Prelude to the Apocalypse

[system11]

I'd take Kanye West over Biden, and he only makes marginally more sense. Biden is what you end up with if you are absolutely determined to field an establishment candidate and can't find anyone else to do the job. Obviously he's only going to last for a fraction of a year if elected so attention should be paid to whoever the VP is, because that's your actual president in all likelyhood. When this inevitable turn of events happens I wonder if the media will start crowing about stolen democracy despite this being a transparent tactic of securing votes for one candidate by puppeting another.

I mean, it's that or they really have lost their fucking minds, is that better or worse?

[Mischief Maker]

If Kanye was the Republican nominee, I would vote for Biden over him in a heartbeat.

[bottino]

And holy shit are you missing historical context behind the gangs and/or militants of Africa and South America you mention. Look up Patrice Lumumba and compare and contrast the Congo before and after the CIA assassinated him. Look up the nun-murdering Contras in Nicaragua that Ronald Reagan sold crack to arm in contravention of the constitution. Behind every "people are naturally awful" bromide is a repressive power looking to justify its inexcusable actions after-the-fact with appeals to "natural order."

How many times have you seen or heard by now people exclaiming that the US is not, will not become a "Banana Republic"?

"Fascism is colonial violence turned inwards", or something like that.

Oh yes. Gangs of young men with guns (and no accountability) didn't rape and steal because they were natural born paladins? We can look up all kinds of stories. I am not fond of the way foreign policy is performed, but you're ignoring quite a bit.

You also ignored the way the "militia" always grinds axes from the past. They get "revenge" if they were the minority. If they were the majority, they try to finish genocide. Every time. Every darn time. Without fail. When the rule of law goes away, they can't wait to get their "justice".

Funny you say that. Did you know that the most dangerous crime organizations here are the ones called 'milícias'? Paramilitary groups formed by not a bunch of poor, hot-headed young men, but by cops and ex-cops, a direct consequence of a militarized police that has a license to kill, empowered by the structures that were set up during the colonial period, and the military dictatorship that lasted 21 years, and the war on drugs... They even have close ties to the current president and his family.

The problem is that they operate from inside the legal and state structures, not that they are some rogue force.

Did you get the picture here and how that correlates to what MM said?

This should also serve as a warning about the events that are taking place in Portland and elsewhere right now.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I'd take Kanye West over Biden, and he only makes marginally more sense.

Biden isn't exactly a great candidate by any means, much like Hillary Clinton, but he was at least decent enough to be in a position of power as Vice President without the country being horribly screwed up. Though ineffectual, with bad policy history and not being well liked (and likely a spoiler candidate in his own election vs Trump, much like how Clinton was a spoiler candidate in her own election when Sanders would've won), I'm not sure how he is less preferable than a candidate known for bad music and whose family's claim to fame is having a sex tape.

One does not fix a broken electoral system (which plurality fundamentally is) by electing a bad candidate as a "take that" against your own country. If anything, Trump, and the thousands of dead in the United States as a result of his unwillingness to listen to his pandemic experts are the perfect example of this; anyone who refused to vote because they didn't like Clinton or purposefully voted Trump knowing he was a bad candidate basically only emboldened the people who genuinely believe Trump is anything other than a fundamentally incompetent plutocrat with a love of nepotism.

I'm also not sure why you think the blame for the many repeated failures of the Trump administration somehow lies at the feet of those who did not vote for Trump. He was left with a perfectly competent and functioning set of staff working under him, and was even left with a playbook for exactly this kind of pandemic by his predecessor Obama's staff, who tried to go over everything with him in order to make the transition of power as smooth and professional as possible. If you think people who didn't vote for Trump are all responsible for Trump's own strongarming of foreign governments into doing his political dirty work or Trump's own failure to act as a role model for his country in a pandemic crisis, or Trump's own administration flagrantly attempting to promote deals to enrich the Trump estate with no regard for ethical financial dealings, and Trump's unwillingness to look into Russian political interference in the country's elections because it benefits him, you must think extremely highly of the Democrats for somehow being able to both orchestrate all that and then get Trump to agree to having it all pinned on him. The truth of course is that, Trump's post-election popularity or lack thereof aside, the Trump administration is ultimately responsible for the material failings of the Trump administration, for which there is widespread documented evidence of the Trump administation fucking things up every step of the way. Nobody needed to undermine Donald Trump because frankly he does a perfectly good job of repeatedly undermining himself on the public stage.

[orange808]

@bottino
Of course they are intertwined with the leadership. Above the law is the issue. That's my point.

And, eventually, every militia becomes exactly what you are referencing. Always. Every. Single. Time.

Because, human beings can't ever be trusted and they must be forced to be honest with transparency.

You have a corruption problem. That's human nature at work.

There are warnings. You can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Far right Trump freedumbz "libertarians" and far left "we don't need no gubment, we can all just hug" are equally dangerous and misguided.

[Mischief Maker]

far left "we don't need no gubment, we can all just hug" are equally dangerous and misguided.

I know you're in love with this George Lucas-esque political mirror analogy ("It's like poetry, they rhyme.") but I think if you take the time to learn more about anarchism, you'll find the similarities between it and libertarianism are superficial at best.

Edit: Better explanation of libertarianism linked.

[orange808]

far left "we don't need no gubment, we can all just hug" are equally dangerous and misguided.

I know you're in love with this George Lucas-esque political mirror analogy ("It's like poetry, they rhyme.") but I think if you take the time to learn more about anarchism, you'll find the similarities between it and libertarianism are superficial at best.

Edit: Better explanation of libertarianism linked.

Discussion of Idealism linked.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/idealism/

Hope it's a good enough explanation. Although, you live it, so you should already understand it.

[Steamflogger Boss]

https://mobile.twitter.com/Yamiche/stat ... 3874564096

Land of the fReeeeeeeeee. *snort*

[Dr. Claw]

https://mobile.twitter.com/Yamiche/stat ... 3874564096

Land of the fReeeeeeeeee. *snort*

If only he had done this to the actual extremists who stormed state capitals because they couldn't bear a shut down in a pandemic, the US wouldn't have a death toll dwarfing all of their recent wars combined.

[Mischief Maker]

https://mobile.twitter.com/Yamiche/stat ... 3874564096

Land of the fReeeeeeeeee. *snort*

If only he had done this to the actual extremists who stormed state capitals because they couldn't bear a shut down in a pandemic, the US wouldn't have a death toll dwarfing all of their recent wars combined.

Yeah, I'd just as soon nobody get "disappeared" by the government, nice or asshole.

[Mischief Maker]

Also, it's much bigger than Portland.

[GaijinPunch]

https://mobile.twitter.com/Yamiche/stat ... 3874564096

Land of the fReeeeeeeeee. *snort*

If only he had done this to the actual extremists who stormed state capitals because they couldn't bear a shut down in a pandemic, the US wouldn't have a death toll dwarfing all of their recent wars combined.

Or what about those fucking yokels (also in Oregon if I recall) that stormed a building and held people hostage a couple of years ago? Gotta love consistency.

[To Far Away Times]

If Kanye was the Republican nominee, I would vote for Biden over him in a heartbeat.

If nothing else, Kanye has the best taste in videogames out of all the candidates. I know he is a big Blazing Lazers/Gunhed fan.

Spoiler

But seriously, lets get a functional adult in office.

[GaijinPunch]

If nothing else, Kanye has the best taste in videogames out of all the candidates. I know he is a big Blazing Lazers/Gunhed fan.

Akira fan, too. And he's still a dip shit.

[drauch]

He credit feeds and watches Akira dubbed I heard.

[BryanM]

I had totally missed Bartkira, along with the Simpson Wave fad. 2015-16 was hella distracting.

[GaijinPunch]

He credit feeds and watches Akira dubbed I heard.

lmao

[Queen Charlene]

The threat to America's democracy would appear to me, to be a very large group of people both in society and in places of power including the media and government, who refused to accept the outcome of a vote.

do you mean the vote where the people democratically voted for one candidate and the scam known as the Electoral College ignored it entirely?

[system11]

The threat to America's democracy would appear to me, to be a very large group of people both in society and in places of power including the media and government, who refused to accept the outcome of a vote.

do you mean the vote where the people democratically voted for one candidate and the scam known as the Electoral College ignored it entirely?

That's how your democratic system works, someone should have told you about it. The alternative is direct democracy as opposed to representative, each has its merits. I used to tend towards direct (no Electoral College) when I was younger, I still lean that way now but I'm more understanding of where the criticisms come from. I'm not sure quite how it directly compares between US/UK as we have a similar setup, but it doesn't tend to affect the outcome as much as it has in the US. Perhaps it's the magnitude of scale, perhaps the allocation of votes needs rebalancing, the answer is not to deliberately try to sabotage everything for 4 years. It's right up there in the bad ideas list.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

A fundamentally broken democratic system cannot accurately be described as truly democratic. The USA uses a plurality election system, which is literally the worst possible way to select leaders (possibly being worse than true random selection) due to a variety of inherent pathologies in the system such as gerrymandering. The Electoral College is simply an added layer of dysfunction on an already broken system. Both of these things have been known for decades, and the main reason reforms have not happened, as with Canada, is that the major parties in power have no reason to want reforms because the broken elements of the system are exactly what keep them in power currently.

the answer is not to deliberately try to sabotage everything for 4 years

Your definition of "sabotage" appears to be "attempting to hold accountable for their actions a president who has demonstrably broken the law, shows a flagrant disregard for ethics or rule of law, and is responsible for the deaths of thousands due to the spread of lies and misinformation".

If you've missed that all of the major problems and scandals in the Trump administration were entirely of their own creation due to their repeated acts of self-dealing and outright incompetence, perhaps you've not been paying attention to credible news sources. Someone should have told you about it.

[CIT]

That's how your democratic system works, someone should have told you about it.

Yeah, it's written in our Constitution.

Wanna know what else is written in our Constitution? The fact that the Vice President is an elected official just as the President. Strangely though that doesn't seem to stop you from crowing about how the Vice President taking office after the President's death is totally stealing the election.

The alternative is direct democracy as opposed to representative, each has its merits. I used to tend towards direct (no Electoral College) when I was younger, I still lean that way now but I'm more understanding of where the criticisms come from. I'm not sure quite how it directly compares between US/UK as we have a similar setup, but it doesn't tend to affect the outcome as much as it has in the US.

You're just mixing up types of democratic governance with types of electoral systems. Virtually all democracies in the world are representative democracies apart from maybe a few cantons in Switzerland that have direct democracy.

What the US and the UK share is a first-past-the-post electoral system, which is pretty much the simplest and also worst electoral system you can use, and has all kinds of detrimental effects like susceptibility to gerrymandering and voter fraud, political polarization, and the total lack of representation for the minority in a given district.

The reason it's not quite as bad in the UK as it is in the US is because the US adds the additional layer of stupidity called the 'Electoral College" which can lead to the person with less votes winning, which just can't happen in the UK. They introduced this system because when they were writing the Constitution, they couldn't agree whether Congress or the people should elect the President so they came up with that as a shitty compromise in order to get all states to agree to join the Union.

There's about a dozen other ways you can run your elections, like is done in France (multi-round), Israel (proportional), Germany (mixed-member proportional), Japan (parallel/hybrid). All of these are better than the outdated garbage US/UK systems.

[Specineff]

And yet people like my younger brother's mother in law (WASP, republican because-think-of-the-poor-little-children-that-the-Demoncrats-want-to-abort-en-masse-so-they-can-suck-the-juices-out-of-the-little-fetuses-and-thus-keep-the-illuminati-deep-state-members-alive-and-young-forever) think the electoral college is the absolute best thing since sliced bread and bread slicers.

[o.pwuaioc]

And yet people like my younger brother's mother in law (WASP, republican because-think-of-the-poor-little-children-that-the-Demoncrats-want-to-abort-en-masse-so-they-can-suck-the-juices-out-of-the-little-fetuses-and-thus-keep-the-illuminati-deep-state-members-alive-and-young-forever) think the electoral college is the absolute best thing since sliced bread and bread slicers.

Only because it helps her side. I don't think either Democrats or Republicans would back the electoral college in its original formulation. Everyone should read what Alexander Hamilton actually thought about it. It's current incarnation is a bastardization of the intent of the founding fathers.

[GaijinPunch]

And yet people like my younger brother's mother in law (WASP, republican because-think-of-the-poor-little-children-that-the-Demoncrats-want-to-abort-en-masse-so-they-can-suck-the-juices-out-of-the-little-fetuses-and-thus-keep-the-illuminati-deep-state-members-alive-and-young-forever) think the electoral college is the absolute best thing since sliced bread and bread slicers.

Why wouldn't he? It works in their favor.

[BryanM]

Like 80% of democrats support universal medicare, over 50% republicans. But 0% of the viable political parties support it. Can't even get them to lie about lowering the eligibility age like Hill did, so we're going backwards. Medicare for children lol no of course not - young people don't vote to kill young people, so their remaining hold on political power would be harmed if they carried out that policy.

Voting still doesn't matter, the capitalist dictatorship endures. You can go mask off with Trump, or mask on with Biden. Oblivion awaits either way.

Wanna know what else is written in our Constitution?

Slavery. Only constitution in the world that explicitly protects slavery.

This still goes on. They just use the "I smelled weed" excuse now.

Over 70% of democrats want to legalize weed. Over 50% of republicans want to legalize weed.

0% of US congresses want to legalize weed. The democrat's nominee explicitly endorses locking people up for the sake of private profit.

At least he's still getting $0 from the Violent J superPAC. Oh J, you so cray cray.

[orange808]

Either directly or by proxy (lobbying is not well regulated), members of the current US legislature are already benefiting from grey market "legal weed".

It's not a situation where individual entrepreneurs could start a small business. From what I see, state governments created a bureaucratic rube goldberg machine to funnel the opportunities to their cronies.

Anyhow... The longer it goes on, the more bold the industry will become. Sooner or later, it's too big to fail.

In my opinion, there's already too much money lining the pockets of politicians to stop the wave. Sooner or later, that will probably lead to official legalisation. Right now, it's not convenient or strategic to be honest about it--and politicians are always best at lying and triangulation.

TLDR: The legislature wants to legalise marijuana, but they want it on their terms and time table.

[Specineff]

Why wouldn't he? It works in their favor.

There was more that I was intending to write in that post, but my brain is currently fried thanks to a nasty cold I haven't fully shaken off. I also meant to say that attempts to change from an electoral college usually die in the process, or no one cares enough to try getting them passed.

[Steamflogger Boss]

or no one cares enough to try getting them passed.

There was recently an attempt to change military recruitment laws. They biggest leader by a mile was no vote, esp among Dems. It was, of course, destroyed by a margin of about 2:1. Things like the business of war, keeping the old systems in place etc are extremely bipartisan.

[BryanM]

Democrat politicians not attempting to get rid of the electoral college only seems strange if you think Democrats want to win elections.

[Mischief Maker]

I love the irony that the Republicans' beta-version secret police, who ostensibly were deployed to Portland to protect the federal courthouse from damage by being spraypainted, have dumped so much tear gas over the last couple weeks that they've rendered several floors of the courthouse uninhabitable, that's how much chemical agent has seeped into it.

We really are living in Warhammer 40K.