Tonald Drump vs the rest...

Discussion in 'Politics' started by JohnLiberty, Aug 18, 2016.

?

Vote for the most Ethical Moral and most Justifiable President available.

Poll closed Nov 16, 2016.
  1. Trump

    31.8%
  2. Clinton

    50.0%
  3. A fluoridated chimp

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  4. A moon rock

    18.2%
  1. JohnLiberty Registered Member

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    Trigger3d.
     
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  3. Randwolf Ignorance killed the cat Valued Senior Member

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    Trump IS a moon rock - with apologies to moon rocks....

    Twice on Sunday, Trump told audiences at rallies that Hillary Clinton would open the U.S. borders so wide that it would reshape the entire planet.

    “You could have 650 million people pour in and we do nothing about it,” Trump claimed. “Think of it. That’s what could happen. You triple the size of our country in a week.”
    Let's see...

    Just to have a little fun, The Washington Post blog “The Fix” calculated the numbers and came up with several ways to look at Trump’s blather.

    First, it would mean one-tenth of the world’s population flooding into America in the space of seven days as undocumented immigrants. If every person in Central and South America rushed across our borders, that would only account for 600 million people.

    If all these invaders come by car, the line of four-person vehicles would be up to 1.8 billion feet long, enough to stretch around the Earth 86 times, according to The Fix. If each car started in Panama City, Panama, it would mean 106 lanes of traffic, bumper to bumper, heading up to our Southern border. If only we had built that mythical NAFTA superhighway that was debunked nearly a decade ago.

    Maybe this unprecedented horde predicted by Trump would fly here. Well, the top 45 busiest U.S. airports in 2014 handled an average of 24.8 million people a week in 2014. If each somehow handled 10 times their normal influx of passengers — allowing flights at all hours and allowing planes to land in much closer sequence — we’d manage less than half of the one-week immigration total that Trump foresees.

    Perhaps in the spirit of the Ellis Island era, these illegals would come by boat. But … the largest cruise liner in the world is the Harmony of the Seas, which carries 5,500 passengers in comfort. So, we would need 118,000 Harmony-style ships to sail the seas and accomplish this 1-week transition.
    Wow...

    https://www.politicscentral.org/trump-says-650-million-immigrants-coming-numbers/
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...illion-immigrants_us_5816c811e4b0990edc31e593
     
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  5. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Rabbit Hole America

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    I dissent.

    We can sit here and say the behavior is bad or whatever all we want but I'm getting sick of the revisionism. We're just getting a glimpse inside a very efficient version of what voters have been rewarding my whole life. It's not so much that we can't change our mind, but like I say of other things: If it's time to discuss it, it's time to discuss it, but let us not pretend it is somehow new.

    And quite honestly, yeah, I think there is some more subtle bullshit going on with the American psyche; we need a both-sides narrative or else we have to admit that it really is when the underclasses achieve that we start changing our rules.

    I actually don't see "bad". I see a political operation. I see committee thinking and decision making. I see the relative comfort of relative empowerment.

    Thomas Paine railed against the idea of hereditary rulers, but we're clearly near to that already. Americans have built a professional political class, and oppressed people have complained the whole time. Now that white, Christian males and the customs they have put in place are obliged to share customary authority in society―thus undermining their primacy in defining freedom and equality, which in turn resulted in white, Christian, and male supremacist sentiments presently shredding our political discourse―they're ready to call it off, and they want to blame everyone else who complained about the problems the whole time.

    And it kind of bugs me to see so many people taking the bait of equivocation. Look, we can argue about the Great War all we want, and whether the U.S. should have come to Europe's aid, because there are plenty who will mark our decision to get into the War as the beginning of the end for our Republic, and it's true that our need for a professional political class above and beyond regular civil service has largely orbited our imperial designs. But the whole time we've done it to ourselves.

    Seriously. Complain about Walmart all we want, but it's not going away unless people stop shopping there. Complain about the NFL all we want, but it's not changing for the better until people stop buying tickets and gear, and effectiely threaten advertisers with boycotts.

    We can definitely do things better, but if we're supposed to screech and wail and bawl and pull our hair out over the content of Frank's article, something about the old line having to do with security and freedom and not deserving jack fucking shit goes here.

    Think of it this way: Michele Obama gave a fine speech, but tried to cover for men; what Donald Trump said is locker room talk, or pub talk, or whatever, and it's a lot more common than we're allowing ourselves to acknowledge, and that, in the long run, is part of the problem with the way our society treats women. Donald Trump wrote off nine hundred fifteen million dollars and we're all supposed to be shocked at the tax loophole. The thing is that I'm pretty sure the People elected the Congresses who gave us this tax code. I remember the Reagan years; this wasn't some dastardly surprise that came without any warning―this is what voters wanted.

    Besides, we have to pretend we're all idiot simple; that's part of what I don't get about the reaction to Frank's article. Joe might have overstated the idea of Republican talking points, but―

    Attacking billionaires! In the year 2015! It was, one of the correspondents appears to write, “madness and political malpractice of the party to allow this to continue”.

    ―the question Frank↱ ignores in order to do his Dorothy to Toto routine is the wisdom of antagonizing one's allies.

    This is the thing: Someone says something about Hillary Clinton, we all are supposed to rush to assuage them.

    I'm still not certain why "the behavior discussed in the article is bad" insofar as there comes a point at which I don't know what people think the world looks like.

    Let's try it a different way: Taxes are terrible, the government is wasteful and tyrannical, but we're all fine with ... oh ... say ... the cable company.

    If we dig into the cable company the way we dig into the Clintons, just how well do we expect the cable company to fare?

    Or Nike?

    Microsoft?

    Facebook?

    Any other politician in D.C.?

    How much of what we complain about having to do with Hillary Clinton was just fine with people until it was Hillary Clinton? We might not like everything about the rich people Americans have long wanted to be, but, seriously ... I mean ... if I tell you that "masturbation is common", does the thought of such rampant perversity mean I wait to tell you 'til we have a fainting couch at hand?

    Seriously, though, that's the thing. Yes, people fart. Yes, people poop. Just because we demand to watch doesn't mean we ought to pretend it's somehow shocking and unknown.

    When did we start playing Diogenes?

    I'm pretty convinced that it will be like Republicans and special investigators. After hounding Bill and hounding Bill and hounding Bill, with the nation reeling and trying to figure out how George W. Bush got us into a war, Republicans in Congress decided to allow the law authorizing special investigators to lapse because they decided the People were tired of all those special investigations.

    And this is how it goes; go ahead and tack her to the wall. She will likely be the only one. Just like we didn't care before it was her, neither will we care after.

    Who do people think they're going to send up?

    And just look at this anti-institutional year by the way: Conservatives freaked out about the prospect of (A) losing another election (B) and to the first female president, at that; liberals freaked out because they felt they could―we have very few "looks like a sure thing" years, so we take those opportunities to endanger them because, let's face it, what looks like a sure thing is never good enough―and what, four Congressional incumbents have lost their primaries?

    Democratic felon, Republican redistricted, Republican woman punished, Republican "Freedom Caucus" member defeated by so-called "establishment" candidate.

    Yep. That's who got benched this year. American voter dissatisfaction seems largely confined to a limited range of demonstrations focused on raising the presidential contest as an emblem.

    I think the reason I'm objecting is that compared to the American culture I've witnessed through my forty-three years, if, "The behavior discussed in the article is bad", then success is bad.

    My father, for instance, might say a couple of things, but once upon a time the Reagan Republican capitalist was hardly alone in viewing such offices and genteel settings as the Frank article describes as something to be admired and even envied. And he knows it.

    And, truth told, what the Frank article describes just isn't so awful compared to some of the people we were supposed to admire. I'm a Eurasian American―honorary white, as Vonnegut put it―raised in the petit-bourgeosie. Quite frankly, I'll take Podesta's brand of bullshit over what we would find in most Fortune 500 boardrooms.

    ―End Part I―
     
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  7. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Part the Second

    This is simply one of those "nice things" arguments. If people want to throw out the professional political class―and let's face it, that's the underlying theme, except, of course, for reality, in which that fantasy is largely limited to the presidential contest. The worst year for the Senate in my lifetime was 1980, a Class 3 cycle, with only fifty-five percent incumbency survival. For the House, the eighty-five percent incumbency survival rate in 2010 is the lowest I've ever seen. The American tantrum isn't really about the Establishment; it's about a confluence of factors including ongoing Establishment transition, the rising power feeling impatient, the declining power panicking, and everyone else throwing down because they think they're supposed to.

    Oh, right. If people want to throw out the professional political class, that's fine, but we're going to have to give back some nice things. And depending on who we are, that might seem just fine, since we'll mostly be taking out the difference on women and people of color.

    Right back into the mess we've been trying to get out of; it's a thoroughly American prospect.

    We don't have to find these people paragons of perfection, but that? Seriously, that article? Quite technically, it's reassuring.

    The software I use? The coffee I drink? The car I drive? The insurance companies I pay for car or health policies? The house I live in?

    Subject any of these to the sort of scrutiny Hillary Clinton faces and none will fare so well as she. No, seriously: The particular floorplan of the townhouse I live in should never have passed inspection; the hot water heaters are illegally installed. Start with that and run it through committee investigations and deliberate, protected slander and libel; the kind of vicious, presuming press we've witnessed; the basic presumption that none of the human beings involved could possibly ever be honest or even decent; that everything we find along the way that we think we can manufacture a scandal from ought to be made into a scandal. Belmark Homes would be destroyed.

    Investigate the two Democrats who rolled to the GOP in order to cede one of our state legislative houses. Treat them the same as the Clintons have been treated and tell me how either of them are faring in twenty years. Remember the bit about Sarah Palin and the Alaska state patrol? Nor do I, but I recall it exists. Run her through the wringer; will conservative women turn on her, too? The witchy woman myth is stronger than water, blood, Party, or God.

    I get it: We don't like the way things are going, but:

    (1) We did this to ourselves.

    (2) Nobody seems to have any real plan for getting out.

    (3) Is there actually an altruistic presupposition in place that whatever we decide on can't possibly be a con job?​

    It really feels like this going to be one of those things where once we put that bitch in her place, we'll decide it isn't worth keeping the standard.

    Seriously, before or after, if it wasn't Hillary Clinton, that article doesn't describe anything so "bad". Once upon a time, the petit-bourgeoisie raised its children to want to be those people.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Frank, Thomas. "Forget the FBI cache; the Podesta emails show how America is run". The Guardian. 31 October 2016. TheGuardian.com. 1 November 2016. http://bit.ly/2frTFOI


    ―Fin―
     
  8. PhysBang Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,422
    That's some seriously blinkered pro-Clinton and forgive all flaws stuff there.
     
  9. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Only in what it ignores.

    He's basically right as far as he goes: The anti-Clinton wave is bullshit all the way, a pillorying of Clinton for a combination of outright falsehoods and slanderous exaggerations of stuff that goes uninvestigated and unremarked all around her, among all of her political enemies, on a larger scale and with worse consequences.

    But there is a reason the anti-Clinton big guns focus on lying and slandering: the real problems with Clinton rest in her "legitimate" similarities to themselves, her agreements and compromises with them, her - and their - political stances and behaviors.

    What's actually wrong with Clinton is even more wrong with the entire Republican Party and every candidate in it, including (even: especially) Trump. So they have to push lies and slanders. So they do.
     
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  10. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

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    Trump has been caught in so many outright lies and made up slanders that it makes Hillary look like a girl scout. I highly doubt that lying is the real issue with Hillary here. Men and even women are distrustful of ambitious women. We have no problems with men striving for positions of power. But god forbid a woman do that. She must be up to something. Sneaky and calculating and cold. A real conniving bitch. That's our sexism speaking loud and clear. That's why all this hatred of Hillary is so overblown and hysterical. She doesn't "look" presidential. She doesn't have the stamina a man has. She's shrill when she speaks loudly. Here's an old article about this bias we have against female power figures. I think it rather prescient of this whole campaign:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joann...rust-ambitious-political-women_b_9636016.html
     
    Last edited: Nov 2, 2016
  11. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,893
    That's some seriously desperate I-don't-have-an-argument-but-don't-want-to-admit-it stuff, there.

    If that's such low-hanging fruit, swing away.

    It's one thing to say the political class is corrupt, but that's not how our society is actually behaving.

    This is all as straightforward as it looks, including your evasion: I think the problem is that you know I'm right, and like a lot of people the prospect of acknowledging that we do this kind of stuff to ourselves is at least a little disappointing.

    The absolutism required by the conservative Clinton discourse is demonstrable, and we all respond to it. You did. Okay, bad behavior. What behavior? How bad? How does it compare to the rest of society? My answer is that if the behavior described in the Frank article is so awful, then so is pretty much the entire bourgeoisie, and while leftists have known this the whole time I really do wonder what everyone else's excuse is. That is to say, if so bad, then we are condemning pretty much the whole of American prosperity, pretty much the whole Boomer generation, and even the so-called "Greatest Generation". Whatever we think of it in the twenty-first, Americans built their twentieth century, and pretending some mystical, godlike institutions somehow inflicted these outcomes on us without the Will of the people is exactly bullshit.

    Leftists who vote have already wrangled with this haunting compromise; it's been part of our discourse at least since Pankhurst and Lenin had it out, and in all that time we've never resolved that issue―and, in truth, we probably never will. And as with liberalism and even leftism in general, idealism wins on points but pragmatism wins in practice.

    Think of it this way: If I became a rich person in order to help people, and managed to accomplish that outcome in verifiable altruism―i.e., actually accomplish the idyll―would the underlying complaint about wealth and corruption be automatically disqualifying? That is to say, does one lose all ability to use that wealth to help simply by becoming wealthy?

    When I was a kid, we were supposed to want to be like the good capitalists fighting the noble fight for America. Economic justice wasn't simply "unrealistic", it was also "Communist", and therefore a suspect idea. When you see the political class that rose during this time, you're seeing expressions of our market demand. When Hillary Clinton reminds that she has acknowledged the server was a mistake, the actual mistake she made was being a Clinton. Certes, it wasn't the best idea, but once upon a time it actually had merit because it's true that certain parts of the government don't work. Then again, a secure email system in a time when the companies designing email systems want limited security makes replacing the federal government's software a little more complicated.

    Really, start with a question: Why do I need a Facebook cookie on my computer when I didn't go to Facebook? (Answer: Is there a Facebook button anywhere on the page?) Why do I need the google.js cookie everybody hates when I didn't even go to Google? (Answer: Is there a search bar anywhere on the page?) So translate that to a more physical question: If I want to buy at your store, why does your bank need to track what I spend everywhere else?

    Now start a Congressional investigation, and subject Google to the same treatment we've shown the Clintons over the course of a quarter century. Google won't make it that long, and everyone else in the industry who was behaving like they were will pretend shock that Google was behaving so badly, and the rest of us are all supposed to play along. And, what, will you do your part to save this or that megacorporation? Will you say things about how that's not really business and we shouldn't tar business that way? I find Michelle Obama giving cover to men regarding "locker room talk" emblematic of this aspect of the American compromise. It's how Americans fail to learn from history; to wit, we're supposed to believe that racism in these United States is some manner of bad-seeds phenomenon despite the evidence playing out before our eyes over the last few years. We're supposed to believe that sexism is just a bad-seeds phenomenon despite the evidence we've witnessed our whole lives. And we are supposed to believe in the virtue of the business sector despite the evidence they just can't help piling up on top of everyone else.

    And here's the thing: No broad condemnation of my society I ever uttered could possibly match the substantive self-indictment American society undertakes according to your blithe standard of how the "behavior discussed in the article is bad". You want to talk about blinkered? How about the outlook by which you exclude the rest of the American endeavor in order to demand satisfaction from Hillary Clinton?

    Part of what you're dealing with―including a large number of Americans you're simply excluding as unimportant and irrelevant―are the people who grew up learning that we needed to find some way to work within the system, to play along in order to show we weren't purely oppositional, that we weren't evil commie agents, and so on. What people are essentially complaining about is that (A) the Clintons did just that, and, (B) turn out to be really, really good at it.

    So let's think about history for a moment: All those jobs, all that economy and American prosperity? We Americans really, really like economy and prosperity. The analogue is that we want the fruits of capitalism without having to put up with capitalism itself, or capitalists.

    Yes. Boardrooms are elitist. The chambers atop large organizations are elitist.

    Hey, you know that bit we hear in the American discourse sometimes about health care, the cost of everything, and what's wrong with hospitals and hospital administrators?

    What do you think would happen if we subjected hospitals and their administrators to the Clinton treatment?

    I'm betting Hillary Clinton wouldn't look so "bad", and that we would stop before we got all the way through because it would be very bad for society to inflict that much damage against hospitals.

    Americans do not get to forget that we've been voting the whole time. We built this.

    And the standard we apply to Hillary Clinton requires that we either fallaciously constrict the application exclusively to Hillary Clinton, or else we start dismantling the fundamental structures by which our society operates, thus dismantling our very prosperity.

    It is my belief that we don't treat anything or anyone else in our society this way because we know it is wrong and dangerous to do so.

    My larger critique of what is wrong with Hillary Clinton doesn't work in an environment like this because, quite frankly, the discourse is too simplistic. American society can watch financial and surety companies run themselves into the ground, figure how to bail them out, and then watch the executives do what we all knew they would do but we're not supposed to presume because, you know, it's impolite to think of people that way, and, you know, most days we're still supposed to think more of them, their humanity, and their rights than we think of Hillary Clinton.

    But in an environment where it's not even a question of whether the historical record is accurate, but, rather, whether it exists at all, there really isn't any point in trying to explain how I see a reality that other people are determined to refuse acknowledging.

    So, you know, you could have picked out some aspect of my post to discuss, but all we have right now is some vague, polymerized objection I could hear from pretty much any quarter of Hillary Clinton's opposition.

    I'm tired of prefacing myself by validating the concerns of irrational people who are deliberately determined to never be assuaged. I don't really care anymore that you don't have to find her paragon of perfection, or even like her all that much. In the end, I'm sick and tired of the fact that people refuse to allow Hillary Clinton a place in humanity itself.

    I talk about comparatives, about where this fits in society, and you've got ... what?

    Absolutely nothing. We cannot compare Hillary Clinton in the context of the rest of our society because ... why?

    No reason other than simple, stubborn refusal.

    Which pretty much makes the point, as far as I'm concerned.
     
  12. PhysBang Valued Senior Member

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    2,422
    The length of text does not equal veracity.

    While I agree that Hilary Clinton faces undue criticism in the press of the USA, for the most part, there is also legitimate criticism. That she, and the Democratic Party as a whole, do not represent all of the interests of most citizens of the USA and engage in a fair amount of nepotism is a fair criticism. That is not to demand absolutism, nor is it a reason to vote Republican.

    Yeah, it is. Frank is not against the left, he is against merely accepting how things are.
    Sure. And every left win has come because it made the ideal pragmatic.
    Frank was not saying that the elite are a problem because they are wealthy.
     
  13. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    37,893
    What do people think success looks like?

    I'm just curious. What the hell is this idyllic success people believe in?

    Just how scandalous am I supposed to find the behavior described in the Frank article?

    Can you actually offer an argument to explain that?

    This is the thing that gets me: Fine. She's that evil. Now that we've indicted our entire society, top to bottom, the way we weren't supposed to do when I was younger because that just wasn't fair to everyone else, are we fucking happy, now?

    Seriously: She's that worth it?

    Why do the desperate suddenly lose their grasp of the implications?

    You can't even make an affirmative argument. Remind me, please: How seriously should I take you on these points, then?
     
  14. billvon Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    21,646
    Agreed. Clinton is far from an ideal choice; she has a lot of baggage, and there are many politicians who could (IMO) do a much better job as president. She is merely the best choice of the viable candidates.
     
  15. PhysBang Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,422
    How am I suppose to make an argument against your content-free tirades? Frank never said that Hillary is evil. I never said it. You seem to mistake criticism with wholesale rejection, there is little I can do about that.
     
  16. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,893
    I should probably make the point, regarding my prior post, that only part of my annoyance is actually with you, and on this occasion it's the lack of any argument about your responses.

    But perhaps it's best explained this way:

    • The petit-bourgeoisie in the United States is our middle class, and if the petit-bourgeoisie is that awful, we are indicting the nation through and through, for the middle class is the heart of the proverbial American Dream.​

    Okay.

    We can finally admit it. I'm fine with that part. I'm a leftist; our societal mobility pathways beg restructuring.

    Still, though: Really?

    For her?

    She is worth it?

    You do recognize the inevitable verdict of history on this point: Of course we finally "came to our senses" and indicted the whole of our American ethos and identity, just in time to denounce the first female President of the United States of America. Of course we did.

    We're Americans, damn it. It's one thing to say I expect nothing less, but for fuck-all sake, you'd think we could break form every once in a while.

    We lost our shit over the color barrier. It's going to be an even more ridiculous spectacle watching people panic as the shattered glass ceiling showers down on the phallic wall. And American men can't cry for their mommies, this time.

    Still, though. Fine. We're Americans, of course we would. This is the one thing in all of history that could cause us to stab this deeply into the soul of our nation. Of course it is. Of course we would.

    That is the problem I have. Not for love or justice or equality, or the millions who came before us. But to stop ... that ... bitch. That's why.

    And yeah, sure, the American petit-bourgeoisie is just that awful.

    Of course we're ready to admit that, now. We are, after all, Amercians. And we'll take it back―(had our fingers crossed!)―when we're done with her.

    We are, after all, Americans.

    And we're just that awful.

    Right?

    †​

    That's actually really, really disappointing.

    First, why can't you answer the question:

    Okay, bad behavior. What behavior? How bad? How does it compare to the rest of society? My answer is that if the behavior described in the Frank article is so awful, then so is pretty much the entire bourgeoisie, and while leftists have known this the whole time I really do wonder what everyone else's excuse is. That is to say, if so bad, then we are condemning pretty much the whole of American prosperity, pretty much the whole Boomer generation, and even the so-called "Greatest Generation". Whatever we think of it in the twenty-first, Americans built their twentieth century, and pretending some mystical, godlike institutions somehow inflicted these outcomes on us without the Will of the people is exactly bullshit.

    You can put up an argument about that↑. Or was there not enough content to consider?

    After all, you said the behavior described is bad.

    I actually don't see "bad". I see a political operation. I see committee thinking and decision making. I see the relative comfort of relative empowerment.

    Thomas Paine railed against the idea of hereditary rulers, but we're clearly near to that already. Americans have built a professional political class, and oppressed people have complained the whole time. Now that white, Christian males and the customs they have put in place are obliged to share customary authority in society―thus undermining their primacy in defining freedom and equality, which in turn resulted in white, Christian, and male supremacist sentiments presently shredding our political discourse―they're ready to call it off, and they want to blame everyone else who complained about the problems the whole time.

    And it kind of bugs me to see so many people taking the bait of equivocation. Look, we can argue about the Great War all we want, and whether the U.S. should have come to Europe's aid, because there are plenty who will mark our decision to get into the War as the beginning of the end for our Republic, and it's true that our need for a professional political class above and beyond regular civil service has largely orbited our imperial designs. But the whole time we've done it to ourselves.


    (#63↑)

    ‡​

    This is simply one of those "nice things" arguments. If people want to throw out the professional political class―and let's face it, that's the underlying theme, except, of course, for reality, in which that fantasy is largely limited to the presidential contest. The worst year for the Senate in my lifetime was 1980, a Class 3 cycle, with only fifty-five percent incumbency survival. For the House, the eighty-five percent incumbency survival rate in 2010 is the lowest I've ever seen. The American tantrum isn't really about the Establishment; it's about a confluence of factors including ongoing Establishment transition, the rising power feeling impatient, the declining power panicking, and everyone else throwing down because they think they're supposed to.

    Oh, right. If people want to throw out the professional political class, that's fine, but we're going to have to give back some nice things. And depending on who we are, that might seem just fine, since we'll mostly be taking out the difference on women and people of color.


    (#64↑)

    We could have taken apart our society any time we wanted, right? Power to the People?

    Except we didn't.

    Or is that lacking content?

    I mean, really, not even on the professional political class itself?

    Let's try this:

    Neither was that the point; one of the dangers of fisking is loss of context.

    What I'm getting at is that to achieve certain outcomes, pretty much everyone's hands get dirty in some way someone, somewhere, can rightly complain about.

    The thing is that trying to pretend to stay somehow above the fray, to pass judgment without acknowledging the millions of other Americans who played their parts through history, is disingenuous. I can't actually tell if Frank is throwing down against the political class the way, say, you are, or if he's actually chuckling at all the fuss. If I read him according to the ferocious critique, I'm back to the line about the fainting couch. If I read him as clucking a bit at the melodrama, I don't know, I guess I could pick on the writing―nobody is perfect, after all―but I would give wide latitude; certain market sectors have unpredictable boundaries in this cycle, more than I've seen in the past, so it's hard to tell, in that clucking context, which hyperdramatic strains he, personally, is seeing. If I am supposed to be appalled by the content of Frank's article, somebody needs to actually explain why.

    And that's the most cynical thing about this political cynicism: The people who can explain why apparently have no interest in doing so.

    Which is the other thing: You ask, "How am I suppose to make an argument against your content-free tirades?"

    Give it a rest.

    Edit: Revise & extend my remarks. (2 Nov. 2016, 15.00 PDT)
     
    Last edited: Nov 2, 2016
  17. PhysBang Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,422
    You are tilting at windmills. You aren't arguing against anything Frank wrote. You aren't arguing against anything I wrote.

    You seem to be imagining that every criticism against Hillary Clinton is a declaration that nobody should vote for her or that nobody should ever do anything to improve anything. There is nothing that I can do about that.
     
  18. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    37,893
    You can't even discuss why, "The behavior discussed in the article is bad"↑.

    Whatever.
     
  19. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

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  20. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    37,893
    There comes a point where you ought to consider what parts you should blame yourself for.

    Our ballot has two socialist tickets, and a Constitution Party ticket that I know is specifically anti-woman, so, you know, left or right there are places to go that don't involve Johnson or Stein.

    Despite your futility, though, you offer a fun talking point having to do with whether or not conservatives will complain that Republican voters were denied their voice↗. Hugh Hewitt↗ beat you to it a couple weeks ago.

    The Republican post-electoral psyche is going to be one of the most fascinating human wastelands in history.
     
  21. Bowser Namaste Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,828
  22. billvon Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    21,646
    Hmm. So yet another claim about Clinton's email makes you "feel ill." Does the unfolding story of Trump's alleged rape of a 13 year old, or the burning of a black church by Trump supporters, affect you at all?
     
  23. JohnLiberty Registered Member

    Messages:
    35

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