General Politics Three: But what is left/right?

[Gorbles]

Covid-19 was everywhere, and yet individual countries still did better or worse at handling it.

 

[Farm Boy]

The country mostly ignored it while it ravaged the gay community. RENT the musical would come from that timeframe.

The US caught up pretty fast, but it would have been unacceptable to do so before Ryan put a face on it the country wasn't indifferent to. It happened on Regan's watch.

Granted, the credit wouldn't be there if he did awesome, but still.

 

[tjs282]

Not in the early 80s. In the US at least, AIDS was very much regarded as affecting 'only' homosexuals and the promiscuous, and therefore essentially God's punishment for the wicked sinners.

So Reagan and his backers didn't really prioritise it -- until Ryan White (a haemophiliac 12 year old who'd contracted HIV through a badly-screened transfusion) died of it in 1986 or so. Then they started throwing money at the problem in previously-undreamed-of quantities.

 

[r16]

a "bonus" was the needle users , heroin abusers and so on . There would be the odd claim that the South Africans had tested a race specific weapon in 1978 or whatever ; the Poor would still do it and get it , the Rich could have their "workers" tested . Never heard of that kid in Turkey , had long assumed it was some Rich Republican that got a needle in him . But yes , the drugs that wouldn't cure it but slow it or whatever were already in the Turkish newspapers by late 1980s , if ı remember that correctly enough .

 

[Gori the Grey]

So much cool political and general news this week.

 

[Core Imposter]

Yep. Alexei Navalny has died in a Russian prison. No reason to think this will be one, but sometimes one death resonates where many do not. God's will be done.

 

[Core Imposter]

It's not as if MAGA needed the Fani Willis controversy to convince them that the entirety of Trump's legal troubles are merely partisan lawfare but what it will do is impact those who are struggling with how to vote (or whether to vote). If you are trying to portray a man as dangerously corrupt you don't really make headway with a halfcocked RICO legal theory, a blatantly political DA who, when caught naked, gets on the stand and lies through her teeth.

"My Daddy wouldn't be happy if I didn't have more than $9,000 in cash lying around the house".

Good grief.

Still, the trials and counts are so arrayed against Trump it seems he is going to be toast eventually absent divine intervention. Or, additional intervention, as the cases may be.

 

[Kyriakos]

Yep. Alexei Navalny has died in a Russian prison. No reason to think this will be one, but sometimes one death resonates where many do not. God's will be done.

It might. Which is both logical and irrational. Logical, because if you need to put a minor political figure (how many votes did he get in elections?) in jail, you are obviously a tyrant. Illogical, since there was no chance of Navalny ever becoming a popular politician in Russia and yet some western media presented him as "the leader of the opposition".

 

[Lexicus]

How did he screw up AIDS exactly ? I was 5-15 at the time, but it was a big thing everywhere in the 80s as far as I remember ?

Is this a joke question?

The Reagan administration's unbelievable response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic

It's very upsetting.

www.vox.com

 

[Kyriakos]

I suspect that most people outside the US had no reason to know about this. I was less than 1.5 years old when Reagan became potus and wasn't paying attention.

 

[Farm Boy]

His Vice President's son seems to have attempted atonement by being perhaps one of the most useful humans on this issue, ever, globally.

But we don't talk about that sort of thing so much. Africans, for one.

Such a small portion of our efforts, for what it did. But the world is like that. You try to "just feed people" and you walk a path of good intentions to Blackhawk Down. Simple good is rarely simple easy. That's not how Jesus comes.

 

[Samson]

I suspect that most people outside the US had no reason to know about this. I was less than 1.5 years old when Reagan became potus and wasn't paying attention.

For those who grew up during the later part of the HIV crisis the fact that it was played down by the political and medical establishment in the earlier stages was common knowledge.

 

[Lexicus]

Africans, for one.

Oh yes, the people Ronald Reagan referred to as "monkeys" on a recording made in 1971. A view that was evidently unchanged by the time he was President when he vetoed the sanctions on apartheid South Africa and otherwise did everything in his power to preserve white rule there.

 

[Farm Boy]

Yes. But I'm talking about us, and what actions we lionize.

I can't see much difference between not caring about W's programs in Africa and not caring about the early '80s homos. The reason is, well, the same.

 

[Core Imposter]

Even more big news. Manchin is out. That's a big deal for Biden fans. He would have clearly taken a lot of votes from the Democratic ticket. I am actually a little surprised. I will have to look further down the ballot.

 

[bernie14]

Heheheh.

Is that the new dog whistle? Does it come with a hand gesture, special pin or ribbon, facial gesticulation?

What, the literal Alzheimer's patient in the White House?

Perhaps, but I think it's more likely to be vascular or parkinsonian

For those who grew up during the later part of the HIV crisis the fact that it was played down by the political and medical establishment in the earlier stages was common knowledge.

Don't know if that's the facts....I was there. I remember the hospitals. But perhaps you are right. I recall some in the medical community wanting to quarantine all these people....that would have been interesting.

 

[Farm Boy]

Is that the new dog whistle? Does it come with a hand gesture, special pin or ribbon, facial gesticulation?

Consider it a crossover moment with the moral foundations thread. They can be equal before the Eyes of God, but they definitely are not equal in their hungers, impulses, and guiding stars(the people in federal government in Washington DC being at question, right?).

Let's even not be cynical for a moment. Over in the other thread you postulate that the top three moral foundations are considered "good" by posters who score high on those values while scoring low on the bottom three, and that they then consider those foundations "bad." I don't think that's quite the case. I think that the posters you seem to be referring to act plenty often under guiding principles of in-group bias, purity, and authority. They've just been taught that specific examples thereof are instead(erroneously) care, liberty, and fairness. The examples in the test then creating its biases(such as with non Americans boggling at weaponry questions). Even better, if they score very very low on certain values the whole presumption of the test(for whatever it's worth) is that they literally can't even see/understand the principle they're acting on. The "bottom three" scored lower for me than the top as well, even if they were relatively high when compared to different people's results. Keeping that in mind, I would say the majority of the acrimonious disagreements I get into on this board are over my objections to (what I see as) purity enforcement, authority plays, and in-group biases casting people out or grinding them under. But then in order to have that fight, in that context, one needs to start picking at the borders of what they consider their in-group, explaining that it's ok to care about those outside of it, understanding what betrayals/diseases they fear and arguing what cures are worse than the disease, and explaining that simply forcing people to comply with things that make themselves feel more free isn't universal. Then you wind up being from the moon, hard to understand, and ... crypitc? I guess? It's probably because I'm not particularly good at it, but it's hard to have enough social purchase and understanding across a continent(s) with only a message-board-bond to work with. At least for me it is. Especially when some shared cultures now transcend raw physical distance with light-based-communications. Some people very far away in meat space are very close in relative culture whereas somebody in a slow eddy in the county might have half a century of day-to-day drift in the lived life.

 

[Crezth]

At moment the bottleneck is not the available funds, but production capacity, even if we ordered an extra 30 F35s or just a single patriot battery they wouldn't be available, worse we would compete with those that might actually need them, the Germans wanted to spend 100 billion iirc, they could only spend 3.

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What happened to the German military's €100 billion fund? – DW – 03/02/2023

A year ago, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz promised to upgrade the Bundeswehr with a massive one-off fund. Critics say not much has happened since.

www.dw.com

Yeah meanwhile the Russians can build 3 million artillery shells a year. Isn’t that fun?

 

[Crezth]

Who is talking about yesterday? We pay today. I am questioning the worth of it tomorrow.

The Chinese and the Indians can perhaps worry about the waters off Yemen, for example, if the trade is so important.

We best wait for Crezth there to be honest, we don't know what she was talking about, I doubt she's paying for me,

I am indeed paying for you and that is what I'm talking about. The outcome of the second war is completely immaterial here. In the other events, you'd be explaining to a German or maybe a Russian right now how you don't owe them anything, while probably having the same attitude and outlook in all the other things and while said German or Russian was actually trying to talk about how they think the current flow of aid should dry up.

 

[Kyriakos]

European solidarity ^^
Maybe some people have the memory of an ant, otherwise one can't explain how they seriously believe that's the reason.
It comically culminates in thinking all other countries will send their conscripts to die for you - meanwhile irl it took years for the US to even enter a massive world war.