All Purpose News and Politics Thread Part IV: The Center Cannot Hold

[Cimmerian]

Don't know what to think about this.

On the one hand, you have this narrative on the news that these numbers are the curtain getting pulled back on the Wizard.

On the other hand, I just have a tough time just going with the idea that any of the numbers this guy has presented at any point are on the level. What makes this set of numbers the one that folks shouldn't second guess?

There’s also the fact that Trump wrote a book about this 20 years ago (The Art of the Comeback). Which was praised by the very same New York Times.

They’re reaching for absolutely anything.

[Kevinroc]

There’s also the fact that Trump wrote a book about this 20 years ago (The Art of the Comeback). Which was praised by the very same New York Times.

They’re reaching for absolutely anything.

"Wrote" a book.

[Tendrin]

Did someone seriously say the guy who retweets white nationalists and called them 'very fine people' being a white nationalist himself is a 'bit fringe'? The same guy who was sued for being racist in housing policies?

Huh. How about that.

[Kusanagi]

How come we just ignore Trump was the face of the birther movement for several years. Just watching him accuse Obama of not being American should be more than enough for anyone with common sense.

[Darkspellmaster]

It takes a special kind of person to still be in college at the age of the average baby boomer. They're not really representative of their age group.

Community college, and they get a free class if they graduated from the school. Yeah I know but I've seen articles that have been saying similar sentiments over the past two years. Apparently Millennials are killing every thing under the sun, and I just find it odd that it's from the same group that people complained about in the 60s.

[jetengine]

Community college, and they get a free class if they graduated from the school. Yeah I know but I've seen articles that have been saying similar sentiments over the past two years. Apparently Millennials are killing every thing under the sun, and I just find it odd that it's from the same group that people complained about in the 60s.

Itd because American Boomers lived in a weird bubble and are now outside it and seem confused about how the world works

[Tendrin]

How come we just ignore Trump was the face of the birther movement for several years. Just watching him accuse Obama of not being American should be more than enough for anyone with common sense.

I mean, it SHOULD, but.

[InformationGeek]

So Trump just pulled executive privilege to block the release of the full Mueller Report. Soooooo much winning and total exoneration!

Meanwhile, here's this bag of trash trying his best to say something is not a crime.

Jim Jordan cites Trump firing a bunch of people who were investigating him as evidence of FBI misconduct. It's actually evidence of obstruction of justice by Trump!

Then over to Steve Chabot who won't get over things.

.@RepSteveChabot accuses Hillary Clinton of being the real colluder, rewrites history by saying the FBI tried to help her win, and says Trump "may have been right" about Obama spying on him. #FairyTales

Louie Gohmert is also yelling about attempted coups and Hillary's servers.

[Darkspellmaster]

People tend to overemphasize their own merits. I'd even go so far as to say there is a cycle of the previous generation trying to ensure that it's trauma is elevated in an attempt to downplay the legacy of their own misteps.

Yeah that's something I've been seeing a lot more recently in people when it comes to articles about various generations. Sure Nixon gets talked about for example, but no one talks about the votes that put him in office. And your right that people tend to ignore their mistakes to make themselves seem cleaner.

As for not protesting "correctly", that's asinine. The current "establishment" is the direct legacy of Boomers, using their methodology to revolt against that would be largely ineffective. The entire idea of protest is meant to be disruptive. You can't disrupt a system that already has, and you could even say developed, the antibodies to fight back.

That was something I was thinking about. I had to keep pointing out to my dad about the fact that, just because you don't see us pounding the pavement in marches doesn't mean that we are ignoring the problems. Question becomes then how do you change things from the outside the body? We know there are a lot of congressional people trying to do it inside, but I guess other than voting, what are the ways to effectively help them out.

You definitely get the sense though that most millennial activists are ineffectual because they don't really want to upset the apple cart too much.

I would say that's largely because a lot of us for the most part grew up viewing it as something our parents would do, and the whole, were not our parents way of thinking tends to happen, so less vitriolic than them.

Just being an American will make you part of the "establishment" by global standards, because you have the benefit of a military deployed around the globe to facilitate the extraction of every resource imaginable, and a restrictive immigration system designed to limit the number of people who can share in those resources. Sure, someone might label themselves a woke progressive and be anti-war and pro-immigration or whatever, but at the end of the day, it is in their economic interest to continue the system as it is rather than to make any kind of serious reform to it, and they and everyone else know that.

I wouldn't agree totally with this. Part of it is true, but I would day that people do want to change things to make the system better and more equal than anything else. Used to be if you were from the UK you were the establishment well before the US got that title.

I watched a pretty interesting video on Youtube the other day that suggests that the "connected world" (internet, social media, etc) actually serves to placate people and operates counter to the way most millennials and post-millennials believe it does. They cited access to global media in general going back to the cold war as means to quiet social unrest.

Essentially, feeling connected to a global community gives people either an outlet for aggression or provides escapism. When communities feel more isolated they are more prone to lash out physically.

Apparently, and I didn't know this, a lot of the much discussed "arab spring" really happened once access to the internet was shut down, so all those hashtags didn't really have much to do with anything after the initial stages.




All that said, I'm not sure what effective protest looks like in this day and age. It's very easy to "hack" a protest due to the spread of misinformation and atomized interests. I'd imagine it's still a process in development, or even a synthesis of everything that came before (which is typical). I don't think 1960s style radicalism, in itself, would be effective either since everyone already knows that playbook.

Yeah, I mean look at how the newspapers were used effectively during the wars pre social media. Then you look at Venezuela or China, and how different the situation with social media is being used in both their cases. I'm gonna have to watch this, thanks for the link.

Yeah its something that I keep thinking about. Look at for example the parkland protests or the womens marches. Momentum is/was there, but when your using tactics that may have worked previously it doesn't always push people to join in.

[shooshoomanjoe]

How come we just ignore Trump was the face of the birther movement for several years. Just watching him accuse Obama of not being American should be more than enough for anyone with common sense.

I never understood the stupidity of the birther movement. Even if Obama wasn't born on US soil, his mom has always been a US citizen so that would automatically make Obama a US citizen.

[Dalak]

That depends on how you interpret the Clause 5 in the Article Two of the United States Constitution

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articl...ons_for_office

. . . are you defending Birtherism now?

[Malvolio]

. . . are you defending Birtherism now?

No, he's just being pedantic. The bottom line is that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961, two years after Hawaii became a state. Period.

[Kusanagi]

That depends on how you interpret the Clause 5 in the Article Two of the United States Constitution

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articl...ons_for_office

A person born to One Parent that is a US citizen, and that has residence within the United States, is a citizen at birth.

https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/...rt-h-chapter-3

Trying to say a citizen at birth isn't a natural born citizen and is disqualified from being president is laughably specific and would usually have some malicious underlying motive behind it.

Also entirely a moot point since the only ones who contended that Barack wasn't born in Hawaii are conspiracy looneys and/or racists, and given Trump's history we comfortably say he's both.

[Gray Lensman]

A person born to One Parent that is a US citizen, and that has residence within the United States, is a citizen at birth.

https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/...rt-h-chapter-3

Trying to say a citizen at birth isn't a natural born citizen and is disqualified from being president is laughably specific and would usually have some malicious underlying motive behind it.

Also entirely a moot point since the only ones who contended that Barack wasn't born in Hawaii are conspiracy looneys and/or racists, and given Trump's history we comfortably say he's both.

I knew people who insisted neither Obama nor his opponent in McCain qualified because the latter was born in the Panama Canal Zone. Some people interpret it in the most pedantic way possible.

Still right about Trump though.

[KOSLOX]

A person born to One Parent that is a US citizen, and that has residence within the United States, is a citizen at birth.

https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/...rt-h-chapter-3

Trying to say a citizen at birth isn't a natural born citizen and is disqualified from being president is laughably specific and would usually have some malicious underlying motive behind it.

Also entirely a moot point since the only ones who contended that Barack wasn't born in Hawaii are conspiracy looneys and/or racists, and given Trump's history we comfortably say he's both.

You guys seem to keep forgetting why this poster was most recently given a vacation.

And also that it's not a person that posts anything worth engaging.