Rafa=FedKilla
Banned
Rubio's Superpac needs to release an ad focusing on that barrage he landed on Ted last night. Loved Trump's second ad, very uplifting.
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PoliGAF 2015-2016 |OT3| If someone named PhoenixDark leaves your party, call the cops
- Thread starter Diablos
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Hi, I said that. Did I say all criticism of her is subtle sexism? Because I don't think I did. And I wasn't wrong. The most obvious example is how the Republicans are treating her. Who cares about her policies? She was schlonged by a man in 2008. Who cares about her accomplishments? Her husband cheated on her. All these things are meant to discredit her without even talking about the substance of what she's advocating for.
Oh yeah, and I'm such a centrist.
Elaugaufein
Member
100. Though I think I messed up by not refreshing the tab on mobile. Sorry.
Probably but it seems the purpose of casting it in that light is to try and shame people who may not support Clinton.
It kind of is a chronic thing. There's very little in this thread thats even vaguely sympathetic to the idea that maintaining the fire of a movement is important and pretty much any other explanation for why people may not be 100% behind Clinton seems to be searched for. And to some extent this is a mistake. The reason the GOP can paint you as socialists is because you've spent so long removing them from the American political sphere, out of fear their existence may taint you, that many Americans can't tell a liberal, from a social democrat from a Communist let alone anything more finely grained. By contrast you've got detailed names and descriptions of a variety of far right movements (Evangelical fundamentalists, Militia movements / Sovereign citizens , "libertarians" (more like hyper capitalists) which make the GOP establishment look far more centrist than they are.
ItWasMeantToBe19
Banned
Rubio is too busy burying any dignity he had to release ads that don't eat his soul.
Elaugaufein
Member
Yes, but how much is cause and how much effect? I mean as a country you're quite proud of your relationships with a variety of countries who's political centre is to the left of the Democrats beginning. So its not like you're instinctively revolted by (American standard) left wing policies or governments. There seems to be a disconnect between self perception, world perception, labels and actual policy positions. It's kinda fascinating. This isn't a new thing though. You've been this way for at least 80 years (there was a 1930s movie that altered the plot of a book because they thought Americans wouldn't be sympathetic to a revolutionary. Which is historically hilarious given the American Revolution ).
Why does the accusation of sexism bother you so much more than actual sexism?
Should it not be rightfully pointed out if someone who disagrees with Clinton also expresses opinions about her in a sexist way? Are people supposed to hold their tongue because it's "political disagreement", and therefore anything is fair game?
You may feel the accusation is chronic, but imagine how chronic the actual sexism feels. You may feel that "maintaining the fire of a movement is important" and apparently important enough to dismiss the criticisms of sexist remarks or behavior from said movement. Sure. Discussion about the label of socialism and right-wing labels are indeed much more important than receiving critique about sexist issues.
People complain that the Republican and Democratic parties are too preoccupied with their messaging problems. Apparently other movements are not exempt.
Elaugaufein
Member
Receiving critiques about sexisn or racism aren't exactly a thing you can do on GAF because there's only one position that doesn't come with rising chances of getting banned as the discussion continues. That means I yield by default and move on to other topics. Besides which I'm not even sure what you'd expect such a thing to look like. "Racism/Sexisn is terrible." " Yes , it is. " would just about sum it up.
Maybe we like living in a center-right country. I find it bizarre that so many non-Americans are encouraging me to support Bernie.
To answer your question, our electoral system might be the biggest cause and this would be a very different country with PR. It has its perks, though. Comparative government increased my faith in American government.
Elaugaufein
Member
Actually I'm not encouraging you to support Bermie. Support the candidate you think is best, given the knowledge you have available. If that's Clinton then so be it.
I'm AOK with being politically allied to different people on different issues and I'd say that overall Hillary is probably better than any Republican candidate on every issue (except maybe Paul on hawkishness and maybe the escalation of the security state and he's been a mighty flip flopper on other libertarian principles so even that's not certain and his economics are consistently terrible ).
I was more criticisizing the incredible hostility to Bernie supporters who you all seem to think don't matter anyway, which makes the hostility even weirder. They are just as entitled as you to support whoever they feel is best. If you feel they are misinformed you'd be better of presenting information than insults.
User 463088
Banned
What I find interesting is that Americans are often accused of having our heads so far up our asses that we can't envision a world different from our own. We're often accused of lacking an appreciation for the way other countries do things. I agree, this is a problem we often have. Ethnocentrism is bad. 100%. But, at the same time, it's important to realize what works politically in other countries may just simply not work here. Not because our way is better. Not because it may or may not be the right thing to do, but because we are, for better or worse (mostly worse) a center-right country. I would love to see this country way more liberal than it really is. It's just not, though. That doesn't mean we accept it. We can definitely fight for progressive ideas. However, we also have to be realistic.
We do not live in a country in which the right is just slightly less palatable than the left. We live in a country in which the right is bat shit insane. Like....terrifyingly insane. I don't think people have an actual appreciation for the devastation that the GOP would bring down on women, gays, the poor, the disabled, AA, Hispanics, and non-Christians. The whole thing is just "lolz Donald Trump."
To be clear: I have no bile for folks who are supporting Bernie in the primary. I have a ton of bile for those who refuse to line-up once the nominee is decided. And this guideline is not selectively enforced; it goes for supporters of Clinton who would be similarly short-sighted in the event that Bernie wins nomination.
Elaugaufein
Member
Yes, because I totally said not to do that. I'm actually okay with other people not being 100% dedicated to my primary interest at every moment. If that's what you want to pursue then have at it. Chances are that I'll even support 95% of your goals and may possible quibble about some of your methods. Which I note is what you're doing with Bernie supports only with significantly greater hostility.
Abinash117
Member
Possibly because many of those non-Americans probably live in left-wing economic countries and Bernie is more similar to their ideology. They probably think that Bernie is better for America because of that.
So Ted Cruz has started to bring people together, Cuomo and de Blasio have put their blood feud aside long enough to jointly pen an op-ed in the Daily News calling him an asshole. Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!
Azure Dream
Member
Has anyone else read the titles wrong and accidentally wandered into POPGaf.
I got distracted when going to reopen the Republican Debate thread last night, and ended up in RealPic GAF. Was pretty confused when I saw someone's drawing and something about "nipple".
User 463088
Banned
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that most of the people who support Hillary over Bernie are not new to the political process, at least on GAF. Maybe I'm wrong, and I'm not trivializing any one at all. We know what the GOP will do to him. We know why it's unlikely for him to get half of what he's promising out of committee, let alone to his desk.
I have no issue whatsoever with someone supporting Bernie enthusiastically. I think that's great. It's wonderful. A lot of people can make great cases for his positions on the issues, and, again, that's great. I'm willing to engage and explain why I think they're mistaken. They're happy to tell me why I'm the one who is wrong. And, hell, maybe I am. That's the good thing about leaving an echo chamber once in a while.
Where the issue, for me, arises is when ANY criticism of Bernie is suddenly an attack on him. Any time a weakness in his candidacy is brought up, it's usually answered by something that's equivalent "It's not a problem because it's Bernie." Socialism? Not a problem because we decided it's not. No party support? Not a problem the party is bad anyway. Pointing out logical, organizational and historical problems with a candidacy is not being hostile. The candidate and his supporters should find a way to minimize those flaws. Pretending that Bernie Sanders is some type of mystical, Liberal Messiah and everyone else is unworthy to even have an opinion that differs from his IS a problem.
Elaugaufein
Member
No.The rest of the world is well aware. We can compare some of your establishment to our own Far Right factions/parties and its rather distressing given how much power the US wields. It's only funny in the look at the ridiculous thing happening over there sense (Like Australia electing Tony Abbott was).
This is hilarious. Lol at "looters".
Abinash117
Member
I don't think America will be completely liberal like that of Europe because of the huge political and racial differences( extremely different priorities ), and the fact that we have a huge military and are very capitalistic that runs deep in our culture . Possibly , it might be a bad idea to have similar policies like some European countries as our situations, the realities in policies , culture, demographics, and the structure of the governments is very different.
User 463088
Banned
I honestly don't think they are well aware. I really don't. Things that most of the world take for granted, we have to live in near constant worry that one bat shit insane person will take them all away. In most countries the extreme far right is kept in check by quite a few smaller parties and a strong left or center-left party. In the US, it's basically the Democratic Party standing between a complete shit show. We basically have to play a damn near perfect game every time we take the field and hope to god we don't screw up.
It IS getting better, but only because we've been able to cement some of the progress we've made. A one term GOP lunatic like Cruz could, literally, erase the progressive we've fought tooth and nail for. It would be freaking gone, and progress could be stalled for decades if the GOP names RBG's successor. So, when someone stands on a mountain of ideological purity? Ya that freaking pisses me off. It really does. Cause these are real people. They're people like me. The people who barely have protections as it is, and god help us if we lose what little we have.
That would be goddamn hilarious if it wasn't so frightening.
Elaugaufein
Member
But the thing is we don't. Most of us live in countries that can charitably be called socially democratic economically. Which means that our Center-Right parties want to privatize as much of that as possible and our center-left usually focuses on embracing capitalism and trying to mitigate its worse tendencies through things like universal health care and provision of public services / utilities / welfare where the private sector can't or won't. And they are usually the current remains of blue collar labor movements which means their environmental policies are very mixed and they can be rather conservative socially.
Not exactly left wing economies by most standards especially since the government utilities and services usually charge for their services too to allow private sector competition.
User 463088
Banned
Hahaha. Amazing. Sad, but amazing.
Elaugaufein
Member
Australia actually had that happen. Our Senate refused to ratify a budget in the 70s and it toppled a government. The fallout was so bad that both parties have bad a gentleman's agreement (is there a gender neutral version of this expression?) ever since to split the budget into maintenance bills which pass unanimously (even if their might be disagreement about details) and things that might be controversial which can be blocked.
It's a shame about America's lurch to the right considering this country was well on its way to advancing liberal ideas in the past. The cannibalization of the Rockefeller Republicans and the annihilation of the southern Democrats post Civil Rights era really really fucked this country up.
The US would never be able to do that. We're one of like 3 countries that still votes on the debt ceiling, despite deciding how much debt to take on during the budget process. We vote on whether or not to pay our damn bills and the last few times...fuck I don't even want to think about that shit...
User 463088
Banned
Again, the fact that you even have government utilities and services show that you are far to the left of the United States.
We're not talking about a Right Wing who wants to sell the power grid to a corporation. We're talking about a Right Wing who wants to let the corporation do whatever the fuck they want, pay little if any taxes, refuse to protect consumers and remove all environmental regulations on top of it.
We're talking about a group of people whose policy on what we should do with a poor sick person was "Let him die." We're talking about people who want to "protect" a fetus as a person from the moment the condom breaks, but refuses to pay for schools to educate the child. We're talking about people who have argued there's a difference between "rape" and "legitimate rape." People who believe that gays, lesbians and trans people are, at best, deserving of no rights and, at worse, should be forced to seek conversion therapy. These are people who propose a solution, we accept it, and then they refuse to go along with it because we agreed to it. To call them ideologues is an insult to fanatics everywhere. *
These aren't people who disagree on how to solve a problem. These are people who believe that everyone who isn't them IS the problem. Feeding the poor? Bad. More benefits to seniors? Bad. Healthcare for the poor? Bad. We used to be a country in which we could at least agree that there was a problem. Sure, we'd disagree on how best to solve it, but that ship sailed a while ago. The current GOP strategy is burn everything down and whoever is lucky enough to be able to survive is the winner. It's like the Hunger Games where the odds are never in our favor.
* I'm not saying all Republicans are evil. That would be insane. It's just that the crazies have taken over that asylum. The non-batshits are getting smaller and smaller because they're being forced out by the crazies. The nature of power being what it is, though, the moderates have no idea what to do except go along with it.
Ted Cruz is like Johnny Turbo levels of sanctimonious
THEY APPLAUDED THAT SHIT! THAT SHIT GOT A STANDING-O.
Fuck me man, I am sick of this shit.
User 463088
Banned
I'm not proud of this, but I broke a television over that. I threw a Gameboy at my TV. Gameboy was fine. TV was fucked, though.
Man, you can't break a Gameboy. You can bomb that shit and it'll survive, seriously the Nintendo World Store has one that survived a bombing and still works. Nobody builds electronics like that any more.
User 463088
Banned
Tell me about it. I've gone through 3 Wii Us. One of them was my fault, but the others totally weren't. The one that was my fault was because one of my cats used the gamepad screen as a scratching post.
In other news, this is weird.
I'm still on my launch model, my brother went through like 4 Xbox360's last gen though.
Oh goddamn it, fucking unforced errors.
User 463088
Banned
What in the hell....Who could have possibly thought that was a good idea?
Abinash117
Member
I meant that actually. I was going to say social democracy and/or democratic socialist, but either way it still is more left-wing than the US or at least less neoliberal.
Either way what we call it, it doesn't matter. The US has very different ways of wanting to achieve something and the politicians that might want more of a social democratic country it might be a worse option at least at the time. Many people want a single payer system in the US, but have different ways of going about it and maybe at the same time it might not even work . It is like many foreigners think you can just copy and paste and everything would be fine.
I just read that WaPo article about the establishment coming the conclusion it's Trump or Cruz.
Part of me is happy. This means that Hillary's (I mean, if we had to take bets) coronation will be even more clear. It'll help downstate Dems. We have a chance in North Carolina.
But what happened to my fucking country. My god.
Part of me is happy. This means that Hillary's (I mean, if we had to take bets) coronation will be even more clear. It'll help downstate Dems. We have a chance in North Carolina.
But what happened to my fucking country. My god.
User 463088
Banned
This was my mantra last night. What the hell have we become?
Ted Cruz is right about Trump's New York values. It is a certifiable fact that he doesn't give a fuck about domestic social issues. He's easily the least religious person running. Probably the best tax plan. Doesn't want to start foreign wars and basically wants to continue our current ISIS strategy. Excited to boost relations with Russia. Wants to do something about jobs lost to globalization. Howard Stern would be his first Supreme Court pick. Easily, the best Republican if you're an American citizen.
Abinash117
Member
Trump is the gift that keeps on giving.
9/11 tho.
Elaugaufein
Member
It's sometimes like IP lawyers inhabit an alternative universe where ideas are some form of conserved currency and reputation and awareness has no value.
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