I have lots of Japanese family and friends, and none of them understand the horrors of WW2. As far as they were taught, America just randomly dropped nukes on them. They’re mad because they think of Japan as a victim, not a monster that needed to be stopped. They raped and pillaged everyone who wasn’t Japanese.
At least Germany teaches their kids about their atrocities in hopes that they never repeat it.
Japan was definitely a monster that needed to be stopped. But to say that made it okay to drop two nukes instantly killing thousands of civilians is not okay in any case.
Mostly agreed. Historians and philosophers can argue ad nauseum about if the bombs were the only way to end the war, but we literally can’t know. Some argue that everyone will listen to the emperor while others argue that they would fight to a long, drawn-out death, citing the coup that happened even after the Japanese saw the immense power of the bombs.
My comments just give insight into the ferocity with which they attack the movie. Japan doesn’t teach their population about all of the war, the invasion of China and the Philippines, the rape of Nanjing…any of it. They are only taught that they were one day minding their own business when Americans destroyed two cities. It makes sense they don’t want to consume this media.
this isn’t specifically a Japanese thing though, most American kids are taught that dropping both bombs was the only way to win the war, when this is still the subject of a lot of debate. for that matter, they probably aren’t taught about how eugenics were effectively exported from America to Germany. I’m from the UK and I had to wait until I was reading history for fun to learn about most of the UK’s colonial crimes. the way history is taught in schools is just a bit shit
Wholeheartedly agree, history books are basically propaganda. Like, I it get if you don’t want to get into the gory details of war, but if that’s the case, why talk about murdering civilians at all.
Americans learn everything about the middle-eastern conflict from Sept. 11th, 2001 and on. They don’t know anything of what happened before then, or why these evil bastards were so mad, etc.
From what I understand this is not the main point of contention among historians. That Imperialist Japan, like all Axis powers, was a cancer that demanded amputation was not the justification for the deployment of nukes. Rather, the debatable justification was their leadership’s inability to surrender unconditionally.
This right here, there is a reason for a lot of the hate towards Japan in East and Southeast Asia, their reputation in the world today has drowned a lot of that out but it still happened and the crimes of imperial Japan are on the same level of cruelty as many crimes committed in the Holocaust some are worse
That to me seems like the same logic being used by the israelis to justify killing the Palestinians. Its never justified to go after the civilian population and non combatants.
That to me seems like the same logic being used by the israelis to justify killing the Palestinians.
The difference though is the availability of precise targeting of the enemy versus the civilians.
Do you potentially end the lives of a million of your own drafted citizens just for more precise targeting of the enemy? One hell of a moral dilemma for any leader to decide.
Its never justified to go after the civilian population and non combatants.
Absolutely agree with this, and one of the reasons I’m upset personally with Israel right now is that they are fairly infamous for being able to precisely target their enemy when they want to, and hence what they’ve done in Gaza to the civilian population that had nothing to do with the conflict is just horrific.
Having said all that, there is a nuance in the two scenarios, they are not equal.
I never said they deserved to be killed. They needed to be killed but they didnt deserve it. It just had to happen that way or they would have decimated their population fighting a losing battle.
But to say that made it okay to drop two nukes instantly killing thousands of civilians is not okay in any case.
My understanding was they were actually attacking manufacturing for the war, it’s just that an atom bomb is not that discriminatory, and that all the military-only targets had already been bombed out of existence by that point.
Not saying it was right, just explaining it wasn’t as black-and-white as you express.
Thats and interesting point, but it does make me think, why drop the nukes when they can just bomb the manufacturing hubs without incurring as much civilian death
No, the targeting committee was very clear that the targets were selected mainly based on spectacle and effect.
They purposely kept a few cities in a “pristine” (or as close as possible) by disallowing other bombings so when the nukes were finished the before and after would look more dramatic.
The fact that they could just ignore these cities before dropping the nukes shows that the targets were of little to no military value
No, the targeting committee was very clear that the targets were selected mainly based on spectacle and effect.
That’s not my understanding at all, only just that having witnesses was a side effect, but not the primary reason.
From what I remember from watching documentaries there were military targets in the cities, I think (don’t hold me to it) bomb making factories.
Feel free to pass on some links if you know otherwise, as history is always a learning experience. (See edit below.)
Edit: Looking at the Wiki page, under the section about targeting, it mentions this about Hiroshima…
Hiroshima, an embarkation port and industrial center that was the site of a major military headquarters
… and…
Hiroshima was described as "an important army depot and port of embarkation in the middle of an urban industrial area. It is a good radar target and it is such a size that a large part of the city could be extensively damaged. There are adjacent hills which are likely to produce a focusing effect which would considerably increase the blast damage.
The wiki article does mention what you’re stating as well, so in essence we’re both right, though I would still argue that the military objective was primary, and the spectacle as you call it was secondary, even if it was a close secondary.
Interesting post. I was unaware of this “random attack” teaching. Is this present day curriculum? Japan isn’t closed off to Western internet and media. It can’t be that close of a secret, I mean they’re watching Oppenheimer right now. Not like China where they lose you in a prison colony if you talk about certain historical facts and the internet and media are fully censored.
I’m reminded of the Japanese guy who remained encamped on some spit of jungle in the Pacific Islands until something bananas like 1975 or something, and he had been out there with two others still holding their position, and had shot like 15 locals. Even when NGOs brought them newspapers, they assumed it was an American trick because they were taught and still believed that Japan would never surrender and would die fighting door to door to the last. It must have seemed paradoxical to them. They had to bring back the guy’s commanding officer fom a retirement home or something and fly him to the island to get the guys to come out. As far as I understand, that sort of rhetoric is viewed in Japan how anti semitic rhetoric is viewed by most Germans.
Personally I think those two bombs saved a lot of lives by destroying Japan’s will to continue prosecuting the war, and two showed restraint that the world has continued to this day. As I understand, some in America argued for more targets, like as many as 50(?) cities? If that had happened, Japan wasn’t going to be any more beaten than if they lost the will to fight and surrendered unconditionally after just two bombs, and I wonder what might have happened if that tradition of restraint didn’t exist all these years. You know, if it had been fifty, sometime by now some despot would have been saying “what’s the big deal, not like we did fifty.”
Mines is mostly anecdotal - I grew up in Hawaii and became friends with a lot of Japanese nationals + my wife’s family constantly has get-togethers in Japan or America. Thankfully there’s several testimonies on Reddit and YouTube that I sadly can’t reference because I’m on mobile.
I want to clarify as well, I’m not saying the Japanese are bad, I’m saying why Oppenheimer would spark outrage for Japan’s general public. Some comments in this post could benefit from cultural context. It’s not as simple as “haha people who got beat up don’t want to watch the replay”. It’s tragic, and I get it.
As I said in a comment below, a country’s history curriculum seems to always show the country as a winner, or the victim of an atrocity. Every country seems to be guilty of this to some degree, I just like how Germany handles it: “we did dumb shit, we’re never doing it again, and here’s why.”
And still, even here in Germany, people played victim, the perpetrators just weren’t the people who “freed” us. There was (and still is to some extent) a “we didn’t know about anything about the holocaust, we’re all victims of the evil Nazis” mentality. This was, of course, most prominent in the years after the war because being a Nazi suddenly had consequences. And it’s obviously not true. While a majority of the population might not have known about death camps or the exact conditions in the camps, they certainly knew about the persecution of the jewish community.
Of course, our history classes do now teach about that (meaning that we did know, even though we liked to pretend we didn’t).
If you mean that all six conservatives could be impeached today, there really is only damning evidence against two of them right now and impeachment has to start in the Republican-controlled House and get a 2/3 vote in the Senate, none of which have a chance of happening.
If you mean that Democrats could expand the Court to 15 today, that also has to go through the Republican House first, as well as centrist Democrats in both houses who might view that as too extreme. I am an advocate for expanding the Court, but I would stop at 13.
I also think 13 is a good number because that would be 1 Supreme Court justice for each circuit court
But getting to that will be hard and not to mention unless a cap is put in place (I prefer tying it to the number of circuit courts) then the next person who scoots in could expand it further with less push back due to it having been done just recently
The last thing we need is every president who scoots into office appointing more and more justices until it gets out of hand
The way you do it is to - BOOM! - expand the Court to 13 on Day 1 of the next Biden administration, if Democrats also have both houses of Congress, nuking the Fillibuster if necessary, but delay it’s effect until September 2026.
Then, go to Republicans and give them a choice. Either we can reform the SC and institute meaningful reform, or Republicans can watch Biden appoint four judges in their 40’s to lifetime appointments, and they can wait until they have the Presidency and both houses of Congress to make a tit-for-tat response. (Biden’s appointments would only be subject to those term limits if the amendment passes before he makes the appointment.)
We can do a lot in an amendment, including instituting term limits, a firm code of ethics, a better process for confirmation where the Senate can’t just ignore an appointment, and formally fixing the size of the SCOTUS to match the number of appellate courts.
I know it feels good to say “Pack the court”, but it would turn it into a clown show with every new president adding double what the previous president added.
Yes yes this is where you say it’s already a clown show, and then I say it’d be even more, etc.
Yup. Until at some point the American people got fed up with the clown show. But some of us have been waiting for them to get fed up with it for quite some time. Maybe this would exasperate the issue to the point where we actually do something.
Please give me a hypothetical example of how “the American people” can actually change the fundamental structure of the 3 branches of government. Like seriously, I would love to know how.
So if enough people in every state complained about SCOTUS to their state legislature, the state legislature can force the people’s opinion up to the Governors who can do something at the federal level? I guess I’m just not seeing the actual legal mechanism that would be used to force any kind of change.
My understanding is any change to the structure of government at that level requires 2/3rds congressional majority.
And people act like “the people” want this in the first place. Nearly half of “The people” voted for Trump, and probably will again. The US is not united against the fascists. Hell, in this thread itself, you have someone blaming the Dems for not waving a magic wand and somehow assigning 6 more scotus memberswhen we don’t even have a majority in either the house or the senate, and taking such a drastic move with obvious dangers would certainly be objectionable to many.
Congratulations, the constitution now allows for the execution of gay people.
I’m not sure how people don’t get this. There are already plenty of avenues for the creation of popular change in the current democratic system. The problems we have today largely exist because they are popular.
If we really did get to rip up the Constitution and start over, who do you think would get to write it? You think Bernie Sanders is just going to stroll up with a pen and start setting things straight?
Step 1 would be organizing and unionizing our workplaces (with a focus on strategic industries like food production, railways, construction… the stuff that really makes the gears turn). The next step would be aligning the collective bargaining contracts negotiated by those unions to expire at the same time. Solidarity strikes were made illegal in the US, so unions are only ‘allowed’ to strike against employers who employ their union members. The collective bargaining contract expiration dates would need to be far enough in the future to allow the union to build up a nice little strike fund, enough to pay each member a stipend to survive off of for a month or two. Then the unions and their members need to negotiate with each other and vote to decide on general strike demands to change the current system (my preference would be on revolutionary unionism to end capitalism and put industry in the hands of workers democratically, but you could also do things like change FPTP voting to something else, or really any demand you want to propose that you think could make our country better for us). Then when the contracts expire, the general strike begins. Unions issue their demands on behalf of the workers and the gears turn from there. The only real way to create fundamental change to the system is to use collective organizing and collective action. What I’ve said above is just one way to go about it and I think it’s a pretty democratic way to do it, but there are definitely others (communist vanguard party, democratic socialism via electoral politics, etc.). The UAW is actually advocating for the general strike method and have set a date of May 1st, 2028 (international labor day) for other unions to align their contracts accordingly.
The Republicans will do whatever benefits them anyway. They haven’t needed to expand the court because there’s been a conservative majority for basically forever.
Limiting your actions because the Republicans will act in bad faith in the future is never going to get you anywhere.
"We go high when they go low." Has been the dumbest fucking slogan. Sorry, not sorry but that tactic backfired so badly that is hilarious. With these gullible fools we need to fight fire with fire. They don't respond to logic or reason. They respond to false "gotcha" moments and memes.
packing the court would set the billionaires giving the court gifts back like 20 years. I don’t buy the nonesense about how its a “norm” that’s shit the media made up out of pocket. There used to be 6 justices. That is the original precedent.
One, they haven’t had the votes since Biden became President. Two, that doesn’t fix anything. If we had 6 more liberal justices today they can’t just say, “Hey, let’s undo the bad decisions from the last 15 years.” They need to address the issues that come before them in regular fashion. If the Democrats had the votes they need to just start codifying everything we take for granted AND institute reforms (e.g. no more fucking filibuster, no stock trades for elected officials, and a SCOTUS code of ethics).
there’s only hundreds of billionaires and 52 weeks in a year. Even if they can pay them all a 100 million each year you still have to spend time with them and take them on your yacht to you private sex trafficking island. It takes a lot more work than just the money up front. The direct gifts and freebies are just the tip of the iceberg.
The entirety of gifts received by the justices over the past 2 decades is about $3 million. About $2.4 million of that went to Clarence Thomas.
Thomas was bought for $120,000/year.
Even if that’s just the tip of the iceberg, and the total monetary equivalent compensation were say, $1,000,000/yr… Over 20 years, that’s still only 2% of a billion dollars.
Also, it seems like justices are charging on the order of 1 million, so a billion dollars gets 1000 judges. Still plenty for them to get whatever they want.
Judges aren’t charging anywhere even close to a million dollars. You might be thinking of Clarence Thomas, who I pointed out as an outlier.
And even if I was off on my math, we aren’t getting more than 10,000 justices. Ever. Never. And even if we did, my math was based off only 1 billion dollars. A few people have MUCH more than that. So with that in mind, you’re going to need about 100,000 justices anyway just to outweigh the influence of money.
Oh, wow, sorry. It’s just Thomas that’s throwing it way off. My bad.
Also, I wasn’t disagreeing with your point at all. You’re absolutely right. Just that somewhere you had an extra zero, but it doesn’t change your point at all: judges are cheap and a billionaire could easily buy them all for a small fraction of their wealth.
Obviously that’s a terrible idea, but what is stopping a dictator from doing that in the US? The Supreme Court is the arbiter of whether things are legal. Literally what is stopping a dictatorial president from killing or threatening the Justices and replacing them with cronies?
Don’t worry, I’ve been told if we just keep electing right-wing corporate neolibs they’ll eventually magically change one day and reverse their drift to the right.
No one has been able to actually articulate how that wotks, but that’s the plan. Apparently.
Instead of correcting their falsified claims of rape, New York Times is trying to find out which person has leaked information about their stories and systematically harasses Arab employees to expulse any dissent against israel.
He's not even a game show host. He's a failed real estate mogul who inherited his wealth and then squandered it, bankrupting multiple businesses along the way.
Counterpoint: it’s more like they are trying to use support for him as the excuse to start the civil war? But if not him, they would find some other “cause” for it.
With arson, it is not enough simply to put out the immediate fire.
"I'll never forget the sweet romantic words he said to me last night: 'As a learning language model, I am unable to comprehend what the feeling love is. Here is a list of love songs from Wikipedia.'"
FWIW any state that has a reliable political majority will do the same. Massachusetts had ranked choice voting on the ballot and it ended up getting defeated at the polls by a sizable opposition campaign because it would only make it likelier that the democratic party might lose some elections, either to Republicans or (gasp) actual leftists.
There is literally no good argument for writing a law banning this. It’s indefensible. I challenge one person to try.
You can bet I’m going to start parading this around to conservative family members. This is such flagrant bullshit.
Edit: no good argument for writing a law banning this is the operative phrase here folks. RCV has pros and cons like anything. Banning it from even being proposed is indefensible.
Conservatives lose pretty much all the time when voting is fair. That’s why they work as hard as possible make voting harder and create districts where they are guaranteed to win.
If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy.
Missouri has previously done things like pass state laws that ban local areas - especially St. Louis - from raising the minimum wage. Which if you think about it, really works to the advantage of the rural people the most, to have a slave low-wage-earning population forced to live inside the city, so that whenever the rural people deign to grace them with their presence, their fast-food burgers are at maximum cheapiness.
After all, it’s their “fault” for choosing to live in the city - when any (cough not-black) “person” (or rather, 3/5ths of one?) could “choose” to “live” out in the country, for a cheaper price. Actual facts to the contrary be damned - see e.g. Ferguson, yes Missouri is where THAT infamous place is.
They actively take away people’s freedoms to live in the manner that seems best to them, and this is unfortunately entirely on-brand for them. Look up Scott Hawley - he has so very many things going on it’s hard to pick just one, but one that springs readily to mind is being the only congressman to vote against a child sex-trafficking bill. Who da fuq hears “child sex-trafficking” and says “yes please, sign me up for MORE of that!” (you know… outside of Missouri anyway)?
Which if you think about it, really works to the advantage of the rural people the most, to have a slave low-wage-earning population forced to live inside the city, so that whenever the rural people deign to grace them with their presence, their fast-food burgers are at maximum cheapiness.
There’s plenty of people earning slave wages in rural areas.
They can do as they please, subject to federal laws - the difference is when you cross the line to tell others what to do.
Take mask wearing: they don’t want to wear masks? Maximized freedom demands that they not be forced to… except that’s not good enough, they keep trying to force others to also not wear masks, b/c they don’t want to see those face diapers on other people.
Or take women’s medical care: they don’t want something like an abortion? Maximized freedom demands that they not be forced into having an abortion… except that’s not good enough, and the woman’s life has to be sacrificed (extremely ironically, in the name of being Pro-“Life”!).
So if they want to allow employers to pay slave-labor wages out there in rural areas - where tbf housing is legit cheaper, so that minimum wage really would go farther - then maximized freedom demands that they be allowed to live how they please (I am not arguing for maximized freedom btw, but they use that as their justification hence I am focusing on it here)… except that’s not good enough, and they literally pass state-level laws, preventing local areas from raising the minimum wage above the federal minimum.
So it’s a hypocrisy thing, where they demand one set of laws for themselves (freedom) while a whole other set of laws for others (the opposite of freedom so… slavery?). Also, they demand authoritarianism for themselves (employers being allowed to pay slave-labor wages, or prevent women from doing medical care procedures, or round up LGBTQ+ and shoot them on sight), but then when they deal with others, suddenly the “authority” no longer matters, and now they whine for the “freedom” that they themselves deny to others. What word would work best for this besides “childish” - its not even “selfishness” b/c a smart implementation of the latter would do a cost-to-benefit tradeoff analysis as to what actions would yield the greatest net result; nor is it quite “immaturity”, though that comes a lot closer. This is behavior that (I thought) most people grow out of early in life, yet here we are.
I just wanted to counter the notion that people in rural areas (a) are all wealthy landowners and (b) want to go into a city at all. Some of the poorest people in America live in rural areas, and there’s not many of them that regularly travel multiple hours to get to a city.
If you had said it was suburban people I’d definitely agree. They’re the ones who are going into cities a lot more than rural folks, and they’re generally better off as it’s all single-family homes there. If the rural people are behind preventing a minimum wage increase it’s because they want to stem the depopulation from people moving to the city for better paying jobs.
Please take some time to think in more depth about what you said. Not only are you wanting to “counter” a bunch of stuff that I never said (tbf we are using the word “city” differently - I included tiny ones of 100-1000 people whereas you seem to mean full-on urban cores of major metropolitan areas), but your ultimate answer would only explain why the rural people could give two shits about people that live within the cities - heaping those heavy burdens upon them without either offering a finger to help or even just simply taking the finger off the scale to allow them to govern themselves without that interference - but it would not justify why being so extraordinarily selfish is anywhere close to being “okay”?
If people in rural areas want to make life better in rural areas, then please do so - people in the cities even have and continue to offer substantial help in that regard!!! - but it is not okay to simply make life shittier everywhere else as a means to control the choices of other human beings. It is anti-democratic, anti-freedom, anti-friendly, anti-competitive, and a bunch of other stuff as well (anti-Christian, anti-sensical, the list goes on and on).
Also, black people DO NOT FEEL SAFE in rural areas. B/c they are NOT safe. Hence why they don’t live in rural areas, and for the past hundred years or so, never really have (in Missouri at least). So your reason isn’t even true - why are black urban people not allowed to vote to best take care of their own areas, without interference from the rural people who as you claim really have little stake in the affair to begin with, not even wanting to so much as visit. Except somehow they also want to move & live there permanently? And one of the big things stopping that is somehow… lower wages in a place that is “multiple hours” away? Even if true, how is 100-1000 kids wanting to move from a rural to an urban area able to outweigh the literally MILLIONS of people inside the cities who want to vote to improve their own conditions? (even if you count “those people” as a mere 1/10ths of a person, that still seems like a heck of a lot more than the absolute number of kids that might want to even consider moving into an urban area?)
There are huge gaping holes in your reasoning there. And it is literally destroying America, if that rift ends up causing a Civil War perhaps bloodily so, but even without that the obstructionism is already making it happen slowly:-(.
Well, thank you for answering at least. It is nice that we can at least try to discuss things here - on Reddit I gave up entirely b/c it was nearly always so hostile. I hope I haven’t come on too strong here - it is your position I am arguing against, not you personally:-).
There is literally no good argument for writing a law banning this. It’s indefensible. I challenge one person to try.
I’ve been in favor of RCV for a decade+ and believe our country would change practically overnight by adopting it; however, there are legitimate reasons it hasn’t been adopted. As stated and linked in the article,
Brown and other critics of ranked choice voting contend the system is confusing, and he said there are numerous instances in which voters didn’t end up ranking their choices.
Ballot exhaustion occurs when a ballot is no longer countable in a tally as all of the candidates marked on the ballot are no longer in the contest. This can occur as part of ranked-choice voting when a voter has ranked only candidates that have been eliminated even though other candidates remain in the contest, as voters are not required to rank all candidates in an election. In cases where a voter has ranked only candidates that did not make it to the final round of counting, the voter’s ballot is said to have been exhausted. An exhausted ballot is sometimes referred to as an inactive ballot.
Whether this qualifies as “literally no good argument” I think is dependent on the number ballots where this was an issue. You could make an argument that people aren’t educated about the system or the system isn’t adaptable for all voters. Whether those are “good arguments” is perhaps subjective.
It’s education for sure. We have very few issues with the system in Australia, which has been used for decades.
The exhaustion issue could be prevented by using full preferential instead of optional preferential (although some don’t like that because they believe it “forces” them to rank a candidate they don’t like).
It could simply mean they didn’t want any of the remaining candidates to get in. I suppose at a push, maybe it makes sense to choose the least worst of the remaining, but I can certainly imagine candidates I would consciously not rank at all.
How is an exhausted ballot any different from voting 3rd party today? 100% guaranteed for sure when I’ve voted Green my vote did not count towards anybody with a chance of winning. Is that any different if I could vote green and socialist and whatever else (but still not rank any major party candidates)?
I’m not saying there is no good reason for not adopting it. I am saying there is no good reason for writing laws that ban its adoption.
There is no good argument for passing a law that bans the adoption of RCV. It’s the GOP continuing to stack the deck in their favor, a flagrant attempt to stop a change they don’t like because they think it will hurt them.
He missed the point of my comment. I’m not saying there aren’t reasons to not adopt RCV, I am saying there is no reason to write laws that ban its adoption. They’re going to ban any system that could vaguely hurt them. This is a dangerous precedent when simply not adopting it is an available option. It also means if future constituencies want to switch over to it, they to repeal the law before they can even start to an enact a new one.
You’re right. I’m just pointing out that even the bullshit reasons are easily dismissed.
But conservatives aren’t arguing in good faith. They don’t sincerely believe that alternative voting options are bad, they believe they are bad for conservatives.
You mock but I have successfully changed the course of conversation when I bring up extreme or otherwise flagrantly undemocrstic actions like this. I have uncle who is completely rethinking his stance because he has been watching what governors in the south have been up to. Never seen him question the GOP/MAGA until recently, because he’s seeing the consequences play out for real now. Louisiana ending concealed carry permits scared the shit out of him.
A lot of people really do have a line and you need to keep showing them the stuff Fox and breitbart won’t show them. If we don’t try then we may as well just roll over and die and skip the stress of effort.
Up until now, AirBnB was more concerned about upsetting their providers. Now that local governments are starting to crack down, AirBnB now is more worried about staying in business. Especially if they end up on the losing end of multiple privacy lawsuits.
I think that even the most brainwashed Republicans are starting to realize that basic duties of their state’s government are being neglected in favor of attacking people that they frankly don’t even see
Yea, some of my childhood friends have staunchly conservative parents… one of those friends is gay. Conservatives are fine (apparently) with attacking “the other” but when your antiwoke campaign broadens to include family members then your voters suddenly remember what empathy is.
It’s fucking ridiculous that if DeSantis had stuck purely to antitrans rhetoric he’d probably be quite popular still because, sadly, most Trans people are invisible to their conservative family members… but when the net gets too wide suddenly DeSantis starts attacking people conservatives like and that causes higher attrition.
So the state supreme court ruled that a fertilized human egg is a human life and killing it is murder. Now the legislature is, in essence, saying murder of those innocent, unborn humans in this circumstance is okay. They care about innocent human life, but not when it might cost them votes, I guess.
Since self defense is a valid defense for a murder charge, murder itself is not against the constitution. In theory, the state legislature could pass legislation making “they looked at me funny” a valid defense for murder too if they wanted, so saying IVF makes murder okay should fly. I guess the state supreme court could say that this legislation runs afoul of the equal protection clause of the US Constitution since it only applies to some people, but who knows. Considering that these judges just make shit up these days they could strike it down because they passed it on a Wednesday.
The media has done “both sides” with everything he says out of this weird fear that the people that are now part of a cult and will easily question reality, might accuse them of being political. I think them (the media) always white washing Trump’s actions and word salad has 100% enabled him to make it this far.
also they are waaaayyy more critical than the first go round where they would not call out anything. I mean I sorta get it. His stuff was just so incredibly stupid and outside the bounds of what a presidential candidate would do that they just did not know how to react to it. Then also to he would do something rediculous each day so it was hard for them to have time and cover the previous stuff more in depth. Even online you would see people (like myself) ask what was the worst or stupidest things he had said to date or just a list of all of them and it was hard to find because there were so many existing and many being created in real time.
I don’t think it’s a “to much material” issue. It’s 100% not wanting to be seen as bias/political by people that argue and conduct everything they do in bad faith. It’s about chasing profits from an audience they aren’t going to get, because they are trying to sell facts to a cult that has been conditioned to discard them outright with no critical thinking involved, just blind deference to Dear Leader. And giving the press a pass is why we got Trump the first time, and certainly looks like will be a factor this time around as well.
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, call it a duck instead of “it might be a duck” or “some people believe it may be a duck”. The media is suppose to report what they see/hear, not play favorites or white wash things to placate a section of the country that has gone off the rails. Congress also needs to bring back some type of legislation prohibiting the types of Murdock “reporting” that serves only to muddy the water and/or throw shit at the wall for profit.
Media also has a HUGE problem with weasel words. I hear it all the time. “Certain politicians are saying”, “some people believe”, “it is believed that he was radicalized online” (by fucking who? to believe what??)
Be fucking honest. Republicans are saying crazy shit. Right-wing domestic terrorists are radicalizing people. Media refuses to come out and say this shit and it makes stupid and/or uninformed people think it’s both sides doing the heinous stuff.
Sinclair is another group out to muddy the waters and report “both sides” nonsense instead of actual news. Just watch the 2 instances now where they had every channel in harmony read straight propaganda like it was news. Watching them back with all the feeds synced up is wild and disturbing. I know the first time they actually lost broadcasters because they didn’t want to read propaganda like a robot to their audience.
Well I sort of agree but at the same time for months they avoided “being mean” to him. He lies repeatedly and it took a long time for most outlets to call him out for it
I could totally see him agreeing to a debate format same as last time, but apparently he agreed to a debate format where your mic is cut off after your time is up? I never thought he would agree to that and Im not surprised he’s trying to get out of it.
We’re not “trying to make every episode real”. Technology’s direction and human foibles are predictable. Black Mirror writers just aren’t blind and have a good sense of what’s coming down the pipeline.
That’s why it’s called Mirror. It’s about showing us who we are.
Sorry if that’s too horrifying for you, but this goes way beyond imitating the last person to mention these problems.
Exactly. And the other comments so far are pretty ignorant. All close elections are won by winning over independents AND people registered to the other party. Just because Republicans in Congress appear largely in lock-step with Trump doesn't mean Republican voters are.
It's fair to speculate that many Trump haters left the Republican party in 2016 and more in 2020. But certainly not all of them. And beyond the Trump haters are a swathe of people uncertain or uncomfortable with Trump who can be won over.
Elections are won by appealing to the center, where the majority of the populace sits, while not alienating (too many) people on your flank.
Two party politics is a lot of this problem. Ranked choice voting would help a lot. But even in parliamentary systems, coalitions have to gather support in the center without pissing off the edges too much.
Don't accuse me of lies. Trump dog whistled to the far right and appealed to the ignorant center. The folks who thought he was a savvy business man who would run the country better than some lifelong politician. The ignorant center that somehow thought Trump would create jobs and restore the rust belt to it's former glory.
No, Trump did not run to the center of anything. From the very beginning, he was overtly racist. FFS, he called Mexicans rapists during his announcement.
If you don’t want people to say you’re lying, don’t lie. I get that you’re happy when the party moves to the right and ignores progressives, but you don’t need to tell lies to justify it.
And yet, she got more votes than Trump. She did appeal to more people, it’s that the system is broken that getting more votes doesn’t make you the winner.
It’s almost like Trump appealed to the fucking shitheads whose votes count for more than the rest of us.
Speaking to the center in swing states is important and Mrs. Clinton failed to bother with MI, PA, WI, or MN, because she thought he was an easy opponent.
Compare it to a party, or a social gathering. Bill is a bit racist and a loose cannon ® but he shows up every time. Kelly and Joe are cool and level headed and show up quite regularly. Then there is Scott who shows up maybe 10% of the time.
Now, if I’m looking to invite people to the party and can only pick two, do I go for Kelly and Joe who are quite reliable or do I go with Scott and one of the other two knowing Scott says he’ll go but then doesn’t or just says flat out he isn’t gonna come?
There are people whose whole jobs revolve around political campaigning and the data says progressives by and large will find one reason or another to not go vote. Or just vote for some esoteric third party therefore “wasting” the vote.
Put simply, the Dem message can’t stretch far enough to cover both “centrist” voters and the way out there progressives. So a choice has to be made and the centrists come out to vote more often than progressives (at least for the Dems.) Or there are more of them compared to progressives coming out.
So I’ll ask you too- what is the path forward to political viability for progressives? And I want a real honest to god plan and not just pie in the sky “well if we just abstain for the next few decades like we’ve been doing then they’ll see the light” crap.
Compare it to a party, or a social gathering. Bill is a bit racist and a loose cannon ® but he shows up every time. Kelly and Joe are cool and level headed and show up quite regularly. Then there is Scott who shows up maybe 10% of the time.
Now, if I’m looking to invite people to the party and can only pick two, do I go for Kelly and Joe who are quite reliable or do I go with Scott and one of the other two knowing Scott says he’ll go but then doesn’t or just says flat out he isn’t gonna come?
Appealing to your best friend Bill isn’t going to get Kelly and Joe to show up any more reliably, and Scott is fed up with how you keep cozying up to Bill. But you always intended to blame Scott for no one coming to your “Let’s all be like Bill” party.
Bill is there to present the landscape only you blockhead.
Except Biden is courting Bill in this scenario.
Big surprise- ensign is always complaining acting like he’s smarter but doesn’t have the answers.
I don’t have to have the answers to know that “abandon your base to court lunkheads who hate you” is a stupid idea, no matter how much it means you get to move right.
If progressives were even half as popular and half as dedicated as they think themselves to be then they’d sweep elections across the country.
Imagine more AOC hitting the pavement and voting in primaries and less whining and crying on the internet. I like AOC and progressive causes and such but it’s apparent that there is not enough there (either by apathy or lack of resonance with progressive ideas) to make progressivism a real popular cause.
So I ask progressives- what is the path forward to political viability?
Because I like to contrast this with the whackos on the right. The one thing to their credit is they vote every. single. time. And hence the Republican party has gone from right to off-the-rails right and dragged the country with them. They got it done somehow. How do progressives do the same but in reverse?
I’m a progressive. Why would I do that? Most progressives live in states where voting for President has no effect anyway. The blue wall, + New York, + Illinois…
All close elections are won by winning over independents
Not true. It’s also possible to win by increasing your side’s turnout. And independents aren’t all centrists.
Republicans already have a major party catering directly to their interests. Meanwhile a full third of the country doesn’t vote. Obviously it’s a better strategy to give non-voters a reason to be engaged rather than trying to win over people who hate you and everyone who looks like you.
Yeah, the choice is pretty clear and Biden, while definitely too old, seems to be more with it than Trump. Maybe eating buckets of KFC in your 70s isn’t the best idea.
Here’s the thing tho: it’s been “vote blue to save democracy” but the DNC is just as fucked up just without the outwardly fascist leanings. No one wants to vote for Biden, they just want to vote against Trump. It’s lose/lose and the most marginalized of us are going to get savagely fucked or slightly less fucked depending who’s voted in.
There’s no viable candidate who doesn’t want to give Isreal carte blanche to commit genocide with US backing, no one wants to address money in politics… the fucking economy is a mess for the rank and file, non owning class majority of us. If these very real issues are mentioned, suddenly it’s progressives’ fault the Trump with be president. Fuck all that. Explain why I’m supposed to be enthusiastic?
I get voting for harm reduction and by virtue of the electoral college, my presidential vote won’t matter in my state (my state has been “safe democratic” for the last half century) but when I cast my vote I will be holding my nose
Question for you: has any candidate for president, or even someone running in a party’s primary, ever been perfectly aligned with your beliefs on all things?
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