US Politics Thread 2016-2020 - Page 724

Skybird · 10-10-20, 05:47 PM

^ Be advised that you will not make yourself many friends with posting videos like that.

But you probably know that. You are throwing mud at the golden calf of American mythology.

Its what I call the perverting of capitalism.

Edit:

However, the video author doe snot hide he doe snot like if you spend your money earned on property that you then rent. In the landlord section of the video he imoplies that around 22:00. By that he speaks out against private property in itself, which you then can rent. If you condemn even that simple mechanism, you have neither "private" nor "property" anymore. Both terms inevitably bas eon that you can do with what is yours what you want as long as you do not dmaage or kill others, and that you can rent it to others and conditions youd efine,k ebcasue you are the owner.

Good video, but on this the author is either not clear enough what he propagates instead, and is too generalising, or is openly left and wants the expropriation of ALL private property. It s one thing if a company makes it its job to buy houses and rent them by the hundreds and thosuands, or if a private John Smith buys a second house with his savings from his wages he earned by a job and then rents it away.

We owned a house with four appartments until we sold it some years ago. It was property of my mother's family for three generations and was initially build by an early ancestor of mine. We let not live people live there for free, of course we took a rent. Nothign excessive, nothign under value, and we kept the house in shape. Owners like us are not the problem, but investor-driven corproaitons making it their job to own such properties and eithe nbrsell it with profits, or to rent it for as high a profit as possible. That are two very different things, and the author should make that clear if he does not want to propagate open socialism and expropriation of private property alltogether.

But maybe he wants that!? In that case him and me would have nothing to share or talk about.

Catfish · 10-10-20, 05:49 PM

^ That's all what it is about. Myths.

Skybird · 10-10-20, 06:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Catfish

^ That's all what it is about. Myths.

Or as I opften said: the difference between America as it was meant and hoped to be by the founding fathers - and the America as it really is. Lightyears apart.

The first I like. The latter I like not. Its different, still, than European nations. But not better. And certainbloy not the best, or "GodÄ'S own country", no matter which country that should be.

I mean Iran claims the same message for self-description: "God's own country".

Skybird · 10-10-20, 06:39 PM

That channel is a good find, Catfish, thank you for sharing it. I watched another video of theirs, and it is even better, I agree 100% with every single detail in it. Americans should fall silent, listen and start thinking about it. Especially after four horrible years of "America first" and "Make America great again".

Quote:

Okay, but if our votes are so meaningless, why do politicians try so hard to convince people to vote for them? Well, think of the optics. Without a significant number of votes from the population, the country would not be considered democratic at all, the illusion of the shining city on the hill would be shattered, and the decidedly undemocratic oligarchy laid bare for the rest of the world to see.
(...)
For decades now Democrats and Republicans represent two wings of the same party, dedicated to corporate dominance.

Words straight from my mind. I said the same in different words, often, didn't I. They are true, in principle, for our European states as well.

MaDef · 10-10-20, 08:32 PM

The U.S is not a full Democracy, it is a Democratic Republic, there is a subtle but undeniable difference between the two.

Buddahaid · 10-10-20, 08:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MaDef

The U.S is not a full Democracy, it is a Democratic Republic, there is a subtle but undeniable difference between the two.

Yes, one sucks, and the other one sucks.

August · 10-10-20, 08:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Catfish

Paying taxes, well - if Trump pays less taxes than you i can see how you envy him.

Fine redirect but Mr Quatro didn't say "paying" taxes he said "raising" taxes which if they regain power is exactly what the Democrats intend to do to everyone rich and poor.

As for Trump he didn't invent those deductions, he's just following the same rules as everyone else. More power to him I say.

skidman · 10-11-20, 03:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Catfish

Excellent analysis. I wonder if the working poor have unlearned to strike back against the fat cats, or if they are still vainly waiting for the breadcrumbs to trickle down from the moneybags' dining tables, as Reagan, Thatcher and all the other neocon idiots promised.

Skybird · 10-11-20, 08:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MaDef

The U.S is not a full Democracy, it is a Democratic Republic, there is a subtle but undeniable difference between the two.

Who cares. Jump directly to 1:14 to be gotten out of the way, so that the real relevant non-distraction stuff can be focussed on.

Skybird · 10-11-20, 08:45 AM

https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/un...2-52bfda6956d6

The biggest problem with Trump is his voters

by Henrik Müller

It is a scandal that Donald Trump can still win the presidential election - despite all the wrongdoings and atrocities. How can that be? The answer is not good.

The US presidential election should actually have been decided long ago. And completely regardless of which side you are on in individual political questions. It's not about that anymore. The main thing is now. Those who take the rule of law and democracy seriously cannot actually vote for this incumbent.

But the latest polls show that Donald Trump is by no means completely behind. In most states and also in the US, the president's score is lower than his challenger Joe Biden, but on average he is up to ten percentage points behind. Around 42 percent of those surveyed are still satisfied with Trump's administration. So he still has a chance of being re-elected. How can that be?

What is really unsettling about this campaign is not Trump's official conduct, but the possible inability of the sovereign - that is, the people - to remove an intolerable president from office. And all of this takes place in that great country which, despite all its mistakes, has been a shining example to the western world for generations. A finding that puts democracy itself as a system of government into twilight - and thus also concerns us directly.

Two revelations in the past few weeks should be enough to make Trump ineligible: his admission that he deluded the American public - knowingly and calculated - about the dangers of the corona pandemic, as he chatted into the recording device to reporter Bob Woodward in the spring. And the New York Times publications on Trump's tax returns, which reveal an abyss of tax avoidance and corruptibility.

Everything is there, for everyone to read and hear. The president is jointly responsible for hundreds of thousands of preventable corona infections. For years he has not paid any taxes and also posted income in the millions in office, which can be interpreted as political favors from home and abroad. Nobody can say they didn't know anything. Even those who have forgotten the dizzying series of misconducts and scandals of the past few years should be able to make a clear judgment in view of the current revelations: The main thing is not to have a second term.

Under these circumstances, it should be completely irrelevant whether after the cancellation of the television duel originally planned for the coming week, another meeting of the candidates takes place. A dispute over factual issues does not do justice to this presidency. The real issue is the functioning of democracy.

Democracy, as Abraham Lincoln once said, is "government of the people, for the people, by the people". That sounds good, simple and plausible. But there is a complex construct behind it. For democracy to be a form of government of the people that works for the people and is exercised by the people, as the 16th US President put it in his "Gettysburg Address" in 1863, certain conditions must be met.

The people mean: The first and last instance are the citizens - without the trust of the people the system collapses. It elects its representatives and delegates its power to the state authority. But what if the people do not exercise their power effectively because they are distracted, deluded, or hopelessly polarized?

For the people this means: The results of the governance must benefit broad majorities, they must make the lives of most of them better and safer and not only benefit small minorities. And they should be sustainable over the long term; A policy à la Trump, which is limited to gimmicky ad hoc measures, but in the long term has expensive consequences and side effects, contradicts this demand.

Democracy is a fragile event. The people's rule must make decisions in a way that meets the requirement that every citizen can participate equally in them. In other words: the procedural input should correspond to the principle of equality. The institutions that implement these decisions should work reliably and transparently. And whatever results come out of it, the output, should be sensible and benefit the people in the long term.

If democracy fails in these disciplines, it becomes unstable. Then their legitimacy suffers, and other, less liberal forms of rule appear in a more advantageous light.

At present, liberal democracy is in danger of losing its justification. On the one hand, this affects the output: the crashes and accidents in the western system - from the financial and euro crisis to the ongoing Brexit hangover to Trump's presidency - undermine credibility. Crumbling prosperity, increasing insecurity and millions of corona infections do not necessarily fall on their feet, but damage the system as a whole, because it enables such self-damaging results in the first place.

Obviously, the success of a government - at least for parts of the population - is no longer necessarily measured by its performance, but by its entertainment value.

The widespread skepticism about whether we are on the right track, which is shown in various surveys, can be understood as a lack of output legitimation. This is also the case in the USA: Four weeks before the election, two thirds of US citizens said their country was "on the wrong track". But what conclusions do you draw from this? A re-election of the incumbent is still possible. What ?!

The disintegration of the public plays a central role in these developments. In an ideal system, democratic processes are stabilized by being embedded in a free public discourse. To put it pathetically: in a collective search for truth.

If the essential, pressing questions are openly debated, if grievances are uncovered and the negative consequences of current developments are discussed, then the chances are not bad that the representatives of the people will cast them into laws (input) that actually have a positive effect on the reality of life ( Output).

In order for democracy to function properly, an enlightened population is required. However, if the relevant is no longer addressed in a true form, if false news, trivialities and other bull**** clog the debate rooms, if niches and echo chambers seal themselves off and the roar of the spiral of noise becomes deafening, then it is no longer absolutely guaranteed that the truth for everyone Visibly comes to light. Under these conditions it is no longer so easy to see what the quality of government is like.

Attention spans have become short. That plays into the hands of the populists. In the competition for attention, the audience turns away bored if something surprising doesn't happen all the time. Donald Trump, you have to give him that, has developed the perfect style for it. He continues his story every day, using reality TV. Emotional outbursts, bitter conflicts, surprising reconciliations, cliffhangers, public castings, suspense, staged highlights - there is always something going on around Trump. That is why he is in a position to dominate large sections of the public for years - and to cover it up with all sorts of incidental matters, so that his true scandals are blurred.
"You can't fool all the people all the time?" Maybe yes!

During the Corona shutdown, I expressed the hope at this point that the Covid 19 crisis could become the populists' oath of disclosure. After all, their failure is all too obvious. I was too optimistic. The pandemic mismanagement by Boris Johnson (UK), Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil) and Trump was so inadequate that each of them ended up self-infected. Nevertheless, they all still enjoy considerable approval ratings. Obviously, the success of a government - at least for parts of the population - is no longer necessarily measured by its performance, but by its entertainment value.

A process is under way in which the basic consensus threatens to be lost. The changes in the media landscape - the emergence of social media, the weaker penetration of serious journalism - favor a disintegration of the public. Societies split up into smaller and smaller resonance spaces, each with its own narratives about the state of the world. These narratives do not necessarily need a reliable factual basis in order to appear credible to the respective followers. Mutual confirmation within the respective group is sufficient.

Trump can use disinfectant injections as corona therapy with impunity, while German aluminum hat wearers fear that Bill Gates, the "Deep State" or God knows who will read their brains. Quite clearly, without a common factual basis, real existing problems can hardly be distinguished from imaginary ones.

To quote Lincoln again: "You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." Fooling some of the people all the time? In any case, Trump and his loyal following are showing the way.

August · 10-11-20, 09:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skybird

Trump can use disinfectant injections as corona therapy with impunity, while German aluminum hat wearers fear that Bill Gates, the "Deep State" or God knows who will read their brains. Quite clearly, without a common factual basis, real existing problems can hardly be distinguished from imaginary ones.

Who cares what German workers think? Shouldn't this crap be in the German politics thread where nobody will care enough to read it?

u crank · 10-11-20, 11:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Catfish

Trump is not automatically "orange man bad". He has earned his bad reputation.
My "problem" is that Trump e.g. spouts out ten direct lies, and some democrat one. But all Trump followers concentrate of "democrats bad and hypocritical". Of course they are! Too!

But even in their best hypocritical time they are not even close to the hypocrisy and lying of Trump. You make it look as it it were the same, but the amount of bs is unbelievably higher on Trump's side.
They are not in the same league, plain and simple. Not that i understand what and why the US democrats do what they do, or republicans, or not

Well you changed the subject there from the media (Fox News and Redstate) to orange man bad. What is amazing to me is the lack of credibility of the MSM. They now wear their bias like a badge of honor. And yes Fox News is just as bad as CNN and MSNBC.

Here is a guy, Kyle Smith from National Review (oh the horror) who asks a very simple question. What if Joe Biden was a Republican?

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/...-a-republican/

skidman · 10-11-20, 01:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by u crank

Here is a guy, Kyle Smith from National Review (oh the horror) who asks a very simple question. What if Joe Biden was a Republican?

Well the answer is as simple as the question: If Joe Biden was a Republican, Kyle Smith would not have written this article.

Catfish · 10-11-20, 02:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by u crank

Well you changed the subject there from the media (Fox News and Redstate) to orange man bad.

No i just said or better wrote that this is what Fox News and Trump's other adlati accuse the mainstream press of. They hate anything not far-right, and it shows everywhere.

Lack of credibilty of the MSM - i guess you mean mainstream media - i wonder what Fox News, Breitbart or the lot have that you would call "credibility"?

What you call "bias of the MSM" is what distinguishes them from your opinion and the far right. Yes they are biased against the far right. I can criticize the right wing and the left wing and the more or less neutral center, but it often helps to evaluate the source that criticizes - in this case it is not constructive critic but throwing dirt at anything non-Trump.

I have no idea who Kyle Smith is, he obviously posts in the "National Review" [sic!] and does not like Joe Biden - and I could even understand this, but if the "alternative" is Trump ..

His "arguments" are just a way of throwing dirt at Trump critics and competitors.
And once more: Even if all democrats would be full-time liars, hypocrites and power-hungry hyenas they would never even come close to Trump. The latter is not the messiah, he is an atrocious liar and a bigmouth. It is frightening that this pleases most of the Americans.

u crank · 10-11-20, 03:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Catfish

They hate anything not far-right, and it shows everywhere.

Lack of credibilty of the MSM - i guess you mean mainstream media - i wonder what Fox News, Breitbart or the lot have that you would call "credibility"?

Do you even know what the Mainstream media is? Fox news is MSM, Breitbart is not. CNN is MSM, Vox is not.

Quote:

What you call "bias of the MSM" is what distinguishes them from your opinion and the far right. Yes they are biased against the far right.

Jesus. Do you think I am far right? Do you think conservatives and Republicans are far right? Do you know the difference between the far right and conservative ideology? I am beginning to think you don't. And if you don't you should educate yourself.

Quote:

I have no idea who Kyle Smith is ...

His "arguments" are just a way of throwing dirt at Trump critics and competitors.

Let's ask a simple question. Again. Do you think that Joe Biden is untouchable? Are there questions that he can't be asked? In case you missed it that was the whole point of the article. Kyle Smith shouldn't have to ask those questions. Jake Tapper, Anderson Cooper, Chuck Todd, Nicolle Wallace etc. should be. But they are not. Ask yourself why not.

Quote:

And once more: Even if all democrats would be full-time liars, hypocrites and power-hungry hyenas they would never even come close to Trump.

That is the worst argument I have ever heard.

Quote:

The latter is not the messiah, he is an atrocious liar and a bigmouth.

I'm not disagreeing with you.

Quote:

It is frightening that this pleases most of the Americans.

Simply not true. The truth is that probably many people on the American right don't like Trump's behavior but they are not going to vote for someone like Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden. It isn't a popularity contest. It is all about the political reality that the candidates and their parties and their political philosophies represent. Why is that so hard to understand?

10-10-20, 05:47 PM	#10846
Skybird Soaring Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: the mental asylum named Germany Posts: 40,704 Downloads: 9 Uploads: 0	^ Be advised that you will not make yourself many friends with posting videos like that. But you probably know that. You are throwing mud at the golden calf of American mythology. Its what I call the perverting of capitalism. Edit: However, the video author doe snot hide he doe snot like if you spend your money earned on property that you then rent. In the landlord section of the video he imoplies that around 22:00. By that he speaks out against private property in itself, which you then can rent. If you condemn even that simple mechanism, you have neither "private" nor "property" anymore. Both terms inevitably bas eon that you can do with what is yours what you want as long as you do not dmaage or kill others, and that you can rent it to others and conditions youd efine,k ebcasue you are the owner. Good video, but on this the author is either not clear enough what he propagates instead, and is too generalising, or is openly left and wants the expropriation of ALL private property. It s one thing if a company makes it its job to buy houses and rent them by the hundreds and thosuands, or if a private John Smith buys a second house with his savings from his wages he earned by a job and then rents it away. We owned a house with four appartments until we sold it some years ago. It was property of my mother's family for three generations and was initially build by an early ancestor of mine. We let not live people live there for free, of course we took a rent. Nothign excessive, nothign under value, and we kept the house in shape. Owners like us are not the problem, but investor-driven corproaitons making it their job to own such properties and eithe nbrsell it with profits, or to rent it for as high a profit as possible. That are two very different things, and the author should make that clear if he does not want to propagate open socialism and expropriation of private property alltogether. But maybe he wants that!? In that case him and me would have nothing to share or talk about. __________________ If you feel nuts, consult an expert. Last edited by Skybird; 10-10-20 at 06:11 PM.

10-10-20, 05:49 PM	#10847
Catfish Dipped Squirrel Operative Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: ..where the ocean meets the sky Posts: 16,923 Downloads: 38 Uploads: 0	^ That's all what it is about. Myths. __________________ >^..^<*)))>{ All generalizations are wrong.

10-11-20, 08:45 AM	#10855
Skybird Soaring Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: the mental asylum named Germany Posts: 40,704 Downloads: 9 Uploads: 0	https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/un...2-52bfda6956d6 The biggest problem with Trump is his voters by Henrik Müller It is a scandal that Donald Trump can still win the presidential election - despite all the wrongdoings and atrocities. How can that be? The answer is not good. The US presidential election should actually have been decided long ago. And completely regardless of which side you are on in individual political questions. It's not about that anymore. The main thing is now. Those who take the rule of law and democracy seriously cannot actually vote for this incumbent. But the latest polls show that Donald Trump is by no means completely behind. In most states and also in the US, the president's score is lower than his challenger Joe Biden, but on average he is up to ten percentage points behind. Around 42 percent of those surveyed are still satisfied with Trump's administration. So he still has a chance of being re-elected. How can that be? What is really unsettling about this campaign is not Trump's official conduct, but the possible inability of the sovereign - that is, the people - to remove an intolerable president from office. And all of this takes place in that great country which, despite all its mistakes, has been a shining example to the western world for generations. A finding that puts democracy itself as a system of government into twilight - and thus also concerns us directly. Two revelations in the past few weeks should be enough to make Trump ineligible: his admission that he deluded the American public - knowingly and calculated - about the dangers of the corona pandemic, as he chatted into the recording device to reporter Bob Woodward in the spring. And the New York Times publications on Trump's tax returns, which reveal an abyss of tax avoidance and corruptibility. Everything is there, for everyone to read and hear. The president is jointly responsible for hundreds of thousands of preventable corona infections. For years he has not paid any taxes and also posted income in the millions in office, which can be interpreted as political favors from home and abroad. Nobody can say they didn't know anything. Even those who have forgotten the dizzying series of misconducts and scandals of the past few years should be able to make a clear judgment in view of the current revelations: The main thing is not to have a second term. Under these circumstances, it should be completely irrelevant whether after the cancellation of the television duel originally planned for the coming week, another meeting of the candidates takes place. A dispute over factual issues does not do justice to this presidency. The real issue is the functioning of democracy. Democracy, as Abraham Lincoln once said, is "government of the people, for the people, by the people". That sounds good, simple and plausible. But there is a complex construct behind it. For democracy to be a form of government of the people that works for the people and is exercised by the people, as the 16th US President put it in his "Gettysburg Address" in 1863, certain conditions must be met. The people mean: The first and last instance are the citizens - without the trust of the people the system collapses. It elects its representatives and delegates its power to the state authority. But what if the people do not exercise their power effectively because they are distracted, deluded, or hopelessly polarized? For the people this means: The results of the governance must benefit broad majorities, they must make the lives of most of them better and safer and not only benefit small minorities. And they should be sustainable over the long term; A policy à la Trump, which is limited to gimmicky ad hoc measures, but in the long term has expensive consequences and side effects, contradicts this demand. Democracy is a fragile event. The people's rule must make decisions in a way that meets the requirement that every citizen can participate equally in them. In other words: the procedural input should correspond to the principle of equality. The institutions that implement these decisions should work reliably and transparently. And whatever results come out of it, the output, should be sensible and benefit the people in the long term. If democracy fails in these disciplines, it becomes unstable. Then their legitimacy suffers, and other, less liberal forms of rule appear in a more advantageous light. At present, liberal democracy is in danger of losing its justification. On the one hand, this affects the output: the crashes and accidents in the western system - from the financial and euro crisis to the ongoing Brexit hangover to Trump's presidency - undermine credibility. Crumbling prosperity, increasing insecurity and millions of corona infections do not necessarily fall on their feet, but damage the system as a whole, because it enables such self-damaging results in the first place. Obviously, the success of a government - at least for parts of the population - is no longer necessarily measured by its performance, but by its entertainment value. The widespread skepticism about whether we are on the right track, which is shown in various surveys, can be understood as a lack of output legitimation. This is also the case in the USA: Four weeks before the election, two thirds of US citizens said their country was "on the wrong track". But what conclusions do you draw from this? A re-election of the incumbent is still possible. What ?! The disintegration of the public plays a central role in these developments. In an ideal system, democratic processes are stabilized by being embedded in a free public discourse. To put it pathetically: in a collective search for truth. If the essential, pressing questions are openly debated, if grievances are uncovered and the negative consequences of current developments are discussed, then the chances are not bad that the representatives of the people will cast them into laws (input) that actually have a positive effect on the reality of life ( Output). In order for democracy to function properly, an enlightened population is required. However, if the relevant is no longer addressed in a true form, if false news, trivialities and other bull** clog the debate rooms, if niches and echo chambers seal themselves off and the roar of the spiral of noise becomes deafening, then it is no longer absolutely guaranteed that the truth for everyone Visibly comes to light. Under these conditions it is no longer so easy to see what the quality of government is like. Attention spans have become short. That plays into the hands of the populists. In the competition for attention, the audience turns away bored if something surprising doesn't happen all the time. Donald Trump, you have to give him that, has developed the perfect style for it. He continues his story every day, using reality TV. Emotional outbursts, bitter conflicts, surprising reconciliations, cliffhangers, public castings, suspense, staged highlights - there is always something going on around Trump. That is why he is in a position to dominate large sections of the public for years - and to cover it up with all sorts of incidental matters, so that his true scandals are blurred. "You can't fool all the people all the time?" Maybe yes! During the Corona shutdown, I expressed the hope at this point that the Covid 19 crisis could become the populists' oath of disclosure. After all, their failure is all too obvious. I was too optimistic. The pandemic mismanagement by Boris Johnson (UK), Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil) and Trump was so inadequate that each of them ended up self-infected. Nevertheless, they all still enjoy considerable approval ratings. Obviously, the success of a government - at least for parts of the population - is no longer necessarily measured by its performance, but by its entertainment value. A process is under way in which the basic consensus threatens to be lost. The changes in the media landscape - the emergence of social media, the weaker penetration of serious journalism - favor a disintegration of the public. Societies split up into smaller and smaller resonance spaces, each with its own narratives about the state of the world. These narratives do not necessarily need a reliable factual basis in order to appear credible to the respective followers. Mutual confirmation within the respective group is sufficient. Trump can use disinfectant injections as corona therapy with impunity, while German aluminum hat wearers fear that Bill Gates, the "Deep State" or God knows who will read their brains. Quite clearly, without a common factual basis, real existing problems can hardly be distinguished from imaginary ones. To quote Lincoln again: "You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." Fooling some of the people all the time? In any case, Trump and his loyal following are showing the way. __________________ If you feel nuts, consult an expert.**

10-10-20, 08:32 PM	#10850
MaDef Ace of the Deep Join Date: Oct 2007 Posts: 1,046 Downloads: 5 Uploads: 0	The U.S is not a full Democracy, it is a Democratic Republic, there is a subtle but undeniable difference between the two.