ALL HAIL PRESIDENT TRUMP
"If you believe Ailes was flinging around the term "libtard" in 2000, you deserve the bridge Mr. Smith is selling you. When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted.
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" Frankly, there's also been quite a lot of anti-dem schadenfreude in this thread. The current US political situation is extremely polarized, to the point where both sides fail the other as something else than ennemies. I can see it hasn't been much about Trump lately, though, which is weirdly positive in a thread containing "Trump" in its title. The discussion about Gerrymandering is quite constructive, which is very good. Rather than disputing what effects Gerrymandering does or doesn't have on the political climate, I would simply think it's important to have third parties take care of redrawing the districts because it avoids the people that get elected being able to tamper with the list of people who vote on their elections. You wouldn't play a game of Risk where the one in the lead decides the continent compositions, would you? Why would the same situation in the real world, with real-life incentives to game the system lead to better results? |
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" You need to reread. Nowhere in that piece does he accuse Ailes of actually saying "libtard." But go ahead and create whatever reality gets you to the next moment. It's what TDS Trumpers do best. :) |
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I think we're nearing the end of gerrymandering-talk. I hope someone has the next topic primed. :P
--- " You're oversimplifying if you think that there aren't variants of liberal and conservative that matter when it comes to policy. See prior example of pro-gun liberals. Republican and Democrat parties are not (yet) uniparties, they're big tents. Their policy prerogatives change over time as the constituent groups within the group change. Tea Party conservatives have obviously moved the current Republican party, just as progressive leftists have obviously moved the current Democrat party. " Show me the universal laws. The vast majority of policy is necessarily tailored to particular communities, or are tailored in their silence about particular communities (e.g. "the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread"). If the policy to be discussed drastically affects 1% of the population by some common quality, it's a failure of the system if not 1% of representatives are beholden to people with that quality and can argue against the policy directly to other representatives. It's also importantly not just about votes -- you have to have those voices present when writing bills and pushing them through committees. The vote is only a small part of policysmithing, honestly. " It's certainly true that in "safe" districts, primaries cause the parties to sharpen their arguments and move to their logical extremes. This was my point about truly, mutually-exclusive ideas. Just because those differences are becoming more clear doesn't mean they never existed. Parties refining their ideas and highlighting the differences is nothing more than the truth finally coming out. There is no "solution" to this, certainly not in districting laws. You can either have competitive districts where people hate being forced to interact with each other and fall into ideological echo chambers, or you can have non-competitive ones where people optimize their ideas and spread them to competitive districts. The ideal is that federal legislation about these topics get completely clogged and only municipal legislature is allowed to proceed. The next best thing would be balkanization, which we're seeing starting with sanctuary cities. "Compromise" on fundamental differences is the worst of the options. | |
"Ellipses and bold his. "That is Tobin Smith saying Roger Ailes was using the term "libtard" in 2000. When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted.
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http://time.com/5542123/donald-trump-michael-cohen-2016-campaign/
" Headline of the decade?  | |
" I was born and raised strict conservative evangelical christian. While I'm now an atheist, many of the core tenants of the faith that I grew up with are still part of how I view the world now. I didn't become a "Liberal Democrat" through some wondrous life affirming choice. I ended up as a "Liberal Democrat" because the Party I was raised in abandoned the values that I was raised with. I'm pretty curious how scientists are going to be able to explain that. | |
"Regarding the if: sort of. I didn't mean to imply a strict dichotomy; I meant what I said in the sense of "Scientists are able to tell you if you're short or tall on the basis of your DNA." Obviously this doesn't exclude people of a medium height, or political moderates. I was referring to a 2D spectrum, not a binary. I guess there are a lot of different variations of "moderate," though, such that it's not a 2D spectrum so much as a multidimensional space. In that sense I was simplifying that tangle into a 2D spectrum — like that bitch of a teacher from Donnie Darko. Yeah, okay, that's oversimplifying. Touché. "Again, I agree that proportional represntation is desirable and should be part of the districting process. Our difference is not in this point, so I'm a little confused as to why you keep arguing it. Our difference is that you think homogeneity within borders is good in the context of representative districts, while I think maximum heterogeneity is a goal second only to proportional represntation in representative districts. We both agree some kind of homogeneity is best for the jurisdiction that representative districts feed into. Governments should be over people who have shared values; if a government is over two or more groups with irreconcilable differences, then that government shouldn't decide the issue (leaving it to smaller governments within the structure, or to the individuals themselves). But — and I really hope this gets through to you — the very structure of a House of Representatives, as opposed to a single appointee, presupposes heterogeneity in input, while the Rule of Law presupposes homogeneity in output. Look, if I could wave a magic wand and alter the Constitution as I see fit, no law would be able to pass the House without a 2/3 majority. If I was POTUS I would veto literally everything that wasn't a strict repeal of previous legislation, whether I agreed with it or not, on principle. If I was campaigning for POTUS I'd run on that veto policy as a campaign promise. But this doesn't change the nature of the House as a feedback mechanism for a people of some narrow homogeneity to manage their many heterogeneities, and you don't manage that well by hardening representatives as they enter that system. "Oh. So when you see AOC dragging the Democrats further left or Breitbart calling Trump "Amnesty Don" for considering a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, you think that's a good thing. The truth of hyperpartisanship coming out, finally, after so much breathless anticipation! You've bought into the moral panic, pneuma. The vast majority of Americans are not extreme in their political views, and most understand correctly that most of those they perceive as on their side are not extreme either. But the essence of clickbait news — corporatist media as well as Breitbart and many YouTubers — is to paint the other side as consistently extreme by cherrypicking examples from the fringes. Do you honestly believe most Democrats are socialists? Because most aren't, even if they're the ones under the right-wing media's microscope. Hyperpartisanship is the opposite of the truth coming out. It's an exaggeration being sold to you to encourage you to become more partisan yourself, in retaliation for perceived extremism on the other side. Which, ironically, makes the other sides' narrative of your hyperpartisanship just a little more true. Like the systems created by the villains of Full Metal Alchemist, the system of Clickbait Media has the ultimate end of bringing the Strawmen to life, even if those feeding that system realize not what they do. No, this isn't a good thing. It's taking us closer to the unsustainability of shared values and the eventual balkanization of Western Civilization through civil war. Which is part of the reason why, as a preventative measure, I view balkanization through peaceful means to be a reasonable option. Although perhaps that's too pessimistic. "You are completely conflating the ideas of independent jurisdictions with representative districts! Districts do NOT have their own laws or policies to refine over time — unless you count federal laws, shared amongst all districts. Therefore, districts do NOT force people to interact with any of the other people in their district, save the candidates and their current representative — and it is the representative's job to recognize heterogeneity and avoid policies that too drastically favor one group over another! Again, I am NOT arguing for heterogeneous jurisdictions — jurisdictions should group people according to shared values — but that doesn't mean districts should! When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted. Last edited by ScrotieMcB on Mar 6, 2019, 1:56:22 PM
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" It is ridiculous to think that is an exact quote. Perhaps you can't imagine him using the term libtard later though? If so then that is a different issue. The important part is the idea that Fox News was and still is choreographed entertainment similar to professional wrestling. Over 430 threads discussing labyrinth problems with over 1040 posters in support (thread # 1702621) Thank you all! GGG will implement a different method for ascension in PoE2. Retired!
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" No, I never said it was a good thing. I said it was a reality, a thing, absent moral judgment. And that the alternative to primarying in safe districts is highly contentious districts which lead to the bad things I listed earlier. Prioritizing one "bad" over another "bad" is a wash to me, so I look for other effects. You're only focused on one of the two effects. " In my last paragraph I stated "The ideal is that federal legislation about these topics get completely clogged... The next best thing would be balkanization". We have the exact same opinion on this issue of the endgame of bipartisanship. " To the first, I obviously and openly am counting federal laws shared amongst all districts in the set of laws that individual districts should have a direct say in. If a federal law is proposed that primarily benefits the constituents of 434 districts at the cost to the constituents of 1, I want the representative of that affected district screaming on the floor of the house, sitting in a committee around that law, going on TV, everything he can do to do his job and represent. Of course districts are fluid and only represent a specific 10-year grouping. And yet, they often form around similar areas, and we see incumbent representatives that have been speaking for a fairly static community for decades. The purpose of a house rep is to represent a group of people (some fraction of a state) on federal policy. Independent jurisdictions (cities, counties) and representative districts have a strong overlap. Cities often form around one big industry, or around one big religious group, or around one big natural resource, and so on. They didn't just spring up overnight for no reason. Your argument is that I'm conflating jurisdiction with representative districts. My argument is that you're suggesting forcibly and unnaturally separating them, which is a form of gerrymandering in itself. You may be inured to this form of misrepresentation since it's been going on for so long. Keep in mind, we're both talking about what districting should be, certainly not what it is now. " Realistically, they likely don't even know which group they're favoring in the first place if their district looks like a jigsaw piece and takes a bunch of small splinters out of lots of different communities on purpose. In the end, they are representatives that don't know who the fuck they're representing other than R or D, so they follow party leadership and write disgusting, inaccurate, often hamfisted federal policy as a result. |
