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Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

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Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

#551

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

anon84873628 wrote: post #452
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm anti-Trump. If you tell people "Trump is a corrupt asshole", that has a chance at convincing supporters to abandon him. If you tell people "the US needs a cultural revolution due to events from past centuries", that's what got him elected in the first place. A good general wouldn't voluntarily shift the battleground to a region where their troops are weak. Political persuasion is no different. The Democratic Part…

This whole thread started with: >We're still fighting the remnants of the confederacy. Germany and Japan in particular purged most of those elements from their society. Here we built statues to the evil fucks That is a historical fact which has important explanatory power. It may not directly be the best basis for public Democratic platform, which most people probably agree with. The core manifestation is in our inst…

Is this theory falsifiable? What would it look like if this problem was "fixed"? Many confederate statues were taken down--did anything change as a result? The entire thing seems like a delusional crusade against windmills. Focus on the present, not the past.

I get the sense that many in this thread simply have an un-quenched lust for re-education camps. Probably under Stalin they'd be mumbling about dastardly capitalist spies and saboteurs.

Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

#553

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

otterley wrote: post #445
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tumblr? Cultural shifts from social media started to gather momentum roughly around that time.

There was a lot for people to be angry about, particularly the quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan that the Bush administration got us into as a knee-jerk reaction to 9/11, combined with the 2008 financial crisis and Wall Street public bailout that culminated in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street

None of those events were the focus of the cultural shifts I'm referring to.

Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

#554

Post by potamic »

scott_w wrote: post #547
potamic wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corruption is not limited to financial profit. There are many ways to engage in acts of self interest like grant personal agenda, favours to friends/donors, quid-pro-quo etc.

That’s not an answer to the question. How did any of these presidents profit, financially or not, from their actions regarding Iraq or the 2008 financial crisis? What was the quid pro quo they received?

Well, the question primarily seemed to contest the scope of corruption, so I responded in view to that.

The big banks were one of the top donors to Obama's 2008 campaign. The fact that none of the banks were prosecuted or even held accountable for the crisis raises big questions how much the campaign funding influenced the way the bailout was structured. It also doesn't help Obama that he was famous for going after private funding after backtracking on his pledge not to do so.

Bush's story is similar but with energy companies the most famous being Halliburton who funded his election campaign and turned out to be the biggest beneficiaries to profit from the Iraq war. It probably wouldn't have upset people as much had it not been that the Bush family had close ties to this company and where Dick Cheney also happened to be the CEO. It was a big scandal at that time you can go read back on, but as is with many of these scandals everything seems to be forgotten or forgiven with time. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same with Trump 20 years from now.

Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

#555

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

anon84873628 wrote: post #447
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pushing back on Chermska1's effort to say that "well actually, the confederacy wasn't really about slavery".

They didn't say the Confederacy wasn't really about slavery, they said it was much more than that. And it's those more abstract ideologies which have persisted through American politics, as traced in the history podcast episode I posted in a sibling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy

Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

#556

Post by com »

rolisz wrote: post #387
pjc50 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big cheap lever that everyone has is voting, and using whatever social leverage you have to get people around you to change their vote. Primary legacy democrats. In NYC, the primary was the real election. Then vote in the replacement Democrat. Replace any Republican in any elected positions, then start taking a closer look at the local D machine.

Maybe if they don't like the results of the elections, they'll hold new ones until the "good" result comes out (true story, happened in Romania (a EU country) two years ago).

There was proven massive illegal funding of advertising for one candidate and the election result was annulled and rerun under the existing statutes and regulations under Romanian law, ordered by professional judges in a public legal process that was procedurally fair and had appropriate evidentiary requirements.

Stop parroting lines from organisations dedicated to delegitimising liberal democracies.

Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

#557

Post by ModernMech »

bluGill wrote: post #368
ModernMech wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the point, it's that people who were slaves died in a time when color TVs existed. This woman died in 1964! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_J._Cooper That's not long enough ago to call it ancient history.

Someone who died in 1964 was technically a slave, but not yet old enough to function as a slave. Real slaves were mostly dead by 1940, the few who remained are outliers

Babies being born into slavery served the slave system just as much as grown men slaving in a field. Slave was a legal status in a system, not a job title. A baby born into slavery is a real slave, not a fake slave.

  Either George, who enslaved her mother, or his brother, Dr. Fabius Haywood, who enslaved her older brothers, Rufus and Andrew,[3] was probably Anna's father
So Anna came into existence because her mother was raped by a man who legally owned her as property. And that was recent enough that Anna lived to witness Gilligan’s Island.

Moreover, she was still a slave until she was six and served her masters as a domestic house servant. When you were six you were probably being educated to read and write and do math.

You guys are so quick with your “well ackshually” that you’re missing the point which is very simple and has been restated by other posters.

Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

#558

Post by [deleted] »

mulmen wrote: post #527
wahern wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting aside textual analysis and how commas are used in the constitution, the point is that people claim not just that slavery is allowed, but that mandatory penal labor is slavery, and implicitly the same slavery that was ostensibly abolished. So do you agree or not agree that mandatory penal slavery is an extension of 19th century and earlier American slavery. Because that's what the movement and rhetoric are say…

> So do you agree or not agree that mandatory penal slavery is an extension of 19th century and earlier American slavery. I agree that mandatory penal slavery (as practiced in US prisons in the 21st century) is an extension of 19th century and earlier American slavery.

[deleted]

Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

#559

Post by lesuorac »

vannevar wrote: post #510
lesuorac wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't the beliefs founded though? There are immigrants who commit crimes. Sure, it's not _every_ Mexican is a rapist and we're probably talking about basis points of basis points here. But it's a foundation. Hunter Biden did get money from people who wanted access to Joe Biden. Sure, Joe didn't actually help them out. But it's a foundation. The problem isn't the unfoundedness it's that it's extrapolated beyond what…

>The problem isn't the unfoundedness it's that it's extrapolated beyond what the foundation supports. The purpose of creating a "Biden crime family" was to implicate Joe Biden in the actions of his son without needing any evidence that Biden himself traded on his presidency (because there was none). I see the point you're trying to make, but evidence that Hunter traded on his dad's fame simply isn't evidence of any w…

I don't think you understand what a foundation is.

If I make the claim, immigrants cause crime and I show a bunch of mug shots of immigrants who were arrest for crimes. That's a foundation.

The solution isn't to pretend things aren't foundations. The solution is go expand the equal air-times rules so that if you want to argue for political change (official immigration policy) you have to allow the other side to show arguments of immigrants commit crimes below average.

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