The Politics Thread (PLAY NICELY!)

It's always funny when people bring up "big bad standard oil". Boo hoo, someone happens to be so good at bringing down prices and increasing quality that everyone voluntarily chose to buy from them. It's not like rockefeller absolutely devastated the whaling industry and saved the whales or anything. People aren't doing what I want them to do, better get the government to stop them! Yea, I'm a good person but those other people using government to stop people from voluntarily choosing to get gay married are bad people!

This idiotic anti-capitalist rhetoric can't keep it's own principles straight, which should be apparent to anyone not easily satisfied with the first low energy, one bit, feel good answer that happens to cross their radar.

Increase prices = price gouging
Decrease prices = destroying competition
Win big market share by catering to customers = not serving interests of customer.

You just can't win with this anti-logic marxist/socialist thinking. Anti-trust is an idea as stupid as the iraq war. No coherent direction, definition, scope, or goal. Merely one of many weapons co-opted by crony interests in cloak and dagger language, designed to trick and exploit useful idiots in order to to attack their market competitors through different vectors.

It's always funny when people bring up "Marxism is destroying capitalism". Boo hoo, someone happens to point out valid and real flaws in capitalism as it exists in society today. It's not like Marx himself looked at modern society, clicked his fingers, and bam, hey presto, instant reset to the Stone Age. Socialists don't do what I want them to do, so I'd better endlessly moan about them on a video games forum. Yea, I'm a good person but I spend all my time constructing elaborate fallacies about people I've never met to satisfy my own "tribal" tendencies!

This idiotic anti-socialist rhetoric can't keep its own principles straight, which should be apparent to anyone not easily satisfied with the first low energy, one bit, feel good answer that happens to cross their radar.

somebody made me feel bad = Marx did it
somebody made me feed good = capitalism did it
somebody made me question why the world works like it does = Marx did it

You just can't win with this anti-logic capitalistic thinking. Capitalism is an idea as stupid as the Iraq War. No coherent direction, definition, scope, or goal. Merely one of many weapons co-opted by crony interests in cloak and dagger language, designed to trick and exploit useful idiots in order to to attack the average person in order to keep them complaint and voting for parties that exploit their labour for little reward or compensation.

As far as I remember mered brought up that topic. All I did was question his suggestion that Standard Oil was perfect. I don't even question they did okay or maybe even good. But cant-do-any-better perfect? lol

If that's addressed at me : I never said that. I relish it.... I shove it in your face.... I have fun with his unpresdential rhetoric and ways on twitter and how it pales in comparison to other mediums. but I don't complain about him doing that.

louis CK on Racism and sexism and america.
relevant nowadays

ongoing left-right peace compromise and how to keep it going :

Well, I can't make you stop posting these random videos, but since you're not a mod, you can't stop me for mocking you for not at least reducing the video embeds.

Good job admitting Trump supporters are Neo-Nazis. Brilliant self-own

Good job admitting you think being a Trump Supporter is equivalent to being a Neo-Nazi and deserving of a street-assault.

Keep sinking the democrat's chance in the next election, because the ONLY way they can lose, is by threatening to club over 50% of the voting population. Bonus points for blaming everyone else for not surrendering their vote to the democrats like they're entitled to it as God's gift to humanity.

They're really starting to seem like God's Chemotherapy Treatment, they get rid of ultra-conservative cancer, but they're probably going to kill you in the process of saving you, and still get praise for "good effort, best chance anyone had".

Only Nazis get punched, trophy.

Keep up that apologism, really makes you look good

The sad part is that Comedy Central IS more accurate on this stuff than Fox News. A lot.
Says a lot about the quality of Fox News.

GUYS GUYS GUYS!

party hats on!

NOW!
hip-hip Hurray !


sorry this is not my full photoshop game but I'm at work so I had to use pixlr.

everybody! Dance !



nearly FOUR THOUSAND posts. that is ducking crazy. this thread might be longer to read as a whole then the harry potter series.

I'm too lazy to do the math (or rather I don't know how to get the thread's word count) but here are some stats in case you're up for it :

1. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: 76,944 words.
   
   
2. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: 85,141 words.
   
   
3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: 107,253 words.
   
   
4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: 190,637 words.
   
   
5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: 257,045 words.
   
   
6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: 168,923 words.
   
   
7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: 198,227 word

that being said that wouldn't factor in image and video viewing which we should if we're being thorough about this so I think by that metric this thread can easily beat that.

I'm so proud of us :' )

how come @tunsel11 and @cola_colin are being all silent? xD

it's your turn to explain your country's politics to us. Apparently this one's a big one as well.

The success of the extremist right AFD is quite a shame and certainly worries a lot. Over 13% of voters who think it is okay to vote for a party represented by people who think Germans should be "proud of what German soldiers achieved in WW2" or are happy about clear ties between the AFD and extremist right organizations or flat out believe some form of secret government is trying to destroy German "culture" by replaced "Germans" with Muslims.


Also the CDU and SPD have, under Merkel, systematically destroyed their distinction so much that the socialistic democratic SPD has lost most of its profile and with that many voters, while the CDU has lost voters probably mostly directly to the AFD.

What baffles is that analysis seems to show that many AFD supporters are not "stupid poor people" who are envious per se. Their voters are in a pretty okay to good economical situation for the most part. Economics is not what drives them, it is xenophobia. The fear that German "culture", whatever that is, will be replaced by something else. Something foreign. Something apparently very scary.

No party had an answer on how to handle this. Since it is entirely unclear how to talk a xenophobic nationalist out of it , attempts were targeting the "poor stupid, envious" stereotype that one might see as a "typical" supporter of political catastrophes like the AFD. But those attempts fall on deaf ears when the real problem are people with a deep rooted fear of foreign elements "invading" their culture.

It'll be interesting to see how the formation of the government will play out.
The SPD, in a dire attempt to get back to former strength someday, has announced it will stop working together with the CDU and will go into the opposition. A good decision imho. They need to put the "socialist" back into their politics and working together with the CDU that is not possible.

But since nobody wants to form a government with the AFD and the CDU does not want to form a coalition with the left party either the only coalition that could govern as it stands is CDU + FDP + Green
Which is not impossible per se, but definitely not an easy combination.
The libertarian FDP got burned badly by working with the CDU before and will be quite careful.
The Green party is more left leaning then the other two and doesn't like to back down easily as well, also demanding more climate protection than the economy friendly FDP or CDU would opt for.

Not happy at all with any of this.

You have to introduce all your players correctly with pictures and stuff like I did to make it easier for us neophytes to understand.

I think I more or less got it. but like here :

"mostly directly to the AFD" or did you mean it without the to?

Oh come on, one missing word typo

I'll not write an essay about our political system. You'll have to accept only this:

- CDU/CSU Merkels Party. The CSU is active in bavaria, the CDU everywhere else. They are kinda one thing. Both conservative. The CSU is more right and more conservative then the CDU. CDU stands for Christian Democratic Union, so they also go strong on Christian values. Or at least they claim they do.

- SPD. The social democracy party. Has worked in a big coalition with the CDU a few times now, lost a lot due to it.
At one point this was the socialist party that fought for worker rights, etc. But they've lost that profile a lot by giving in to the CDU when working with them a lot and have not managed to rebuild yet.

- The Greens. An environmental protection party. Left leaning. Have my support.

- The Left party. As much left as it gets. So much left that the CDU/CSU won't work with them ever.

- The FPD. Libertarians. Similar to the SPD they lost a lot when they worked with the CDU in the past.

- The AFD. The alternative for Germany. Extremist right. Trumpesque. Racists. Started as an anti EU/anti Euro party a few years ago when that was still a thing. Realized that being racist and xenophobic gets them more votes, so they jumped on it. Are treated like outcasts by most other parties, which they use to portrait themselves as the big victims.

Generally the situation seems to be that the CDU/SPD both ended up losing out from many years of working together. Merkel also is a rather centrist leadership person, so the right wing of CDU/CSU has drifted towards the AFD. Both voters of the CDU and SPD complain there is no distinction anymore, which I totally agree on.
This has caused both of them to have the worst results since basically ever, giving strength to smaller parties. On the far right they gathered in the AFD. On the left it's split between Green and the Left.

What seems likely to happen is that the CDU, and especially CSU, will try to go as far right as they can to get voters back from the AFD. So one can only hope the Greens will have some influence when forming a coalition with them. Also the FDP is all "the free market over everything" and is the kind of party that would love to deregulate things that ought to be regulated. Like Banks. If they get to do whatever they want, it would be bad as well.

@cola_colin
huh.

I personally took Merkel for libertarian, I even thought Merkel was deemed too libertarian by Germans.

Isn't she the one with the total tolerance policy towards immigrants?

is there a German definition of "conservative to be gleaned from you post?

Me is confused..


Overall though it sounds like a perfect recreation of the French elections with the labels switched out a bit :

for example even though it was the rightmost victory ever in france practically the whole candidate panel feigned to all be opposed to the right but overall that would be your greens and AFD

whereas your CDU - SPD is the right and left, would in france, correspond to the green and right who contrary to the german setup never teamed up but both lost the trust of the electorate entirely and are set to fail in this election but refuse to admit it (to themselves).

and then there's the AFD profiteering of of all of this on their rise to power which ultimately they're only a pawn in and their chances of winning were always 0 it's just a ploy for the rise of a "new" party which in essence is just the same people in the corridors holding on to power but remotely.


and for some bizarre reason that party might be the green party ....?

x'D I've just realized their's no way to make this stick this is nothing like the french elections.

She was. Has stepped back from it more and more due to pressure from the CSU and the success of the AFD.

Also while the Green has gotten a better result than expected it's still less than 10%, so I'd not say they're the big profiter overall. They will have a more important position, as they will be needed to form a government. But still... they should get more votes imho

I'd not call the AFD a pawn with no chance of winning. They're an incredible risk to our democracy and having these people in the Bundestag will be a significant strain on it. The only strategy to oppose them used by CDU/CSU appears to be to just go more into the right. Obviously I don't like that.

Nobody is really profiting of this either. All big parties lost a lot. The two small parties with significant gains are the FDP, for whatever reason I dunno probably people who dont like the CDU but are not willing to support racists, and the AFD.
The left side small parties gained a bit, but there is no clear default choice on the left side. People go "I wanna vote left", but don't know for certain what to exactly vote. So it spreads over Green, The Left and maybe a bit SPD and various tiny parties nobody cares about.

I just read that 1.3 million people who did not vote in 2013 this time decided to vote... for the AFD. They're clearly also positioned as a "I hate out democracy"-protest party.

Let me get this straight. A person deciding to peacefully participate in and exercise their democratic vote is somehow acting in a way that hates democracy and wants to tear it down. ...Simply because they have opinions that differ from you. You realise democracy is a structure, not an ideology.

The next step of this narrative is pretty clear. It'syou're trying to build up to is that the use of violence against these fundamentally peaceful people is now justified because they are somehow "violent anti-democratic people". If you really want to know who is acting in a way that "hates democracy", you only have to look in the mirror.

It never ceases to amaze me the level of pretzel logic human beings are capable of self brainwashing themselves into. I've looked into AFD positions and they aren't even "far right" as much as they are a principled version of the christian democrats. It's actually kinda cute how ruffled you guys are over them like they're the second coming of hitler or something.

There's still time to right your own ship and find your own independent voice though I gotta say from my position as a detached observer the disease that is afflicting you looks to be accelerating at an alarming rate. Wasn't too long ago you were still for peaceful protest etc. How the times change. If you ever wondered how ordinary germans could end up being Auschwitz camp guards, it happened step by step rationalising small falsehoods one after the other. No-one just woke up one day and thought "hey i'm going to kill some jews today". Likewise, careful how you step today.

You should try this really good exercise called resolving binaries. It'll help you truly find yourself whatever that may be. Whenever you see an issue being presented as having two sides, learn both sides until you can articulate them well as if you were advocating for them. Afterall, you'll never really understand what you're against until you well.. understand it. Then come up with a third side, your own side.

Also, Merkel isn't libertarian what are you on about. Since when was the EU a libertarian utopian construct?

So I'll go point by point for this mess.

This is not an argument. You are only trying to demonize a political party you disagree with because it makes you look higher and morally superior than supporters of "Nazis". It's you setting up a big bad "far right" boogy man that allows you to cower away from arguments. The second part of that last sentence is a good example of this. Instead of looking at population and migration data, you just call the AFD tin hatters conspiracy nuts. The AFD blames Merkel, or the government in power because Merkel was instrumental in the acceptance of the migrants.

*WHEW* Xenophobia is a convenient way of masking the arguments put forth by the ADF. It's entirely unclear how to talk a person into walking off a cliff which seems insane to the person who cannot see the cliff. But of course you don't give any rationality to the people who don't want migrants because that would be entirely unreasonable. I mean imagine a Paris without migrants. A Rotherham without migrants. A Cologne without migrants. These are atrocious actions committed by migrants, and are not even all encompassing, but they all stem from the same issue. That is that criticism of migrants is shut up. You can't argue for not taking migrants because that makes you a "xenophobe" so the German police will come knocking on your door.

For those who might not know, Rotherham was a sexual abuse scandal involving Pakistani immigrants who were involved in sex trafficking since the 1980's. Which only started to come to light in 2010 and culminated with at least 1,400 children being sexually assaulted from 1997 to 2013. A major cause in this catastrophe of government was that accusations of rape were waived as being remarks made by crazy racist. This is the price you pay for shutting people up and not listening to the other side. I don't think this can at all describe the full extent of the tragedies which have occurred in direct correlation with migrants, but at least understanding this leads to some kind of understanding of what exactly "Xenophobes" are afraid of. Which is better than simply writing them off as irrational because then you can argue with them, but I think it's a little hard to convince someone that over a cliff is a good place to step.

More on the Rotherham thing:
www. bbc.com/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-28939089

More on the Cologne incident:
www. bbc.com/news/world-europe-35231046
(Broke links because I can't post links)

With Paris I was referring to the mass shooting


I don't actually care about the rest of your little speal on German politics, you comments on the AFD just really rubbed me the wrong way.