While there’s more to quality of life than just environmental threats and humans are still better off today than at any other point in history,
Do we have to make this pointless statement every single time we criticize Trump?
Do we need to pointlessly mention how terrible things are the world over every single time we criticize Trump?
I’m criticizing him and others over how they are failing to address what I think is making the world terrible for many of its inhabitants. Stop misrepresenting me. I’ve never posted in this thread and just said, “The world is terrible” and not backed up my statement with examples and evidence that I think supports my claim.
P.S. - Things aren’t terrible.
Are you ever going to bother to address any of the things that I’ve brought up to support my claim? You, more than anyone else in this thread, have consistently refused to have any kind of discussion. I don’t understand how you can claim that others in here are being unproductive when it’s you that says your opinion and refuses to actually defend it or provide any kind of rationale for why you think everyone in here is wrong. You ignore all of my points almost every time. And you do this to everyone else too.
I don’t think I’ve ignored anyone else’s points, at least not intentionally. Yours I gloss over because I don’t think you back up much at all. Most of your claims are little more than complaining based on your overwhelmingly negative perspective that has little to do with reality. Cite policy, cite laws, cite research/data, etc. and you’ll have my attention, but otherwise it mostly reads like doom and gloom. It’s damn depressing.
You have said before in this very thread that you don’t have any interest in citing things. Why should I take any of your attempts to appear as a rational voice in the discourse seriously?
Feel free to push me on more fact-based, data-driven points if you feel I’m lacking.
You never address any of my arguments or examples so why I should I waste my time with that?
I agree climate change is probably the most pressing issue for us as a species and it’s unfortunate that bad politics could end up wrecking the planet.
Unfortunate? It’s not just politicians. It’s primarily to blame on a willfully ignorant population that votes for people like Trump. Even Hillary, although she would’ve been better, was still incredibly weak on environmentalism. There’s also a lot of corporate propaganda in conservative-leaning media that spread outright lies about climate change. I’ve noticed lately that they’re back to spreading the lie that climate change is a total myth. I think it should be illegal to publish fraudulent studies about climate change, kind of like how it’s illegal for tobacco companies to publish fraudulent studies that cigarettes won’t destroy your lungs.
Most voters don’t vote based on a single issue and are primarily concerned with immediate results over future consequences, and I think the economy, immigration, and anti-PC culture took precedence over climate change in the last election for Trump voters (at least some of whom were Obama voters previously).
The immigration issue is something that appeals to ignorant people, willfully or otherwise, are compelled by. Immigration isn’t a problem now. It wasn’t a problem then. Illegal immigration is going down. Obama deported more people than his predecessors. It’s a manufactured issue.
If it’s manufactured, why are people on both sides so fired up about Trump’s immigration policy? There are still millions of undocumented immigrants already here. What do we do about them? As long as their status is up in the air and some people keep coming in illegally (which they are), it will be an issue voters care about.
They’re fired up over Trump’s immigration policy because it’s inhumane and stupid. I would think that’s the obvious reason why people are fired up about it since that’s what they say is the reason they’re fired up about it. I should’ve been more clear, though. The idea that the lives of citizens and non-immigrants are threatened by immigration is a manufactured issue.
And Trump is about as PC as you can get. He and his people have their own version of political correctness. Look at their responses to Hamilton’s cast criticizing Pence (Trump even demanded that the theater be a safe space), Samantha Bee’s comment, Kathy Griffin’s stunt, and Michelle Wolfe’s stand-up and tell me I’m wrong.
You’re wrong. Trump’s people are mostly pointing out hypocrisy on the left.
How am I wrong? I gave you examples. Give me examples. Or at least address my examples! How is it pointing out “hypocrisy on the left” to call for safe-spaces at Broadway plays? Or demanding that Samantha Bee be fired? Just accept that these people on the right are fragile too. I can’t stand this double standard where fragile little snowflakes on the left are called out, as they should be, but the fragile little snowflakes on the right are not.
Compare responses from the left regarding any insults thrown at Obama and his family versus responses from the left when insults are hurled at Trump — they don’t care about decorum at all when it’s not their guy.
What does that have to do with any of the shit that I just brought up? So because the people on the left are whiny little PC bitches, it’s okay that the people on the right are too? Is that the message? I hate the PC liberals. I wish they’d disappear so I never have to hear from them again. That doesn’t mean I ignore the fact that the right does it too. Your attempts to redirect the focus onto the left doesn’t work with me because I’m not one of these liberal hypocrites that you hear about from Louder with Crowder. So that form of argument doesn’t work on me, just to let you know.
Democrats lost because they had a mediocre platform and the wrong candidate. They need to come out with a rock star in 2020, but with the party going hard left on immigration and pretending that most Americans don’t want secure borders, they’re setting themselves up for another loss.
You actually are right that they had a mediocre platform and the wrong candidate. They tried to have a center-right, status quo platform. They aren’t pretending anything about immigration and borders. I don’t know what Steven Crowder and Candace Owens are saying these days since I don’t follow people like them anymore, but there are no major Democrats that don’t believe in secure borders. It amuses me that you claim that people like me are getting their information from insane fake news media when it’s very, very obvious that your views on the world are coming from right-wing outlets. Hillary Clinton’s platform was for secure borders and extreme vetting for people traveling here from the muslim world. Trump’s platform was ban muslims and build a wall. The side that is pretending that Americans want insane immigration policies is the right wing.
Trump is a salesman. He outsold Hillary while selling the same product.
He didn’t sell the same product. Their platforms were different; that’s an objective fact. He actually was 3,000,000 votes behind so he actually didn’t outsell her, he just sold himself to the more important voters.
Also, I think most liberals who voted for Hillary did so despite her position on immigration, not because of it. That was her trying to reach across the aisle, though she didn’t need to extend her arm very far.
What’s she supposed to extend her arm to? The build the wall crowd? There’s this notion that being a centrist is good. You shouldn’t reach across the aisle if the people on the other side are wrong.
Who has it worse now than before Trump was president?
Undocumented immigrants for sure. American citizens that are children of undocumented immigrants. Muslim Americans, or just Arab Americans regardless of their race. Public-school students thanks to Betsy DeVos. Women in college are getting Title IX protections revoked thanks to her too.
We’ve covered immigration extensively, so I’m not going back there.
I take issue with that. Is this your way of denying that undocumented immigrants are worse under him? Or citizens that have undocumented parents? I’d like for you to at least acknowledge this. I know you won’t, but I would like it if you did.
Other than enforcing current law, Trump’s admin isn’t doing much that’s different from prior administrations. You want to talk about a manufactured issue, it’s Trump’s war on immigrants as portrayed in the media. It’s the same shitshow it’s always been, just a different guy doing the song and dance.
He has made it worse. Separating children from parents over the misdemeanor crime of crossing the border illegally is a Trump decision. It used to be that children were typically only separated if the parents were charged with felonies.
What changes in law or policy have made things worse for Muslims or Arabs? Let’s talk about the “Muslim ban”. What has been the real-world effect of that policy? Not what you think might happen, or could happen. What actually happened as a result?
It actually really hurts citizens that have family in those arbitrarily-selected countries, whose family can’t visit them now and it’s difficult for them to go back to those countries and then return to the United States even if they have every right to be here.
I don’t know much about what DeVos has done to affect public schools, so I can’t speak to that. Of course she looked like a moron during her confirmation hearings and I’m sure the position is well beyond her level of competence. Title IX is trash though and universities should never have been put on the hook for investigating and punishing students for sex crimes. I’m not crying over that at all.
Okay, so obviously your ignorance on DeVos extends to Title IX because it covers gender/sex discrimination in colleges beyond just sex crimes.
While there’s more to quality of life than just environmental threats and humans are still better off today than at any other point in history,
Do we have to make this pointless statement every single time we criticize Trump?
Do we need to pointlessly mention how terrible things are the world over every single time we criticize Trump?
P.S. - Things aren’t terrible.
Things are quite terrible for many people now though.
This is always true at any time. Until someone invents free energy and the Star Trek replicator, the world will be a terrible place for some people, but hopefully in ever-decreasing numbers (which has been the general trend throughout history).
Okay, so do we just do nothing? I don’t understand this notion that there will always be suffering so let’s actively do as little as possible to better the lives of our people. I genuinely don’t get it. Maybe you’d feel less complacent if you weren’t a well-to-do white guy.
Did I say do nothing? No. Not once. Not ever. I said the world is better than you make it out to be, and it is. I didn’t say it was perfect and never said we shouldn’t strive for better.
It’s the obvious implication. You say the world is better than I think without giving me anything to support that claim while you ignore all of the issues that I put forward. What other conclusion am I supposed to take away?
However, that doesn’t mean I’m going to focus on everything that’s broken and walk around chronically depressed waiting for the world to end like you do. If I’m so complacent, please tell me the specific things you’ve done to make the world a better place. You don’t even vote, right?
I never once said that I made the world a better place because I think that I make the world a worse place. And the reason I don’t vote is because I live in a shithole where my vote means pretty much nothing because everyone else votes the other way. Why would I waste my time on that shit? And again, you’ve ignored my examples of why the world is not in good shape even though it is largely better than it’s been in the past, which is a sentiment that I’ve agreed with. Why do you refuse to address any of those things? I think I know why, but I’m curious to hear your justification for it.
I grew up in a small town in a family that would probably fit squarely into the lower middle class category. My mommy and daddy didn’t get me into a prestigious school and they didn’t foot the bill when I did go to college (my dad wanted me to join the military, ha), though they did contribute as much as they could afford, and for that I’m grateful. I had some grants to get me started out and relied on loans for the rest. When I graduated and couldn’t find a job in my field (English, mostly looked for copywriting jobs), I taught myself how to code on a computer I bought with a credit card (banks love to throw credit cards at new grads and hook them early). Lots of places wouldn’t even talk to me — despite my supposedly overwhelming white privilege — because I didn’t have the right degree. Everyone I can recall interviewing with was a white guy, and it didn’t seem to do me any favors. I washed windows for a year and a half to pay the bills until I was offered my first “real” job. I’ve excelled at my career because I’m better than most at what I do, and I wasn’t given a free pass because I’m white and male. As tech opportunities have increased, white guys have been matched or even outnumbered by minorities at my recent places of work, and the number of women at my last job was surprising and welcome. My boss was Indian, as were many of my coworkers, and we had a decent number of female engineers and a largely female QA staff. Three out of the four designers on my team were women, none of them originally from the U.S., all of whom I hired directly.
I never said you haven’t worked hard and I never said you got a free pass, I’m just saying that you obviously don’t acknowledge the societal roadblocks that people face because of the corporate hacks that run this country. The only reason I brought your race up was because of your startlingly absurd comments on how black people are worse off after the Civil Rights Act and how they should vote Republican. I don’t even really believe in white privilege the way that a lot of liberals frame it, especially seeing as how I’m a white guy with no potential or opportunities. But I do acknowledge that there are obvious disadvantages that plenty of black people face in this country. I was just reading about Detroit schools with black mould and without enough teachers and such poor heating that they could see their breath in the classrooms during winter. The reason I called you complacent is because of your repeated statements on how good life is for people these days compared to the olden days. Well, a lot of people don’t have any opportunities, and they don’t have good quality of life, and their lives are shitty, and it doesn’t look like that will change because by and large very few elected officials care. Most people can’t pull themselves up by their bootstraps like you could.
Labeling me privileged and complacent just doesn’t fly.
I didn’t label you anything, I just said that if you weren’t living the way you are now then maybe you wouldn’t feel so optimistic. It was just a basic, if futile, empathy exercise. And you’re obviously complacent on immigration issues, that’s pretty clear. I never said you were “privileged” because I think that word is kind of vague and bullshit, but I do think that your constant attempts to claim that things are going largely okay and are more or less fine now shows that you are either not concerned with or are ignorant of how the other half lives. Your shrugging off of liberal attempts to better people’s lives based on the fact that Star Trek replicators don’t exist makes that pretty obvious. Even if your post was supposed to convince me that your life isn’t and hasn’t been better than most people’s in America, your post did nothing to address the issue of complacency, so I don’t really see shy calling you complacent doesn’t fly.
As for keeping people like Trump from winning, I’d say we abolish the electoral college. The only reason people like it now is because it gives unpopular Republicans a better chance at winning the presidency without having to get the most votes.
I didn’t want Trump to win, but I think the Electoral College did exactly what it was supposed to do: give smaller communities a voice in federal government without being drowned out by major population centers. Not liking the results doesn’t mean the system is broken.
It drowned out the voice of major population centers. So three million people’s votes don’t matter because that somehow gives smaller communities a voice? The idea that the Electoral College gives small-town people a voice is a fucking fantasy. There’s no reason to vote for a presidential candidate in California or Idaho or anywhere in the Bible Belt because those states are already a given. And that’s not what it’s supposed to do, by the way. It actually was intended to keep the people from electing a moronic demagogue and obviously it didn’t fulfill that purpose. Your account of why the Electoral College is good may be the more PC way of saying that it allows unpopular Republicans to win in spite of failing to court a plurality of the votes, but make no mistake of thinking that that isn’t the real reason why conservatives like it. If you think that these same right-wing defenders of the Electoral College would be defending it if Hillary had won the Electoral College and lost the popular vote by three million, then you’re crazy, because they absolutely wouldn’t be.