All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[KOSLOX]

Trump the Ultimate Troll. It is obvious why he is using the word "woke". If nothing else the guy has a talent for twisted biting humor.

Yeah, that's pretty clever. Use a phrase black people have moved past and only old white people really use.

Next he should start deploying "jive speakers" to go rap to the cats down the boogie.

[The Darknight Detective]

I don't think he is lying, rather I think he is going senile and has been for at least a year.

Unfortunately, I agree. It's too bizarre to be a lie.

[Mister Mets]

Some interesting poll results.

Biden is doing pretty well in South Carolina, averaging ten points ahead of Sanders.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/ep...mary-6824.html

It's possible that he'll do even better. South Carolina polls have a history of underestimating candidates supported by older African American voters.

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/st...74530119716864

A big South Carolina win could turn Biden into the obvious Sanders alternative. While recent polls showed Sanders beating all other Democrats head to head, Biden did come closest (44 to 48.) And that was after blowout losses in Iowa and New Hampshire. It may be a different story if he beats Sanders by more than ten points in South Carolina.

https://today.yougov.com/topics/poli...d-to-head-poll

There is some good news for Sanders.

Nate Silver suggests he has a 24 percent chance of winning the South Carolina primary, which likely eliminates Biden.

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/st...14701785718785

He's also doing very well among Latino voters, and has been for some time. They helped him dominate the Nevada Caucuses. His outreach efforts have paid before.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/campa...-latino-voters

And there are going to be a lot of delegates in play in California in less than a week. With Bloomberg spending half a million dollars and potentially doing just enough to split the centrist vote.

[Superbat]

Biden will comfortably win South Carolina and he knows it but it's too late for it to make a difference. Bernie will win big on Super Tuesday.

[Tendrin]

House Democrats tell us they are outraged by one aspect of the White House response in particular: The White House appears to have informed Democrats that they want to fund the emergency response in part by taking money from a program that funds low-income home heating assistance.

A document that the Trump administration sent to Congress, which we have seen, indicates that the administration is transferring $37 million to emergency funding for the coronavirus response from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, which funds heating for poor families.

Want your pandemic response money? Well, then, we gotta make poor people freeze to death in their homes. No big, right? They're just old people usually.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020...-response.html

[Steel Inquisitor]

For one thing, while all of these regimes are obviously atrocious, it's a bit delusional to pretend like THAT is the reason that America opposes them, when we have no problem propping up equally brutal regimes like Saudi Arabia or any number of Latin American tinpot dictatorships as long as they serve our economic interests. Indeed, resentment at being strip mined by American corporations and not seeing any of the gains from that supposed economic development flowing back to the public is the primary reason why most of these countries turned to socialism in the first place. For another, while they do of course have their own foreign policy objectives, by and large their ability to disrupt the geopolitical order outside of their own backyards is fairly limited, even China only has one overseas military base and they didn't get that until a few years ago.

I didn't say that was the reason America opposed them, or that they don't uphold terrible regimes themselves. However, you blamed all the sins of those dictators on America, while ignoring the context of why they're not liked by Americans and not just politicians. Their reasons for turning to socialist are there own, it's how they did it which is where people are turned off by them, that isn't an excuse for their atrocities anymore than capitalism is for America's behaviour on the global scale. North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Russia and China are varying degrees of awful, taking way their agency is short sighted and dismisses their responsibility for their actions domestically and internationally. This very day their countries engage in horrific activities like genocide but rather then rebuking America and them you wrote them like they had a moral high ground, when they don't. The atrocities they commit aren't all because of getting sanctioned by America, it's vastly more complex than that. Russia's been disrupting the global order the last few years and that's cost the world many things, Trump himself is a major disaster and there's Brexit, too. Ukraine. China's been able to do more in the Pacific with Trump quashing TPP, internally there's Hong Kong and the Uyghur's - which matches whatever America's done in the past and now. Venezuela's a train wreck dictatorship. Among them Iran has shown the most evidence that they can grow but they're still a Theocratic regime and very recently made their own purges with protests. Trump disrupted what progressive's they had going that Obama and the EU began. This is more than simply military bases.

It's interesting to see how people have absolutely lost their minds at the prospect of Russian interference in American politics, because for people outside of the US, foreign interference in domestic affairs is just a reality that everyone accepts and is forced to live with, and it's not hard to figure who the main culprit is in all of that. And the thing is, all of this geopolitical ratfucking really doesn't get us very far, because while it may secure us resources and the allegiance of corrupt local elites in the short term, it has built up an unbelievable amount of ill will that has become increasingly resistant to us trying to flex our military muscle to suppress. Nobody had any great love for Saddam Hussein or the Taliban, but even given how brutal they could be, the people knew better than to trust American promises of democracy and prosperity, which is why it has proven impossible to set up a stable pro-American government anywhere in that region.

That's bad regardless of who does it. It comes off as hypocritical that you're ok with everyone else doing that, except when America does it then it's unacceptable. Which is it? Why wouldn't Americans be upset by that interference? It's a reason we got Trump as president - would you prefer him to stay in power? They're going to do it again in '20.

You're right that geopolitics is a dirty business which lots of terrible actions and things never truly seem to change. Sanders being president won't change that, that's something one man can't do by themselves on the world stage.

Who should they trust then? It's fine dragging down America, since they are responsible for terrible status quo across the world, but what are you offering? What's the solution America isn't creating?

Granted, Bernie won't bring all our troops home immediately and he isn't running on that particular plank. But what he is promising is a foreign policy outlook that is less exploitative and more cooperative, not trying to constantly scare our rivals into submission but rather trying to work together to tackle global challenges instead of wasting resources on unproductive arms races. Perhaps this is all kind of pie in the sky thinking, but the reality of the current situation is that our "peace through strength" posture has simply not worked, it hasn't bought us any kind of peace and we look increasingly weak as the dysfunction and corruption of our military industrial complex is revealed to the world.

I don't think anyone would disagree with this in theory, it's in practice that things get fuzzy for what the left is providing. Change requires having ideas that work in the real world, with the political mechanisms to implement them - doing nothing maintains the status quo and demoralises the left. The military industrial complex isn't a secret, and the dysfunction comes from Trump who's been perverting to his own agenda, not that they were "good guys" to start with. Has the world become a safer place with the American hegemony weakening? I don't think so.

[Theleviathan]

Bernie having to defend these Fidel comments and others is a self-inflicted mistake. He has to be a smarter candidate and walk away from traps like that. His supporters are actively building golden idols and licking the dirt he walks on, he doesn't have to say this stuff to make his base happy. Doubling down on these comments, whatever you feel about them, is politically unwise. He needs to do a better job avoiding unnecessary pitfalls.

[InformationGeek]

So, we had an anti-lynching bill pass in the House today. Most people regardless of party voted to pass it. A few no shows but that could be for any number of reasons.

The big thing to note are the fools that voted against it and SURPRISE! We have some regulars.

4 House members voting No on Emmett Till Antilynching Act:
Amash (I-MI)
Gohmert (R-TX)
Massie (R-KY)
Yoho (R-FL)

Massie's reason is especially awful.

Massie on voting against anti-lynching bill: "This bill expands current federal 'hate crime' laws. A crime is a crime, and all victims deserve equal justice. Adding enhanced penalties for 'hate' tends to endanger other liberties such as freedom of speech." https://t.co/8S99YZAXWv

[Lord Falcon]

I think you don't understand what I mean by Natural Law. I'm not talking about customs or "norms". What I am talking about is the concept that people have universal human rights whether certain societies recognize so or not is irrelevant. A society can't give or take away your human rights said rights are always yours by virtue of being human. An example of Natural Law are concepts such as equality before the law and murder or unlawful killing and (yes) same sex marriage. Sure, a society can pass a law to curtail a human right but that law only has power where it is enforced by said state, take slavery for example. The Northern States realized they were under no obligation to return a person to a Southern State because being enslaved was considered an unnatural state for humans because we are born free, it is our natural right or state of being.

You should read Scorpion's Sting: Antislavery and the Coming of the Civil War -

https://www.amazon.com/Scorpions-Sti.../dp/0393351211

I suspect I do understand your meaning. It's the common language of humanitarian and human rights groups, and it helps that the idea of natural, inherent rights jives well with modern religious ideas of god-given rights for everyone. But it's all arbitrary. Customs, norms, universal rights, it's all made up. Some rights have more benefits and are better thought through than others. But nobody will ever be able to point to a universal, unchanging source of what universal rights are. The idea that such universal rights exist in the aether, just waiting for us to discover them, is a fiction. Some people decide what rights everyone ought to have, and if they get the right amount of influence into the social fabric we call them universal rights. It's another social construct, one very reminiscent of many religions where we're trying to discern some hypothetical perfect being or ideal.

The Northern States had a political marriage between the abolitionists who really did believe in black rights and the free market capitalists who didn't like competing against slave labor. If the entire North had fervently believed in the cause of black equality as greatly as the abolitionists did, Reconstruction would have gone a lot differently. Am I glad the North won? Absolutely. But I'm glad they won because they supported more progressive ideas, not because they gleaned some extra glimpse of some perfect truth.

Humans are, by nature, social animals. Morality is an survival response to that Social Nature. Without it, society would break down as would survival. Societies that abandon all expressions of morality, that no longer manifest compassion, empathy, or even self sacrifice tend to eat themselves up from within. Eventually losing population due to violence, mistreatment, low reproduction rates, widespread illness and starvation, suicides, and abandonment.

Populations that grow and thrive are those that foster balanced morality. The kind that attempts to provide the same considerations to as many individuals as possible. Doing so decreases stress, aggression, hostility, and ignorance.

Laws and religion are means by which morality can be systematized, if done correctly and not abused or overused.

Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior

I'm in 99.9% agreement with your first sentence. Your second is intriguing, and while I'm hesitant to call today's morality solely a primal survival response I think there's some truth to it. I'd counter off the top of my head that people do the right thing even when it costs them personally, but one could argue that our social nature means sometimes we think of the survival of the group over ourselves. Or what about Bushido, which was more about a warrior's idea of a good life and death even in the context of Buddhism? That seems a bit less survival-oriented. It's an interesting thought anyway.

I'd disagree that entire societies, especially on a large scale, ever totally abandon expressions of morality and empathy. These concepts often get warped and a lot of people acting in good faith end up doing horrible things because of their worldview of what is right. And of course societies can end up empowering bad actors who cloak themselves in moral virtue.

As your discussion with Farrealmer indicates, tribalism is one way in which morality is shaped by the nature and culture of the tribe.

This and your other posts today are excellent statements of modern Epicurean social-contract theory. Keep it up, I'm with you!

For those who want to explore this further, I recommend this book: How To Be An Epicurean

I talked about this with my friend who actually did study philosophy into the graduate level. I'm just a talented amateur with history hobby and a legal education. He says my ideas are most similar to postmodern philosophy.

[Zauriel]

Several moderate democrats including John Delaney oppose Bernie Sanders' bid for presidency. On Twitter, he called Sanders' plans unworkable.

https://twitter.com/JohnDelaney/stat...61942417428488

Our next President needs to be a person who can work with Congress on real solutions, get them done, and make progress. My issue with Bernie is not so much electability vs Trump (polls show him doing as well as Biden and Bloomberg). My issue is that his plans are unworkable.

That is not good, if Sanders wins the nomination and cannot win the support of the moderates.

[Zauriel]

I don't think he is lying, rather I think he is going senile and has been for at least a year.

Then why would South Carolina voters want to elect a senile commander in chief who can't properly remember nuclear warhead passwords?

[Steel Inquisitor]

Several moderate democrats including John Delaney oppose Bernie Sanders' bid for presidency. On Twitter, he called Sanders' plans unworkable.

https://twitter.com/JohnDelaney/stat...61942417428488




That is not good, if Sanders wins the nomination and cannot win the support of the moderates.

It is when it comes to governing when he's president. If this is what moderates are doing, what's Sanders going to do about a conservative like Manchin?

[Celgress]

Yeah, that's pretty clever. Use a phrase black people have moved past and only old white people really use.

Next he should start deploying "jive speakers" to go rap to the cats down the boogie.

I don't know about that. I sure do hear a lot of people use the word "woke" (and associated phrases) on social media and Youtube, and most aren't "old white people", odd.

[Celgress]

I suspect I do understand your meaning. It's the common language of humanitarian and human rights groups, and it helps that the idea of natural, inherent rights jives well with modern religious ideas of god-given rights for everyone. But it's all arbitrary. Customs, norms, universal rights, it's all made up. Some rights have more benefits and are better thought through than others. But nobody will ever be able to point to a universal, unchanging source of what universal rights are. The idea that such universal rights exist in the aether, just waiting for us to discover them, is a fiction. Some people decide what rights everyone ought to have, and if they get the right amount of influence into the social fabric we call them universal rights. It's another social construct, one very reminiscent of many religions where we're trying to discern some hypothetical perfect being or ideal.....

I believe people have natural rights you don't, so be it.

Cultural Relativism can easily be embraced as an excuse to say certain societies can abuse their populations because it isn't our business due to no universal standard existing. Such a stance is a very dangerous one. Universal Human Rights is the best standard to embrace in our modern world, by far.

But we all have to decide how we want to live and what ideas to embrace. I honestly believe desiring freedom is our nature. It has been fun chatting with you. I doubt we will change each other's mind so you be you I'll be me.

[Zauriel]

It is when it comes to governing when he's president. If this is what moderates are doing, what's Sanders going to do about a conservative like Manchin?

Manchin is a DINO, and also anti-environment, because he knows a pro-environment policy would hurt the coal industry and might negatively affect the livelihoods of the coal mine workers who are his constituents. The last thing Manchin wants to do is alienate his constituents. It doesn't matter what Manchin believes. It matters what his constituents believe. So Manchin won't support Sanders plans if they are too pro-environment.

By the way, Bernie won the West Virginia primary in 2016.