We are heading towards an Idiocracy!

[Kim]

Originally Posted by rpgdemon

"Vote third party instead of someone you don't like"

"It's just the fact of knowing they're not going to win."

if a third party gets enough votes they get government funding

[Krylo]

Originally Posted by Kim

if a third party gets enough votes they get government funding

In addition to this third party votes ARE counted and political parties ARE motivated by votes. A third party that loses can still push parties and politicians (who want to get re-elected) in new/different directions on policy.

Voting isn't just a competition, it's a form of speech. And one of the most powerful ones that we, as people who don't own lobbyists, have. It's one of the few ways to be 'heard' as an aggregate group by the major parties in a real and important way.

If people overwhelmingly vote third party it will send a message that they don't like the current choices, and depending on what party is voted for, will send a message about policy ideas and decisions that the people generally like.

This is infinitely important even in a situation where your vote can't matter as to who wins or loses. In many places and in many cases it's the only way in which your vote matters at all.

So, I guess, I don't know, I don't agree with a lot of what Dual Destiny is saying, but maybe we don't try to silence one of the only ways he has to make important and meaningful speech toward the government by shaming him out of it?

Speaking of not liking what he's saying, why does everyone criticize Hillary for being 'untrustworthy' and 'corporate' but never for her friendships with war criminals or the fact that she's the one of the most hawkish nominees. . . in ever?

Like, I get it. She's caught a lot of shade and she's nebulously untrustworthy, but that's just. . . there's very little substance and what's provable at WORST is she's business as usual, which is disappointing and, yes, in many ways disastrous (but less so than Trump, so using it as a qualifying statement for why she's just as bad is silly).

BUT it seems to me if you're going to make a real argument for why this election is SO MUCH WORSE than others, it should be based less on the fact that 'oh they're both shit with money and have both said some sexist/racist things' because, I mean, okay yes. But the balance there is really off, and you're not really talking about life and death stuff here (At least not with Hillary. With TRUMP arguably you are).

Instead make one for how they're both pretty likely to start World War III, or at least commit massive atrocities and war crimes that make Obama's drone horribleness seem like better times. Just one out of idiocy and one out of, what seems to be, a genuine love of murdering foreigners. Or because she buys entirely into Kissinger's 'Real Poltick', which. . . well read up on Kissinger. I suggest just googling his name with the word 'genocide' next to it.

Like, I guess, it just bothers me that this entire election, primaries included, we've spent so much time talking about just "She's bad with classified things, just like every Secretary of State before her, but the rules changed shortly before she took office!" and "SHE SAID SOME THINGS THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN BAD TO WALL STREET" (which, yes, the wall street stuff is frustrating and terrible if you're hoping for any kind of closing of the income gap--I mean her daughter is married to a Goldman Sach's trader, and it IS important but again, business as usual), but no one has spent any time at all criticizing her for her 'Foreign Policy'.

In fact, it's a point that was used in her FAVOR against Sanders and Trump (the latter entirely making sense, to be honest).

We live in a country and with a media wherein just really loving war--despite the fact that we now have wide spread enough information to know that war fixes fuck all and just makes things worse because the US has the worst possible exit and rebuilding strategies possible (in that we have fucking none), and vacuums of power just leave things less stable and more extremist (HI Isis in Libya! Hi current day Iraq! etc. etc.). DESPITE all that, we still have a media and society that thinks this is preferable to someone who would prefer to avoid fighting to the point that we consider her foreign policy a 'strength'. Even the article I picked that talks about how she almost never backs down from expanding military operations presents it as favorable.

And it's just frustrating and infuriating every time I think about it.

[Dual Destiny]

Originally Posted by rpgdemon

Okay, see, but when you say that all black people think "Fuck the police" and have a "no snitching culture" "within them" (WTF?!) you know that's hella racist, right?

I'd like you to point out where I said, "All black people think." It says more about you than me if that's what you got out of my assertion. I was expecting someone to challenge it, not throw aspersions at me.

I pointed out two specific cultural phenomena(attitudes) that are found mostly, but not entirely, within black communities. Also as I've noticed, both practiced to lesser degrees within Latino Communities as well. 'Black communities' and 'all black people' are not synonymous terms. Because not all black people live in black communities and not all black communities are filled entirely with black people.

Originally Posted by dude guy fella bro steve

Lower war, longer life expectancy, higher productivity, intelligence, worldwide presence of Civil and Political rights. Where I've been, and where you likely are, is living in a time with unprecedented access to health, wealth, recreation and relevantly to this conversation; Information. If you think things are going to hell, it's probably because you only very recently started paying enough attention to notice bad things happen. Bad things are always happening, they have happened for all human history. There's a kind of Bell Curve with suffering for our history, where our old style societies had very little, and it spiked ridiculously for a while but have been getting better. But along with that reduction in actual things wrong has come an inundation of knowledge about the things that do go wrong. Leading to a lot of people thinking the world is worse than it is, or getting worse as we go along.

That said, no matter how likely it has been, there's almost constantly been some portion of people who say the world is literally right about to end. Which, I guess has something to do with feeling themselves important enough to see the end of the world. They do things like convince a bunch of people to sell all their stuff and then sit on a mountainside for a while, and, so far, every single person who has ever said the end of the world was imminent has been pretty wrong about it.

Well, signs are currently strong. Terrorism on the rise or maybe just higher frequency of reporting due to controversy equaling big bucks for Big Media. Brexit was a big one and haven't heard anything too great about the EU lately but maybe that's just scaremongering. Not to mention in the US, it's the 'Most Dangerous Presidential Election'. Maybe I'm just being pessimistic here and tensions are just so high right now that everyone is making things out to be worse than they are. Misery loves company after all.

Wow.
The seventies and eighties, huh?
Can't.
Even.
Begin.
To imagine why black people before, during and after the seventies and eighties may have been distrustful of police.
I'm sure it was for no reason. They, as a community, decided to incite violence against themselves through a conspiracy of distrust of the authorities. All so that they could one day continue to be abused.

Violence against themselves, by themselves, is still a fact and continues to be a fact. Far worse and far more bleak than any police brutality or unjustified police killing that happens each year. With innocent casualties to boot. Neither of those police crimes can be condoned either, but looking at that 'and' the violence within their own communities, should we really be looking at this through a racial lens?

I mean usually if someone challenged something I was saying in such a fundamental way I'd probably try to at least address it a little, like pointing out why my belief IS valid, but I can totally see where you're coming from. Challenges to your claims claims are definitely an insidious trap. Being asked to substantiate them must have felt incredibly insulting.

It's certainly a 'fact' that nobody likes their claims challenged. It's human nature to dislike being wrong. The trap I mentioned was saying 'she's not as bad as Trump', which is true. She's also not bad in 'the same way' that Trump is. She's a liar and he's a megalomaniac.

Just play the song "Big Shot" by Billy Joel every time Trump enters a room. Should fit pretty well.

---------- Post added at 05:42 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:36 PM ----------

I'm trying to comprehend how that sentiment works minutes after reading it. Like.

"Hillary Clinton is not as bad as Trump in any reasonable way."

"Yes she is, here's several reasons why that I, as a rational adult have given thought to."

"Haha! You may have suspected that I would critically respond to these points, but instead the very fact that you have responded to my initial point IN AND OF ITSELF was a ruse! You have fallen into my cunning trap, and thus doomed yourself entirely! MWAHAHAHAHA"

I do not know much about Shiney on a personal level, but I have a reasonable level of confidence that he does not have a curling black mustache, or that if he does indeed have such a mustache, I have confidence he does not twirl it menacingly as he writes posts. Nor does he likely wear a black cape as he stalks upon rooftops, and does not in fact cunningly lay traps on the internet waiting for unsuspecting but goodly folk to stumble into them.

At least I had a chuckle at the visual of Snidely Whiplash as I read it.

---------- Post added at 07:12 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:07 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Krylo

Speaking of not liking what he's saying, why does everyone criticize Hillary for being 'untrustworthy' and 'corporate' but never for her friendships with war criminals or the fact that she's the one of the most hawkish nominees. . . in ever?

Like, I get it. She's caught a lot of shade and she's nebulously untrustworthy, but that's just. . . there's very little substance and what's provable at WORST is she's business as usual, which is disappointing and, yes, in many ways disastrous (but less so than Trump, so using it as a qualifying statement for why she's just as bad is silly).

BUT it seems to me if you're going to make a real argument for why this election is SO MUCH WORSE than others, it should be based less on the fact that 'oh they're both shit with money and have both said some sexist/racist things' because, I mean, okay yes. But the balance there is really off, and you're not really talking about life and death stuff here (At least not with Hillary. With TRUMP arguably you are).

Instead make one for how they're both pretty likely to start World War III, or at least commit massive atrocities and war crimes that make Obama's drone horribleness seem like better times. Just one out of idiocy and one out of, what seems to be, a genuine love of murdering foreigners. Or because she buys entirely into Kissinger's 'Real Poltick', which. . . well read up on Kissinger. I suggest just googling his name with the word 'genocide' next to it.

Like, I guess, it just bothers me that this entire election, primaries included, we've spent so much time talking about just "She's bad with classified things, just like every Secretary of State before her, but the rules changed shortly before she took office!" and "SHE SAID SOME THINGS THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN BAD TO WALL STREET" (which, yes, the wall street stuff is frustrating and terrible if you're hoping for any kind of closing of the income gap--I mean her daughter is married to a Goldman Sach's trader, and it IS important but again, business as usual), but no one has spent any time at all criticizing her for her 'Foreign Policy'.

In fact, it's a point that was used in her FAVOR against Sanders and Trump (the latter entirely making sense, to be honest).

We live in a country and with a media wherein just really loving war--despite the fact that we now have wide spread enough information to know that war fixes fuck all and just makes things worse because the US has the worst possible exit and rebuilding strategies possible (in that we have fucking none), and vacuums of power just leave things less stable and more extremist (HI Isis in Libya! Hi current day Iraq! etc. etc.). DESPITE all that, we still have a media and society that thinks this is preferable to someone who would prefer to avoid fighting to the point that we consider her foreign policy a 'strength'. Even the article I picked that talks about how she almost never backs down from expanding military operations presents it as favorable.

And it's just frustrating and infuriating every time I think about it.

Nothing I can actually find to disagree with. The war criminal thing slipped my mind due to what direction the discussion had gone.

That reminds me, war is another thing I was going to address in my pseudo-essay/thesis/thing... less real life events and more the concept itself.

[Kim]

Okay so like just a general question for mods but what level of racism does DD have to reach for that to be a punishable offense

[pochercoaster]

i want to make a quick note (on my phone, on lunch break) that third parties really can make a difference, based on what I've observed in canada. Third parties keep the main parties in check; when the liberals screwed up a huge number of liberal voters voted for the new democratic party (which is like the actual liberal party) and that caused the conservatives to win. Now having stephen harpet wasn't that great but the liberals saw that they screwed up, so they cleaned up their shit and now we got Justin Trudeau. Also last i checked i'm pretty sure canada had one or two seats for the green party. making the total number of parties with seats 5. So a lot of different interests are advocated. Also the conservatives, though they totally suck, can't fly off the handle the way republicans do in the US cause they know voters got options.

My two cents. If your state has been blue for decades there ain't no harm voting third party. I mean it's still.your right to chose so even if your state isn't blue i don't grudge you for voting third party. It's your fucking right! Now if i could vote i would go with clinton just because i don't really care fo any of the third parties at this point, but yeah.

Also you can do shit to better your country besides voting in the federal election. Thats a thing.

[Dual Destiny]

Originally Posted by Kim

Okay so like just a general question for mods but what level of racism does DD have to reach for that to be a punishable offense

I think a better question to you ma'am, is, what do you define as racism? Because what I posted neither violates the forum's rules or falls under the legal or dictionary definition of racism.

The burden of proof is on you to prove that what I have posted thus far is racism.

[pochercoaster]

Whenever kim comes back to the forums a racist poster shows up. It's a law of the universe.

[Solid Snake]

I came here this evening just to post that I had a terrifying nightmare last night about Donald Drumpf winning the election that felt so viscerally real that I had to do a double-take when I woke up and check sites like CNN to confirm the world still existed.

Originally Posted by dude guy fella bro steve

Lower war, longer life expectancy, higher productivity, intelligence, worldwide presence of Civil and Political rights. Where I've been, and where you likely are, is living in a time with unprecedented access to health, wealth, recreation and relevantly to this conversation; Information. If you think things are going to hell, it's probably because you only very recently started paying enough attention to notice bad things happen. Bad things are always happening, they have happened for all human history. There's a kind of Bell Curve with suffering for our history, where our old style societies had very little, and it spiked ridiculously for a while but have been getting better. But along with that reduction in actual things wrong has come an inundation of knowledge about the things that do go wrong. Leading to a lot of people thinking the world is worse than it is, or getting worse as we go along.

That said, no matter how likely it has been, there's almost constantly been some portion of people who say the world is literally right about to end.

I'll concede everything's gotten better in the aggregate, sure, but I still feel terrified and incredibly uncomfortable about handing over one of the largest nuclear stockpiles in the world to an egomaniac with the intelligence of a third-grade bully and an inability to even accept the slightest degree of criticism when it's presented on a social media platform.

I think the frightening reality about living in a world with WMDs over the past sixty or so years is that we've always been a few bad decisions from our leaders away from unparalleled catastrophe. And despite everything you've mentioned generally getting better, we also have climate change, which has already crossed the Rubicon of no return, and which is going to devastate the world over the next century in ways we can barely even begin to fathom.

Feels strange to defend DD on this one small point, but while humanity has always sucked throughout the course of human history, the difference now is that humanity's finally achieved sufficient scientific power and dominion over the world to ensure our fuckups will now effect everyone, everywhere, for all time. The worst King in the Middle Ages might have been more overtly and indiscriminately evil than any living politician today, even Drumpf, but he couldn't do much more than impact the present-day lives of his present-day peasants and the next country's over. We're handing Donald Drumpf the keys to the world's hegemonic superpower and praying he doesn't do what far more intelligent men in his position have barely avoided by not pressing the buttons that make the world go boom.

For that matter, talking to Drumpf supporters today, I'm not really sure how many of them are even mildly aware of the existence of global 'Civil and Political Rights.'

---------- Post added at 08:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:23 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Krylo

Speaking of not liking what he's saying, why does everyone criticize Hillary for being 'untrustworthy' and 'corporate' but never for her friendships with war criminals or the fact that she's the one of the most hawkish nominees. . . in ever?

This is the most justifiable criticism of Hillary Clinton out there (a heavy irony that she served in the State Department given that lackluster foreign policy record), but the reason no one's criticizing it is because Donald Trump's going to be just much a drone-loving, war-criminal-coddling hawk. He'll probably be even worse in the narrow sense that he appears particularly eager to coddle the Russians and anyone Russia likes, and if there's one net positive regarding America's historical rivalry with Russia it's that the two countries have been on their best behavior when calling out the other's most egregious foreign policy fuckups.

It's sad that no one's putting Hillary on the defense regarding her foreign policy stances, but Trump isn't even trying to cater to the delusional fantasy with foreign policy that he attempts with the economy where he's somehow convinced his supporters that he's a real reformer who's going to take on Wall Street and defend the little guy despite doing the exact opposite throughout the course of his adult life as an entrepreneur.

My general thoughts on third parties is, if you don't live on a battleground state where the results will be close, by all means, indulge your ideal preferences and make your voice heard.

If you do live on a battleground state, as I do, consider this trading-votes option as an opportunity to swap with a Hillary supporter in a safe state. You'll help defeat Donald Trump, you'll still have a vote for your preferred third-party candidate out there somewhere, and maybe you'll even make a friend in another state.

What boggles my mind about third-party supporters now though is: You've actually read Jill Stein's policies, right? I'm a pretty committed environmentalist who thinks climate change is the greatest issue our country faces and even I can't vote Green because Jill Stein is a mess. Sometimes I think certain progressives who 'like Stein' (but know virtually nothing about her) are just excited about casting a protest vote without doing a modicum of research, or else they'd realize that Stein would be much worse than Hillary Clinton.

[Kim]

im just saying dd you seem to be putting the blame for the continued racist oppression of black people on black people and also using the classic white supremacist scapegoat of "what about black on black violence huh" to derail from the very real issues black people face in america today

no matter what you might want to blame on black culture like... no blame for white people continuing to be racist oppressive fuckups is on black people. thats squarely on whites.

---------- Post added at 05:46 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:38 PM ----------

Originally Posted by pochercoaster

Whenever kim comes back to the forums a racist poster shows up. It's a law of the universe.

both accounts are actually me and DD is a subtle reference to the fact i wish my tits were bigger

[Dual Destiny]

Originally Posted by Kim

im just saying dd you seem to be putting the blame for the continued racist oppression of black people on black people and also using the classic white supremacist scapegoat of "what about black on black violence huh" to derail from the very real issues black people face in america today

no matter what you might want to blame on black culture like... no blame for white people continuing to be racist oppressive fuckups is on black people. thats squarely on whites.

"You Seem To Be". The first thing you did wrong was assume. Pointing out negative aspects within a minority group's culture is not in and of itself racist. Every culture has both positive and negative aspects. Neither did I say there was no blame to be shared or did you miss the mention of the slack that needs to be picked up on all sides.

You still haven't provided any proof. Also, I find it pretty patronizing that people think the black community needs other people's help to fix what problems they have amongst themselves.

I also find it hilarious that people think whites have been the only ones to have been shitty to black people. It really shows how much of a narrow view a lot of people have.

---------- Post added at 08:58 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:57 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Kim

both accounts are actually me and DD is a subtle reference to the fact i wish my tits were bigger

Who says I'm not trans? Hell, who said I'm not black?

I'm never making a mention of who or what I am because it has no bearing on the validity of ones arguments.

Just remember this: Experience lends itself to credibility, 'not' Validity.