Donald Trump

@Dalai: I don't think it's fair to scapegoat Hilary for destabilization of the Middle East, or the failure to stabilize the region. I'd go further and say that it's fundamentally wrong to assume Americans should be responsible for various foreign nations; ambassadors are not colonial governors, and the State Department's job is not to oversee the entire world. Middle East problems have mostly Middle East causes; Middle East solutions are going to need to have mostly Middle East causes, if they're going to stick. International diplomacy should be about communication flow and gently encouraging favorable situations, not strongarming sovereign nations with an overly interventionist foreign policy.

I understand that view isn't popular since 2001, with the Democrat platform being a rather heavily interventionist foreign policy and the Republican platform being a massively interventionist foreign policy. But look at the fruit of US efforts in trying to control things. 15 years later, we're looking at ISIL as a threat... it's not better. Micromanagement and war has brought insurgence and war. The strategy doesn't work. I mean shit, Teddy fucking Roosevelt understood; how do we forget so quickly?

Now, forgetting the death of personnel, that's bad. But it's not half as bad as stuff Trump has said.

Let me be clearer: I don't particularly love the idea of Clinton for President. She has made mistakes, she's further left than I'd like, and I have a vaguely bad feeling about her. However, she is experienced and apparently sane, two things you can't say about any of her competition; the other candidates don't make me feel vaguely bad, but unambiguously afraid if they're elected.

meh, I think problem is USA only have 2 partit to vote for. USA need other political partit.


HEre in europe there is like 7-10 partit you can vote for, why America hate so much pluralism?

He's literally calling out George Soros in his newest propaganda video. Ballsy!

https://www.facebook.com/DonaldTrump/videos/10156772205750725/

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Xavderion wrote:

He's literally calling out George Soros in his newest propaganda video. Ballsy!

https://www.facebook.com/DonaldTrump/videos/10156772205750725/

Soros' foundation is named after, and founded on the principles of, a book which explains how Marxism leads to totalitarianism. How radically left of him.

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MrSmiley21 wrote:

Spoiler

I gotta say, this post is really naive and shows a complete lack of understanding about basic human nature. Its a long winded way of saying "Can't we all just get along?".

Humans are a warlike species, because we evolved from primates who are warlike and territorial. For example, Chimp A will smash the skull of Chimp B with a rock if he tries to get a piece of fruit out of the tree that Chimp A is in if he's not part of Chimp A's group. If you examine human history, you'll find that as a species we behave the exact same way.

For your ideas to actually be viable, humans would have to rework their DNA, because these behavioral tendencies are coded in our genome. We're primates. Forced multiculturalism only brings chaos and unrest. There might be pockets of people who buy into it and might be able to make it work on a smaller scale, but to expect humanity as a whole to buy into it is really naive. So the question I got is, what would have to happen for you to be convinced this simply cannot work on any sort of larger scale? Even in societies with forced multiculturalism, different groups of people in large part seek to segregate themselves from each other by choice. This is because we're territorial, and each group needs their safe space.

The problem with the middle east, is the west is frequently getting involved in political affairs and disputes in Muslim countries, for example the situation in Iraq, Libya, and Syria, etc is as a result of the west destabilizing these countries. These people had their safe space, and we took it away from them, and are telling them to come to our countries instead. They got a chip on their shoulder for good reason. If you're looking for a formula for multiculturalism that's guaranteed to fail, this is it. These people don't respect Western culture, for good reason, and Westerners don't respect their culture.

Europeans should be blaming the USA for the refugee crisis. It was the USA who went in and destabilized the region. Now Europe is expected to pay for the failures of US policy.

Multiculturalism is a red herring. See, once a time french and british were at way constantly. Every country in Europe hated each other. Six million died in a genocide. Japanese used to make suicide attacks. Nuclear bombs killing a whole cities. US had legally sanctioned segregation 70 years ago. The illuminated west culture wasn't a thing. Eventually, people started to mix and it created the modern west culture as we know it. I know is not impossible. Just painful and it takes too long.

You are the one that reduces everything to genetics, you are the naive one ignoring society and free will.

I'd rather suffer trying to reform muslims (not via wars, I mean, education and assimilation) than to hide and wait for things to solve themselves. Religious conservatives are always like that and it deserves some work. Your solution means terrorists will attack anyway, so it's a non starter. If it takes 50 or 100 years, so be it. For humanity. Safe spaces must be broken. Be from the left or from the right.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Hilary is obviously the best candidate. She has 8 years experience (including a balanced budget) and everyone else in the running is batshit insane.

I'm a conservative, mind you. Which is kind of the point; Sanders might better represent the left, but Clinton is the candidate Republicans can vote for. And if Trump wins the nomination due to extremists within the Republican party, you can be sure a very significant minority of Republicans will be looking for a way to vote against Trump.

Balancing budgets tend to be pro cyclical so they are not really desirable. Maybe in the long run, but in the short run, deficits are needed (specially in crisis). See Germany for a good example (although it's arguable that their policies applied to Europe as a whole have been harmful, debt reduction is undesirable in emergencies). US has many examples of states balancing budget when it's harmful.

Sanders has more problems that being too much to the left (in the rest of the world he would be center left, a moderate, US is too much to the right). He is somewhat ignorant in economics, and his followers are not critical enough to make him a good president. He doesn't seem evil, but a zealot. I don't know what's worse.

The problem with Hilary is that he has too many skeletons in the closet. She is the most experienced but she will govern like a corporatist. It will be fairly worse than Obama.

Truth is, conservatives like you (or libertarians, that would be more adequate to describe you) were always a minority. The rest of conservatives are reactionaries or plain evil/corrupt. I think there is space for your ideology, but I think it's wrong sometimes. That's it.

Hell, this thread shows the mentality of Trump supporters (the birther one was hilarious), and anti-establishment-at-any-cost types.

There are no good candidates, and that happens when elections don't happen in a free market of ideas.

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Xavderion wrote:

He's literally calling out George Soros in his newest propaganda video. Ballsy!

https://www.facebook.com/DonaldTrump/videos/10156772205750725/

Aaaand the video has been taken down. Who would've thought :3

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NeroNoah wrote:

The problem with Hilary is that he has too many skeletons in the closet. She is the most experienced but she will govern like a corporatist. It will be fairly worse than Obama.

Truth is, conservatives like you (or libertarians, that would be more adequate to describe you) were always a minority. The rest of conservatives are reactionaries or plain evil/corrupt. I think there is space for your ideology, but I think it's wrong sometimes. That's it.

I don't believe we were always a minority. Late 1700s, for example. Of course, that era was awash with all sounds of other bullshit, like slavery and misogynism. But still.

Also, you say "corporatist" like it's a bad thing. If you mean crony capitalism and pork-barrel corruption trying to hide under banner of laissez-faire (aka Republican standard MO at present), then yeah, it is. If you mean actual, corruption-free laissez-faire, then no, it isn't... although perhaps it's a tad naive to hope for a government check-and-balanced well enough to avoid significant levels of such corruption. They say prostitution is the oldest profession, but I wonder if pork predates it.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

I don't believe we were always a minority. Late 1700s, for example. Of course, that era was awash with all sounds of other bullshit, like slavery and misogynism. But still.

Also, you say "corporatist" like it's a bad thing. If you mean crony capitalism and pork-barrel corruption trying to hide under banner of laissez-faire (aka Republican standard MO at present), then yeah, it is. If you mean actual, corruption-free laissez-faire, then no, it isn't... although perhaps it's a tad naive to hope for a government check-and-balanced well enough to avoid significant levels of such corruption. They say prostitution is the oldest profession, but I wonder if pork predates it.

Corporatism means government control by corporations, so crony capitalism. Players shouldn't be making the rules. Hillary has made too much questionable shit with corporations already (that's no conspiracy). You'd be chosing the lesser evil (arguable).

Laissez faire only works for some markets and some social situations. It's not a silver bullet, and it's irresponsible to pretend otherwise.

The first welfare theorem shows very well under what conditions laissez faire works. Market failures are a thing.

Yet government failures are a thing too, and we must balance between the two (and no, small government won't cut it all the time).

It could be argued that the lack of safety nets (and I don't mean that in a naive welfare thing) have made possible a candidate like Trump (I mean, want to convince someone to be a protectionist? Let them rot when their job evaporates and ask them to solve problems they have not created). It's easier to blame China rather than make a more nuanced analysis of a situation.

There is no optimal solution, and you cannot sidestep the problem of corruption with a system (namely, laissez faire free market). It's kinda like GGG balance. Everyone will be pissed off, it will be shit, but it will be better than the rest. At the end, it comes all to humans doing their best.

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Head_Less wrote:

meh, I think problem is USA only have 2 partit to vote for. USA need other political partit.


HEre in europe there is like 7-10 partit you can vote for, why America hate so much pluralism?

There is no way to answer this succinctly.

On the one hand, there are more parties than two - the factions just stay under the same large named umbrella of (R) or (D) for pragmatic reasons. You can see divisions in each party; to take the Republicans for example:

Evangelical Christians
Tea Party
Libertarian

there are many, many more, but these 3 are enough to illustrate. If you asked members of each group to list what their highest priority is - their most important campaign issue, each will have a different answer. Americans think (or perhaps know) that if they fully divided based on these differences, they would be less equipped to fight against, and win versus, Democrats - who hold positions that they hate.

This leads to a second point, which is that politics in America seems to lead people to hate the 'other' more than they love their own position. Anyone is palatable to them as long as it comes at the expense of the other side not getting what they want.

Pluralism exists, but there is power and utility in continuing to brand yourself as part of one of two options. Splitting a party right now into 3 or 4 like minded, but unique parties would throw local and national elections to the other side for 20 years or more. Since there is money in politics, I don't think anyone is interested in taking a long term approach based on their ideals - they'd rather just get elected another term.