General US Politics

[Dark Holy Elf]

37 minutes ago, Lushen said:

Most other countries don't have the level of diversity in culture that US does which can lead to violence.  What's happening to Germany with it's influx of different cultures and diversity?  Yea, not good.  Note that I'm not talking about the Islamic population, but those defined as "Non Germans".  When you have a rather singular culture, there is bound to be less violence.  Heck, in America you don't even have to cross state lines to meet people of entirely different cultures.  Most other countries don't have ghetto-like inner cities and gang violence.  As for why we have so many people jailed, that's because we have so many people committing crimes.

 

Wrong again. You're proving my point about your ignorance of other countries.

Canada and Australia are both significantly more racially diverse than the US. So is Belgium. The UK and France are comparable. Heck, I live in one of the most multicultural cities on the planet... and yet our murder rate (easiest available stat I could find) is lower than all but four US states, including lily-white ones such as West Virginia and Iowa. Diversity is not a driver of crime; poverty is. El Salvardor has relatively little racial diversity, but very high crime. Canada is one of the most diverse countries out there, yet has very little crime. Explain this.

I will never understand the calling for less jailing.  So we have people committing crimes and your solution to ending crime is to....not punish them?

You can't understand because you aren't looking at the facts, but instead arguing from emotion. Weren't you the one that said facts don't care about your feelings?

FACT: The United States incarcerates people at an extremely high rate compared to other nations already.

FACT: The United States has an unusually high level of crime compared to most other nations of similar economic status (even ones that are more racially diverse!)

CONCLUSION: At the very beast, high incarceration rates don't help the US drive down crime.

FACT: The United States has an extremely high rate of recidivism.

CONCLUSION: United States prisons, which should be helping rehabilitate criminals, are not doing that job well.

It's possible to punish people without sending them to jail (e.g. community service), or by sending them to jail for less time and using that time more efficiently to rehabilitate them. Again, I'm beating a dead horse, but other countries do this. They are doing a better job at controlling crime than the US. Learn from them.

Edited October 5, 2017 by Dark Holy Elf

[Dark Holy Elf]

EDIT: Whoops, doublepost, just noticed. Sorry everyone.

Edited October 5, 2017 by Dark Holy Elf

[Res]

The U.S. judicial system is hugely racist. I know you'll no doubt disagree with some of the points linked but particularly with regards to the war on drugs, the facts are indisputable. An easy example is in the treatment of crack vs powdered cocaine; the latter is largely used by middle class white people, the former by poor black people, and sentencing for carrying crack is much harsher and predicated on a much smaller amount than on powdered cocaine.

There are many other issues with the U.S. prison system, including the length of time people are held in jail without trial/sentencing (you may be innocent, but meanwhile you lose your job if you're not free to work), the privatization/monetization of prisons, the lack of rehabilitation, and the extremely long sentences for non-violent crimes.

Oh, and crime rates in the U.S. have been in a steady decline these past few decades.

But to suggest that mixed cultural society is naturally going to raise crime rates and that's the reason for the U.S. having the highest incarceration rate... actually, all studies have shown the opposite is true:

Crime fell fastest in big cities and high-density suburbs that were poorer, more minority, and had higher crime rates to begin with. At the same time, all kinds of suburbs saw their share of poor, minority, and foreign-born residents increase.

 

 

[BBM]

Lushen: "people become violent by being around other violent people"

also Lushen: "we should keep people who commit crimes in prison longer, where they will be around violent people more"

this is one of the major problems in the US, step by step, and it's a vicious cycle:

1) Black people are on average poorer, in worse situations, etc etc, and so commit crimes at a higher rate.

2) Police are aware of this and therefore are more suspicious of black people and therefore black people get arrested at a rate proportionally even higher than the rate at which they commit crimes.

3) The prison sentence lengths in the US, policies like mandatory minimums, etc make sure they're in there for a long time and that they get very little skills training or improvement when in prison, because privatization requires you put them to useful work (cough cough new age slave labour) instead. Plus, they're around the negative influence of other, potentially harder, criminals.

4) While they're in prison, their family, if they have one, is at the very least financially worse off with one less provider and get poorer (you can argue that they are "morally" better off without the negative influence if you want). It also creates single parent homes (and Republicans love talking about how single parent homes lead to problem children).

5) When they finally get out, they're probably in an even worse position than when they first went in and have even fewer options. 

Rinse and repeat. When you say that people should get even longer prison sentences, you're basically prioritizing getting other people away from their negative influence over getting them away from negative influences. And yes, once you get arrested you should lose the benefit of the doubt, but it doesn't mean that you should be given up on as a potentially helpful member of society.

I just don't understand how so many people in the US can see how much worse their crime statistics are than every other developed country and yet argue to double down on the policies that got them there. You're saying that America having ghetto-like inner cities is the reason for its problems... yet refuse all solutions like better health care and education that would improve them?

Lushen, you should watch the documentary 13th, on the relationship between race and the US prison system through history. It's not politically partisan- Newt Gingrich is one of the speakers interviewed heavily and Democratic administrations are slammed just as hard as Republican ones. It's a little bit out of date now (partially because it created change) but still worth watching.

Edited October 5, 2017 by BBM

[BBM]

(My apologies for the double post but the above one is already really long and I don't want these points to get lost in it)

The main difference between you and the others in this thread is that you seem to think that only morally corrupt, unforgivable people commit crimes. Yes, that's sometimes the case, but just as often, desperate people commit crimes. Also often, desperate people start committing crimes and lose their morals as a result of it.

You also have an image of all criminals as like, murderers. Almost half of the federal prison population is there on drug-related charges. Homicides are only like 3% or something. 

[Lushen]

Correlation does not always equal causation.  The fact that America has more jailing could be explained simply by the fact that we have more crime.  Looking at other countries when it comes to crime is very difficult because they have different cultures and the people committing crimes are very difficult.  For example, a large portion of crime in America comes from gang violence.  A large portion of crime in Central America comes from drug wars.  A large portion of crime in the middle east is religious related.

 

Anyways,
My main point that I started posting about is that progressive democrats are wrong when they're talking about the future of a party.  A lot of people saw Bernie as a laughing stock among democrats (even the DNC as a whole) and considering Trump's anti-PC game won over the democrat's inequality game, I think it's clear that people don't like the direction the democrats are heading in.  I think the moderates are right, they need to return to democratic roots and stop progressing more and more to the left if they want to regain control of the gov't. 

It's important to note that the 2018 elections will have 25 democrat senators up for re-election.  Republicans will have 8.  Additionally, many of the democrat seats are in areas where Donald Trump won over Hillary so if the democratic strategy is to progress more to the left away from Trump, they're going to lose.  Trump's approval rating means very little because the reason people are pissed off about Trump has little to do with his policies and more to do with his tweets or things he says.  It does not correspond to a lack of approval among the GOP as it did with Barack Obama when people criticized him for his policies, but considered him well spoken.  I think the reason Republicans are taking a break from Obamacare is because they are wanting to tackle it again in 2018 where they expect to have more control so lone wolf Republicans can't stand in the way and Republicans can break through the filibuster rule and pass whatever legislation they wish.  Now is not a time for democrats to experiment with progressing to the left.  Although, I don't think politicians really have much of a say in what their parties do these days.  Most people vote based on what they see on TV so how their party progresses depends more on the media, late night talk show hosts, Bernie/Hillary's twitter accounts, etc. than actual politicians.

Edited October 5, 2017 by Lushen

[Shoblongoo]

1 hour ago, Lushen said:

Correlation does not always equal causation.  

Yes. That's why when you're doing statistical analysis for the social sciences, you run a multi-variable linear regression model.




 

^^^
That's what the math behind [proof of causation] looks like.  

You demonstrate correlation with the simple  y = m(x) + b  line-of-best-fit model that we all learned in basic grade-school algebra.

You demonstrate causation with y = m(x₁)  +  m(x₂) + m(x₃) + m(x₄)…

…so on and so forth…

Where the x-series represents each and every proposed variable that could explain phenomenon (y).

THEN, if in this model, you still get a statistically significant strength-of-correlation. You’ve demonstrated that the correlation is causal, because the correlation persists even in the presence of alternative proposed mechanisms of causation.

Look up any published paper in a peer reviewed journal of law and public policy—on causes of gun violence, on formulas for economic growth, on disparate outcomes in the criminal justice system, w/e—and scroll on down to the methodology section. This is what you’ll see.

Be aware of what this analysis should look like when done correctly, so that you know what a fraud looks like and when someone is putting out sub-standard work to push an agenda rather than get to the truth-of-the-matter asserted. Because you are posting ALOT of junk research right now.

Edited October 5, 2017 by Shoblongoo

[ping]

51 minutes ago, Lushen said:

Correlation does not always equal causation.  The fact that America has more jailing could be explained simply by the fact that we have more crime.  Looking at other countries when it comes to crime is very difficult because they have different cultures and the people committing crimes are very difficult.  For example, a large portion of crime in America comes from gang violence.  A large portion of crime in Central America comes from drug wars.  A large portion of crime in the middle east is religious related.

...and why does the US have a high amount of gang violence? You seem to be very averse to any attempt to understand and improve things that don't go as well as they do elsewhere.

[Shoblongoo]

1 minute ago, ping said:

...and why does the US have a high amount of gang violence? You seem to be very averse to any attempt to understand and improve things that don't go as well as they do elsewhere.

BTW, I saw your question earlier about the first amendment. 

Have to get back to work right now. But I will answer it later and try to shed some light on that  particular mystery.

It is a rather convoluted body of law.

[Lushen]

10 minutes ago, ping said:

...and why does the US have a high amount of gang violence? You seem to be very averse to any attempt to understand and improve things that don't go as well as they do elsewhere.

You're trying to tell me that the reason the US has more crime is because we jail too many people.  That's like telling a mother the reason her child keeps breaking the rules in school is because she punishes her child too much.  Understanding how to improve things is very important which is why you can't look at two facts and instantly assume causation = correlation if logic tells you it makes absolutely no sense. 

[BBM]

jailing too many people isn't the sole cause of the crime lol. Literally nobody has made this argument; everyone has talked about poverty and the situation you're born in as the main reason there's too much crime. We're saying that over-jailing doesn't help reduce crime and actually probably hurts it because you increase the rate of recidivism.

Putting someone in jail is not the same as grounding someone, and the fact that you would even compare those things shows how little you know about conditions in jail. Punishments that children get take away things they find fun but generally leave the things that still help them grow as people. Jail makes people lose years of their life and l

I hate to burst your bubble Lushen, but unless you think that Obama was like the worst Democratic president of all time, Obama's policies had little to do with Republican reaction to him. The Republicans stonewalled bipartisan efforts and Obama's policies to a historical degree. This didn't stop just in the House, but continued into the narratives that Republican media pushed to convince people that all of Obama's policies sucked. It ranged from little things like rebranding the "Affordable Healthcare Act" to "Obamacare" to out and out disinformation and thinly-veiled racism in the form of birtherism. And birtherism btw proves that lots of people didn't like Obama the person- how well spoken people think someone is isn't the only thing that goes into whether or not they like them.

Did you know that as of September 2016, only 44% of Republicans believed for a fact that Obama was born in the US? 33% believed he was not, and 23% were unsure. But yeah! All about his policies! Nothing to do about race whatsoever!

And I'm sure you'll bring up the fact that there were people who voted Obama and then switched to Trump as proof that race had nothing to do with it. That doesn't mean anything. It just means that even if they personally are not racist, they don't particularly care whether or not their President is and whether or not his election will be better or worse for minorities.

EDIT: Also, to be clear, since I'm sure you'll also talk about how you aren't racist and you never believed in birtherism and you know many fine upstanding Republicans who didn't either, I am not talking about every single Republican- I am talking about averages. The data bears out that Obama was disliked by some of his political opponents and parts of the population to an unprecedented degree.

Edited October 5, 2017 by BBM

[ping]

1 hour ago, Lushen said:

You're trying to tell me that the reason the US has more crime is because we jail too many people.  That's like telling a mother the reason her child keeps breaking the rules in school is because she punishes her child too much.  Understanding how to improve things is very important which is why you can't look at two facts and instantly assume causation = correlation if logic tells you it makes absolutely no sense. 

Sir, you're ignorant.

18 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Spoiler

This obviously is NOT working, as the United States also has one of the highest crime rates of any developed nation... and perhaps even more tellingly, one of the highest recidivism rates (that is, the rate of crime as committed by people once they leave jail). Why? It's because prisons, especially American prisons (which frequently focus more on punishment and cheap labour than rehabilitation), do not prepare people for a post-crime life, instead causing their occupants to learn from other criminals therein and be more likely to return to crime after being released. Incarceration should be used sparingly and it should be focused on rehabiliation and reducing recidivism when it is used, except of course for the small minority of heinous cases which merit life imprisonment (and/or execution). These are the facts.

 

15 hours ago, BBM said:

Spoiler

Lushen: "people become violent by being around other violent people"

also Lushen: "we should keep people who commit crimes in prison longer, where they will be around violent people more"

this is one of the major problems in the US, step by step, and it's a vicious cycle:

1) Black people are on average poorer, in worse situations, etc etc, and so commit crimes at a higher rate.

2) Police are aware of this and therefore are more suspicious of black people and therefore black people get arrested at a rate proportionally even higher than the rate at which they commit crimes.

3) The prison sentence lengths in the US, policies like mandatory minimums, etc make sure they're in there for a long time and that they get very little skills training or improvement when in prison, because privatization requires you put them to useful work (cough cough new age slave labour) instead. Plus, they're around the negative influence of other, potentially harder, criminals.

4) While they're in prison, their family, if they have one, is at the very least financially worse off with one less provider and get poorer (you can argue that they are "morally" better off without the negative influence if you want). It also creates single parent homes (and Republicans love talking about how single parent homes lead to problem children).

5) When they finally get out, they're probably in an even worse position than when they first went in and have even fewer options. 

 

These are two postings written in the last 24 hours in this very topic that explain why simply locking criminals up does not help preventing crime and to the contrary even is one (!) factor that promotes higher crime rates. Laws and law enforcement that only aim for punishment and deterrence are counterproductive.

€: Thanks in advance, Shoblongoo! :)

Edited October 5, 2017 by ping

[Tryhard]

3 hours ago, Lushen said:

Anyways,
My main point that I started posting about is that progressive democrats are wrong when they're talking about the future of a party.  A lot of people saw Bernie as a laughing stock among democrats (even the DNC as a whole) and considering Trump's anti-PC game won over the democrat's inequality game, I think it's clear that people don't like the direction the democrats are heading in.  I think the moderates are right, they need to return to democratic roots and stop progressing more and more to the left if they want to regain control of the gov't. 

Man, it beggars belief how you can think the Democrats were going left - they were going more right wing with Bill Clinton and Obama. It's like the thinking that led to people calling Obama a communist even though he clearly isn't. Hillary got a little dragged to the left because of Bernie, but it's not like because of that all of her problems went away.

Also, Trump is anti-PC? Sure, he talks a big game about it, but let's check out the Anti-PC leader for a second.  
- He has sued people over jokes before, including the onion, and Bill Maher. 
- He fucking wrote letters to Spy Magazine for years because they made fun of his small hands, including circling a picture of his hands to prove that they weren't small.
- He has banned many different media outlets from covering him in the past (blacklist) during his run because "they won't cover me right". 
- He has had many media pens made that he used to make sure the media could not cover him properly during his campaign
- He didn't allow the media to interview people at his rallies before 
- He has kicked out protesters just for silently holding posters and wearing shirts before. 
- He has also said he wants to open up the Libel laws so that it will be easier for him to sue media companies that report on him in ways he does not like. 
- On his ask Reddit he banned certain question he didn't like. 
- He said anyone that dares to question his VP is "harassing: him.
- He talks about how oppressed he is by the lying media to open up his meeting of Black History month.
- Has said any negative polls about him are Fake news
- Gets triggered by SNL
- In his old roast he made sure nobody joked about his money
- Now he doesn't want to be roasted to his face
- He got upset at Mike Pence's reception at the Hamilton play, demanding an apology
- He got so upset at players protesting during the anthem in NFL games that he threatened to fire them

And probably a bunch more I have forgotten about.

Edit: Aren't there a lot of non-violent drug offenders in US jails that don't deserve to be there?

Edited October 5, 2017 by Tryhard

[The Geek]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/05/politics/jeff-sessions-transgender-title-vii/index.html?sr=fbCNN100517jeff-sessions-transgender-title-vii1247PMStoryLink

Remember when Trump said his campaign would be LGBTQ friendly?  Add that to the list of lies.

[Lushen]

2 hours ago, Tryhard said:

Man, it beggars belief how you can think the Democrats were going left - they were going more right wing with Bill Clinton and Obama. It's like the thinking that led to people calling Obama a communist even though he clearly isn't. Hillary got a little dragged to the left because of Bernie, but it's not like because of that all of her problems went away.

Going more left is not communist.  It's not even socialist.  Left and right is between liberal and conservative so when I say go more left, it means more liberal.  Liberal and conservative are like principals in a capitalistic gov't.  Socialist and communist is another form of gov't.

And Trump getting triggered and calling people an SOB doesn't mean he's pro-PC.  It means he is easily angered.

I'm not sure but I don't think you go to jail unless you have enough to be diagnosed as a dealer.  I don't think anyone is there just for, say, smoking pot unless they've been to court numerous times.

Edited October 5, 2017 by Lushen

[Moblin Major General]

41 minutes ago, Lushen said:

I'm not sure but I don't think you go to jail unless you have enough to be diagnosed as a dealer.  I don't think anyone is there just for, say, smoking pot unless they've been to court numerous times.

If you're white. If you are anything else except maybe asian, most judges will throw the book at you, giving you 90 days for 100 milligrams. Your upper-class white privilege blinds you to a lot of problems in our society.

[Tryhard]

50 minutes ago, Lushen said:

Going more left is not communist.  It's not even socialist.  Left and right is between liberal and conservative so when I say go more left, it means more liberal.  Liberal and conservative are like principals in a capitalistic gov't.  Socialist and communist is another form of gov't.

And Trump getting triggered and calling people an SOB doesn't mean he's pro-PC.  It means he is easily angered.

I'm not sure but I don't think you go to jail unless you have enough to be diagnosed as a dealer.  I don't think anyone is there just for, say, smoking pot unless they've been to court numerous times.

My point is that when Republican hysteria was in full force when Obama was in power, Republicans called him many things that were inaccurate like Marxist, Socialist, Communist.

Also Communism is absolutely a far-left idea, so I don't know where you are getting that Liberal vs Conservative are opposed... like it's been mentioned in this topic before the Democrats are far more center than left-wing.

I don't so much care about him calling him a son of bitch, I care more about how he threatened him with actual federal consequence. Also him making blacklists and suing over jokes like I said is classic things that the "anti-PC" crowd would normally complain about.

Edited October 6, 2017 by Tryhard

[Res]

11 minutes ago, Hylian Air Force said:

If you're white. If you are anything else except maybe asian, most judges will throw the book at you, giving you 90 days for 100 milligrams. Your upper-class white privilege blinds you to a lot of problems in our society.

Yup; the link I posted on the previous page mentioned you can be imprisoned for possession of 1 gram of crack (vs 100 grams for coke - and which is used more by black people and which by white?!)

[Lushen]

1 hour ago, Tryhard said:

My point is that when Republican hysteria was in full force when Obama was in power, Republicans called him many things that were inaccurate like Marxist, Socialist, Communist.

Oh yea I'm not saying that.  I just think that the democrat's shift to the left will be very bad news for them.  I think moderates need to take power back in the democratic party.  Even though I'm Republican, I do like having two competitive parties rather than just one because I fear total government power.  For example, if the democrats held 2/3 of Congress, they could literally abolish the 2nd amendment (or rather, create a new one and revoke it). I don't like the idea of a gov't with so much power they can revoke/pass any legislation they want.  That's how democracies fail.  The Tea Party movement was really effective for the Republican party, the shift in the democratic party doesn't seem to be.

And yea, the difference is the left takes capitalism more towards socialism/communism and the right takes capitalism more towards pure Darwin capitalism.  I never called Obama a Communist/Socialist because it doesn't make sense.  This is also why I think Bernie is an idiot when he pretends to be a socialist and not social democracy. 

Edited October 6, 2017 by Lushen

[Sias]

3 hours ago, The Geek said:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/05/politics/jeff-sessions-transgender-title-vii/index.html?sr=fbCNN100517jeff-sessions-transgender-title-vii1247PMStoryLink

Remember when Trump said his campaign would be LGBTQ friendly?  Add that to the list of lies.

My cousin sent me this a few days ago, which is another nice example showing how much they actually care about LGBT people.

22 hours ago, Lushen said:

Most other countries don't have the level of diversity in culture that US does which can lead to violence.  What's happening to Germany with it's influx of different cultures and diversity?  Yea, not good.  Note that I'm not talking about the Islamic population, but those defined as "Non Germans".  When you have a rather singular culture, there is bound to be less violence.  Heck, in America you don't even have to cross state lines to meet people of entirely different cultures.  Most other countries don't have ghetto-like inner cities and gang violence.  As for why we have so many people jailed, that's because we have so many people committing crimes.

Diversity doesn't automatically lead to violence.

And the thing with Germany is the following: While the crime rates in general admittedly did go up (although some fields like burglary continue to decrease), you have to see this in context. First of all, more inhabitants in a country simply equals more crime numerically, so the absolute number of crimes obvously did rise with the absolute number of refugees.
Furthermore, the situation of these people is quite terrible most of the time - not only are many traumatised by war or persecution, they also have to live in a new nation whose language they don't speak, often crowded together with other foreign people of various ethnicities, cultures and religions, possibly waiting for a long time until their request for asylum gets accepted and even longer until they can get a job and lead a somewhat normal life again. It's only natural that people like these are more suspectible to crime, but as soon as the immigration process actually kicks in, these rates go down drastically again.
Finally, there seem to be some problems with statistics like these in general, for example a differentiation between suspects and proven perpetrators or issues with criminals from another EU country who get added to the "foreigner" category as well.

It's also interesting to note that recently right-wing extremist hate crimes have increased rather harshly. Hm.

Quote

The color of someone's skin does not force them to be in a certain culture.  If you look at crime rates among blacks outside of inner city communities, no problem!

I'm glad that you kinda seem to get my point now? There's no such thing as inherently violent black city culture, but instead the problem of being disadvantaged by poverty/bad education/racism...

7 hours ago, Lushen said:

Anyways,

My main point that I started posting about is that progressive democrats are wrong when they're talking about the future of a party.  A lot of people saw Bernie as a laughing stock among democrats (even the DNC as a whole) and considering Trump's anti-PC game won over the democrat's inequality game, I think it's clear that people don't like the direction the democrats are heading in.  I think the moderates are right, they need to return to democratic roots and stop progressing more and more to the left if they want to regain control of the gov't. 

It's important to note that the 2018 elections will have 25 democrat senators up for re-election.  Republicans will have 8.  Additionally, many of the democrat seats are in areas where Donald Trump won over Hillary so if the democratic strategy is to progress more to the left away from Trump, they're going to lose.  Trump's approval rating means very little because the reason people are pissed off about Trump has little to do with his policies and more to do with his tweets or things he says.  It does not correspond to a lack of approval among the GOP as it did with Barack Obama when people criticized him for his policies, but considered him well spoken.  I think the reason Republicans are taking a break from Obamacare is because they are wanting to tackle it again in 2018 where they expect to have more control so lone wolf Republicans can't stand in the way and Republicans can break through the filibuster rule and pass whatever legislation they wish.  Now is not a time for democrats to experiment with progressing to the left.  Although, I don't think politicians really have much of a say in what their parties do these days.  Most people vote based on what they see on TV so how their party progresses depends more on the media, late night talk show hosts, Bernie/Hillary's twitter accounts, etc. than actual politicians.

A lot of people also saw Trump as laughing stock.

In my opinion, the Democrats actually have the opposite problem: They generally try to fish right-wing voters away from the GOP by moving further right themselves. Hillary herself was somewhat center-right and attempted to expand that position by actions like picking an anti-abortion vice-presidential candidate, even though appeasing the left wing by choosing someone who's popular with the Bernie crowd might have been wiser. This strategy obviously doesn't work however, and when you consider that quite a bunch of left policies are very popular with Americans, why shouldn't they be embraced?

Also, have you kept an eye on the elections that have happened since Trump was elected? A lot of formerly safe Republican areas suddenly had ~30% point swings in favor of the Democrats. The seat distibution may be indeed in favor of the GOP, but everything's still very much up in the air.

2 hours ago, Lushen said:

Going more left is not communist.  It's not even socialist.  Left and right is between liberal and conservative so when I say go more left, it means more liberal.  Liberal and conservative are like principals in a capitalistic gov't.  Socialist and communist is another form of gov't.

And Trump getting triggered and calling people an SOB doesn't mean he's pro-PC.  It means he is easily angered.

Left and right don't just equate liberal and conservative though?
if you look at some political orientation chart, one axis is usually liberal/authorative and the other left=progressive/right=conservative. And then there are splits like with most liberal parties, which are commonly socially progressive but fiscally conservative.

Or it could mean that Trump, like pretty much everyone who's seriously angry about "political correctness", is a huge hypocrite.

[Res]

What's a moderate? Serious question with relation to the U.S. parties. There's not enough difference between the Democratic and Republican parties right now for anyone to hover somewhere in between the, IMO. Most self-described centrists seem to be somewhere outside the two parties.

 

3 minutes ago, Sias said:

In my opinion, the Democrats actually have the opposite problem: They generally try to fish right-wing voters away from the GOP by moving further right themselves. Hillary herself was somewhat center-right and attempted to expand that position by actions like picking an anti-abortion vice-presidential candidate, even though appeasing the left wing by choosing someone who's popular with the Bernie crowd might have been wiser. This strategy obviously doesn't work however, and when you consider that quite a bunch of left policies are very popular with Americans, why shouldn't they be embraced?

This, exactly.

[Lushen]

17 minutes ago, Sias said:

My cousin sent me this a few days ago, which is another nice example showing how much they actually care about LGBT people.

What?  You can already not put people to death for being LGBTQ.  Why would we need to pass a law for this?

17 minutes ago, Sias said:

Diversity doesn't automatically lead to violence.

It can cause friction which can lead to violence.  What doesn't cause friction is singular cultures.  This is backed by gang violence where each gang could be seen as its own culture.

17 minutes ago, Sias said:

if you look at some political orientation chart, one axis is usually liberal/authorative and the other left=progressive/right=conservative. And then there are splits like with most liberal parties, which are commonly socially progressive but fiscally conservative.

Talking about American politics where 'left' is a phrase to describe liberals.

17 minutes ago, Sias said:

And the thing with Germany is the following: While the crime rates in general admittedly did go up (although some fields like burglary continue to decrease), you have to see this in context. First of all, more inhabitants in a country simply equals more crime numerically, so the absolute number of crimes obvously did rise with the absolute number of refugees.

That's why I looked at crime rates, not numerics. 

17 minutes ago, Sias said:

A lot of people also saw Trump as laughing stock.

Obviously not cause he killed the primary.  And the reason people are against Trump is largely do to what hes says and tweets not his actual policies which is why Trump's approval rating won't, in my opinion, affect the 2018 elections at all.

17 minutes ago, Sias said:

Also, have you kept an eye on the elections that have happened since Trump was elected? A lot of formerly safe Republican areas suddenly had ~30% point swings in favor of the Democrats. The seat distibution may be indeed in favor of the GOP, but everything's still very much up in the air.

There was a big governorship race where a bunch of democrats were concluding that they were going to win because everyone was mad at Trump and his approval rating was so low.  Republicans won. Everything in the 2018 elections gives Republicans an advantage, and it's an advantage they don't really need given the momentum of the GOP.  I'm telling you, after the 2018 elections Republicans are going to pass all the legislation they want to.  Democrats would be better off working with Republicans and compromising than continuing to delay legislature until they have no power.  But some in their party are optimistic that they will gain control in the house in 2018 despite the odds.  The 2018 elections are kind of more important than the 2020 election.

 

@ResDemocrats are divided between progressives and moderates.  Progressives are wanting the democrat party to change (Bernie), in this case wanting them to move more to the left.  Moderates oppose this idea and want a more traditional democratic party.  I would consider Clinton a moderate for the most part in terms of policies, except she plays the sex,race, and gender card like a progressive.

I think the tea party / anti-establishment would be seen as a progressive Republican party, but I'm not sure if that's what people refer to it as.

The democratic party is definitely not moving to the right any way.  They regularly condemn people as bigots in one way or the other and call anyone in a minority a hero.  Terms like "white supremacy", "racial inequality", "gender gap", etc. are all liberal terms more than they are democratic terms and they're the terms that are being used more and more by the democratic party.

Edited October 6, 2017 by Lushen

[SullyMcGully]

1 hour ago, Res said:

Yup; the link I posted on the previous page mentioned you can be imprisoned for possession of 1 gram of crack (vs 100 grams for coke - and which is used more by black people and which by white?!)

Is that really racist? Last I checked, being black doesn't predispose you to like some drugs more than others. Being poor or living in the inner city do, but just because there are more blacks in the inner city doesn't make different standards for different drugs inherently racist. They might still be wrong, but just not racially motivated. 

Out here where I live in the country heroin seems to be the drug of choice. Most of the users are poor whites, but the standards are stricter than for either crack or cocaine. I guess part of that is because heroin is so much more potent, but can't the same be said about crack and cocaine? 

[Dark Holy Elf]

16 minutes ago, Lushen said:

It can cause friction which can lead to violence.  What doesn't cause friction is singular cultures. 

I have already posted why this is a load of malarkey. You should refute my points or stop bringing this up.

Quote

There was a big governorship race where a bunch of democrats were concluding that they were going to win because everyone was mad at Trump and his approval rating was so low.  Republicans won. Everything in the 2018 elections gives Republicans an advantage, and it's an advantage they don't really need given the momentum of the GOP.  I'm telling you, after the 2018 elections Republicans are going to pass all the legislation they want to. 

Midterm elections are rarely good for incumbents, and the Republicans are not popular right now (Fivethirtyeight). While the senate particulrs favour the Republicans retaining control of the Senate, they're highly unlikely to get to 60, which is what they'd need to pass significantly more legislation than they can now.

22 minutes ago, Res said:

What's a moderate? Serious question with relation to the U.S. parties. There's not enough difference between the Democratic and Republican parties right now for anyone to hover somewhere in between the, IMO.

Mm, I definitely disagree with this; I think the two parties are reasonably far apart and this discussion kinda highlights this. There aren't many moderates in the current political climate, but some do exist, like Susan Collins of the Republicans or Henry Cuellar of the Democrats are two examples.

Edited October 6, 2017 by Dark Holy Elf

[Lushen]

6 hours ago, BBM said:

I hate to burst your bubble Lushen, but unless you think that Obama was like the worst Democratic president of all time, Obama's policies had little to do with Republican reaction to him. The Republicans stonewalled bipartisan efforts and Obama's policies to a historical degree. This didn't stop just in the House, but continued into the narratives that Republican media pushed to convince people that all of Obama's policies sucked. It ranged from little things like rebranding the "Affordable Healthcare Act" to "Obamacare" to out and out disinformation and thinly-veiled racism in the form of birtherism. And birtherism btw proves that lots of people didn't like Obama the person- how well spoken people think someone is isn't the only thing that goes into whether or not they like them.

The biggest reason my party disliked Obama was Obamacare/AFA.  I don't think anyone cares what he calls it, we just don't like it because it doesn't match our political views.  We do NOT like public healthcare programs.  I don't know anyone that thinks Obama is a bad human being, all the hate towards his presidency was politically motivated.  The hate on Trump is not all politically motivated, which is why I'm saying his approval rating isn't going to hurt the Republican party.  Plenty of Republicans are against what Trump says but they're fine with GOP policies. 

I've watched CNN, they talk about the president's tweets way more than his policies.  Policies are like a one-day story, someone in his campaign calling him a moron is big news though!

@Dark Holy ElfThey need to get net 8.  If things in 2018 go like they did in 2016, that is perfectly dooable.  On the other hand, dems need net 3, which is like less likely than Trump was, for whatever that's worth.  There are arguments for the "Angry white college graduates", but I highly doubt it will actually play out that way, not many young people vote in midterms or even know they're going on.  Dems also lost all four of the special election seats held by Republicans and they're claiming that they're going to win 70 house seats and 3 senate seats in 2018.  I have my doubts.

Exactly, moderates have totally lost control of the democratic party and they've been losing control of the gov't ever sense.

Edited October 6, 2017 by Lushen