US Politics Thread 2016-2020

Originally Posted by mapuc

Divided Americans !?

Please tell me I'm wrong when I say/Write:

Whether you like or dislike your President Mr. Trump

You like your country.

You may see it differently on how your country should be ruled….but you love your country.

I'm talking about the country outside the politics.

Markus

Victor (Correctly)

[August]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Not conflicted. Just willing to look at all sides of the issues and not automatically assuming I'm right.

Uh huh, well just remember that's exactly what the deer is doing when it stands frozen in the middle of the highway while the 18 wheeler bears down on it.

[August]

Originally Posted by Skybird

"You must grab them by their pussies." - Trump.

Inaccurate and misleading. If you're going to use quotation marks maybe you should get it right.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by August

Inaccurate and misleading. If you're going to use quotation marks maybe you should get it right.

"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not." - Emerson.


Trump's great(tm) sayings show what he is looking for in life and in the world, and by that reveals what he is made of himself. The more dirt and hostility he sprays in his speaking, the more of the dirt he is made of himself is revealed. He doe snot find anything different, because he is not any different.



But go on, defend this crooked character, try to distract from his many flaws and the rotten smell around him, sell him your precious loyalty. If this is the standard by which your vote can be had, then your choice has only my pity.



People may think they choose the lesser of two evils. That way they nevertheless choose evil. That way they only chose the easier way. The only sensible option is to fight BOTH evils.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by August

Uh huh, well just remember that's exactly what the deer is doing when it stands frozen in the middle of the highway while the 18 wheeler bears down on it.

Which has nothing at all to do with what I said. I see no difference between you and the "Evil Lefties" you hate so much. Different sides, yes, but the same exact means and methods.

[August]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Which has nothing at all to do with what I said. I see no difference between you and the "Evil Lefties" you hate so much. Different sides, yes, but the same exact means and methods.

Oh I've known how you felt about me for a long time now Steve. My point to you however was that you and everyone else sitting on the fence will have eventually to pick a side, or be run over in the middle of the road like that deer.

[Buddahaid]

Here lies the Art of Compromise. You know, it's really quite easy in a one party system, all those pesky decisions are already taken care of and everybody is happy.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by August

Oh I've known how you felt about me for a long time now Steve. My point to you however was that you and everyone else sitting on the fence will have eventually to pick a side, or be run over in the middle of the road like that deer.

Actually I don't think you have any idea how I feel about you. As for "sitting on the fence" and "middle of the road", it's hard to take a side when, as I said, they both behave in the same way.

"Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule – and both commonly succeed, and are right."
—H. L. Mencken

Not my words, but ones that reflect the reality as I see it. Yes, the Left is a major cause of this nation's troubles. So is the Right. The very fact that there are sides is one of the major problems we have. Yet there they are, and they both insist that they are totally right and the other side is totally wrong, and for the most part are so convinced of their own rightness that it's difficult to have a real conversation with either one without having to wade through a sea of bluster, challenge and True Belief.

I do take sides, but I do it issue by issue, not as a Party Line. I'm also open to honest discussion, but I rarely find it.

[August]

Well there you go.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

The very fact that there are sides is one of the major problems we have.

Some of the wisest words spoken in this whole long thread. And they are true for practically every Western state, not just the US.


But people like to have "sides". Its tribalism in modern terms, like is bing a die hard fan for the football club of your home city. And that is why this election system, with so many people voting by habit or for tribalist reasons, makes no sense.There is assumed to be a level of reasonability and altruism and insightful knowledge beign at work, that simply is not there at all. That is also one of the major criticisms voiced by democracy-critics like Jason Brennan.


I cannot mention a >realistic< mehtod to overcome this, this issue us hauntign mankind since - since always, it seems. Nevertheless I can say that this issue leads man into tyranny and corruption and collapse time and again. We must overcome this, or we get overcomed. Worse, we all in th world must overcome this, else the few that chnage will soon get eaten again by their neighbouring enemies thzat refuse to follow this new idea.


Its probably a hopeless cause. But the only reasonable cause: professionalised politics and administration, the idea of superregional concepts like national states, must be left behind. A bit we can learn from Switzerland maybe, and from a few city-states, from a few cities and communities in the US that try to follow this trail (quite successful: better public services, and lower tax levels and more economic, smaller bureaucratic systems) as well as from historic examples (my favourite example being the Hanse which blossemed when it had no caste of career politicians, and once the career politicians took over, got immersed in unneeded foreign political conflicts and so descended).


Its neither the one party state versus the two party state. It is about no-party state, it is about no superregional state at all. It is unlikely to ever come. Too many parasites are hooked up to the status quo, and working solutions of that are so drastic that people will no accept them. And if you force them, then you have another dictarship again. Its all a dilemma royal.

[Platapus]

My hopeless fantasy is for people to recognize the common sense of moderation and to recognize the absurdity of extremism.

I might as well wish for a pony for my birthday. Both have the same chance of happening.

[ikalugin]

I think pony is more likely.

[Mr Quatro]

Your free to think whatever you want ... getting someone to agree is another subject

[Hawk66]

At least I find it refreshing that people now start to discuss issues instead of only accusing the other one(s)...even if not all can or want to go along with this...

[Dowly]

Originally Posted by Skybird

(my favourite example being the Hanse which blossemed when it had no caste of career politicians, and once the career politicians took over, got immersed in unneeded foreign political conflicts and so descended).

You are once again oversimplifying and twisting history to back your worldview.

The Hanseatic League was already very much embroiled in foreign conflicts long before its (gradual) decline. The League's decline was more to do with outside pressure from other emerging powers than "career politicians".

The Cambridge Economic History of Europe from the Decline of the Roman Empire, Vol. 2 summarizes:

The debut of the League was thus very successful. As a political
weapon it proved itself equally successful in the struggles which it was
to wage in the subsequent hundred or hundred and fifty years. The
Treaty of Utrecht of 1474, which concluded a somewhat similar
conflict with England a century later, still found the League in full
possession of its foreign privileges and as triumphant over its enemies
as it had been in 1370. Yet, successful as the League was in direct
political action, it failed, as it was bound to fail, in its attempt to arrest
the march of economic and political forces which continued to shape
the evolution of trade in northern Europe. It was unable to defend its
position in Novgorod in the face of the rising power of the Tsars;
unable to maintain its old position in Flanders in opposition to the new
centres of northern trade which were rising under different auspices
in Brabant and Holland; unable to maintain its monopoly of eastern
routes; in fact unable to maintain the route itself, which came in the
end to be rivalled and replaced by other routes crossing the continent
further south. Above all it was incapable of preventing the rise of the
two great rivals who were destined in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries to supplant the Hanse in the economic leadership of northern
Europe — England and Holland.