They are both entirely mad. The planet is populated by mad, powercrazy fruitcakes (not the mods who do a great job citizens) and I will watch it in wonder until I die.
Tonights Debate : Clinton v Trump
- Thread starter longers
- Start date
- Status
They are both entirely mad. The planet is populated by mad, powercrazy fruitcakes (not the mods who do a great job citizens) and I will watch it in wonder until I die.
Haha, I'm telling ya man, George hook for 8 years, just imagine it
gorgeousgeorgeEFC
Player Valuation: £25m
Is it just me or did Hillary look quite attractive last night?
Gladystweet
Player Valuation: £50m
I'd rather endure 3,500 years of Trump as my slug God-Emperor than have to listen to George Hook address the nation
So I don't disagree with you fully. You may be surprised. Intellectually I follow your logic trail and it feels good. Democrats DO keep trotting out what would have been Republicans (fiscally and militarily) 20 years ago, let along 40 years ago. But I think you're banking on the wrong antecedents.I don't think voting Trump in will be a quick fix, far from it. And I agree that it may have the perverse effect of legitimising the opinions of the absolute tubes that comprise a large portion of his support. But it will at least ask questions of the two main political parties (who have an unopposed monopoly on the political dialogue), questions that they haven't had to ask themselves until now. It may not even work. But voting in Hillary definitely won't.
Well done to Occupy Wall Street for bringing 1% into common parlance. Meanwhile, in the following years, the wealth inequality chasm grows ever wider and the movement has yielded absolutely no return. Let's have a look at the Civil Rights movement. There was a long term goal that seemed only vaguely obtainable. To join it meant you were signing up to the possibility of being beaten by police, thrown in jail, declared a danger to society. And a lot of the establishment did everything to support that dynamic. People accepted that there would be short term hardship and a genuine danger to their livelihood, but did it anyway until the dialogue changed. Protesters don't have that fear anymore, because they are mostly white middle-class people who sign online petitions, protest every now and again(not beyond the point of comfort) and are more concerned with how their activism looks on Facebook than what results it achieves. It doesn't work, because authorities know that any flavour-of-the-month cause will eventually dissipate in the face of affluence and apathy. BLM is genuinely different, because it's fuelled by genuine anger, and they are escalating it necessarily. It looks and acts like a real protest.
Mainstream Republicans don't want Trump, they never did. But liberals are doing their trademark thing of putting right wingers and Republicans in the same box and sticking a label on it instead of trying to understand the complexity and divisions that exist on their side. Every Brexit voter is a racist. Everyone who voted in Cameron hates the poor. It's making political discourse more and more polarised and it plays into the hands of a political system like the US.
The Republicans may well eventually control house and senate, but a large contingent of them will not be relishing a Trump presidency. Even If they think Trump could be a vehicle to shoehorn in traditional conservative policies, they will be proven very wrong. The man is nuts, and exists outside of their rules, good luck keeping a leash on him. He won't be the first buffoon to hold a position of power in the Western world (Tony Abbott, Rob Ford) and he won't be the last. This idea that he's going to launch nukes the minute he gets into office is patently nonsense. In fact, he's the only candidate in the course of the Republican primaries who espoused a non-interventionist policy.
I stress, I don't think it's going to change America into a hand-holding utopia. In fact, in the short term, I accept it might well do the opposite. But the two parties who control the whole system will eventually have to start recognising that people aren't going to stand for the likes of Hillary Clinton anymore, and that populist candidates like Paul, Sanders and Trump aren't going away. Otherwise, they'll keep moving the goalposts during their primaries and make sure their candidate is the one that serves their interests, people be damned. This is only a shot in the arm for their electoral system, nothing more.
Here's what I mean.
To you, Prev - who I like and agree with generally, what is the purpose of government? Is it to provide or protect or both? What is paramount in your world view? Society, or the individual?
Do you agree that people hold very different views from you?
Do you agree that those views can be manipulated by your environment? Can who is in power manipulate that environment?
What happens if Trump becomes president and it forces Democrats to the left....and then they lose again because a large portion of the voting public has been taught that government interference is BAD news?
I agree that slacktivism is nonsense - like protest voting it is doing the least you possibly can to change anything. Occupy changed the conversation. Then they went away. That doesn't mean protesting fails. It means if you give up, you fail - like literally everything else. But that just means that people don't care that much. You do. I do. But does that make it right?
If you believe in progressive causes, then voting for Donald Trump is logically inconsistent to the extreme. You are voting for the polar opposite of your views to get a point across. That doesn't implement your views.
Good change takes time. It just does. Look through history at all the examples of overnight change driven by a niche group. The French Revolution. The Fall of the Roman Republic. The Rise of Imperial Japan. Fascist Spain and Italy. Communist Russia.
This is what happens when you demand an entire culture change overnight.
Regardless of how I feel on the matter, progressive causes in America Take Time if we want them implemented in a sane fashion and without massive tearing of our cultural fabric. It's horribly annoying. Especially for a generation that has grown used to immediate returns. But it takes a while to turn a country of 300 million in any direction. Especially if half of them don't want to turn.
Clinton is proof that our system needs a revamp, but I'm not willing to burn the whole thing down because people don't agree with me.
summerisle
The rain, it raineth every day
And I understand the fear that would go along with the prospect of voting for Trump. It's easy to spout madcap ideas from my armchair in Ireland, but I'm honest enough to say that I'm not sure how well my current conviction would hold up if I were an American citizen.
Just to say though, it's not about my ideas. My views are irrelevant, and it should solely be about the system that's in place. The DNC effectively rigged the nomination in favour of Hillary, Sanders never really had a chance. I'm politically at odds with Sanders in more than one way, but he should have been given an equal platform and wasn't, and that's corrupt to me. I didn't agree with Britain's vote to leave the EU, but was appalled at the idea that they might force a re-referendum because they didn't like the answer they got (That idea never got any real traction, but it was very reminiscent of the Lisbon referendum that Ireland had many moons ago, and that was retaken).
What we disagree on, fundamentally, is the impact a Trump presidency would have. I don't think it would change the general character of the liberal or moderate left overnight. America won't suddenly become a fascist, racist nation-state. The ideas of freedom and equality are still important to most people in the US, I'm sure of it, even in a society where Trump has a chance of becoming President. That will all still be there. It's just reminding the Democrats that they can put crap on your plate but you don't have to eat it.
I respect your opinion and see your point of view.
I am not of the mind that Sanders was screwed. I live in a caucus state that overwhelmingly chose Sanders. That said, many primary states in the South overwhelmingly chose Clinton. Was the DNC clearly backing Clinton? Yes. But the RNC was clearly backing Rubio, then Cruz, then Kasich, then a tramp in the gutter, then Trump in the end.
Sanders was the preference of young, overwhelmingly white, middle class people. Clinton was preferred by the elements of the party more concerned with social justice than with economics or interventionism. Sanders is clearly lacking in those areas. The man doesn't believe in gun control.
The truth is that the vast majority of this country is either:
A) not as progressive as you or I
B) apathetic
The best thing we can do is not fling feces at the DNC for this by electing Trump. That just means everybody is covered in ....
The best thing to do is to go run for office. Go back candidates you believe in. Go and write or tape your message. Get out there and show people that there is a better way. GO be that better way. Because right now, we really don't have much in the way of a great choice. That doesn't mean you should pick the worse one to prove a point.
Pick the better choice, the lesser evil, then work as hard as you can to make sure you get a better choice next time. I don't like the mentality that we are helpless if we don't let the world burn. Are we that far gone already?
I know you don't think electing Trump would turn us into Nazi Germany. You're almost certainly correct (that almost sends shivers down my spine). But that doesn't mean the wealth gap increase wouldn't accelerate. It doesn't mean that our race relations wouldn't get worse. It doesn't mean we wouldn't be putting soldiers on the ground to 'take ISIS out, and take them out fast'. It doesn't mean we wouldn't end up with 2-3 more hardline conservative Justices at the expense of some of our older, liberal, judges. America's Supreme Court is Too Damn Important to protest vote. It doesn't mean that the ensuring 4 to 8 years wouldn't be significantly worse than they could be.
Garrick
Awesome, lid.
Serious LOL at any non-American who's pulling for Trump.
You realize the thing he'd screw up the most is American policy, right?
Say what you will about the overly hawkish policies that basically every American president has subjected the world to since the end of World War 2 that Hillary would continue. Trump effectively said "[Poor language removed] YOU PAY US" to the rest of NATO last night.
When it's all said and done presidents middling authority on almost everything outside of foreign policy. On foreign policy, they reign supreme. Trump would drive global order off of a cliff.
And not in a good way.
You realize the thing he'd screw up the most is American policy, right?
Say what you will about the overly hawkish policies that basically every American president has subjected the world to since the end of World War 2 that Hillary would continue. Trump effectively said "[Poor language removed] YOU PAY US" to the rest of NATO last night.
When it's all said and done presidents middling authority on almost everything outside of foreign policy. On foreign policy, they reign supreme. Trump would drive global order off of a cliff.
And not in a good way.
Garrick
Awesome, lid.
When it's time to go to the ballot box, it's waaaaaay past time to protest. Protesting needs to happen in between elections.
I'll use Black Lives Matter as an example. No way that race relations is a presidential debate issue with departments around the country either considering reforms or actively implementing them if they didn't start their actions three years prior.
Nah.
Protesting needs to be a constant presence. In between, in the run up, during. All of it. We should be constantly, and loudly, making our voice heard. We need to reject complacency wholesale and aim for a better world.
I just disagree with a means of protest that is inherently illogical and self-defeating.
I dunno if there is a 'between the elections'
- Status