The Politics Thread (PLAY NICELY!)

alot of good points made @thetrophysystem I'm sorry though can't address them right now the news train just busted in my room and filled it with hilarity that I NEED to share and have you opinions on :

Scaramuchi fired before he even reached his official start day.

it's not the same thing. Oliver doesn't "fool the sheeple". He even says in the video himself that he does get paid for this. He doesn't sell overpriced bullshit from a guy with fake credentials, nor does he endorse easy solutions.

Oliver also doesn't pretend he is so poor he could lose his house if nobody buys stuff.

EDIT: I also don't know, who was that picture aimed at?

Targeted at Tatsu, the only person who posted more than 50 Oliver videos in 175 pages.

And casually collecting a top 20% of society type of salary while making mock-spongebob humor, is entirely "allowed", but i'm not just going to respect it like it's better than football players, political foundations funded by Saudia Arabia, or any other stuff of that nature.

It's horseshoe theory. They're so opposite, that they do the same thing for different reasons/agendas. The thing itself, is goofy, I respect crummy let's players who don't thrive because their art is so boring, more than sh*tpot-stirring mock-humor about the same single politician of target for 3 years straight.

that's a bit unfair it's been 7 months at most and before then Jon oliver did everything in his power to stay away from the topic. He actively avoided him.

and durring the segments of the last 7 months less then half of them have been devoted to trump

Uh no they don't? I mean, maybe if you dumb it down far enough eventually you might find something, but i already pointed out they're not the same. Their topics are not the same, the quality is not the same, and John isn't constantly lying about his income or guilt-shaming people into buying his products. HBO makes money off subscriptions.

So no, please stop pretending they're the same thing.

I also don't see why we should blame the media for focusing on Trump, since he IS the president, and seems intent on creating as much controversy as possible. The Media didn't choose to misrepresent (read: blatantly lie) about crowd size for instance. The president is essentially in open war with the media. Yet media representation of trump isn't fair, yet also censorship is bad and we shouldn't withhold anything. Meanwhile comedians like Colbert are completely open with the fact that they can barely keep up with the comedy and that the jokes pretty much write themselves. Hell, the autoplay video on Colbert's youtube channel for months was the one where trump called him a "No-Talent guy" (and Colbert giving a lesson in ratings and media).

Elect a realty-TV star and you get a reality-TV presidency. Rumors, infighting, collusion, it's like the presidency is a soap

Horseshoe theory is and always has been well-fertilised horse manure. It relies on gross abstractions, both of the actions of the relevant ideological extremes, and of their reasons for doing so.

You can oppose violence unilaterally, and I respect that stance.

But let's not pretend violence for the sake of overthrowing the state is the same as violence for the sake of exterminating minorities and "people who aren't like us".

"We both force people to do exactly what we want, but what we want is right so it's okay if they are imprisoned or die, as long as we aren't imprisoned, don't die, and get what we want. One side has to win, and I think most people agree it'd be best if it were my side standing on their throats."

Yeah, you're both the same. Let's not pretend incarceration that proportionately imprisons more blacks, is better than incarceration that proportionally imprisons more blacks, whether it's drugs or guns bruh. Let's also not pretend violence for the sake of overthrowing the state is always a good thing. Fidel Castro, Lenin, Zedong, all good things? Who gets to decide when it's good?

It's not like you're stopping a violent regime. Who'd Trump kill, exactly? Half a year into his presidency, was told we all would die 20 times by now. Sorely disappointed. Can't blame me for not believing a single word from either side, both promise they're better than this, and both deliver unto us these blatant hostilities and acts outside the realm of our best interest.

So far, we know for Trump and Hillary, legal reform means strengthen enforcement, civil rights means rights for the wealthy not to follow laws, and wage gap means the gap between industrial workers and service workers. ****, them, both.

problem is you didn't make that horseshoe theory you made another very different comparison..... I think it's worth noting as it was relevant to why it was wrong.

that being said I don't deny that there's a "bubble effect" on both sides of the debate isles. and that itself brings the two to a valid comparison field. you can then mention the comparable methods used by both and all that.

Horseshoe theory is a pretty simplistic theory, and i don't think it does the various ways the extreme left and right are different justice. Sure, there are similarities, but just as surely they are different.

I mean, there's the fairly trivial proof that if they truly were the same, they'd be the same ideology.

You wouldn't know authoritarian if it hit your car window with a brick, sorry.

The fact that you attempt to rationalise authoritarian dictatorships as "the far left" is more evidence of that (and your alt-rightness, but hey, who's counting). "the far left" is no more authoritarian than any side of a simplistic, high school-level ideological chart.

Left to right, authoritarian to libertarian, right? That's the common square diagram. Completely oversimplified, of course.

This means, as far left as you go, or as far right as you go, there is (in theory) a spread of both authoritarian and libertarian principles.

The difference is more the far left kinda don't want eugenics, and the far right kinda do. That's the kind of things people differ on. Cultural ideology (as supposed to economic policy. A lot of leftists I know subscribe to at least some conservative economic ideals. The problem is they're often implemented in a way that disadvantages by class and minority race). Another reason why that square is too simplistic; there are racists on the "left" and racists on the "right". But this doesn't make the left and right the same, because as Devak rightly said, above, this would make them, uh, the same.

The far left and the far right differ in the same ways the left and the right differ in general. Cultural beliefs and the justification for revisionist history and genocide.

I mean, there are people in the far left who genuinely think Communism (capital C) is Good, and that any form of modern capitalist society needs literally burning to the ground. However, I would argue, proportionally, that these comprise less of a percentage - or at the very least have their beliefs challenged by the rest of the moderate-to-far left more than - the right bothers to interrogate the alt-right, or the far right. The right encourages these demographics, and rarely openly condemns them. Why would they? They fit their purpose, and serve as a scapegoat when people consider right-leaning actions too extreme.

Most folks on the left agree that burning down the Western world is a tad extreme, in literal terms.

Most folks on the right kinda think maybe white genocide is a thing.

That's the (scary) difference.

@Devak wrong person for your quote.

x'D
true... true...

So extrapolating further from the development so far I guess it'll continue:

• Trump was at the meeting, but only as a background decoration(10 August)
• Trump lead the discussion at the meeting (20 August)
• The Russian lawyer actually was Putin in disguise (1 September)

?

source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-ca...nald-trump&link_location=live-reporting-story

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blog...27/the-quest-to-prove-collusion-is-crumbling/

oh look what the distinguished WaPo is finally publishing.

Uhm, pretty sure those were left parties I listed, that participated in genocide. They could have chosen to be libertarian instead... but they didn't, they chose genocide. The far left and the far right kinda both want eugenics, and kinda don't want to be a part of said eugenics. Everyone in the middle is thinking "why are they such raging arseholes", but they're just thinking "if we eliminate all the religious leaders, no more war", or "if we eliminate all the weird cultures, no more war".

They both kinda really want eugenics badly, because if the left "kills or terrorizes Trump and all his supporters, they improve the intelligence of the entire planet". Thus, the cinderblocks go flying. Horseshoe theory: because you don't want to admit there are moral conservatives and immoral socialists.

The horseshoe has two ends that curve back around on both sides. Iranian and Saudi authoritarian, curve around to the other side to become Nazi-Germany and the People's Republic of China. Both severe, yet polar opposites on their cultural aims.

Horse shoe theory only works so well because any authoritarian regime that doesn't have the blessing of the marxists at the time is perceived as right wing. It's one thing to point at "right wing authoritarianism" and say "look there is it", it's another thing entirely to provide a coherent taxonomical definition of what left and right mean and what it means to be authoritarian left or authoritarian right. Right wing popularly refers to anything to the right of leftist marxism.

Here's a question, if a country forgave all loans, prohibited a lending market, and instituted housing and welfare programs, would you consider this socialist?

Well that's what hitler did. He also suppressed speech which is attributed to his rightwingedness. But similar is the case today with the left and in soviet russia. It was soviet russia that championed the idea of hate speech laws.

In reality right wing authoritarianism is simply ethno socialism which thinks that socialism is best implemented when everyone is of common identity (heritage, blood). While lenin and stalin thought the hurdle to implementing utopian socialism stemmed from purging people that didn't fit a common economic classes, hitler observed the strong tendency for socialism within family/blood relationship units and purged people that didn't fit the common ethno class instead. He thought the ideas of classless societies and economic equality would naturally follow from that.

Richard Spencer the white supremacist likewise openly and clearly advocated socialist policies (redistribution, safety nets, public services etc.) it's kinda funny.

In the end it's really just big government vs small government. Authoritarian vs libertarian. The conceptualisation of horse shoe theory occurs when failed authoritarians try to distance themselves from themselves.

I have no idea how that happened. But i fixed it.

Although republicans tend to be for small government, they have no problem with big armies. Politics is more complex than than a mere "only two flavors".

Yep it is more complex. That's why you can't just label everything right or left. For example, opposing gay marriage, killing people from an ethnic, no freedom of speech has little to do with wanting a bigger or smaller government. So you shouldn't label those as left or right just based on the opinion about them from a particular socialist/libertarian party.

It's pretty clear that Marxists/socialists have been trying to drag bad things to the "right side" when they have little to no relation to opposing collectivism. Hitler and Franco were (moral stuff apart) what people now call socialdemocrats, big governments with lot of intervention but allowing private property.

Hint, "the moral stuff" is what decides a lot of common right and left-leaning positions, these days.

Your opinion on safe spaces is more likely to matter to what people perceive you as, than foreign aid spending and debt relief.

You can't say "morals aside" when you invoke the regime responsible for mass genocide. Which they enacted on moral, cultural grounds.

The right wanted to kill Obama. Still do.

That's the problem with generalisations.

But really, you're tying yourself in knots here. You claim, directly, that I "don't want to admit there are moral conservatives and immoral socialists". I literally just admitted knowing of people who literally wanted the world to burn to the ground.

I literally just admitted that.

Even when I say things straight, you can't read them. Because it doesn't fit your narrative for me to be capable of doing so

I wonder if it really is over. As the article you linked itself states:

In absence of any real evidence the team around Trump managed to produce so many little questionable things related to Russia, so much attempts at hiding things that ultimately were apparently harmless.
As I posted above you: Constant attempts at first hiding something and then going "yeah it did happen, but it was harmless".
Can you blame the democrats for jumping at all these hints the Trump team is dropping?

If anything this whole affair, assuming it really is only hot air produced by Trump and friends, shows how incredibly bad the Trump presidency is. They can't even successful bring an end to month long discussions about possible collusion with Russia, because instead of putting out the fire they instead come up with new suspicious looking things to do. Fire the FBI director, lie about harmless meetings, etc.
Just the ******* truth from the start and letting some independent investigator look into things and confirm "nothing here" would've solved this month ago. Yet Trump and his team did not manage to do that. Instead Muller is currently suffering from a republican smear campaign and rumors go around that Trump would like to fire Muller in some way or the other. Which sure would be the next stupid thing to do to keep this tale alive.

Either this affair exists because they're incredibly stupid, which sure looks very likely, or because something illegal did happen after all.

Take your pick.