Mmm, yes. Abortion and racism. Both equally complex issues with a lot of good points on both sides.
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Abortions for some, tiny swastika flags for others and literally no difference between the parties.
This is what persons actually believe.
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There’s no reason to smile and pretend everything’s okay when you’re suffering through electoral lesser evil moral calculus, even when it’s really one of the simpler calculations I’ve seen my lifetime. However you choose, a vote only means that you made a choice between one of the set of options presented to serve in an office. It doesn’t mean you are okay with the status quo, like the candidate, endorse every policy that candidate is likely to implement, or that you’ve sworn a loyalty oath and are not permitted to criticize or engage in activism against things that candidate represents.
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Mmm, yes. Abortion and racism. Both equally complex issues with a lot of good points of both sides.
Abortions for some, tiny swastika flags for others and literally no difference between the parties.
This is what persons actually believe.
The point of that was casually omitted from the quote.
Republicans say, “Not voting for Trump means you support murdering babies.”
Democrats say “Not voting for Clinton means you support lynching.”
It’s an ugly, bullying tactic used to shame people into voting against their conscience, as old as politics itself. I choose to have my own mind, and be responsible for my own conscience. They both are terrible people with terrible agendas, and I choose not to support terrible things.
With due appreciation for smug one-liners, the point was showing that both parties shame people into voting for unworthy candidates against their conscience.
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Shame implies that there are no consequences from a Trump win, smugness drips from your playing at “conscience” when you selectively give a shit about what matters to you. You’re far more compicit in what happens by not voting than you are by selecting an imperfect candidate.
At least we get some strategic wins for our losses by voting pragmatically.
You take undeserving credit for your slactivism, voting 3rd party is not activism, nor does it achieve anything beyond self-gratification. Your parties of choice and your interest in changing the status quo disappear in-between elections.
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Just pointing out one example of why your posts are confronted and/or flagged.
Stop playing the martyr.
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…And bad example is bad. My point in criticizing your example is that two political parties can employ superficially similar political tactics, while having real differences in their political positions. Enough so that a person can be reasonable in selecting one as morally superior to the other without being simply a partisan Sheeple (Sherson? what’s the singular of sheeple?)
Plus, give me some credit for not going full bbs and posting the at least two extremely relevant xkcd comics in lieu of my own original smug one-liner…
Wake up Sheeple and Athiests maybe I’m not so strong after all
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Meanwhile, in the negaverse…
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You are being incredibly unfair in this thread.
Other people have different opinions from you. Because you are human, you are not perfect and you are capable of mistakes. That means that your opinions probably do not give you the optimal position on all possible issues. This means you should probably try to be tolerant of opinions which differ from yours – in many cases, you may learn something by keeping an open mind.
But engaging in ad hominem – by accusing interlocutors of being “confused” or “ignorant” when they’re actually making very precise historically literate arguments with sound logic backing the ethical components, which is what I’m seeing here – you are making it impossible to have a good faith political discussion between people with different opinions.
You are demonstrating with your actions exactly what’s wrong with politics in this country – why we can’t have good faith discussions which bring us closer together instead of acrimonious spittle-flecked diatribes.
This was spoken by one of the Democratic party duckwalkers to one of a very few in this thread whose shown any capacity for independent thought.
You’d think there would be a little more tolerance for non-conformity at the BoingBoing BBS of all places.
Really? REALLY?!
She’s been making good faith arguments right along, and only posting to respond to incredibly repetitive arguments made by the pro-Clinton contingent (i.e. every “right thinking person” I’m sure) who are chiming in to tell her she’s ignorant or confused or doesn’t know WTF she is talking about even though she’s been incredibly serious, level-headed, and intelligent in all her replies.
Which all goes to show that the alt right really has a few good points when it comes to liberals’ conformity, lack of tolerance for different opinions, and support of civil liberties only for people with the correct ideologies.
People aren’t trying to reason her into it, that’s for sure – but then, liberals don’t seem to really employ much reason in their political discussions. Instead, everyone is trying to shame her by getting really moralistic and by denigrating her intelligence and connection to reality. That’s the liberal way, after all. If someone disagrees with you, they couldn’t possibly have real reasons for believing what they do. They must be morally or mentally defective.
You seem to be confused as to which sorts of beliefs and ideas constitute the “mainstream”. Hint: unalloyed support for Clinton is a mainstream idea. (The notion that anyone should care whether they are considered “woke” in the first place is another mainstream idea, and since it basically means “not committing thoughtcrime”, it’s incredibly conformist as well as being mainstream.)
I think it also ignores the decades of smug condescension on the part of liberals that made them not only ignore the problems and political concerns of half the country, but actively malign and marginalize those people as well. Of course, this attitude is the solution to itself. “I don’t understand why these people are so angry!” Of course not, you don’t want to understand.
One of the things that became obvious in this election is that the hard right is not economically hard right. A better way to say this is that political beliefs in the US do not map nicely to a 1-D axis with “left” on one side and “right” on the other.
On identity politics, Clinton plays plenty of lip service to the left. On economics, I’d bet she is farther right than half the country.
OMG! So much less condescending or harping than the vast majority of the stuff you’ve posted in this thread! Your lack of self awareness is mind blowing!
In most cases that I’ve seen, it’s actually a strawman of a more nuanced position you can’t be bothered to understand, let alone rebut.
She’s been remarkably restrained given the provocation she’s been subject to. The rest of you have been much more histrionic than that single isolated instance you found of her doing it. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry about the lack of self awareness everyone’s displaying in this regard.
Y’all should probably apologize and try to do better in the future, but since this election has already turned everyone’s brain to mush, I suspect I’ll get dogpiled instead.
Doesn’t matter. Screaming that I’m wrong doesn’t make me wrong. Failing to consider an opinion that’s different from yours doesn’t make you right. In fact, unwillingness to do so makes it more likely that you’ll be wrong.
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Probably the closest thing you’ll find to a Democratic party duckwalker in this thread is me - I’ve been walking those ducks since carrying signs for LBJ - but if you think @nemomen and the others are in the tank for Clinton you haven’t been paying attention.
Most of the attacks on Clinton this election cycle, including most of those raised by aLynHall, are tired old right-wing talking points. Every time a progressive repeats right-wing talking points, a kitten dies. This election cycle there are dead kittens all over the place.
[quote=“wysinwyg, post:312, topic:87929”]
One of the things that became obvious in this election is that the hard right is not economically hard right. A better way to say this is that political beliefs in the US do not map nicely to a 1-D axis with “left” on one side and “right” on the other.[/quote]
This has been obvious in previous elections as well. It is why the Republicans are able to do so well with working-class voters by attacking Democrats like Clinton when they propose to increase taxes on the very wealthy. (They still haven’t forgiven her husband for partly rolling back the Reagan tax cuts.)
[quote=“wysinwyg, post:312, topic:87929”]
On identity politics, Clinton plays plenty of lip service to the left.[/quote]
Good! Much of what our leaders have to do is set an example by what they say, especially when it comes to normalizing progressive values.
This speculation is not supported by either her track record or what she has said and written.
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At least 80% is complete bullshit, but the stuff that isn’t is a pretty big deal for some people.
The thing is, though, whether it’s BIll or Hill, their household is running for a third term. Hillary has had 8 years as the right hand, number one advisor to the president, and another 8 as SoS. Now we want to make it 20+ years across three administrations? The people voting in the next midterms will have lived their ENTIRE LIVES with her in the White House.
We have term limits for a reason, and I don’t vote for dynasties. It’s far too much power to put in the hands of one family for more than a limited time. 8 years is pushing it. 20 is hitting the point where we may as well just cancel the election, hand it off to Jeb until Chelsea is ready to pick up.
She did extremely well in one of the most strongly Democratic states in the country. I’m sure she’ll also do extremely well in California. Kentucky, Oregon, Texas, Kansas- There are a hell of a lot of people living there who would just as soon lynch her if given the chance.
And for the youngest, largest block of eligible voters, her experience is a detriment, not a qualification. When you believe that the system is irredeemably corrupted and needs to be replaced, being one of the foremost experts at working within that system is not a desired quality.
I stand by my original prediction: Low voter turnout, high rate of third party and protest votes. Put enough of those two things together and literally anything could happen.
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It’d be a shame if Trump gets elected out of sheer voter ignorance and a desire to send an “F.U.” to the imaginary Establishment.
If I was interviewing people for a job to run a company, and thought that company could use a bit of shaking-up and change, and my choices were a person with thirty years’ experience with specific plans to do exactly that or a guy shitting in a bucket, I’d go for the one who knows how the system works.
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Having had sad experience with executives who specialise in such work, I’d hire the guy with the bucket. Keep in mind I’m referring to your analogy - there’s no way in hell I’d vote for the Orange that Roared.
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What kind of bucket? I mean, maybe it’s a company that makes buckets of shit…
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I’m not entirely sure how much of the criticism that Clinton gets for the Foundation and pay for access stuff forgets that she wasn’t in government for at least some of the cases.
I mean, yeah, still not good, definitely a poor idea since she was surely considering another run at the Presidency, but…
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That reason being the incredibly popular FDR dying in office after winning a fourth term as president. Before 1945, the only thing preventing someone from running more than twice was the George Washington precedent, and it’s not like FDR was the only person ever to make a go of it.
The two-term limit has honestly always struck me as kind of odd. I get that George Washington stepped aside in part to ensure that the system outlived him, but we’re 240 years removed from the need to teach the nation to expect and embrace routine, peaceful transitions of power (I hope…). If it’s supposed to be a bulwark against tyranny, the fact that this country lasted over 150 years without it sort of belies its necessity. If it’s supposed to be a check on the risk of a president dying in office, the degree of scrutiny placed on modern candidates’ medical histories makes the amendment somewhat redundant. I just don’t see how preventing a person from seeking a third term is inherently any better or worse than letting the same party win more than twice in a row - something which has also only happened once since the 22nd amendment was ratified (Reagan, Reagan, Bush I). If the president is popular, and Americans are willing to support them, I don’t see the issue. We can always vote them out in 4 years. If anything, the term limit seems like it removes accountability; the president can essentially do whatever they want for the last 2 years of their second term, because there’s no way to hold them to task for their actions at the ballot box.
Long-term, I don’t think America has a dynasty problem, nor do I think it really has much of an appetite for them. The Clintons would be only the 4th family to ever hold the presidency multiple times (the others being Adams, Roosevelt [kinda], and Bush). The quirks of our current political class and informal party nominee succession practices have meant that the people in charge have largely been the same for the last 20-ish years, but I don’t think that’s sustainable for more than one or two more elections. Looking ahead to 2020 (for the Republicans) and 2024 (for both parties), I don’t really see anyone who would be willing or able to take up a dynastic banner. Hillary’s daughter seems unlikely to run, and the Bush dynasty - such as it is in national politics - seems to have been effectively run into the ground by Jeb and W. Short of Michelle Obama making a return to national politics in 2024 against all expectations to the contrary, I think the next non-incumbent election and beyond are going to be between two names with no presidential history. They’ll almost certainly be people who have been around for a while, because for the most part you don’t get to come from total obscurity and run for president, but it’s not like we have nothing but a pair of ruling houses to look forward to.
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