2020 Political Chatter

[zachateseverything]

So in Australia we've got two key parties. The meanspirited and ineffectual ones and the genuinely ineffective ones.


I've seen a few snippets of the GOP "convention" thingy. Why is it that in the US there is "us" and "them" and the "them" will bring down hellfire and damnation. I don't really get it. I don't think either of our two main political parties could organize armageddon. And I don't think the public would believe you if they said they would.

Ooh, and guns. We were thinking about having a rational discussion with a possum. Looked into air rifles. For which I would have to get a gun license in Australia. WTAF is going on with that pink shirted barefoot dude with the assault rifle and his wife with a pistol. Even ignoring the bairfooted pink shirted thing, it's just weird.

There are a lot of systemic issues with America and what you're seeing are the symptoms. We probably have some of the same stuff going on as the rest of the western world regarding the spread of misinformation on social media, the addiction to 24 hour news coverage, etc but there are some distinctly American phenomenon that likely doesn't exist in much of the rest of the world. This is a non-inclusive list.

- like some other countries we use a first past the post system of choosing the winner of an election. this guarantees a two party system for any election larger than a town council position. in theory this forces the political parties to be "big tent" operations but the reality turns out to be a bit different because...

- gerrymandering. This also exists in other countries but it's very pronounced here. In the short term one political party divvying up the voting districts to their own benefit does help them stay in power. in the long term the issue it creates is that non-competitive districts feature a party primary as the defacto general election. You know who wins a party primary with no concern about winning a general election? Cranks capable of passing a purity test but not compromising with others and governing effectively.

- 100 years of military, economic, and political dominance has really rooted in this idea that America is the greatest country in history and shouldn't change at all. The founders of this country have been deemed infallible despite their horrible records regarding slavery, women's suffrage, civil rights, genocide, etc. The people with strong America fetishes really by into this idea that taxation is theft, they aren't free if they can't do whatever they want when they want regardless of the consequences to others, and that they need a gun to protect themselves and their property from a police state (but somehow police gunning down unarmed civilians doesn't qualify as such).

- money in politics. There are effectively no caps on the ability for special interests to poor money into elections and key issues. We've seen stuff like gun rights advocacy go completely off the rails.

- a good chunk of the early settlers from Europe were religious kooks who got chased over here. Early in the history of America that's a net positive. The constitution was written with the idea that Government should be separated from all forms of religion. However, those kooks still lived here and had children here. Low and behold a lot of the ancestors of those people seem to display high degrees of cognitive dissonance.

[BBB]

Yes there are some marked differences between the two countries, despite some similarities.

But, man, you do elections different. The RNC seems to be nothing but an extended freak show. The sky is blue, but these turkeys seem to think it is purple.

And what's with the extended Trump circle jerk? Sure he's President (at least in name only), but what's his daughter in law got to add, other than quoting Lincoln incorrectly?

Make America great again, again. Morons.

[Colinmclelland]

I do enjoy these. Colourful language warning though...

[Mark Kelly]

You have to love

"Or fuck it, just go to a rich neighbourhood and mail it there: it'll arrive on time"

[guido]

The Manic Denialism of the Republican National Convention | The New Yorker

"The problems in your life aren’t real; the real problems are the ones that nobody, except for everybody on this stage, has the courage to talk about. The media wants to brainwash you; the Marxists are massing outside your idyllic suburban lawn; if the enemy gets its way, small businesses will be decimated, Thomas Jefferson will be cancelled, and 911 will go straight to voice mail. The speakers at the Republican National Convention keep ringing the same notes: fabricated panic followed by hoarse, manic Panglossianism. Jobs were lost under past Democrats, and they would be lost under future Democrats, but with President Trump there is only milk and honey. Joe Biden is a stultifying agent of the status quo, too boring to mention by name; he is also an unprecedented break with tradition, a threat to all that we hold dear. Climate change, of course, is waved away as mass hysteria; even the coronavirus pandemic is mentioned rarely and almost always in the past tense, as if the decision to deliver speeches in a cavernous, empty auditorium were merely the whim of a quirky location scout. Anyone watching from quarantine, during a once-in-a-century unemployment crisis, would not need a fact check to know that this is all a stretch, to say the least. Still, who doesn’t like a bit of flattering escapism now and then? A disaster movie is supposed to have a clean arc: hero nukes asteroid before it can collide with Earth. Who wants a muddled plotline about a real and intractable disaster—a hurricane supercharged by global warming, or the long struggle against police brutality, or a President who may or may not be on the verge of stealing an election and triggering a constitutional crisis? Sounds depressing. Besides, movie theatres are closed right now, for reasons it would be too much of a bummer to mention.

“America is not a racist country,” Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, said on Monday night, twenty seconds before referring to the “discrimination and hardship” she and her Indian-American family had faced. On Tuesday night, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, demonstrators chanted the name of Jacob Blake, an African-American father of six who had been shot in the back, on video, by a white police officer. Melania Trump, in her keynote address from the White House Rose Garden, said, “While debate rages on about issues of race, let’s focus on the strides we have made and work together for a better tomorrow for everyone.” Mistakes were made in the past; fewer mistakes should be made in the future; in the meantime, it would be unseemly to focus on anything so mundane as the present. The point was to stay positive. Beyond that, no one seemed too hung up on the details. Rand Paul, the libertarian senator from Kentucky, praised Trump for winding down foreign wars; Eric Trump, perhaps the dimmest star in the Trumpian firmament, praised his father for dropping “the mighty MOAB,” which stands for Mother of All Bombs. “Hello, folks,” President Trump’s top economic adviser said, employing the faux-familiar tone of a neighbor who can never quite remember your name. “You know me from TV and radio. I’m Larry Kudlow.” He declared the Trump Administration’s economic policies “a roaring success”—hopefulness repackaged as blithe, obstinate blindness—and asked, “Do you want economic health, prosperity, opportunity, and optimism, or do you want to turn back to the dark days of stagnation, recession, and pessimism?” A desire for both opportunity and reality—say, a nod toward the obvious fact that we’re currently in a recession, which would seem like a prerequisite for finding a way out—was not on offer. “Our enemies fear us because Americans fight for good,” Dan Crenshaw, a representative from Texas, said on Wednesday night. “The defeat of ISIS was the result of America believing in our heroes.” Then, before Vice-President Mike Pence’s acceptance speech, came a five-minute trailer, an orgy of white picket fences, amber waves of grain, and sun-drenched American flags billowing in slow motion."

[guido]

The most shocking line in Vice President Pence’s 2020 RNC speech | Vox

"Across all three nights of the Republican National Convention so far, speakers returned to a single theme: In American cities, at least according to these speakers, protesters hostile to the police are rioting and crime is skyrocketing — and if Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is elected, this will be the future.

As Vice President Mike Pence put it during his keynote speech on Wednesday, “in the midst of this global pandemic ... we’ve seen violence and chaos in the streets of our major cities.”

Pence’s speech highlighted a single law enforcement officer, strongly implying that this officer was the victim of left-wing radicals opposed to police officers and to President Trump: “Dave Patrick Underwood was an officer of the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Protective Service, who was shot and killed during the riots in Oakland, California,” said Pence, before acknowledging Underwood’s sister, who was in the audience.

Underwood’s death is tragic, but it has nothing to do with left-wing radicals.

Underwood was killed just blocks away from anti-police violence protests in Oakland, but federal authorities say he was killed by Steven Carrillo, an Air Force staff sergeant and a follower of the “boogaloo boys,” a right-wing extremist movement that, according to the Washington Post’s Katie Shepherd, “has sought to use peaceful protests against police brutality to spread fringe views and ignite a race war.”

Carrillo was taken into federal custody, and he faces murder charges.

The “boogaloo” movement, which emerged on the website 4chan, is a bizarre mix of in-jokes, conservative gun culture, and Civil War nostalgia. It derives its name from the 1984 breakdancing film Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, a film that is sometimes used as a sarcastic shorthand for an unnecessary sequel. The idea is that the Boogaloo movement hopes to bring about a sequel to the Civil War."

[ides1056]

you can't make this shit up

[vertical_doug]

you can't make this shit up

Boogaloo Bois + QAnon and you have some dangerous sh!t

[gregl]

Boogaloo Bois + QAnon and you have some dangerous sh!t

Dangerous AND promoted by the President and his minions to sow the seeds of doubt and divide the voting public. The danger exemplified by the 17 year-old shooter in Kenosha. Uninformed, under-educated, untrained gunmen in the streets, tacitly supported by some in law enforcement. This is how violent revolutions happen, folks. Wake up now before it's too late.

Greg

[Mark Walberg]

Dangerous AND promoted by the President and his minions to sow the seeds of doubt and divide the voting public. The danger exemplified by the 17 year-old shooter in Kenosha. Uninformed, under-educated, untrained gunmen in the streets, tacitly supported by some in law enforcement. This is how violent revolutions happen, folks. Wake up now before it's too late.

Greg

I've heard that this guy's mother drove him to and from the protests.

After shooting, he apparently walked toward police with his hands up, apparently surrendering. The police told him to "get out of here" and did not detain him.

"Asked at a Wednesday press briefing how the suspect was able to get away despite appearing to surrender, Kenosha Sheriff David Beth speculated that it was because the scene was chaotic. “There was screaming, hollering, chanting... In situations that are high stress you have such an incredible tunnel vision,” he said.

No kidding about the tunnel vision of the police.

[Too Tall]

RE Guys cut and paste << Can we expect that the Boogaloo (thing) will be declared a domestic terrorist group?

[gregl]

RE Guys cut and paste << Can we expect that the Boogaloo (thing) will be declared a domestic terrorist group?

Nope. Until the Democrats have the White House and a majority in both houses of Congress, these domestic militias and fringe groups will have a free rein. Even if the Democrats gain control of our federal government, too many people, including law enforcement personnel, support the right wing, armed militias and fringe groups. In Kenosha, cops in an armored vehicle gave them water and thanked them for their presence. Absolute madness. Our country has lost its collective mind. All tribalism/white power and no logic or respect for fellow humans.

Greg

[72gmc]

"Few police agencies have explicit policies against affiliating with white supremacist groups."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-police-report

[guido]

With this reality, there is little surprise how much support the de-fund the police movement has...

[guido]

April Was Trump’s Cruelest Month | New York Times

"On Wednesday, Vice President Mike Pence peddled an extraordinary fantasy about Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus. Pence’s tale of heroic, decisive leadership was so completely at odds with reality that pretty much the only words he spoke that weren’t lies were “a,” “and,” and “the.”

And most media organizations did, indeed, point out the falsehoods.

Yet what seems to me to be missing from much of the commentary on the Republican carnival of disinformation is an acknowledgment that Trump’s worst hour came not during Covid-19’s initial surge but weeks later, when he did all he could to push America into a reckless — and maskless — reopening.

And he’s doing it again. Speaker after speaker at the Republican National Convention referred to Covid-19, if at all, in the past tense. Their not-so-subtle message was that the pandemic is over. But it isn’t, and the Trump administration is still failing to protect the American people.

If I had to pick a single day when America lost the fight against the coronavirus, it would be April 17. That was the day when Trump proclaimed his support for mobs — some of whose members were carrying guns — that were threatening Democratic state governments and demanding an end to social distancing. “LIBERATE MINNESOTA,” he tweeted, followed by “LIBERATE MICHIGAN” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd amendment.” (That last bit reads an awful lot like an incitement to armed insurrection.)

In so doing, Trump, in his eagerness to see good economic numbers, chose to disregard warnings from health experts that returning to business as usual would lead to a new surge in infections. And while the Democratic governors he targeted mostly ignored his taunts, many Republican governors, especially in the Sunbelt, rushed to remove restrictions on restaurants, bars, even gyms.

The result was a vast national catastrophe."

[guido]

The 3 charts that disprove Donald Trump’s convention speech | Vox

"The central question going into Donald Trump’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention was how he’d spin his disastrous record — which now includes more than 200,000 Americans dead of coronavirus, and an unemployment rate above 10 percent. And Trump quickly made his strategy clear: Take credit for something he didn’t do, and dodge blame for something he did do.

Let’s start with what he didn’t do. The convention was suffused with nostalgia for the economy of six months ago. “Before the China virus came in,” Trump said wistfully, the US “produced the best unemployment numbers for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans ever recorded.” And he’s right, in a way. Unemployment was low. Wages were rising. GDP was growing. The stock market was shattering records.

But that wasn’t a boom Trump created. It was a boom Trump inherited, and one that slowed and then collapsed on his watch.

During the first three years of the Trump administration, the economy added slightly fewer jobs per month than during the last three years of the Obama administration — 182,000 jobs a month vs. 224,000 jobs a month. The first three years of the Trump economy look like the last three years of the Obama economy, albeit with somewhat less job growth.

If Trump’s economic policy was so masterful, why is it impossible to pinpoint his takeover on a simple chart of job growth? You can see the economy turn around under Obama. You can’t see job growth accelerate under Trump — because it didn’t. To the extent presidents deserve credit for economic trends, Trump is taking credit for someone else’s work. "

[ides1056]

Obama took the SAT's for him.

[guido]

The RNC weaponized exhaustion | Vox

The most consistent theme of Donald Trump’s Republican National Convention wasn’t that Joe Biden was a puppet for radicals. It wasn’t even that rioters and looters are coming to your home and only Trump can protect you from the radical left.

The clear theme of the RNC was a flagrant and brutal disregard for the truth.

The first night of the RNC featured more false and misleading claims than all four nights of the DNC put together, according to a CNN fact-check. The second night starred an anti-abortion activist whose tale about the horrors of Planned Parenthood had been exposed as a fraud more than 10 years ago. On the third night, Vice President Mike Pence suggested that the murder of a police officer by a far-right extremist was a crime committed by left-wing rioters. It was all capped off by President Trump’s Thursday night speech, a farrago of falsehoods that even veteran Trump fact-checkers found stunning.

“Basically everything Trump says about Biden’s proposals is false,” the Washington Post’s Philip Bump writes. In a tour-de-force segment, CNN’s Daniel Dale spent three minutes debunking the speech at a rapid clip — and still didn’t cover all the lies...

Writing honestly about the RNC requires centering the dishonesty. But adequately describing the sheer breadth and brazenness of the lying that was on display these past four days would take volumes. And after a certain point, the whole thing reaches diminishing returns: Some depressing political science research suggests that pointing out when Trump is lying doesn’t actually change the way voters feel about him.

And that’s the dark brilliance of the RNC, and maybe the entire Trump presidency. If you just lie and break legal rules frequently enough and brazenly enough, the sheer volume of misconduct will overwhelm the systems that are designed to check them."

[Too Tall]

Wondering how, why or who are those individuals abject disregard for others is measured? Well....here is a start. I think we all have a positive dark core score, it would be weird if all of us never had imprudent thoughts. That is the devil and angel in us all right? In our dream states we play with these dilemas, it is not real life. In real life hitting the pause button before you act is probably a signal your dark core score is on the low side of positive....we all have a score. Go for it.

What is your "Dark Core Score"?

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/t...=pocket-newtab

The Dark Core Scale

1. It is hard to get ahead without cutting corners here and there.

2. I like to use clever manipulation to get my way.

3. People who get mistreated have usually done something to bring it on themselves.

4. I know that I am special because everyone keeps telling me so.

5. I honestly feel I'm just more deserving than others.

6. I'll say anything to get what I want.

7. Hurting people would be exciting.

8. I try to make sure others know about my successes.

9. It is sometimes worth a little suffering on my part to see others receive the punishment they deserve.

[ides1056]

zero

no kidding

it's hard enough to live with oneself