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Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#48527: Jan 30th 2013 at 7:49:49 PM

Yes, Senator. Video games allow someone to walk into a room and kill 20 people... Idiot.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
DevilTakeMe Coin Operator from Wild Wasteland Since: Jan, 2010
Coin Operator
#48528: Jan 30th 2013 at 8:01:27 PM

[up] Their argument is ridiculous in that he's basically saying that video games may cause you to WANT to go into a room and do that, not that it allows you to do so.

edited 30th Jan '13 8:02:02 PM by DevilTakeMe

Glove and Boots is good for Blog!
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#48529: Jan 30th 2013 at 8:21:48 PM

@Devil Take Me: I'm not really sure that, "Most people who are shot don't even make the news," is a good argument against gun control. We don't need less public awareness and calls for action; we need more. We need to rouse people and take back our country from the gun nuts.

Heck, we have massive law enforcement and PR campaigns to crack down on drunk driving. We have PR blitzes to get people to stop smoking. One supposes that, if we had some sort of Constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to smoke and drive drunk (anachronistically or not), people would be making the same arguments in favor of those things that they are in favor of gun ownership.

Saying that the status quo makes addressing the problem impossible is giving up. Stephen Colbert made that observation Monday with regards to climate change. Republicans are moving from, "It ain't happening," to, "It's happening, but what can you do? Nothing, am I right?"

The United States is unique among First World nations only in that our culture worships guns and violence. While outright seizure of weapons is not in the cards any time soon, we must address these issues, including the widespread availability of guns, if we want to not have fifteen year old girls shot dead at bus stops. Or five year old kids shot in their homes while playing with Daddy's guns. Or 26 people massacred in a school. Or even those unreported "black on black" shootings that nobody cares about because it's not a white person.

Frankly, the guns do make these sorts of crimes possible. You can't conduct a drive by shooting with a knife, or murder twenty people with a sword without being stopped.

I believe that the Second Amendment is wrong and I want it repealed if it's causing us this much grief.


Edit: I'm seeing side ads with a grimacing Obama and the caption: "Gun control? Vote here now." I love how they conflate the President with gun control, rather than large numbers of Americans with legitimate concerns about violent crime. You know, he was legitimately elected so now you have to deal with the possibility that the ideology he represents will now start to move forward with its agenda. The ad might as well say: "OBUHMU GON TAKE AWAY YER GUNS. FORM A POSSE FOLKS, YEEHAW".

edited 30th Jan '13 8:38:54 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
HilarityEnsues Since: Sep, 2009
#48530: Jan 30th 2013 at 8:32:13 PM

I'm no expert on the guns issue, though I think ending the war on drugs would have a positive effect on gun violence overall. Shoot outs over a black market good that could easily be made into a white market good just shouldn't be happening.

...Oh wait, I almost forgot that the only solution to problems caused by guns is giving everyone more guns! My bad, Amurrrka.

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#48531: Jan 30th 2013 at 8:36:47 PM

Well, yeah, end the War on Drugs, stop incarcerating black people for 10 years for smoking a joint or doing a line, impose severe restrictions on gun purchases, tax away some of the massive profits enjoyed by Wall Street and put the money to use eradicating poverty, properly fund public mental health services, get PR campaigns going to stigmatize gun ownership, fire all the private prison companies and bring them back under government control. Hell, make enforcement of age restrictions on video game and film purchases less of a joke, if you must.

Sensible steps that, in aggregate, will prevent a great many deaths and a whole lot of suffering.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Pykrete NOT THE BEES from Viridian Forest Since: Sep, 2009
NOT THE BEES
#48532: Jan 30th 2013 at 8:38:33 PM

Eh. Even if you legalize the usual drugs, the black market will still thrive and flourish by undercutting any regulation and taxes you apply. The way to win the war on drugs is to focus on rehab.

If we want to cut violent crime, the places to focus are poverty and mental health.

Kostya (Unlucky Thirteen)
#48533: Jan 30th 2013 at 8:39:25 PM

Really? I didn't think cigarettes and alcohol had a huge underground market.

edited 30th Jan '13 8:39:34 PM by Kostya

Midgetsnowman Since: Jan, 2010
#48534: Jan 30th 2013 at 8:39:54 PM

@Fighteer: theuve used that same grimacing bama for every issue even vaguely obama related in the past 2 years.

Pykrete NOT THE BEES from Viridian Forest Since: Sep, 2009
NOT THE BEES
#48535: Jan 30th 2013 at 8:40:41 PM

Alcohol and tobacco get smuggled all the time to dodge taxes. Last I checked something like a quarter of all tobacco purchases in the US are black market.

edited 30th Jan '13 8:41:54 PM by Pykrete

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#48536: Jan 30th 2013 at 8:42:44 PM

If that were true, then tobacco and alcohol would be driving violent crime in South America. No, people will overwhelmingly seek legitimate sources for drugs if they are available, even if it costs more. And it's quite likely to cost less, given how much overhead is imposed in the drug trade by the requirements of smuggling, middlemen, etc.

Obviously, treatment and rehab are important components of any rational drug policy. But simply having a legal way to obtain these substances will take a massive bite out of the crime associated with them.

Frankly, a quarter of purchases being made on the black market is orders of magnitude better than one hundred percent of purchases. And in any event, you drive most of the profit out of the system — the street price obviously can't be higher than the market price, or nobody will buy it from the crooks. If government drives the price of these drugs down to a certain point, the dealers will literally go out of business.

edited 30th Jan '13 8:45:28 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Pykrete NOT THE BEES from Viridian Forest Since: Sep, 2009
NOT THE BEES
#48537: Jan 30th 2013 at 8:45:00 PM

If you're saying that obviously there isn't a black market for legal goods because people will gravitate to legal means, no. If anything, the main reason tobacco doesn't have an even larger black market is that so many people aren't even aware it exists. If you try to legalize something that's been entrenched in it for decades, it's gonna be a hell of a lot bigger and bloat the market to boot.

edited 30th Jan '13 8:46:30 PM by Pykrete

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#48538: Jan 30th 2013 at 8:46:38 PM

The practice in the article you linked would be stopped almost entirely by making taxes on cigarettes uniform across states.

And just because it's difficult is no reason not to do it.

edited 30th Jan '13 8:47:33 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Pykrete NOT THE BEES from Viridian Forest Since: Sep, 2009
NOT THE BEES
#48539: Jan 30th 2013 at 8:47:36 PM

Until it just gets smuggled from somewhere else. Which would take, like, weeks, if that.

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#48541: Jan 30th 2013 at 8:49:20 PM

[up][up]And it would be more costly, easier to stop/seize, and easier for inspectors to deal with thanks to the rather blatantly incorrect tax stamps.

Sure, there will always be a black market. As I said before, though, a quarter of sales being made illegally is a vast improvement over all of them. You're pulling a Perfect Solution Fallacy here.

edited 30th Jan '13 8:49:46 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Pykrete NOT THE BEES from Viridian Forest Since: Sep, 2009
NOT THE BEES
#48542: Jan 30th 2013 at 8:58:53 PM

I'd be very, very surprised if most currently-illegal drugs drop to a quarter black market. I picked tobacco specifically because it's something that's been legal for our entire recent memory and never really had that kind of chokehold, and it's still staggeringly huge. And given how legalizing something like that tends to immediately bloat the market, the black market could still grow in absolute terms even if it takes a proportional hit.

As for reating it as a public health issue that spurs rehab instead of prison, yeah I'm all for that. Less legal fees and it works better.

edited 30th Jan '13 9:04:28 PM by Pykrete

Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#48543: Jan 30th 2013 at 8:59:38 PM

http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/30/opinion/avlon-hagel/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

Really enjoyed this article. The Republicans are out to discredit Obama at any cost, even if it means lying to the public and smearing the record of one of their own.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
DeviantBraeburn Wandering Jew from Dysfunctional California Since: Aug, 2012
Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#48545: Jan 30th 2013 at 9:08:07 PM

[up]Wow. I honestly thought the first link was an Onion article as first glance. That's... pretty funny in a dark way.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
Linhasxoc Since: Jun, 2009
#48546: Jan 30th 2013 at 9:31:31 PM

[up][up] That's definitely one of the issues I have with a lot of pro-gun people: they don't seem to comprehend that other people might be uncomfortable around guns.

DevilTakeMe Coin Operator from Wild Wasteland Since: Jan, 2010
Coin Operator
#48547: Jan 30th 2013 at 9:48:10 PM

[up] Anti-gun people have been getting away with that tactic in state legislatures, but pro-gun people don't seem to have a problem with it, aside from t he fact that Joe had his finger on the trigger like an idiot.

@ Fighteer: The same sort of thinking went into Prohibition and the War on Drugs. If you make something illegal, then crime will disappear. It created a black market as people scrambled to get around those laws, and it cost even more lives in the long run.

Again, there are far more law-abiding gun owners than there are criminals, and most of the measures being taken are Association Fallacy in that, because, a percentage of the gun owners are irresponsible and criminal, that all gun owners are now criminal and should be subject to legislation that won't stop the criminals.

Only a few measures being proposed are meaningful in vetting the type of people who gain access.

As for the whole "status quo" thing, why aren't those stories of people being shot on the news more often? Because it's not news to the people delivering the news. Not simply Old Media Are Evil but they are certainly not being held accountable for their role in dramatizing crime and making them exciting enough for copycat crime.

Glove and Boots is good for Blog!
Pykrete NOT THE BEES from Viridian Forest Since: Sep, 2009
NOT THE BEES
#48548: Jan 30th 2013 at 9:51:44 PM

[up][up]To be fair, a lot of anti-gun people can't seem to comprehend how to not start freaking out the moment they know someone's carrying one. I mean, around here guns are just a completely ordinary fact of life, but drive about 150 miles north and suddenly people start looking at you like you're a potential spree shooter if they even know you own one (on an unrelated note, fucking hippies).

edited 30th Jan '13 9:54:17 PM by Pykrete

DeviantBraeburn Wandering Jew from Dysfunctional California Since: Aug, 2012
Midgetsnowman Since: Jan, 2010
#48550: Jan 30th 2013 at 10:05:04 PM

@Pykrete: no offense. I live in a part of the country where hunting rifles are common. I still consider the appearance of a gun in anything except a hunting or skeet shooting situation uncomfiortable at best.


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