Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo — Page 822

Jeebus said:

Mrebo said:

If I were the proverbial person from Mars and you wanted to convince me that Naziism/white supremacy is gaining a foothold in US society and politics, these aren’t convincing examples.

1. A guy in Illinois with no chance of winning who was completely disavowed by the GOP

What about a Nazi winning the Missouri House primary by 25 points?

The Martian is not impressed. It is amazing what kind of people can be elected in state houses but it’s not proof that Naziism is sweeping the nation.

Antisemitism was a major part of actual Nazism and for whatever reason has found quarter on the Left. That is something that I do find worrisome. (The Missouri candidate expresses antisemitism which is more rare among candidates on the Right.)

What the flying fuck are you talking about? Antisemitism is less common on the right? I actually agree that a lot of people on the left are conflating their opposition to Israel with Jews in general, which is distressing, but you simply can not complain about how others are making claims that are supposedly without evidence and then do exactly what you’re complaining about. Antisemitism being less common on the right is something that you pulled out of thin air. That’s fucking absurd. Breitbart is a haven for alt-right filth. Most rightwing conspiracies involve Jewish control in some way. Holocaust denial is almost exclusively a rightwing phenomenon. The Trump administration put Steve Bannon in a prominent role at first.

We’ve given you concrete examples of how fringe, rightwing neoNazism is at least more common than you’re letting on, and you disregard all of those examples as not being good enough and then proceed to say something without any kind of evidence whatsoever. What the fuck?

EDIT: Give me some fucking examples of leftwing antisemite candidates. Give them to me, and I’ll actually condemn them, but I’ll also give you plenty more rightwing examples for each leftwing one you give me.

NeverarGreat said:

Mrebo said:

This article helped me understand the intense dislike some have for Jordan Peterson.

I read that entire article and still have no idea what this Peterson guy is on about or why people dislike him.

Also, and sort of a tangent, what’s this about Leftism being like the final days of the Roman Empire? It’s an overly ominous attitude about the Left that has seemed to grow on the Atlantic these past few years. I’ve noticed it especially in their pieces on Trump, where the authors write as if his policies and tweets are couched in some form of intelligent strategy or overriding ideology instead of what they almost always are - an attempt to distract from the latest scandal and/or channel the media’s attention. This means that the Atlantic, and many other publications, play right into his hands when they ought to know better, and in fact they often do. When you read right to the end of the pieces, the authors often admit that they know just how cynical his ploys are, but the impression I get is one of defeat from the authors in their assumption that their article will not change anybody’s mind so why bother.

This is from the same publication that wrote this when supporting a presidential candidate for only the third time since 1857:

“In its founding statement, The Atlantic promised that it would be “the organ of no party or clique,” and our interest here is not to advance the prospects of the Democratic Party, nor to damage those of the Republican Party. If Hillary Clinton were facing Mitt Romney, or John McCain, or George W. Bush, or, for that matter, any of the leading candidates Trump vanquished in the Republican primaries, we would not have contemplated making this endorsement. We believe in American democracy, in which individuals from various parties of different ideological stripes can advance their ideas and compete for the affection of voters. But Trump is not a man of ideas. He is a demagogue, a xenophobe, a sexist, a know-nothing, and a liar. He is spectacularly unfit for office, and voters—the statesmen and thinkers of the ballot box—should act in defense of American democracy and elect his opponent.”

This is why the Atlantic infuriates me. If they are convinced that Trump is such a danger to the Republic, they should fight him regardless of how partisan it makes them look.

I like the Atantic’s stance here if I understand it right. Give me the news straight. Don’t slant it or make it too slippery to catch. Let me see what’s really going on as best as possible. Then I’ll decide what I like and what I don’t from there.

I don’t want to be forced to swallow stuff that’s not clean and true. The world’s complicated enough without added smear. Just do your job the best way possible. Just tell us the actual fucking news. Not your opinion of the news. Not what you want us to believe happened. Not some polished off version. Not some clever exaggeration. Just clear facts. And give us a goddamn Joe Friday to read it to us too.

It’s so simple.

Almost anything Trump or his administration says comes pre-slanted or is an outright lie. So when the media simply repeats these things without immediately fact-checking them, they are perpetuating the lie.

Mrebo said:

If I were the proverbial person from Mars and you wanted to convince me that Naziism/white supremacy is gaining a foothold in US society and politics, these aren’t convincing examples.

1. A guy in Illinois with no chance of winning who was completely disavowed by the GOP

2. 20 people holding signs.

3. Steve King who has been in Congress 15 years. During that time he’s said ignorant and racist things but he’s not an insurgent Nazi.

Probably a good choice to start with three mild examples. You don’t want to freak out the Martian with Stephen Miller and his ilk, since we don’t know how they’d react to a serious concern. But seriously, numbers have nothing to do with it. If there are only 40 Nazis in the whole country and they’re all in the White House, does that make it less scary? Frankly I’d say it’s the opposite.

Now, I get what you’re saying about abusing the meanings of words (such as Nazism), but holding too tightly to the definition is equally unhelpful. The core defining belief of Nazism is white supremacy, and someone who agrees strongly with the Nazis on that core principle, but doesn’t agree with their view on railway pensions can, in my opinion, still be called a Nazi, even if they’re not actually a member of a 30’s German worker’s party. We’re just going to need to differ on that score.

It should go without saying you can find people with loathesome views. You can find violent racists. What I see totally lacking is a popular appeal that would give Nazis/white supremacists power. The pathetic turnout for the recent “rally” supports my view.

And yet Stephen Miller gained power without popular appeal. It’s almost as if Nazis care more about power than popularity, and that there are avenues to power that bypass popularity altogether.

In these discussions I see the definitions blurred so that Nazi becomes a general slur against positions that may be objectionable but don’t belong to Nazis/white supremacists, like nativist/anti-immigrant positions. Those ideas have had some sway throughout our history. I don’t like those views either.

Nativism and anti-immigrant positions are almost always racially tinged. i.e. there was a Chinese Exclusion Act, but no consideration of an accompanying English Exclusion Act. It wasn’t about immigrants, it was never about immigrants, it was about those immigrants. And today, our government compares Norway favorably to “shithole countries” when discussing immigration. Modern anti-immigrant sentiment is almost always very poorly masked racism. Poorly masked only because people are masking a lot less than they used to in the recent past. I’m sure you can find one anti-immigrant crusader who wants to shut down Portuguese immigration just as much as Vietnamese immigration, but that is not representative of the whole. Is racism the same as white supremacy? No, not in my book. There are far more simple racists in the world than outright Nazis. But with regards to Steve King, you can only promote neo-Nazis and recommend neo-Nazi books so many times before, hey, maybe this “aww shucks I’m just an ignorant bigot that likes to read Nazi stuff, I’m not a Nazi myself” excuse wears pretty thin, to the point of unbelievability.

The idea that civil society is done and there’s a whole bunch of Hitlerites running around that need punching is not supported by the facts.

We survived our last major Republic-threatening bout with white supremacists and ended up better for it. We could certainly survive this one as well, hopefully with a lower body count.

The need to punch Nazis is not related to civil society or the lack thereof. Nazism has a long and sordid history of enforcing the rules of civil society when it suited them, and ignoring them completely when it didn’t. They operate outside civil society, waiting for an opportunity to take over. Today they don’t have a huge popular following, I agree, but they do have unprecedented funding and connections, and a recent track record of turning functional pluralist democracies like Poland into minority rule Nazi states in a very short timeframe. I posit they’re seeing the present situation as their opportunity.

NeverarGreat said:

Almost anything Trump or his administration says comes pre-slanted or is an outright lie. So when the media simply repeats these things without immediately fact-checking them, they are perpetuating the lie.

The media should always check up on things before quoting anyone. When they quote someone they basically give that guy credibility. So yeah. I totally agree with you.

Well in Denmark - not so Fox’s Trish Regan…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSd8ellS52M or

https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1029832098603888641

Just for info & interest - the OECD website; with useful and easy to follow information on many countries around the world:-

http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/#

Anderson Cooper uses a Star Wars reference (appropriately) to describe Trump’s people about 4-mins into this clip (enjoy):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUU1Vd2E3DY

‘Donald Trump: ‘worst hour’ for president as Manafort and Cohen guilty’…

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/22/worst-hour-for-trump-after-convictions-for-manafort-and-cohen

‘Trump ex-campaign chief Manafort guilty of multiple fraud charges’

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45265676

&

‘Michael Cohen trial: Trump accused of directing hush money’

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45265546

https://t.co/Nt3DFwJqRL

Handman said:

Well, it seems John McCain is not long for this world. That’s a shame, as he was one of the few Congressmen who appeared to have real integrity, and a voice of his own.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/24/politics/john-mccain-cancer-treatment/index.html

Him standing up to Trump in the final moments of his life earned him a lot of respect from liberals and leftists (including me), so I think he will be remembered a lot more positively than he would have had he not had the character to stand up to that man.

When I was in 3rd grade, I would say thank you to my teacher when she passed out work. I wasn’t actually thankful for the assignment or anything, I just thought it was polite, and she seemed to appreciate it. Then one day a sub got pissed at me for it. Needless to say, it baffled me.