All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Tendrin]

I'm thankful whenever fascists are never allowed power, I just wish such a barrier affected the Republicans, as well. Your argument lacks merit when it would replace Trump with someone like Stalin.

Steel, please stop conflating strains of left wing authoritarianism with fascism. Not all authoritarian forms of government are fascist, and this conflation only helps actual fascists.

[PaulBullion]

bUt WhY wOn'T tHe LeFt StOp TrYiNg To LiNk TrUmP tO RuSsIa? tHeRe'S nO rEaSoN tO sUsPeCt ThErE's AnYtHiNg WiTh TrUmP aNd RuSsIA.

I love when they think that "you've been bringing up RussiaRussiaRussia for 3 years now" is some kind of attack.

[Kirby101]

I never said anything resembling that, but you fail so consistently at understanding the simplest of posts, so I shouldn't be surprised at you doing it again.



Any communist ≠ Stalin

You're a product of America's right-wing, so again, I shouldn't be surprised that you can't tell the difference.

So Rosa, please point out to us a real world Communist country that has been better for it's people than democratic countries? Explain why Communism is a better model than the Democratic Socialism Europe favors (and we have to a more limited extent)

[worstblogever]

I love when they think that "you've been bringing up RussiaRussiaRussia for 3 years now" is some kind of attack.

Right. Meanwhile the more terrifying reality is, Trump has been their puppet for years, and in the White House for 3. Hell, the whispers about him being beholden to Russian interests was discussed just about 4 years ago during the final months of the 2016 campaign.

The moments to give any "theory" legitimate credence from the intelligence community just keep stacking up.

[Tami]

Some interesting information for the discussion from the CIA World Factbook

Countries by Government Type

[Steel Inquisitor]

Steel, please stop conflating strains of left wing authoritarianism with fascism. Not all authoritarian forms of government are fascist, and this conflation only helps actual fascists.

Not all strains of leftist thought equate to fascism, but Stalin and his ilk aren't far off IMO. Purging, gulags and secret police have more in common with Communism strains like Stalin than, say, Sweden. It's important that they never gain a foothold again. I disagree that acknowledging this helps fascists, the right may abuse the Red Scare tactics but it's vital the left not lets it guard down of the dangers of extremism in its own movements. They must be fully discredited by the left so the right can't take advantage of it anymore than they already do.

[Steel Inquisitor]

I never said anything resembling that, but you fail so consistently at understanding the simplest of posts, so I shouldn't be surprised at you doing it again.

I'm understanding you perfectly, and you deliberately omitted the caveat of my opinion to create a straw man.

Any communist ≠ Stalin

You quoted someone who was a famous supporter of the Soviet Union, Castro's Cuba and Jim Jones! Without a single word of a caveat.

You're a product of America's right-wing, so again, I shouldn't be surprised that you can't tell the difference.

I'm a Liberal Democrat, we're not right wing. What difference does it make between Stalin's boot over Trump's? It's still a boot of oppression.

[Mister Mets]

In today's era the left has become the moderate center party in the United states, and the right is out on the fringe, aka Donald Trump. All Biden really has to do is find a diverse (Preferably African American) VP, and run the gauntlet down the middle and he's won.

This is in no way like the Nixon era of 68, right wing nationalists like Steve Bannon are reading the general populous sentiment totally wrong, which is why Trump will lose.

The article wasn't about Republicans VS Democrats, but about Biden (wisely, in my opinion) ignoring a group of Democrats overrepresented on social media.

My favorite bit from the Politico essay Mets posted was when they called the Maggie Haberman NYT a far left publication.

The essay didn't say that the New York Times is far left, but that a particular type of political understanding has taken hold there, as "the critical race theory-intersectional left that has taken over places like The New York Times."

We can see that in the 1619 project, the firing of an editor who approved an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton, hundreds of their employees getting concessions after virtual walkouts, and the effort to reveal the name of a writer of a popular blog that sometimes questions conventional (especially to the far-left) wisdom, a decision that led to the guy shuttering said blog.

Not all strains of leftist thought equate to fascism, but Stalin and his ilk aren't far off IMO. Purging, gulags and secret police have more in common with Communism strains like Stalin than, say, Sweden. It's important that they never gain a foothold again. I disagree that acknowledging this helps fascists, the right may abuse the Red Scare tactics but it's vital the left not lets it guard down of the dangers of extremism in its own movements. They must be fully discredited by the left so the right can't take advantage of it anymore than they already do.

I think the main point is that fascism is not a catchall for dictatorships; it is a specific type of dictatorship. It is by definition ultranationalist, which is distinct from many left-wing dictatorships, as ultranationalism is against the spirit of "workers of the world unite!"

[PaulBullion]

The essay didn't say that the New York Times is far left, but that a particular type of political understanding has taken hold there, as "the critical race theory-intersectional left that has taken over places like The New York Times."

"

Still as funny as the first time I read it.

It might never get old!

[Mister Mets]

I think Stacey Abrams is incredibly intelligent and I've loved a lot of the things she's said in the past two years, but my issue with choosing her as VP is that Biden himself has a problem with appearing very low energy (it doesn't help that he's almost 80) and Abrams won't add a lot of desperately needed energy or charisma. She has actually described herself as an "introvert".

I would personally like Biden to choose Kamala. Her criminal justice record could hamper her, but she's taking the lead when it comes to police reform not to mention the ani-lynching bill. These recent pushes could help make up for her past as a D.A. in the eyes of some voters. She also worked closely with Bernie on the COVID relief bill. Yeah, she called out Biden during the debates but Obama and Biden got into it a few times during the 2008 election.

I don't know enough about Val Demings to comment on her as a potential VP pick. I don't know if she would bring any excitement to the ticket. She could help Biden carry Florida which would be huge.

Stacey Abrams does have a major qualifications question. No one has ever been selected to national office if their top experience is as the minority leader of a state legislative body.

She hasn't been in Congress, statewide office, a Cabinet-level position or served as mayor.

From what I've seen her, the knock isn't that she's low-energy.

Rep. Demings has served since 2016, and was one of the impeachment managers against Trump. She's also a female POC who is the former chief of the Orlando Police Dept.

In other words, it would be f***ing hard for Trump or Pence to call her out as being naive on policing, as it's her actual background.

On the downside, she'll get the "_______ is a COP!" treatment that Kamala Harris did if picked, except this time it will be accurate. I've not seen Demings make any statements in favor of any kind of reform. Which is disappointing. She has, on more than one occasion, defended bad behavior of police, saying that looking for excessive force complaints is "like looking for a prayer in church", while being willing to go to bat for officers who body-slammed octogenarian suspects and broke their vertebrae as a result.

In other words, Kamala.

Demings had an Op-Ed in the Washington Post with the title "My Fellow Brothers and Sisters in Blue: What the hell are you doing?" where she called for reform.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...are-you-doing/

That was about a month ago.

Still as funny as the first time I read it.

It might never get old!

How are they mistaken?

[PaulBullion]

Stacey Abrams does have a major qualifications question. No one has ever been selected to national office if their top experience is as the minority leader of a state legislative body.

She hasn't been in Congress, statewide office, a Cabinet-level position or served as mayor.

From what I've seen her, the knock isn't that she's low-energy.

Demings had an Op-Ed in the Washington Post with the title "My Fellow Brothers and Sisters in Blue: What the hell are you doing?" where she called for reform.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...are-you-doing/

That was about a month ago.

How are they mistaken?

Utterly.

...........

[Tami]

Flashback Fom May 11

Trump administration cuts funding for coronavirus researcher, jeopardizing possible COVID-19 cure

Peter Daszak is a scientist whose work is helping in the search for a COVID-19 cure. So why did the president just cancel Daszak's funding? It's the kind of politics which might seem ill-advised in a health crisis. President Trump is blaming China's government for the pandemic. The outbreak was first detected in the city of Wuhan. The administration has said, at times, the virus is man-made or that, if it's natural, it must have leaked out of a Chinese government lab. Both the White House and the Chinese Communist Party have been less than honest. And so, in China, and the U.S., the work of scientists like Peter Daszak is being undercut by pandemic politics.

Peter Daszak is a British-born American Ph.D. who's spent a career discovering dangerous viruses in wildlife, especially bats.

In 2003, in Malaysia, he warned 60 Minutes a pandemic was coming.

Peter Daszak in 2003 interview: What worries me the most is that we are going to miss the next emerging disease, that we're suddenly going to find a SARS virus that moves from one part of the planet to another, wiping out people as it moves along.

In the 17 years since that prophecy, Peter Daszak became president of the New York-based EcoHealth Alliance.

Peter Daszak: We're a nonprofit research organization that focuses on understanding where the pandemics come from, what's the risk of future pandemics and can we get in between this pandemic and the next one and disrupt it and stop it.

In China, EcoHealth has worked for 15 years with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Together they've catalogued hundreds of bat viruses, research that is critical right now.

Peter Daszak: The breakthrough drug, Remdesivir, that seems to have some impact on COVID-19 was actually tested against the viruses we discovered under our NIH research funding.

Scott Pelley: And so that testing would not have been possible--

Peter Daszak: No, it would not.

Scott Pelley: --if it hadn't been for the work that you did with the NIH grant?

Peter Daszak: Correct.

But his funding from the NIH, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, was killed, two weeks ago, by a political disinformation campaign targeting China's Wuhan Institute.

[Tendrin]

Not all strains of leftist thought equate to fascism, but Stalin and his ilk aren't far off IMO.

]

They are, in fact, far off. Fascism is a specific kind of ultra-nationalist, right-wing 'folkish' movement that compromises a specific series of characteristics. Calling leftwing movements fascists only serves to help people who want to say 'Actually, the Nazis are left-wing'.

Purging, gulags and secret police have more in common with Communism strains like Stalin than, say, Sweden.

Those are facets of authroitarian governments, *not* merely fascism.

I disagree that acknowledging this helps fascists, the right may abuse the Red Scare tactics but it's vital the left not lets it guard down of the dangers of extremism in its own movements. They must be fully discredited by the left so the right can't take advantage of it anymore than they already do.

It does, in fact, help fascists. There are fascists who make an entire industry of trying to pretend fascism is a characteristic of the left. You're essentially helping Strasserites, D'souza, and Jonah Goldberg with this argument.

It's important that they never gain a foothold again. I disagree that acknowledging this helps fascists, the right may abuse the Red Scare tactics but it's vital the left not lets it guard down of the dangers of extremism in its own movements.

It is also important to be wary of casting all stripes of supposed 'extremism' in the same light.

[quote[]They must be fully discredited by the left so the right can't take advantage of it anymore than they already do.[/QUOTE]

[Tami]

'The Confederacy of California': life in the valley where Robert Fuller was found hanged

In a corner of desert country at the northernmost edge of Los Angeles county, Black boys have grown up watching their fathers handcuffed by sheriff’s deputies during routine traffic stops. Black girls have had racial slurs shouted at them from passing cars and been warned not to go out by themselves at night.

They have stood in line at the grocery store alongside white men with swastika tattoos. They have organized to protect themselves when they felt no one else would. They have learned which streets to not drive down to avoid law enforcement traffic stops. Some have stopped driving at night al together.

“The Confederacy of southern California is the Antelope Valley,” said Ayinde Love, a longtime Lancaster resident and organizer.

When the body of Robert Fuller, a 24-year-old Black man, was discovered hanging from a tree near Palmdale city hall earlier this month, it plucked at a trauma that had been etched into the Black community for generations. Just over a week before, the body of Malcolm Harsch, a 38-year-old Black man, had been found hanging from a tree just 50 miles east. Together, Fuller and Harsch’s deaths ignited a firestorm of fear in the region, of white supremacist hate group violence and police conspiracy, during a time of racial reckoning nationwide.

Coroners with the Los Angeles county sheriff’s department preliminarily declared Fuller’s death a suicide. But following widespread outcry, the Los Angeles sheriff, Alex Villanueva, backtracked on the finding and announced that the FBI and the state attorney general’s office would monitor the department’s investigation.

Two days later, Los Angeles sheriff’s deputies fatally shot Fuller’s brother. It was the department’s sixth fatal shooting since the killing of George Floyd sparked worldwide protests and heightened scrutiny of police violence.

Two mysterious deaths of Black men, a thin investigation from a sheriff’s department with a documented history of misconduct, another police killing, all within a dry desert landscape rife with historic anti-black hate. To many in Antelope Valley’s Black community, it came to represent the years of racism, bigotry and violence that has gone overlooked in what is considered one of the most left-leaning counties in America.

“People are arguing whether it was homicide or whether it was suicide, but that’s not the position that I’m taking,” Love said. “It’s a lynching regardless, because it is an act of violence when the people that are supposed to serve your community send a message through their lack of concern.”

[Ragged Maw]

I understand the suspicion that some of the douchier progressives may want some Orwellian form of micromanaging (for lack of a better word) everyone else’s behavior. Still, a lot of left-aligned sociopaths (not merely Democrats simply pushing for more social safety nets) would have to reach power in government first before I’d freak out.