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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
The other verses include "Senator's son" and "militarist's son", so it could apply equally to the business, political, and military spheres. There was a persistent rumor
that the Senator's son of the lyrics was Al Gore, but it was actually David Eisenhower, grandson of Dwight and son in law of Richard Nixon.
Texas is absolutely looking unwinnable for Biden; it's one of the nine closest states, polling-wise. It is not, however, a particular wise strategic target because if he wins Texas, he's almost certainly won enough other states that Texas doesn't matter, and it takes a lot more people changing their minds to flip it than, say, Iowa, meaning that Texas is also high-risk.
The symbolic value and crushing electoral college advantage that Texas would bring make it a tempting prospect though- it's probably the best way to take the wind out of any GOP attempts to delegitimatize the result, and send a message that Trumpism is a dead end.
Edited by Gilphon on Sep 6th 2020 at 12:46:46 PM
I had an extended "talk" with a co-worker tonight where he regaled me with his Democratic conspiracy theories about how they want to enslave us all and the Republicans are the only thing holding them back. Man, I wish we lived in a world where things were so simple and sides had no ambiguity.
He loves to save face by insisting he's a centrist, but he's very defensive of Ol' Donny and very condemning of "socialists" like Bernie and Kamala.
Just Having FunSpeaking of centrists:
Axios: Biden’s centrist mirage
A brief take on how Biden's moved leftward with the rest of his party, and how he's going to have to maintain a centrist image despite that to avoid losing swing voters.
Also, fuck Bernie or Busters:
The Guardian: Bernie or bust: a centrist Democrat is still as bad as Trump for some on left
Edited by M84 on Sep 7th 2020 at 2:13:09 AM
Disgusted, but not surprisedWell, a problem a lot of centrists have is that they use it to mean something like 'not Republican or Democrat', which can actually mean, among other things, that they're too extreme, not a centrist.
An actual centrist is more like someone who simply had a viewpoint that's neither left nor right but somewhere in the middle.
I might technically be called a Centrist in the sense I'm not really a democrat or a republican, though I don't especially think of the Democratic party as being as evil as the Republican party despite being well to the right of it. In other words, I'm essentially the opposite of a bernie or buster.
Leviticus 19:34I mean, I want to understand both sides, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to automatically assume that therefore both sides might be correct. Nor am I going to make the assumption that modern political discourse is so advanced that the correct options must lie somewhere within the middle of possible view; economically, politically, and morally this has often not been the case.
I used to openly identify as a "moderate" and superficially adhere to the philosphy of centrism until I realized after 2016 that my actual politics were further left than I was previously willing to admit, and that it was more a matter of having more critical thinking skills than the most mindlessly accelerationist factions of the left than outright alignment with rightwing ideology. Thus I was actually an example of "a centrist is just a cowardly leftist/Democrat".
So broadly speaking I'm "left" with regards to the arithmetic mean of the population, and only "center" with respect to the extreme outliers of the left. But because political ideology is quite complex there are certainly aspects in which I'm a little closer to the right than for o thers (whether that means on the right or simply closer by a smidgen depends on the listener), and where I lie is a matter you'd have to interrogate me in order to figure out exactly what is meant by that.
Ideology-wise I'm perhaps somewhere in the general ballpark of social democrats and democratic socialists (who are broadly recognized by most as left), but I'm not super keen on labels as they tend to imply package deals that I may or may not actually agree on the minutiae of.
Edited by AlleyOop on Sep 7th 2020 at 3:11:38 PM
From the perspective of definitely not being in the middle of anything, "I'm a centrist" sounds like advocating for the golden mean fallacy. Moderate seems similar: "regardless of any bias I have I wish to proclaim my position as central and well reasoned in comparison".
Relative terms seem meaningless.
I still find the term "moderate" useful compared to "centrist" because while moderate does have broad connotations of degrees (someone with ideology that could be described as far left nevertheless can be moderate with respect to a certain issue, or at least in terms of methodology), centrist does in fact tend to imply an absolute location on the scale of ideologies in between the broad left and the broad right, whatever they may be for a given nation. Basically moderate is vague enough that it ends up being meaningless as a singular descriptor, but also relatively harmless. Meanwhile centrism tends to imply a much more aggressive and absolute form of Golden Mean Fallacy.
I think most of the "politically active" poster on OTC are somewhere in the ballpark democratic socialists (me included, though I drift to socialist syndicalism every now and then).
I'm very hard on centrism (as most of us are) but I can really say M84 is one of my favorite users from the "political threads" and a very intelligent, very nice guy and if centrism at large and centrists was more like him I'd have no issues with that belief system other than occasional disagreements. So, hey.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."I will say that despite identifying as a centrist, if I only had a choice between voting for a leftwinger and voting for a rightwinger, I'd probably pick the leftwinger. Probably because, at least in the USA, the leftwinger is less likely to be a horrible bigot.
And I voted for Warren in the primaries despite my misgivings about her (which I've already posted about in the past), so there's that.
Edited by M84 on Sep 8th 2020 at 3:07:38 AM
Disgusted, but not surprisedSo 538 actually did some digging into this, it turns out that most centrists/moderates simply aren’t.
They’re not voters who sit in the middle on all the issues and swing one way or another depending on how close a party is to the middle, in reality they’re voters with a wide spread of positions. So they might be left-wing on welfare but right-wing on gun rights, or right-wing on business regulation but left-wing on racial issues.
With them it’s not about tacking to the imagined ‘center’ to get their vote, it’s about either catering to their focus issue (so being a supporter of gun-rights with an otherwise left-wing platform), or changing their focus issue by talking about its importance (so highlighting the importance of solving racial discrimination and thus making them not care about your desire to increase business regulations).
That’s how we got Obama-Trump voters, they didn’t actually change their positions, Trump just moved their focus from their economic desires (more government support) to their racial desires (fewer people of colour).
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranYou guys sound like leftists in denial...
Centrist requires two things: a belief that the solution is some mix of left and right, and that ideology is transactional.
Moderate means you believe your ideology needs to be implemented but not necessarily in the exact form or immediately.
Radicals are much more of the " do it now, exactly as imagined " variety.
An enlightened centrist is a mock term for a Centrist who tries to "both sides" things that are binary. Such as civil rights, slavery, racism. You have it or you don't.
I am not surprised.
Edited by devak on Sep 7th 2020 at 10:13:20 AM
Radical in the more 'literal' definition means a person trying to uproot society. The term is derived from the Latin word 'radic' meaning 'root'.
So, a radical essentially means someone who thinks that social evils are too intrinsic to the cultural fabric making up society, and thus, society must be destroyed and rebuilt. This is in contrast to someone who tries to 'fix' society.
Leviticus 19:34
I see a lot of those on Era's RED Hangout for Socialism, Communism, Leninism, Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Anarchy, etc. They see Capitalism as the ultimate supreme evil that needs to be destroyed and if it means burning everything down and starting over then it's a small price to pay. Hell, to most of them it's seen as either the only path or the preferred path WAY over trying to fix things which they see as appeasement. They also quite aggressively hate...pretty much everyone that's been in office since Bush(Senior or Junior frankly), but more topically they hate Biden and Harris a good bit and only VERY SLIGHTLY less so than Trump and Co.
It makes political discourse absurdly hard as fuck, same for the fact that there's such an inundation of information out there and little to no way to shift through it without crashing into bullshit, propaganda, or pure bias and grift.
Edited by FinestArts on Sep 7th 2020 at 4:52:23 AM

Thought it was mostly about the congressmen who pulled strings to keep their sons out of the war more than anything.
"Yup. That tasted purple."