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Author Topic: AmeriPol thread  (Read 3533439 times)

dragdeler

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #38025 on: July 11, 2020, 03:53:42 am »

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« Last Edit: November 24, 2020, 04:29:47 pm by dragdeler »
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Loud Whispers

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #38026 on: July 11, 2020, 05:31:06 am »

Monkeys aren't fools

Naturegirl1999

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #38027 on: July 11, 2020, 06:37:43 am »

In 2030, if we somehow live that long, will we be less doomed when the boomers lose their grasp on the heart of this society? I fucking doubt it

This is the thing that broke my sense of hope. There will never be a shortage of mistreated people eager to push their misery as the gold standard. Like when it came out recently that in negotiations with the Sanders task force Biden put his foot down AGAINST the legalisation of marijuana, I'm convinced he somehow unironically thinks that is about fairness towards those allready imprisoned. What you can't just change the rules, because the rules are the rules "weeeeeh weeeeeh".

You know like that experiment story with the monkeys and the banana on the ladder: we're so far in at this point the "alphas" are grandstanding and pulling their virtue out the fact they never even dared to look at the ladder.


yeesh that was too meta, is anybody surprised though this shit would be reserved to the males  ;D
thanks for the info. I had no idea about the gender sex specific responses or the inconclusive ones.
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scriver

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #38028 on: July 11, 2020, 06:50:08 am »

Six attempts are not great enough amount to from-lead a pattern or make generalisation

Also I'm a monkey and I'm dumb
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Love, scriver~

sluissa

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #38029 on: July 11, 2020, 07:15:23 am »

We're definitely doomed as a country. Or rather, the country may continue on, but it will never escape being an oligarchy where the rich control everything by force of money and everyone else suffers to varying degrees.

I hate it too, but it's also the only choice, so you have to learn to live with it.

Things may eventually catch fire and burn down. But remember, the rich still will not suffer even then, and when the flames die down, and those who survive dig themselves from the rubble, who do you think is going to build the next system? Not us. Not the people who are desperate and hungry and have nothing. It will be the people offering the bread. The people offering the stability of something, anything. And we will take it, just like we always take it, because when you have nothing, no power, no control, you take what you're offered and yeah, you complain amongst yourselves, but they never hear it. They never hear it.
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McTraveller

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #38030 on: July 11, 2020, 09:19:34 am »

Have you all considered that talk of doom is largely self-fulfilling? If you keep telling yourself (and others) that there is no hope, then people stop even trying - at best they just become isolated, at worst they become "every person for themselves" so start stealing, being violent, etc.

Give people hope, something to strive for, something to make them think trying is worth it.  If you tell people trying isn't worth it - they won't even try.  In that case, then of course the people who are actually trying to accomplish something will be able to do it - because they will be the only ones trying.
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sluissa

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #38031 on: July 11, 2020, 09:34:34 am »

That kind of talk is basically "Well if you don't buy a lottery ticket you'll never win." for most people. This is true, but it's also true that most people who buy a lottery ticket will never win, just like most people who try to make significant change will never make any meaningful progress.
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McTraveller

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #38032 on: July 11, 2020, 09:41:52 am »

Not as individuals, no.  You have to get people to hope in doing something collectively.
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scriver

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #38033 on: July 11, 2020, 09:43:00 am »

No it's the opposite -- it's "if you don't stop buying lottery tickets you'll never save any money"
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Iduno

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #38034 on: July 11, 2020, 09:51:03 am »

But even voting for Biden is defensible in my opinion.  I'm mortified by his part in the Iraq war, and the war on drugs.  "...but-"

His wars on women, LGBT+ people, black people, the poor...


Leftist goals like- sorry no, centrist goals like universal healthcare and environmental reform aren't going to be championed by this liberal geezer.  But I don't think he would veto them

I'm pretty sure he said he would veto it. He and Obama made millions by making sure the ACA was a pro-corporate (specifically insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies) as possible.


It's possible to get some Democrats to care about progressiveness, but the majority seem to fight against it as hard/harder as Republicans. Certainly Biden always chooses the most regressive position to take.

Our current options are to support the worst parts of the Democrat party, ensuring they will continue to ruin the country, do the same with the Republicans, or show we'll vote for someone who actually represents our interests and hope we haven't already gone too far.
« Last Edit: July 11, 2020, 09:52:57 am by Iduno »
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WealthyRadish

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #38035 on: July 11, 2020, 10:33:29 am »

I'm not going to tell you all not to vote for Biden - Trump seems to have critically failed to take over the military in his clear wish to be President-For-Life, but that's incompetence, not lack of will.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There's an essay by Orwell titled England Your England that I think you may find interesting.

Here's an amusing excerpt, apropos of nothing:

Quote
One of the dominant facts in English life during the past three quarters of a century has been the decay of ability in the ruling class... ...the ruling class decayed, lost its ability, its daring, finally even its ruthlessness, until a time came when stuffed shirts like Eden or Halifax could stand out as men of exceptional talent. As for Baldwin, one could not even dignify him with the name of stuffed shirt. He was simply a hole in the air. The mishandling of England's domestic problems during the nineteen-twenties had been bad enough, but British foreign policy between 1931 and 1939 is one of the wonders of the world. Why? What had happened? What was it that at every decisive moment made every British statesman do the wrong thing with so unerring an instinct?

The underlying fact was that the whole position of the moneyed class had long ceased to be justifiable. There they sat, at the centre of a vast empire and a world-wide financial network, drawing interest and profits and spending them – on what? It was fair to say that life within the British Empire was in many ways better than life outside it. Still, the Empire was underdeveloped, India slept in the Middle Ages, the Dominions lay empty, with foreigners jealously barred out, and even England was full of slums and unemployment. Only half a million people, the people in the country houses, definitely benefited from the existing system. Moreover, the tendency of small businesses to merge together into large ones robbed more and more of the moneyed class of their function and turned them into mere owners, their work being done for them by salaried managers and technicians. For long past there had been in England an entirely functionless class, living on money that was invested they hardly knew where, the ‘idle rich’, the people whose photographs you can look at in the Tatler and the Bystander, always supposing that you want to. The existence of these people was by any standard unjustifiable. They were simply parasites, less useful to society than his fleas are to a dog.

By 1920 there were many people who were aware of all this. By 1930 millions were aware of it. But the British ruling class obviously could not admit to themselves that their usefulness was at an end. Had they done that they would have had to abdicate. For it was not possible for them to turn themselves into mere bandits, like the American millionaires, consciously clinging to unjust privileges and beating down opposition by bribery and tear-gas bombs. After all, they belonged to a class with a certain tradition, they had been to public schools where the duty of dying for your country, if necessary, is laid down as the first and greatest of the Commandments. They had to feel themselves true patriots, even while they plundered their countrymen. Clearly there was only one escape for them – into stupidity. They could keep society in its existing shape only by being unable to grasp that any improvement was possible. Difficult though this was, they achieved it, largely by fixing their eyes on the past and refusing to notice the changes that were going on round them.

There is much in England that this explains. It explains the decay of country life, due to the keeping-up of a sham feudalism which drives the more spirited workers off the land. It explains the immobility of the public schools, which have barely altered since the eighties of the last century. It explains the military incompetence which has again and again startled the world. Since the fifties every war in which England has engaged has started off with a series of disasters, after which the situation has been saved by people comparatively low in the social scale...


(this was written in 1941)
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dragdeler

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #38036 on: July 11, 2020, 11:36:23 am »

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« Last Edit: November 24, 2020, 04:29:56 pm by dragdeler »
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Quarque

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #38037 on: July 11, 2020, 03:42:19 pm »

It's possible to get some Democrats to care about progressiveness, but the majority seem to fight against it as hard/harder as Republicans.
This is just not true, and this is exactly the kind of gloomy exaggeration that plays right into the hands of Trump. Democrats fight harder against progression than the monstrosity that now calls itself the Republican party? Really?
The Republicans are currently painting journalists as the Enemy of the people, locking up refugees in cages, telling us that an old man beaten down by the police is probably part of a conspiracy, releasing criminals as a personal favor, tearing up nuclear agreements, actively tearing up institutions like the EPA, tearing up the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform.. the list goes on.

Yeah, Biden isn't the dream candidate. If you would rather vote for a more progressive third party, by all means go ahead. But Biden isn't nearly as utterly corrupt and downright evil as Trump, and it is not even close. Sowing apathy and despair with a false narrative of them being equivalent is exactly the tool Trump uses with most effect.

You think the Democrats aren't good enough? Fine, go ahead and at least come up with a better alternative. Make people rally behind another party, instead of making them feel that voting isn't worth it.

Or vote for Biden. He wouldn't set everything right, but having him as a president would sure as hell be a better starting point when fighting for a better world than sulking righteously in your room and having another Trump term.
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MetalSlimeHunt

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #38038 on: July 11, 2020, 03:48:50 pm »

This isn't a Biden problem. The right does not have a Trump problem, they're just bad people who love a guy like Trump. The center does not have a Biden problem, they're just...zombies? They won't defend, touch, or admit the existence of the real Joe Biden. That's true for some of the right, but it seems to be true of all of the center. In my opinion it's the ultimate version of "don't scare the racist" politics that the DNC likes so much, but now it's clear that this attitude isn't a strategy so much as a reflection of 40% of the American population.

The center is always "starting". Taking a "first step", as they have been in every bullshit campaign the past 40 years. But it's 11:59 now, and claiming to take another first step then is almost more pathetic than just giving up.
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Quote from: Thomas Paine
To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.
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Quarque

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #38039 on: July 11, 2020, 04:05:30 pm »

The center is always "starting". Taking a "first step", as they have been in every bullshit campaign the past 40 years. But it's 11:59 now, and claiming to take another first step then is almost more pathetic than just giving up.
Giving up is less pathetic?

This isn't the first time in history that man faced evil rulers. And the fight has never been easy. In fact, it has often been harder than today.

Imagine the Russians would have given up in WOII. The odds did seem overwhelming. But no, 10 million Russians sacrificed their lives to rid the world of Hitler and it worked.

Imagine the French would have given up instead of revolting. We might still be ruled by kings today, without voting rights to begin with.
Imagine that people would have given up about slavery. Abolishment never happening.
Imagine that people would have given up about female voting rights.

Giving up before the fight never worked.
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