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

[ZombieHavoc]

The most obnoxious kick my Cult of Shapiro ex-friend got on was just hardcore railing about how white priveledge doesn't exist. He would say it's not white priviledge, it's American priviledge--every one has the same oppurtunity as everyone else because it's America. All while posting condecending **** about people who are in debt. He is not in any debt, because his parents paid for his college, after which he received a well paying job.

It always seems those who go hardest against the idea of white priviledge are the ones who are the most priviledged.

Ugh, that dude sucks. I get so annoyed when I think of the 20+ years I wasted in friendship with him.

[ZombieHavoc]

But the issue at hand is getting from Shapiro's boilerplate stuff to Stormfront. That's on the algorithms.

Yes it is. But it's the gentle vaccination to the ideology the viewer gets from Shapiro that makes those sites easier to digest when they pop up. And those viewers seem way more open than usual to...exploring alternative ideas about the source of all their problems and so on.

Edit: I will add, though, I am not letting any of the tech companies off the hook. Facebook specifically, but the others too, are instrumental in pretty much destroying this country and the world--and they have no intention of letting up.

Facebook feels it's cool to point people down the path of fascism because of ad revenue.

Algorithims can eat ****.

[ZombieHavoc]

Ha, uh, cool, Robert Mueller. You felt compelled to get up and keep things nice and vague.

[kidfresh512]

Listening to this Robert Muller press conference. All he did was reiterate that his team would have said if they came to the conclusion that trump and the administration was clean. They DID NOT make that conclusion. And stating again that he feels they were bound by DOJ regulations that he couldn't charge the president with anything while in office if he wanted too.

Basically saying he left it up to Congress and their processes. And he wont say another word outside the report even if subpoena to testify. He feels like its all in the report there is nothing outside the report to discuss.

[ZombieHavoc]

Well, I guess that's game over then.

Not this was ever going to lead to anything, the investigation...but some of the DC swamp got drained in the process, so that's good. And it was annoying as hell to Trump, also good.

Now everyone just needs to vote. Ha, whoops, i know that's not gonna happen. Ah well.

[Mister Mets]

Also, if Mitch McConnell gets a SCOTUS pick before 2020...man.

If only there were some way, some place people could have gone and like checked a little box in November 2016, that could've prevented a conservative super majority Supreme Court for decades to come. Something that would've been like super easy to do, require very little time and have a huge impact on the country for decades. Siurely people would not sit out something that imporant, right? No way. Not in America, you commie!

A vote about Supreme Court justices usually favors Republicans. Polls consistently show their voters caring more about it, and that if it made a difference in 2016, it was to encourage more voters to back Trump.

https://www.vox.com/2018/6/29/175110...kennedy-retire

I'd also argue there's a better argument for the conservative view of jurisprudence (an understanding of laws should be based on the original intent of the lawmakers and/ or the ordinary understanding of the law) versus the liberal view (all conservative legal arguments are pretext to get what they want; this is not actually an argument for a particular vision of legal understanding although the subtext is the left should act in the same way.)

Also--it may not be Ben Shapiro's intended purpose, as he sees it--but those on the more extremist right view him as such.

And he definitely bridges that gap, intentionally or not. He is a whiny, white-man-is-the-reall-victim type of dude. And he presents himself calmly, intellectually, level-headed, etc., and that is way less threatening at first to someone who just, you know, leans right or whatever.

I had a friend who began as just someone who was conservative because he was really religious and therefore pro-life. By way of Shapiro, he became a real victim complex, white people are persecuted, etc., kinda guy who became insufferable. Fortunately, to my knowledge, that dude never fully crossed that bridge. Well, I guess aside from thinking Steve Bannon and Joe Arpaio are good guys.

Shapiro is in ways one of the worst of this crop of...political analysts(?) because he seems reasonable at a glance.

I don't know how people in the media can approach this kinda topic though. I think it's important to point out (though I don''t think you can ever turn someone back once they've gone down that hole), but at the same time, it feeds into the persecution complex that people like Shapiro, his followers, and conservatives have anyway.

If someone makes a strong claim based on their understanding of the political views of people they disagree with, it's important to determine whether their understanding is accurate and they know what they're talking about. In this case, there is the claim that Ben Shapiro intentionally bridges the gap between Fox News and white nationalists, which would be a vicious slander if untrue, even if Shapiro wasn't Orthodox Jewish.

There may be a different discussion about Shapiro's shortcomings, but someone has to actually make it. People shouldn't be expected to come up with a better articulated version of someone else's argument.

Arguments have to be followed where they lead. If the claim is that people who are fans of Shapiro are disproportionately likely to become terrible, and that this means Shapiro is bad, that logic has to be applied in all cases. When there are left-wing lunatics, we've got to look into whether they liked Maddow or Thinkprogress at any point, and be willing to make the same argument.

Good and bad people can find something in particular ideologies and communicators; it doesn't make the ideology automatically good or bad. You might agree that the people who go to Shapiro because they're conservative and find Hannity/ O'Reilly intellectually dishonest or too focused on tradition have a point.

To determine whether Shapiro's a problem, it's more important to look at what he actually does. What does he actually say to incite violence? What does he say that no one reasonable can agree with?

[ZombieHavoc]

A vote about Supreme Court justices usually favors Republicans. Polls consistently show their voters caring more about it, and that if it made a difference in 2016, it was to encourage more voters to back Trump.

https://www.vox.com/2018/6/29/175110...kennedy-retire

I'd also argue there's a better argument for the conservative view of jurisprudence (an understanding of laws should be based on the original intent of the lawmakers and/ or the ordinary understanding of the law) versus the liberal view (all conservative legal arguments are pretext to get what they want; this is not actually an argument for a particular vision of legal understanding although the subtext is the left should act in the same way.)



If someone makes a strong claim based on their understanding of the political views of people they disagree with, it's important to determine whether their understanding is accurate and they know what they're talking about. In this case, there is the claim that Ben Shapiro intentionally bridges the gap between Fox News and white nationalists, which would be a vicious slander if untrue, even if Shapiro wasn't Orthodox Jewish.

There may be a different discussion about Shapiro's shortcomings, but someone has to actually make it. People shouldn't be expected to come up with a better articulated version of someone else's argument.

Arguments have to be followed where they lead. If the claim is that people who are fans of Shapiro are disproportionately likely to become terrible, and that this means Shapiro is bad, that logic has to be applied in all cases. When there are left-wing lunatics, we've got to look into whether they liked Maddow or Thinkprogress at any point, and be willing to make the same argument.

Good and bad people can find something in particular ideologies and communicators; it doesn't make the ideology automatically good or bad. You might agree that the people who go to Shapiro because they're conservative and find Hannity/ O'Reilly intellectually dishonest or too focused on tradition have a point.

To determine whether Shapiro's a problem, it's more important to look at what he actually does. What does he actually say to incite violence? What does he say that no one reasonable can agree with?

Who knows. I think Ben Shapiro, as a person, is bad. I don't think he is trying to turn people into full on nazis. That's about as much of a compliment as I'm willing to pay him.

[shooshoomanjoe]

Well, I guess that's game over then.

Not this was ever going to lead to anything, the investigation...but some of the DC swamp got drained in the process, so that's good. And it was annoying as hell to Trump, also good.

Now everyone just needs to vote. Ha, whoops, i know that's not gonna happen. Ah well.

I guess I get a different view from you trump supporters. Mr. Mueller left it up to congress whether to continue, and they are. trump is doing his best to stonewall congress which makes it difficult to believe he's innocent.

[ZombieHavoc]

A vote about Supreme Court justices usually favors Republicans. Polls consistently show their voters caring more about it, and that if it made a difference in 2016, it was to encourage more voters to back Trump.

Uh, yeah, obviously. 2016 is proof that we on the left can't get our **** together, even it means destroying the country via the Supreme Court for 40 years.

I'd also argue there's a better argument for the conservative view of jurisprudence (an understanding of laws should be based on the original intent of the lawmakers and/ or the ordinary understanding of the law) versus the liberal view (all conservative legal arguments are pretext to get what they want; this is not actually an argument for a particular vision of legal understanding although the subtext is the left should act in the same way.)

Conservative view of jurisprudence hahahahahahahahahahaha original intent of the lawmakers hahahahahahahahahaha.

Okay.

[ZombieHavoc]

I guess I get a different view from you trump supporters.

Wait, wait, wait. You think I'm a Trump supporter?

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

Wait, wait, wait. You think I'm a Trump supporter?

Shhhhh whenever anybody disagrees with whatever the fashionable take in this thread is you get called a Trump supporter/Republican.

Anyways I called the Mueller report from the jump. It would be messy and inconclusive enough for nothing to result from it and Trump had enough smart people protecting him from anything flagrant

[Farealmer]

I'd also argue there's a better argument for the conservative view of jurisprudence (an understanding of laws should be based on the original intent of the lawmakers and/ or the ordinary understanding of the law) versus the liberal view (all conservative legal arguments are pretext to get what they want; this is not actually an argument for a particular vision of legal understanding although the subtext is the left should act in the same way.)

The problem is most of those laws were made in a time when lawmakers were hostile or apathetic to the needs of marginalized groups.

[ZombieHavoc]

The problem is most of those laws were made in a time when lawmakers were hostile or apathetic to the needs of marginalized groups.

Exactly. The original intent of the lawmakers was "what's best for wealthy white men". So yeah I guess is how conservatives view the constitution.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

The problem is most of those laws were made in a time when lawmakers were hostile or apathetic to the needs of marginalized groups.

Ironically the SCOTUS has been the most progressive arm of the government when it comes to marginalized groups historically.

[ZombieHavoc]

Just out of curiosty--why is the policy that you can't charge a sitting president with a crime?

Like, is that in any situation at all? Like, if a president murdered someone in front of a ton of witnesses and it could be easily proven, the only course would be to see if both sides of elected representative leadership agree the president should be removed from office?

Also, on the topic of **** in our system that is nuts, is that it is the elected representative leadership that decides if the president should be removed. The people vote to get the president elected (kind of--obviously the EC decides who is elected, but symbolically, the people get a vote), but if that president is not good, not doing a good job, mentally in decline or turns out not to be fit, the only people who can decide to remove him from office is a really really really small group of people who are pretty much controlled by corporations anyway.

So like basically, Tylenol and the NRA are the only ones who can decide who should be president.

The more I think about it, the more surprised I am it's taken this long for the American Empire to crumble.