U.S. Politics

[rayk]

55 minutes ago, ml1dch said:

I didn’t suggest that we did.

We’re getting closer and closer though.

[Dom_Wren]

I've got a sneaky suspicion the Democrats are going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

[sharkyvilla]

6 hours ago, Dom_Wren said:

I've got a sneaky suspicion the Democrats are going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

I'm starting to suspect we are currently witnessing the start of the reversal of evolution of the species, if Trump manages to win this election then it'll confirm it for me.  That and the idiocy of a lot of the newer members in the On Topic section.  

[sne]

As always this 2003 tune by NOFX is sadly 100% on point today as it was back them, maybe even more so.

"It's not the right time to be sober
Now the idiots have taken over
Spreading like a social cancer, is there an answer?

MENSA membership conceding
Tell me why and how are all the stupid people breeding
Watson it's really elementary
The industrial revolution
Has flipped the bitch on evolution
The benevolent and wise are being quieted, ostracized, what a bummer
The world keeps getting dumber
Insensitivity is standard and faith is being fancied over reason

Darwin's rollin over in his coffin
The fittest are surviving much less often
Now everything seems to be reversing, and it's worsening
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool
Now angry mob mentality's no longer the exception, it's the rule
And im startin to feel a lot like charlton heston
Stranded on a primate planet
Apes and orangutans that ran it to the ground
With generals and the armies that obeyed them
Followers following fables
Philosophies that enable them to rule without regard

There's no point for democracy when ignorance is celebrated
Political scientists get the same one vote as some Arkansas inbred
Majority rule, don't work in mental institutions
Sometimes the smallest softest voice carries the grand biggest solutions

What are we left with?
A Nation of god-fearing pregnant nationalists
Who feel it's their duty to populate the homeland
Pass on traditions
"How-to-get-ahead" religions
And prosperity via simpleton culture
The idiots are taking over"

[Villaphan04]

22 hours ago, rayk said:

I am making a vast generalisation here but the reality is people on the west coast and east coast understand things......but the folk in the middle.....jeez I’d be surprised if they even knew where Europe was.

This type of thinking is what gets republicans elected to national office. Whilst I think saying that the difference is between understanding things and not would be pretty disrespectful to 'middle America'. They just have a vastly different way of life to those of us who live in suburban areas. I grew up right outside DC and then went to college in very rural southern VA. Just the difference in way of life and how people acted was astounding. 

[maqroll]

Rand Paul feeling the heat last night

 

Edited August 28, 2020 by maqroll

[maqroll]

 

[A'Villan]

6 hours ago, maqroll said:

 

Hopefully that 'one woman' is right. The end of the world, as we know it.

'Apocalypse' derives from ancient Greek and means "revelation", "an unveiling or unfolding of things not previously known and which could not be known apart from the unveiling". 

Democracy derives from ancient Greece and means "power of the people".

I have faith that my family's heritage and my ancestor's efforts to give birth to meaning and expression that meant greater freedoms and virtues were not in vain. 

The shit show that has Trump as its frontman will probably BUY itself another 4 years.

I'm not a religious person, but one of three phrases on the back of the dollar bill is printed in Latin and reads "He has approved our undertakings"

"He?"

Yes.

The devil himself.

 

[TheAuthority]

10 hours ago, maqroll said:

Rand Paul feeling the heat last night

 

 

This is how Paul described it.

 

Now, watch the video again from 30 seconds on. Where are people behind him? He's not even surrounded. He could have run off. Sure the large cop (overweight and unfit for duty) took a stumble but did anyone try and hurt him? No. They laughed at him.

I see emotional people demanding that Rand Paul say the name of Breonna Taylor. "Say her name."

I actually believe that he was walking through that situation thinking "Oh this is great, I'm going to be on all the news channels tomorrow."

 

 

F****ng disgusting people.

[HanoiVillan]

19 hours ago, Villaphan04 said:

This type of thinking is what gets republicans elected to national office. Whilst I think saying that the difference is between understanding things and not would be pretty disrespectful to 'middle America'. They just have a vastly different way of life to those of us who live in suburban areas. I grew up right outside DC and then went to college in very rural southern VA. Just the difference in way of life and how people acted was astounding. 

Funny how this dynamic only ever works one way though isn't it. If I had a pound for every time I saw someone saying 'you can't mock middle America, that's why they elect Republicans' I'd be a millionaire; I've never once seen anyone argue the opposite, and frankly I would be pretty annoyed if someone accused me of voting left because other people were mocking me. No, those are my beliefs.

[blandy]

1 hour ago, HanoiVillan said:

Funny how this dynamic only ever works one way though isn't it. If I had a pound for every time I saw someone saying 'you can't mock middle America, that's why they elect Republicans' I'd be a millionaire; I've never once seen anyone argue the opposite, and frankly I would be pretty annoyed if someone accused me of voting left because other people were mocking me. No, those are my beliefs.

Well, yes, maybe. But I don't think that's really quite the point of the original comment (could be wrong). I think the point is if you want to persuade people to vote FOR you, or even against who they voted for last time don't mock them, insult them, etc.it just turns them harder against you and makes them less persuadable, making your pool of potential voters smaller, and "their" pool of potential voters less likely to decline. It's a dumb strategy and does lead to defeat, sometimes.

So not quite the same as your comment, (which is obviously a fair one).

[HanoiVillan]

3 hours ago, blandy said:

Well, yes, maybe. But I don't think that's really quite the point of the original comment (could be wrong). I think the point is if you want to persuade people to vote FOR you, or even against who they voted for last time don't mock them, insult them, etc.it just turns them harder against you and makes them less persuadable, making your pool of potential voters smaller, and "their" pool of potential voters less likely to decline. It's a dumb strategy and does lead to defeat, sometimes.

So not quite the same as your comment, (which is obviously a fair one).

I don't think it makes the blindest bit of difference. Do you vote for who you vote for, because of people on right wing blogs laughing at you? If someone wrote a piece on ConservativeHome mocking liberals, would that change your likelihood of voting in any way whatsoever?

[blandy]

2 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

I don't think it makes the blindest bit of difference. Do you vote for who you vote for, because of people on right wing blogs laughing at you?

This is missing the point being made.

If I was (I'm not) a wavering mildly right of centre voter - heck, maybe I voted Trump last time because I didn't like Hillary, now I'm faced with a choice between the Dems and the Reps, and the Dems are mocking Trump voters (the hypothetical me of 4 years ago), it would in all probability put me off my wavering and lead me to not vote, or to vote for the Reps, because "Dems just mock me and people like me, they don't understand my concerns".

It won't be like that for everyone, of course, but for some, I'm certain it will.

[HanoiVillan]

Just now, blandy said:

This is missing the point being made.

If I was (I'm not) a wavering mildly right of centre voter - heck, maybe I voted Trump last time because I didn't like Hillary, now I'm faced with a choice between the Dems and the Reps, and the Dems are mocking Trump voters (the hypothetical me of 4 years ago), it would in all probability put me off my wavering and lead me to not vote, or to vote for the Reps, because "Dems just mock me and people like me, they don't understand my concerns".

It won't be like that for everyone, of course, but for some, I'm certain it will.

If there are indeed people who are so thin-skinned that they vote based on nothing more than what you're suggesting, I don't see how you can possibly rely on their votes. I can't gather every left-wing person in a room and give them a pep talk never to say anything rude. The hypothetical voter you are imagining is looking for literally any reason to vote Republican, and if it wasn't this it would be something else.

[blandy]

3 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

If there are indeed people who are so thin-skinned that they vote based on nothing more than what you're suggesting, I don't see how you can possibly rely on their votes

I don’t see how you can possibly rely on their votes - exactly. You can’t.  You have to persuade the waverers, the undecideds, the not really paying attention, the Non-committed. All those “I don’t like Trump, but gimme something to get me on your side” types. So maybe not slagging them off, or letting them feel you’re slagging them off might be a start.

[HanoiVillan]

6 minutes ago, blandy said:

I don’t see how you can possibly rely on their votes - exactly. You can’t.  You have to persuade the waverers, the undecideds, the not really paying attention, the Non-committed. All those “I don’t like Trump, but gimme something to get me on your side” types. So maybe not slagging them off, or letting them feel you’re slagging them off might be a start.

Do I need to remind you of this every time you post something humorous in a politics thread?

[colhint]

3 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

If there are indeed people who are so thin-skinned that they vote based on nothing more than what you're suggesting, I don't see how you can possibly rely on their votes. I can't gather every left-wing person in a room and give them a pep talk never to say anything rude. The hypothetical voter you are imagining is looking for literally any reason to vote Republican, and if it wasn't this it would be something else.

I would guess that there are many types of people, I would guess that what some may call thin skinned others may say it's not worth arguing.  If you look at the Brexit thread, after the vote, there was healthy debate for a few 100 pages, then for the next 500 hardly anyone from the Brexit side bothered to post. People were either called or suggested or implied they were racist thick Gammons etc. Why engage in that conversation.  That's not thin skinned. 

What politicians have to do is sell something positive, whether you like it or not, people vote for something positive not to be told they are thin skinned or wrong.

[HanoiVillan]

16 minutes ago, colhint said:

I would guess that there are many types of people, I would guess that what some may call thin skinned others may say it's not worth arguing.  If you look at the Brexit thread, after the vote, there was healthy debate for a few 100 pages, then for the next 500 hardly anyone from the Brexit side bothered to post. People were either called or suggested or implied they were racist thick Gammons etc. Why engage in that conversation.  That's not thin skinned. 

What politicians have to do is sell something positive, whether you like it or not, people vote for something positive not to be told they are thin skinned or wrong.

People vote for all types of reasons, good and bad. And some people will vote in ways I don't like, for reasons I don't like. There's not much point getting upset about every individual instance and possible explanation, especially one as weak as 'the elites were mocking me'.

If you didn't participate in a political conversation because some people were calling people like you names that you didn't like, then yes that was thin-skinned

There is a broader point to the original post here, however. There is an idea amongst certain Republicans that 'coastal elites' are looking down on them. As you have transposed the conversation to this country so seamlessly, you have in doing so highlighted that the political right in this country *also* attempts to persuade voters that 'elites' are looking down on them. It's a common tactic among conservatives, who are largely projecting when they make it. There is no world in which Conservatives and Republicans give up this argument, and stop making jokes about 'Islington dinner parties' (or whatever the American equivalent is), so I'm not particularly minded to worry about it. As I said before, people who hear prominent conservatives, whether Boris Johnson or Mitch McConnell, go on about 'liberal elites' and think they have an excellent point is someone who was always going to vote for them anyway.

Edited August 29, 2020 by HanoiVillan

[blandy]

8 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

Do I need to remind you of this every time you post something humorous in a politics thread?

If you like, next time I do a “vast generalisation” about a whole geographic section of the country being utterly dumb - let’s say an area where they don’t like gravy on chips, as an obvious example of irredeemable morons. But I’d never mock those unfortunate simpletons. 

Trump! Biden! Guns! Could you put gravy on a cheeseburger? Mmmm.

[bickster]

9 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

Do I need to remind you of this every time you post something humorous in a politics thread?

Is Pete a Political Party now or just some bloke who puts gravy on fish and posts on a football forum?