Random political thought thread.

[Burning Paradigm]

My gut feeling is that people calling the harassment scandal and resignation a death knell to Andrew Cuomo's career are being a bit premature. I find it hard to believe the scion of a dynasty in a political environment like New York will not try to resurface in some way.

 

[ceecee]

Reading through some of the transcripts of defendants from 1/6 - the most glaring takeaway is that they truly do live in another reality (and most Trump supporters do as well). They also seem to think if they support the cops and the military, what they did shouldn't really be a problem.

 

[Virtual ghost]

Pretty detailed prediction for the house in 2022.


Plural vote


Key districts are mostly in: New Jersey, California, Texas, Iowa, Pennsylvania, New York, Oregon, New Hampshire, Michigan, Nevada, Minnesota.

 

[Kephalos]

Much like Saudi Arabia and Russia Texas is a fossil fuel oligarchy.

 

[FemMecha]

What if COVID-19 actually is the zombie virus? What if more people are infected than we realize and it's why everyone is getting 'stupider'. What if each mutation makes people more stupid until it is the zombie apocalypse?

 

[Virtual ghost]

This is sooo copy/paste.

 

[JocktheMotie]

I'm surprised at how reluctant the Left is to really engage with violence against the State. It seems the obvious play to me, as well as a way to funnel the disillusioned young male cohort away from the typical alt-right targets. But when the fundamental assumption of your ideology is "The State is my Daddy" you don't have the psychic path to contemplate action against Him.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I'm surprised at how reluctant the Left is to really engage with violence against the State. It seems the obvious play to me, as well as a way to funnel the disillusioned young male cohort away from the typical alt-right targets. But when the fundamental assumption of your ideology is "The State is my Daddy" you don't have the psychic path to contemplate action against Him.

Sure, and then have the cops crack down on it because that's something they would actually take seriously because they don't have sympathy for it. A lot of cops aren't even getting vaccinated....gee I wonder why, maybe it's just possible that they aren't an apolitical force for law, justice, and order.

I was at the U.S. capitol in 2019.... the cops there gave me a hard time because I went too close to look at an archway. Tourists looking at archways they have no issue with trying to stop. I guess violent insurrectionists who are fellow travelers are a different story.

 

[Virtual ghost]

Why Germany’s red scare is real

Germans ponder ‘sea change’ on tax, spending policies ahead of election


This is pretty much why I said that Germany is probably going towards "cultural shock". Which is the coalition between 3 left wing parties. The SPD and greens will be relative winner judging by everything that is coming out and they will probably need another partner. The center right block seems pretty unlikely to be that partner judging by all the current statements and programs. The far right AfD is completely out of the picture in this regard. What leaves business friendly FDP and far left Linke. But this is the problem since in ideology for the most part Linke is much closer to SPD and Greens than FDP (and it is actually to the left of them). In other words the key promises of SPD and Greens are basically unachievable with FDP in the mix. While with Linke the only real problem are some foreign policy stuff, for which it was said that are open for negotiations. While out of all major parties in Germany FDP seem to be the most right wing in economic issues.




EU political compass

When you open a political compass for all parties in EU the problem becomes kinda evident. When you click at "manual countries" and then remove every country except Germany that leaves you with just German parties. What presents clearly how big gap is between SPD+Greens and FDP. While the gap towards Linke really isn't that large. Even in the "EU issues" the things still kinda work. Especially since Germany turning left and moving whole EU left would probably bring Linke to be more friendly instead of neutral towards it.


What in the end means that Germany is probably heading towards shock that many consider impossible. Because if you read between the lines that is fairly likely if the polls are generally correct. However this kinds of changes will surely spill all over EU and they will redefine it. Especially since large changes are already being designed, however this will evidently change how exactly they are designed and implemented. What has large global consequences however you turn it.

 

[JocktheMotie]

Sure, and then have the cops crack down on it because that's something they would actually take seriously because they don't have sympathy for it. A lot of cops aren't even getting vaccinated....gee I wonder why, maybe it's just possible that they aren't an apolitical force for law, justice, and order.

I was at the U.S. capitol in 2019.... the cops there gave me a hard time because I went too close to look at an archway. Tourists looking at archways they have no issue with trying to stop. I guess violent insurrectionists who are fellow travelers are a different story.

I don't really mean the Cops, they're sort of a tangential paramilitary ecosystem (in large cities), but what the Left should attack is far more upstream. They should break more things. Nobody feels the Heat anymore.

 

[Kephalos]

Nostalgia is a terrible foundation for political ideology:

The White Nostalgia Pandemic | Los Angeles Review of Books

Geoff Nelson responds to Marilynne Robinson’s essay “What Kind of Country Do We Want?,” elaborating on the perils of white nostalgia.

lareviewofbooks.org

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I don't really mean the Cops, they're sort of a tangential paramilitary ecosystem (in large cities), but what the Left should attack is far more upstream. They should break more things. Nobody feels the Heat anymore.

Well, I'm referring to cops in a broad sense. FBI, CIA, Border Patrol (yes, they do things inside the country... read up on BORTEC some time.... this is how I know the people complaining about vaccine mandates threatening freedom are full of shit...they don't care about any of that stuff) are also part of what I'm referring to.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Nostalgia is a terrible foundation for political ideology:

The White Nostalgia Pandemic | Los Angeles Review of Books

Geoff Nelson responds to Marilynne Robinson’s essay “What Kind of Country Do We Want?,” elaborating on the perils of white nostalgia.

lareviewofbooks.org

Yes it is.

Like so many liberal White Americans, Robinson presumably considers the 2016 election of the United States’s 45th president to be the date when the American project came suddenly and grievously undone, never considering that the flaws in the American experiment have been there from the beginning, that a hideous present could not obscure a monstrous past.

This woman sounds like a dipshit.

I know a lot of things were fucked up, but I do remember people did generally seem to believe in facing the challenge and promise future when I was a kid. if 9/11 changed anything, it changed that and put us on this shitty nostalgia-obsessed trip we've been on ever since. If there's something I'm nostalgic for it, it's the time when the whole fucking culture wasn't backward looking.

This sounds much better:

Seen in the Financial Times in April, Arundhati Roy wrote an essay with better purchase than Robinson on the relationship of the coronavirus to history. She suggests the pandemic should not remind us of some Lost Greatness, but rather that it offers pathways forward.

That's kind of how I feel about it.

I certainly agree with this:

Author and activist Sonya Renee Taylor, writing on Instagram in the beginning of April put it best. “We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was never normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate and lack. We should not long to return, my friends.”

 

[Virtual ghost]

List of countries by home ownership rate - Wikipedia

Just a thought.

 

[Kephalos]

The truth is that along with immigration restrictions, trade restrictions are among the most racially prejudiced policies around:

How Northern subsidies hurt Africa

From Africa Recovery, Vol.16 #2-3 (September 2002), page 29One of the many economic differences between developed and developing countries is that developed countries subsidize farmers while developing countries tax farmers. But what do agricultural subsidies in Canada, Japan, the US or the...

www.un.org

The WTO’s decision to end agricultural export subsidies is good news for farmers and consumers

In December 2015, World Trade Organization ministers agreed to abolish export subsidies for agriculture. Heinz Strubenhoff explains what led to this decision, and what the implications are for farmers and consumers around the world.

www.brookings.edu

The Real Farm Subsidy Scandal? USDA’s Legacy of Racial Discrimination.

Prominent white nationalist Richard Spencer receives farm subsidies, but this is not a real scandal. There is no “Nazi test” for farm subsidies – nor should there be.

www.ewg.org

Nearly 100 percent of Trump funds designed to help farmers went to white farmers

A new report reveals race and income disparities in regards to a program designed to protect growers from Trump’s trade war with China.

grist.org

Addendum:

If you’re poor in another country, this is the scariest thing Bernie Sanders has said

Vox is a general interest news site for the 21st century. Its mission: to help everyone understand our complicated world, so that we can all help shape it. In text, video and audio, our reporters explain politics, policy, world affairs, technology, culture, science, the climate crisis, money...

www.vox.com

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

Dave Chappelle pulled the "I have a trans friend" card.

His latest stand up special did not outrage me but I also don't think it was all that "brilliant" as some of his defenders are describing it. Social commentary and "dark" stand up is fine, but I didn't see so much of that as I saw an aging gen x'er ranting about how he's grossed out by trans people and he is team TERF, but he also wants you to know he's totally cool with sharing a restroom with trans people. Sounds like typical reactionary social conservative doublespeak to me, nothing particularly brilliant or revolutionary there.

Pulling the "I had a trans friend" angle does seem a little weak, and as smart as he is, I would think he'd probably heard enough "I happen to have a black friend" or "I'm not racist, but..." disclaimers in his life to have connected the dots. But he didn't make that connection, based on his perception that the LGBTQ community is mostly white people cosplaying to score oppression points.

BTW, I still defend his his freedom of speech to say tone deaf shit and am not calling to cancel him, that's just my two cents on his standup special. It was mediocre and not up to the level of some of his past stand up.

I do have to wonder how many people suddenly outraged by his statements on trans folk laughed unironically at some of the edgiest race jokes on his old comedy central show back in the 2000s.

 

[Kephalos]

More on economic and ethnic nationalism:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/01/30/theres-a-dark-side-to-buy-american/

Hearst equated foreign products with foreign workers. “We have as much RIGHT TO EXCLUDE CERTAIN IMPORTS, DANGEROUS to our AMERICAN STANDARDS AND IDEALS, as we have the right to EXCLUDE certain IMMIGRATION which is a MENACE TO OUR AMERICAN STANDARDS AND IDEALS.” A news story in this vein promoted a “BAN ON ALIEN ACTORS.” In Hearst’s eyes, “foreign “workers were pernicious whether outside or inside the United States.

And how the new boss is strikingly similar to the old boss:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/07/28/biden-buy-america-rule/

During his remarks, Biden said his administration was making the “biggest enforcement changes” to the Buy American Act — a 1930s-era law that calls on the federal government to purchase materials and products domestically — in seven decades.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

Goodbye recreational weed sales, hello qualified immunity, virginians. Hope you enjoy the increase in COVID cases too.

 

[Kephalos]

How much of European history would you say is possible to interpret as a war between West Francia and East Francia over Middle Francia?

 

[FemMecha]

This likely should have it's own thread, because what's going on with jury selection for Ahmaud Arbery's trial is not okay. There is only one person of color on the jury and several Black individuals were dismissed for "non racial reasons" because they said they support Black Lives Matter. The judge accepted this.

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