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Ansem

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I wonder why that's there? I'm also curious how long that it's been in the code, or rather, when it was added.

That actually seems like a pretty clever spot to put that link, especially if they're looking for technically savvy people.

Although... I wish I could understand what exactly they mean at the end of the sentence there.

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2 hours ago, Lewyn said:

I know there is midterms in 2022, another presidential election in 2024 which Trump may return

Very much doubt that, if Trump tries to run again it will be a Ross Perot type situation. He'll likely split the Republican party right down the middle and make the united Democratic front stronger in comparison than a split Republican party. 

 

The real fun comes in if a candidate fails to get a simple majority of electoral votes in a 3 way split. That'll make previous electoral college complaints look tame in comparison. 

 

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I really hope Trump forms that new Patriot Party he is looking into, yeah. For now, though, I think focusing on what Biden actually does going forward is going to be very critical. I think a lot of his policies and plans are moving towards something better, but his talk of unity is not a great sign, so I hope he actually does everything he has said he would. If need be, he should ram it through, though I highly doubt that will ever happen. Still, there is potential for some good things to come out of this. I know he plans to reverse all of trump's policies that were just pushed through in his last week, and some of the other worse ones too.

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Day One and Biden's already flexing the executive orders: a mask mandate on federal property, reversing diversity training restrictions, and dissolving the 1776 commission to name a few. And there's talk about reversing the climate change agenda.

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43 minutes ago, Shipnoez said:

If need be, he should ram it through, though I highly doubt that will ever happen.

While the potential to do so exists I'd very much question whether the long term ramifications of such actions are worth it. Obama did this on healthcare and the end result ended up being an inability to get most anything done following the mid term elections, which left us essentially in the same place as we were before that was passed. Somethings improved, some things got worse, but the system ended up deadlocked for most the rest of his presidency and was one of the primary factors that lead to the rise of Trump and his victory in 2016. 

I think if Biden pushes too hard here it can only end with more sectarian violence from the fringes and mainstream backlash from the opposition which will be another ripe situation for someone similar to Trump to be able to take advantage of again. 

 

 

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Oh yes I forgot to comment about today being Inauguration Day, but I’m in the latest U.S. time zone and it’s still the day so we’re okay.

Congratulations to this whole country! This time we actually have a President that most of the people (who voted, but probably including everyone as well) want! Stupid electoral college... I wonder if that will get looked at any more closer since it basically caused the horrible administration of the past 4 years. Anyway, I hope all the people who died of COVID will be able to Rest In Peace now, and that those who died due to civil unrest will be able to follow suit during this administration.

On an unrelated note, these executive orders are looking nice. Cheers!

21 hours ago, eclipse said:

Alright, poll gone, who knows what the next four years will bring.  I think we might reverse a bit of the damage, but I'm already worried for 2024.

Of Trump rerunning and getting elected? Any republican winning?

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4 minutes ago, scigeek101 said:

While the potential to do so exists I'd very much question whether the long term ramifications of such actions are worth it. Obama did this on healthcare and the end result ended up being an inability to get most anything done following the mid term elections, which left us essentially in the same place as we were before that was passed. Somethings improved, some things got worse, but the system ended up deadlocked for most the rest of his presidency and was one of the primary factors that lead to the rise of Trump and his victory in 2016. 

I think if Biden pushes too hard here it can only end with more sectarian violence from the fringes and mainstream backlash from the opposition which will be another ripe situation for someone similar to Trump to be able to take advantage of again. 

Yeah lets stop letting how the other side may react dictate what we should do. They literally vowed to do everything they can to make Obama a one-term president at the onset: go into this knowing that'll be the game plan and stop giving them the benefit of the doubt. They have relentlessly proven they do not act in good faith. They know better.

Be more concerned about the massive pipeline of disinformation that has been peddled to a significant portion of Trump voters which has utterly convinced them that we're baby-eating Satanists, and the white supremacists organizations who are undoubtedly licking their chops now that the cultists are beginning to have doubts now that Dear Leader has rolled over and left them. Whatever comes out of that will probably be this "Patriot Party".

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8 minutes ago, Sooks said:

Oh yes I forgot to comment about today being Inauguration Day, but I’m in the latest U.S. time zone and it’s still the day so we’re okay.

Actually, that's me.  Unless you're visiting my state, in which case I hope you were able to wrap your head around our testing rules.  Or are in quarantine.

9 minutes ago, Sooks said:

Of Trump rerunning and getting elected? Any republican winning?

Someone who embodies the worst of the Republican party, but isn't a bumbling idiot.  Up against whoever the Democrats pick for 2024.  Today's the first step in a new direction, and that made Fox News unhappy.

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1 hour ago, scigeek101 said:

While the potential to do so exists I'd very much question whether the long term ramifications of such actions are worth it. Obama did this on healthcare and the end result ended up being an inability to get most anything done following the mid term elections, which left us essentially in the same place as we were before that was passed. Somethings improved, some things got worse, but the system ended up deadlocked for most the rest of his presidency and was one of the primary factors that lead to the rise of Trump and his victory in 2016. 

I think if Biden pushes too hard here it can only end with more sectarian violence from the fringes and mainstream backlash from the opposition which will be another ripe situation for someone similar to Trump to be able to take advantage of again. 

 

 

I'm inclined to agree with Crysta's point here. But, in addition, I think that Biden's policies making things materially better for so many people might just be enough to bring them away from the cult of Trump and the Republican party. I don't know how realistic this is but it's something that I think might happen, and it's a benefit to forcing things through, in addition to what Crysta already said.

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I think Biden can significantly improve the lives of 90% of Americans and they'd still believe the narrative they've been fed. Fox News is a disease.

Obamacare was watered down af but it was still a good thing and we saw how much they appreciated that lol

I think Biden throwing all the "radical" stuff he wants out right away is a good move even if Republicans are going to try to harpoon it with all their might and it'll inevitably get watered down: if the last four years has had any tangential benefit, it has been exposing how truly ridiculous Republican justifications are now that they've spent so much of their time and energy carrying water for a racist ignoramus.

It's going to be hard to put the mask back on, but they sure as hell gonna try. Don't let them.

 

Edited by Crysta
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Over these next four years, I mostly hope that America can heal itself; not just from the collateral damage from COVID, but also between the two political parties. America seems really divided right now, so it'd be great to see less hatred between the left and the right.

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28 minutes ago, Benice said:

Over these next four years, I mostly hope that America can heal itself; not just from the collateral damage from COVID, but also between the two political parties. America seems really divided right now, so it'd be great to see less hatred between the left and the right.

The issue is that the people who are wedging the divide are the people who have been in power for the last four years.

Anti-Trump people don't want pro-Trump people to lose their rights or be made second class citizens. They just want them to shut the fuck up when it comes to their awful, awful rhetoric.

The pro-Trump people want to kill the anti-Trump people. A good chunk of them literally think democrats are a Satanic death cult.

That's a divide that'll be really, really tough to heal, because the pro-Trumpers didn't become that way when they were stewing in the dark while Trump was out of the spotlight. They did it during a period where they had all the power. A number of congressmen and women were actively involved in what happened two weeks ago, and those people won't go away while Biden is president, and they'll still be there, continuing to drive that wedge.

Edited by Slumber
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4 hours ago, Crysta said:

Yeah lets stop letting how the other side may react dictate what we should do. They literally vowed to do everything they can to make Obama a one-term president at the onset: go into this knowing that'll be the game plan and stop giving them the benefit of the doubt. They have relentlessly proven they do not act in good faith. They know better.

While I agree that we shouldn't allow the reaction to totally dictate policy making, I do think we need to focus on what policies are realistically implementable in the long term. Currently we have a game of political football going on where executive orders are punted back and forth as administrations change. I believe there is one abortion related  funding order that flips with each successive president since the Clinton era at the least. I think this is done more for visibility and political leverage than actually making functional policy, but I do strongly believe this kind of unstable policy making is far more damaging to society in the long term than a less effective but more stable policies that can last across administrations. 

Let's not forget the Republican hold almost identical views on the democrats and had you substituted Obama for Trump here we'd have something that would be right at home as a Fox News opinion piece. I don't think continuing as we have will lead to any kind of functional solutions here. The political dynamic will need to change if we don't want to be repeating history every 4-8 years with more "excitement" in each cycle as we have been for decades now. I don't think our current dynamic is sustainable and our political landscape will see massive shifts as the baby boomers start dying off. I doubt either party will exist in its modern form in 30 years time. But who knows. There is kind of a stranglehold on any 3rd parties gaining much relavence due to the way the 2 party system works. I don't see a patriot party having much relavence beyond a single election cycle. There's been talk of this sort of thing for years now. 

4 hours ago, Crysta said:

Be more concerned about the massive pipeline of disinformation that has been peddled to a significant portion of Trump voters which has utterly convinced them that we're baby-eating Satanists, and the white supremacists organizations who are undoubtedly licking their chops now that the cultists are beginning to have doubts now that Dear Leader has rolled over and left them. Whatever comes out of that will probably be this "Patriot Party".

These are definitely big concerns. But the flow of disinformation works both ways. Extreme and fringe elements of both parties are magnified and made to look mainstream in an attempt to scare people into voting for the other guy. Rather than actually focusing on effective policies, it's much more expedient to simply bring out the "fear vote". 

I think far more troubling and endemic than the white supremacist groups is the religious extremist wing of the Republican party. They have been syphoning off non-active voters for years by pushing the fear narrative. It's only gotten worse as social media has pushed a lot of otherwise incompatible groups together under a similar banner. Most of the troublesome fringe groups you see online like the anti-vax camp have existed since the 90's at least in some form. They've only gotten more coverage and linked with other fringe groups to create the kind of unified conspiracy theory like Q-anon is. But the undercurrent has been there for years and I don't see it improving anytime soon. If anything nothing motivates voters to get off the couch and stop watching cable news than telling them their children will be eaten alive. Or they'll go to hell if they vote the wrong guy. The white nationalists in my experience are extremely fringe and are not particularly popular even with the more extreme religious segments of the party. They tend to be ostracized outside of a few regions where they have clout due to historical reasons. 

Edited by scigeek101
Removed unnecessary spaces.
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19 minutes ago, scigeek101 said:

While I agree that we shouldn't allow the reaction to totally dictate policy making, I do think we need to focus on what policies are realistically implementable in the long term. Currently we have a game of political football going on where executive orders are punted back and forth as administrations change. I believe there is one abortion related  funding order that flips with each successive president since the Clinton era at the least. I think this is done more for visibility and political leverage than actually making functional policy, but I do strongly believe this kind of unstable policy making is far more damaging to society in the long term than a less effective but more stable policies that can last across administrations. 

We need to focus on winning a large enough majority to implement long overdue policies because the Republicans aren't really interested in actual governance, just obstructionism and creating dumb wedge issues to galvanize their base. We do not need to take them seriously as a political party because they are no longer a serious political party. They did not actually run on any policy this election: just a cult of personality.

Democrats will inevitably have to water down what they present if they want to get it passed, but it doesn't have much to do with stability. We don't need to pretend it's complex or that norms haven't been completely tossed aside.

19 minutes ago, scigeek101 said:

Let's not forget the Republican hold almost identical views on the democrats

No. Democrats don't currently have Qanon believers among their ranks. They don't actively campaign on harming minorities, engage in voter surpression, or try to overturn an election. Obama and Trump are nothing alike, even policy-wise.

A lot of Republicans know what they spew is utter bullshit.

If we really wanna stop our current cycle isn't it a good idea to, you know, have the Democrats stop behaving the way they have been for as long as I can remember and not give the Republicans wriggle room they would never even think about giving them?

The Patriot Party will do plenty of harm in the local elections. That may not be enough to worry you, but it should.

19 minutes ago, scigeek101 said:

These are definitely big concerns. But the flow of disinformation works both ways. Extreme and fringe elements of both parties are magnified and made to look mainstream in an attempt to scare people into voting for the other guy. Rather than actually focusing on effective policies, it's much more expedient to simply bring out the "fear vote". 

The "fringe" element of the left is not in any way comparable to what is now mainstream on the right. This is fiction.

What do you consider the fringe elements? Are they the current mouthpieces of the Democratic party?

19 minutes ago, scigeek101 said:

I think far more troubling and endemic than the white supremacist groups is the religious extremist wing of the Republican party. 

It sort of blends together now. It's not surprising that a lot of fervor in the qanon circles sounds a lot like religious quakery.

Edited by Crysta
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33 minutes ago, Slumber said:

The issue is that the people who are wedging the divide are the people who have been in power for the last four years.

It's been a problem for a lot longer than that I think. And I don't think this is something that is unique to the Republicans either. It's just that they keep pushing the envelope and this kind of thing has been snowballing. It's resulted in not simply having slick politicians using this to try to rile up voters. After decades of it people have grown up being fed this and they wholeheartedly believe it and are running for office and winning on these platforms. But I see similar trends forming in the democratic party as well and it very much concerns me that this division will simply continue to escalate until there is no hope of reconciliation or co-existence without violence. 

 

40 minutes ago, Slumber said:

Anti-Trump people don't want pro-Trump people to lose their rights or be made second class citizens. They just want them to shut the fuck up when it comes to their awful, awful rhetoric.

The pro-Trump people want to kill the anti-Trump people. A good chunk of them literally think democrats are a Satanic death cult.

They do. And it's getting worse, but I still think this line of thinking is itself part of that wedge that's been driven through the center. 

 

The vast majority of people in both parties are still very reasonable people who don't condone fringe elements. But the fringe elements are growing stronger and any semblance of common ground is collapsing. I think with the Democrats the party leadership still is primarily centrist in their views but if they aren't careful there I think a similar reckoning to the wedge politics will come for them as it came for the Republicans and you'll see the party shift away from that and towards the more fringe elements, which pushes more and more reasonable people to be forced to choose a camp and radicalize their own views in light of social pressures. Currently I think social media is the biggest element in this, but media in general I feel is contributing as it is simply more profitable to report on outrage than it is to report more objectively which I fear is having a feedback on our society and pushing people more towards extremism. In both directions. Largely based on fear of the other guy. 

48 minutes ago, Slumber said:

That's a divide that'll be really, really tough to heal,

I agree but I think we have to heal it or else it will continue to plague us going forward. 

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15 minutes ago, scigeek101 said:

They do. And it's getting worse, but I still think this line of thinking is itself part of that wedge that's been driven through the center.

Source this.

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3 minutes ago, eclipse said:

Source this.

This is my opinion. What source do you want for an opinion? 

Here's a recent news article on republican support for the capitol "protests"

 

https://www.newsweek.com/45-percent-republican-voters-support-storming-capitol-1559662

Most Republicans do not support the kind of violence that happened at the Capitol. Though a troublingly high amount do according to this poll. The party is very much split along these lines. But it's not a monolith. In many ways I think Trump is using this as his own wedge to spin off his supporters from their usual Fox News consumption habits towards whatever it is he decides to do. After all if you get all your customers believing that all other sources are "Fake News" you can get them to believe anything. You are already seeing this as hard-right elements of the Republican part are abandoning Fox News for being too liberal. Instead turning to sources like News Max or World Net Daily which make Fox News look like the communist manifesto in comparison. 

 

 

You can also read this article here that touches on wedge issues and their consequences. https://www.theatlantic.com/membership/archive/2017/12/the-irresistible-effectiveness-of-wedge-politics/547946/

 

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1 hour ago, Crysta said:

The Patriot Party will do plenty of harm in the local elections. That may not be enough to worry you, but it should.

Well they already are if republican primaries are anything to go by. If anything I think a 3rd party would be beneficial to the Democrats as even if they are in the minority they might still be able to eaque out a win in a 3 way election if the Republicans are split. I'd be more worried if they don't split off than if they do. 

 

1 hour ago, Crysta said:

What do you consider the fringe elements? Are they the current mouthpieces of the Democratic party?

Official party leadership no. The Democrats have still managed to maintain control. The closest to the fringe who has anything resembling a mothpiece is AOC. 

 

The fringe on the Democratic side does not have a united front. They've largely spun off into 3rd parties. Currently I'd argue the fringe elements that get the most Republican attention are the wannabe bolshevik revolutionaries who have tried to themselves to currently the BLM movement and before that the Occupy Wall street movement. Groups like Antifa. Various environmental extremest groups though they have largely been surpressed in recent years following terrorist attacks by ELF in the 1990's and early 2000's. 

None of these have upset the balance of power within the Democratic party in the same way MAGA types have. But that won't stop the Republicans from using them as wedges to dissuade voters from associating themselves with these groups due to "perceived ties to the democratic party". 

While I don't think they are equivalent. Similar arguments are used by both sides to convince their side not to vote for the other side. I don't really see campaigns as all that different across party lines. The song is different but the tune is the same. So I'm quite worried that they might backfire on the Democrats in a similar manner to the Republicans if we aren't careful. 

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21 minutes ago, scigeek101 said:

The fringe on the Democratic side does not have a united front. They've largely spun off into 3rd parties. Currently I'd argue the fringe elements that get the most Republican attention are the wannabe bolshevik revolutionaries who have tried to themselves to currently the BLM movement and before that the Occupy Wall street movement. Groups like Antifa. Various environmental extremest groups though they have largely been surpressed in recent years following terrorist attacks by ELF in the 1990's and early 2000's. 

None of these have upset the balance of power within the Democratic party in the same way MAGA types have. But that won't stop the Republicans from using them as wedges to dissuade voters from associating themselves with these groups due to "perceived ties to the democratic party". 

While I don't think they are equivalent. Similar arguments are used by both sides to convince their side not to vote for the other side. I don't really see campaigns as all that different across party lines. The song is different but the tune is the same. So I'm quite worried that they might backfire on the Democrats in a similar manner to the Republicans if we aren't careful. 

Yeah the current "fringe" democrats aren't very... dangerous, and the concessions they have managed to wring out of the Democratic Party have largely been good and widely popular. If Bernie and AOC are the worst they have they are doing pretty good. Antifa and BLM are favorite bogeymans of the conservatives right now, but they're willing to go great lengths to vilify even the most milquetoast democrats. I don't consider those movements inherently radical at all.

We need to stop entertaining bad Republican arguments. I don't care if they use them and I'm certainly not afraid of them when they inevitably do: lampoon and ridicule them, because they deserve it.

Edited by Crysta
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Yes but be that as it may we must be very careful not to drive these wedges in farther than they are. As they continue to work their way deeper into political discourse they make it all the more difficult for people to consider crossing the gap for issues that they believe in and prevents our democracy from functioning. Very scant few issues are wholly black and white even if there is a rationally justifiable "correct" side. I fear lampooning and ridicule outside the sphere of comedians only serves to drive the wedge in deeper. Some people simply will not listen to arguments or change their mind and are wholly unreasonable true, but others are always watching trying to decide what side they are on, I feel like there isn't much of any benefit to lampoon and redicule in political discourse rather than simply validate ones owns position at the expense of alienating the undecided. 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, scigeek101 said:

Most Republicans do not support the kind of violence that happened at the Capitol.

So, right off the bat reading this, 45% are in favor of what happened, and only 43% are opposed- the remaining 12% are divided between "didn't know this happened" and "unsure of how to feel about it," which is not exactly a rousing consensus that violent opposition to democracy is a bad thing. Moreover, further into the article, 63% of Republicans polled said they didn't consider the coup attempt a threat to democracy, which makes it feel like some of the Republican opposition to this coup has more to do with how ineffective it was than anything else, or in a more charitable reading has more to do with it being bad optics than the fact it was an attempt to keep a wannabe dictator in power.

Also, like... Trump's administration didn't begin and end on January 6 2021. He's had four years of vile rhetoric and terrible actions under his belt, and the Republicans (particularly Republican politicians) have largely been all for it, or at least stomached any personal dislike of him to get their own agendas through. And their agendas are also terrible, to be frank, but even if they weren't, working closely with an authoritarian who encourages violence against protesters and the press and sets up prison camps for immigrants is, perhaps, a sign they aren't nearly as reasonable as you're trying to paint them.

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Not gonna lie, this feels a lot like telling someone in an abusive relationship to be careful about angering their partner because you know what they'll get hit again, instead of like... actually dealing with the abusive partner.

EDIT: Seriously the most basic of preventative measures – wearing a facemask and not being all up in someone's space – were turned into political causes du jour b/c the moron thought it would help him get re-elected. Democrats are not nearly as irresponsible with the wedge issues. 

Edited by Crysta
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