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42 minutes ago, Tryhard said:

Quite astounding.

I really thought that was satire at first, but it's his actual account (not sure why he isn't using the POTUS twitter but hey). Trump can go barely one day without surprising me in some new way.

"Any negative polls are fake news"

That's...That's the answer of a child. I understand that no ones likes being constantly criticized by the media, but with the way he acts whenever they do anything he doesn't like, he's giving them excuses for them to continuing with their criticism. Besides, Trump was never popular, in a positive way, with the media, what did he expect that they would do once he became president? With the way he seems more pissed off than usual with the media, I think he was honestly expecting that everyone would shut up and respect him once he became president. I wonder how long it will be before Trump declares war on mass media? As in, trying to create some sort of law to make them stop criticizing him.

 

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2 hours ago, Flee Fleet! said:

Oh god the replies to his tweet are amusing as well.

 

Is it like that with every one of his tweet?

Every famous person's twitter and every big account tends to be like this.

I think the only accounts with more vitriol than Trump is an athlete's account.

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I feel a bit lost when it comes to my beliefs about politics (when it seems that everything has two sides and no clear answers).

 

Have any of you felt the same way at some point? What helped you to overcome that feeling?

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1 hour ago, Raumata said:

I feel a bit lost when it comes to my beliefs about politics (when it seems that everything has two sides and no clear answers).

 

Have any of you felt the same way at some point? What helped you to overcome that feeling?

I can safely say I was a libertarian when I was 15ish, where I believed that people could pull themselves up by their bootstraps and be successful. It helps that at the time my dad was making a six figure salary despite surviving two heart attacks and cancer, and I was living in one of the best places for public education in the country.

Then some things happened (restaurant burned down), my dad wasn't doing as well anymore (and you can also tell that his mental health was in a state - due to the chemotherapy - that if something went wrong it would spiral into something worse) and I realized that nobody is poor on purpose. I realized the reason why my dad came to the US in the first place (which was ultraconservatism taking over his home country of Pakistan) and I realized that my dad would happily pay taxes and donate because it is just so difficult to pull yourself up when you're poor. I can speak partially from personal experience, but I looked into the statistics on top of certain other anecdotes and saw that it's just not easy.

In general, it's much harder to be for something if you haven't experienced it for yourself. In the end, talk is both rewarding but also cheap - it might be harder to convince an upper middle class person that poor people get screwed over because they don't know any other life. It's rewarding because it helps you question where your convictions lie and it helps others do the same, but it's cheap because it's tough to change your fundamental beliefs from when you grew up.

My life experiences have shaped my beliefs, which is why I argue for certain things, but I also try to look up my assertions. For instance, I am a hard pacifist and I don't believe in violence, but I lean towards allowing guns moreso nowadays than I did even around a year ago for various reasons. But otherwise, I'm more or less a socialist, and I believe that people also cannot be trusted to vote or run the world because of the number of politicians and people in general (doctors and pharma companies being another key example) to run things themselves.

I'm not arguing any of this as an objective truth (though I believe it to be truth), but I'm just stating that many people really believe certain things due to how they're raised and what they've personally done. The issue comes when people purely use those anecdotes to justify themselves in proper debate - anecdotes in general don't mean much, they just shape you. You're only a year younger than me though, I'm not sure what your life has been up until now. Reading discussions also helps as much as participating and asking questions.

Edited by Lord Raven
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On 4.2.2017 at 4:13 PM, Tryhard said:

I did enjoy quite a few people complaining at the german magazine Der Spiegel's cover for this week. It's almost as if the concept of the free speech they attempt to push goes out the window when it's against them or a political view they agree with.

NY Daily News did it before (and the New Yorker currently), I know, but it seems more striking.

Here's a statement / a response to criticism about the cover by Der Spiegel. (also a bit of self-backpatting) It's been somewhat controversial over here, even among the more left-leaning newspapers like the Süddeutsche.

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On 2/4/2017 at 10:13 AM, Tryhard said:

I did enjoy quite a few people complaining at the german magazine Der Spiegel's cover for this week. It's almost as if the concept of the free speech they attempt to push goes out the window when it's against them or a political view they agree with.

The cover received a fair amount of criticism from people who aren't right-wing, or Trump supporters though.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38867961

And while approval rating polls for Trump aren't necessarily "fake news" (although I remain dubious of any polls after the election), national polls seem pretty meaningless at this point.

The political/cultural division is pretty clear. The people in the major population centers, liberals, will hate Trump regardless. Yet his core support among Republicans/conservatives, especially in the heartland, has remained strong.

Basically, people who never supported him don't approve, and people that did support him do.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-is-stronger-than-national-polls-suggest/article/2614092

Edited by CyborgZeta
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20 minutes ago, CyborgZeta said:

The cover received a fair amount of criticism from people who aren't right-wing, or Trump supporters though.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38867961

Sure. It wasn't exclusively talking about those.

20 minutes ago, CyborgZeta said:

And while approval rating polls for Trump aren't necessarily "fake news" (although I remain dubious of any polls after the election), national polls seem pretty meaningless at this point.

They are not meaningless. How many times must it be repeated that the polls were not wrong in the event of this election (and the Brexit vote, additionally). They were in the margin of error, and pretty much turned out to be on point more or less (considering Hillary won the popular vote by a fair sum, also correct in that regard). They were correct. You may want to point to people's analysis of the polls, these are not polls, as being heavily biased (for example, the Huffington post analysis that said Hillary had something like a 98% chance of winning or such) but even still Nate Silver I believe gave Trump around a 30% chance of winning, which is more or less fair for the results pre-election (in which Hillary was only up by about +2.1 points, once again in the standard margin of error.) There can indeed be criticisms about how the media handles reporting or analysing these polling results, but that remains distinct from the results being meaningless.

People who go around talking as if these polls have been proven wrong have no idea what they're talking about.

20 minutes ago, CyborgZeta said:

The political/cultural division is pretty clear. The people in the major population centers, liberals, will hate Trump regardless. Yet his core support among Republicans/conservatives, especially in the heartland, has remained strong.

Basically, people who never supported him don't approve, and people that did support him do.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-is-stronger-than-national-polls-suggest/article/2614092

Yeah, right now. But it is entirely possible for a Republican president to lose their core support, ala Bush 2008. Even then, 20-25% of the country still approved of him.

Edited by Tryhard
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18 minutes ago, Tryhard said:

There can indeed be criticisms about how the media handles reporting or analysis of these polling results, but that remains distinct from the results being meaningless.

Fair enough, although state polls like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania had results that were beyond the margin of error from the polls.

Trump may have won them by no more than a point, but considering the leads polling gave Hillary in those states, that sounds like a pretty big miss to me.

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2 hours ago, Raumata said:

I feel a bit lost when it comes to my beliefs about politics (when it seems that everything has two sides and no clear answers).

Have any of you felt the same way at some point? What helped you to overcome that feeling?

Not particularly, in my case. Even growing up in a household where I attended church twice a week and have a staunchly pro-life mom (but, then again, we're talking about the UK here and that's a very different kettle of fish; also, abortion isn't such a political issue there). 

I benefitted hugely from a social healthcare system growing up, and I attended university back when tuition fees were only just being introduced (I missed the cut-off for free tuition by a year or two; they were still low when I attended, though). So I've seen that socialistic practices can work. With the privatization of many industries in the UK in the 90s, prices rose sharply.

Everything has two sides, sure, but what's your thought process? For example, gay marriage. If you're against gay marriage, why? How does gay marriage being legal affect people who aren't gay? I used to be on the fence regarding many issues until my social circle grew to include people who were impacted by such laws. My life isn't impacted in any way by letting trans women use the women's bathroom, or by letting gay people marry, but my trans and gay friends are affected negatively if they have such laws made against them. I've also never been on welfare (and it's worth pointing out that, as a legal immigrant, I CAN'T be on welfare until I've resided in the country at least ten years. The myth of the immigrant - even legal immigrants, but especially undocumented immigrants - coming to the U.S. and taking your tax monies is just that, a myth), but I can see how it's benefitted friends when they've been suddenly abandoned by their husbands and left to try and feed their kids, or when they've unexpectedly lost their jobs and have no way to pay their bills. 

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When Trump supporters talk about draining the swamp, are they referring to putting a long-time Republican donor in charge of a department? So you'd rather see cronies that are out of touch with government and the working class over legitimate outsiders? Or did you guys want to see the world burn?

@CyborgZeta - with PA and WI - voter turnout was considered remarkably low there, and it was more or less Trump over performing expectations. That's still not saying polls are bad, it's saying that they're not always accurate, but polls are consistently trending low in terms of Trump approval ratings so it's not some sort of aberration.

Edited by Lord Raven
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Yes; Betsy DeVos's nomination is a tragedy, and it's an especial tragedy if you actually care one iota about the ordinary citizen - especially the working class and rural people Trump was supposed to appeal to.

I haven't seen a single person, especially amongst the teaching community, who thought she was a good choice.

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5 hours ago, Lord Raven said:

I can safely say I was a libertarian when I was 15ish, where I believed that people could pull themselves up by their bootstraps and be successful. It helps that at the time my dad was making a six figure salary despite surviving two heart attacks and cancer, and I was living in one of the best places for public education in the country.

Then some things happened (restaurant burned down), my dad wasn't doing as well anymore (and you can also tell that his mental health was in a state - due to the chemotherapy - that if something went wrong it would spiral into something worse) and I realized that nobody is poor on purpose. I realized the reason why my dad came to the US in the first place (which was ultraconservatism taking over his home country of Pakistan) and I realized that my dad would happily pay taxes and donate because it is just so difficult to pull yourself up when you're poor. I can speak partially from personal experience, but I looked into the statistics on top of certain other anecdotes and saw that it's just not easy.

In general, it's much harder to be for something if you haven't experienced it for yourself. In the end, talk is both rewarding but also cheap - it might be harder to convince an upper middle class person that poor people get screwed over because they don't know any other life. It's rewarding because it helps you question where your convictions lie and it helps others do the same, but it's cheap because it's tough to change your fundamental beliefs from when you grew up.

My life experiences have shaped my beliefs, which is why I argue for certain things, but I also try to look up my assertions. For instance, I am a hard pacifist and I don't believe in violence, but I lean towards allowing guns moreso nowadays than I did even around a year ago for various reasons. But otherwise, I'm more or less a socialist, and I believe that people also cannot be trusted to vote or run the world because of the number of politicians and people in general (doctors and pharma companies being another key example) to run things themselves.

I'm not arguing any of this as an objective truth (though I believe it to be truth), but I'm just stating that many people really believe certain things due to how they're raised and what they've personally done. The issue comes when people purely use those anecdotes to justify themselves in proper debate - anecdotes in general don't mean much, they just shape you. You're only a year younger than me though, I'm not sure what your life has been up until now. Reading discussions also helps as much as participating and asking questions.

 

4 hours ago, Res said:

Not particularly, in my case. Even growing up in a household where I attended church twice a week and have a staunchly pro-life mom (but, then again, we're talking about the UK here and that's a very different kettle of fish; also, abortion isn't such a political issue there). 

I benefitted hugely from a social healthcare system growing up, and I attended university back when tuition fees were only just being introduced (I missed the cut-off for free tuition by a year or two; they were still low when I attended, though). So I've seen that socialistic practices can work. With the privatization of many industries in the UK in the 90s, prices rose sharply.

Everything has two sides, sure, but what's your thought process? For example, gay marriage. If you're against gay marriage, why? How does gay marriage being legal affect people who aren't gay? I used to be on the fence regarding many issues until my social circle grew to include people who were impacted by such laws. My life isn't impacted in any way by letting trans women use the women's bathroom, or by letting gay people marry, but my trans and gay friends are affected negatively if they have such laws made against them. I've also never been on welfare (and it's worth pointing out that, as a legal immigrant, I CAN'T be on welfare until I've resided in the country at least ten years. The myth of the immigrant - even legal immigrants, but especially undocumented immigrants - coming to the U.S. and taking your tax monies is just that, a myth), but I can see how it's benefitted friends when they've been suddenly abandoned by their husbands and left to try and feed their kids, or when they've unexpectedly lost their jobs and have no way to pay their bills. 

Hope you both don't mind me quoting the both of you.  I appreciate the response.

My thought process?

Get information before I make a decision on the something. I try to do this and give people or laws or situations the benefit of a doubt. Unfortunately I end up being indecisive. Usually go to my mom or grandma for advice when that happens.

Those two and I don't agree all the time on certain topics, but I know I can trust them, even if I end up feeling a bit confused or unsatisfied with their answers afterwards.

Edit: Unfortunately, I'm a recluse. So my family are the only ones in my life. 

Edited by Raumata
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1 hour ago, Res said:

Yes; Betsy DeVos's nomination is a tragedy, and it's an especial tragedy if you actually care one iota about the ordinary citizen - especially the working class and rural people Trump was supposed to appeal to.

I haven't seen a single person, especially amongst the teaching community, who thought she was a good choice.

Out of curiosity, who does her nomination benefit? If anyone at all. Because from the research I did, not even some republicans want her.

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37 minutes ago, Raumata said:

 

Hope you both don't mind me quoting the both of you.  I appreciate the response.

My thought process?

Get information before I make a decision on the something. I try to do this and give people or laws or situations the benefit of a doubt. Unfortunately I end up being indecisive. Usually go to my mom or grandma for advice when that happens.

Those two and I don't agree all the time on certain topics, but I know I can trust them, even if I end up feeling a bit confused or unsatisfied with their answers afterwards.

Edit: Unfortunately, I'm a recluse. So my family are the only ones in my life. 

The internet is fine in terms of that. In the end, if you're confused on both sides, then it helps to think about it in terms of problems and solutions, and then researching how those solutions have worked in reality - so for instance, healthcare in the US vs in Western Europe or things to that extent. It's still okay to be politically confused, although at the same time everyone votes for the system that they believe (and in my eyes that belief is misguided far more often than not) benefits them in the end and there's little philanthropy in voting. So it may even help to think in terms of selfish terms and maybe come around to better reasoning later.

@Water Mage - she benefits the rich and religious and the Republican Party. Her aim is to make schools more religious, take away public school funding and open up the market for schools. Her success in general is very low because she had an advisory role in some part of Michigan that resulted in much lower quality of education. I would also like to note that her family has donated a hefty amount (200 million dollars) to the Republican Party so the elected officials are more or less bribed into this position.

She is truly terrible and will be a black mark on an already shitty ass political party.

Edited by Lord Raven
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7 minutes ago, Lord Raven said:

The internet is fine in terms of that. In the end, if you're confused on both sides, then it helps to think about it in terms of problems and solutions, and then researching how those solutions have worked in reality - so for instance, healthcare in the US vs in Western Europe or things to that extent. It's still okay to be politically confused, although at the same time everyone votes for the system that they believe (and in my eyes that belief is misguided far more often than not) benefits them in the end and there's little philanthropy in voting. So it may even help to think in terms of selfish terms and maybe come around to better reasoning later.

@Water Mage - she benefits the rich and religious and the Republican Party. Her aim is to make schools more religious, take away public school funding and open up the market for schools. Her success in general is very low because she had an advisory role in some part of Michigan that resulted in much lower quality of education. I would also like to note that her family has donated a hefty amount (200 million dollars) to the Republican Party so the elected officials are more or less bribed into this position.

She is truly terrible and will be a black mark on an already shitty ass political party.

Sheesh, that looks pretty bad. I can see why people are worried.  

And that also explain why I keep seeing on Twitter people claiming that she got in that position through bribe. 

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16 minutes ago, Water Mage said:

Sheesh, that looks pretty bad. I can see why people are worried.  

And that also explain why I keep seeing on Twitter people claiming that she got in that position through bribe. 

We can hope that they just leave her there as a figurehead honestly. Although, I think if I had children I'd just home school them at this point. 

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Homeschooling is a definite privilege; I know we can't afford for either my husband or I to stay home.

Also, although I've heard of many successful homeschooling stories (including two of my kids' cousins), teachers are generally better qualified than parents, and will generally have a wider range of resources and experiences. Teachers are already undervalued and underpaid and the perception that homeschooling is better for kids perpetuates this. 

I can't deny I haven't thought about it, though!

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10 minutes ago, Augestein said:

We can hope that they just leave her there as a figurehead honestly. Although, I think if I had children I'd just home school them at this point. 

I'm contemplating Canada.

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I've given serious consideration to moving back to the UK, but the requirements to bring my husband along are pretty stringent these days. And having moved country once, I know how tough it can be. And at least I moved between two countries with a common language, and with a support system in both. Immigration/refugee issues frustrate me hugely because it's never something anyone takes up lightly. It's a huge deal and for the people with valid visas to have been turned away at the borders... most people have no idea how much money and effort went into obtaining those visas. 

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21 minutes ago, Radiant head said:

yeah this is really bad, potentially a whole generation could have their childhood ruined by the damage they do to public schooling

Don't look at it like that! They're just grooming another generation of republican voters!

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While I'm very relieved to be avoiding public education under DeVos, I'm still a bit uneasy -- she IS now in charge of federal student loans, after all.

Disappointed that no other Republican Senator chose to vote against her, although I suspect those two GOP Senators that *did* vote against her only did so because they knew no others would. Even if Trump wanted a school-voucher proponent as Secretary of Education, could he at least have picked somebody qualified to lead a national school voucher program?

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1 minute ago, Fly_or_Die said:

Even if Trump wanted a school-voucher proponent as Secretary of Education, could he at least have picked somebody qualified to lead a national school voucher program?

the people in our government are and always have been chosen by money, backstabbing, and nepotism

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