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[Spoiled Milk]

"There is a type of civic mind that does not merely resign itself to the writing of laws and signing of statutes, but instead endeavors to transform, even if only meekly, the ways in which we perceive our place in this world, our attitude toward it, and our responsibilities toward each other." — Y2Kev.

 

[The Technomancer]

what a horrible fucking attitude

If you really think people will always be awful, why bother for fighting for any change at all?

No socialist would say that an economic transformation alone would end racism and misogyny (though it could potentially change their expression), but we recognize that these structures of oppression have a material basis.

And I think this is sort of a...fundamental divergence. I think this underlies a lot of the conflicts we're seeing now that, contrary to how some want to paint them, don't break down cleanly along "radical vs centrist" lines. I think that material conditions form a substantial part of the "base" but I think we have to also recognize that there are genuine, internally motivated fronts of intra-class conflict that are not just determined from material relations

 

[Spoiled Milk]

that's mostly the problem of trying to fit everything into one paradigm

 

[sphagnum]

Fucking Homoousions.

Go assault a soldier, circumcellion.

 

[Bronx-Man]

Is the DSA convention still going on?

 

[East Lake]

It's a realistic attitude.

Talk to me about the inherent goodness of racists and bigots when you've actually been on the receiving end of it, kthx.

Why fight for change? Because you can use structures and systems to rein in or curtail the shitness of people so that they do less harm to others because of their shitness.

But the systems do not create the shitness. People do themselves. Because sorry, people are just shit.

This seems like a shitty argument! Systems don't create shitness? So for example if I create a system that has a heavy punishment for crime, and little in the way of rehab, if crime goes up after this system is in place, it's because the people are shit, not the system?

 

[ShadowSwordmaster]

Major problem with the Dems is that they need people to vote in the right areas and that is not happening.

 

[sphagnum]

Is the DSA convention still going on?

One more day

https://dsaconvention.org/

Where's bonen been? Is he there?

 

[shinra-bansho]

Systems created by shit people can reinforce the shitness they want to impose on the world. Sure.

The Christian right don't give a fuck about the economic implications of restricting abortion access. And racists who think all blacks are inherently lessor don't implement racially motivated criminal justice systems that disproportionately impact other races because of the economics.

 

[The Technomancer]

This seems like a shitty argument! Systems don't create shitness? So for example if I create a system that has a heavy punishment for crime, and little in the way of rehab, if crime goes up after this system is in place, it's because the people are shit, not the system?

I could be misreading him but I think he's making a similar argument to what I was, which is that while systems can either exacerbate or dampen existing shittiness they rarely create it themselves whole cloth

 

[Bronx-Man]

When you making the DSA OT, sphagnum brah

 

[Spoiled Milk]

I bet shinra's literally never smiled before.

 

[East Lake]

I could be misreading him but I think he's making a similar argument to what I was, which is that while systems can either exacerbate or dampen existing shittiness they rarely create it themselves whole cloth

I think that interpretation of the argument is correct, but it seems to me obviously incoherent unless you believe people have some inherent behavior divorced from the material world. Are people not crafted by their environment?

 

[shinra-bansho]

I am not saying and have not said that systems and structures material and cognitive do not shape the environment we live in. I thought that was pretty implied in that we can actively work to improve these and make them less shit.

But if you want to ascribe chicken or egg status, the egg, which clearly predates the chicken, is that a lot of people are shit.

 

[sphagnum]

When you making the DSA OT, sphagnum brah

Probably not allowed I'd think, since they closed the general leftist thread I made a while back.

 

[Autodidact]

Flipping between this thread and my re-read of Brideshead Revisited sure beats lesson planning.

 

[The Technomancer]

I think that interpretation of the argument is correct, but it seems to me obviously incoherent unless you believe people have some inherent behavior divorced from the material world. Are people not crafted by their environment?

My answer to this was super clunkily worded so I'm rewriting it from scratch

 

[BlastProcessing]

I think that interpretation of the argument is correct, but it seems to me obviously incoherent unless you believe people have some inherent behavior divorced from the material world. Are people not crafted by their environment?

That's a big and unanswered question that I think will have an uncomfortable answer.

Personally, I think it's a mix. Humans are incredibly plastic animals, but we are still just animals at the end of the day. There is a limit to our ability to adapt to an environment.

Some people are just jerks. Some kids just torture animals. Some people invite themselves over to dinner and take all of the goddamned mashed potatoes before everyone gets a serving.

Any political or social system that doesn't acknowledge that people are flawed and greedy and will, in the end, always come up short, is doomed for failure. When people are involved, given enough time, the worst case scenario will always come around eventually.

Our job is to create systems that stall that inevitability. I don't think that this is a negative or baseless pursuit; I wouldn't chastise a doctor for treating a patient even though I know that eventually that patient will die no matter what. It's all a stall.

 

[The Technomancer]

I think that interpretation of the argument is correct, but it seems to me obviously incoherent unless you believe people have some inherent behavior divorced from the material world. Are people not crafted by their environment?

I mean there are obvious material factors. It can be as directly biological as that "leaded gasoline = violent crime" trend people are picking up on or as indirect as "populations exhibit different political inclinations in times of plenty than in times of scarcity" but to flip this on its head slightly the things that people consider important are clearly not purely materially derived. The ways in which we form self identities and group identities have non-material components that are entirely real to us, such that even when our material conditions change parts of our self identity does not.

I mean we are basically discussing the infrastructure/superstructure model here and yeah I don't...really agree with it. I think that material conditions lay out boundaries but that within those boundaries there's a tremendous amount of other stuff going on, including other transverse boundaries derived entirely differently.

 

[East Lake]

Too late Techno I already read it. Just to be clear my main quibble was with the systems don't create shitty behavior comment. I think it's clear they do, for example a legal system obviously isn't responsible for all bad behaviors, but it can certainly bring into being events and behavior that wouldn't have happened otherwise. These systems create life altering events and behavior.

 

[Grexeno]

EDIT: wrong thread

 

[The Technomancer]

Too late Techno I already read it. Just to be clear my main quibble was with the systems don't create shitty behavior comment. I think it's clear they do, for example a legal system obviously isn't responsible for all bad behaviors, but it can certainly bring into being events and behavior that wouldn't have happened otherwise. These systems create life altering events and behavior.

Okay sure, I wouldn't disagree with that. I think this maybe goes down a bit more of a semantic rabbit hole around concepts like "create" and "behavior" that I'm running out of energy for tonight

EDIT: Like yes if you put X shittiness into a system and get 3X shittiness out its creating shittiness sure

 

[Frank the Great]

Billy Kristol isn't a racist, just a jerk :/

I know, all I meant was that he represents the old ideological wing of the Republican party, which doesn't really exist anymore because it has been replaced by the emotionally-based "racism/fuck you I got mine" non-philosophy that dominates the current party and represents modern "conservatism," which means that the economical and ideological "conservatism" he grew up with (which is really classical liberalism) is, like himself, a historical relic, but he is either too stubborn or too naive to realize that the movement has left him behind and is, and will be for the foreseeable future, an intellectually bereft morass in which tribal/racial identity takes precedence over any semblance of economic or political theory.

 

[Spoiled Milk]

I know, all I meant was that he represents the old ideological wing of the Republican party, which doesn't really exist anymore because it has been replaced by the emotionally-based "racism/fuck you I got mine" non-philosophy that dominates the current party and represents modern "conservatism," which means that the economical and ideological "conservatism" he grew up with (which is really classical liberalism) is, like himself, a historical relic, but he is either too stubborn or too naive to realize that the movement has left him behind and is, and will be for the foreseeable future, an intellectually bereft morass in which tribal/racial identity takes precedence over any semblance of economic or political theory.

Did you miss Goldwater? Or, you know, Ford, who didn't enforce the civil rights act.

 

[shinra-bansho]

That's a big and unanswered question that I think will have an uncomfortable answer.

Personally, I think it's a mix. Humans are incredibly plastic animals, but we are still just animals at the end of the day. There is a limit to our ability to adapt to an environment.

Some people are just jerks. Some kids just torture animals. Some people invite themselves over to dinner and take all of the goddamned mashed potatoes before everyone gets a serving.

Any political or social system that doesn't acknowledge that people are flawed and greedy and will, in the end, always come up short, is doomed for failure. When people are involved, given enough time, the worst case scenario will always come around eventually.

Our job is to create systems that stall that inevitability. I don't think that this is a negative or baseless pursuit; I wouldn't chastise a doctor for treating a patient even though I know that eventually that patient will die no matter what. It's all a stall.

Basically. The moment you start ignoring how fundamentally terrible people as a whole can be to each other, to everything around them, and ignoring the requisite attribution of outcomes to that inherent terribleness, is when your ideas stop becoming practicable. Which makes them useless.

 

[Ogodei]

I know, all I meant was that he represents the old ideological wing of the Republican party, which doesn't really exist anymore because it has been replaced by the emotionally-based "racism/fuck you I got mine" non-philosophy that dominates the current party and represents modern "conservatism," which means that the economical and ideological "conservatism" he grew up with (which is really classical liberalism) is, like himself, a historical relic, but he is either too stubborn or too naive to realize that the movement has left him behind and is, and will be for the foreseeable future, an intellectually bereft morass in which tribal/racial identity takes precedence over any semblance of economic or political theory.

Thing is, that never existed. Just like there's a group of Republicans today who cut their teeth on the propaganda that was slung by the generation before them, that their predecessors knew was bullshit but what they know as the only truth, so it is in right-wing intelligentsia. William F. Buckley was a racist trying to repackage Bircher ideals as something that could pass muster in academic circles, and there were a group of intellectuals who bought Buckley's attempts at legitimizing conservatism as an intellectual doctrine that never actually existed.

All we're seeing in the modern day is conservatism come full circle. The song-and-dance that was invented to hide the ugliness of paleoconservatism has been discarded because it is no longer necessary, and part of that facade is the entire conservative intellectual establishment (which is why Heritage is being gutted in favor of Heritage's PAC)

 

[East Lake]

That's a big and unanswered question that I think will have an uncomfortable answer.

Personally, I think it's a mix. Humans are incredibly plastic animals, but we are still just animals at the end of the day. There is a limit to our ability to adapt to an environment.

Some people are just jerks. Some kids just torture animals. Some people invite themselves over to dinner and take all of the goddamned mashed potatoes before everyone gets a serving.

Any political or social system that doesn't acknowledge that people are flawed and greedy and will, in the end, always come up short, is doomed for failure. When people are involved, given enough time, the worst case scenario will always come around eventually.

Our job is to create systems that stall that inevitability. I don't think that this is a negative or baseless pursuit; I wouldn't chastise a doctor for treating a patient even though I know that eventually that patient will die no matter what. It's all a stall.

I don't agree that it's inevitable. If you take something that's kind of mundane like the mashed potato example the act is bad but not necessarily done because of some clearly formed ideology that has a tight grip on a person. If you come across that person tens years later you might guess they'll still take all the potatoes, but you can't be sure they will. They might in that time have run across a system or set of social events that curbed that type of behavior.

 

[chadskin]

Ya'll might enjoy some Trump bashing brought to you by the German election...

Germany's Social Democrats on Sunday rejected NATO's target of spending 2 percent of economic output on the military, and blasted German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her conservatives for kowtowing to the demands of U.S. President Donald Trump.

"We say a clear no to the 'two-percent target' of Trump and the CDU/CSU," the two leaders wrote, referring to Merkel's Christian Democrats and their Bavarian sister party.

"It's not only unrealistic, it is simply the wrong goal."

The SPD leaders, whose party is lagging Merkel's Christian Democrats in the polls by 15 percentage points, said Germany would have to nearly double current defense spending to meet the NATO target. That would make it the largest military power in Europe - a goal they said "no one could want" given Germany's Nazi history.

Instead, they said, Germany should focus on building a strong European defense union and ultimately, a European army - a stance that may resonate with a deeply pacifist German public that remains skeptical of military engagements.

"Merkel and the CDU/CSU make themselves small vis-a-vis Donald Trump when they answer his provocations around the two-percent target by saying, 'Okay, fine, we'll put in more money,' as if we didn't have any better ideas what to do," they wrote.

They said increased military spending should be matched by higher outlays for diplomacy, humanitarian aid and crisis prevention.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-election-military-spd-idUSKBN1AM001

DER SPIEGEL: Before the U.S. election, you told us that as president of the United States, Donald Trump would be "not only a problem for the EU, but also for the entire world." You were right.

Schulz: It has actually been far worse.

DER SPIEGEL: What do you mean by that?

Schulz: It was clear to me that the White House's solemn atmosphere would not civilize Trump. But the merciless nepotism with which he conducts politics, in which he places himself and his family above the law, I wouldn't have considered that possible. And on top of that there is this reduction of complex political decisions to 140 characters. When it comes to a U.S. president, I consider the reduction of politics to a tweet to be truly dangerous. Trump is a risk to his country and the entire world.

DER SPIEGEL: How would you deal with Trump if you became chancellor?

Schulz: Fifteen years ago to the day, Gerhard Schröder showed how it is done by giving an unequivocal 'no' to a U.S. president on his war of aggression against Iraq that violated international law. At the end of the day, men like Donald Trump need to be given that which they themselves dispense: clear messages. I would confront him as clearly and explicitly as possible. It is not only the right, but also the duty, of the leader of a German government to do that.

DER SPIEGEL: That sounds a bit like a staged fight.

Schulz: Trump believes politics is a staged fight. But it is not. Still, clear words are sometimes needed in politics. In that sense, I believe I am better than Mrs. Merkel.

http://www.spiegel.de/international...-trump-far-worse-than-expected-a-1161253.html

 

[Spoiled Milk]

Ya'll might enjoy some Trump bashing brought to you by the German election...




http://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-election-military-spd-idUSKBN1AM001


http://www.spiegel.de/international...-trump-far-worse-than-expected-a-1161253.html

no I DON'T fucking enjoy this. They can't even spend 2%? Germany gets to be a socialist paradise while we subsidize the defense of the eastern front? Fuck me sideways.

If Britain can do it, so can they. I want to see everyone on the same line

 

[chadskin]

no I DON'T fucking enjoy this. They can't even spend 2%? Germany gets to be a socialist paradise while we subsidize the defense of the eastern front? Fuck me sideways.

If Britain can do it, so can they. I want to see everyone on the same line

Lol socialist paradise. Worth reading all the quotes, though!

 

[Spoiled Milk]

Lol socialist paradise. Worth reading all the quotes, though!

Well at least they have a real healthcare system and free college. Think of all the things we could do with $275b

Spoiler

maybe even reparations >.>

 

[Valhelm]

Germany is not a socialist paradise

The US shouldn't be bankrolling the defense of the whole EU

The US shouldn't be spending so much on domestic defense either

We're the wealthiest nation on the planet and can afford single payer healthcare, free higher education, better K-12, and ethnic reparations

 

[kirblar]

It's a realistic attitude.

Talk to me about the inherent goodness of racists and bigots when you've actually been on the receiving end of it, kthx.

Why fight for change? Because you can use structures and systems to rein in or curtail the shitness of people so that they do less harm to others because of their shitness.

But the systems do not create the shitness. People do themselves. Because sorry, people are just shit.

At 13 I hated being gay.

At 33 I can't imagine not having the perspective change it imposed on me.

 

[pigeon]

I bet shinra's literally never smiled before.

He's smiling right in his avatar pic.

 

[chadskin]

Well at least they have a real healthcare system and free college. Think of all the things we could do with $275b

Spoiler

maybe even reparations >.>

 

[CrimzonSamurai]

Yeah I gotta say I'm with Shinra on this one, humans are inherently garbage social animals because we evolved to be inherently garbage social animals and horde resources and radically change our environment without forethought and a million other examples.

This is why I don't understand why people believe a true socialist or communist state could work, somebody is always going to find a way to turn any system to their personal advantage.

 

[pigeon]

Yeah I gotta say I'm with Shinra on this one, humans are inherently garbage social animals because we evolved to be inherently garbage social animals and horde resources and radically change our environment without forethought and a million other examples.

Wait, wait, wait.

Humans are definitely evolved to be bad for the environment.

It doesn't follow that they evolved to be bad to other humans. The exact opposite is true! Humans are herd animals. They evolved to share alike and work together. We kept some psychopath genes around because they're beneficial for the species during famines, but they're pretty recessive.

I don't think humans are fundamentally evil. I just also don't think the core systems that make them act evil are tied to capitalism. Evil has been around a lot longer than capitalism!

 

[Aaron Strife]

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2017/...ection-no-one-turns-out-to-vote-in-iowa-town/

0% turnout in a special election in an Iowa town of 70 people.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN???

 

[Basileus777]

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2017/...ection-no-one-turns-out-to-vote-in-iowa-town/

0% turnout in a special election in an Iowa town of 70 people.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN???

Huh? Even the people working the poll booths didn't vote? Not even the mayor or town council members? This doesn't make any sense.

 

[pigeon]

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2017/...ection-no-one-turns-out-to-vote-in-iowa-town/

0% turnout in a special election in an Iowa town of 70 people.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN???

Martin Prince 2020

 

[DrForester]

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2017/...ection-no-one-turns-out-to-vote-in-iowa-town/

0% turnout in a special election in an Iowa town of 70 people.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN???

How the hell do the people running not turn up to vote?

edit:

NVM, these were initiative ballots, not voting for positions.

 

[You Know Nothing]

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2017/0...-in-iowa-town/

0% turnout in a special election in an Iowa town of 70 people.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN???

John Delaney (who?) will win 2020.

 

[CrimzonSamurai]

Wait, wait, wait.

Humans are definitely evolved to be bad for the environment.

It doesn't follow that they evolved to be bad to other humans. The exact opposite is true! Humans are herd animals. They evolved to share alike and work together. We kept some psychopath genes around because they're beneficial for the species during famines, but they're pretty recessive.

I don't think humans are fundamentally evil. I just also don't think the core systems that make them act evil are tied to capitalism. Evil has been around a lot longer than capitalism!

Nah there were two factors at play in the evolution of humanity. Socialization, or really, reciprocal altruism increases lifespans. Which, clearly is good for survival in some regard. But sexual selection matters too, and in this regard the thing that matters most is relative fitness. That doesn't mean actual muscle mass or anything, just like, how many resources do you have, how often do you find food to eat, how much food to eat do you have saved up instead of just eating it all. There's definitely evolutionary benefits to resource hoarding, in the sense that it lets you have more kids over a longer period of time. I mean you see this in other herd animals, too. Like a lion can down a zebra 40 feet away from other zebra and then the rest of the heard 99% of the the time is like "oh, cool, that lion is occupied" and then just keep eating. Even in hunter-gatherer societies there's a hierarchy, or some spiritual leader who gets to do nothing or at the least ingests some hallucinogens and then receives the free patronage of the rest of the tribe. Someone is always going to have their foot in your back. That's why every attempt at a true socialist state devolves into either oligarchy or dictatorship.

Humans are programmed to be selfish until being altruistic results in equal or presumed eventually equal reciprocation.

 

[You Know Nothing]

The Prohibition Party candidate for 2020 is... something.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Fellure

Fellure has formally campaigned for President of the United States in every presidential election since 1988 as a member of the Republican Party.[1] He asserts on his campaign web site that his platform based on the Authorized King James Bible (1611) has never changed.[2] As a candidate, he has called for the elimination of the liquor industry, abortion, and pornography, and advocates prayer in public schools[3] and criminalization of homosexuality.[1] He has blamed the ills of society on those he has characterized as "atheists, Marxists, liberals, queers, liars, draft dodgers, flag burners, dope addicts, sex perverts and anti-Christians."[4]

... Don't know why he left the Republican Party with a platform like that!

 

[Deleted member 231381]

no I DON'T fucking enjoy this. They can't even spend 2%? Germany gets to be a socialist paradise while we subsidize the defense of the eastern front? Fuck me sideways.

If Britain can do it, so can they. I want to see everyone on the same line

I actually agree with this. It's wrong that the EU functionally allows the US to subsidize their defense and act as free-riders on NATO.

 

[KirbYuuYuu]

The Prohibition Party candidate for 2020 is... something.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Fellure



... Don't know why he left the Republican Party with a platform like that!

"Liars"

 

[phisheep]

I actually agree with this. It's wrong that the EU functionally allows the US to subsidize their defense and act as free-riders on NATO.

I don't think it is quite that simple or quite that one-sided. America wanted bases in Europe to protect American interests post-WWII, which pretty well coincided with Western European interests. America's still got those bases and still wants them so far as I can tell. Now, you don't get to plonk your military in somebody else's country and then moan about the cost.

 

[Spoiled Milk]

You're right, it's not simple. First it's not that simple because there is not some big pot called NATO that everyone puts money in. We're all in a military alliance and we all have our own budgets. The amount the US spends is completely voluntary. Second, I don't think it's reasonable to assume countries can make the 2% spending target. Most countries don't think they should be spending that much on military defense, and maybe that's their right. Obviously I don't think the US should spend that much either. But I think a good question to ask is, does Germany feel safe if the US drops its defense spending to, say, 3%? 2%? And if not... hey, well is that fair?

 

[timetokill]

The question is, if the US decided defending NATO Euro countries wasn't worth the cost, would it be more expensive for Germany to defend itself then than putting in a more equitable share with the US now?

 

[pigeon]

I don't think it is quite that simple or quite that one-sided. America wanted bases in Europe to protect American interests post-WWII, which pretty well coincided with Western European interests. America's still got those bases and still wants them so far as I can tell. Now, you don't get to plonk your military in somebody else's country and then moan about the cost.

I mean, I think this is a little bit tricky. American interests only coincide with Western European interests to the degree that we all want democracy to be the dominant governing ideology. It's not like we have self-defense requirements in Eastern Europe or indeed in Europe at all. If America decided to be primarily concerned with its own self-defense rather than the advancement of any ideological goals, we'd be back at the Monroe Doctrine and none of those bases would exist.

Given that, I think saying "America still wants those bases" is kind of a dodge. We want those bases because we believe we need them to protect Europe, because, not to put too fine a point on it, we don't think Europe can really get its act together in the event of a major military threat. If one day the EU started taxing people and conscripting defense forces like a real union of states* we could probably just give the bases up. Sure, we get a lot of individual benefit out of being able to say "Civis Americanus sum" whenever we travel, but even there I don't think it would work if we weren't actually providing benefit.


* Idea -- have the founding members of the EU vote on one state to be the official leader of the EU and give them all the military forces, but they have to come to everybody's aid whenever there's a problem, also it's always Austria.