Liberals Protesting Democracy

[Mechanicalsalvation]

Good Lord I have found a liberal with a brain! And she is a muslim who voted for Trump!

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

Moderator Action: Strange that I should have to say this, but here goes: images or videos of people exposing their buttocks and pooping are not allowed. Removed and infracted. - Bootstoots
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

Well I am very liberal about what I post..

Moderator Action: This is public discussion of moderator action (PDMA), which forces me to infract you again. - Bootstoots
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[schlaufuchs]

Feigning ignorance. You know the context and the tone of your words. Your rhetoric isn't new. Your ideas are stale and they smell, and we all know what it smells like.

...Teen Spirit?

 

[Lord of Elves]

...Teen Spirit?

"my favorite Led Zeppelin song is Stairway to Heaven"

@Liberals and reactionaries, fight! fight! fight! Like people don't have valid reasons for wanting to leave the United States in 2016. Like they could ever possibly get away with it. You guys are cute together.

 

[Camikaze]

You all ran Trump and his supporters through the ringer for making claims that they would not accept the results of the election, yet now you are praising Clinton supporters for not accepting the results of the election. You are all the classic "I only support democracy when it works for me" types. Grow up CFC.

Trump was widely criticised because he was calling into question the very legitimacy of the election, and inciting his supporters to regard the election as rigged. What Clinton supporters are doing through protesting (though not rioting), is saying that, although the election itself was entirely legitimate, those in the majority (i.e. Clinton voters) will not be afraid to use their democratic rights and freedoms to oppose the morally unacceptable policies of Trump. They are not saying that Trump didn't actually win, they are just saying that, despite Trump's legitimate victory, he should be peacefully opposed, in the same way any other democratically elected politician might be peacefully opposed.

In other words, when someone wins an election, there isn't some sudden moratorium on protest. It's not the job of the minority to just shut up and bow down to the majority (or in this case, for the majority to shut up and bow down to the minority). This is a concept familiar to Sanders supporters, for instance. The election determines who legitimately controls the levers of power, but it still up to the people to exercise their democratic rights in order to influence how those levers of power are controlled. If opposition simply fell silent once an election had concluded, it might be mistakenly thought that those who did not vote for the victor have subsequently acquiesced to everything that the victor now proposes to do. It's important then, that opposition is not obscured, but is rather clearly demonstrated.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Liberals consistently have far worse and more extreme behavior. Just watch and see how badly they behave once Trump takes office. I'm not going to draw this faux moral equivalency between the behavior of liberals and conservatives. Take BLM for example, their behavior has been nothing short of abhorrent.

Obama was elected twice and you didn't see conservatives behave like this. I didn't see hordes of them marching in cities across the country. They formed the Tea Party, but they accepted the results of the election. They built a political movement. They left just wants to cry, be butthurt, and reject the election results. They don't build anything.

Wasn't the Tea Party around before Obama was first elected?

People who arm themselves and attempt to overthrow the government should be gunned down.

So you're saying that the people who fought the British in the American Revolution should have been "gunned down"?

Interesting.

If someone puts a police officer in a position where their life is at risk then that officer is legally and justifiably allowed to use lethal force.

Except that we know that many police officers use a somewhat creative set of criteria for claiming that their lives were at risk.

It signals that the left lacks civility and only respect democracy when it suits them.

I know the left hates it when people say they support keeping law and order and won't allow cops and innocent people to get murdered by uncivilized goons.

Honestly, it really doesn't matter what you guys think about this election. The left has no power in our government for at least 4 years and after that they'll never have the supreme court in this life time and I gotta say you guys really do deserve it.

I could almost be reading the CBC comment boards back when Stephen Harper cheated his way to a majority government by using various dirty tricks taught to his team by American advisers.

Even here in Canada the party getting elected can get less overall votes and still win.

There's nothing undemocratic about that. People are just salty their party didn't win

The difference is that every federal riding in Canada has at least FOUR main parties to choose from (five in Quebec), and some ridings have as many as seven, once the fringe parties and independents are on the ballot.

The Reformacons on CBC.ca keep whining that Trudeau doesn't have a real mandate because less than 40% of the voters voted for him. What they miss is that over 60% voted ABC - Anyone But Conservative - and most who didn't vote Liberal aren't actually that unhappy that the Liberals won. I fall into that category; while a couple of things they've done this past year haven't met with my approval (I'm pretty steamed with the inept effort at the assisted-dying bill, for example), it's still a hell of a lot better than what we had for the past 9.5 years.

It should be interesting to see what happens over the next year or two in Alberta; Harper's lapdog Jason Kenney is here, trying to "unite the right" in a more ethical way than the old Reform-Alliance did when they hijacked the Progressive Conservatives a long while back. Right now, neither right-wing party here is especially eager to be united.

The only counterinsurgency that were going to have in this country will be from violent leftists after the government starts sending out riot police to deal with these morons and they start killing cops.

I am beyond disgusted with the left. What you speak of about the right is pure fantasy. How about admitting what trash the left has become for once? Instead of creating imaginary scenarios to draw some false moral equivalency. We have one side. ONE SIDE. That is behaving like animals. They're going to turn this country into a police state and when they do I hope you love it. Trump hasn't even taken office yet and it's this bad.

Behaving like this over an election. This is pathetic. These people are demented.

Yes, SOME of the left are not taking this well. Violence isn't the right answer, no matter which party loses. In my province in Canada, we elected an NDP government after 44 straight YEARS of Conservative rule and 36 YEARS of Social Credit rule before that (the Socreds were also right-wing, but more intolerant ones).

So what did some of the fine, upstanding "rightists" do? They promptly started sending death threats to our new Premier. Effigies were made, and she's got security issues that are appalling. Assassination isn't how Canadians - at least normal, sane Canadians - handle political disagreements. These right-wingers are understandably worried about their jobs, but to threaten assassination and put up effigies is not normal or sane.

ranting

Wow.

I appreciate you shifting the goal posts. Even here in Canada? Apparently it didn't occur to you that's not very democratic. Democratic would be: one man, one vote. (Including ladies and CBGT, of course.) Any situation in which your vote doesn't count for 1, but some other number, is in principle not democratic. And yes, that's by design.

But again, that wasn't the argument.

One major plank in the Liberals' platform was to change the voting system from FPTP to something else. Now they're musing that maybe they don't need to be too concerned about that. If they renege on this promise, it will cost them in 2019. I know I would never consider voting for them if they break this promise. My vote has NEVER counted in a federal election. You could run a piece of biomatter from my cats' litter box as a Conservative in my riding and it would be elected over any other party's candidate.

My MP claims to speak for "everyone" in his riding, but he certainly does not speak for those of us who voted Liberal, NDP, or Green.

It is one human, one vote. However, you are usually voting for a representative in your own riding, and not throwing your vote into a giant hat into which all votes from the entire country go.

This could change if we move to proportional representation.

"We didn't won the elections and so we are going to cry and threaten to leave unless we get our way!"

Spoiled child- actually spoiled 'adult' democrats.

The separatists in my province regularly post nonsense like this on CBC.ca. The most recent posting I noticed was last week. Mind you, the Alberta separatists are a bunch of crackpots who even Preston Manning realized would be unelectable and kicked them out of the old Reform Party back in the 1990s.

 

[Agent327]

"We didn't won the elections and so we are going to cry and threaten to leave unless we get our way!"

Spoiled child- actually spoiled 'adult' democrats.

That pretty much sums up Mr Trump's reaction tweet upon hearing people were protesting his win: "So unfair!"

(From the candidate who threatened not to recognize the election results unless he won.)

 

[Arwon]

If "trantrum because you didn't get your way" is how you interpret protests against Trump, then that just demonstrates you never had anything else at stake except getting your way in and of itself.

 

[abradley]

IMO protesting is fine as long as it's peaceful and doesn't block traffic, ect.

For those of you who are unhappy with the results there's this:

Introduction

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[Zardnaar]

The democrats lost the election on both the State and Federal level. The people voted for a republican controlled house, senate and presidency. The conservatives have also had a majority in both house and senate for the last 4 years. This election was nothing short of decisive.

The electoral college is the best tool we have for holding elections because if you didn't have it the cities would dominate the rest of the State and the more populous States would dominant the smaller States. If you went solely by the popular vote you wouldn't be able to keep the union together under such conditions. That's why the electoral college (although not perfect) is set up to allow every part of the country to be represented.

I'm not a American but remember that whole taxation without representation thing in 1776?

A vote in Wyoming is worth 3 votes in California. Various flawed democracies or totalitarian regimes have lopsided electorate sizes. Here all of them are similar size and there is no gerrymandering.

So even when it was winner takes all you by default won the popular vote if you won the most electorates.
Lets say you have 100 000 people with a 50/50 split among conservatives and liberals. The liberals create 10 states/electorates with 5000 voters each, the Conservatives get 5 states/electorates with 10 000 voters each. It would be impossible for the conservatives to win that election.

Do you think that is fair? That is essentially what you have in the states. In an extreme case you can carry a US election with 23% of the popular vote by winning the 11 biggest stats IIRC by 1 vote each and losing the rest of the country.

Technically Trump won, 600k more people voted for Hilary and that lead is increasing. Losing the popular vote and winning the election hs happened 5 times in US history 2 of them in the last 16 years and every time it has happened it has been to the Republicans benefit. 100 000 voters out of 300 million people won the election for Trump.

If the voting system is rigged (it is BTW) what happens is say California and the western states decided to leave the Union or just refuse to pay taxes. California would be the 6th or 8th biggest country economically in the world and the blue states are subsidising the red states.

If they can't win an election because they lose the popular vote 2/5 elections in recent years and try to leave are you willing to have another civil war over it? Even if you win that it still means no tax from California for years+ reconstruction costs. If it came to civil war over it you are actually outnumbered and the blue states are richer (you lose).

That is one potential problem having an electoral college could do. Why would you stay in a country when the remnants of the Confederacy stack the deck?

Technically Trump won, he does not have a strong mandate for dramatic change though. If Trump has done anything slightly dodgy all it would take is 4 Republican senators to cross party lines and he is gone burger.

 

[Traitorfish]

The electoral college is the best tool we have for holding elections because if you didn't have it the cities would dominate the rest of the State and the more populous States would dominant the smaller States.

See, people keep saying this, but I have no idea how it's supposed to mean. If people are voting as individuals and as a nation, with no intermediate levels of representation, why are we talking about "cities" or "states" as if they vote as blocs? They absolutely don't: the highest share of the vote Clinton won outside of D.C. (which is even more Democratic than most cities) was California, where she won 61.5%, less than two thirds of the vote. In Trump's biggest win, Texas, he won by a slim 52.4% of the vote. Even solid majorities are, if placed in the context of a nation-wide popular vote, merely a concentration of support, not some ticket to ultimate power.

For that matter, neither are small states entirely homogeneous: Clinton won Rhode Island with only 53.8% of the vote and New Hampshire with 47.6% of the vote, and Trump won Iowa with only 51.2% of the vote and Utah with only 46.8% of the vote. There were only three super-majorities anywhere on the map: D.C. for Clinton and West Virginia and Wyoming for Trump, and only D.C. (which gave Clinton over 90% of the vote) was within a mile of unanimity.

For all the talk of "blue states" and "red states", support for either major party is quite varied within any given state, which wouldn't translate into a bloc vote in a straight popular vote. Perhaps a popular vote would encourage more people to cast a vote on behalf of their state and not their conscience, so you'd see stronger majorities in safe states- but if that were to produce anything like the influence as the winner-takes-all outcome of the electoral college, these would need to be some truly crushing majorities.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Wasn't the Tea Party around before Obama was first elected?

Nope. The Tea Party was an astroturfed reaction to the ACA (Obamacare). It took on a life of its own and ended up giving us Trump. It did not pre-date Obama and I don't know that it will continue in its current form post-Obama.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

IMO protesting is fine as long as it's peaceful and doesn't block traffic, ect.

Why don't you just make it clear...you think protests are fine as long as they don't work.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Nope. The Tea Party was an astroturfed reaction to the ACA (Obamacare). It took on a life of its own and ended up giving us Trump. It did not pre-date Obama and I don't know that it will continue in its current form post-Obama.

I think it's creeping north. There seem to be more people here who are happy Trump won, and have started to think that because he's an obnoxious bigot who got away with saying all kinds of things in public and ended up winning, that it's somehow become acceptable. There are two people like that in the leadership race for the federal Conservative party here.

Remember Sarah Palin and her "death panel" scaremongering? There are some spouting that crap here, but in reference to the assisted-dying legislation. They can't wrap their minds around the fact that the patient is the one who has to request an assisted death, either verbally or in writing and satisfy a list of other requirements. So that means that someone with Alzheimers or someone with advanced MS (can't speak, and is paralyzed) will just have to suffer because the legislation doesn't allow advance arrangements. Somehow, to these twits, that equals "death panels".

 

[BvBPL]

I think it's creeping north. There seem to be more people here who are happy Trump won, and have started to think that because he's an obnoxious bigot who got away with saying all kinds of things in public and ended up winning, that it's somehow become acceptable. There are two people like that in the leadership race for the federal Conservative party here.

You're worried about Trump's antics moving North.
I'm worried about Harper's antics moving South.

 

[Lord of Elves]

The whole "death panels" thing has nothing to do with the actual policy. It's never had anything to do with any kind of policy. In the absence of specific anecdotes - which I'm sure exist, but are at best few and far between - what we're dealing with when we talk about the death panel hysteria that took hold in the United States after Obama "came to power" and I guess the death panel hysteria that is moving north, is a kind of nightmarish fantasy. If you ever read any of the literature put out by the Tea Party - and admittedly it was hard to read because it was so frantic and skewed and grammatically questionable - they imagined something like Maoist self-denunciations or Stalinist show trials, where the elderly and infirm would be trotted out before an openly hostile panel of professionals and academics whose job would be to cull undesirables from the population. I don't think it's going too far to say that often this vibed with fears that the White and elderly would be targeted by these panels, as a "dying breed" that needs to be exterminated.

Guilty, much? This resembles nothing so much as eugenics. In fact, a lot of them referred to it as a return to eugenics. Ironic considering these are the same people who are now joyfully popping off about how they're going to find, beat and/or kill people who don't belong in this man's country. Even more ironic considering many of the doddering, fearful reactionaries clutching their oxygen tanks in horror at the thought that highfalutin' college-educated Blacks might sentence them to death were there when they and their own were doing just that to people of color, queer people, and all the other usual changeling children that Uncle Sam doesn't want.

When reactionaries wax afraid about death panels what they're really doing is constructing an elaborate "out" for complicity in America's very shameful and very real eugenics programs, many of which weren't discontinued until the latter half of the 20th century. Without being too pop psychologist, it's such classic projection that it's embarrassing it has to be explained to anyone that the people who are so afraid of death panels are talking about the very thing they have done to their own enemies.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

You're worried about Trump's antics moving North.
I'm worried about Harper's antics moving South.

Harper's followers haven't learned a damned thing from his defeat over a year ago. One of the first indications was soon after the election last year when Rona Ambrose (the interim leader of the federal Conservatives until they choose a permanent one) opened her mouth and said the words "as soon as we get back in power..." and it became obvious that this is all they want - to get back into power so they can continue the agenda that got disrupted when the rest of us said "ENOUGH!" and booted them out.

The whole "death panels" thing has nothing to do with the actual policy. It's never had anything to do with any kind of policy. In the absence of specific anecdotes - which I'm sure exist, but are at best few and far between - what we're dealing with when we talk about the death panel hysteria that took hold in the United States after Obama "came to power" and I guess the death panel hysteria that is moving north, is a kind of nightmarish fantasy. If you ever read any of the literature put out by the Tea Party - and admittedly it was hard to read because it was so frantic and skewed and grammatically questionable - they imagined something like Maoist self-denunciations or Stalinist show trials, where the elderly and infirm would be trotted out before an openly hostile panel of professionals and academics whose job would be to cull undesirables from the population. I don't think it's going too far to say that often this vibed with fears that the White and elderly would be targeted by these panels, as a "dying breed" that needs to be exterminated.

Guilty, much? This resembles nothing so much as eugenics. In fact, a lot of them referred to it as a return to eugenics. Ironic considering these are the same people who are now joyfully popping off about how they're going to find, beat and/or kill people who don't belong in this man's country. Even more ironic considering many of the doddering, fearful reactionaries clutching their oxygen tanks in horror at the thought that highfalutin' college-educated Blacks might sentence them to death were there when they and their own were doing just that to people of color, queer people, and all the other usual changeling children that Uncle Sam doesn't want.

When reactionaries wax afraid about death panels what they're really doing is constructing an elaborate "out" for complicity in America's very shameful and very real eugenics programs, many of which weren't discontinued until the latter half of the 20th century. Without being too pop psychologist, it's such classic projection that it's embarrassing it has to be explained to anyone that the people who are so afraid of death panels are talking about the very thing they have done to their own enemies.

Eugenics has occurred in my province, where some "undesirables" like orphans, children of unwed mothers, etc. were shuffled off to the same facility that housed cognitively-impaired people. They were routinely sterilized, and one woman, after her release (she was found to have a normal IQ when tested properly), sued.

 

[Lord of Elves]

@Valka D'Ur, yup. I'd go so far as to say that without eugenics we would have no real precedent, no cultural idea, for these "death panels" people are so afraid of. Short of the show trials and self-denunciations, which really aren't the same thing, we have no other example of this idea.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

@Valka D'Ur, yup. I'd go so far as to say that without eugenics we would have no real precedent, no cultural idea, for these "death panels" people are so afraid of. Short of the show trials and self-denunciations, which really aren't the same thing, we have no other example of this idea.

I'm just being honest about my province's history.

As for the Canadian version of this kind of scaremongering, it takes the form of "put Grandma in the hospital and tell the doctor to kill her so you can get your inheritance sooner" or "they're going to kill Grandma because there aren't enough beds for everyone".

It is true that we don't have remotely enough beds (spaces in seniors' facilities) for everyone who needs one, and my own dad has been shuffled around the province several times in the last 9 years (the rules say anywhere within 100 km of the patient's home). This time he was able to come back here from a city north of here, and I did not have to hope that someone else would die so a bed space would be freed up for him. He's in a new facility that's part assisted living and part regular seniors' apartments.

But when it comes down to him dying, he isn't eligible for assisted death no matter how bad it might get. He was diagnosed with dementia 9 years ago, which means he doesn't have the legal right to consent, and even though I'm his guardian I don't have the legal right to apply on his behalf (even though I know from discussions we had over the years that if he were ever to end up with terminal cancer, he didn't want to be subjected to what he saw his cousin, uncle, and girlfriend go through).

 

[Archbob]

Good Lord I have found a liberal with a brain! And she is a muslim who voted for Trump!

How did the Jews for Hitler thing work out?