Headlines “Politics” [read the OP before posting]

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Ren

i swore lips were made for lies
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It's not about politics, it's about him oppressing many other people based on their identity. It's really easy to take the moral high ground when you're not a part of the groups being oppressed, and if you are then props to you on finding it in your heart to forgive, but for me personally it's not possible to forgive him and many others feel the same. Get over yourselves and your privilege if you think you can tell discriminated people how they should feel because you've got a thicker skin or been lucky enough that you haven't had that tested yet.
 
It's not about politics, it's about him oppressing many other people based on their identity. It's really easy to take the moral high ground when you're not a part of the groups being oppressed, and if you are then props to you on finding it in your heart to forgive, but for me personally it's not possible for me to forgive him. Get over yourselves and your privilege if you think you can tell discriminated people how they should feel because you've got a thicker skin or been lucky enough that you haven't had that tested yet.
You're literally in America. You are not oppressed. Get your head out of CNN and Vox. It's still not ok to wish death on people you disagree with politically. That is all I said.

P.S. Do not shove privilege into this when I'm literally just promoting common decency. That's a pretty dirty road to go down and I don't hack it. Do not go there. I said or implied nothing about discrimination.
 

Ren

i swore lips were made for lies
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You're literally in America.
I'm not, check your facts.
You are not oppressed.
I am and many other people are, just because you aren't doesn't mean that's all there is to it. Check your facts.
Get your head out of CNN and Vox.
Don't even watch those networks, but apparently you know everything about me.
It's still not ok to wish death on people you disagree with politically.
Agreed, but this isn't just about politics, it's about actively harming people and hurting their quality of life. It's also not your call to make, nobody died and said "Let's make Dece1t decide what people should feel". Nobody cares about that. You're entitled to your feelings, others are very entitled to theirs.
 
I'm not, check your facts.

I am and many other people are, just because you aren't doesn't mean that's all there is to it. Check your facts.

Don't even watch those networks, but apparently you know everything about me.

Agreed, but this isn't just about politics, it's about actively harming people and hurting their quality of life. It's also not your call to make, nobody died and said "Let's make Dece1t decide what people should feel". Nobody cares about that. You're entitled to your feelings, others are very entitled to theirs.
I can say plenty about how Biden said Mitt Romney would shove black in chains in 2012; that he supported the 1994 crime bill; and that he says "you ain't black unless you vote for me." Clearly this guy is your beacon of hope. That doesn't mean I should wish for his death because I dont like him. That's so indecent.

P.S. White privilege is a lie promulgating white supremacy under the guise of anti-racism. Do not go there with me. Check your facts.
 
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Bro, I didn't decide anything. You're feel to feel as you like, it's a free country. I'm just telling you it really doesn't look good whatsoever to wish death on anyone, let alone a sitting president. That doesn't mean I'm privileged either for suggesting that. It's called being a decent human being. I thought that was tolerance, no? If that's the case, y'all have done an awful job at that.
 
you literally just denied white privilege, you can't redeem yourself lol i'm sorry gl in life dude you have a lot to learn
Yea, because it literally has nothing to do with this discussion. If you really want to duke it out about White Privilege, my DMs are wide open. I've discussed it in these forums plenty of times before. Otherwise, do not go tooting your horn calling me privileged for pointing out that it probably isn't a good idea wishing death on someone. If you really want to portray the image of tolerance and compassion (or in your case, to "oppressed" groups), that certainly is the wrong way to do it. It just shows you're a hypocrite.
 

Ren

i swore lips were made for lies
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again, you literally can't redeem yourself. i'm not gonna bother reading what you just said, but you really need to know that what you've been doing this whole time just ain't it man. i'm just super shocked at your ignorance
 
again, you literally can't redeem yourself. i'm not gonna bother reading what you just said, but you really need to know that what you've been doing this whole time just ain't it man. i'm just super shocked at your ignorance
Who said I have to redeem myself of anything? Who made you the judge here? You literally just said I can't decide how to make people feel, what the hell gives you that right? 1. You don't know my full position or feelings on the matter. If you're genuinely interested, I'm happy to discuss it over DMs as opposed to you being so quick to judge. You'll have my word that I'll be civil with you. 2. Once again, why should privilege have any place in this discussion when I'm literally just calling for decency?
 

Ren

i swore lips were made for lies
is a Top Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnus
there's no point in arguing with someone who spouts cow dung like white privilege is a lie and if you're in america, you can't be oppressed. gl in life man, gonna hit the block button on you now so i don't waste my time anymore, reply as many times as you'd like for the entertainment of other people :)
 
Hello Americans of Smogon. I just want to ask: How do you feel about the Electoral College system of voting? Is it true that people from the smaller, less populated states have a larger voter's impact? Is it good so that people from the smaller states won't get sidelined or is it unfair to the winner via popular vote should he/she lose because of the electoral system?

What are the advantages of the Electoral College system? Disadvantages?

Questions from a Non-American btw. I'm just curious.
 
I see the largest benefit of the electoral college system as preventing geographically based political coalitions from dominating elections. without it I'm certain candidates from both parties would only travel to population strongholds to try and consolidate the vote, largely ignoring the parts of America with a less sizable population density. of course, population should still matter, and the electoral college does a pretty good job of this by increasing the relative representation of smaller states while still basing the number of votes per state on population. This ends up forcing candidates to appeal to a wider range of voters.

but the electoral college is also important on a more fundamental and historical level. one thing to understand is back when America was formed, the states were far more independent than they are today and a large reason for the constitutional convention happening was a need to tighten the strenuous relationship between what were then functionally separate nations. the entire us government is founded upon the idea of federalism, it's why we have a senate, it's why constitutional amendments have to be ratified by a supermajority of states instead of a popular majority, and it's why each state has its own, separately elected government. however, this part might not apply to other countries with a more unitary government.

one con I can think of right now would be the difficulty in getting third party candidates onto the map, something that'd be a lot easier in a direct popular vote. however, this could also be a double edged sword since you would potentially have a multitude of viable candidates. it'd certainly be a problem if the winner was elected by a plurality but small percentage of the overall vote and only end up representing a small fraction of the population.
 

Gray

stop ballcapping
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Assuming Trump will win presidency again (I would say it wouldn't happen but I have seen the worst of humanity 4 years ago when he ended up winning), I'm not thinking of this as wishing death upon someone. That's terrible. I'm thinking of this as a sacrifice to improve and save countless lives.
If he ends up losing, I do care that he was able to get away with ruining oh so many lives, but I wouldn't want wish death upon him.

But since it's impossible to tell right now and my fellow Americans don't seem to be getting any smarter, I would want to play it safe. :blobthumbsup:
 

Legitimate Username

mad tales of a bloodthirsty corviknight
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personally i don't wish death upon trump, because falling to a disease out of bad luck isn't any form of justice. the guy's terrified of rotting in prison for the rest of his life if he loses the election and gets prosecuted for his collusion and treason, i think it'd be more fair for our legal system to judge him for his actions and find him innocent or guilty of such things rather than for him to just kick the bucket out of random chance. granted if him dying hurts the republican party's chances at reelection then i'd be more happy for the future of the country and everyone who's been/being fucked over him than anything, but i wouldn't exactly be happy to see him energize his base by dying a martyr and kill any chances americans would get to make their statement of rejecting him by officially voting him out. the potential of the future paths we could find ourselves going down are definitely very interesting, but whatever happens happens and i'm more interested in seeing the best possible situation play out for the american population at large than seeing how catching the disease affects one asshole's life.

Some of you guys are really deplorable. I have my disagreements with Biden (many of them) and I think he's said and done some truly shitty things, but I would not ever wish ill will on him or really anyone. Some of y'all really need to put politics second for once. I'm really sorry, but that needs to be said. This sentiment is getting pretty toxic pretty quick.
it would really be nice if trump practiced what you preach

biden's keeping it classy and wishing him the best, and i absolutely respect that. it's not the obligation of american citizens who are directly suffering as a consequence of his leadership and/or personally insulted by the aggressively divisive rhetoric he puts out to rise above and be the bigger person to a president who treats them the way an elementary-school bully would. it's hard to genuinely believe that trump is entitled to any empathy when he's been so unable to give it to other people in the first place, and it really undercuts any moral highground you could have in attacking those who are just treating him the same way he's always been treating us. you know who should be expected to be the bigger person in the face of tragedies and the loss of human life? probably the fucking president.

bottom line, i like presidents who don't have covid.
 

Bughouse

Like ships in the night, you're passing me by
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re: electoral college question:

There is literally no advantage to it if you believe that presidents should be elected via direct democracy by the people. There is no world in which adding a layer of an electoral college, even one that is perfectly representative, would ever result in a more democratic result than the simpler direct popular vote. Add on the fact that the electoral college (intentionally) is not directly representative, and you have what many people think is an abomination for a country claiming to be a democracy.

If however, you believe that the USA is really a federation of powerful states and the President is a somewhat limited-power global representative chosen by the states to handle a few key issues, as the constitution conceived of it (and when the electoral college really was the one and only election - there was no popular vote at all in most states for the elections between 1788 and 1820. 1824 was the first where it was common as the method for determining how states would allocate their electors, but even then some states like Maryland didn't listen to the popular vote results), then obviously, yes, some form of voting per-state would be necessary. In a world where the electoral college was the original paradigm, it would have seemed crazy in 1824 to say "well, actually it should just be who wins the most votes from the people", since even then a few states were selecting their electors in their state legislatures.

This is all to say the best defense of the electoral college is "According to the constitution, states are the primary political power, but we do need to have a President for important national issues, and they will be elected into this limited-power federal role by the comparatively more powerful states. Since not all states are/were equally populous, there needs to be a compromise where the less populous states can feel they will not be overrun by the more populous states in the selection of this President. There were lots of compromises in the constitution that were necessary in order to get states of varying sizes and circumstances to ratify it, and this is just one of them. It is what it is/The founders were geniuses, since it has lasted until today." This was also a world with no fast transit or communications. Even senators used to be elected by the state legislatures. The only federal office voted by direct democracy was the representative in the House. The thought was how can you vote for someone you've never even met or heard of? Direct democracy for the guy representing your immediate area? Sure. Direct democracy for someone dozens or hundreds of miles away? No way - That's crazy! That's like several days or weeks in a carriage!

But both of these factors are no longer true. For one thing - we have many forms of transit that enable the presidential candidates to truly campaign everywhere, as well as instant communication via phones, internet, tv, etc. In addition, the USA is no longer really a federation of states, where states are the main player and retain the vast majority of powers, while presidents pretty much only handle the key "national" issues of international relations and defense. That ceased to be the case a very long time ago, and grows ever more false with each presidency. Congress has over time ceded so much power to the executive branch that it is the President who is now responsible to "take care" that the law is executed and enforced in matters ranging from healthcare to education to environmental protection to infrastructure, etc etc. The election of the president really does impact people's everyday lives in significant fashion, even more so than who the governor or senator of their state is. As such, I don't see how to reconcile this with the best defense of the electoral college. We long ago required that all senators be elected by direct democracy - they used to be elected by state legislatures, similarly to how electors used to be picked. Yet somehow the Presidency has remained caught up in this weird undemocratic institution. It needs to go.
 
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Plague von Karma

Banned deucer.
Just thinking about the number of people who've died due to the current US government's negligence is kind of alarming. Not just Trump, but everyone working under him. 200,000+ Americans have died due to the republicans wanting to gain a political advantage, downplaying the pandemic and spreading anti-mask rhetoric. Workers are being pressured to go out into dangerous environments not prepared for COVID-19, and with the lack of unions and worker's rights only worsened by Trump's malfeasance. Even if they aren't mandated to go, it doesn't really matter when the job economy is so awful that you can't really risk being fired. Then you have the horrors happening at the borders, people are dying from negligence either on the border or in detention centres, and women are being forcibly sterilized. You're keeping people in fucking cages, dude. Not to mention the drone strikes Trump has been ramping up, yet so few news outlets report on that for some reason. He even rescinded the Obama-era ruling that mandated reporting of the civilian casualties (though you required hard evidence to disprove they were militant anyway...). As of March 2019, there were over 2000 drone strikes during Trump's presidency, which far eclipses Obama's. Even if we take away the amount of Americans who've died during the pandemic, there's still a sizable amount of blood on Trump's hands, and it's unlikely whether he would be held accountable for it.

I would personally never wish death on someone, as we don't know what comes after. However, it's certainly ironic that the man spinning conspiracy theories about the "hoax" happened to catch it, and I don't think many people will lose sleep over the death of Trump. He's hurt so many people in so many ways, it genuinely makes my head spin. I've heard some horror stories about what Mike Pence could do as president though, so I am not sure whether America will be better off. Still kinda funny how Trump got COVID-19 though.

Tried to source this the best I can, though bits of this come from American friends who've suffered a lot at the hands of Trump's idiocy.
 
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atomicllamas

but then what's left of me?
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I see the largest benefit of the electoral college system as preventing geographically based political coalitions from dominating elections. without it I'm certain candidates from both parties would only travel to population strongholds to try and consolidate the vote, largely ignoring the parts of America with a less sizable population density. of course, population should still matter, and the electoral college does a pretty good job of this by increasing the relative representation of smaller states while still basing the number of votes per state on population. This ends up forcing candidates to appeal to a wider range of voters.

but the electoral college is also important on a more fundamental and historical level. one thing to understand is back when America was formed, the states were far more independent than they are today and a large reason for the constitutional convention happening was a need to tighten the strenuous relationship between what were then functionally separate nations. the entire us government is founded upon the idea of federalism, it's why we have a senate, it's why constitutional amendments have to be ratified by a supermajority of states instead of a popular majority, and it's why each state has its own, separately elected government. however, this part might not apply to other countries with a more unitary government.

one con I can think of right now would be the difficulty in getting third party candidates onto the map, something that'd be a lot easier in a direct popular vote. however, this could also be a double edged sword since you would potentially have a multitude of viable candidates. it'd certainly be a problem if the winner was elected by a plurality but small percentage of the overall vote and only end up representing a small fraction of the population.
This is objectively a bad interpretation of what the electoral college does. Your argument is that without the electoral college people would only focus on population centers like CA, FL, TX, and NY. All the electoral college does is shift the 4 states that matter (it’s MI, WI, PA, and like FL this year). Additionally it actually encourages disregarding vast swathes of the population. Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked California as a communist shithole, made the feds response to the fires there pretty bad and blamed CA for it (in spite of the fact only 3% of CA’s forests are on state land, 55% are on Federal land). He does this because he can write off ever winning the popular vote in CA. The President literally hopes for shitty things to happen to California and does nothing about them because it’s politically expedient to do so thanks to the electoral college. This is in spite of the fact that in 2016 California is the state where Donald Trump received the second most votes (only less than Texas). The electoral college’s existence means that both candidates can ignore people in many different states because they a) will always win them regardless or b) will never win them regardless. In a direct popular vote every person’s vote matters the same so you need to appeal to more people in CA if you’re a republican and more people in Nebraska if you’re a democrat because every single vote would actually impact the outcome.

Your interpretation of why the electoral college exists is also missing some important details. The 13 original colonies were geographically and economically diverse, but more importantly there were different rules about who could vote. Right now, every US citizen can vote (theoretically, not in practice thanks to efforts by conservatives to make voting harder for groups that aren’t likely to vote for them). For example, in one state it may be any white male can vote, whereas in another it might be only white land owners can vote, and in a third white male land owners. This didn’t lend itself to the popular vote. Additionally the Northeast had a higher population of whites in an economy that benefited less from slavery, so to ensure that the southern states had equivalent power they would only ratify the constitution if it was agreed that black people counted as 3/5ths of a person. So in addition to encouraging geographic division, it’s origins are literally racist and classist, and it continues to be racist and classist in conjunction with republican efforts to disenfranchise BIPOC and young (student) voters in places like Georgia.
 
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atomicllamas

but then what's left of me?
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separate post cause unrelated but since it got brought up again.

It is objectively funny that someone who "wanted to always play it down" got the virus, especially since the person in question is an obese geriatric (more likely to die), and indirectly responsible for several thousand deaths because he was too much of a child to wear a fucking mask. I didn't realize conservatives were such big proponents of political correctness.
 
separate post cause unrelated but since it got brought up again.

It is objectively funny that someone who "wanted to always play it down" got the virus, especially since the person in question is an obese geriatric (more likely to die), and indirectly responsible for several thousand deaths because he was too much of a child to wear a fucking mask. I didn't realize conservatives were such big proponents of political correctness.
I agree. The entire situation going on in the Trump campaign is carthatic. Frankly, there would be no amusement if the all the hooligans in the Trump campaign weren't so damn arrogant about everything. They've spent 7 months thumbing their noses at medical experts and openly ridicule people who take advice from the experts.

Trump is going to get fucking routed. I thought he was going to lose before COVID-19, now it's looking more and more like a catastrophic landslide. In the short term, his poll numbers will go up slightly. Every day Trump isn't in front of the camera has been good for him politically. Fortunately, he's too stupid to figure that out.
 
But both of these factors are no longer true. For one thing - we have many forms of transit that enable the presidential candidates to truly campaign everywhere, as well as instant communication via phones, internet, tv, etc. In addition, the USA is no longer really a federation of states, where states are the main player and retain the vast majority of powers, while presidents pretty much only handle the key "national" issues of international relations and defense. That ceased to be the case a very long time ago, and grows ever more false with each presidency. Congress has over time ceded so much power to the executive branch that it is the President who is now responsible to "take care" that the law is executed and enforced in matters ranging from healthcare to education to environmental protection to infrastructure, etc etc. The election of the president really does impact people's everyday lives in significant fashion, even more so than who the governor or senator of their state is. As such, I don't see how to reconcile this with the best defense of the electoral college. We long ago required that all senators be elected by direct democracy - they used to be elected by state legislatures, similarly to how electors used to be picked. Yet somehow the Presidency has remained caught up in this weird undemocratic institution. It needs to go.
I agree that the legislature has since ceded too much power to the executive. In an ideal government, Congress would focus on making laws (and actually do its job of checking the executive), the executive power of the president would be curtailed, and justices would focus on upholding the law instead of policymaking from the bench. This doesn't change the fact that the Constitution, in multiple places, recognizes states as separate entities with all the rights not explicitly reserved for the federal government. The entire legislature is constructed using states as the basis for representation, so I don't see a problem with states determining the executive either.

there are some valid points in the first paragraph here. it's true that now instead of catering to major population centers, candidates are catering to the swing states since there are some states that will probably always vote blue and some that will always vote red. however, swing states can change year to year, while major population centers almost never will. the recent blue trend of Texas is an example of this. there are also more swing states, generally around 10, which isn't perfect but better than just having 3 or 4 major population centers.

the electoral college itself was not designed to keep slaves in bondage, that was a side effect of the 3/5ths clause, which only directly affected the number of representatives a state had in Congress. by your logic, the House of Representatives is also an institution founded in slavery. the idea that the 3/5ths clause was designed for additional representation rather than increased leverage in national elections is supported if we look at the numbers back in 1790. New York, the largest slave state in the North, had a free population of 320,000, while Virginia, the largest southern slave state, had a free population of 404,000. In other words, they would've had more representation regardless of the compromise. another bit of irony? Abraham Lincoln, the president we credit with ending slavery, only received 40% of the popular vote but won a decisive victory in the electoral college.
 
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