2020 US Election (Part One)

[Zkribbler]

Is Biden that guy? If he is, who is the real horse to ride?

I used to be a huge Biden supporter, But since Obama creamed him in the Iowa primaries, I no longer see in him the necessary fire-in-the-belly,

Too many other candidates have already surpassed my pandering limit. Former constitutional law professor Warren advocates taxing wealth. However, Article I of the Constitution forbids the federal government from doing this. And reparations, WTF? I have yet to see Beto say anything of substance on anything

Maybe when we get into the debates, something interesting will emerge.

Only Washington Governor Jay Inslee has caught me attention, with his sincere and well-educated focus on climate change.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Symbols can function using part of their meaning as well, synecdochically. Eg in various euro countries one can see confederate flags as something symbolizing just resistance. There isn't any reference to slavery in that context. Obviously it wouldn't be the same if the KKK use it.

I'm really confused.

The KKK was founded by ex-confederates originally and was resurrected by lost cause enthusiasts. The KKK is all over the Confederate flag.

 

[onejayhawk]

I'm really confused. The KKK was founded by ex-confederates originally and was resurrected by lost cause enthusiasts. The KKK is all over the Confederate flag.

That was his point. He felt that someone else using it could simply be advocating resistance. That will not work in USA, where the KKK and the flag are too closely linked, but in Europe I can see it as a possibility.

I used to be a huge Biden supporter, But since Obama creamed him in the Iowa primaries, I no longer see in him the necessary fire-in-the-belly,

Too many other candidates have already surpassed my pandering limit. Former constitutional law professor Warren advocates taxing wealth. However, Article I of the Constitution forbids the federal government from doing this. And reparations, WTF? I have yet to see Beto say anything of substance on anything. Maybe when we get into the debates, something interesting will emerge. Only Washington Governor Jay Inslee has caught me attention, with his sincere and well-educated focus on climate change.

I suspect that by the time the debates get here it will be too late. It's a strike now or lose your chance environment.

J

 

[El_Machinae]

Two groups have fought over 'ownership' of the people who like the Confederate flag. It's morphed into Republicans vs. the Nazi parties (to be super-simple about it). People who were prone to waving swastikas were less evenly welcomed.

I do find it strange that there's a loose alliance between people who hate Jews and people who are incredibly fond of Israel. They're each touching a different part of the elephant.

 

[cardgame]

I'll hazard a guess into that particular ring toss, El Mac; it's not so much that they love Jews, but moreso that they hate Muslims and what better avatar of that than Israel The Unrepentant?

 

[El_Machinae]

I get worried when people talk about this. I have loved ones that are evangelical and are also very pro-Trump. And yeah, they have a nearly magical reverence for the nation-idea that is descended from the Biblical Israelites

 

[Sofista]

Re: the Confederate flag.
Were I to see anyone displaying it here, I'd just assume they're of my age group and grew up watching The Dukes of Hazzard every day.
Were they to tell me it stands for "resistance"... um yeah, there were no ad hoc symbols available for what you (supposedly) stand for.

 

[Sommerswerd]

More like at the wrong person.

Don't be jealous... @Tristan_C has the floor... just relax and let it happen... everything doesn't always have to be about you.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Regarding my laundry list, "freedom, competition, individualism, and regard for the founding documents." These have persistently driven events and human behavior here.

So, just as with the side question regarding irony, the following isn't my main line of questioning, but I just want to keep this conversation going at such a rate as my RL presently allows, so I'll see if we can get one thing established:

Just so it's clear that we're keeping race out of the picture, this set of four on which you've settled (and now passed on the opportunity to modify are utterly independent of race. Anyone of any race can value these things and be in the American spirit, as you see it. So, an African-American could value freedom, an Asian-American competition, A Hispanic-American individualism, a Native-American our founding documents?

And if you confirm that you do see it that way, I'll have a follow-up that re-asks the same question in a more extreme fashion, through a hypothetical.

 

[onejayhawk]

Don't be jealous... @Tristan_C has the floor... just relax and let it happen... everything doesn't always have to be about you.

Cute. My suggestion was the person arguing with Tristan.

What do you mean "has" the floor?

J

 

[Tristan_C]

Just so it's clear that we're keeping race out of the picture, this set of four on which you've settled (and now passed on the opportunity to modify are utterly independent of race. Anyone of any race can value these things and be in the American spirit, as you see it. So, an African-American could value freedom, an Asian-American competition, A Hispanic-American individualism, a Native-American our founding documents?

That is not keeping race out of the picture at all. The reason I am reluctant to talk about races and racism is because I think you guys are psychopaths. This is not an ad hominen; it's my assessment that I am acting on: hence, "I think." Any discussion of the topic less milquetoast than a Disney film causes you guys to go berserk. I don't want to make busywork for the mods putting out another dumpster fire. The price of my reluctance is that you'll never know what dark, fiendish ideas I am harboring, and so you will project, and you will be wrong. I guarantee it.

American values and race are foremost on the docket for 2020, like they always are in American politics. But the dark horse is the media, or perhaps more accurately, the flow of information. If the left's stranglehold on the flow of information continues to deteriorate (their media tells lies, their entertainment isn't entertaining anymore, and their schools and unis deliver no value for the money), a hard nut like racism might be opened for more earnest discussion. Might lead to there being less psychopaths around, on both sides.

 

[Gori the Grey]

you guys to go berserk.

But you said you find me level-headed. I'm trying to have a conversation with just you.* Others will reply. We'll just let them. We can't stop them. And if it shuts down the thread, well, it does.

It's not only white people who can hold your quartet of American values, that's all I'm asking you to confirm that you believe. In fact, sometimes it's said that one of the glories of this nation is precisely that citizenship involves adherence to a set of principles or values or documents, rather than race, native culture, etc. Is that not something you believe? that these principles have made for a great nation because people from around the world have flocked here because of those American values? I thought that was in the background of your thinking when you invoked "American values."

*For heaven's sake, I excluded precisely a Berzerker from our conversation! (and forewent some of Lex's easy point-scoring, as well)

 

[brennan]

Are non-white (American) people less likely to hold to those core values though? Because that's all it would take for them to be racist in some eyes.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I suspect that if I can get my main line of questioning opened up, we'll touch on things like that, brennan.

By the way, @tristan, re this:

The price of my reluctance is that you'll never know what dark, fiendish ideas I am harboring, and so you will project, and you will be wrong. I guarantee it.

You've twice already done that very thing with me: assumed I was talking about race, assumed i wanted to call you sanctimonious. Let's play the game one move at a time, rather than telling the other person what his next three moves are going to be. Should it happen that I become ready to call you sanctimonious, you can just rest assured that I will do it then. Until then, that is not my play.

 

[Traitorfish]

True, though this fact is probably more reflective of the terrible state of history education in the US and the proliferation of Lost Cause nonsense than anything else.

Maybe so, but none the less, displaying a Confederate flag is a less certain indicator of someone's political and social views than displaying a Nazi flag. The Confederate flag is, unfortunately but none the less genuinely, regarded by many as symbol of regional identity.

You could even make the case that this is precisely the problem: that, for a lot of Southerners, for a long time, white supremacy was an integral aspect of Southern regional identity- the "Southern way of life"- so any symbol of the South which is not explicitly qualified against this version of Southern identity is going to inherit those associations, regardless of its origin. That the Confederate flag has explicitly racist origins is convenient for those who wish to employ it as a racist symbol, but not strictly necessary. Whether the Civil War was fought over slavery or tariffs or state's rights is almost besides the point, so long as it can be framed as a war for Southern interests.

 

[Lexicus]

Well I would point to the fact that these views and feelings are the product of a self-conscious elite project to construct them which started immediately after the Civil War ended but really started to be successful a few decades later, and wasn't challenged much until the mid-20th century (unsurprising when, for the most part, to challenge it was death).

 

[Traitorfish]

Well I would point to the fact that these views and feelings are the product of a self-conscious elite project to construct them which started immediately after the Civil War ended but really started to be successful a few decades later, and wasn't challenged much until the mid-20th century (unsurprising when, for the most part, to challenge it was death).

They started well before the Civil War. Southern intellectuals were talking about a distinct Southern civilisation by the 1850s. Secession was articulated in terms of Southern distinctiveness, but I don't know how far we can point to it as a formative or even particularly galvinising moment in Southern identity, given that large areas of the South remained stridently hostile to secession, even if it did provide a lot of later myths- chief among them, the centrality of the Confederacy to Southern identity itself.

 

[Tristan_C]

You've twice already done that very thing with me: assumed I was talking about race, assumed i wanted to call you sanctimonious. Let's play the game one move at a time, rather than telling the other person what his next three moves are going to be. Should it happen that I become ready to call you sanctimonious, you can just rest assured that I will do it then. Until then, that is not my play.

Ehhhhhh you are leading the chat towards towards race, so I am undissuaded from my original assumption that you were thinking about it on the approach. Moreover, to "claim to be able to declare which were American values and which weren't," is sanctimonious behavior, and I didn't do it.

But on balance, you've been doing just fine. Since you asked nicely I will just keep talking, and it may answer you.

It's not only white people who can hold your quartet of American values, that's all I'm asking you to confirm that you believe. In fact, sometimes it's said that one of the glories of this nation is precisely that citizenship involves adherence to a set of principles or values or documents, rather than race, native culture, etc. Is that not something you believe?

Yeah, I'm always ready to go on at length about how ideology should supersede race. I consider this idea to be a strategically anti-marxist idea in the current year, and a universally good, right choice. So yes, you are entirely accurate here. The essence of MLK's speech. Judging people by the content of their character.

The problem is that realizing MLK's dream takes more mental effort than we think, as most right action does, because racism is built into the brain. It's part of our evolved threat-response system. We do not detect faces that look like clouds; we detect clouds that look like faces. Such prejudice against clouds. But in angst over this, the left's love affair with science and the theory of evolution drops stone dead at the doorstep of this topic, which is why I think they have gone a little bit insane. They want all of this stuff gone. They want to be something that, as hominidae, as chordata, animalia, they can never be. They want life to be something it never was.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Moreover, to "claim to be able to declare which were American values and which weren't," is sanctimonious behavior, and I didn't do it.

Well, here's the thing that drew me into this discussion:

anyone who identifies more with American values than marxist values could potentially consider themselves Republican

That sounds to me like someone who knows what American values are, and that marxist values aren't them and so he knows what American values are not. So, again, I'm not labeling you "sanctimonious"; at worst "certain he knows what are American values." I'm not sure I've ever called someone sanctimonious. I've called someone unctuous once.

Anyway, you continue to answer my questions, so as long as you do, I will continue to put them.

It's this that I want to challenge, that marxist values are automatically not American values, that we can know so firmly and finally what American values are that we can entirely exclude marxist values from them.

You've already, in a way, answered the big question I want to put to you. Here's your answer:

These have persistently driven events and human behavior here. Also they are a consensus reality; i.e., they are obsessed-over as American values by so many that it ends up being true.

Here's my question: so that set of American values are the American values because of tradition and consensus? Because they've operated in the country for a long time and because a lot of people regard them as identifying what is distinctive about America?

Oh, and since you answered this

Yeah

to my question about the intersection of your values and things like race, you also get my more extreme version of that question, a pure hypothetical. Say there were no more white people in the US through some weird set of events like interracial marriage, emigration, some disease that wipes out only white people. America could keep on being America, as long as the remaining people kept honoring your four key values? Those values are utterly non-dependent on race, yes?

 

[Takhisis]

Cute. My suggestion was the person arguing with Tristan.

I'm not going to laugh at Gori unless he posts more of his limericks and that's that.