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[Max™]

Nevermind, I don't care.

[Iduno]

Yeah, there aren't two other candidates, anybody who says so needs to shut their fucking mouth.

We're bleeding to death from a gut wound, voting third party won Trump four years to fuck shit up (seriously, third party vote was larger than the margin by which he won critical states, good job fuckups!) so we need to remove the bullet and patch up the wound, not get calf implants by voting third party like a dumbfuck.

Oh yeah. The only thing that can stop a bad bigoted rapist who will doom the country economically is a good bigoted rapist who will doom the country economically.

Shhh, adults are busy planning how we can permanently remove republican influence from the country and don't need children throwing hissyfits letting a big orange child win again, we have a rare opportunity here to banish all the right wing bullshit forever and actually make things better, so take your ideology and shove it, thanks, I'm a naive anarchist and I can manage, I'm sure you can as well.

Lookit this genius. "We'll get rid of all of the right-wingers by...bringing in more right-wingers."

The guy who voted for DOMA, every war that was suggested while he was in office, any attempt to deregulate his constituents (the banks), and segregation (as he said, he didn't "want to live in a racial jungle) isn't going to do what you're suggesting.

Do you try to silence every attempt to suggest ways to improve the world, because you love all of the bigotry you promote, or do you just love to see your side of the ruling class crush people instead of the other team?

[Cheesy Honkers]

You need a good right winger with right wing beliefs to fight the bad right wingers with right wing beliefs, everyone knows that.

[scriver]

Yeah, there aren't two other candidates, anybody who says so needs to shut their fucking mouth.

We're bleeding to death from a gut wound, voting third party won Trump four years to fuck shit up (seriously, third party vote was larger than the margin by which he won critical states, good job fuckups!) so we need to remove the bullet and patch up the wound, not get calf implants by voting third party like a dumbfuck.

Oh yeah. The only thing that can stop a bad bigoted rapist who will doom the country economically is a good bigoted rapist who will doom the country economically.

Shhh, adults are busy planning how we can permanently remove republican influence from the country and don't need children throwing hissyfits letting a big orange child win again, we have a rare opportunity here to banish all the right wing bullshit forever and actually make things better, so take your ideology and shove it, thanks, I'm a naive anarchist and I can manage, I'm sure you can as well.

Lookit this genius. "We'll get rid of all of the right-wingers by...bringing in more right-wingers."

You'll never have anything but right-wingers in the USA, Americans lack the cultural groundstone needed for leftwing ideologies. So if you've got to choose right wing why not choose the lesser right?

[Iduno]

You'll never have anything but right-wingers in the USA, Americans lack the cultural groundstone needed for leftwing ideologies.

I wish you were joking. We apparently have people claiming to be far-right anarchists here.

[Eschar]

Sovereign citizen types?

[Loud Whispers]

I wish you were joking. We apparently have people claiming to be far-right anarchists here.

Isn't that just ancaps?

[Dostoevsky]

You'll never have anything but right-wingers in the USA, Americans lack the cultural groundstone needed for leftwing ideologies. So if you've got to choose right wing why not choose the lesser right?

As a person who works within the metaphorical DC beltway, at least, it certainly feels this way. Not to say people with left wing ideologies don't exist, just that they seem to be a pretty slim minority at the national level - especially in the places that, due to our system, effectively have the most political power.

Events in the last few months have me cautiously optimistic we may be approaching a change in the winds, but I'm wary of being hopeful.

[McTraveller]

I still maintain that the main problem with American politics is that it's become become more about team affiliation than, oh, I dunno, solving problems.  And I don't just mean "R vs D" but also "the 1% vs the 99%" or "minorities vs historical oppressors".  Everything is now framed in terms of "beating the other team" rather than solving problems - so much so that the problems are now defined in terms of "beating the other team" rather than the problems at hand.

You solve social problems not by being part of group X instead of group Y.  You solve social problems by solving social problems.

[nenjin]

You say that like that like this is a new phenomena. People have been bemoaning identity politics and oppositional politics since before I was able to vote.

The issue now to me is that no one has any fucking integrity anymore at the highest levels of government. You can't win with integrity so most don't bother. They just pay lip service to the idea because it's expected of them, but have zero qualms about misrepresenting themselves or the political landscape if it will get their base fired up.

[Dostoevsky]

My hobbyhorse theory on where things went wrong is more on the money side. Not that money and corruption in politics is new, but that nowadays most members of congress have to spend more hours working the phones pumping rich people for money than they do talking to colleagues or working in committee / on the floor / elsewhere.

Staff do a lot of the work, of course, but staff can only present arguments to the member - they don't get to vote themselves (also of course). We're in this political realm where the job is not just 'policy optional' but 'everything but voting optional' in terms of what congressional members used to do; some of that slack gets picked up but not in a way that's reliable.

Some members (on both sides of the aisle) are still fine, and still put in the work for actual policy development toward what they see as solutions to problems. But a lot of folks aren't there for the day to day work and don't really care about it that much.

I have other theories about how making so much of the congressional work publicly livestreamed has created more problems than it's solved, insofar as it works to penalize friendliness across lines, but that's less thought out and I'm not sure how I feel about its implications if true.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Two SCOTUS rulings today.

1. Religious schools can use the ministerial exemption to fire people for pretty much anything - in this case, firing a woman for getting breast cancer treatment. She did not live to see the discrimination against her written into law.

2. Trump can exempt whatever businesses he likes from providing birth control coverage in their health insurance, because Obamacare doesn't specifically bar him from doing it.

Ruling on releasing Trump's tax returns is coming tomorrow.

[McTraveller]

Citizens United definitely doesn't help either. I still can't wrap my head around that decision...  The "voice" a company exerts is proportional to its revenue but the message is directed by the board, not really the shareholders. This is anathema to balanced influence... but what do I know.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

...Sure? That doesn't really have anything to do with these cases, though.

[McTraveller]

Sorry I got ninja'd in there - I was talking about the money/lobby conversation before.

Those new SCOTUS rulings:  be careful what you ask for if you are asking for the government to say that a religious institution cannot vet the religious examples its leaders set, including teachers.  If a religion says "no invasive medical treatment" and if you're a leader, by getting such a treatment, you are promoting a different religion. Freedom of association (especially religious association) includes being able to kick someone out of your club. You'd have to show that you got fired not because of the religious implication but because of arbitrary cause to have won that case.

For the ACA one - congress needs to fix that, not SCOTUS.  I can't think offhand of a constitutional clause that is violated by allowing the Executive to operate within the confines of a passed law.  You'd have to argue the constitutionality of the law that allows such an exemption in the first place.