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

[Joker]

This can change, as we're living in unprecedented and unpredictable times. There are also still serious concerns about the economy, and how well the country can function going forward, with so many people not allowed to go to work (and the likelihood of massive waves of illness if everyone does go to work.)

The wave of evictions we're looking at in August is also a frightening concern.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Oh yeah, they're absolute monsters.

Trumps presidency has been nothing but cruelty from day one. Remember way back in the before times when they were just taking food away from poor, hungry children? Ah, how quaint it all was.

Now Trump is calling for those same kids to go back to school come September, even though the virus is by no means under control.

[godisawesome]

The way that it's always presented in American textbooks, our revolution is the nice and clean one that achieved all of its objectives without much fuss, whereas the French Revolution was the crazy one that went off completely off the rails and ended up overthrowing a king only to crown an emperor. Of course, this is a pretty typical oversimplification, because regardless of how autocratic Napoleon may have been, it's an oversimplification to claim that his rule was somehow worse than what the people had endured under the Louises. The revolution enshrined a whole new set of ideas and reforms within society and really created our modern conception of politics as the struggle between competing sets of ideological principles, rather than just the endless feudal conflict between the interests of different groups of wealthy people who couldn't give less of a crap about right and wrong. It also forced just about every other country in Europe to take notice and start to implement pre-emptive reforms of their own lest they find themselves on the chopping block as well. By contrast, the American Revolution wasn't so much a revolution as it was just a change in management. In some ways, the new government was actually more tyrannical than the one they had thrown off, because it endorsed a more aggressive policy of expansion on the Western frontier, clearing natives out of their land to make room for plantations. And it's difficult to imagine America becoming a proper modern nation without absorbing many of those Enlightenment influences first brought to the forefront by the French. There's a lot to learn from the French Revolution, but the lesson to take away from it is certainly not "oh well lots of people ended up dying so let's not ever try anything like that and just hope that things get better on their own."

I generally agree, but with some more personal nuance:

- Both revolutions are unique to the cultures they sprang from, and both reflect the vices and virtues of their leaders. The American Revolution is very much a derivation and regional version of the old Whig and Tory conflict among the English, but among a populace that Franklin accurately described as “rougher, simpler, more violent” than their fellow (initially) Englishmen, and in conflict that I think genuinely could have been avoided if not for some unwise maneuvered on the part of the Tory government. The French Revolution is the result of all three Estates being torn apart by the flaws of the Ancien Regime, in a way that the French system was somewhat inevitably leading to: the Catholic clergy being composed of genuinely faithful churchmen looking after their flocks and utterly secular power-mongers like Talleyrand destabilized the First Estate, the Second Estate was collecting the unstable policies of the French Kingdom with liberal nobles vs impoverished nobles vs “up-jumped” nobles vs dyed in the wool autocrats, and the Third Estate was becoming more and more aware it was the hand wiping the $#!+ from the backside of the other two.

- The American Revolution ultimately succeeded because the different factions of the revolutionary side managed to cooperate effectively, and because it’s leadership *did* have virtues for their cause, given their context and time. Washington’s ability to stand aside after rising to power is still an admirable show of “civic virtue” for the young republic, and while Adams, Jefferson, and Hamilton waged political war upon each other, the fact it was politcal and not actual needs to be commended. In contrast, Robespierre’s great failing in the end wasn’t so much his willingness to forsake his anti-death penalty stance our of necessity and pragmatism, nor was Danton’s his ruthlessness, nor was Lafayette’s his moderation: it was that all three men, and their peers, became so preoccupied attacking each other that they drained the revolutionary side of its best and brightest, and allowed men like Fouchet, Napoleon, and Talleyrand to rule instead.

The Revolutions need to be evaluated two ways - both for their time and context, and for modern comparisons. Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin were truly more successful and extremely admirable for their age and their time, though disappointing flawed and venal compared to modern standards... and something similar can be seen in their French counterparts. The individuals need to be evaluated more on what type of people they were in both their contemporary times and their overall impact.

[Tami]

We know Trump has a dictator complex. He envies people like Kim Jong-un and Putin. Everything Trump does, he does from the perspective of 'Will this make me happy?'. He wants crowds of people bowing down to him, military parades just for him, he wants everything to be 'perfect', from his perspective of what perfection is.

He wants the economy to be 'perfect', so he'll march people back to work even if it kills them.

He wants his core supporters to be happy, even if it means putting children in cages. Even if it means turning the streets into hunting grounds where anyone who doesn't support him, especially non-whites, can be targeted and killed.

He wants to be free to do whatever he wants, which means scrapping laws and the constitution. He wants his supporters to be free to do whatever they want, whenever they want. Trump hates the courts, he'd rather not have to go around worried that his tax returns would be made public or that his money laundering and tax evasion and other crimes be made public.

Speaking of which, Trump hates the News Media, unless they are praising him 24-7. If he could, he throw any reporter, journalist, or public figure that criticizes him in jail. Even a whiff of bad news, like the Fox News polls, would be grounds for immediate incarceration in Trump's 'perfect' world.

He'd wipe out the majority of the population of America, just so that he could create his own version of a Trump-centered, all white utopia.

What he wants, what he thinks is perfection, is to the rest of us a nightmarish dystopia.

[PwrdOn]

I generally agree, but with some more personal nuance:

- Both revolutions are unique to the cultures they sprang from, and both reflect the vices and virtues of their leaders. The American Revolution is very much a derivation and regional version of the old Whig and Tory conflict among the English, but among a populace that Franklin accurately described as “rougher, simpler, more violent” than their fellow (initially) Englishmen, and in conflict that I think genuinely could have been avoided if not for some unwise maneuvered on the part of the Tory government. The French Revolution is the result of all three Estates being torn apart by the flaws of the Ancien Regime, in a way that the French system was somewhat inevitably leading to: the Catholic clergy being composed of genuinely faithful churchmen looking after their flocks and utterly secular power-mongers like Talleyrand destabilized the First Estate, the Second Estate was collecting the unstable policies of the French Kingdom with liberal nobles vs impoverished nobles vs “up-jumped” nobles vs dyed in the wool autocrats, and the Third Estate was becoming more and more aware it was the hand wiping the $#!+ from the backside of the other two.

- The American Revolution ultimately succeeded because the different factions of the revolutionary side managed to cooperate effectively, and because it’s leadership *did* have virtues for their cause, given their context and time. Washington’s ability to stand aside after rising to power is still an admirable show of “civic virtue” for the young republic, and while Adams, Jefferson, and Hamilton waged political war upon each other, the fact it was politcal and not actual needs to be commended. In contrast, Robespierre’s great failing in the end wasn’t so much his willingness to forsake his anti-death penalty stance our of necessity and pragmatism, nor was Danton’s his ruthlessness, nor was Lafayette’s his moderation: it was that all three men, and their peers, became so preoccupied attacking each other that they drained the revolutionary side of its best and brightest, and allowed men like Fouchet, Napoleon, and Talleyrand to rule instead.

The Revolutions need to be evaluated two ways - both for their time and context, and for modern comparisons. Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin were truly more successful and extremely admirable for their age and their time, though disappointing flawed and venal compared to modern standards... and something similar can be seen in their French counterparts. The individuals need to be evaluated more on what type of people they were in both their contemporary times and their overall impact.

Ultimately, the American Revolution was simply a conflict between two sets of wealthy elites, and so it was easy for the founding fathers to declare that their work was done and step aside, never mind that the the country they founded was right on the precipice of massive sociopolitical change which would lead to tremendous upheaval and bloodshed in the coming decades. The French, on the other hand, embraced the idea of a radical transformation of society and in many cases even tried to get out in front of it, but failed to recognize that rapid social change is never a process that can be micromanaged from the top and inevitably spirals out of control. However, we shouldn't use the brutality of the process to discount the importance and necessity of the many reforms that came out of that time period or were inspired by it.

In a way, wielding the language of liberty and justice against tyranny really opened up a can of worms that the American revolutionaries didn't really comprehend. Of course from their perspective, the fact that they had to pay taxes to a far off imperial government was an unbearable yoke of oppression, but once you start talking like that it's easy for the same language and ideas to be adopted by people who have far more serious grievances to sort out than you do, and once they get it in their minds that their oppressors are not all powerful and can be taken down with the right tactics, it all starts to snowball rather quickly. So it's pretty easy to see how the revolutionary language that was only really meant to further the interests of a small group of wealthy landowners ended up spreading across the ocean and, over time, to the entire world, often finding expression in ways that horrify and frighten the same Americans who repeat these slogans every July 4th without much understanding of their real meaning.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

We know Trump has a dictator complex. He envies people like Kim Jong-un and Putin. Everything Trump does, he does from the perspective of 'Will this make me happy?'. He wants crowds of people bowing down to him, military parades just for him, he wants everything to be 'perfect', from his perspective of what perfection is.

He wants the economy to be 'perfect', so he'll march people back to work even if it kills them.

He wants his core supporters to be happy, even if it means putting children in cages. Even if it means turning the streets into hunting grounds where anyone who doesn't support him, especially non-whites, can be targeted and killed.

He wants to be free to do whatever he wants, which means scrapping laws and the constitution. He wants his supporters to be free to do whatever they want, whenever they want. Trump hates the courts, he'd rather not have to go around worried that his tax returns would be made public or that his money laundering and tax evasion and other crimes be made public.

Speaking of which, Trump hates the News Media, unless they are praising him 24-7. If he could, he throw any reporter, journalist, or public figure that criticizes him in jail. Even a whiff of bad news, like the Fox News polls, would be grounds for immediate incarceration in Trump's 'perfect' world.

He'd wipe out the majority of the population of America, just so that he could create his own version of a Trump-centered, all white utopia.

What he wants, what he thinks is perfection, is to the rest of us a nightmarish dystopia.

But hey, her emails....!

Meanwhile, I heard a report on my local all-news radio station this morning that the White House wants to ban the use of Tik-Tok in the U.S., under a pretense voiced by Mike "Pompous" Pompeo that user info was being mined by Chinese communists since the app is owned by a company there. My take? It's a bullshit ruse. Remember, it had been Tik-Tok users (along with K-Pop fans) who sabotaged Trump's egofest in Tulsa last month, and this proposed ban on the social media app is his revenge. Nothing more complicated than that.

[Tami]

Someone in the NJ State Communications Office got a bit whimsical

MASK: Not what your country can do for you

MASK: What you can do for your country

[Tendrin]

This is two weeks old, but some positive news that isn't really discussed right now is that the United States has had a decline in poverty during COVID-19, largely due to all the relief programs.

https://money.yahoo.com/us-poverty-d...170035995.html



This can change, as we're living in unprecedented and unpredictable times. There are also still serious concerns about the economy, and how well the country can function going forward, with so many people not allowed to go to work (and the likelihood of massive waves of illness if everyone does go to work.)

Gosh. It's like giving poor people money and relief works.

[shooshoomanjoe]

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro Tests Positive For Coronavirus

While I don't wish death on anyone, I hope he has a long and painful recovery so that he may know from first hand experience what others have gone through.

[MiddleMan]

Wear a M.A.S.K.

[Joker]

As of today in Washington masks are mandatory in public, and businesses must turn away anyone not wearing one.

Washington also lifted the eviction moratorium today.

[AnakinFlair]

Wear a M.A.S.K.

I had the '57 Chevy from that show. And the Jeep, I think

[MiddleMan]

I had the '57 Chevy from that show. And the Jeep, I think

I had the Jeep, the Motorcycle, and the T Bird

[Joker]

The T-Bird. That was all.

[TheManInBlack]

In fairness, that's been the conservative answer to all our problems for years now. It's why they don't even want us to have the language to be able to describe a problem in the first place. If you lack the language to be able to identify a problem or describe it, then there IS no problem!

I'm genuinely curious about this statement. It sounds like a reference that I've been using lately to 1984 where the use of language is changed and words are erased in order to make dissent impossible, or at least quite difficult. In your example above, what words/language in particular are you suggesting have been removed by the current administration?