Shipnoez

What's going on right now with GameStop stocks and WSB is incredible. It's unfortunate that it's being halted by the people on top, but I think this display of power just to say fuck you to the people on wall street by the common person is amazing. I do expect a bill to be passed in the coming weeks to prevent retail investors from doing this ever again, because that's how our legal system works, but it will have been fun while it lasted.

I mean, at this point, I feel like the impeachment will go through and be successful no matter what, and he won't have a Republican Senate to try to stop it or let him off the hook, so yeah I'd probably rather wait for more charges to pile up.

Yeah this makes a lot more sense. Apologies for my misinterpretation. Like I said before, I agree with you guys that the Confederacy is indeed bad, yes. The statues should be removed as well.

Man, I'm a far leftist. Do you really think I support the Confederacy? This isn't me trying to say the statues should be left up. Tear em all down, for all I care. I'm just pointing out that the message that they carry should not be one of insurrection being bad by virtue of it being insurrection.

This is actually something I brought up earlier. I was just pointing out that insurrections are not necessarily bad by their very nature. The American Revolution was one, after all.

I'm not gonna address the rest of the stuff you guys have posted on statues cause I don't think it'd get much of anywhere and I think I've made my point as well as I can, but tbh I feel like the sentiment that insurrection is always bad is not what should be taken from these statues, since it can be necessary at times and serve useful purposes.

Hey, I mean, at least Biden disbanded that damn thing today! But yeah, I definitely agree here. I think this is fair and what I'd also think, but keep in mind not everyone is a visitor. Even if these states are racist places, keeping the statues up would only serve to reinforce that to the people there and the people outside. Like I said, the removal definitely needs to be in conjunction with a larger push for accurate education, but removal is definitely more achievable in a shorter timeframe. Something I mentioned a few pages back is how I don't support how it feels like Democrats are leaving red states and southern states behind, and I think this feeds into that sort of mentality, even though I know this isn't what you're trying to communicate at all! I know myself until recently I had the pretty ignorant view of southern states being racist backwater places who don't deserve attention since I grew up in a pretty liberal area, and the statues definitely contributed to my point of view. It's a bit hard to imagine this sort of thing, but I feel like if I grew up around Confederate statues, even with those plaques, my opinion would definitely be tinted to be more, not in favor of, but lenient, regarding their, many, many failings, because statues are very specific in their purpose. I'd be inclined to agree with you here, which is why I think that plaques are not super effective. Even if half of all people read them, that's still 50% of the population seeing the statues in their original light, lol.

I don't think we should destroy history for sure, but I think there are better ways to communicate it. You don't need statues to remain up for the history to exist. If you do, I think that's more a failure of the education system to teach people things than a virtue of statues as a medium to teach history. The difference with Dachau is that it is in an entire area that is dedicated to being preserved as a museum to remember past atrocities. Confederate statues aren't really closed off, they're just kind of there in the middle of towns and cities and institutions. And I think your last line is pretty important. It's super hard to control how people behave in the presence of a statue, so if you put the plaque there it's kinda just there. In a museum at least you're kinda expected to read and learn, but out in public? Not so much. Like I said before, context is super important with stuff like this. This is less like Dachau and more like if you had statues of Nazi officers littered around cities of Germany. Of course it's not nearly as bad, this is an extreme analogy, but I think I got the message across. And I think your comment on the inscriptions you've read speaks a lot to how statues are utilized. They're almost always supposed to be about people who are valued, and I think having people on the side of the Confederacy has some not great implications if this is the norm for statues. My last point that I completely forgot to mention the first time 'round was mentioning how even Robert E. Lee didn't want these statues to be erected. I feel like if the guys the statues represent were against them, that makes a pretty good case against them staying up, doesn't it? Not really much of a point, to be honest, but I think it's interesting that they remain up despite these types of wishes.

I do not doubt it. But it didn't happen, so I think it's pointless to speculate. I partially agree with this. Like I said, Trump took what was happening before and worsened it, but I mean, like he said in the one debate, the cages were built by, well, not Bush's, but Obama's administration. I think I've made it fairly obvious I'm no supporter of Trump's, but his immigration policy was not as hugely bad compared to what came before as some think. Of course it was still far worse, but I think it was something that built off the backs of prior administration's efforts, such as bush's building a fence at the border and Obama's administration building those cages and deporting so many people. Yeah this was kind of rude of me to say and I apologize. And I do hope that his failures and bad deeds are taught to the future generations. EDIT: As for what eclipse said, I think you guys have made a good argument for Trump being worse that I can't really refute. I think I just personally care more about what Bush set up to happen and his foreign intervention, since I'm supper opposed to the U.S. doing stuff like that by virtue of my political affiliation. Double edit: I don't know if you guys have done the whole conversation about confederate statues but I mean, statues are explicitly meant to glorify people. Putting a plaque next to a big statue is not going to change the context it exists in and therefore not really gonna change what it means. I'd say even putting it in a museum is questionable, since you'd have to take really good care to display the statues with full consideration to their context. I don't really mind them being taken down and destroyed cause fuck those guys lol, but past that these are my reasons I disagree with the whole plaque thing. I think it's well-intentioned but if I came across a statue with a plaque like that, I would definitely still notice the statue more than the plaque. And if I read it, I'd think "Wait, if this guy was such a horrible person, why is there a statue of him right here?" I don't really think these statues deserve a vetted plaque anyways, cause I mean, made by racists to glorify racists, not much more. Guess I ended up going on a bit there, sorry if you've gone over this before and I opened a can of worms.

I can see your point here, but I think this is a bit misguided in that it reads to me that a theoretical 2 term Trump presidency would have been worse than Bush on foreign affairs. Which it very well may have been, but I don't think that should count. We are talking about what really happened here, so this isn't really relevant in my opinion. This is a really bizarre talking point, since Trump's immigration policy was largely a continuation and worsening of the same stuff that happened before. I dislike Trump and kids in cages, but I feel like there are much stronger things to knock him on that he uniquely did. I would have chosen leaving the Iran Nuclear Deal, which I think ties in nicely to your point about nuclear warfare. The rest I'm not gonna address because I don't think there's much of a point going back and forth again, but I can see where you are coming from.

I said overall, though I think I have shifted a bit from thinking that. I don't mean to dismiss Trump's horrible acts, though. I just disagree that he is by and far the worst president we've had. I still consider Bush to be worse, and I think Reagan is easily as bad, if not worse, if you want an example for domestic policy, for his lasting impact in addition to what he did during his term. Though there is still plenty of time for Trump to make his long term impact, and if worst comes to worst I would probably agree with you guys.

Covid has ravaged even liberal European countries. I don't think those ones are looking to Trump for his wise guidance. I'd chalk the deaths up more to neoliberal leaders being inept or valuing short term economic gains over human life, which isn't exclusive to right wing leaders who follow trump. These leaders were also inept in the first place. I don't believe Britain's covid response is going to get better because Biden is in office. Again, I don't disagree with the sentiment of what you are saying, but you can't link this to every single covid death, or even the majority of them, and I don't get why you need to. Trump causing 400k (maybe 370k technically, assuming if a more competent leader was in place that people would still probably die from covid cause they wouldn't be perfect) is horrible enough.

I don't really disagree with this at all but I think it's a bit silly to say Trump's incompetence and America's influence is equal to 1.5 million covid deaths.

Yeah, no. I know Trump's negligence ended with 400k deaths domestically, but no way in hell is he responsible for 2 million deaths. You can't just say countries look at the US for leadership and pass off an additional 1.5 million deaths on him. And you don't need to, 400k is enough. I was not talking about worldwide deaths under Bush, either. I was talking about lives lost directly because of his interference in the middle east. Trump's incompetence on covid does not even begin to match the direct military invasion of countries. I heavily disagree with your value of American lives over foreign lives, but that is not something I can really debate besides saying that every person is worth equal. Killing Bin Laden in Afghanistan is an achievement, but the amount of pure human suffering caused by Bush's invasion is not really something this justifies. I don't know about you, but killing so many people just for the mere feeling of safety, since again they were not harbouring nuclear weapons like was claimed as the excuse to invade, is not something I particularly care about. Bush and Obama again also enabled ISIS, which we had to spend another few years fighting against. And I feel like it's a bit contradictory to say that the world looks to America for leadership and is influenced by them but invading countries because of a hunch and causing wars that last almost 20 years is a good example to follow. But yes, like I said originally Trump was overall worse domestically. Unfortunately that is not the only part of being the president. EDIT: I should also mention that I feel a little more strongly on this issue now that Bush showed up to the inauguration and liberals have been praising him as competent next to Trump, which is really disgusting when you look at what he did. I don't really have much more to say on the matter, though.

PLEASE tell me you are joking. I really don't want to believe you would leave out the impact the war on terror has had on, you know, people in the countries we invaded? Or that the war is still going on to this day? Remember all the drone strikes Obama and Trump did to innocent civilians? The fact that George W. Bush caused ISIS to be a thing in the first place? I could go on, but you get the point. Americans aren't the only people to exist, and there is a reason why I stated Trump was worse domestically specifically. EDIT: WAIT. I missed the part where you said this war was for our security? They never found any weapons of mass destruction in their entire time there. Where is the threat? We were the ones who invaded them first. Apologies if I come off mad, because I really am, but, wow.