• The Road to 2020 - American Elections
    Beyond the incoherency of a dual endorsement, what's absurd about the NYT endorsing Klobuchar is that less than a year ago the Times published a story about how she is physically and mentally abusive to members of her staff and that she has the highest staff turnover rates in the Senate.
  • The Road to 2020 - American Elections
    NYT endorses Apple, but also, Orange lol
  • The Road to 2020 - American Elections
    The question isn't whether they vote for Trump. They'll just stay home. Then your statistic would still be right yet miss the point. That pollster should have asked about the stay home factor.fishfry

    You originally said there was a lot of overlap between Sanders and Trump supporters, so now I'm not sure what "the point" is because it seems to have changed.
  • The Road to 2020 - American Elections
    I will say that even less than a year ago I oscillated from Sanders to Warren, and that my vote would simply go for whoever was leading the other prior to the NY primary (April 28th). However, the last few months have made me increasingly weary or at least less enthusiastic of Warren, and while I unequivocally prefer her to the other candidates, my own political ideology, understanding of historical change and dialectics, and, frankly, the recent blunders made by Warren and her campaign, have convinced me to lend my full support for Bernie.

    Warren and her campaign team have made a notable series of blunders that, to my mind, demonstrates poor political acumen. The Native American DNA fiasco demonstrated shoddy political judgement, particularly vis-à-vis prodding by Donald Trump. Had she made this decision now, any momentum her campaign currently has would likely screech to a halt. And while the Native American stuff hasn't and won't come up in the primary, you better bet that Trump will lean into it hard in the general. Additionally, her decision to first pursue a private-public healthcare option, only to then formulate a comprehensive Medicare-For-All legislation sans private insurance as late as her third year in office would effectively stifle the momentum that bona fide Medicare-For-All would have and make it harder to pursue. Healthcare is consistently ranked one of the most important policy issues, particularly among Democrats, and Warren's waffling on the subject is correlated with her atrophying support as she moved from the second place position, to third behind Sanders. She also mishandled the recent controversy with Bernie Sanders and potentially widened the animosity between the two camps which could have repercussions in the primary and broader repercussions for a progressive/socialist alliance. There are an array other concerns (e.g. endorsing Clinton over Sanders in 2016, despite the latter encouraging her to run against Clinton...and she probably would have won!) from policy to campaign judgement, but it's not my goal to be comprehensive here, just to outline a broad overview of objections.

    And as cathartic as it may be to see Trump lose to a women in 2020, politics isn't aesthetics (liberals and conservatives often confuse it for one).

    But my original reasoning for supporting Sanders over Warren is in their distinct theories of how social and political change occur. In true Democratic Socialism fashion, Bernie is (and has been since 2016) clearly focused on building and energizing a wider social movement so that even if he doesn't win the presidency, or after his political career is over, there is still a strong grassroots momentum to demand political change, which, beyond Sander's own message, is further substantiated by over 5M individual donors and donation numbers, rally turnout, and loyal following. Warren, while also having a solid donor and supporter base, nevertheless leans into a more technocratic approach, which locates social/economic/political changes not with a broader worker class-focused movement but with elite-decision makers (e.g. "Warren Has A Plan For That").

    Meaningless. Each poll is only a single data-point ("snapshot"); it takes a series of polls to exhibit a trend (curve) of data-points from which a prediction can be inferred.180 Proof

    The tense isn't exactly relevant, my point is that it's mistaken to claim there is a substantive overlap between Sanders and Trump supporters.
  • The Road to 2020 - American Elections
    There's a lot of overlap between Bernie and Trump supportersfishfry

    According to a recent Emerson poll, only 4% of Bernie supporters will vote for Trump if Bernie doesn't get the election. Compare this with Buttigieg, Warren, and Biden at 12%, 10% and 9%, respectively.
  • The Road to 2020 - American Elections
    In the near future I'll provide a larger, general post about why I prefer Sanders over Warren (which has only strengthened over the past few months given a number of notable campaign and policy slips from Warren), but there is one quick point I want to make here:

    She also has more of the common touch - with her deep Midwestern & Texan working-class roots - than gruff old Bernie as evident by her consistently polling better (so far) than him with African Americans180 Proof

    I think this has largely been untrue for quite sometime. Politico's robust polling has shown that since February 2019, African American voters have consistently leaned toward Sanders over Warren. Most recently polling (mid-December 2019) currently shows that Bernie supporters were 6% more likely to be African American contra Warren supporters who are 29% less likely to be African American. Additional polling substantiates this, increasingly within the last few months as Bernie's "electability" becomes increasingly viable, and as other candidates favored by Black Americans, such as Harris and Booker, dropped out, even over Biden (who otherwise continues to enjoy the majority of Black American support), and a recent polling show that more Black Americans would strongly consider voting for Sanders in the General over Warren in the GE by 30%.
  • The Road to 2020 - American Elections
    The vindictive part of me wants Biden to win the nomination, and then watch with glee as he loses the presidency - as he obviously will - and watch democrats wonder HOW THIS COULD HAVE POSSIBLY HAPPENED.StreetlightX

    The nihilist in me would love nothing better than to see a debate between Biden and Trump, two sundowning men who can't speak longer than 120 seconds before digressing into jabberwacky. Trump, the more brash, slightly more senile of the two would undeniably get the upper hand by attacking Biden's 40 year record of political blunders (his only saving grace being the VP of a beloved president). The ultimate manifestation of a sundowning nation.
  • The Road to 2020 - American Elections
    Very curious about this one, comrade.
  • Roger Scruton 1944 – 2020
    You can choose whatever adjective you like, it's not important. My point is that he was all those things I listed, and given that précis it's curious who we continue to sanction as a "decent person" this far into the 21st century.

    Scruton's career provided gravitas to hate speech and dehumanization via a veneer of elegant writing and highfalutin rhetoric in order to frame and legitimate Islamophobia, misogyny, homophobia, etc. as profound intellectual positions. They are not.
  • Roger Scruton 1944 – 2020
    Roger Scruton once said that it was an "impossible proposition" to think that a Muslim "from the hinterlands of Asia" could produce a child loyal to a secular European state. The guy was a rabid islamophobic, anti-semite (I've cover this in another thread), sexist, and homophobe. Ah, but he wrote so elegantly!!!
  • Roger Scruton 1944 – 2020
    yeah RIP a guy who characterized Syrian refugees in Hungary as a "sudden invasion of huge tribes of Muslims from the middle east", truly a great loss for decency
  • Down with the patriarchy and whiteness?
    One person spoke to all the white people, explaining how it's difficult to acknowledge that their existence as a white person was harmful to others,Marchesk

    Guaranteed that no one who is part of a diversity training program said this
  • Why do you think the USA is going into war with Iran?
    At least the Bush administration attempted (and succeeded) to manufacture consent. The Trump administration thought they could pull the trigger and that the cart would lead the horse.
  • Roger Scruton 1944 – 2020
    "Consider the woman who plays with her clitoris during the act of coition. Such a person affronts her lover with the obscene display of her body, and, in perceiving her thus, the lover perceives his own irrelevance. She becomes disgusting to him, and his desire may be extinguished. The woman’s desire is satisfied at the expense of her lover’s, and no real union can be achieved between them"

    Damn RIP a true conservative intellectual.
  • Why do you think the USA is going into war with Iran?
    If Iran's response to Soleimani and Trump's follow up speech is any indication, there shouldn't be any further escalation. Fortunately, Trump doesn't have the national support that Bush had for Iraq. Only 39% approve of Trump's actions in Iran, whereas in the leadup to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, up to 60% of the US population were in support.
  • Why do you think the USA is going into war with Iran?
    added that Soleimani and his Quds Force “were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more.”ArguingWAristotleTiff

    Killing military personal who are in occupying countries is hardly befitting of the term "terrorist". Seems that the appellation is simply being used to denote any and all perceived enemies of the US. Additionally, as has been noted, Soleimani was a prominent government official. Should the US consider Putin a terrorist and assassinate him? Kim Jong Un? Maduro? Xi Jinping?
  • Rating American Presidents
    1. tRUMP (aka "Individual-1" "Putin's Bitch" "Agent Orange" "M.oscow A.sset G.overning A.merica" "SCROTUS" ...)
    3. Bush 43 (aka "Dubya" "Shrub")
    180 Proof

    I would say, minimally, Bush's War in Iraq and Afghanistan, which has lead to the death of most likely around 400,000 people in addition to around 7,000 Americans (while also helping to birth and enable ISIS), is worse than Trump (although he's doing his best to surpass him!)
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Misspoke, meant enlist, but the point remains the same
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    I think it's pretty sad that NOS4A2 is too old for a draft because imagine being that stupid and jingoistic and being over 30, rather than just some 14 year old that would hopefully grow out of it.
  • Currently Reading
    Let's see in 2019 I read:

    Essayism: On Form, Feeling, and Non-Fiction by Brian Dillion
    The Origin of Capitalism by Ellen Meiksins Wood
    Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative by Mark Fisher
    The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
    Crime and Punish by Michel Foucault
    Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism by Fredric Jameson
    Kids These Days: The Making of Millennials by Malcom Harris
    Dune by Frank Herbert
    The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord
    Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War by Michael Isikoff and David Corn
    From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth: Labor and Republican Liberty in the Nineteenth Century by Alex Gourevitch
    Capital In the 21st Century by Thomas Piketty
    Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don't Talk about It) by Elizabeth Anderson
    White Identity Politics by Ashley Jardina
    The Prince by Machiavelli
    Grundrisse by Marx
    Prison Notebooks by Antonio Gramsci
    The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon by Marx
    Theses on Feuerbach by Marx
    The Limits of Capital by David Harvey
    Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino
    The World of Late Antiquity: AD 150-750 by Peter Brown
    Black Rights/White Wrongs: The Critique of Racial Liberalism by Charles Mills
    In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West by Wendy Brown
    The Phenomenology of Spirit by Hegel
    A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America by Bruce Gibney
    A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
    The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James
    One-Dimensional Man by Herbert Marcuse
  • Currently Reading
    One-Dimensional Man by Herbert Marcuse
  • Currently Reading
    Depends on what month it was, but I was either in my mother's womb or shitting in my crib :monkey:
  • Currently Reading
    Likewise. I'd attended a few readings / lectures she'd given in the late 1980s and met her in 1990 at a private dinner given in her honor by William Kennedy (I crashed that party as Hayden Carruth's last minute wingman (HC was invited)), which, for me, had turned out to be an incredible evening, especially Ms. Morrison, who was by turns easily charming & brilliant, down home funny & regal.180 Proof

    Excellent, very jealous, although I doubt you want to know where I was in 1990 :razz:
  • Currently Reading
    Origin of Capitalism so good!
  • It's stupid, the Economy.
    Gravity is a concept and doesn't decide anything. But things fall down.unenlightened

    Not at all analogous to a social-economic concept.
  • Trump: vote here to acquit or convict and remove from office.
    Trump should be convicted, removed, and consequently arrested, but in actuality he will acquitted and most likely not arrested even after leaving office.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Article 1: Abuse of Power just passed the House
  • It's stupid, the Economy.
    No doubt true, but still worth thinking about.tim wood

    Of course it's worth thinking about, as I said the solution should be collective ownership. My issue is it's exigency, which I think is clearly overblown.

    My candidate for 'the biggest threat to labor' is customary or state regulated denial of easy / universal access to (a) clean water; (b) safe, effective, family planning; & (c) quality education of females of all ages. Y'know, because - Ignorance breeds surplus. Sickness breeds surplus. Poverty breeds surplus. But 'surplus people' are only a symptom (pace Malthus), like 'automation' (pace Harari) which compounds it, and not the problem: malign neglect ... abetted by the scale & complexities of technocapital societies.180 Proof

    You are of course correct, I meant the biggest threat to labor specifically in terms of occupational displacement, rather than existential.

    An UBI is not as good as truly distributed ownership, but it's certainly better than the status quoPfhorrest

    Exactly, so as @180 Proof stated, let's make a truly collective ownership our goal, rather than cede to a limited technocratic political imagination via the restrictive TINA nihilism that Capital demands.

    Really? Is it not decided by the invisible hand? If the robot is cheaper, the robot takes the job. And if the the capitalist has scruples he goes out of business.unenlightened

    The Invisible Hand is a concept. It doesn't decide anything. It may be true that Capital tends towards greater production at cheaper cost, but this isn't, strictly speaking, a law by any means. Certainly a number of factors,social, technical, play into deciding whether or not to replace workers with some form of automation, often a huge undertaking made with great risk. Ultimately, automation shouldn't be considered fatalistic lest we forgo our agency and our ability to demand and determine what kind of society we want.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    It’s complete speculationNOS4A2

    Meanwhile the GOP is actually purging voters
  • It's stupid, the Economy.
    This type of eschatological talk around automation is mostly a boogeyman; a two hundred year old cudgel used to threaten labor to put it in it's place when it get too rowdy against capital. The biggest threat for labor within developed and developing economies continues to be free trade, not automation. Further, note how the author of the article writes as if automation is inevitable, as if implementing new innovations that replace the workforce just happen, as oppose to being a concerted choice by the owners of a company. Automation is a decision. Not fate.

    Besides which, an economy powered by automation is an ideal for socialists; where productive forces replace human labor enabling humanity to decrease the need to work allowing us to pursue whatever ends we choose. This is only made possible, however, if value created by automation is reinvested back into society by collective ownership, contra private hands. Others, like Andrew Yang, lacking political imagination because they've drank the nihilistic kool-aid of neoliberalism, instead argue not for collective ownership but UBI (general at the expense of a welfare state and social services), further formalizing economic power in fewer hands, producing greater wealth inequality, and placing people in greater economic precarity.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Maw is convinced the support for impeachment with voters is such that if the republicans acquit it will cost them dearly in the election, leading to an extensive win for the Democrats. I'm not so sure because Trump's character was quite clear during the previous election and it didn't make a difference.Benkei

    I don't know about an "extensive win" for the Democrats, but it's not clear to me how a GOP controlled Senate acquitting Trump of impeachment encourages anyone to vote for Trump who wouldn't have otherwise. Besides, the 2018 midterms was a clear Democratic refutation of Trump: the House's biggest seat swing since the early 70s.
  • The "Fuck You, Greta" Movement
    It's the Boomer Death Drive
  • Currently Reading
    A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
    The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James

    Toni Morrison180 Proof

    I met her several years ago she was very lovely.
  • Jordan Peterson in Rehab
    Do we have a deficit of empathy?Brett

    Jordan Peterson once said that Feminist defend Islam because of an unconscious desire to be subjugated, so maybe this guys sucks and no one should care what happens to him