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  • Current Events & Politics Moderators: deficiT | tryptakid | Foreigner

The 2018 Trump Presidency thread

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One thing I'll say for you, CH, is that you're being honest... you feel you're not doing your part and you don't think it's okay. Most people who are against social safety nets are rabidly against them until they need them and then they think it's okay, until they don't need them anymore. Which is just so overwhelmingly selfish and short-sighted it just drives me nuts.

Anyway, I'd personally rather live in a society in which a certain percentage of people receiving benefits from my tax dollars are abusing the system, than a society where no one who needs the help is able to receive it. Any fucking day of the week. Yeah, there are some freeloaders. But the vast majority of the people receiving help from social safety nets are not freeloaders. They're people who have helped to support these programs their whole careers who temporarily need help (for example during the Great Recession when tons of people were suddenly laid off... they had families and the need for unemployment benefits. And then they got another job. Don't you think it was completely just that these people who paid into these programs without using them were able to use them rather than lose their homes and go hungry because of some bad fortune? Don't you think this alone justifies the existence of social safety nets, and proves they are a good thing? If we don't have public services like this, what is the point of society at all?
 
Yep, the problem with countries that have huge, ever-widening gaps between the wealthy and the poor is the social ills that come with it.
When you are born into poverty that you cannot escape, you have a different set of options to people who have opportunities when it comes to education, careers and the future aspirations those people can have.

If you look at something like the 1980s "crack epidemic", the social problems and desperation associated with that were not just caused by the presence and popularity of crack cocaine - it was also related to the reagan administration's cuts to social welfare programs, and "social security amendments" in the early 1980s.
The social ramifications of this were in full effect by the mid to late 80s, but all too often the massive social dysfunction that was taking place - especially in poor inner-city neighbourhoods was blamed on crack - and therefore blamed on the people suffering the most, whether they used crack or not.
The violence and other associated crimes are always blamed on drugs - but as i'm sure most of us here know all too well, lots of the problems blamed on drugs are often a result of other things.

The crime associated with drugs tends to be a result of poverty and desperation, not drug use itself.

Rich countries like australa and the united states can easily afford to support their poorest citizens. It's a question of ideology to some, and ethics to others.

It's interesting to me though, in just hearing people's opinions about politics, society, life etc - that lots of our american members talk about a feeling of fear and insecurity in their own homes (which is why many of you say you have guns or need/want to).
I wonder if there is a link between the wealth inequality in a country and the sense of personal threat its citizens feel in their day-to-day lives?

I'm just musing really. Not wishing to make assumptions or generalisations about one country or another - i'm not into patriotism or national pride, but i do wonder if the flow-on effect of "rugged individualism" is a sense of every man for himself (or woman for her self) to the point that everyone is suspiciously protective of everything they've got, to the point of isolation and paranoia.

It might sound idealistic to say that everyone in society is better off if we collectively (with our tax dollars) support financially vulnerable people who need financial or material support (pensions, unemployment benefits, public housing etc) - but i think there is a lot of real world evidence to suggest that it's true.
 
spacejunk said:
I've been on the dole. I've also worked ~95% of my adult life. I've more than paid for my the support i've received and that seems fair enough to me.
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It's not a question of fair but time and effort. Staying on the welfare system in the U.S. can become a part/full time job and easily you will waste so much time you could have just turned to crime to pay the bills. It's sad. Welfare doesn't pay out very well and it's not really worth it.

It's not OK for me or anyone else but I'm more OK with welfare than I am a border wall, or the war on drugs, etc. but I know how I still stand on the subjects in general.

I'm sure in Australia with only 24 million people it's really easy to help everyone out. If we had the population of a western European nation I'd easily put forth a different opinion about welfare. We have 325 million people (not excluding the impending next few million deportations :|) and deporting people is NOT a viable way to afford social welfare programs; it's wrong, everyone here deserves a chance here if they're already a contributing member of society or are at least good at heart. We need an open border policy (something Aus doesn't have and clearly never will thanks to physical isolation and an oceanic barrier to the rest of the world).

You are a really well read person and if you still believe in UBI I think you're right to believe in it. I think UBI might catch on in western Europe, Aus, NZ first. The embers might spread to the states, might not. I wouldn't count on it. If it works over there, that's amazing and PLEASE TAKE ME. lol. Drug user refugee status? :D

Shadowmeister said:
One thing I'll say for you, CH, is that you're being honest... you feel you're not doing your part and you don't think it's okay. Most people who are against social safety nets are rabidly against them until they need them and then they think it's okay, until they don't need them anymore. Which is just so overwhelmingly selfish and short-sighted it just drives me nuts.
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That is also what drives me bat shit insane. I'm for all civil rights (at least the ones we've theorized so far, right? There could be some new ones in the future I might not be OK with 8( lmao) and even if I don't want to have an interracial marriage, a gay marriage, a straight marriage, a bunch of marriages as an open scoff to the hallowed tradition, guns, drugs, etc. Maybe I want none of it; but the right is important. I'll always want the right. Every progression in the United States with civil rights has been amazing, we've made a great country and we need to keep that momentum up until the right to die is a reality for everyone and not just mentally healthy people with 6 months to live due to a fatal disease. It's a form of discrimination and we're going to expand the right to die out here.

Easily the right to die is the end of the train in terms of philosophical extremes on personal liberty when balanced with rationality and logic. It might be the last stop on the civil rights train, and we need to make it there while we have the steam.

Most people only want the civil rights that *they* want to exercise. So insane. We can have our gay marriages AND gun rights. We'll add drugs and the right to die state by state until we've done it. We're not going to trade one for the other. :!

Shadowmeister said:
Anyway, I'd personally rather live in a society in which a certain percentage of people receiving benefits from my tax dollars are abusing the system, than a society where no one who needs the help is able to receive it.
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I'd rather live in a government that helped control population so we're not all poor with too little gov't cheese to go around. And I'd rather live in a world where everyone can find a fucking job THIS ISN'T IMPOSSIBLE PEOPLE, IT CAN BE DONE. I heard SJ try to allude that there's limited jobs now *true* but that doesn't have to stay static! So much misappropriated, mismanaged US funds!

I'd rather live in a world where they open the age range for the military, get everyone working in the war machine, get some great national image of us going to war again and not just hiring the Saudi's to go do our dirty bidding in Yemen. I'd rather live in a world where I end up dead but at least my sacrifice helped the North Korean people escape mass enslavement and multi-generational brutalization at the hands of bloodthirsty dictator.

I'd rather live in a world where we go to war with dictators for their policies, not because of where they geographically lay or what group of people are victimized. We're all human beings. We should be ashamed for watching so many Korean lives ruined by the DPRK. We should look back in history one day and want to shame all the Republicans and Democrats who sat around letting the death camps continue. It's despicable and I'm sickened that not enough people speak out about restarting the war. If you got in a time machine and went back 84-ish years, would you say "Don't invade Europe, it could backfire!"? Would you? Or would you think it would be worth it at any cost to stop national socialism dead in its tracks and free all those millions of Jewish, Romani people, intellectuals, mentally disabled and gay people? What kind of person do you want to be remembered as? A hero or a coward for human rights?

(I'm so sorry for my rant I have had a hellish fucking day and need to open up)

I know you guys like shadow and SJ have really big hearts and care about others deeply, I'm not trying to say you guys aren't. I just needed to vent indirectly at the rest of the US nation who has fallen into love with Trump or at least fallen in love with Trump's disgusting bromance for Un. That's fucking sick and if Trump doesn't go back to war with Korea I will always see Trump as a traitor of the American people.

I would rather live in a world where physical goods, scientific progress, resources, nature and intelligence are treasured above all else. Instead we're concerned mostly with short term economic gains. :| America has lost its way.
 
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spacejunk said:
When you are born into poverty that you cannot escape
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I'm going to totally trash on your idea here, please don't hate me any more because of it, but...

1) determinism: no one has free will, is a reality BUT I CAN'T CONVINCE ANYONE OF THIS! SO....

2)
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anyone can fuck their way to billions. In fact it required zero brains and is more than I'll ever be able to do in life. Well done, Melania. You deserve it.

She probably only has it inside of her like for 1 or 2 minutes, as per Stormy's reporting, and it's not that big.

Easiest job in America.

spacejunk said:
Rich countries like australa and the united states can easily afford to support their poorest citizens. It's a question of ideology to some, and ethics to others.
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We are 20 trillion in debt, so no, no we can't. We have bills to pay.

Aus debt can't be too bad. LOL only 30 billion...oh man. What we wouldn't give to be in that situation. You lucky fucking bastards.

I know I've told you 20 TRILLION. It's an insane amount of money. We'll never make that much up. We'd have to effectively squeeze more money out of the rest of the world and it just isn't there.

Oh, sorry it's now 500 billion? I just got better stats on wiki. That sucks; y'all need to pull it back down before you're in our situation.
 
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If Jim Mattis, current Secretary of Defense, leaves the current administration, we're going down people! Time to go to the bunker...ahhhhhh!

Clip available at link...

Trump Addresses Rumors Mattis Is Planning to Leave His Administration

WASHINGTON ? U.S. President Donald Trump said he is unsure whether Defense Secretary James Mattis is planning to step down from his post, but told CBS? ?60 Minutes? in a pre-taped interview that the retired general might and that he regards Mattis as ?sort of a Democrat.?

?It could be that he is? planning to depart, Trump said, according to an excerpt of a transcript released on Sunday before the show airs. ?I think he?s sort of a Democrat, if you want to know the truth. But General Mattis is a good guy. We get along very well. He may leave. I mean, at some point, everybody leaves. Everybody. People leave. That?s Washington.?

This marks the first time that the Republican president has publicly said anything negative about Mattis, who last month told reporters not to take seriously reports that he may be leaving.

Asked about Trump?s remarks, Pentagon spokesman Colonel Rob Manning said in a brief statement: ?Secretary Mattis is laser-focused on doing his job ? ensuring the U.S. military remains the most lethal force on the planet.?

Mattis? future has become a focus of media speculation, particularly after last month?s release of a book by Watergate reporter Bob Woodward that portrayed Mattis privately disparaging Trump to associates.

Mattis has strongly denied making any such remarks.

Trump had been deferential toward Mattis, saying on Sept. 5 his defense chief would remain in his job.

Mattis is not political by nature, and previously made no secret of the fact that he was not looking to become secretary of defense ? or even return to Washington ? when Trump was elected.

The retired Marine general had stepped down from the military in 2013 and taken a job at Stanford University. He told his Senate confirmation hearing last year he was ?enjoying a full life west of the Rockies? when the call came about the position.

Asked last month about reports he may be leaving, Mattis said: ?I wouldn?t take it seriously at all.?

Western officials privately extol Mattis, whose standing among NATO allies has risen as they become increasingly bewildered by Trump?s policies on trade and Iran and disoriented by his outreach to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

One factor thought to have darkened Mattis? prospects is this year?s arrival in the White House of Mira Ricardel, who now has the powerful post of deputy national security adviser and is believed to dislike Mattis, current and former officials have told Reuters.

He is also seen as less hawkish on Iran than Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and White House National Security Adviser John Bolton.

Mattis has a dim view of journalism about inside-the-beltway politics in Washington, using the word ?fiction? to describe Woodward?s book and similar reporting about closed-door conversations among U.S. national security leaders.

Asked about the reports speculating about his departure, Mattis said on Sept. 18: ?It?s like most of those kinds of things in this town.

?Somebody cooks up a headline. They then call to a normally chatty class of people. They find a couple of other things to put in. They add the rumors? Next thing you know, you?ve got a story,? he said.
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Hang in there General! Please...?
 
Captain.Heroin said:
You are a really well read person and if you still believe in UBI I think you're right to believe in it.
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UBI is merely a bandaid to prop up an unsustainable and collapsing economic system

I'd rather live in a government that helped control population so we're not all poor with too little gov't cheese to go around.
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#thanosdidnothingwrong

Captain.Heroin said:
1) determinism: no one has free will, is a reality BUT I CAN'T CONVINCE ANYONE OF THIS! SO....
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its true but also not true. you do have free will regarding a lot of choices, which can lead to new opportunities, and you do have free will regarding whether or not you act on those opportunities. or at least thats the illusion our brain creates after the choice has already been made subconsciously. but i'm also really fuckin hungry right now and actively choosing to procrastinate on eating something. i'm also consciously choosing the words i'm using to write this, which changes what everybody else sees, thereby influencing their actions through my own choice of actions (like how you respond to this; if my response was different, it would necessitate yours also be different).

on the larger, long term scale, things happen because they're supposed to happen, but then also things only happen because we make them happen, by choice.
 
There's a possibility everything is unchangable to one degree or another, hence why welfare keeps people suspended in a state of poverty nearly indefinitely in the US. It probably works better in AUS because you have a higher minimum wage over there. More continuous employment and welfare is likely only used in the interim in between jobs, etc and tough times.
 
spacejunk said:
What does free will have to do with social welfare? Sorry man, you've lost me.
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because if there's no free will then the whole concept of "pulling oneself up by their bootstraps" (which is obviously impossible on its face, but i digress) becomes especially nonsense, because if there was anything they could do themselves to improve their situation then they wouldnt be having such a hard time in the first place (they cant "make different choices" to improve their lot, because that would require free will), so it becomes a moral necessity to have safety nets and provide food and shelter for those who cant provide it for themselves, else society is outright murdering them by neglect
 
Captain.Heroin said:
We would have already done it. In essence.
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and thats where things get complicated. this is a sloppy mess of analogies so bear with me here; lets say "society" is an entity without free will that simply responds to stimulus, and those stimulii are based on the awareness and activity of the individuals within it, kinda like neurons in a brain. to trigger an action, we need to get enough people active and acting towards the desired reaction, just as a neuron wont fire unless the electrical potential goes to -55mV (and then immediately goes up to 30mV once triggered). just as by getting enough people starving, you can easily "trigger" a revolution, so to can we "trigger" the enactment of policies like enacting safety nets, UBI, changing economic systems, etc. we can then use different political leanings similar to drugs, making "triggers" easier or harder to activate; so when reactionaries are in control, its like "society" is blacked out on benzos, conservatives (actual conservatives, not the reactionaries that call themselves conservatives) would be like being drunk, and progressives would be like being tweaked, making it extremely difficult, hard, and easy, respectively, to trigger different policy enactments.

so once the societal stimulii get extreme enough, things will change, and the inevitable actions that result depend on how extreme things had to be pushed before things could be changed; 1/4 of the country in extreme poverty isnt enough to push the system into action against a reactionary establishment, but if it gets to say 1/2 starving then the guillotines will absolutely be coming out; conversely, if the system was progressive, the 1/4 in poverty would probably be enough to get things reformed to help all those in need.
 
tathra said:
and thats where things get complicated. this is a sloppy mess of analogies so bear with me here; lets say "society" is an entity without free will that simply responds to stimulus, and those stimulii are based on the awareness and activity of the individuals within it, kinda like neurons in a brain. to trigger an action, we need to get enough people active and acting towards the desired reaction, just as a neuron wont fire unless the electrical potential goes to -55mV (and then immediately goes up to 30mV once triggered). just as by getting enough people starving, you can easily "trigger" a revolution, so to can we "trigger" the enactment of policies like enacting safety nets, UBI, changing economic systems, etc. we can then use different political leanings similar to drugs, making "triggers" easier or harder to activate; so when reactionaries are in control, its like "society" is blacked out on benzos, conservatives (actual conservatives, not the reactionaries that call themselves conservatives) would be like being drunk, and progressives would be like being tweaked, making it extremely difficult, hard, and easy, respectively, to trigger different policy enactments.

so once the societal stimulii get extreme enough, things will change, and the inevitable actions that result depend on how extreme things had to be pushed before things could be changed; 1/4 of the country in extreme poverty isnt enough to push the system into action against a reactionary establishment, but if it gets to say 1/2 starving then the guillotines will absolutely be coming out; conversely, if the system was progressive, the 1/4 in poverty would probably be enough to get things reformed to help all those in need.
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I can't wait to read this with a more sober mind tomorrow; I only have a little time left and am going to spend it buzzing and stuff.

Take care all <3 Can't wait to pick up this discussion in the morning
 
This whole socialism vs libertarianism thing on this page would be a really good topic for a deepbprobing of CH's politics, which I find somewhat fascinating, if hes up for it.

Prol better to ask a few as and get some kind of understanding of his or anyones views than wander around confused as hell looking for your beer say wot
 
zephyr said:
This whole socialism vs libertarianism thing on this page would be a really good topic for a deepbprobing of CH's politics, which I find somewhat fascinating, if hes up for it.

Prol better to ask a few as and get some kind of understanding of his or anyones views than wander around confused as hell looking for your beer say wot
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As long as you donate $1,000,000 to my charity if the DNA tests shows you's the daddy =D Thanks Trump. Pocahontas payout time!

I'm OK with it, but I suspect SJ et al. will rip my ideas to shreds (which he's entitled to do as he's really well read; it's not like Kanye coming at me telling me time isn't real and the 13th amendment is a trap door =D) and like literally no one else here thinks the same way I do. *shrugs* it's worth a shot.
 
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