Donald Trump and US politics

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The_Reporter wrote:

The folks in that story are fully breitwashed and DEEPLY racist.

I doubt it's all of them that are racists. There's undoubtedly racists in that articles though.

Still, it's good to understand the grievance of the people even if a lot of the ranting is dumb. I just wonder why they don't try to fix their own problems instead of having to ask for federal intervention. A lot of them are resisting re-specialization for some reason. I can't believe that they are all passionate miners either so, I'm just left wondering...

Speaking of DEEPLY racist, anyone catch that New York Times article?

I figure the NYT is old enough that they might have once ran a column asking "Can My Children Be Friends With Black People?" I just wonder how long ago that would have been. 40 years? 50?

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Speaking of DEEPLY racist, anyone catch that New York Times article?

I figure the NYT is old enough that they might have once ran a column asking "Can My Children Be Friends With Black People?" I just wonder how long ago that would have been. 40 years? 50?

Poor kid. Daddy has full blown TDS and is raising his kid to be a racist.

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Xavderion wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Speaking of DEEPLY racist, anyone catch that New York Times article?

I figure the NYT is old enough that they might have once ran a column asking "Can My Children Be Friends With Black People?" I just wonder how long ago that would have been. 40 years? 50?

Poor kid. Daddy has full blown TDS and is raising his kid to be a racist.

A quote from the article, almost:

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I will teach them to be cautious, I will teach them suspicion, and I will teach them distrust. Much sooner than I thought I would, I will have to discuss with my boys whether they can truly be friends with Jews.

I'm surprised the Twitterverse hasn't demanded his children placed into protective custody.

John Oliver describes Whataboutism

Whataboutism is a very interesting concept. I can easily see how the anti-Trump folks in this thread might consider me guilty of it, as I routinely point out similarities between the far left and the far right. However, if any clarification is necessary, here it is: I am not trying to say the the far right is okay because what the far left does is okay according to the far left, making me a far-right apologist; I am saying the far right is horrible and the far left is horrible and fuck 'em both because I am neither. Don't fall for the false dichotomy, people: there are more than just two sides.

However, it's worth noting that such triangular relationships don't hold well in American politics due to first-past-the-post voting and the resultant doninance of the two-party system. When third parties are not realistic alternatives, Whataboutism isn't a logical fallacy, it's a valid argument. What about Clinton's private email server, what about Bernie getting cheated, what about KSA influence on the Clinton campaign... all of these were good reasons to vote Trump under first-past-the-post but would have been mediocre reasons at best to vote Trump under an instant-runoff system.

I want that to really sink in. The way we vote makes Whataboutism valid when it otherwise wouldn't be. Is it any surprise, then, that both parties are corrupt and hypocritical about it?

The saddest thing about the Whataboutism/Two-Party-System synergy is that the predictable response to Whataboutism is... more Whataboutism. Oliver employs it himself, deflecting a horrible choice of footwear with "Whatabout Hitler's gonads?" Oliver assumes there's this single authoritive order under which certain topics will wait their turn, but this won't happen; the importance of topics is contended and thus people won't agree on whose turn it is. No matter who we are, our choices of what to cover first, what to cover later, and what to not cover at all reveal our inner biases.

But I digress. There is no single reform to US politics as important as IRV. Get involved in trying to promote it. The predictable result of first-past-the-post is steadily increasing hyper-partisan extremism, and if we don't remove the cause then we deserve the effect.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

The way we vote makes Whataboutism valid

Nope. It means changing the subject and distract without reacting to any criticism. Result: only accusations, nothing else. Hey, let´s just point at someone else....

The amount of this has risen with Trump, so his followers might want to call this behaviour normal. It is not. He is not.

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Schmodderhengst wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

The way we vote makes Whataboutism valid

Nope. It means changing the subject and distract without reacting to any criticism. Result: only accusations, nothing else. Hey, let´s just point at someone else....

When you have only two choices, an attack on Choice A is a defense of Choice B, and vice versa. Thus, if a proponent of A responds to an attack on A with an attack on B, that is valid in the context of forced dichotomy.

We really need viable third parties through IRV.

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Schmodderhengst wrote:

The amount of this has risen with Trump, so his followers might want to call this behaviour normal. It is not. He is not.

I agree it's risen with Trump, but you're delusional if you think the GOP is going back. The previous normal was: Democrats employ Whataboutism (with significant grace and subtlety), Republicans don't use Whataboutism and get hammered rhetorically (hence "cuckservative"). Trump is completely unapologetic about using what Oliver calls a Soviet therefore communist far-left technique, deploying it without grace or subtlety in many instances. Given the strategic context of the two-party system, Trump (and Republicans in general) would be an idiot not to do this; because he knows of the Whataboutism of his opponents, he can easily use Whataboutism to defend his own Whataboutism.

Unfortunately, this new Republican pugnacity will only cause Whataboutism to escalate further so long as the US remains under the two-party system. Did I mention we need IRV? Because we need IRV.

It is not legitimate. Our media is much harder with people who try this and demand an answer. If politicians don´t answer questions, why listen to them anyway ?

Your media was all too nice and naive (and greedy) with Trump.

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Schmodderhengst wrote:

It is not legitimate. Our media is much harder with people who try this and demand an answer. If politicians don´t answer questions, why listen to them anyway ?

Your media was all too nice and naive (and greedy) with Trump.

Your media probably exists in a context of viable third parties. (Where are you from again?) Mine doesn't, and is shackled by that truth. Things in America are increasingly either Republican or Democratic with the ground for independent voices and centrism shrinking rapidly.