Nov 2023 Mod notice:
There may be other, more specific, threads about some aspects of US politics, but this one tends to act as a hub for all sorts of related news and information, so it's usually one of the busiest OTC threads.
If you're new to OTC, it's worth reading the Introduction to On-Topic Conversations
and the On-Topic Conversations debate guidelines
before posting here.
Rumor-based, fear-mongering and/or inflammatory statements that damage the quality of the thread will be thumped. Off-topic posts will also be thumped. Repeat offenders may be suspended.
If time spent moderating this thread remains a distraction from moderation of the wiki itself, the thread will need to be locked. We want to avoid that, so please follow the forum rules
when posting here.
In line with the general forum rules, 'gravedancing' is prohibited here. If you're celebrating someone's death or hoping that they die, your post will get thumped. This rule applies regardless of what the person you're discussing has said or done.
Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Historically speaking, the last time a major party collapsed, the Whigs back in the years proceeding the Civil War, the vacuum was filled up pretty fast. Northern Whigs wound up in the Republican Party, which then aggressively courted the two smaller, but influential at the state level, parties; the Know Nothings and the Free Soilers.
This allowed them another numbers in enough states to take on the Democrats in the 1860 election.
![]()
It gets better: The Donald himself asked his supporters to vote for him on the 28th
. Yes, 28 November, not 8.
Although interestingly enough that is the date he goes on trial over Trump University.
Reconsidering relations: For me it started with PVV fanboys. And then The Hashtag That Burned Out Faster Than Its Users Did Masturbating came along, and then there was the anti-feminist memers. All of which overlap with Trump fanboys. I got a hitlist as long as Mysterious Heroine X.
edited 12th Oct '16 8:45:36 AM by Krieger22
I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiot"Well, it's more about the mood/atmosphere than anything."
Yes, we're all members of an exclusive gentleman's club. We sit in a darkened room smoking cigars and drinking pretentiously named Grand-Cru wines from snifters while guffawing about the ignorance of the masses.
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."Best Of: And more open voting systems have their own problems, such as giving voices to such lovely folks as the various European neo-fascist parties. FPTP is not objectively worse than other systems, just different. Essentially, the coalition building necessary to form a government in nations that have proportional representation is forced into the party system itself. The good part about this is that it can prevent someone like Donald Trump from taking control of the nation because his opponents are busy fighting among themselves. The bad part is that it can allow a party that has no interest in governing to hijack the system and prevent anything from getting done. There are no perfect solutions, only tradeoffs.
Nervmeister: Letting hate "vent" doesn't solve anything. There is plenty of psychological and sociological evidence that doing this only reinforces it. It must be made clear in all public venues (and as many private venues as possible) that expressing such views is anathema and will not be tolerated. You can't kill the bigots without becoming something horrible, but you can ostracize and chastise them so they learn never to speak their minds. This is the only way to maintain a civil society.
edited 12th Oct '16 8:59:01 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"edited 12th Oct '16 8:56:30 AM by nervmeister
Yeah, having a way for "bigots to be bigots" legitimizes bigotry as part of the social fabric — that's exactly what an educated, diverse, accepting, and secular society should be working against.
Or just let them riot and then put them down. If they're going to threaten violence every time society doesn't adhere to their insanity, society doesn't need them.
edited 12th Oct '16 8:56:25 AM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."I'm not a US citizen, but I've been reconsidering my relationships and general outlook on life for like the past 2 years.
Over that time I've come to realize that arguably the biggest problem when it comes to dealing with these types of social issues is that our education system and media does an exceptionally poor job of preparing us to take part in real world issues.
Most people have a very shallow understanding of prejudice, and aren't prepared to constantly navigate complex, thorny problems - aka every social issue ever. They see things in very black and white ways and want to use a sledgehammer for every situation that requires a firm hand and a chisel.
I don't really know what that looks like, but one of the attempts I saw posted a while back in the Race thread was a great example of how NOT to do it. One educator was attempting to educate children about privilege in an upper class school, when all she was doing was basically fostering white guilt - and therefore not really solving anything.
edited 12th Oct '16 8:59:35 AM by Draghinazzo
![]()
, etc: Can we please not talk about mass murder (or imprisonment, or whatever) as a tool of government social policy? That's against our site's rules for a very good reason.
edited 12th Oct '16 9:00:01 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"@ Elections:
Weren't there UN election monitors monitoring the US Elections in 2012 and 2008?
@ Diplomats: I agree with Silas on this — certainly from what I've read, other countries prefer a professional Diplomatic Corps. Countries do make exceptions to the rule, of coursenote , but there's usually a good reason and the people are well-qualified for the position.
Keep Rolling On
Still, all you're accomplishing is to create a culture of martyrdom. Not really conducive to stamping out the belief system. Do you want an alt-right domestic insurgency that occasionally bombs schools and whatnot? It would make us more like other countries, that's for sure.
![]()
The United States does have a professional diplomatic corps. That some positions are given as political favors doesn't mean that all of them are.
edited 12th Oct '16 9:06:19 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"The FBI is incredibly adept at detecting, infiltrating, and breaking up honest to goodness insurgent groups. They're so good at it, in fact, that memes have spawned about most domestic terror cells being a Flock of Wolves. Testament to this is that every major terror incident in the past who knows how long (save one notable event, of course) has committed by one (or at most two) lone, radicalized actors.
edited 12th Oct '16 9:16:47 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Re: ambassadorships and diplomatic jobs being given as favors. Okay, so favors have to be repaid sometime down the line, since politics is still a form of human interaction. Giving a patron a useless posting as an ambassador at a quiet embassy somewhere means a.) they're out of sight; b.) their favor is repaid; c.) they can't cause any harm.
Ambassadors to important allies and volatile countries are pretty much always seasoned diplomats with extensive credentials, since their actions define American foreign policy.
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."Well, they've got a point. Back when my father was a kid, once you hit puberty and started getting the urges, you just went to the best brothel that you could afford. You were also very likely to get a wife early on, complete with Marital Rape License. The richer you were, the easier it was to get sex.
It's a fucking awful mindset, and the sex you'd get would be embedded in toxic misery, but there is that bit of truth to it.
At least until you overcome a certain tipping point in gender equality where girls are actually comfortable seeking casual sex for its own sake. Then everyone gets what they want, no strings or coercion or repression involved.
Guys, you want to, er, 'bust a nut' and 'get laid'? For starters, how about you stop slut-shaming?
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.Y'know, it occurs to me, we've been talking so much about the alt-Right lately, that I can't remember the last time the Tea Party specifically has been in the news. Are they just one and the same now?
https://twitter.com/jbarro/status/786191219160481792
I cannot wait for the mental gymnastics they'll use to defend this
New Survey coming this weekend!![]()
Yeah, mainly. The Tea Party as a dominant political group no longer really exists; it's been absorbed into the alt-right or split up into its libertarian and evangelical components. The actual group that we call the Tea Party was largely an astroturf movement funded by the Koch brothers; when they lost interest, it slowly dissolved.
Perhaps the saddest thing about this election from a personal level is that such a revelation no longer surprises me, nor even really shocks me. "Trump ogled underage girls in a beauty pageant dressing room." "Will this turn away his voters or his Republican establishment supporters? No?" *yawn*
edited 12th Oct '16 9:35:49 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I think the Tea Party has actually become "The Establishment," seeing as they have a faction already in power. The alt-right that Trump represents is (even more) nakedly racist. I guess the racist and nativist elements found the obstructionist libertarian wing too vanilla.
edited 12th Oct '16 9:31:41 AM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."Another one on Trump male and white supporters being insecure of their masculinity and thinking they are being oppressed.
The Precarious Masculinity of 2016 Voters
Several recent surveys suggest that when men feel persecuted, they turn to Donald Trump for affirmation.
Americans have tolerated much from Donald Trump. But for many, the leaked 2005 video in which he is heard bragging that “when you’re a star, you can do anything” to women—including “grab ’em by the pussy”—was a bridge too far.
The comment set off a collective gag across social media. Some women were so horrified that they tweeted stories of their first sexual assaults late into the evening. As the video hit the internet Friday, The New York Times started a running tally of Republicans defecting from his campaign. As my colleague David Graham wrote, women and Independent voters in particular have bailed on him.
But many Trump voters—38 percent, according to the latest Politico/Morning Consult poll—are refusing to abandon Trump. That choice raises a few questions: What exactly do they see in him that can sustain their loyalty? And how can they stomach what he's said?
For some voters, Trump's boasting about sexual assault doesn't mean he's unfit to run the country. And for the men among them, what Trump's candidacy offers seems more important than his comments 11 years ago.
Many men, in fact, see Trump as the candidate who can restore men’s status in society. According to several recent analyses, about half of men feel American culture has become too soft and feminine, and they feel men are suffering as a result. Many seem to find comfort in Trump’s talk of male dominance and success.
Trump supporters are more likely than Clinton supporters to feel that society punishes men just for acting like men, while Clinton supporters are far more likely to “completely disagree” with that statement, according to an analysis of likely voters in a poll conducted by PRRI and The Atlantic between October 5 and October 9.
Not all the men surveyed could stand by Trump after his hot-mic comments on women, which were made public as pollsters were still collecting their data. Wiley, a 60-year-old in Hurst, Texas, liked Trump’s stance on jobs and immigration. But the Access Hollywood video was too much for him—and he now plans not to cast a vote for president. “His mouth, the cussing, the vulgarity,” he said. “My father’s a preacher, and we just have a very strong faith, so it’s not something we can live with.”
Meanwhile, 65-year-old Ed in Summit, Wisconsin, still plans to vote for Trump. “It was inappropriate and unprofessional,” he said, referring to the Republican nominee’s remarks on women. But, “having been in a number of locker rooms in my years ... there’s always somebody in there that’s trying to be more macho than the guy next to him. Ms. Clinton couldn’t control her husband in the past. How is she going to control the country?”
In the PRRI/The Atlantic survey, education level and gender played a role in whether respondents felt men are punished unfairly by society. Men—and less-educated men in particular— were more likely than women to agree. Among Americans with a high-school degree or less, 25 percent “completely agreed” that men are punished just for being themselves.
The education gap seems even more striking when pollsters asked people if they think “society as a whole has become too soft and feminine.” White, working-class Americans—a crucial part of Trump’s base—were more likely to agree with that statement than white, college-educated respondents were.
Overall, half of men agreed with that assertion, compared with 32 percent of women. Republicans, conservatives, and Trump supporters were also far more likely than liberals, Democrats, or Clinton supporters to say society is becoming soft.
Ed, in Wisconsin, was one of those voters who laments the softening of America. He said people are becoming too afraid to criticize things like illegal immigration. And he does see some reverse gender discrimination. “Everyone talks about breast cancer, but prostate cancer is just as bad for men,” he said.
The PRRI/The Atlantic results—gleaned from 1,327 U.S. adults reached by cell and landline phone—mirror other recent analyses of the impact of male anxiety on support for Trump. In an August Pew poll, a slight minority—45 percent—of all respondents believed that the obstacles that made it hard for women to get ahead are largely gone. But among Republicans who felt that way, support for Trump was overwhelming, at 91 percent.
Meanwhile, an analysis published in the Harvard Business Review by Dan Cassino, a political science professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, showed that Republican men increasingly feel discriminated against. According to the American National Election Study, nine percent of Republican men said men faced “a great deal” or “a lot” of discrimination in 2012, but that figure rose to 18 percent in 2016, Cassino points out:
If we add in those men who say that men face “a moderate amount” of discrimination, 41 percent of Republican men now say that men are being discriminated against.
According to Cassino, the more independent and Republican men support Trump, the more likely they are to feel discriminated against. And the more marginalized they feel, the more negatively they view Hillary Clinton:
“Men used to run everything,” Cassino told me. “And now they don’t, and Hillary Clinton is the apotheosis of these fears.”
The problem, Cassino writes, is that many men see social gains as zero-sum. Women have notched progress toward equality in the workplace, parenting, and other domains in recent decades, and men see these advances as coming at their expense. “Men who perceive discrimination against men are more likely to oppose mandatory employer coverage of contraception and parental-leave laws,” he writes. It doesn’t matter that free birth-control pills won’t affect men—other than positively, if they don’t want children.
“There’s this tendency as social change takes place — you see it with whites, too — the privileged group says, ‘We’re the ones being discriminated against,’” Peter Glick, a social sciences professor at Lawrence University, told The Washington Post. “Any policies that favor minority groups or women, there’s backlash: ‘They’re getting special breaks, and we’re getting screwed over.’”
In a separate study, Cassino found that even asking men whether they made “more, less, or about the same as their spouses” before asking them about the election increased their support for Trump—even among those who earned more than their wives. The question simply primed them to think about how good women supposedly have it. As Cassino explains, again in the Harvard Business Review:
Men who weren’t asked about spousal income until late in the survey preferred Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump in a hypothetical general election matchup by a 16-point margin; men who were asked about spousal income only a few questions before being asked about the Clinton-Trump matchup preferred Trump by an eight-point margin—a 24-point shift in preferences.
Men who fear the rise of women can bask in the reflected glory of Trump’s testosterone-revved, macho persona. Even prior to Friday’s leaked video, he has repeatedly made statements praising traditional gender divisions, such as saying the extent of his parenting would be “supplying funds.” Trump hearkens back to a time when men were on top. Clinton-supporting women see that nostalgia as a threat. But to many Trump-supporting men, his rhetoric is a promise of status restored.
edited 12th Oct '16 9:59:06 AM by AngelusNox
Inter arma enim silent leges

4chan is very much the example why venting never works. Each and every time racist content took over a board, it started taking over other boards as well. And then they just gave up.
Well, it's their own fault nobody unwilling to serve malware in addition to ads wants to advertise on them. Fuck knows where Voat gets the money.
And I always pegged OTC to be closer to The War Room if it were a physical place.
I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiot