgent needs of the deep state and police state chug along. A breakdown of what was “shut down” by The Washington Post at the time put it best: “Although agencies like the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Agency will continue their operations, the Justice Department will suspend many civil cases for as long as the government is shut down.”

Funny how that works. Enough money to sting Muslims and low-level drug dealers but not enough to combat civil-rights violations.

When Congress passed laws over the past decades to feed the poor, educate people, and create public spaces, it didn’t mark these efforts as “nonessential.” This distinction is simply an extra-legal assertion by the government that’s been mindlessly accepted by the media and internalized by the broader public. But what is and isn’t “essential” isn’t a determination made by some objective bureaucrat simply calling balls and strikes; it’s the entire framework for how this right-wing administration and Congress will remake government in its image—all without input from the public.

As we build toward another choreographed, deliberate starvation of liberal government by the GOP, the media should think critically about finding other words for what’s taking place. A more precise term would be to call it a “soft right-wing coup” or simply a “right-wing coup.” If that seems too loaded, “Republican government starvation” or “attacks on liberal programs” would suffice. All of these terms are, by their very nature, fraught with subjective input, but so is “government shutdown”—a label that necessarily creates a tiered system of “essential” and “nonessential” functions based on the reactionary principle that “property” is an axiomatic good.

READY TO FIGHT BACK? SIGN UP FOR TAKE ACTION NOW

There’s the broader ideological coup as well. As Michael Zuckerman noted in The Atlantic in 2013, by calling it a “government shutdown” the left runs the risks that many Americans will not notice their lives change in a clear way as the months roll on. The ROI, or “return on investment,” of liberal government–education, science, children’s health–are not noticeable in an immediate and demonstrable way. Each day the “government shutdown” rolls on is another day the far right achieves another propaganda victory by giving the public the impression that government must not be very important if its wholesale closure has no impact on people’s lives.

If the Carpenters Local 926 union decided not to show up for work one day, would we call it a general strike? Of course we wouldn’t. Targeted and specific assaults on the government should be labeled as such, if not in the interest of properly informing the reader as to the animating forces behind it, at least in the interest of accuracy. Starving liberal institutions by triaging programs on ideological grounds without input from the public isn’t a “shutdown”; it’s a coup by another name. The media should start calling it one.

Ultimatum Disasturbator from the Amiga Forest (Old as dirt) Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Disasturbator
#266138: Jan 8th 2019 at 4:59:55 PM

No article dumping please

properly sourced

have a listen and have a link to my discord server
DeMarquis (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#266139: Jan 8th 2019 at 5:00:50 PM

It is a taken for granted cultural assumption among folk conservatives that the world is, or should be, a meritocracy, in which there are limited number of good deserving folk, and a larger number of bad, undeserving ones. Good people should be rewarded, and bad people should be punished. To them, this is what civilized society consists of, their very definition of it. Because they percieve the government as irredeemably corrupt, they believe that it rewards bad people, punishes good ones, and that is why their own lives are harder and feel less secure than before. In conservative circles, this is called "cutting in line", the idea being that hard working people have been waiting patiently for their rewards, and then they see less deserving people getting handouts.

This is scapegoating, of course, and the racist part is that the "bad undeserving people" almost always turn out to be poor minorities. Naturally, they dont see themselves as racist, and are often genuinely confused when someone tries to demonstrate to them that these are racist views. Thats because they justify these beliefs on personal experiences, which themselves are the result of a subconscious selection effect (they dont know that they are remembering only negative experiences that they have had with members of minority communities, and are selectively forgetting postive ones).

When I teach a class that touches on racism, I start by defining racism as "any preference or judgement based primarily on race. I usually get at least one person who gives me pushback: "Aren't there some differences?" Which I reply in the positive, yes, there are some real average in behavior and psychological traits between the races (such as IQ). I then point out that the same thing is just as true with regard to physical attractiveness (which is also correlated with IQ, at least according to some studies), should I then, as your teacher, make assumptions based on how hot you are? That leads to an interesting discussion.

I have never found such students to be "irredeemably" racist, and while I cant know what effect this might have, if any, outside the classroom, but within it at least, we seem to come to a mutual understanding that racist attitudes are more common and problematic than most people assume.

I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.
Oruka Since: Dec, 2018
#266140: Jan 8th 2019 at 5:14:01 PM

"there are limited number of good deserving folk, and a larger number of bad, undeserving ones. Good people should be rewarded, and bad people should be punished."

Seems a tad tautological. Moral elitism? Isn't part of 'goodness' a certain disdain for petty material concerns and a security and stability found in a positive outlook and moral integrity? That is, isn't spiritual enlightenment, good characfer, its own reward, and precluding resentment, envy, wrath, greed, gluttony, and other mortal sins?

Have they been listening to anything Jesus said?

Edited by Oruka on Jan 8th 2019 at 5:14:54 AM

Protagonist506 from Oregon Since: Dec, 2013 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
#266141: Jan 8th 2019 at 5:43:02 PM

Speaking as a conservative: With Meritocracy my general take is that 'merit' is best taken as a concept orthogonal to morality. The idea is that the most qualified person should have the highest positions, not because they deserve it but because they're qualified. Similarly, a person who earns a lot of money does not necessarily morally deserve to be rich, but should be allowed to keep much of it (excluding reasonable taxes and such) because it's theirs and it's wrong to take it.

Leviticus 19:34
PhysicalStamina i'm tired, my friend (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Coming soon to theaters
i'm tired, my friend
#266142: Jan 8th 2019 at 5:44:37 PM

Have they been listening to anything Jesus said?

i'm tired, my friend
OmegaRadiance Since: Jun, 2011
#266143: Jan 8th 2019 at 5:50:34 PM

A proper Meritocracy would demerit and take away said rich persons money if their output isn't equivalent to the work they put in to get in, and they'd have to keep working to keep it. But humans have never been a species capable of putting the ideals of a system into reality so the actual system would not even be close to what Meritocracy is.

Much like the reality of Communism is far harsher and crueler than the ideal that was conceived.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Jan 8th 2019 at 5:52:28 AM

Every accusation by the GOP is ALWAYS a confession.
Draghinazzo (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: I get a feeling so complicated...
#266144: Jan 8th 2019 at 5:59:00 PM

It is a taken for granted cultural assumption among folk conservatives that the world is, or should be, a meritocracy, in which there are limited number of good deserving folk, and a larger number of bad, undeserving ones. Good people should be rewarded, and bad people should be punished.

That's part of the problem: they focus too much on the idea of "punishing bad people", often to the point where it actually starts to harm them. You can see this in a lot of conservative positions such as abortion, criminal justice, and so on.

ironballs16 Since: Jul, 2009 Relationship Status: Owner of a lonely heart
#266145: Jan 8th 2019 at 6:09:48 PM

Well, he didn't invoke National Emergency on-air, but fucking christ that scaremongering on Trump's part.

"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"
TheAirman Brightness from The vicinity of an area adjacent to a location Since: Feb, 2011 Relationship Status: Historians will say we were good friends.
Brightness
#266146: Jan 8th 2019 at 6:13:00 PM

Jesus fuck I was on edge during that.

PSN ID: FateSeraph | Switch friendcode: SW-0145-8835-0610 Congratulations! She/They
RainehDaze Nero Fangirl (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
Nero Fangirl
#266147: Jan 8th 2019 at 6:13:57 PM

Let me guess, if the wall isn't build, basically all of Mexico will flood into the USA to Rape, Pillage, and Burn?

MrHellboy The Shadow from A world of my own Since: Dec, 2017 Relationship Status: Yes, I'm alone, but I'm alone and free
The Shadow
#266148: Jan 8th 2019 at 6:14:29 PM

Not gonna lie, I was shaking during this whole thing

Ended up a lot less terrifying than I thought

So basically, this speech changes nothing. Everything is exactly the same as it was before it happened

Edited by MrHellboy on Jan 8th 2019 at 8:14:42 AM

The hardest thing in this world is to live in it.
Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#266149: Jan 8th 2019 at 6:14:42 PM

Wait, its already over? I figured he'd drone on.... didn't they request up to an hour?

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
kkhohoho (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#266150: Jan 8th 2019 at 6:15:02 PM

So for some Goddamned reason I watched Trump's Border Wall address. On the one hand, he didn't declare a national emergency on the air. And on the other he said that more people will die from drugs this year than in all of Veitnam.

I think I need a shower.

Edited by kkhohoho on Jan 8th 2019 at 8:24:27 AM


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