News Thread 2015: Page 140 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

News Thread 2015

Biggus

Burnwinter wrote:
Qwiss! wrote:
Its more than just Trumps personality though. Cruz is the only other plausible candidate for the GOP and he's arguably worse than Trump. The Republican Party has lost its own base to the lunatic fringes, if you can even call about 35% of the country a fringe. I thought at the start of all this that Trump had grabbed a small vocal minority but the US has a serious amount of crazy cunts in it at the moment.

The effectiveness of the conventional political system has been hollowed out. It doesn't deliver for ordinary people, and so voters are always looking for a rainmaker.

Inequality in the US is quite marked compared to somewhere like Australia. Half of all citizens couldn't raise $2000 in a month, a quarter of whom couldn't do it at all; another fifth would have to sell possessions to do so. People who are so comparatively poor, and living hand to mouth, have very little latitude to transform their lives.

Well in a democracy aren't ignorant loud mouthed obnoxious arseholes entitled to representation too?

Qwiss

Burnwinter wrote:
Qwiss! wrote:
Its more than just Trumps personality though. Cruz is the only other plausible candidate for the GOP and he's arguably worse than Trump. The Republican Party has lost its own base to the lunatic fringes, if you can even call about 35% of the country a fringe. I thought at the start of all this that Trump had grabbed a small vocal minority but the US has a serious amount of crazy cunts in it at the moment.

The effectiveness of the conventional political system has been hollowed out. It doesn't deliver for ordinary people, and so voters are always looking for a rainmaker.

Inequality in the US is quite marked compared to somewhere like Australia. Half of all citizens couldn't raise $2000 in a month, a quarter of whom couldn't do it at all; another fifth would have to sell possessions to do so. People who are so comparatively poor, and living hand to mouth, have very little latitude to transform their lives.

Well thats all true enough but are those the majority of Trump voters? He offers them nothing real. I suppose "the Mexicans are taking your jobs" appeals to those people. Still I reckon there are a lot more people voting for Trump who can raise $2000 in a month than those who can't.

Qwiss

Biggus wrote:
Well in a democracy aren't ignorant loud mouthed obnoxious arseholes entitled to representation too?

Why do you have to make everything about yourself?

Burnwinter

Qwiss! wrote:
Well thats all true enough but are those the majority of Trump voters? He offers them nothing real. I suppose "the Mexicans are taking your jobs" appeals to those people. Still I reckon there are a lot more people voting for Trump who can raise $2000 in a month than those who can't.

Trump's not the only candidate who'll try to sell himself as a disruptive, transformative figure though. That's how Obama got himself in.

A vote in an evidently captured system means something different, it's a combination of protest, half-hearted whimsy, hail mary pass, moment of delusion. It's anything but a confident and rational statement of preference in relation to a clearly defined suite of policy settings and strategic goals.

Biggus

Qwiss! wrote:
Biggus wrote:
Well in a democracy aren't ignorant loud mouthed obnoxious arseholes entitled to representation too?

Why do you have to make everything about yourself?

JK

As no one has answered I repeat the question.

goon

Most of them are not really represented though, they're just manipulated and used for votes.

Burnwinter

Biggus wrote:
Burnwinter wrote:
The effectiveness of the conventional political system has been hollowed out. It doesn't deliver for ordinary people, and so voters are always looking for a rainmaker.

Inequality in the US is quite marked compared to somewhere like Australia. Half of all citizens couldn't raise $2000 in a month, a quarter of whom couldn't do it at all; another fifth would have to sell possessions to do so. People who are so comparatively poor, and living hand to mouth, have very little latitude to transform their lives.

Well in a democracy aren't ignorant loud mouthed obnoxious arseholes entitled to representation too?

The difference between America and other western democracies isn't that there are more loud-mouthed arseholes, you get those everywhere. Where it differs is the relative advancement of the capture of the entire system of government by elite interests, which has already had dire consequences for its public, whose interests are rather poorly represented in the country whether they're arseholes or not.

As a democracy becomes less representative and large sections of the population become more and more clearly disenfranchised, anti-political sentiment rises. Within politics itself, this sentiment leads to the popularity of eccentric or unusual, disruptive, pretending-to-not-be-business-as-usual candidates with big promises they can't keep. It's not rocket science.

Qwiss

Burnwinter wrote:
Qwiss! wrote:
Well thats all true enough but are those the majority of Trump voters? He offers them nothing real. I suppose "the Mexicans are taking your jobs" appeals to those people. Still I reckon there are a lot more people voting for Trump who can raise $2000 in a month than those who can't.

Trump's not the only candidate who'll try to sell himself as a disruptive, transformative figure though. That's how Obama got himself in.

Meh I don't think those two are tapping into the same thing. Obama said he'd change government, he'd bring the parties together and fight vested interests. He was going in to work on the inside with the political system to make it better (Sanders is similar now). Trump is saying "fuck everyone else I'm gonna fix this by myself" which is more like what Obama ended up doing.

MistaT

Obama sold himself on 'Hope' and 'Change' rather than specific policy and experience. That's similar to what Trump is doing, and after eight years of a Democrat in office - whom Republicans think is very liberal - its no surprise that Republicans want change. They don't like the path the country is taking for a number of reasons, many of which they are directly responsible for (economy, foreign involvement, etc.).

The problem with Republicans is they have sold their original base short by focusing too much on social issues. The wealthy rich male wasn't a large enough population once the USA economy consolidated into the 1%, and so now the Republican party has to win over the Bible Belt with pro-life, anti-foreigner (and Muslim) and gun control policies. Problem is, for much of the western half of the USA those messages ring hollow because its a far more liberal region.

Trump sucks and I told my GF"s parents that to their face....who then turned around to inform me that they support him. Good to know where they stand so we can never talk politics again.

Rex

Qwiss! wrote:
Biggus wrote:
Well in a democracy aren't ignorant loud mouthed obnoxious arseholes entitled to representation too?

Why do you have to make everything about yourself?

JK

😆

arsedocmd

MistaT wrote:
Trump sucks and I told my GF"s parents that to their face....who then turned around to inform me that they support him. Good to know where they stand so we can never talk politics again.

Exactly. I stopped snickering when talking Trump and have been generally avoiding politic talk since realizing about a couple of months ago how much more support he has among regular everyday working people than we would have expected. Pretty crazy and scary.

MistaT

Oh I'm still very passionate about politics and find myself discussing it regularly. The open discussion is a hugely important part of politics and ensuring government doesn't stifle important discussions.

I just now know not to talk with them about it 🙂

jones

My condolences MistaT

Meatwad

the homie trump went to evangelical liberty university to court that vote and quoted "two corinthians". hypocrisy and evangelicalism go together so they'll overlook the fact that he's never cracked open a bible since he passes the doesn't like muslims test.

Burnwinter

Qwiss! wrote:
Meh I don't think those two are tapping into the same thing. Obama said he'd change government, he'd bring the parties together and fight vested interests. He was going in to work on the inside with the political system to make it better (Sanders is similar now). Trump is saying "fuck everyone else I'm gonna fix this by myself" which is more like what Obama ended up doing.

Of course Obama and Trump were different both rhetorically and actually, but both candidates offered a route to sweeping change that would somehow transcend the limits of the existing system.

This is the trouble for Hillary Clinton, she's going to struggle to define herself as a transformative candidate. At this stage of the race Sanders is out-polling her against hypothetical GOP candidates in the abstract Presidential campaign that will follow the primaries, because Sanders is perceived as a political outsider.

Biggus

Burnwinter wrote:
Biggus wrote:
Well in a democracy aren't ignorant loud mouthed obnoxious arseholes entitled to representation too?

The difference between America and other western democracies isn't that there are more loud-mouthed arseholes, you get those everywhere. Where it differs is the relative advancement of the capture of the entire system of government by elite interests, which has already had dire consequences for its public, whose interests are rather poorly represented in the country whether they're arseholes or not.

As a democracy becomes less representative and large sections of the population become more and more clearly disenfranchised, anti-political sentiment rises. Within politics itself, this sentiment leads to the popularity of eccentric or unusual, disruptive, pretending-to-not-be-business-as-usual candidates with big promises they can't keep. It's not rocket science.

I think you're giving the public a cop out by just saying that they are disfranchised, in modern democracies where there is a free vote they are NOT disfranchised- They are stupid and lazy and so therefore get a government that reflects that.
So the system does work in a tragicomic way.

Burnwinter

You're not reckoning with the idea of system capture.

Research shows that no matter who you elect in the US, it's extremely difficult to get any legislation through that adversely affects the rich elite actually in control.

Obama was elected with a mandate for single payer health care in 2008, which was turned into a clusterfuck.

So yes, voters are not disenfranchised at the ballot box, but they are disempowered as far as influencing social outcomes is concerned.

Biggus

I think we've had this discussion before my friend, it revolved around the motivation of people,
A mistake "the Left" has commonly made is that they trust man is a rational being and will always calmly reflect what is the best pragmatic solution for him/her, whereas "the Right" has always better understood that man is first and foremost a creature motivated by emotions and moods, by feelings rather than thoughts if you will.

Burnwinter

Look mate, even you can't deny Obama was the best choice available in 2008, and you also can't deny he wasn't able to implement the platform he campaigned on. So where's the enfranchisement?

Left and right are abstractions, artifacts of a 50%+1 political system, society isn't economically divided into two halves it's a long plunging curve from the ultra-rich down to the great long tail of the rest of us.

For decades now those at the top have enriched themselves at the expense of flat wages growth and intermittent crisis for everyone else. It's all there, on paper. When it comes to electoral politics, the masses aren't misusing the tools they've been given, the tools simply aren't fit for purpose.

Biggus

Decades? The powerful have always enriched themselves, since the invention of currency power and wealth have always been interchangeable and we are the exact same species who emerged from Africa 200,000 years ago, everything has changed except the way we think.

You said it yourself- Democracy is a very blunt tool, the different forms in various countries simply reflect how much power those who held the genuine wealth and power had to cede in order to fend off complete overthrow.

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