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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
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I agree, in general, though I think whether something is "liberal" or "conservative" should be treated as different from whether it can work the way people propose it.
It's why "Reality has a liberal bias" always annoyed me, even though I know what (most) people who are saying it mean. Reality doesn't have a bias ,only people do. It's part of the reason I stopped being able to tolerate Daily Kos.
edited 8th Jun '16 11:10:53 AM by LSBK
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"Reality has a liberal bias" is so phrased because, throughout the 20th century, facts have lined up more with "liberal" — that is, Social Democrat — political positions than with "conservative" — that is, reactionary/movement — political positions. This is across the board on matters such as economic policy, gun control, reproductive health, LGBT rights, minority rights, taxation, climate science, and so forth.
This is not to say that reality somehow favors liberalism; it's that liberals, by and large, tend to pick positions that align better with scientific evidence. Of course, the left has its share of nitwits, such as the anti-vaxxers, the anti-GMO crowd, anti-free-traders/protectionists, and, on the fringes, crazies like Greenpeace and PETA.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Echo chambers are very real. It's all too human to take vindication of your choice of positions as evidence that you have some kind of inherent correctness and fail to perform due diligence in future choices. The basic psychology seems to be related to the self-aggrandizement that afflicts people who come into wealth: as a psychological defense, they convince themselves that their position is due to some inherent moral superiority instead of luck (or favoritism, or whatever).
"I have things other people don't, so I must deserve them."
When applied to the realm of politics, this can lead one to a belief in one's own infallibility that is in no way justified.
A perfect example of this is the radical turn towards freshwater/Chicagoan economics after the 1970s stagflation crisis. Neoclassical wonks had been trumpeting the impending death of America by hyperinflation due to monetary debasement for decades; that it kept failing to happen was irrelevant. When an inflation spike suddenly showed up, they crowed their triumph over their stopped-clock vindication, kicked the Keynesian/saltwater economists out of power, and proceeded to run the U.S. into the ground.
edited 8th Jun '16 11:40:17 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I'm seeing a lot of Sanders supporters saying they are moving to Canada cause he lost. While most of them aren't serious they'd be in for a shock when they realize we aren't a revolutionary paradise up here. In fact we are probably one of the most moderate countries in the West, no far right or far left movements have gained any steam.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.And quite frankly, the United States needs to go to the left if only to be more in line with reality. There is a difference between being sensibly progressive and, by extension, being sensibly conservative, and being unreasonably progressive and, by extension, unreasonably conservative. Currently, the Republican Party are being unreasonably conservative and dragging the country rightward due to it. The sensible positions are towards the left.
You should not take anyone threatening to move to Canada because of the election seriously. Everyone in the United States threatens to move to Canada because their pet candidate loses.
They'll be thoroughly disappointed. We haven't had a cult of personality politician here since Trudeau I. And of course we are currently under Trudeau II which means that, horror of horrors, we have a political dynasty, exactly the kind of thing they purport to hate. They'll also discover that "fight the man, stick it to the establishment" rhetoric doesn't get you that far here—even the NDP generally eschews that kind of language, and we're pretty far to the left of even Sanders.
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Being Canadian won't save you if Trump gets his hands on nuclear weapons.
edited 8th Jun '16 12:03:07 PM by GameGuruGG
Wizard Needs Food Badly![]()
Eh. People in the Middle East have nukes and I'm still here posting.
@Bat: I don't think even Martians are safe in that scenario.
Actually contributing to the thread: BBC: CIA agent expects to be extradited to Italy
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If half the people who said they were moving to Canada in response to some slight actually did it; North America would probably tip over and capsize into the Arctic Sea.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"The people who will move away to Canada are one of the few positives of this election cycle.
Leviticus 19:34By the way am I the only one who, when I hear lefties calling for a revolution feels the need to point out that the Right Wing Militia Nuts have a lot more guns?
edited 8th Jun '16 12:40:35 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
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I've mentioned that quite a few times, in fact. There's no guarantee that the far left would win in a putative revolution, particularly if the social order broke down completely and victory came to those with more guns.
edited 8th Jun '16 12:43:53 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I think most left wingers calling for revolution are thinking of a very different kind of thing than the right wing militias, though, so guns generally don't enter into thinking about it in the same way. More rampant civil protest/voting in far left political outsiders than fighting against the government.
This isn't to say they're any more realistic or any less nuts, but they are thinking about revolution in very different ways.

As I understand it, the original blanket primary system was where a voter on primary day could pick and choose which candidates for which office they wanted to support from among the slate of candidates each party offered - e.g., a voter could pick a Democrat for senator and a Republican for governor. Though this allows even more options for the voter in their election choices, this system was declared unconstitutional in 2000 by the Supreme Court (California Democratic Party v. Jones) because it held this to be a violation of the parties' right of free association. The switch to the jungle primary system avoids this issue by making the party association irrelevant.
The damned queen and the relentless knight.