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
@Tactifox: Sure, the twenty-year-old daughter of the unemployed coal miner has been fucking humanity over forever. We should never reach out to her, her brother, her grandmother. Listen to yourself.
On a sillier note, and since we're in Fictionalndpedia, see here, Ma and Pa Kent, decent folks, as decent as they come... do you think they'd have voted Trump this year? Would that have made them unforgivable and undeserving of being talked to?
edited 26th Nov '16 2:26:41 PM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.Good point.
The worst part is, this all seems unnecessary. It's not like the oil companies can't afford to switch to renewables; they have the capital, they have the men, they have the power. I think they're in some sort of game of chicken due to one of those Nash Equilibrium traps due to perverse incentives.
They are. The one who sticks to coal, gas and other CO 2 emitting fuels while the others go to renewables is likely to remain King of the Hill, while the others get sued by their shareholders and lose profits, I'd wager.
Most of society's economic issues are due to essentially Nash-ing because the one who serves last wins, economically speaking.
Wheeeee, the world burns.
edited 26th Nov '16 2:39:42 PM by PotatoesRock
Aren't they themselves advocating for and investing in green energies and situated in the middle the damage area of Global Warming?
Because if they hold that kind of sway, then we haven't made much progress since the times of Slave Power
in DC.
@henry
How in the heck do you know so little about the candidate you yourself are pushing? Stein has money invested in almost every corporation she denounced.
Given that their own adoptive son is an illegal alien whom Trump would cheerfully try to deport...yeah, yeah it would.
That's without getting into the fact that the character at DC who most often spouts Tea Party style rhetoric is Luthor. Who, as you may have noticed, they're not overly fond of.
edited 26th Nov '16 2:42:02 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
The old Steinbeck Temporarily Embarrassed Millionaire
might have had something to do with this situation too.
These guys need to see In The Heights.
Unfortunately, those are poor predictors. We've heard, right here, several stories of extremely decent people voting for Trump because they're misinformed and/or out of misguided partisan loyalty, even when Trump actually is against every single thing they stand for.
edited 26th Nov '16 2:49:10 PM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.I think so, a lot of it's probably waiting for the roll over moment, so to speak, where it becomes more fiscially sustainable/rewarding to do so.
I'm pretty sure Republicans feet dragging by insisting on sticking to Coal, Oil and Gas also is holding it up. Which is on that front economically, reasonable in a shortsighted sense, unfortunately. Because the moment you make Oil worthless, the Dakotas might as well turn into a Mad Maxian Post-Apocalypse Hellscape, relatively speaking.
Economic disruption is a bitch.
I mean, I don't think anyone thought it was realistic to get the world to quit fossil fuels cold turkey. All the rest of the world is doing that the GOP isn't acknowledging that we have a dangerous addiction.
Like, that's literally it. Plenty of people aren't actually doing anything about it, but at least they acknowledge that the problem is real.
That's why you plan those things out and don't let the footsoldier citizen pay for the change. You retrain, you relocate, you diversify, you help people out. You don't just make them obsolete and then leave them in the curb. They're not machines, they're human beings, with feelings, aspirations... and votes that are worth five times as much as yours.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.I think the election has largely put people (liberals, especially) in an extremely uncomfortable position in terms of what they have to do going forward.
Because honestly, I've gotten the impression that besides the xenophobia, racism, and apathy the other big pillar in Trump's rise was the startling ignorance in the US.
So many people living in small towns which are basically time capsules, where they have very little in the way of economic or educational opportunities, and their main sources of information as to what goes on in the outside world are open TV and maybe a few shitty radio stations.
So these people had no real idea that they were presumably being conned, or any of the horrible implications and consequences that would come to pass if Trump won.
However, it doesn't really change the fact that by voting for him they were complicit in all the horrible shit that Trump symbolizes and the terrible things he's going to do going forward. Ignorance and malice are different things, but in many cases they have the same result.
So I think that people who ARE aware of the things Trump is going to do, and fear that their rights and lives might be in danger, have every right to resent them for that, because whether they realized it or not, they have part of the blame.
...but because of their lack of education, those people don't have the intellectual or moral framework to understand just WHY people are so mad at them. Unless something gives, it's just gonna be people talking past each other.
@AmbarSonofDeshar
Here's an excerpt from the response on her campaign's website
:
While I have explored “green” mutual funds, I found their investments in fracking and large scale biofuels not much better than the non-green funds. I have not yet found the mutual funds that represent my goals of advancing the cause of people, planet and peace. Admittedly I have not spent a lot of time researching elusive ethical investments. I prefer using my time fighting for social, economic and ecological transformation, and recycling capitalist money into the fight to do so.
And let's not forget there's also probably a ton of low information voters who barely even follow politics that closely, either out of lack of resources/time or just sheer disinterest. And may have gone "Eh, tired of politics as usual, hey it's Donald Trump from The Apprentice, he's a pretty successful guy! I'll vote for him. And that E-Mail stuff I heard a blurb about sounded pretty shady. 🤔"
edited 26th Nov '16 3:27:20 PM by PotatoesRock
Venezula is an OPEC country. Part of its collapse is because their oil reserve value imploded due to the recent drop on barrel prices.
If the oil reserves become functionally worthless / funny money, the countries relying on them to prop themselves up are going to find themselves in a proverbial barrel. Which leads to social unrest.
And a fair number of Middle Eastern countries rely on their oil holding economic value to not implode on themselves. Saudi Arabia being a key example where they throw money at the populace to keep things stable and keep them out of grunt work by importing foreigners. When they can't sustain that any further (say due to Oil becoming worthless due to a massive shift in renewables).
"Whelp." doesn't even begin to describe how bad it goes.
edited 26th Nov '16 3:46:57 PM by PotatoesRock
I tend to think that the majority of those who actually voted were just going by name recognition, and knew very little about the actual issues or the candidates' platforms. Nor could they be bothered to find out.
It's this attitude of complete indifference to politics that (I suspect) allowed Arnold Schwarzenegger to be elected Der Guvernator of California in that recall election. "Hey, Ah-Nuld is on the ballot! Let's vote for him!" (giggle, snicker...)
Then, when the results came in: "...he fucking won??"
Same goes for Jesse Ventura, Sonny Bono, Clint Eastwood, Al Franken...
edited 26th Nov '16 4:30:50 PM by pwiegle
This Space Intentionally Left Blank.

Showing these people sympathy and talking to them is the only chance we have at trying to knock some common sense into them, and if we're ever going to try and heal the divide in this country, then it's something we need to at least try to do. Because if we don't, then it's Civil War II, mark my words.
edited 26th Nov '16 2:23:30 PM by kkhohoho