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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM

sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
#129751: Jul 12th 2016 at 10:32:49 AM

Dean was a dem though, wasn't he? And not a militaristic one like Flynn

PhiSat Planeswalker from Everywhere and Nowhere Since: Jan, 2011
Planeswalker
#129752: Jul 12th 2016 at 10:36:45 AM

[up][up][up][up] Don't forget Palin.

edited 12th Jul '16 10:36:55 AM by PhiSat

Oissu!
Greenmantle V from Greater Wessex, Britannia Since: Feb, 2010 Relationship Status: Hiding
V
#129753: Jul 12th 2016 at 10:40:06 AM

@ Capsase:

A cultural and political paradigm shift of historic proportions. Many other such shifts have been catalyzed by technological changes that made information more readily available, here that change is the Intetnet.

You mean some sort of...socialist revolution, don't you? smile

Keep Rolling On
Clarste One Winged Egret Since: Jun, 2009 Relationship Status: Non-Canon
One Winged Egret
#129754: Jul 12th 2016 at 10:42:06 AM

There aren't as many white people in this country as white people seem to think there are. "Minorities" is a bit of misleading in that regard. White people outnumber any given minority, sure. But all of them? Not by a long shot.

But if you split "white voters" between "racists" and "decent human beings" you see that Duke never stood a chance.

I mentioned this a couple of pages ago, but from what I can tell the idea is there are many white racists that don't actually believe in non-racists at all, they just think everyone else is lying to fit in. Which makes them even angrier, since they think of them as hypocrites. Racism isn't just an opinion you hold about certain groups, it's a lens through which you view every single thing that happens in the world. A lot of them seem to be believe that by sounding the horn of open racism they'll get the white majority to collectively abandon their "hypocrisy" and join them on the winning side of the race war. Because the idea of actually getting along with other races cannot even occur to them.

edited 12th Jul '16 10:43:14 AM by Clarste

LSBK Since: Sep, 2014
#129755: Jul 12th 2016 at 10:46:51 AM

[up]Whoever you're quoting there is just wrong, by the way. The percentage is definitely going down but "white" people or more specifically, "non-Hispanic white" people do very much still outnumber all minority groups combined, and it's expected to stay that way for awhile.

Clarste One Winged Egret Since: Jun, 2009 Relationship Status: Non-Canon
One Winged Egret
#129756: Jul 12th 2016 at 10:49:30 AM

Er.. yes, that was brought up in the discussion on the previous page, and the second quote was in response to the corrected number. I didn't feel the need to bring it up again, but we're all in agreement that there's still a white majority in the US.

LSBK Since: Sep, 2014
#129757: Jul 12th 2016 at 10:50:34 AM

Oh, sorry, I've been a bit out of it.

tricksterson Never Trust from Behind you with an icepick Since: Apr, 2009 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
Never Trust
#129758: Jul 12th 2016 at 10:55:34 AM

Not to mention that minorities are hardly a unified whole, although in the case of Trump they probably are save for a token here and there.

edited 12th Jul '16 7:29:52 PM by tricksterson

Trump delenda est
Elle Since: Jan, 2001
#129759: Jul 12th 2016 at 10:59:41 AM

@Cap: I'm not sure what post you're replying to me about, the most likely one being the 2008 crash.

CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#129760: Jul 12th 2016 at 11:04:57 AM

@greenmantle: Not in the sense that 19th and (most) 20th century leftists thought of it; I'd argue that kind of revolution already sort of happened but isn't called a revolution in most places since governments gave in to many of the demands on the left there rather than fighting to the bitter end*. What we are undeniably seeing among the youth is a breakdown of cultural barriers between much of the world facilitated by the Internet. Perhaps in time this will blossom into a trend towards global solidarity where the masses begin to see themselves as members of the human species before members of nations. In other words, the Internet is beginning to globalize human culture, just as the neoliberal era has seen the globalization of economies. With a global economy and a global culture, the political boundaries that divide us—the nation state—becomes obsolete, and will presumably begin to break down as well. Probably not within the 21st century, but, assuming humankind proves to be sufficiently responsible as a species to avoid self-inflicted extinction or the collapse of industrial civilization, quite possibly within subsequent centuries.

* I'm referring to the labor movement of course. In countries where attempts to compromise failed (most notably in Russia and Germany), you saw the rise of totalitarian regimes. Elsewhere you saw unprecedented progressive economic reforms.

[up] Sorry, I mistook you for PotatoesRock, you two have similar avatars in terms of the color scheme.

edited 12th Jul '16 11:32:01 AM by CaptainCapsase

JackOLantern1337 Shameful Display from The Most Miserable Province in the Russian Empir Since: Aug, 2014 Relationship Status: 700 wives and 300 concubines
Shameful Display
#129761: Jul 12th 2016 at 11:12:35 AM

[up] I am afraid this only exists in the first world. In place like China and India nationalism is alive and well. And frankly I believe it is quite arrogant for us to assume they will adopt the "correct" positions of us Westerners, especially since half of our ideology only came about because of the trauma Europe suffered in World War 2 and the Cold War

I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#129762: Jul 12th 2016 at 11:14:01 AM

[up] There's nothing wrong with a group of nations leading the rest of the world into the era of true global politics and culture. The problem will be how to balance the carrot and the stick in this regard, while preventing the regressive forces from tearing us back into chaos.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
smokeycut Since: Mar, 2013
#129763: Jul 12th 2016 at 11:14:30 AM

Nationalism exists here, in the UK, throughout Europe. Nationalism isn't going away, and if it does lessen, it won't disappear entirely. A worldwide breaking of nations to form one giant one is never going to happen.

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#129764: Jul 12th 2016 at 11:16:19 AM

[up] That depends on how far into the future you look. It is unlikely that nations will disappear entirely; they would remain useful as jurisdictional units regardless of whether we have a world governing body. It is also all but certain that we would have to fight at least one major war in the course of establishing such a body; that's just human nature. Then we can begin the grand experiment to see if global governance is possible.

As always, some will be dragged along, kicking and screaming.

edited 12th Jul '16 11:17:55 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#129765: Jul 12th 2016 at 11:16:22 AM

@Jack: It's even happening to some extent outside of the first world, though it's far less visible, particularly in places where the Internet is heavily censored like in China.

[up][up] A century ago, the mere idea of a united Europe was unthinkable except by military conquest, which was itself more or less doomed to fail for geopolitical reasons. With the European Union is currently imperiled, that's not the fault of the youth; they overwhelming support the EU, despite its numerous flaws.

edited 12th Jul '16 11:19:01 AM by CaptainCapsase

Greenmantle V from Greater Wessex, Britannia Since: Feb, 2010 Relationship Status: Hiding
V
#129766: Jul 12th 2016 at 11:20:18 AM

@ smokeycut: As I've long said, the only something like that would happen is due to a immediate, yet medium-term extensional threat that involves the whole planet (and probably where Earth Is a Battlefield).

In other words, something like an Alien Invasionnote .

edited 12th Jul '16 11:20:57 AM by Greenmantle

Keep Rolling On
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#129767: Jul 12th 2016 at 11:23:02 AM

[up] You say that, but consider how culture is formed and transmitted: by human interaction. The internet has made it extremely easy, necessary even for people from all over the world to meet and interact; this in and of itself is resulting in cultural diffusion on a scale that would have been impossible prior to the Internet.

While it is perfectly understandable, even reasonable to be skeptical that the world can change (and having read my posts around these parts, you can see that applies to me to a great extent), there are in fact moments in history where everything changes. Writing. The printing press. The telegraph. All these technologies are part of a continuum which has drastically increased our access to information, and our ability to communicate with each other. As our ability to communicate grows, so to does our understanding and empathize with one another.

edited 12th Jul '16 11:28:39 AM by CaptainCapsase

Bat178 Since: May, 2011
#129768: Jul 12th 2016 at 11:49:46 AM

Well, some Europeans like me are fed up with Americans destroying our culture and replacing it with their own and with our depictions in the media, where the Americans typically depict us as evil, useless, or we get blown up or destroyed some other way.

edited 12th Jul '16 11:59:35 AM by Bat178

CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#129769: Jul 12th 2016 at 11:53:08 AM

[up] That is the great generational divide at work that I was talking about. Also part of America being one of the biggest media exporters.

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#129770: Jul 12th 2016 at 11:54:43 AM

The pervasiveness of the infosphere in our modern lives presents quite a few challenges:

  • Not everyone has access to or the necessary knowledge to make use of it (the "digital divide").
  • The sheer amount of information available makes selectivity very difficult to exercise. No one person can understand everything, so we either become shallow headline readers or develop very narrow reference pools. ("Everything I know, I learned on Fox and Friends.")
  • The Internet makes it very hard to reliably filter good information from bad information. Click-bait headlines get views even if the articles beneath them are garbage. Deprived of an anchor, people fall back on their personal social networks to judge the quality of information, leading to accumulated bias.
  • People intent on specific ideas can develop powerful filters and join closed groups that shut out all competing thought.

Fundamentally, our brains aren't built to handle all this input. Developing good information processing filters is a skill like any other, but one that is challenging to teach — in part because so many people have bad filters that getting the necessary impetus to develop an education program of this nature is a Sisyphean effort. "How dare you teach my child things I don't approve of?"

edited 12th Jul '16 11:57:37 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
JackOLantern1337 Shameful Display from The Most Miserable Province in the Russian Empir Since: Aug, 2014 Relationship Status: 700 wives and 300 concubines
Shameful Display
#129771: Jul 12th 2016 at 11:56:34 AM

@ Fighter: Their is nothing wrong with the notion, but it does not seem to be working. The countries of the "third world" seem interested on making their own way, which does not necessarily meaning embracing "western values."

@Bat: Oh please European culture is doing just fine. And if it isn't it's not our faults that your people like our culture better.

edited 12th Jul '16 12:01:19 PM by JackOLantern1337

I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#129772: Jul 12th 2016 at 12:00:22 PM

[up] Who said anything about "Western values"? The global culture of the future will be as diverse as it ever was, just more politically connected. Some of that will mean sacrificing an amount of cultural amour propre on the part of various nations, but some of it will also mean sacrificing practices that are considered detrimental to humanity in general on the part of others.

But like it or not, the generations of the future will include increasing numbers of people who consider themselves global citizens rather than citizens of any particular nation. Sooner or later this will reach sufficient weight that what was informal will be made formal by mutual agreement.

The real problem will be dealing with the people who feel left behind by all of this and just want to live in their holes nursing their hidebound pride.

edited 12th Jul '16 12:03:23 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#129773: Jul 12th 2016 at 12:06:50 PM

@Fighteer: You know, you say that, but generally millenials in American and elsewhere in the western world have fairly reasonable and educated opinions compared to previous generations, particularly in regards to race and gender issues. It's far from perfect, but its a tremendous improvement. Which isn't surprising considering they're the most highly educated generation in our history.

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#129774: Jul 12th 2016 at 12:10:20 PM

I'm not just talking about millennials. Sure, they're pretty okay, but there are a lot of people who aren't a part of that group, and those have a say in things too. Also, the millennial generation includes lots of people who have grown up with economic and social disenfranchisement, and they are strictly limited in their ability to become informed.

edited 12th Jul '16 12:10:35 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Bat178 Since: May, 2011
#129775: Jul 12th 2016 at 12:12:45 PM

Though at least we appear in American media. The other North American countries besides the US like Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Panama, etc. usually don't even appear at all.


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