241–250 of 426 posts
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The only way you can see Tulsi as the "middle" is because the overton window has slammed so far right. In a rational society, Biden and Obama would be considered middle and AOC/Bernie left.
In most countries around the world, Sanders' policies are mainstream.
The most chilling part is "But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on th…
If 2016-2020 gave us a window into what it's like, I would say your last bit isn't quite right: Authoritarianism rises gradually and relies on people looking away from it, unable to confront inconvenient truths. I feel like many people paid a lot of attention, and confronted truths, and spoke out about it. Yet, Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not risk being shot in the streets at Step B, why…
The ammunition of the authoritarian is collectivism. The more of Those People there are, the easier it is to Divide and Rule.
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Exactly. Consider the erosion of long-standing norms in the west over the last four years and how far society has slipped. These are the first, strong, signs that things are starting to go off the rails.
Which west? Which norms?
2. The media, in new and unusual ways, has abandoned the goal of neutrality in reporting.
3. The university and corporate culture is overwhelmed with demands for every discipline to consider the "Whiteness problem." What does this description remind you of in American life right now?
"Then, suddenly, I was plunged into all the new activity, as the university was drawn into the new situation; meetings, conferences, interviews, ceremonies, and, above all, papers to be filled out, reports, bibliographies, lists, questionnaires. And on top of that were the demands in the community, the things in which one had to, was ‘expected to’ participate that had not been there or had not been important before. It was all rigmarole, of course, but it consumed all one’s energies, coming on top of the work one really wanted to do. You can see how easy it was, then, not to think about fundamental things. One had no time."
4. The restriction on liberties during the pandemic is new in its breadth and uniformity. It was one thing for un-modern medicine to act regionally in 1918. It's another thing to shut down a Country along the same lines in 2020. We're writing off two years of education for most kids, taking on huge amounts of debt, and shuttering small businesses -- based on a testing regime that seems little better than reading entrails.
We are a tired, angry, debt-laden people unable to agree on the facts. We distrust our formerly-shared institutions. We distrust science if it contradicts political norms.
It's been a bad year.
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Genuinely curious: what are some historically significant examples of "false positives"? By which I assume you mean a time when people rose to resist something they didn't really have to.
History is written by the victors. From this perspective, every successful resistance was necessary and every failed resistance was not. Take the American Civil War, for example. If you (still) believe in the cause, it was a true positive. If you don't, then it was a false positive. Or, to be less inflammatory, consider the French Revolution. Was that a true positive or false positive, especially considering the afte…
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The probability of a frivolous lawsuit succeeding in such a way that it could overturn the results is literally zero. Frivolous suits are not legal, the courts have identified and nullified all frivolous lawsuit attempts so far, and they have signaled that they will not be tolerated. If Trump wants to bring frivolous suits then it only makes him look less legitimate in the eyes of everyone and bolsters the case for f…
So to clarify, you're agreeing that the GOP is trying to overturn a solid election result, but you think the left poses a greater danger to democracy, because they are talking about what the GOP is doing? If we're sitting next to each other reading books and you start yelling about how I just hit you and stole your wallet, I'm not in fact required to hear you out on that if I did not just hit you and steal your walle…
No, I don't think this and never said anything like that. I believe the right ultimately poses the greater danger in this context. What I am saying is it's very obvious what Trump wants to do: he wants to build and support a narrative that this election is illegitimate. He wants to do it through stoking resentment against the left and center and suggesting systemic bias. We resist this by calmly saying that we as a nation are committed to fair elections, and we agree that we need to investigate any cases of impropriety that he can find in courts which are independent (and if anything are largely friendly towards his party).
If he fails to discover any issues, we say we cooperated fairly / openly, he failed to produce evidence of impropriety, this suggests the process was fair, and now we can move on. What we don't do is scream that he's wasting our time, that Republicans are assholes, that they're trying to undermine democracy, and that this whole process is bullshit. If we do, it allows Trump to say "SEE?! I told you they are biased against us! What are they trying to hide??? Why are they so impatient?!" It hands him the ammunition to build the narrative that there has been a conspiracy. If there was no conspiracy, why is the left so impatient and hostile? Why are they trying to subvert the process? Politics isn't just about facts it's about feelings and opinions. At the end of the day we want Republicans to accept the results willingly, and in my opinion that's best served by being calm and patient in our dealings with them rather than by being angry or impatient. This is a lesson the left generally fails to grasp: screaming at people and calling them assholes is not a particularly effective way to get them to agree with you.
The most effective thing we can do is allow Trump et al to burn themselves out.
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Florida in 2000 bears no resemblance to this situation. Trump and his supporters are alleging widespread, systemic fraud for which there is no evidence whatsoever. Florida in 2000 was a historically close election for which there should have been a recount, but the election was handed to Bush by the Supreme Court instead.
Florida 2000 was indeed very different. That said, Gore was hoisted by his own petard and not by SCOTUS. It's important to remember that Gore did not wish to recount the entire state and all the ballots in the same way, but only in areas and ways considered favourable to Gore. If Gore hadn't tried that stunt, the process wouldn't have dragged on until December, and the Court wouldn't have been able to interfere. Even…
The most chilling part is "But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on th…
Racially charged ownership stickers. Many added to protect from racially charged vandalism. A familiar sight in 2020 USA. On the streets and online. Does your favorite open source project sport an out of place racial banner?
True, the confidence of those in power in their ability to harm their targets increases gradually. But make no mistake, using blatant injustice and naked violence to silence inconvenient voices is there from the beginning. Only the scale grows over time.
We could wax poetically about the effects of new communication technologies, mass radio in 1930s or mass social media in 2010s. The effects are chillingly similar, and that's what matters.
> "How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice — ‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certa…
The full quote is worth repeating here.
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.
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So to clarify, you're agreeing that the GOP is trying to overturn a solid election result, but you think the left poses a greater danger to democracy, because they are talking about what the GOP is doing? If we're sitting next to each other reading books and you start yelling about how I just hit you and stole your wallet, I'm not in fact required to hear you out on that if I did not just hit you and steal your walle…
> So to clarify, you're agreeing that the GOP is trying to overturn a solid election result, but you think the left poses a greater danger to democracy, because they are talking about what the GOP is doing? No, I don't think this and never said anything like that. I believe the right ultimately poses the greater danger in this context. What I am saying is it's very obvious what Trump wants to do: he wants to build an…
The thing is, most Republicans already accept the result. And I'm not saying the whole process is bullshit! Nobody is saying that. It is pretty bad that we can have an election with the popular vote won by five million and counting and have the result disputed, but that's mostly orthogonal to this situation.
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What am I supposed to think about the intent of the other side when they're trying to get a legitimate election result overturned to support their preferred presidential candidate? Who isn't living in reality here? This is not a far left position, and it's not the left that is driving FUD about US election integrity.
I recall a scant four years ago when many on the left were suggesting that the electors be faithless electors to get Clinton in office. After all, she won the popular vote, right? "What am I supposed to think about the intent of the other side when they're trying to get a legitimate election result overturned to support their preferred presidential candidate" indeed ?
You really can't bothside this.