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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
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Most Right-Wingers don't understand that and see the UN as do nothing organization that just bad mouths the US.
I actually think some of them are still upset over the UN not going along with us during the Iraq War, as well smaller nations daring to use the UN as a platform to advance their interest, especially when it's against ours.
This is maybe more international than national politics but while I don't think withdrawing from the UN is a good idea, does it actually do anything when it comes to keeping the world's superpowers in line?
The whole security council veto thing, with all the members of said council heading down increasingly dubious paths...and when you look at Syria and US diplomacy apparently not being able to do much...
The United Nations is more of an ideal than a governing body. It's a place where all nations of the world have the opportunity to be heard. It's a place dedicated to the ideal of peaceful cooperation. It has little direct power due to the Security Council veto, but it has enormous indirect influence through its humanitarian and peacekeeping arms. It's the start of something that could, someday, be a true world government.
Withdrawing from it would be catastrophic to world peace and solidarity.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"A couple months ago, there was some sort of issue with some Canadians somewhere in the Middle East. (I don't remember where, I'm sorry), and Canada didn't have an embassy or a consulate or anything. So Canada went through the UN back doors, like Switzerland and Oman, and got the Canadians back.
The UN is a great way to talk to someone you don't have official relations with, basically.
Re Democratic Party Election Strategy: There is a difference between a candidate trying to act more like Trump on the one hand and engaging the concerns of people who voted for him in a respectful and truthful way on the other. Of course, many of them are motivated by racism, but even that doesn't preclude a conversation that could wean some of them away. Few of the people who voted for Trump actually voted for Trump- they voted against Hillary or for getting their jobs back. Provide candidates who aren't tainted by scandal and coverups, and who seem to care about the economic opportunities available to everyone, not just one narrow constituency, and we could very well win back some seats.
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.![]()
The simple fact of being able to go to a place, or send a representative to a place, and talk to other nations without having to go through an embassy or diplomatic communique, or whatever, creates enormous opportunities to resolve issues peacefully that might otherwise have come to blows. Again, if the U.S. withdraws, it signals the return to an era when warfare was the default way to resolve disagreements between nations.
edited 22nd Jan '17 3:51:26 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"That depends entirely on what you mean by "in line", it doesn't keep superpowers from propping up dictatorships or committing war crimes , but it does prevent them from fighting each other and causing a world war.
That's why the UN exists, not to stop the US or Russia from doing horrible things but to keep them from fighting each other.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranTwo kinds of people voted for Trump: die hard Republicans, who are a cult in all but name and will never vote for any candidate the Democrats run; and chumps who bought the Trump campaign's lies.
The former are a dead end, and it's pointless to waste time and energy attempting to woo them. The latter are not a matter of respectful engagement, they are a matter of combating fake news, propaganda, and outright lies. Purging that shit from our political process is going to be a long, grueling process, and isn't something that we're likely to see completed for years, if not decades, if ever.
The short term strategy for the Dems has to be to firing up their own base, combating voter suppression, and shining a spotlight on all the shady shit the Trump administration and the GOP try to pull over the next four years to keep people angry and ready to vote against them. The number one thing they need to do is stop playing ball like the Republicans are still acting in good faith. Stop giving them inches, stop giving them the benefit of the doubt, and take off the kid gloves when calling them out on their shit.
...so Hillary?
Remind me how that turned out.
Hillary was tainted by scandals, they might have been false and manufactured but they still tainted her, likewise she didn't seem to care about the economics of the rural middle-class, sure she did care, but she didn't appear to (mainly due to the press deciding to work against her).
edited 22nd Jan '17 4:24:11 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranWhich is the key word here: it's not really about what the candidate IS, so much as how they can sell themselves to the people.
That's sorta what I was talking about when I said the democrats needed a basically "perfect" candidate to win. Both Bill Clinton and Obama benefitted from being charismatic, uniting the party around them and banking on the people's dissatisfaction with the poor economic conditions that were largely attributed to an unpopular Republican administration.
edited 22nd Jan '17 4:29:40 PM by Draghinazzo
Right, but that's my point. Hillary was free of scandals, and was genuinely concerned about the economic welfare of the entire country.
The Trump campaign was still able to successfully paint her as exceedingly corrupt and hostile to the economic concerns of "real Americans." At that point the problem is less the candidate, and more the Right's ability to delude the country with repetition of lies going unchecked by the news media.
'd
edited 22nd Jan '17 4:32:20 PM by Wryte
That's part of why it would be nice for the next Democratic candidate to have a reality distortion field of their own.
If they're sufficiently charismatic the Right's lies and propaganda will matter less, especially if the country is in sufficiently bad shape in 4 years. Republicans tried to throw all kinds of shit at Obama but he was way too inspiring for much of it to stick, and in the end they cared more about how they felt they could trust him and that he would be a positive change after the mediocrity of the Bush administration.
Also Trump will now be the incumbent, the press are going to be working against him if he looks secure in 4 years, the press want a horse race, they want a tight fight that gets them ratings. That way well hurt Trump in the future.
edited 22nd Jan '17 4:51:09 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranOn the National Parks Service issue, Trump walked back slightly on it. It went from 'ban' to 'don't tweet anything that's not official business, and don't tweet this weekend'. It was issued to all other departments that belong to the Interior as well. They're not allowed to do any new policy tweeting until the new person in charge of Interior is in post and can actually decide what the new policy will be.
Not saying it's any better behaviour, just giving an update on where things went next.
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.All right, we need to hash some things out here. We may all be on the same side, but we don't see eye to eye.
"Two kinds of people voted for Trump: die hard Republicans, who are a cult in all but name and will never vote for any candidate the Democrats run; and chumps who bought the Trump campaign's lies" You're stereotyping, which is not helpful. I am personally acquainted with a number of people who voted for Trump, and none of them are cult-like in their behavior or thinking. They are about as likely to vote for a Democrat as I am a Republican, meaning it's rather unlikely, but they would be willing to listen to someone. As for lies, with Trump you pretty much get what you see. We don't like him because of the racist, misogynist, bigoted things he has said, but he pretty much says what he thinks (the Republican Party leadership, by contrast, lies all the time).
Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, is a deeply flawed candidate who probably shouldn't have run. The Democratic Party leadership colluded to undermine the Sanders campaign in favor of Clinton (see here
, and here
). She certainly knew that she had broken security regulations with her email server long before she admitted it
- a case where the coverup is far worse than the crime (runs in the family). As for Benghazi, its hard to believe that she really didn't know what she claimed not to know as long as she claimed not to know it
. Her whole career is filled with incidents like this, where she appears to be covering up a mistake that itself would have been relatively minor had she just fessed up. Bottom line, she wasn't the ideal candidate to run at any time. Still, she did win the popular vote, and would have won the electoral one if our system wasn't rigged in favor of small, rural states.
But the game is what the game is, and we have to play it by the rules, until such time as we can get those rules changed. The best weapon we have, regardless of who we are talking to, is the truth. It's always worth telling the truth to people even if they don't want to hear it. Remember, by arguing with the extreme right, we aren't trying to change the minds of the extreme right (although that happens often enough), but those people in the middle who are listening to the debate. It's a tug of rhetorical war, one end in their hands, one end in ours, and the midpoint of the rope says "average opinion". Most of the people to the right of the average are not college educated, urban dwelling people living and working with a diverse range of people. But you speak to them, more respectfully than they speak to you, because every person you sway moves that rope a little more to the left.
For example, everyone does, says and thinks racist things. The main thing that differentiates us from the right is that we are willing to admit it, as a step in the process of doing better. The people I know who were willing to vote for Trump see themselves as in competition with people of color for jobs and other economic opportunities. On an emotional level, it feels right to them to blame affirmative action, illegal immigration and federal regulations for the loss of their traditional career choices. It isn't true, but their own experiences do not give them another point of view.
I have asked many of these people "If we could find a way to provide jobs to everyone, would you support that?" What about retraining programs, job placement, loans to small businesses, stimulus spending that was evenly spread across all communities? I ask them if they would support more legal immigration if we could get illegal immigration under control. What if we streamlined government regulations so they were easier to conform to and placed less of a paperwork or financial burden on small businesses?
They don't always agree, but they are mostly open to this sort of thing. And it's not hard to find evidence that globalization and increasing wealth disparity is hurting the white working class. And we progressives have policies that would help them. So why not make the argument, and maybe move that rope?
Notice that I'm emphatically not recommending that we water down what we propose to do. Government stimulus spending, increased immigration, making the federal bureaucracy more efficient are not popular positions in the Republican party. Protecting human rights. Defending the environment. Building bridges overseas. The Koch Bros. will go after such candidates like a tempest of vipers. But the Republican establishment has never been weaker. White working class America has figured out that their party lied to them, that promises were made that no one had any intention of keeping. We didn't lie to them. There is an opening here.
And after all, we aren't going to win back the Congress by relying only on voters who already agree with us. We have to reach out, we have to clarify our talking points and repeat them endlessly, until the overton window moves back in our favor. This kind of retail politics isn't easy or clean or quick, but it's how you play this game.
edited 22nd Jan '17 6:30:29 PM by DeMarquis
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.

RANDOM CONGRESSMAN: Doo-de-do-de-do... Hm? What's that you say? There's a bill that could remove America from the UN? Well, why didn't you say so? That's a great idea! Let's sign that sucker ASAP! What? You said you called me because you wanted to make sure I didn't sign it? Well, tough luck sucker!
Again, I may be completely off base with this, but I really think it might best just not to touch this for now until we hear more news about it. If we more news.
edited 22nd Jan '17 2:01:09 PM by kkhohoho