'Murica! (211 Viewers)

AFL_ITALIA

MAGISTERIAL
Jun 17, 2011
30,974
Bro, i hate where we are politically and intellectually as a society, but it is what it is, and this is a time to salvage western civ. Or at the very least delay its total dismantlement.
I understand. Not that I was even close to being alive yet, but I see the last few years being VERY reminiscent of what I know of the late 1960s to early 1970s. We survived then under what were worse circumstances (WUO was inarguably far worse than anything we have now, engaged in what seemed like endless wars in southeast Asia, massive protests throughout the country, Nixon with some Trump-like comments and supporting counter protesters, Kent State massacre, etc), and I fully believe we will now.
 

GordoDeCentral

Diez
Moderator
Apr 14, 2005
70,038
I understand. Not that I was even close to being alive yet, but I see the last few years being VERY reminiscent of what I know of the late 1960s to early 1970s. We survived then under what were worse circumstances (WUO was inarguably far worse than anything we have now, engaged in what seemed like endless wars in southeast Asia, massive protests throughout the country, Nixon with some Trump-like comments and supporting counter protesters, Kent State massacre, etc), and I fully believe we will now.
I wish i shared your optimism :p
 

X Æ A-12

Senior Member
Contributor
Sep 4, 2006
87,224
I understand. Not that I was even close to being alive yet, but I see the last few years being VERY reminiscent of what I know of the late 1960s to early 1970s. We survived then under what were worse circumstances (WUO was inarguably far worse than anything we have now, engaged in what seemed like endless wars in southeast Asia, massive protests throughout the country, Nixon with some Trump-like comments and supporting counter protesters, Kent State massacre, etc), and I fully believe we will now.
I think a key difference is the inability to escape/ turn it off for a lot of people. Sure you could turn off your technology at times but, even beyond actively visiting social media, most of us also need the internet for work or other responsibilities/ hobbies and its hard to avoid constant news. News which is actively designed to be as inflammatory as possible because thats the only way it remains competitive. Whether its the war on Christmas or a cat being misgendered too many are caught up in this persecution cycle and I fear its creating a mentality where too many interested in sticking it to someone they are told 24/7 has been wronging them. The ignorant want to fuck that person over more than they want to create a better future.

Also, there seems to be a shortage of people willing to sacrifice for the greater good and an abundance of opportunists.
 
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AFL_ITALIA

MAGISTERIAL
Jun 17, 2011
30,974
I wish i shared your optimism :p
A pendulum will swing both ways but eventually always ends up in the middle :p

I think a key difference is the inability to escape/ turn it off for a lot of people. Sure you could turn off your technology at times but, even beyond actively visiting social media, most of us also need the internet for work or other responsibilities/ hobbies and its hard to avoid constant news. News which is actively designed to be as inflammatory as possible because thats the only way it remains competitive.

Also, there seems to be a shortage of people willing to sacrifice for the greater good and an abundance of opportunists.
We have a winner.
 

JuelzSantana

Junior Member
Sep 28, 2017
416
I personally don't think Trump will win, but we'll see.

1) Middle class homeowners in states like New York and California saw their taxes go up because of him.
2) Depends on where they lie on the political spectrum
3) I don't know about effectively, it's still currently is and will be everywhere because lets face it - it's a global pandemic.
4) He's not effective at debating either, he's pretty incoherent too but just louder.
5) He already lost the popular vote once remember, but now there is the added (and imo undercounted) "not Hillary" effect in play too. That alone could be all it takes to win a state here or there.
Interesting that homeowners in NY and CA saw their taxes go up, I didn't know that.

In terms of debating, Trump tore Hillary apart. Biden is kinda in the same situation being associated to Washington for so many years, and I feel people were, and still are, sick and tired of the Washington establishment. .

But Biden is obviously more likeable than Hillary and doesn't have as much dirt on him. He also has a specific story to tell which can play to people's emotions. If I¨m not mistaken he lost his first wife and child to a car accident. He also lost another son to cancer, who was in the army and served in Iraq.

I also read an interesting article regarding the Trump demographic. His supporters are mainly older white men without education. They have a far larger death rate than the Democrat demographic, who are typically young people or middle-aged people with education. In other words a bigger portion of Trump's voters have passed away since the last election than the Democrat's, which can be a factor in a tight election.
 

swag

L'autista
Administrator
Sep 23, 2003
84,142
AOC is good. conservatives always spew about "pulling yourself up by the bootstraps" and that "if you work hard, you can make a name for yourself'" but then try and use the arugment that AOC was a bartender before she finished her schooling and became elected as a way to shame her or discredit her.

even though that makes her more human because she isn't some rich elitist person being gifted a postion, but had to fight to get in.. ..which is what conservatives claim they support, but in truth they show their true faces by trying to discredit her.

AOC and Sanders are more socialist in the same way Canada is a Socialist. They want stuff like Free healthcare by spending less on military for example.
Wow... Lion with a fairly reasoned point. What's happened? :D

On a Zoom call with my kindergarten class for my daughter, teacher and students with parents.

Parents are legit concerned how their kids are going to learn and how the parents are going to work to provide. I see a lot of scared moms on this call.

what a shit show shutting everything down

- - - Updated - - -

Teachers just don’t have the answers that the parents want.
Parents can be the worst. My cop brother points this out regularly given his district and what parents post on the district's Facebook page. I still crack up over the parents who demanded that his police department needed a detailed Scary Clown Police Intervention Plan back a few years ago.

I feel for you having to hang out with fellow nutjob parents.

Guys it's incredible what's happening in the USA strongly resemble a book I'm reading right now

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mandibles
Interesting... didn't know. Thanks for the heads-up.

Republican: Working poor deserve to be poor, have shit education, have no health care, etc. Boo hoo.

Same republican: Why are there so many lazy fucks who don’t want to work?

:baus:
Well, you could also argue the elite Democratic argument is the same. The NY Times had a great opinion piece about this recently:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/02/opinion/education-prejudice.html

I don't think I've seen this country handle something more poorly in my life.
I'm actually pretty hard pressed on this one too to come up with something handled worse in my memory. And here's the thing... it's made even more glaring because many other so-called "sh*thole" countries have managed it better. So the excuses are thin.

That said, I knew from February that this was going to be an American sh*tstorm, so I can't say I am surprised. At the end of February I got to ask questions on a Zoom call of Dr. Syra Madad, a special pathogens expert of the NYC Health and Hospitals who was featured in Netflix’s docu-series Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak that came out in January.

I mentioned that the American broken patchwork of U.S. health insurance, lack of public health investments, and American social inequities might pose unique challenges to fighting off the virus. She gave me a trite answer saying that the CDC needed to empower other clinics across America to do a lot more tests, which we all knew were woefully inadequate at the time relative to other first world countries.

Epidemics and pandemics do hold up a mirror to the societies they infect. And how AIDS ravaged South Africa whereas how Uganda handled it really well was heavy on my mind at the time.

war on drugs was handled pretty poorly too
But unlike COVID, we don't have a lot of good comparisons of successful wars on drugs. The US really is out of excuses.

You genuinely think he is a good debater?
Do we really need to elect a debater? That why I want to put someone in office is because they can pretend they are on a high school debate team?

Debating, like conventions, are an anachronism of American politics for an era gone by.
 

Hust

Senior Member
Hustini
May 29, 2005
93,530
Wow... Lion with a fairly reasoned point. What's happened? :D



Parents can be the worst. My cop brother points this out regularly given his district and what parents post on the district's Facebook page. I still crack up over the parents who demanded that his police department needed a detailed Scary Clown Police Intervention Plan back a few years ago.

I feel for you having to hang out with fellow nutjob parents.
I mean, can you really blame the parents though in all of this? I think parents are rightly concerned when many of lost their jobs or are struggling to work AND keep their kids at home and find creative ways to get their kids through these virtual school hurdles.

I will say, we knew this moment was coming for months now but I'm lucky enough to have a job that allows me to work form home so I can be here helping the kids. I can't get mad at the parents, I feel sorry for those not as fortunate.
 

swag

L'autista
Administrator
Sep 23, 2003
84,142
I mean, can you really blame the parents though in all of this? I think parents are rightly concerned when many of lost their jobs or are struggling to work AND keep their kids at home and find creative ways to get their kids through these virtual school hurdles.
I'm partly acting out of an awareness that we are now in a hyper-protective parenting culture where letting your kid walk to school earns a CPS call and you thrown in jail. The drama parent quotient just seems extremely high now. And all that is before COVID.

But also many parents are suffering with having to additionally turn their homes into charter schools too. That is cramping their ability to find and do work.

I'm curious how political attitudes in the US might change around day care with all of this. As soon as wealthier white parents start experiencing what less privileged families had to put up with for decades, often you see attitudes and policy start to shift.

I will say, we knew this moment was coming for months now but I'm lucky enough to have a job that allows me to work form home so I can be here helping the kids. I can't get mad at the parents, I feel sorry for those not as fortunate.
A lot of parents are screwed by this, no doubt.
 

Hust

Senior Member
Hustini
May 29, 2005
93,530
I'm partly acting out of an awareness that we are now in a hyper-protective parenting culture where letting your kid walk to school earns a CPS call and you thrown in jail. The drama parent quotient just seems extremely high now. And all that is before COVID.

But also many parents are suffering with having to additionally turn their homes into charter schools too. That is cramping their ability to find and do work.

I'm curious how political attitudes in the US might change around day care with all of this. As soon as wealthier white parents start experiencing what less privileged families had to put up with for decades, often you see attitudes and policy start to shift.


A lot of parents are screwed by this, no doubt.
They are changing, I think a lot of people are fed up with what they feel is government overreach.

Look at the Pelosi fallout for getting her hair done. It's another "do as I say, not as I do" moment for her Party. I say her Party because good luck trying to blame the salon owner and see how normal people view the excuse. I think the political shift you're pondering is going to push people to the right, but that's Hustini being an Optimist :p
 

swag

L'autista
Administrator
Sep 23, 2003
84,142
They are changing, I think a lot of people are fed up with what they feel is government overreach.
I was actually wondering more if child care would be legitimized more as a national need for a modern functional economy. You seem to suggest that people will want to place more of the burden of child care on individuals as a personal choice... if I read that right. That will certainly add more crying moms on your Zoom calls.

Look at the Pelosi fallout for getting her hair done. It's another "do as I say, not as I do" moment for her Party. I say her Party because good luck trying to blame the salon owner and see how normal people view the excuse. I think the political shift you're pondering is going to push people to the right, but that's Hustini being an Optimist :p
Pelosi's hair is a red herring, and it's being played up because the Trump campaign doesn't have much of a surface to stick anything on given its own failures. It's a bit of the "Look, there goes Elvis!" defense. Because if you're voting for Pelosi's hair or Trump's refusal to wear a mask at all, I think you're missing the point.

If anything, there's only one campaign tactic I see working for Trump right now -- and it isn't Pelosi's hair. People will whine and moan about Lightfoot preventing marches in her Logan Square neighborhood or Ted Wheeler having to move, but both are smoke and mirrors about an individual who really means nothing to most people's lives anyway.

But playing up the natural inherent fear-mongering sensationalism of media coverage over racial protest marches and fighting in the streets is a great law and order play amplified by the media's own transgressions. Make the white people believe that blacks and browns and criminals and gunmen are coming for their suburban houses, and then you've got something that could work. The best thing Trump can do now is incite and provoke reactions to catch the responses on camera and position it as, "See, it's either this or me."

I can be cynical, but I am also a realist about human fears and emotions. The worst thing for Trump at this point would be for Biden to visit places like Kenosha and get the locals to stand down.
 

ALC

Ohaulick
Oct 28, 2010
46,255
They are changing, I think a lot of people are fed up with what they feel is government overreach.

Look at the Pelosi fallout for getting her hair done. It's another "do as I say, not as I do" moment for her Party. I say her Party because good luck trying to blame the salon owner and see how normal people view the excuse. I think the political shift you're pondering is going to push people to the right, but that's Hustini being an Optimist :p
and the “do as I say, not as I do” is limited to the Democrats because republicans openly cheat and lie and encourage their voter base to do the same?
 

Hust

Senior Member
Hustini
May 29, 2005
93,530
There is no guarantee your mail-in-vote will even be counted and there is no warm and fuzzy feeling once you drop it in the mail-box like you get when you vote digitally in person the machine literally tells you that your vote has been counted.

Socially distance in line like you do at the grocery, at the restaurants, at the "salon", at the "protests"...if people can do all that they can vote in person on a machine. Keep the polling places open a day longer if need be. Mail-in-voting is going to be a catastrophe. We see it on smaller scales in local elections, imagine nationally.

Nothing he said is "traitor shit", I think you know that. He is trying to prevent people from voting multiple times that's what one of the potential issues with mail-in-voting is.

- - - Updated - - -

Even the Attorney General knows its an issue but of course....he's just a puppet for Trump or a Trump stooge*

- - - Updated - - -

Maybe I'm jumping the gun here, but logic dictates the more moving parts, the more that can go wrong. Too many opportunities in the system with mail-in-voting that can be used to defraud/scam so I guess we should wait and see what kind of protocols big gov wants in place to help eliminate those issues if locations opt for mail-in-voting. Part of me is telling me that if the Dems/Repubs lose they will prolong, ask for a thousand recounts, refuse (again) they lost, etc. It won't end. It will be the next 4 year cycles RUSSIA issue.
 
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Enron

Tickle Me
Moderator
Oct 11, 2005
75,456
There is no guarantee your mail-in-vote will even be counted and there is no warm and fuzzy feeling once you drop it in the mail-box like you get when you vote digitally in person the machine literally tells you that your vote has been counted.

Socially distance in line like you do at the grocery, at the restaurants, at the "salon", at the "protests"...if people can do all that they can vote in person on a machine. Keep the polling places open a day longer if need be. Mail-in-voting is going to be a catastrophe. We see it on smaller scales in local elections, imagine nationally.

Nothing he said is "traitor shit", I think you know that. He is trying to prevent people from voting multiple times that's what one of the potential issues with mail-in-voting is.

- - - Updated - - -

Even the Attorney General knows its an issue but of course....he's just a puppet for Trump or a Trump stooge*

- - - Updated - - -

Maybe I'm jumping the gun here, but logic dictates the more moving parts, the more that can go wrong. Too many opportunities in the system with mail-in-voting that can be used to defraud/scam so I guess we should wait and see what kind of protocols big gov wants in place to help eliminate those issues if locations opt for mail-in-voting. Part of me is telling me that if the Dems/Repubs lose they will prolong, ask for a thousand recounts, refuse (again) they lost, etc. It won't end. It will be the next 4 year cycles RUSSIA issue.
the AG didn’t know it’s illegal to vote twice, that was the highlight of my day
 

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