The Politics Thread (PLAY NICELY!)

You're making generalisations I never made. Potentially a consequence of taking a reply to another forum poster and making a comment that makes it look like I made it against you. Which I didn't.

And I can protest against whatever and whoever I want, for any reason I like. That's the beauty of free speech, as I understand it. Now, if I want people to agree with me, then I have to ground my activism in something that makes sense, but this is difficult as "sense" is a personal perception r.e. how we understand the world at large.

In this case, you demonstrate a hilariously bad argument yourself, hypocritically, and in doing so expose a key point I've seen in defense of Trump since the election (and before it, actually). Namely, that "Trump lying is nothing new". Now, there are layers of Bad™ here that I will attempt to keep short:

1. Trump lying is hypocritical when the slogans against Hillary involved demonising her for her lies as a politician. Surely, if this was an accepted truism, people wouldn't complain about Hillary's lies - because she's a politician.

This was not the case.

2. Trump is not a politician. He founded his campaign on this particular slogan and websites repeatedly covered how people appreciated a non-politician entering the fray. You cannot, logically, apply the defense of being a politician to him.

Because he isn't one.

3. "everyone does it so it's not an X-specific problem" is a classic bait-and-switch. The correct way to phrase this would be "everyone does it so it's most definitely an X-specific problem, as well as a problem for everyone else who does it".

Hold everyone to account. Don't excuse Trump because "everybody does it" when his anti-Hillary platform ran on skewering her for her doing it. This is quite patently, quite obviously, and quite simply, a double standard.

Hahah, many people can probably relate.

But you still may protest against Trumps values, Trumps proposed policies, Trumps general behavior.

It sure is totally fine for an American to be ashamed and angry at what kind of president they ended up with somehow and express that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politician
Trump is a politician no matter what he or you say. I'm not defending him on the lying thing. I never thought Hillary was a worse option because she lies. Of course Trump has a double standard, he lies and criticizes others for lying.
And what's your solution for politicians' lies? Point them with the finger? you don't have enough fingers.

Good thing I write words then, I don't sit there pointing my fingers at the screen

And yes, Trump by dint of his position is now a politician. But he never has been, prior to this point. Which is what I meant, and what his platform ran on, and therefore why people voted for him.

Therefore, I can criticise the nine hells out of it, and support whatever protest I wish to. There is a lot of lies, and a lot of misinformation out there, and it's not going to correct itself. There being a lot of it is not an argument to not engage with it at all.

Interesting and new point of view:

Forcing people not to kill people is not forcing them to do something. That is called self defense and is a reaction to action. I don't initiate force against the robber so that he doesn't rob from me. If i did that, he would never be a robber in the first place and so how could i use force him? You should read minority report.

Honestly, I don't like how you accuse others of bad faith and then use extreme examples like mind control. Humans for a very long time across most cultures practiced something called slavery. I can very much imagine a roman justifying slavery as forcing people to do things they are uncomfortable with. After all, how else could they get anything done!

The soviets felt the same way about their re-education camps aka gulags for political dissidents. After all, how else could they keep the peace and build a utopia?

Or Nazi Germany about the Jews preventing them from creating a better world of aryan ubermench.

Or if you don't like historical examples that are divorced from our everyday reality. How long do you think your friend would stay your friend if you forced them to do something they really didn't want to?

All I am pointing out is that your argument only leads to, and has lead to, unimaginable amounts of human suffering through human hubris and arrogance. Force against the unwilling has only one inevitable conclusion - violence and death. Don't speak about it so lightly.

As long as it doesn't simply turn into wanton street rioting with thuggery, looting, and damaging of innocent third party businesses. Unfortunately, this is what occurred and there isn't any excuse for it. This is what I was talking about in regard to ideological possession and the subsequent thought that using force against people who disagree with you is morally justified.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-inauguration-protests-idUSKBN1540J7

Interestingly,

https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2017/jan/20/violence-trump-inauguration-protest-video

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-yiannopoulos-shooting-20170121-story.html

Forcing people not to kill people isn't self-defense if you're not the one being attacked.

You're, uh, magically skipping over counterarguments that are inconvenient for you. I mean, it was an appeal to the extreme, and for the record I said nobody was suggesting mind control. I literally, specifically said that.

The truth was the world is all about nuance, not sweeping generalisations exaggerated to absurdity to win Internet Points. You seem to have an opposition to all laws, forever, anywhere, because by definition laws make us do things (or prevent us from doing things). This is an asinine viewpoint, and just as ridiculous as expecting our every move to be dictated by a law.

Your position is an extreme position, according to how you've described it. Perhaps you need to re-describe it.

Being alive itself means you're constantly forced to do stuff you may be not totally comfortable with.
There is a wide range of things between "having to do homework" from "being forced to work as a slave" and taking either of the possible extreme isn't really all that useful.

The nature of your and mine existence is that we have a need for food, etc, pp. That forces us to do things.

So you can't go with "not being forced to do anything all". Unless you life in a futuristic socialist utopia that is. But I think you don't believe into that one.

At the other end of the spectrum you find the violence and death you described. It took a few thousand years of social evolution but slowly the world seems to agree that that's pretty bad as well.

So what that leaves you with is the need for a middle ground.

Obviously that's bad and needs to have legal consequences for the perpetrators.
Doesn't mean that the huge majority of peaceful protesters have any less right to do their peaceful protest.

What's the goal of those protests? That elections doesn't count anymore and the people who make the loudest noise in the streets get to choose the president? A coup d'état?
New requirements for being president such as not saying a word people could get offended by, or not lying?
Magically transform Trump into another person?

Trump won the election, now you have to protests against his actions as president not against him being president.

I am not aware of any rule that states that once somebody won an election that no further protest is allowed.
I am aware of rules that state something like a right for free speech and the right to gather and tell the government you don't like it.

Who said anything about the law? Go protest against the Sun for skin cancer, that's also legal

This just in: gmase doesn't believe anyone should say anything critical of anyone because there is a large chance said words might not achieve anything.

In more constructive news, here's more stuff the new party in power have committed to:

1. They're moving ahead with the Dakota Access Pipeline.

2. The Global Gag Rule is to be reinstated.

Make your own minds up about whether or not these are bad things, of course

I had no idea what that could be, seems it is one of these very "republican" things that make one fear a republican government.

Oh, so it's just about the numbers then. Your politicians must also be elected with the Tatsu-trusted pecker-measurment method. Nobody gives a **** about numbers, lying about them is akin to lying about **** size. I'm consistent btw, I don't care if a politician has sexual relations either, it's literally not why we elect them. Who, the ****, is counting? I refuse to participate in the same politics as those who do, either affect an election or don't, but I'ma pretend you don't exist when you pull out a 14 inch measuring tape and ask for trousers to descend.

Well doesn't that blow. In other news, we are not escalating into war over Syria, and we are repealing Obamacare but keeping provisions limiting healthcare cherry-picking. We got that, we were fucked either way on the other stuff, thus is the life of a nation with "Democrats", I sincerely implore you Europeans to send a "real" liberal party to the states whenever you get fed up with this wankery.

They're alike in that they don't matter politically, but they're completely different in that one is a publicly known fact.

Lying about known, verifiable facts to make yourself look better isn't something a government should be doing. "Alternate facts" shouldn't be something anybody is fine with.

We are talking about different definitions of forced. The problem is that I don't think gorbles understands this difference and thus applies it to any other situation that may suit what he thinks the world should be.

I am talking about one adult forcing another adult to do something with violence or threat of violence.

You are talking about (and i agree with your definition and the scope in which you use it btw),

• An adult 'forcing' a child to do their homework because they don't have fully formed agency to know that is in their best interest. This does not apply to the relationship between government and citizen. The government is not our parent, and neither am I or any other adult a child. The government can suggest to me that I should do x or y, but they should not force me to do so as an adult. Again, we have historical examples of what happens when governments get more and more authoritarian/totalitarian
• A voluntary action taken by an individual is forced by that individual. When i move my arm, I am forcing my arm to move. When i work so that I can buy food, I am forcing myself to do it because I am hungry. I may not want to work, but this is still my voluntary decision to do so. No outside pressure has been applied to me. No-one has come into my house and stolen all my food to make me hungry in the first place*.

*With the exception of privatised central banks that manipulate a currency, enforced and used by government. Monetary policy and it's relationship with fiscal policy is a really interesting topic when you analyse it from the view of voluntarism, but it's probably too much to discuss here.

Oh absolutely, I am 100% for protests as a vital function of free speech just as you are! Afterall, I'm supposed to be the anti-authoritarian libertarian here . Just pointing out that unfortunately a lot of recent anti-trump protests in the US have been on the violent side. Hopefully the extreme left and right will eventually quiet down instead of escalating in reaction to each other and a new moderate center will come about.

There was a really peaceful women's march during the same time as well, no problem with that. Good on them. I didn't really include them in the Trump sphere though because their message was more free tampons etc.

A false claim, about something unpolitical, don't care, we didn't remove Bill Clinton neither.

The claim itself, what little it could mean, also means nothing. What is "attendance" with riots, and what is "unemployment rate" with "workforce participation"? These are ALL stats liberals use to support their view with very concerning statistics left out, they aren't lies or damned lies, they are statistics, at full bias. I know the statistics, you can't bullshat me.

The statistics, are that more people voted for this guy, they're quiet because people keep sending them death threats for existing on social media (and some of the "old folks" don't social media, they still vote though), you can pretend they don't exist but you lost one election and are likely to lose another with that strategy. They had to have voted for a reason, was it the hostility or was it single-issue policy that the democrat nominee was unwilling to give a good answer or past credible action on?

If you keep focusing on inauguration attendance, you might as well accept the fact that you're stuck with Trump for, not 1, not 2, not 4, but 8 WHOLE YEARS. You've already ripped the piloting wheel from the helm and are headed full speed into a brick wall, if you're really addressing every funny ******* thing except the reason voters aren't voting your clown.

"I substitute your reality and replace it with my own."

And no, more people voted for Clinton. Factually. It's amazing how you're sitting there calling anyone left of the centre (and no doubt some centrists who are culturally left) a "liberal" (presented as a pejorative) and you can't get basic facts correct.

Reminds me of Trump's team and their approach to alt-facts