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

nervmeister Since: Oct, 2010
#139476: Sep 21st 2016 at 11:51:31 AM

[up]Fair enough. It's a temporary "bandaid" at best though.

Parable Since: Aug, 2009
#139477: Sep 21st 2016 at 12:00:15 PM

I'm all for teaching racists to not be racists. But it's a long term goal while stopping them from committing racists acts now is what needs to be addressed if we're ever going to get around to that.

Civil rights legislation had to be enforced by the federal government before many Anglo Americans came around to accepting that everyone else should be treated equally.

The country decided slavery was wrong only after the Union forced their emancipation with cannon fire and death.

edited 21st Sep '16 12:01:18 PM by Parable

FFShinra Since: Jan, 2001
#139478: Sep 21st 2016 at 12:01:49 PM

Then you need another issue for TPTB to care about that helps end racism as a secondary effect. That was what the Civil War ultimately was.

nervmeister Since: Oct, 2010
#139479: Sep 21st 2016 at 12:04:09 PM

[up][up]You make a valid point. As long as the more lasting solution doesn't involve exchanging one form of aggressive collectivism for another, then there's hope.

[up]Personally, I think there's no chance of racism or at least racial bias (completely) ending as long as personal insecurity exists. In fact, I strongly feel that the only way to ensure that every single person on earth happily gets along with each other is to exterminate free will.

This brings me to one of my favorite quotes by Eric Hoffer:

"The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause."

edited 21st Sep '16 12:14:37 PM by nervmeister

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#139480: Sep 21st 2016 at 12:15:07 PM

[up] It's built into our tribal nature. We're wired by biology to sort people into "our tribe" and "others", and to fear the others. The goal is to expand the concept of the tribe until it encompasses all of humanity, not to magically make fear of otherness vanish.

Those who won't go along with this must be culled, whether by time (they'll die off eventually) or, if necessary, by force if they seek to violently undo progress.

edited 21st Sep '16 12:17:42 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Parable Since: Aug, 2009
#139481: Sep 21st 2016 at 12:17:04 PM

Joss Whedon returns to Twitter with a voting initiative website encouraging people to vote to stop Trump.

He brought along some friends:

nervmeister Since: Oct, 2010
#139482: Sep 21st 2016 at 12:17:32 PM

[up][up]And if intelligent space aliens show up?.........

Or another question: What if someone has no palpable fear of your idea of progress, but at the same time, due to fierce individualism, refuses to live by any "tribe's" norms except his/her own? Yeah, I know it's psychologically impossible, but what if someone was able to noticeably come as close as one realistically can?

edited 21st Sep '16 12:24:57 PM by nervmeister

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#139483: Sep 21st 2016 at 12:18:11 PM

[up] Then we'll probably have a good chunk of the population that's violently hostile to them. Can't be helped; we are humans after all. In order to be able to do anything about our failings, we must first acknowledge them.

Good news: most possible results of Fermi's Paradox give us a really long time to reach Singularity before the aliens contact us.

edited 21st Sep '16 12:19:22 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
nightwyrm_zero Since: Apr, 2010
#139484: Sep 21st 2016 at 12:19:12 PM

Well then, it seems that the best case scenario for world peace is an alien invasion. tongue

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#139485: Sep 21st 2016 at 12:20:11 PM

That's not entirely wrong; in fact, Krugman has written on more than one occasion that perhaps the only way to get Keynesian economics adopted worldwide is to fake an alien invasion.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Greenmantle V from Greater Wessex, Britannia Since: Feb, 2010 Relationship Status: Hiding
V
#139486: Sep 21st 2016 at 12:21:47 PM

[up][up][up]

Then we'll probably have a good chunk of the population that's violently hostile to them. Can't be helped; we are humans after all.

Quite. Survival of the species must come first.

[up][up] Quite. Although there might not be much peace when it comes to an Alien Invasion.

[up] Or wait for a real one?

[down] Of course, it depends on how alien said aliens are...

edited 21st Sep '16 12:23:48 PM by Greenmantle

Keep Rolling On
Gilphon (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#139487: Sep 21st 2016 at 12:23:02 PM

I don't think anyone's naive enough to believe there won't be tolerance problems if we make contact with extraterrestrials. That's pretty much inevitable. We could, of course, attempt to limit the impact and magnitude of such problems,but preventing them entirely just isn't going to happen.

ironballs16 Since: Jul, 2009 Relationship Status: Owner of a lonely heart
#139488: Sep 21st 2016 at 12:31:53 PM

So I stumbled across this today via a friend on Facebook, where Sen. Warren tore into the CEO of Wells-Fargo for the recent shenanigans, and summed it up with a wonderful "Reason You Suck" Speech after setting him up to equivocate on how many shares of stock he had in the company.

Warren then produced the information herself, saying that Stumpf held an average of 6.75 million shares in the company in that time frame — and that the share price had risen by about $30, "which comes out to more than $200 million in gains, all for you personally, and thanks in part to those cross-sell numbers that you talked about on every one of those calls."

Here's what Warren said toward the end of her allotted time to question Stumpf:

"Here's what really gets me about this, Mr. Stumpf. If one of your tellers took a handful of $20 bills out of the crash[sic] drawer, they'd probably be looking at criminal charges for theft. They could end up in prison.

"But you squeezed your employees to the breaking point so they would cheat customers and you could drive up the value of your stock and put hundreds of millions of dollars in your own pocket.

"And when it all blew up, you kept your job, you kept your multi-multimillion-dollar bonuses, and you went on television to blame thousands of $12-an-hour employees who were just trying to meet cross-sell quotas that made you rich.

"This is about accountability. You should resign. You should give back the money that you took while this scam was going on, and you should be criminally investigated by both the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission. This just isn't right."

What's most telling about all this, though, was that Sen. Toomey (R-PA) hopped on the bandwagon with her, giving this brief Armor-Piercing Question during his time.

"You state unequivocally that there are no orchestrated effort or scheme, as some have called it, by the company," Toomey told Stumpf. "But when thousands of people conduct the same kind of fraudulent activity, it's a stretch to believe that every one of them independently conjured up this idea of how they would commit this fraud."

edited 21st Sep '16 12:32:52 PM by ironballs16

"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"
Zendervai Since: Oct, 2009
#139489: Sep 21st 2016 at 12:33:37 PM

The thing is that if aliens conduct us and not the other way around, they're going to be more technologically advanced than us. Maybe not in all ways, but they will be more advanced, which would hurt the "I'm better than them" justification.

CaptainCapsase from Orbiting Sagittarius A* Since: Jan, 2015
#139490: Sep 21st 2016 at 12:35:17 PM

Assuming they even bother to attempt to make contact with the primitive lifeforms on Earth rather than simply eradicating us (perhaps even accidentally).

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#139492: Sep 21st 2016 at 12:39:58 PM

Assuming that the speed of light is an absolute limit and it is not possible to bypass within the laws of physics, then any visitation from aliens would almost certainly be either probes (sent to determine if our solar system contains planets that are compatible with their form of life) or Grey Goo (von Neumann machines intended to remotely terraform our planet(s) so that the colony ships will find a hospitable environment when they arrive). Any logical species would include some mechanism to warn said colony ships in advance if the terraforming effort fails.

The idea of conducting interstellar warfare without FTL Travel is laughable. At best, we could detect the terraforming machines and find a way to counter them. At worst, we'd all be dead before we knew what was going on.

Sadly, the Alien Invasion will remain a matter of science fiction alone. Unless it doesn't, and then unless we are the invaders, we lose. It's that simple.

But if we could stage such a threat in a believable fashion, we might get most people to fall in line behind a world government with the power to fix things. This is, after all, the plot of Watchmen, albeit with the threat being of our own creation (and actually real), as opposed to alien invaders.

edited 21st Sep '16 1:05:35 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
nervmeister Since: Oct, 2010
#139493: Sep 21st 2016 at 12:44:16 PM

[up]**sigh** It's amazing to think I still haven't come up with a better way of getting into space than the last guy's idea of strapping a huge f**king explosive to a fancy gas-guzzler of a plane.

Also, Fighteer, humanity doesn't need to become a huge, world-spanning "tribe". It needs to be made up of as many self-realized individuals as possible.

edited 21st Sep '16 12:58:06 PM by nervmeister

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#139494: Sep 21st 2016 at 12:57:22 PM

The space elevator is our current best idea for how to use the minimum amount of energy to get to space. But getting "to space" is only the first part of your problems. Getting from Earth orbit to anywhere else is just as much of a challenge — just one that can be more easily solved once you've solved the first problem. (Obligatory xkcd reference)

To go back a bit, since you ninja-edited a page-bottom post (tsk, tsk):

Or another question: What if someone has no palpable fear of your idea of progress, but at the same time, due to fierce individualism, refuses to live by any "tribe's" norms except his/her own? Yeah, I know it's psychologically impossible, but what if someone was able to noticeably come as close as one realistically can?
Eh. As long as they don't interfere with what everyone else is doing, it doesn't really matter. Rugged individualism cannot stand against the march of progress; it's literally a millions-to-one situation. If they get in the way, well... the response depends on how annoying they become.

And, of course, you need individualist voices in any collective effort for various reasons: to warn of dangers, to call out dogmatic stupidity, to incite rebellion against corrupt authority, to innovate, etc.

humanity doesn't need to become a huge, world-spanning "tribe". It needs to be made up of as many self-realized individuals as possible.
It's functionally the same thing. I don't mean we all become mind-slaves to the Collective Will. But until we are all "self-realized individuals making good choices", we need authority to coerce us into behaving like a tribe.

edited 21st Sep '16 1:03:17 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Elle Since: Jan, 2001
#139495: Sep 21st 2016 at 12:58:49 PM

[up][up]We could bypass a lot of that if we established the space architecture to have a launch point outside the main portion of Earth's gravity well. Until then the push is for making the fancy plane with the explosives strapped to it cheaper and safer.

Space elevator, IIRC, still currently requires materials that are effectively Unobtanium for us (we can make them but not cheaply or in sufficient quantity).

edited 21st Sep '16 1:00:30 PM by Elle

TobiasDrake (•̀⤙•́) (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Arm chopping is not a love language!
(•̀⤙•́)
#139496: Sep 21st 2016 at 1:00:34 PM

The constant references to participation trophies in anti-millennial media — a genre of its own at this point — perplexes me. I mean, I get that "we're all winners!" is an asinine statement (even though the concept of mutual benefit isn't talked about nearly enough in our politics), but why do middle-aged people think millennials crave participation trophies, or that we receive so many of them? I received like, two or three when I was five, but they're dinky, plastic pieces of crap and always a product of mollifying enraged Baby Boomer parents who live vicariously through their childrens' achievements.

My favorite comment on this is something I saw on Twitter a while back. Paraphrased.

"Baby boomers keep going on about participation trophies. We were just kids! YOU were in charge of the trophies!"

It's a popular talking point because it implies millennials are lazy and unmotivated, which is a popular myth that baby boomers like to throw around. But it's nonsense because we weren't the ones demanding the trophies in the first place.

My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
LeGarcon Blowout soon fellow Stalker from Skadovsk Since: Aug, 2013 Relationship Status: Gay for Big Boss
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
#139497: Sep 21st 2016 at 1:03:14 PM

I read an interesting take that the participation trophies actually made kids grow up with a lot of self doubt. Kids are perceptive, they know when they did poorly and they see that everyone got a trophy and they grow up never believing any other praise they receive through life and they end up having no self esteem or faith in their abilities.

All of the "laziness" is actually depression.

The article worded it far better than I ever did but I remember it being really interesting.

Oh really when?
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#139498: Sep 21st 2016 at 1:16:17 PM

[up] Yeah, my son called this out when he was quite a bit younger and got a "participation medal". The only people who think they have any value are the ones giving them out, not the ones getting them.

Space elevator, IIRC, still currently requires materials that are effectively Unobtanium for us (we can make them but not cheaply or in sufficient quantity).
We seem to be discussing a hypothetical future in which we have solved technological barriers to space travel to the extent possible within our physical universe. We're also veering rather far off topic, but whatever.

edited 21st Sep '16 1:17:07 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
thatguythere47 Since: Jul, 2010
#139500: Sep 21st 2016 at 1:34:48 PM

I've heard some rumblings on using railguns to greatly reduce the cost of sending stuff up. People would still need rockets because our squishy bodies can't handle that type of boom but ramen noodles don't give af.

I'm not so sure a world government is all that big a leap from nation states. That nations can have an identity is laughable when you really think about it and yet some people will lose their fucking minds if you don't stand for an anthem. Get a nice flag and a catchy anthem and the average citizen wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?

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