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PoliGAF 2017 |OT6| Made this thread during Harvey because the ratings would be higher

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H

Holmes

Member
neurosisxeno said:
My roommate is full blown conservative. Not like, agrees with small government conservative, like Mike Pence--in fact he voted for Trump because he liked Mike Pence so much. A greatest hits of things he's said to me;

"This country used to have morals, back before Abortions were legal."

"Planned Parenthood is just a scheme to kill babies of poor people and sell their organs on the black market. I saw a documentary on it."

"I could never vote for Clinton. I don't think women have the mental fortitude or emotional stability to be President... not because I'm sexist."

"Universal Healthcare is awful, I have friends in Canada and they all hate it... *I cite a poll that it's overwhelmingly supported*... well it could never work here anyway. It only works places with low populations."

"You can't comment on or be critical of the military if you've never served. *he then proceeds to lecture me on how the military does things despite having never served*"

"Black Lives Matter is a bunch of terrorists. They're just a bunch of black people who would rather protest than make their lives better, and want an excuse to kill cops."



*squeels*
Click to expand...
To be fair, everyone hates the health care in Canada. Not because it's single payer, but because the system sucks.
 
S

Stinkles

Clothed, sober, cooperative
Hubbl3 said:
Delicious. They've been willing to lie for Trump in the past, so I would imagine they might try to skirt the truth when talking to Mueller's team and I hope that ends up biting them in the ass
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This is what happens when you keep Spicy out of the Vatican.
 
B

BlastProcessing

Member
whyamihere said:
Joel Osteen's Word of Faith teachings have some interesting views on wealth!

DJOZWGqVwAElUPs.jpg:large
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Jesus had a treasurer Judas Iscariot.

Yeah, and how did that work out for him again?
 
D

Dan

No longer boycotting the Wolfenstein franchise
whyamihere said:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/russias-facebook-fake-news-could-have-reached-70-million-americans





It sounds like they've been able to figure that out.
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I missed that one line so maybe they found direct evidence of some posts appearing as ads but...
PantherLotus said:
Some of these are like a week old.
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Yeah, that's what I noticed when I first saw the collection. A lot of those memes are from this year, not from when the ad buy allegedly occurred during the campaign.

I think the collection is predominantly meant to demonstrate the kinds of posts this page trafficked in since it was recently removed.
 
S

Slacker

Member
Hard to predict: Hurricane paths.

Easy to predict: Trump has a bad news cycle (getting burnt by Pelosi/Schumer), then throws something out there for the hardcore conservative "Christian" crowd:

Jake Tapper‏ @jaketapper
Trump Administration Sides With Baker In Same-Sex Wedding Cake Case
 
R

Randolph Freelander

Member
Slacker said:
Hard to predict: Hurricane paths.

Easy to predict: Trump has a bad news cycle (getting burnt by Pelosi/Schumer), then throws something out there for the hardcore conservative "Christian" crowd:

Jake Tapper‏ @jaketapper
Trump Administration Sides With Baker In Same-Sex Wedding Cake Case
Click to expand...

Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III has never met a case of discrimination he did not like.
 
E

Ernest

Banned
Hubbl3 said:
Delicious. They've been willing to lie for Trump in the past, so I would imagine they might try to skirt the truth when talking to Mueller's team and I hope that ends up biting them in the ass
Click to expand...
No, they only lied to the press because there were no negative consequences for them, like there would be if they told the truth. Lying to Mueller would be something completely different than lying to the press, and something even they're not dumb enough to do.
 
H

Holmes

Member
Random Human said:
Time for Priebus to get his revenge.


This isn't true at all.
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This is so true? Health care sucks in Canada. Especially in rural areas. There are doctor and nurse shortages and provincial governments are always looking to cut funding. I needed to wait a month or two to see a doctor back home for non-emergency issues but here in California I could see my doctor same day.
 
J

jtb

Banned
You had to 'prove' that the conservative alternative to single payer 'wouldn't work.' A lot changes in 8 years.

Shame you had to fuck us out of a public option...
 
C

Cesare Borgia

Banned
Slacker said:
Hard to predict: Hurricane paths.

Easy to predict: Trump has a bad news cycle (getting burnt by Pelosi/Schumer), then throws something out there for the hardcore conservative "Christian" crowd:

Jake Tapper‏ @jaketapper
Trump Administration Sides With Baker In Same-Sex Wedding Cake Case
Click to expand...

Was it a bad news cycle? Much of the coverage is about Trump the deal maker "shaking things up."
 
S

sphagnum

Banned
Spoiled Milk said:
Are liberals violent, or snowflake pansies? I don't get it.
Click to expand...

"When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers of Ur-Fascism must also be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy."
 
P

pigeon

Banned
sphagnum said:
"When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers of Ur-Fascism must also be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy."
Click to expand...

This is actually pretty interesting to think about.
 
Amibguous Cad

Amibguous Cad

Member
So the Democrats negotiated to keep the debt ceiling raise on the table three months from now, while Republicans wanted 18 months. The Democrats won, and the general consensus is that this was a savvy move.

What does this mean going forward? Are debt ceiling hostage situations going to be commonplace from here on out? Are Schumer and Pelosi willing to shoot the hostage to win policy concessions? If no one believes that they are, what leverage are they getting out of the whole deal?

Most importantly, how much more likely is a default now than it was a week ago?
 
S

Spoiled Milk

Banned
sphagnum said:
"When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers of Ur-Fascism must also be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy."
Click to expand...
Amazing
 
S

sphagnum

Banned
I'll just repost the whole thing since it's always relevant. See how many similarities to modern America you can spot!

Eternal Fascism:
Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt
By Umberto Eco

In spite of some fuzziness regarding the difference between various historical forms of fascism, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.
* * *

1. The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition.

Traditionalism is of course much older than fascism. Not only was it typical of counterrevolutionary Catholic thought after the French revolution, but is was born in the late Hellenistic era, as a reaction to classical Greek rationalism. In the Mediterranean basin, people of different religions (most of the faiths indulgently accepted by the Roman pantheon) started dreaming of a revelation received at the dawn of human history. This revelation, according to the traditionalist mystique, had remained for a long time concealed under the veil of forgotten languages -- in Egyptian hieroglyphs, in the Celtic runes, in the scrolls of the little-known religions of Asia.

This new culture had to be syncretistic. Syncretism is not only, as the dictionary says, "the combination of different forms of belief or practice;" such a combination must tolerate contradictions. Each of the original messages contains a sliver of wisdom, and although they seem to say different or incompatible things, they all are nevertheless alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth.

As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth already has been spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message.

If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled New Age, you can find there even Saint Augustine, who, as far as I know, was not a fascist. But combining Saint Augustine and Stonehenge -- that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism.

2. Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism.

Both Fascists and Nazis worshipped technology, while traditionalist thinkers usually reject it as a negation of traditional spiritual values. However, even though Nazism was proud of its industrial achievements, its praise of modernism was only the surface of an ideology based upon blood and earth (Blut und Boden). The rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life. The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.

3. Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action's sake.

Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Hermann Goering's fondness for a phrase from a Hanns Johst play ("When I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my gun") to the frequent use of such expressions as "degenerate intellectuals," "eggheads," "effete snobs," and "universities are nests of reds." The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.

4. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism.

In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.

5. Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity.

Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.

6. Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration.

That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. In our time, when the old "proletarians" are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority.

7. To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country.

This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside. In the United States, a prominent instance of the plot obsession is to be found in Pat Robertson's The New World Order, but, as we have recently seen, there are many others.

8. The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies.

When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers of Ur-Fascism must also be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.

9. For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.

Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare. This, however, brings about an Armageddon complex. Since enemies have to be defeated, there must be a final battle, after which the movement will have control of the world. But such "final solutions" implies a further era of peace, a Golden Age, which contradicts the principle of permanent war. No fascist leader has ever succeeded in solving this predicament.

10. Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak.

Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the best people in the world, the members or the party are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the party. But there cannot be patricians without plebeians. In fact, the Leader, knowing that his power was not delegated to him democratically but was conquered by force, also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the masses; they are so weak as to need and deserve a ruler.

11. In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero.

In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death. It is not by chance that a motto of the Spanish Falangists was Viva la Muerte ("Long Live Death!"). In nonfascist societies, the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity; believers are told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness. By contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.

12. Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters.

This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons -- doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise.

13. Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say.

In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view -- one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.

Because of its qualitative populism, Ur-Fascism must be against "rotten" parliamentary governments. Wherever a politician casts doubt on the legitimacy of a parliament because it no longer represents the Voice of the People, we can smell Ur-Fascism.

14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.

Newspeak was invented by Orwell, in Nineteen Eighty-Four, as the official language of what he called Ingsoc, English Socialism. But elements of Ur-Fascism are common to different forms of dictatorship. All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning. But we must be ready to identify other kinds of Newspeak, even if they take the apparently innocent form of a popular talk show.
* * *

Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be so much easier for us if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, "I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Blackshirts to parade again in the Italian squares." Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances — every day, in every part of the world. Franklin Roosevelt's words of November 4, 1938, are worth recalling: "If American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land." Freedom and liberation are an unending task.
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