Re: The US Politics Thread

[Myesyats]

ffs deceased

[VivaStPauli]

Also hilarious because the US owns thousands of islands.

[Pedram]

Funny thing is US doesn't actually own Gitmo, it's leased and the Cuban government has only cashed one payment which was out of confusion in the early days of the revolution.

[BarrileteCosmico]

Tbf to Trump isn't austrlia planning to do exactly that , and already doing that to ilegal immigrants?

[McLewis]

Down goes Cuomo. This has been coming for a while:

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced his resignation, saying that it’s ‘the best way I can help now.’ His announcement comes after NY Attorney General Letitia James revealed that an investigation found Gov. Cuomo ‘sexually harassed multiple women.’ pic.twitter.com/oHthMNBeYE

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) August 10, 2021

[BarrileteCosmico]

I'm surprised he didn't keep fighting on. Isn't this the millionth time this came up?

Btw reminder that what Biden is accused of doing is way worse than just groping someone's butt, but some people we just don't go after.

[McLewis]

Yeah Biden has a lot of stories around his sexual harassments of women. He's extremely problematic in that way. I'm not sure about the Tara Reade allegations as some of those facts don't line up, but there are for sure others that are more credible.

And yet we had to choose between him and Trump, who we know sexually assaulted several women. Like many others, I held my nose and voted for him in order to ensure Trump didn't get re-elected. I took no pleasure in it. There are a multitude of reasons why he wasn't even in my Top 5. Yet voting the way I did back in 2016 would've been a vote for Trump. Not voting at all would've been a vote for Trump. I won't say I didn't have a choice, I did. It was just a very very shitty one.

[Myesyats]

I don't understand this phenomenon in US politics of wanting someone who's never been a politician to be the president. Like it's an added value for some reason. Is this true in any other field or profession? Imagine looking for a plumber and thinking, I need someone to fix the pipes in my house, do you know anyone who's never been a plumber?

That being said I miss the Trump watch thread

[Myesyats]

Greene: This is a simple meme you would find on the internet but this meme is very real pic.twitter.com/hWJ7W6riXo

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 23, 2021

[BarrileteCosmico]

Gotta respect the banter

Brought to you by Facebook memes

[Hapless_Hans]

We are in serious, serious trouble

[CBarca]

Holy shit

[VivaStPauli]

It's funny how sane Sarah Palin seems nowadays.

[El Gunner]

https://twitter.com/mikegalsworthy/status/1440985204596826117

i raise you Boris "the Walrus" Doris

[BarrileteCosmico]

Si lately Biden's approval rating has plummeted. There's 2 popular explanations for this. The first is that he is being punished for covid still being a thing and his perceived mishandling of it.

The other is his inability to pass anything in congress. He can't even get his party to vote on the bipartisan infrastructure deal he negotiated. He came to office with the promise that as a long time senator he knows how to gets things passed and he is failing on that promise.

This is mostly due to internal politics infighting between centrists and progressives. They came up with a 3.5T bill, turned out they couldn't pass it, and now everyone is fighting to keep their favorite part of it alive.

The next victim seems like it will be... allowing Medicare to negotiate lower prices for drugs. How there can even be a debate about this is insane to me.

If they can't get this in its game over as far as I'm concerned, dems should resign and let the GOP back in because they can't govern.

https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-business-congress-health-care-reform-medicare-756e3255a1cb4ab8c813151aec19b60c

[McLewis]

Democrats had a rough day yesterday.

Republican Glenn Youngkin defeated centrist Clintonian Democrat Terry McAuliffe in Virginia, which Biden won by double-digits. Education dominated that race as Critical Race Theory was used as a boogeyman by Youngkin to turn out Republicans while McAuliffe absolutely failed to inspire the Democrat base to come out for him. About 70,000 votes decided that one. Republicans also won the Lt. Governor (electing the first black woman to the post) and Attorney General races as well as flipped the House of Delegates. Virginia is a battleground state in both the midterms and the presidential elections. This is a massive blow for Democrats.

I think what's the most worrying about what happened in VA is Youngkin accepted Trump's endorsement and then did a really good job of keeping him at arm's length, without alienating Trump's supporters and while welcoming back disaffected Republicans who wanted nothing to do with Trump. That's a very narrow needle to thread and it provides other GOP candidates with the blueprint for how to beat their Dem opponents with both Trump voters and traditional GOP voters.

And in deep blue NJ, the Dem governor Phil Murphy narrowly (and I do mean narrowly) beat GOP challenger Jack Ciattarelli. Biden won NJ by 16 points and it's considered safe for Dems next year. It never should've been this close.

Democrats are in serious trouble and so many of us on the progressive side knew this was going to happen with centrists in charge.

This is what happens when you waffle about doing something........instead of just fucking doing something.

[Found]

I’d have to side with the red elephants on that one. Usually when education has been an issue I’ve tended to side with liberals, because I do kind of believe it would be good for every child to have the right to learn things, evolution, what fucking planet they’re living on, that type of stuff.
But, there is a fine line between a child’s right to an education and an activists’ right to have a line of direct access to a whole generation of children’s minds, to use as their own resource. So, I am mindful of the politicisation of eduction, there have been borderline issues regarding sex education and lgbtwhatever stuff in the past, where they’ve really pushed the envelope between what is a real education and what is a “liberal values” influence job. You want to make a living as an influencer? Get on Instagram and out of school classrooms.

[Myesyats]

Polls showed economy and education are most important to voters. Dems will lose if they keep pushing these critical theories on kids and rightly so

not being able to provide on their elementary promises is obviously the most notable issue

[VivaStPauli]

I’d have to side with the red elephants on that one. Usually when education has been an issue I’ve tended to side with liberals, because I do kind of believe it would be good for every child to have the right to learn things, evolution, what fucking planet they’re living on, that type of stuff.
But, there is a fine line between a child’s right to an education and an activists’ right to have a line of direct access to a whole generation of children’s minds, to use as their own resource. So, I am mindful of the politicisation of eduction, there have been borderline issues regarding sex education and lgbtwhatever stuff in the past, where they’ve really pushed the envelope between what is a real education and what is a “liberal values” influence job. You want to make a living as an influencer? Get on Instagram and out of school classrooms.

You realize that teaching abstinence only and creationism would be classified as a  “conservative values” influence job by a) liberals, b) the entire scientific community, right?

And it's been going on for decades.

[Hapless_Hans]

Apparently teaching kids that homosexuality exists and is natural, that climate change is a real thing and that slavery actually is a part of the US's history is "activist politicisation of education", but telling them god created the earth 4000 years ago, put the oil there extra for us so that we could fly private jets just like Jesus would have done is a "child's right to education".

Got it.

[El Gunner]

Polls showed economy and education are most important to voters. Dems will lose if they keep pushing these critical theories on kids and rightly so

why rightly so?
we know that the majority of white middle america will be against it but that's because they are stupid and it will probably cost Dems at the end in these important swing states... but that doesn't mean you change your stance on improving education, which we all know is a very important issue. You should find better ways to convince the dumb middle americans

[Myesyats]

well from my pov it's 2 things: first of all the name sounds very aggressive and can be used very effectively as a political tool, any thing thats "critical" and involving race is a very hot topic in america (critical theory is a marxist concept on top of that)

secondly, CRT is not just about "racism is bad", it involves a lot of stuff and is quite complicated actually. Its a whole school of thought, From sex, sexual orientation, affirmative action, class division etc.,

My biggest problem with these kinds of things is that it assumes 2 sides to a conflict which are: the oppressor and the oppressed, or the perpetrator and the victim while pointing at a class of people and directly calling them out.

I fear this is a way to sneak marxism back into mainstream politicial discourse disguised as a harmless and essential reform of education. Its at every level a marxist school of thought, with the addition of race.

[El Gunner]

Marx didn't coin the term, it was a German Max Horkheimer.

And "critical theory" literally just means thinking critically towards power structures in society. It's literally the same as the practice of reflexive bias in science.

And also there is absolutely nothing wrong with Marxist thinking in academic discourse.

[Myesyats]

And also there is absolutely nothing wrong with Marxist thinking in academic discourse.

That's your subjective truth/your opinion

[El Gunner]

and yet Marxist discourse has been in academia since Marx and it's kind of making a renaissance these days in overall cultural discourse

[Found]

I’d have to side with the red elephants on that one. Usually when education has been an issue I’ve tended to side with liberals, because I do kind of believe it would be good for every child to have the right to learn things, evolution, what fucking planet they’re living on, that type of stuff.
But, there is a fine line between a child’s right to an education and an activists’ right to have a line of direct access to a whole generation of children’s minds, to use as their own resource. So, I am mindful of the politicisation of eduction, there have been borderline issues regarding sex education and lgbtwhatever stuff in the past, where they’ve really pushed the envelope between what is a real education and what is a “liberal values” influence job. You want to make a living as an influencer? Get on Instagram and out of school classrooms.

You realize that teaching abstinence only and creationism would be classified as a  “conservative values” influence job by a) liberals, b) the entire scientific community, right?

And it's been going on for decades.

Just so we’re clear when we talk about education and the ‘right’ to an education we’re talking about using government power to integrate the citizenry into an information system, whether the citizens like it or not, right?
Because if you’re talking about parents or some little local social organisation telling their kids to not have sex or that the bible is true, I don’t have a legal problem with that. I have a personal problem with it but it’s free speech right? I can’t control what other people tell their own damn kids about reality, I don’t think I should have that power either.

It’s easy for me to see why you might think schools should be used as an equally coercive counter balance to the indoctrination that happens in households or within private institutions, but I don’t think coercion should be institutionalised at that scale. I definitely don’t think the government should be made just as coercive as the most coercive parent. It’s obviously tragic that we cannot be totally free from coercion as children, if your parents are tyrants that sucks, but what am I supposed to say to that, neutralise them by making the government a tyrant? That just doesn’t make any sense to me and I don’t even know if it would be good for a child to be in the middle of a tug-of-war between their household and their school. Let’s take a worst case scenario as an example, a really religious parent terrifies their children about going to hell if they have sex. If a teacher comes along and tells them having sex would be a great thing, is that going to help them in any way or just increase their cognitive dissonance? I have no idea frankly and it might vary on a case by case basis.

The government should not be used to impose conservative values like abstinence or myths like the 7 day earth creation theory, so there’s not any double standard in my thinking. If the government is used to do that you won’t find me supporting it.
I prefer these culture war fights over moral values to be conducted in domains that have nothing to do with coercion, where some kind of meritocracy of ideas and morals could actually take place. You can disagree with that and say the culture is too important to be left open or to be disproportionately influenced by parents, so the government needs to get a firm grip over it by using education as a tool of power. That’s a bit too authoritarian for me, unless you are an actual infallible know-it-all (which people are not, and the critical-race-baiters are definitely not). And I myself would be too authoritarian to a creationist, because I agree with using the government infrastructure to teach all citizens basic facts, some of which contradict cherished conservative beliefs. But teaching ideology and moral values at the point of a gun is, I don’t know, it’s like you’re asking for a fight, to worsen antagonisms and divisions.


In terms of sex education I agree with:
- Teaching children what sex is
- Teaching children what different sexual activities exist
- Teaching children what ‘best practices’ are IF they choose to engage in these activities  
- Teaching children what the risks of the activities are and how much risks can be reduced by ‘best practices’

What I disagree with:
- Telling children any of these activities are good or bad or that they should or shouldn’t do them
- Using pornographic materials that don’t have any educational value
(And it’s kind of ironic that even if I did want to stop young people having sex I would still teach them sex education, because you know what happens when you show them pictures of sexual infections? They tend to get scared of sex LOL)

So take homosexuality or transgenderism for example. I don’t see why the culture war over those issues shouldn't just take place in media, films, art, public discourse, academia in the form of research, and wherever else these cultural struggles take place in a free society. Why should they be allowed to ‘put their thumb on the scale’ of cultural trends by using the government to indoctrinate everyone that it is definitely a very good thing and you're a very bad person if you have any doubt about that? I don’t appreciate being scolded and lectured by a queer anymore than by a priest. It’s not necessary to do any of that to make progress happen, and that coercion is not good in general. Also the rich shouldn’t be allowed to control the culture either in case you bring that up, I don’t have a problem with government power being used non-ideologically to curb a bunch of big corporations from controlling and censoring every outlet of cultural production.
And you can’t even make this about a ‘minority needs protection’ thing, because frankly, i would be legitimately surprised if much less than 50% of the male population has some degree of interest in sexual practices that are seen as non-traditional)



P.S.

To Hapless Hans, it is so funny to me that a German got just as irrational at this subject as I predicted you would. What is it with Germans and education systems? There is no other people on the planet that gets so weird about this subject. It’s not surprising that when you study history of education, it’s the Germans that invented new forms of educational authoritarianism as a form of nation building. Is it in your blood or something? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system

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