The Politics Thread (PLAY NICELY!)

Is that legit a thing in the U.S.?

You guys are neck-deep in useless segregation it's hilarious watching you guys wonder why racism keeps coming up and keeps being a problem in the U.S.

alright yeah.

I though it would be weird.

can we officially agree it's lame and in poor taste?

It actually made me quite uncomfortable around election time listening to U.S. analysts on telly discussing 'the black vote' and 'the Hispanic vote' as if it was a single inseparable unit. We do talk about working class voters and middle class voters in the UK but it makes sense that those two different groups might tend to vote in different ways. I find it bizarre that the colour of somone's skin might affect the way they vote.

I know right!?

It's freaking crazy-talk!

Even then, not everyone agrees, but with wealth class comes lifestyles and affinity to concepts. That makes direct sense.

There is nothing sensible about "because of the color of your skin you must live a certain life allied to certain concepts". As if.

Don't forget the "women vote". That didn't turn out as "inseparable" as they thought, but when they discovered it post-election, they... well, they said this stupid nonsense:

http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity...trumps-election-win-women-betrayed-us-w453876

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/06/madeleine-albright-campaigns-for-hillary-clinton

Seriously, which women are more anti-women? The ones that "voted anti-women", or the ones that "belittle women as inferior because they voted anti-women"?

Also, hostile and pretentious. When liberals come off like this, it doesn't impress or enlighten anyone. It drives the divide deeper.

I would hope not.

There's naught to be gained by either party if we either passively consent to this behavior or worse endorse it.

seeing as you've given leeway on no point ever I'm forced to observe there is no way that we can "enlighten" you.

that is a shame. I'm of the upbringing that information and it's collection by an individual can defeat that individual's indoctrinations whichever they may be.

and we all start out with indoctrinations... thus goes the progress of humanity, I've been over this : we necessarily have an "ism" we're not concious of that centuries later will be found weird and dated.

People are most likely to vote along the lines of the group they most identify with.

People who identify most strongly with being black are going to vote in favor of what they consider black issues. You'll see a similar thing with the female vote, the elderly vote, and whatnot. So the black vote constitutes all black people who will vote along those lines. As long as black people identify as that first instead of some other group they belong to, the black vote will remain relevant.

There's also the issue of correlation and associations skewing how a statistic looks. If a disproportionate number of black people are in urban areas, they might identify more strongly as a city person and vote along those lines. But somebody looking at racial statistics might see the issue as a black one.

not necessarily. that's been a whole "Point of Order" of the conservative/republicans. Although misused to anecdotally paint the broad picture (thereby misrepresenting it) the premise is something I agree with at it's core : people don't necessarily fit in boxes.

In fact

by and large people are majoritarily outside of those "preconception boxes" it's only the almost instinctive habit of "boxing" that everyone has and the resulting mass of "boxes" that give us the impression that our assumptions are being confirmed.

We're drowned in a slew of quasi-empty "boxes"...

it's a paradoxal situation.

It's just a most likely. Stats always include a margin of error. It's a lot easier to make assumptions about a group than it is about individuals.

And the point I was making is that the group a person most identifies with is the one they're most likely to vote with. People belong to a number of groups, not just one.

I agree with a lot of fallacies. The new healthcare law is bad, but what did we do with the last bad healthcare law? Got rid of it. We obviously won't have the current one for long, if installed as-is it'll be the silver bullet in the re-election and mid-term congressional election. With any luck at all, America might grow a spine and stop bargaining with partisan politicians for bad plans and only cooperate in electing someone who breaks this ridiculous political mould. Worse case scenario, they vote for Warren, a decent liberal, but she does Trump's nonsense and says "you know what will work? Health insurance subsidies and requiring everyone purchase health insurance". That'd be ******* stupid, I trust Warren, but if she did that, I'd be so pissed at the 16 years of my life I'll never get back.

Btw, that joke was still relevant. DAMN. You know what? I should have listed Kobe Bryant as "rich getting away with rape". I hate Brock Turner because it was so way more "hah in your face I got away with broad daylight raping", but... well, I'm not even going to say why I should have listed Kobe Bryant. Nah, it's good the way I originally worded it, nvm, carry on...

@cola_colin



Left/right is very different from top/down.

One is for individual liberty, the other is not. One is compatible with free speech and civil discussion, the other is not. One uses a market place of ideas, the other uses a gun. I'm perfectly in agreeance with you on social 'punishment' of bad ideas - that's what a market place of ideas is about. Counter bad speech with your own speech.

If that bakery don't wanna sell gay cakes, people can boycott them. However I think you would agree with me that it is wrong to get the government to impose onerous fines on them or make regulations that force bakeries to do certain things.

Progressives go much farther than just speech. Left authoritarian is just as bad as right authoritarian. Progressives are the former - their ideology is centered around the expansion and centralization of power of the executive branch in order to "get things done". It's really the oldest idea in the book, going back to Monarchies, Theocracies, Dictators, Warlords etc. Enforcement of a certain morality or set of values on those who disagree.

Just look at Canada.

Illegal to call someone by the wrong pronoun
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-bl...-prof-defied-sjw-on-gender-pronouns-and-has-a

Religious blasphemy laws being seriously considered in Canada.
http://www.dailywire.com/news/12957/war-against-free-speech-canada-close-passing-michael-qazvini

Or look into Irish hate speech laws. They are really perverse.

http://www.occupy.com/article/sickness-left-are-student-progressives-real-authoritarians

It is very bizarre, but it's better to think about it as a proxy of culture. Genetics and social environment generally go hand in hand. Black Africans will be different from Black Americans, as will White Africans be different from White Americans.

Now, for all the numerous faults and ideological hypocrisy of the republican establishment, I find them generally to not care as much about skin colour as the democratic establishment because of the influence of marxist ideology - class/race struggle etc.

I'm bottom left on all political charts and I still recognise the need for basic laws to exist. "libertarianism" doesn't mean anarchy.

Still using it to cry foul on all laws you personally disagree with, I see.

EDIT

Anyhow, let's have some actual talk on authoritarian principles and the abuse of intelligence services. You know they messed up when they make a formal apology to the UK over claims of wiretapping:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...britain-white-house-accuses-gchq-wiretapping/

@elodea Genetics???

No they don't go hand in hand! They don't have to do with anything!

Hey I did this chart test thingy a little over a year ago in this thread.
I wonder if the test is stable ... redoing ...


Yep seems somewhat stable. I am even more Libertarian according to this than I was a year ago. And yet:

Actually no I disagree. Nobody may be discriminated because of what they are. Not baking a cake isn't a serious offense, but it is an offense. The offended party should have a right to take legal actions against the baker.
Religious freedom is great, but only if it doesn't involve breaking the rights of others. In this case the rights of a gay person to be treated like a normal human being.

Also I am very happy that there are regulations that force bakeries to take all sorts of hygiene precautions to make sure the food they sell doesn't hurt me. I'd think you agree that isn't a bad thing? At least for making sure that the stuff they make doesn't poison anybody? xD

I guess I agree authoritarians are bad.

They are? That's not how I use that word.

Just to make sure, I rechecked and wikipedia agrees: Progressive is the opposite of conservative. It is a political concept that builds upon progress in science, technology, economy and organisation. It stems from the era of Enlightenment. Good stuff.

Sigh. Yeah some of those are pretty weird ideas to enforce like that. Then again those are sources that are going on about "social justice warriors" and "the pc game" and all those right wing inventions to attack things they don't like.

And I am too lazy to verify these claims from a more neutral source. But some of these claims probably are somewhat true and some people take stuff too far. On all sides. It still feels like these are weird issues mostly from far away however. Words not from anywhere near me. "sjw", "political correctness", "triggered/trigger warning", "safe space". Wtf is a safe space even. Never thought about that so far. Looking up what that is now. So a space that "does not tolerate anti-LGBT violence, harassment or hate speech". By that definition all of Germany is supposed to be a safe space. Why would any place accept these things? It makes no sense to me.
What does not accepting those things even have to do with free speech? Sorry but free speech ends when all you're doing is spreading hatred towards groups of people. Then the entire nation ought to show you the door. First socially and if that isn't enough in extreme cases even legally.

For example people who make statements demanding violent actions against refugees in Germany in some cases are the target of legal actions and that's a good thing.

No these things that are described as "the bad progressive left" are nothing I see anywhere in my local surroundings. Those sound like batshit crazy inventions of people in the US or other far away places.

I mean:

Seriously? Wtf are these people. What is the US society doing that they produce a group of people so weak of mind they cannot even deal with some literature and potentially "hard" topics to discuss? Although when "The Great Gatsby" was a topic in my school nobody even had a slight issue with it. Like wtf would be wrong with that work. I don't remember any topics in it I'd even consider slightly problematic. Wtf. Then again I don't remember the details of the story anymore. ...

I am not defending such movements. I am all for the ability to have discussions about any topic, no matter how ... I am missing a word to describe these topics. Ethically challenging? But you know what I mean xD

Something somewhere went horribly wrong there in the education of these people and odd demands to restrict free speech probably are only the symptom of some much deeper problem.
Maybe these people feel generally attacked by their society somehow and thus see attacks everywhere? Maybe because their society does attack them, or at least certain groups of people, a lot and that has made them somewhat paranoid?

Please do not relate any of those people with anything I say or demand. I think those claims are nuts. They have nothing to do with any position I may take. They also have nothing to do with progressive thought in general, even if they might think that. Seriously.

Conservative, authoritarian groups use these crazy people to attack the progressive left. That's what I see here. Not an issue with progressive thought in general.

EDIT:
So maybe I made the mistake of judging a part of those "crazy people who have issues" a little too fast.

In example, the article linked about that "Metamorphoses" work starts with a student who, as a former victim of a sexual violence, felt rather uneasy about reading "vivid depictions of rape and sexual assault". Understandable, isn't it?

Then again what follows afterwards is that they text seems to think that this logic applies to any sort of social group. As if "rape victims" was just another social group.

They do mix up some stuff pretty badly there. I guess the example of a sexual assault in the start is just an attempt of making the rather questionable stuff afterwards more acceptable. It failed.

Yes people with actual traumatic experience should be helped. But most people do not have traumatic experiences. At least not in the US or any developed country.

It's political, so I'm posting the joke image here. If you get offended, I'ma find that funny too.

Too many people throwing easy insults out, with little proof. Kids on Xbox Live say they boink me mum on a frequent basis, words are cheap but how many actually 'ave, 'aye? How many people have had memes made to call them autistic before, and how many people actually were? How many conservatives were called complicit to [whatever]-ism, and how many actually were?

The sad thing is, the list of words are serious ones. Sort of like "autistic". Serious word. When thrown around though, loses meaning. Now when someone uses it, it's so de-sensitized, that it triggers the brain stimulation of the word "a", "the", "or", "but", ect...

Now, it's like, you call someone autistic, and they call you a Hanzo main, and you say "Oh you better take that back you little son of a..." ...because it's more insulting to be called a Hanzo main, than it is to be called a generic insult you've heard 9,500 times on the internet before.

I feel like I fall in a good place to put someone who wants to "attend a gay wedding with a concealed firearm and bag of pot", and to "put full effort into corrections when rational, and when necessary resort to execution rather than lifetime imprisonment".

Economic Left/Right: -1.63
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.31



Everyone's charts show 2 things:

1) Despite the same Y axis position, and the slightest shift of X axis, parties AND people can fully argue about situations when they should mostly agree about things.

2) As many people align waaay closer to Libertarian (and probably Anarchy), than to the actual 2 party system, it's ridiculous these mother fuckers can't get elected even with 2 disgusting candidates. Can't even get the 5% to have access to debates the next election. What relatively the f*ck? Why does a massive libertarian population, mostly vote for an authoritarian establishment???

Economic Left/Right: 0.63
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.74


My results in case someone cared. Good idea but some of the questions are stupid or badly written.
So people want freedom but most politicians don't, is it the main result? We haven't advanced that much from old monarchies.

PULEEEEZE

your chart shows one thing and one thing only : YOU are LOST my friend.

you are actually just like us but deeply believe you're as far as can be (somewhere in the upper right corner)

You LITERALLY do not know what ANY of the political groupings mean :

You don't understand the word SOCIALIST or that you are one. You were raised being told to hate them and so you did even though you are one yourself

this explains the mislabeling and demonizing of "libertarians" "liberals" "the left" "democrats" "socialist" ect that's been going on throughout this thread.

I mean some of your claims about those groups were bewildering the rest were outlandish.

but now at least you know you're one of us minoring some quirks from your upbringing : need guns, blacks are at least somewhat genetically crooks, that aren't truly defining or game changing.