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Headlines “Politics” [read the OP before posting]
- Thread starter vonFiedler
- Start date
I think the problem with this is that by no reasonable definition is Biden a true leftist anyways. He's a neoliberal, of course he's going to support neoliberal bullshit just like the conservatives do. I'm not really sold on Williamson (her takes on nuclear energy and her weird penchant for neopaganism are big turn offs for me) but the idea is that having a more openly progressive opposition will force Biden to be more progressive with his own policies to compete. There are problems with this too, though. Biden being the incumbent president gives him a lot of political inertia that Williamson would need a ton of popular support to counteract, so the chances of Biden being pushed all that far to the left if Williamson runs against him are... dubious.
Another problem is that we run the risk of creating another Bernie-or-bust situation and letting the increasingly fascistic Republican party walk away with the presidency because we were too busy arguing about whether the soulless neoliberal hack who supports LGBTQ+ people and some mild progressive reforms but still strike busts is as bad as the soulless neoliberal hack who wants to execute Mexicans and ban public expressions of transgenderism. Electoralism is fucking useless for getting meaningful social or economic change but it matters somewhat in protecting vulnerable demographics from the vultures who want to prey on them, and besides that Biden's foreign policy hasn't actually been all that bad in my opinion. At least he toned his enthusiasm for drone strikes down a little bit since he was VP.
It feels more like he's just locked target with China to an unhealthy degree. The rollback to trade policies for US hegemony is still stuck in my head as "oh we're just saying the quiet part outloud"
I wouldn't care if people just admitted they were voting biden because they think trump is worse. I think the average american is extremely letalergic politics wise and believing just voting will do anything is a fools errand, but that's another topic.
I'm more annoyed at the pretty delusional treatment that biden gets from libs for doing the bare minimum (and not even that sometimes) and then trying to excuse his uselessness or contradictory policies lol. Then again I have many criticism of us libs in general so, not an original complaint
This falls largely under the purview of "neoliberal politician doing neoliberal things", though. It's not exactly like Trump or DeSantis would try to thaw out relations with China or do anything that could be perceived as jeopardizing US economic hegemony. Don't get me wrong, Biden is very, very far from being my ideal candidate, but if 2016 taught us anything it should be that we need to consider who the opposition is.
Sure, its standard neolib bs and trump is worse, but I still think it's worth discussing and criticizing, especially how it'll affect both countries. The whole "lesser evil" still implies that it's an evil and all that.
Recently during the shorter-than-expected break I was taking from Smogon, I had reminded myself of an American politics take that I wanted your opinions on. I guess I just wanna see how hot this take really is, I suppose.
As an American myself, I’ve had a lot of opportunities to look at how each state is approaching politics. Provided this is more prevalent in some states, such as the DeSantis-led Florida for example, I genuinely believe our country’s political spectrum is shifting heavily towards infighting between states; so much so that I honestly don’t think the “United” portion of “The United States of America” is warranted anymore. We feel less like a united country now than we have in a long, long time, and if I was an outside viewer who was mistakenly told that we were actually 50 separate countries… I would probably believe them.
As an American myself, I’ve had a lot of opportunities to look at how each state is approaching politics. Provided this is more prevalent in some states, such as the DeSantis-led Florida for example, I genuinely believe our country’s political spectrum is shifting heavily towards infighting between states; so much so that I honestly don’t think the “United” portion of “The United States of America” is warranted anymore. We feel less like a united country now than we have in a long, long time, and if I was an outside viewer who was mistakenly told that we were actually 50 separate countries… I would probably believe them.
This is a pretty cold take, to be honest, but the reasons why are... complicated, to say the least. In my eyes, the nutshell version is that, for a lot of people, the status quo just isn't working. The US has some serious skeletons in its closet, and while we might have been able to ignore them 50, 40, 30, even 20 years ago, awareness of progressive issues such as systemic racism, the genocide of indigenous peoples, and LGBTQ+ people and the prejudices they face has only been on the rise. This increase of awareness does not come without backlash, however. Entrenched power, the people who benefit from the blood, labor, and suffering of BIPOC that this country was built on, and who feel that their values are threatened by LGBTQ+ people and the empowerment of women, will fight tooth and nail to keep the Overton window far to the right and cover up or delegitimize the systemic issues faced by vulnerable groups. Hence the "culture wars" and backlash to "woke politics", a nice nebulous term that basically means literally anything vaguely progressive or that the person using it doesn't agree with. This isn't really anything new, to be honest, but the increasing awareness of these issues forces existing political divides further and further apart and makes them harder and harder for the average mostly apolitical person to ignore.
I've experienced this myself; I used to be a wishy-washy politically incompetent centrist (like certain other people I've interacted with on this site) who thought the status quo was more or less alright and we needed to compromise and reach across the isle, and that both sides of the American political spectrum would somehow balance each other out. My mother is a neoliberal who cares more about the charisma of a political figure than their policies, and both my father and my stepfather were heavily conservative-leaning. I understood very little about systemic racism or LGB people. I was taught that racism ended with Martin Luther King and that colorblindness is a virtue, that LGB people are a bit weird or maybe even mentally ill but should still be accepted. Transgenderism and gender non-conformity weren't even issues I was aware of at all.
The more I learned about this country's history and the experiences of marginalized people within it, the more I realized that mindset is a lie, a facade we construct so we don't have to confront the fact that the lives we live and the country we live in were built on an immense amount of suffering and injustice, and that suffering and injustice and the worldviews that enabled it never really went away. I went from seeing conservative mind-sets as maybe a bit misguided, maybe a bit old-fashioned, maybe a bit selfish, but ultimately well-meaning to realizing their primary purpose is to protect a status quo of prejudice, suffering, and exploitation. No communist professor or radical think-tank radicalized me to this position (reading Marx and Kropotkin helped though), it's simply the unavoidable conclusion one has no choice but to accept when you learn about systemic issues.
This is compounded by economic issues. The wealth gap increases, food insecurity increases, inflation and housing prices outpace wages, and worker's rights are undermined more and more year by year. People are suffering economically as well, and this makes them ripe targets for grifters who will give them a scapegoat to all their problems. It's not actually the bourg- er, rich billionaire assholes- sitting jealously like Tolkienian dragons on enough stagnant wealth to eliminate world hunger overnight, paying more for propaganda and lobbying that will allow them to exploit more people hard and harder than they do wages, that are the reason why the economy is in the state it's in. No, it's illegal immigrants, or China, or communist agitators, or the Jews. Or maybe the economy really isn't all that bad after all and the things I mentioned as well as the many other problems I didn't just... don't exist. For many people, it's easier to believe that than accept the fact that the problem might be systemic and require systemic change to fix.
So yeah, the TL:DR version is this country's got problems, those problems are becoming harder and harder to ignore, and that fact exacerbates existing political divides, making them harder and harder to ignore as well.
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I think the idea that social and political disunity in the US is due primarily due to how bad all the social issues are right now is not very well considered. Everyone thinks they are living in the worst time, that the issues affecting them are truly grand and bigger in scale than issues affecting in other times. That's not to say the issues aren't important or contentious, but social issues are often merely a symptoms of an even greater issue.
I think that social and political unrest we see right now are tied to the United States' changing role in the world. We left WW2 the undisputed wealthiest country on Earth, and then after the fall of the USSR we rather unilaterally dominated the world political order. With the failure of the War on Terror and the rise of China and the EU economically and politically, the U.S. is much less powerful than it was 30 years ago. The crux of it is economic - if people feel like they aren't as prosperous as they used to be, it leads to unrest. You see populism rising on both the left and the right as people search for easy answers to why they feel like it's getting worse.
I think the second main reason we are politically divided is social media, the internet, and news propaganda. One can take their choice between watching biased news channels (the old evil), or forming one's own little echo chamber of social media news outlets (the new one). People love rage porn, and it's incredibly easy to expose yourself to nothing but that. I would also argue that journalistic standards even at established publications have gone down the toilet. NYT is probably the only nationally popular publication left that doesn't solely put out drivel on a constant basis. This factor certainly is second to economic and political anxiety, but it just makes a bad issue worse.
I think this is at best, close-minded. This is actually an attitude that contributes heavily to polarization - the idea that I am right, and everyone who doesn't agree with me is wrong, and they are just malicious, moronic puppets and puppetmasters. If Americans recognized that people who disagree with them might just hold different values, and that's ok, we would be far more united as a country.
Of course, when you point that out, you'll get the standard "but my opponents are fascists", "my opponents are brainwashed by <insert evil leaders here>, or just plain old "I am good and those who disagree are evil, no questions." It's easy to hate and misunderstand people who think differently from you rather than just trying to be intellectually tolerant. Both the right and the left love engaging in this kind of populist demonization of people on the other side.
Aware, but it’s not like FDR had a mandate to do whatever he wanted when he first got there. He moved to win that mandate.
And NOTHING is stopping Biden from pushing an agenda and talking. Just talking. Like literally he has a 24/7 available pulpit to address the nation with live cameras right? There’s a lot of campaign issues I never hear talk about these days. If Merriam gets them both talking about those issues again— good?
BUILD BIDEN BACK BETTER
(Unless everyone sleeps on her and she sweeps)
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I feel like I'm going to regret putting my foot in the door, but as someone who knows a lot of Republicans in real life, I wanted to voice my opinions on the state of the party.
Simply put, at least out near where I live, most Republicans seem to be sick of why politics seem so... just, extreme towards one side or the other. Our area tends to be of the belief that our country is in need of the healthy grey area between liberalism and conservatism, and while we can have our own ideologies and voting preferences, sometimes Republicans and Democrats need to both admit that compromises need made within the balance of power so one side doesn't become too out of hand.
The problem with modern-age conservatism as I see it is that an unfortunate number of Republicans don't seem to be getting that full picture. In a similar manner to how men and women may be willing to act like the other group is entirely the only group of the two at fault, I've found that the extremist Republicans are the ones that don't want to hold their party's mistakes accountable for their piece of the pie. I won't act like Democrats are off the hook here, either. It's just that, for the sake of the post I'm responding too, the modern Republican party doesn't exactly look appealing to younger voters who may be trying to make big decisions in their life for the first time. Even though most of my political preferences tend to be moderately conservative, I'm very bothered by the polarization being led by DeSantis and the state of Florida right now. The conservative parts of the media that do exist would rather die than admit this, but the drama in Florida serves as nothing but a disgrace to the Republican party, and anyone within said party who does not want their party to be seen in this way should feel embarrassed.
Simply put, at least out near where I live, most Republicans seem to be sick of why politics seem so... just, extreme towards one side or the other. Our area tends to be of the belief that our country is in need of the healthy grey area between liberalism and conservatism, and while we can have our own ideologies and voting preferences, sometimes Republicans and Democrats need to both admit that compromises need made within the balance of power so one side doesn't become too out of hand.
The problem with modern-age conservatism as I see it is that an unfortunate number of Republicans don't seem to be getting that full picture. In a similar manner to how men and women may be willing to act like the other group is entirely the only group of the two at fault, I've found that the extremist Republicans are the ones that don't want to hold their party's mistakes accountable for their piece of the pie. I won't act like Democrats are off the hook here, either. It's just that, for the sake of the post I'm responding too, the modern Republican party doesn't exactly look appealing to younger voters who may be trying to make big decisions in their life for the first time. Even though most of my political preferences tend to be moderately conservative, I'm very bothered by the polarization being led by DeSantis and the state of Florida right now. The conservative parts of the media that do exist would rather die than admit this, but the drama in Florida serves as nothing but a disgrace to the Republican party, and anyone within said party who does not want their party to be seen in this way should feel embarrassed.
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I don't think I could ask for a better example of why the idea of polarisation is bunk. Why aren't the Democrats, as you put it, "off the hook?" You don't provide an example to demonstrate any sense of reciprocity. The fact is that the Democrats have proven more than willing to compromise -to a clear and obvious fault- whereas Republicans have not unless in exceptional circumstances (like avoiding a default). This doesn't indicate a polarised country, it indicates a country whose political landscape is defined by a radical party.
Both Republicans and Democrats have a lot of dirt they can use against each other in political debates by this point. I’m not going to act like I’m up to date on what either party’s been doing lately, because quite frankly, I’m not. All I need to know is told to me by political voting maps that are closer to 50/50 splits than ever before. On paper, our country voting like this should be a good thing, but in practice, what this actually results in is 50% of the country’s views being ignored either way.
The point I’m to make is that is that, whether we’re talking about the Surpreme Court, the House, the Senate, or the presidency, we haven’t had anyone even remotely agreed upon between both parties in a long time. A good candidate is one who can try and help satisfy the needs of both major parties and compromise, but as the polarization between the parties continues to increase, these candidates will start to care more about their voting results than the needs of the people.
Why, though? Centrists and "moderate" liberals (including past versions of myself) keep falling into this logical trap that meeting in the middle and compromising are, in and of themselves, good things. Why is that the case? If compromising with conservatives is good, what about compromising with socialists? Anarchists? Marxist-Leninists? Why is it only right and center-right ideologies that seem to be extended this benefit of the doubt?
Radical fucking idea here, but maybe compromising with people trying to undermine human rights isn't actually a good thing after all. Maybe some people are genuinely just wrong, and compromising with them undermines your own position.
polarization is good, actually, when there exists a ruling power and constituency seeking to eradicate & disenfranchise a whole host of ppl on the basis of identity. perhaps a more helpful framework of understanding this term would be “fighting for civil rights against oppressors”, which is universally lauded in the 60s, but the script is flipped for modern actors of political change.
Because there are enough conservatives in the US for their votes to matter. What socialist / anarchist / marxist parties are you compromising with? There are none and the number of voters for them in the US is abysmal, probably half of them think Bernie Sanders is a Socialist. In addition just in a vacuum the US government isn't designed for one party to make radical sweeping changes without at least some support from the other side. If you think that's bad, well we just got through 4 years of Trump where the Republicans had control of the entire government, and if they had their way things could have gone a lot worse. No one is saying compromise with them on everything. There is no compromise on things like human rights. But things like infrastructure, chip production, climate change, and even gay marriage have seen Dems and Repubs unify to pass bipartisan bills.
Demographics suggest as gen X dies and gen Z starts to vote both the democrats and republicans will shift dramatically to the left to keep winning votes. Great news. But until then it's simple math. Compromise and get some things done, or don't.
Except there aren't 50-50 splits, 40% of Americans are independent voters and are largely the determinant of who wins elections. Regardless, he make-up of the electorate isn't a factor for determining whether or not a society is polarised. Being unable to draw a consensus IS a sign of polarisation, but the issue here is that Republicans are distinctly unable to compromise, and indeed run specifically on their unwillingness to compromise. The opposite is true for Democrats, who have run on their willingness to compromise. Republican leadership punishes moderate legislators for collaborating with their Democrat colleagues.
Let's go back to the Afghanistan example: Why is Afghanistan not considered politically "polarised" because of the cleavage between the Taliban and the vast majority of Afghan society? Should the rest of Afghan society have been expected to compromise with the Taliban, as the "moderates" did? Let's also not pretend that Republicans who compromised with Democrats were not severely punished by leadership, in several cases being forced into retirement. There is extremely little reason for Democrats to seek compromise with Republicans at this point either, considering the violent rhetoric and propaganda circulated by GOP lawmakers with impunity, and the efforts to blatantly abuse committee powers to target those they deem their enemies, as well as their families. The pertinent question isn't "Why is no one willing to compromise?" Rather the question is "Why are Republicans unwilling to compromise?"
Ok, but that's not polarisation. "Polarisation" as it is being used in American political discourse is a narrative framework that explicitly positions “fighting for civil rights against oppressors” as reciprocally extreme to "seeking to eradicate & disenfranchise a whole host of ppl on the basis of identity."
The last time this happened, a shitload of people died. If it happened again, considerably more people would die in combat alone and there would certainly be a genocide of people who do not fit with the Republican Party's vision of a white, Christian America. If you thought the Rwandan Genocide was especially bad, just imagine if every genocidaire had an M4 instead of just a machete.
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What the fuck are you talking about lmao. Do you not understand how the US political system works? You aren't American, I wouldn't expect you to (I say that in the nicest way possible, I couldn't tell you shit about the Canadian government). In the US if you want anything to happen you either need to overwhelm the political system with people (aka control all three branches of government) or compromise. Since Biden controls exactly one branch of the government, aka the seat he sits in, he has to compromise.
Also the Republicans are garbage but comparing them to the Taliban is silly. Might as well call Biden a communist. It's just low effort name-calling, not really close to reality.
Whine about it on a Pokémon forever if you want, it doesn't change reality. Either find a middle ground or vote the other side out. Since the opposition has about as many voters as the Democrats I'm going to make a wild claim and say yeah, the Republicans are here to stay and one way or another if you want change you have to work together.
If you think the US is even vaguely close to a civil war again, you are ridiculously out of touch with US politics.
They recently voted in favor of making gay marriage a law (instead of a court decision), chip bill, infrastructure bill (including half a trillion dollars in climate change fighting), and even Ukraine support (they voted iirc 100-0 in favor of lend-lease) have had more than enough bipartisan compromise to get things done.
95% of bills passed have had bipartisan support. That's 310 of 334 in 2021 alone. From 2019-2020 that bipartisan number was 812 of 854. Put actual effort into it and there's literally hundreds of bills that don't get reported by the news but pass with bipartisan support.
Stop getting all your info from biased sources. All of you. The US is certainly divided but it's FAR from what garbage clickbait news sources want you to think.
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Not only do I understand it perfectly well, I have a growing suspicion that I understand the political system of the United States (let alone Afghanistan) much better than you. In the US, compromise has become increasingly impossible since the 1990s due to an increasingly radicalising Republican Party. This has not always been the case, particularly for most of the post-WWI realignments within both parties. Within the 2020s, Republicans have made it entirely clear that they will not compromise on anything, and any GOP legislator violating that condition is to be punished. This makes your expectation for Democrats to reach compromises with Republicans completely out of touch with reality.
So allow me to once again ask: Does this mean that Afghans should have been expected to compromise with the Taliban? It's a pretty simple question for someone already suggesting that compromise with extremists should be a normal feature of American politics.
What's actually delusional is equating "Mass Balkanisation like this person suggested would lead to civil war" to "I think a civil war is going to happen" lol. The United States is much more likely to experience an autogolpe (you know, like the one Republicans already attempted) and engage in mass repression/genocide without facing much of an insurgency, if at all.
Also lol @ mentioning infrastructure in a post where I explicitly point out how Republican leadership have punished legislators for voting with Democrats. Also pointing out that Ukrainian lend-lease wasn't even unanimous, it was only unanimous in the Senate (because to extremists, the only actors worth compromising with are America's enemies). All legislatures pass large amounts of unanimous legislation that are vital to the functions of government. That doesn't mean much in terms of bipartisanship, nor does securing the vote of at least one Republican. I'm also not relying on "biased sources" lol, you're torturing statistics (or rather, the White House is, you're just appropriating it) to better serve a narrative you favour. I would go so far as to say that the fact Republicans are now attempting to force a default is further evidence that they are increasingly avoiding any approach towards bipartisan consensus on even the basic functions of government.
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Nobody‘s passion for posting about political issues should be conflated with having an ethos on politics that is virtuous, not on this forum anyway. So moving forward consider this thread for takes on general politics and headlines not meant to be stone cold earnest, but still respect the opinions and perspectives of other posters.
I cleaned up posts from the last 5 pages to weed out posts that break rules or were in bad faith. Read the OP again before posting. This is the last version of this thread.
I cleaned up posts from the last 5 pages to weed out posts that break rules or were in bad faith. Read the OP again before posting. This is the last version of this thread.
since the word "american" has now been removed from the title i assume this is now a space for political discussion of all locales (either that or just classic us-centric thinking from mx. dave?) so what do we all think* about humza yousaf's ascension to the throne of scotland? (pending confirmation vote tomorrow techincally)
*please note that all views different from my own will be mocked with the appropriate degree of heartiness
*please note that all views different from my own will be mocked with the appropriate degree of heartiness
the new op goes so hard
we won
we won
https://www.al-monitor.com/original...amentary-committee-approves-finlands-nato-bid
https://www.euronews.com/2023/03/27/nato-hungarian-parliament-ratifies-finlands-membership
Since this is now not American exclusive, here's some news. Finland is now in NATO pretty much. Once Turkey finally gives Sweden the thumbs up, then Hungary probably follows suit. Good shit.
https://www.euronews.com/2023/03/27/nato-hungarian-parliament-ratifies-finlands-membership
Since this is now not American exclusive, here's some news. Finland is now in NATO pretty much. Once Turkey finally gives Sweden the thumbs up, then Hungary probably follows suit. Good shit.
