Is there a politics thread? Guess I'm making one

[metroid composite]

Day 2 of early voting for Georgia was apparently higher than day 1.

[Dunefar]

Yeah, I've heard both sides are expecting huge turnouts after the Kavanaugh thing. Should be real interesting to see how it all hashes out. I'm expecting some degree of a Dem wave for a variety of reasons, but the question is how much of a one?

[Lady Door]

I live in a big ol' activist blue bubble so it's hard for me to get a good picture of what the rest of the country is doing, but I've heard a lot about Republicans showing up in droves in early voting tallies. I would not be too shocked to find that was true. I'm still puzzled by the blue side being disinclined to participate in the democracy part.

I am and have nearly always been registered No Party so I worry at how much stock is put in the "Democrats/Republicans do a thing" dialog when there are, I know, plenty of people like me who don't register within a party but tend to vote for the same one and their particular issues in every election.

[Hunter Sopko]

Republicans are usually more likely to vote early (overall, it can vary by state/locality) , believe it or not. This is not really a change. It'll be interesting to see the breakdowns afterwards though of how much the numbers have changed though, both Democratic increase/decrease in early voting, possible Republican increase/decrease, etc. Historically, Republicans have better turnout in Midterm years and Dems in Presidential election years, so there will be benchmarks to refer to.

And yes, while registered Independents have been a growing group, GSS and NES surveys have pretty much confirmed the majority of them tend to vote exclusively for one party or the other. Very few of them (<=20%) actually vacillate between parties.

[Grefter]

Good luck.

[dunie]

It varies. The stock in Dems/Rep can be sly in a place like GA for example. We do not have to register at all, so as you'd expect the parties absorb unofficial numbers from voting patterns.

[Lady Door]

Election is coming up. Things are getting tense. Again, I live in the brightest fucking blue spot in the country so it's a little different here, but people are angry and depressed and just so beat down. It's really awful to see. Every time a new story comes up, there is really impassioned arguing that fades in the face of both "you already know, you think the same way" and "the people who don't aren't listening."

It's just... really ugly. And I can't wait to see how this year's slate of "popular vote decides the constitution" goes for California.

• Give veterans stuff out of the general fund
• Make millionaires pay for mental health services and homeless shelters
• Do some stuff to fix the water problem out of the general fund
• Borrow more money to build more children's hospitals
• Amend the comically disastrous Prop 13 to alleviate old people trying to actually go somewhere else
• Rewind that 2017 tax increase on gas stuff, whoops
• Live on DST permanently (if the feds decide to allow it)
• Make dialysis clinics stop gouging the fuck out of their patients
• Repeal that old rent control thing and LET'S GET THIS PARTY STARTED (let localities set their rent control parameters)
• Force EMTs to never take breaks, but  it's cool we will also mandate that they get some mental health coverage
• Raise animals humanely in size-based pens, not chickens-walk-in-circles pens, or else you can't sell those products

The current General Fund spends about $138 billion. What's another billion dollars here and there anyway, right?

[Cmdr_King]

https://www.topic.com/the-secret-weapons-of-the-far-right

The 14 words are carefully chosen, and this is why.  Violent wife beaters are ubiquitous among right-wing activists, but simply put they don’t have a movement without the organizing and recruitment work they have no capacity or willingness to carry out.

The damning thing is, thanks to the way feminism was coopted by capitalism it seems comically easy for them to sway middle of the road ‘liberals’.

[dunie]

https://www.topic.com/the-secret-weapons-of-the-far-right

The 14 words are carefully chosen, and this is why.  Violent wife beaters are ubiquitous among right-wing activists, but simply put they don’t have a movement without the organizing and recruitment work they have no capacity or willingness to carry out.

This is the only thing I appreciated from Lee's Blackkklansman film. There's not enough conversation about how women are the sacrificial lambs of masculinist nationhood and identity searching, whether the women lean in agreement ideologically or not. Although, I would argue for days that this was unwitting on Lee's own part, negligent even. But to not diverge so much from your point, this is why consciousness-raising groups or even a small amount of socialization is powerful as it can stand to brunt the isolation or fear that legitimizes stuff just like in that link.

The damning thing is, thanks to the way feminism was coopted by capitalism it seems comically easy for them to sway middle of the road ‘liberals’.
[/quote]

[Cmdr_King]

I may have been dabbling in bell hooks recently, which definitely put that sort of thinking at the front of my mind.

But yeah, I'm coming to believe that the simple acts of fixing your own heart and existing are a lot more powerful as part of the work than usually credited.

[dunie]

You've been stealing my heart this past year.

If you ever want to chat out your readings in Black feminisim or womanism, I'm game.

[SnowFire]

You know the meme about how it's really the left's fault for ignoring and belittling the Hard Working Normal Americans and driving them into Trump's hands?  Here's a bizarre variant of that in East Germany rather than East Iowa...  communism succeeded too well at educating women so they all left for better jobs elsewhere and the remaining men got really embittered and racist?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/05/world/europe/merkel-east-germany-nationalists-populism.html

[Captain K]

Well fuck Texas for continuing to vote for Cruz. Guess I should be happy that it was close. Ciato should be happy about Oklahoma 5.

[Random Consonant]

This was certainly an outcome, alright.  Could've been a lot better but in all honestly I don't think I held much hope for the House flipping.

[dunie]

Abrams isn't conceding yet. I'm bitter but no one in my racial community has ever received complete, unobstructed wins to anything. Today I'm going to plant some trees in the yard, keep dissertating, get my eyesbrows done, and stay attentive for the maybe-maybe-not mad dash run-off in December.

[Grefter]

Senate would have been good to take.  House is a point to start doing lots.   Lots of angry to be had about the super broken process but I don’t have valuable input.   Lots of good stories mixed in with the bad.

[Lady Door]

Recap on California's props and the results:

• Give veterans stuff out of the general fund - Yeah, sure
• Make millionaires pay for mental health services and homeless shelters - Yes! Please.
• Do some stuff to fix the water problem out of the general fund - No...? What was the question again?
• Borrow more money to build more children's hospitals - It's for the CHILDREN.
• Amend the comically disastrous Prop 13 to alleviate old people trying to actually go somewhere else - Fuck this attempt to give the landed elite any more breaks.
• Rewind that 2017 tax increase on gas stuff, whoops - Fuck this attempt to legitimize partisan fighting.
• Live on DST permanently (if the feds decide to allow it) - I still have a hangover from this change.
• Make dialysis clinics stop gouging the fuck out of their patients - Oh wait, look who was funding this one. And they're trying to punish 2 specific companies. This is not a state issue!
• Repeal that old rent control thing and LET'S GET THIS PARTY STARTED (let localities set their rent control parameters) - Nooooooo. Rent control bad! This one says rent control! Therefore, bad.
• Force EMTs to never take breaks, but  it's cool we will also mandate that they get some mental health coverage - Brought to you by the companies that now don't have to pay as much.
• Raise animals humanely in size-based pens, not chickens-walk-in-circles pens, or else you can't sell those products - We fucked up with the previous version of humane farming, let's do this one!

No huge surprises, though the rent control one was sorely missed by some, the EMT one is a bitter example of what happens when companies punch down, the gas tax one was despicable because it had supporters (actual politicians!) on record as saying they backed it because it was divisive and more likely to pull out the conservative vote. The one about old people moving/fixing Prop 13 was a very good example of how screwed up direct democracy is because it is precisely the sort of thing we hire legislators to handle. I mean yeah, sure, help people move instead of punishing them for staying! Except, wait, no, we're "punishing" them with an insanely good benefit they don't want to lose when they sell their house at 5-10x as much as they paid for it? Fuck those guys.

We really need to fix Prop 13 though, omg. Someone with a winning answer to that problem is going to become the President. It's incredibly unlikely they're going to touch Prop 13 directly - it's actually known as California's "third rail," as in it will destroy you if you touch it - but the side effects definitely need some alleviation, because property tax contributions to local initiatives is huge and hugely affected by what date your property tax was pegged into.

--

I've also been complaining repeatedly about democracy in general on Facebook. I've been reading articles, forums, speeches more than I've done work lately. I feel so powerless and I hate it.

[Cmdr_King]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/22/hillary-clinton-europe-must-curb-immigration-stop-populists-trump-brexit?CMP=twt_gu


You were robbed.  You should be president right now.  The world would have a more certain, easier path to the future if it were so.
But please don't run again in 2020.

God damn what a cowardly statement.

[Cmdr_King]

https://twitter.com/VicBergerIV/status/1068615911198855168

Conservatives accuse others of their own misdeeds, example #29010
May they all be locked away to never harm another again.

[Dunefar]

https://twitter.com/VicBergerIV/status/1068615911198855168

Conservatives accuse others of their own misdeeds, example #29010
May they all be locked away to never harm another again.

All criminals or all conservatives? Rather important bit of clarity there.

[Cmdr_King]

All the names contained in that link.

[metroid composite]

https://twitter.com/VicBergerIV/status/1068615911198855168

Conservatives accuse others of their own misdeeds, example #29010
May they all be locked away to never harm another again.

All criminals or all conservatives? Rather important bit of clarity there.

I'm sure I've said this before: there's nothing wrong with being conservative normally; there was a year in Canadian elections when I supported the Canadian Conservative party, as I liked some of the reforms they had implemented in their first term.

There is a problem with the alt-right, and with the American Republican party in recent times.  (Also plenty of problems with the American Democratic party.  But a lot of the ways the US government has ceased to function properly in the past five years has been stuff like Mitch McConnel refusing to vote on a single judicial nomination for the last two years of Obama's presidency, or Ted Cruz single-handedly deciding to shut down the government because he can, or the NRA agreeing to funnel Russian money to the Republican party).

And in this case...actively working to defend a pedophile ring.  (Which has a particular irony, when the alt-right spent a year on conspiracy theories claiming that literally everyone on the left was a pedophile--some alt-right kid actually killed his dad cause he believed the conspiracy nonsense: https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/10/23/alt-righter-seattle4truth-charged-killing-father-over-conspiracy-theories  Actually apparently stories like this have happened more than once: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/milo-yiannopoulos-intern-lane-davis-kill-father-call-nazi-accused-samish-island-alt-right-a8021011.html ).

Like...this is so genuinely alarming when I compare it to the political climate I grew up with when I was a teenager.  Except maybe in Ireland, where people were bombing each other when I was a teenager.  But like...that's a pretty shitty slogan for 2018.  "2018: we're not as bad as Ireland in the 90s."