191–200 of 466 posts
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Refusing to accept that you lost an election and then attempting an insurrection to overthrow the candidate that you lost to isn't quite the same thing.
J6 wasn't the first protest Washington D.C. has ever seen, but it was somehow the first they allowed to get out of hand.
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The US does have some very weird rules for its Presidents though, both written rules - the "natural born citizen" clause for example, or the minimum age (thirty five years old) and the unwritten rules - no women have ever been elected to this role although the rules don't forbid it, most Americans have also indicated they wouldn't elect anybody who admitted to atheism...
> no women have ever been elected to this role although the rules don't forbid it The same is true of the role of Leader of the UK Labour Party–but I wonder how many people would suggest that the UK Labour Party has an "unwritten rule" that its leader must be male?
The Trump administration is similarly trying to purge / stifle academic institutions and bend them to their uses. For example, the Trump administration has told Columbia to dissolve specific academic departments. See this earlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43358925 The US and Turkish governments are operating under the same authoritarian rules of engagement, it's just that the Turks are further…
The most egregious is the General Service Administration requiring that Columbia place one department under academic receivership (which is nothing like dissolve) for 5 years, in order to continue receiving federal funding. Columbia notably is also a private Ivy League university with an endowment in the tens of billions of dollars whereas at stake is apparently up to ~$0.4 billion of Federal funding. If Columbia feels the demands are unjust and wanted to legally challenge them or even take a stand on values, they could do so extremely comfortably.
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I'm not even American and yet where I'm from it's common knowledge that literacy tests were used to systematically disenfranchise black people from voting.
Right, and that was apparently constitutional. If so we can bring back the law, but this time to disenfranchise dumb voters.
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Doesn't the sheer amount of dissonance make you think twice though? Maybe just a little bit? Consider the commitments you need to make and secondary beliefs you need to have, just to keep this narrative alive right now. You have pretty much implied this point yourself. I can't truly imagine what it must be like to live in the world you do, and I am sorry. I mean, the world is not much better for the other side I gues…
Thankfully I enjoy anonymity behind my throwaway handle. There is no justification for mobs chanting for the death of me and mine. Their coded slogans are not very coded. "Anti-genocide" protests who call for genocide are not honest nor legitimate. There is not justification why several decades after Brown v Board of Education, there needs to be any gray area around equal access. A durable mob preventing people from…
Like is there anyway you could even appreciate the Occam's razor here that at the very least, the protestors in this case may actually minimally think they are doing the right thing? You can believe people to be trying to be virtuous even if they are misguided or deluded or somehow led astray. Is that too worthy of such punishment and ire?
Is it really the case you can see only prejudice and hate from the other side here? That this many just ordinary people (read annoying liberal arts kids) are just pure evil? There is no room or evidence at all to see that we are all just fumbling around, reacting to the terror and pain we are all disproportionally exposed to? What sickness, what trauma could be so universally applied to all of us to create such a universal and bewildering hate? This is not rhetorical, I am truly curious.
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The US requires a fairly high minimum age and for someone to be born American. Those requirements seem also a bit silly and stand in the way of voters expressing their wishes. For some fun times, have a look at the requirements to become president in Singapore. Basically, you either have to have been a senior civil servant before or the CEO of a large and profitable company. https://www.eld.gov.sg/candidate_president…
Having someone born in the country they are looking to lead seems silly to you? With that restriction, it has taken quite some time for a foreign adversary to have a puppet elected vs just shipping in some carpet bagger. Having a minimum age also allows for some decent life experience. After all, 35 years old is not that old.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US requires a fairly high minimum age and for someone to be born American. Those requirements seem also a bit silly and stand in the way of voters expressing their wishes. For some fun times, have a look at the requirements to become president in Singapore. Basically, you either have to have been a senior civil servant before or the CEO of a large and profitable company. https://www.eld.gov.sg/candidate_president…
Having someone born in the country they are looking to lead seems silly to you? With that restriction, it has taken quite some time for a foreign adversary to have a puppet elected vs just shipping in some carpet bagger. Having a minimum age also allows for some decent life experience. After all, 35 years old is not that old.
Whether it is silly or not, I'm not sure, but it certainly doesn't seem very democratic.
IMO Arnold Schwarzenegger, to pick a random foreign born politician, should be able to stand for President. People can choose not to vote for him if they've bothered by him being foreign born.
FWIW, in Australia, no member of Federal Parliament (so Congress equivalent) can be a dual citizen (and they must be Australian citizens), so an equivalent to Arnie in Australia would need to renounce their foreign citizenship before standing for election. This seems like a better middle ground than "must be born in the country" to me.
These tactics are often criticized selectively. Why is it a problem when Turkey manipulates elections by banning certain candidates or parties, but not a problem when Romania or Germany or the EU does it? When any country resorts to such authoritarian tactics, it needs to be condemned. Otherwise criticism of people like Erdogan falls flat.