"A house divided against itself cannot stand." -- Abraham Lincoln
Pretty worrying to observe the polarization in the US where IMO both left and right are full of extremist views and moderates have no audible voice.
Pretty worrying to observe the polarization in the US where IMO both left and right are full of extremist views and moderates have no audible voice.
It turns out there's violent people of all political stripes who would do us harm.
No. The time is now.
Without going into my stance, I will say that in all my years observing politics, every single time I've heard this comment it's to hide a double standard. Not a single exception. How do I know this?
Because when that time does come (in this case it would be violence by the left), they are silent, and will not condemn.
This is as good a time as any.
In fact, regarding Charlottesville, this really isn't a right wing issue, it's a Trump issue. Most Republican leaders that I can think of condemned this immediately and strongly as well. Trump's response was unusually tepid at first, which is what people are taking issue with.
By "they" I meant individuals I've interacted with, not a generic "they". My experience is with individuals who are polarized about various things (abortion, Middle East, etc) - I wasn't referring specifically to left vs right examples.
Some personal examples:
Muslims upset at a local newspaper for publishing certain cartoons. At the time they were protesting and demanding the editors get fired (one of them eventually was fired). I discussed it with them (friends, not just strangers), and they said a few things:
1. This isn't just about Muhammad but all of Islam's prophets (which includes Jesus, Moses, Abraham, etc).
2. This isn't just about Islam - they'd complain even if it happened to reverent figures of other religions.
3. The very statement that is being discussed here: Those are not the current problems and they are discussions for another time.
I pointed out to them that the comic section of the same newspaper had some years prior published really "offensive" cartoons about both Moses and Jesus. Response was "Well we weren't aware". Fair enough. Then later there was a news item about people upset with offensive depictions of Jesus. I pointed it out to them, and their response was the equivalent of "Leave me alone." Happened again related to a Hindu god. Same response.
The examples suggest the three points were not true. When those events became current problems, they did not want to have a discussion about it at all.
Similar story regarding the Israel/Palestine conflict. Without talking about which side did what, in one of the conflicts one side was accused of carrying out war crimes. Protests. I asked some of my friends (protesters) why this issue is so potent to them when similar or worse crimes are not. The response:
1. This is about human rights, not favoritism to a particular group. "We condemn it when it happens to any one".
2. This is the issue of the moment. Don't distract from it.
Sure enough, later there was another conflict so eerily similar to what they were protesting, but in a whole other part of the world. Point it out to them, and get the equivalent of "Leave us alone". And then of course much worse conflicts occur than in the Middle East (DRC, for example). Crickets.
This is what I meant when I said "Every single time I've heard this comment it's to hide a double standard."
And of course, I have to endure accusations of aligning with the other side (by both sides) whenever I ask these questions. I'm asking because I'm curious and want to know. In some cases I may be neutral, and in others I'm actually siding with one side. But my taking a stance to one side does not mean I'll blanket accept the hypocrisy by that side's proponents.
EDIT: Would downvoters care to explain where I'm mistaken?
You hear people chant speak truth to power when they repeat the safe narrative and everyone pats their back.
The fact that the media, large corporate business leaders, online forums, and government representatives are dog piling all over this narrative and ignoring even basic facts and events that happened in very recent memory, it should shock anyone paying attention to what is currently going on.
It's called censorship to blatantly disregard and shout down any opinion or factual information that works against the popularly driven editorial narrative, which is now apparently that Trump and his supporters are extremist violent Neo nazi kkk communist Russian spies, and I'm not even joking when I put that list together.
On the day the shooter was killed, Obama gave a press conference[1] where he said:
We still don’t know all the facts. What we do know is that there’s been a vicious, calculated and despicable attack on law enforcement. Police in Dallas were on duty, doing their job, keeping people safe during a peaceful protest. These law enforcement officers were targeted, and nearly a dozen officers were shot, five were killed.... According to police there are multiple suspects. We will learn more undoubtedly about their twisted motivations, but let’s be clear, there is no possible justification for these kinds of attacks. Grave violence against law enforcement. The FBI is already in touch with the Dallas police; anyone involved in these senseless murders will be held fully accountable. Justice will be done.
Three days later he had returned from Spain (before planned) to visit the survivors, where he ... described the Dallas shooting as a "hate crime" against police, according to a top law enforcement representative in the meeting with Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. One really striking thing the president said in his opening remarks was that the shooting in Dallas in many ways was strikingly parallel to the Dylann Roof shooting in Charleston in the sense that it was a hate crime[2]
The Dallas shooting were a terrible thing, and Obama seems to have responded as one would expect a President should.
Outside the Dallas shooting, Obama himself seems to have had some issues with police behavior. But that didn't stop him saying what should be said.
[1] http://fortune.com/2016/07/08/transcript-obama-dallas-police...
[2] http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/obama-dallas-police-sh...
"We also know when people are armed with powerful weapons, unfortunately, it makes attacks like these more deadly and more tragic, [...] In the days ahead, we will have to consider those realities as well. In the meantime, today, our focus is on the victims and their families."
I don't know if that's something I would consider to be in the wheelhouse of what the president should do, as it reads like exploitative base rallying to me, which is something I've accused Trump of as well. I get it, never waste a good tragedy and all that, but it seems modern presidents are far too open about using tragedy to push an agenda.
So are politicians just supposed to reply "That was horrible" and not look at the underlying causes or events that allowed it to happen?
- BLM
- Antifa
- the 'alt right'
- the Neo Nazis / white supremacy groups
Lumping people into groups often times hides the positives and negatives of individuals.
But, you seem to, at least, acknowledge that BLM has positive aspects. What positive aspects are there to white supremacists?
https://theintercept.com/2017/01/31/the-fbi-has-quietly-inve...
"First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action;" who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season."
Especially in today's political and social climate.
1. Poster asks about other poster's position on the groups in question. 2. Other poster says, 'Pure cancer. All of them.' 3. I ask if poster is really equating groups like BLM to white supremacists. 4. You ask which part of the group. 5. I ask you what positive aspects can we attribute to white supremacists - since you seemed to be backing the guy grouping them together. 6. You say you don't compare opposing groups.
So, why did you respond to the 3rd reply listed above with the 4th reply? If you don't want to compare groups, why are you injecting yourself into a conversation comparing groups?
Things like your response is exactly why I stated I don't like playing the game of false equivalence by comparing opposing groups.
edit: let's try it this way, I wasn't doing the comparing, I was asking for clarification of what was being compared
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-ann-coult...
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/elizabeth-warren-to-berkeley-pro...
re: Scalise Shooting: In a statement, Senator Sanders wrote that he had been “informed that the alleged shooter at the Republican baseball practice is someone who apparently volunteered on my presidential campaign.” He went on to say: “I am sickened by this despicable act. Let me be as clear as I can be. Violence of any kind is unacceptable in our society and I condemn this action in the strongest possible terms.” https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/scalise...
edit: and Obama on the BLM shooting in Dallas rightly called it a racist hate crime http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/obama-dallas-police-sh...
That's my 5 minutes of doing your research for you. High ranking Democrat politicians don't tolerate heckler's veto, much less violence. Republicans are so cowed by losing support from their radicals that they can barely bring themselves to speak up against them. Charlottesville is notable in that its pretty much just Trump who failed to speak up.
> We ALL must be united & condemn all that hate stands for. There is no place for this kind of violence in America. Lets come together as one!
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/89642082278044467...
He didn't fail to speak up.
2. Obama did speak up just one day after the events [1], but he did not specifically mention BLM in particular, claiming lack of confirmed info (justifiably so)
Trump immediately spoke up, but did not mention white supremacists, drawing huge criticism.
I am far from a Trump enthusiast, but can you not see double standard applied here?
[1] Full transcript here: http://fortune.com/2016/07/08/transcript-obama-dallas-police...
Those people defending their "rights" in the Civil War were Democrats.
I'm loving my new single-payer healthcare and free college tuition, though.
So with those two statements, how can you then argue that the positions have not flipped? How does that even reconcile in your mind?
Even more recently, Ronald Reagan supported strong gun control. He's the reason California has such strict gun laws. How about Nixon, a Republican who created the EPA that modern Republicans hate so much? Lincoln was also strongly pro-immigration, saying at one point "Foreign immigration... should be fostered and encouraged by a liberal and just policy". By 1920, they said "the practical exclusion of Asiatic immigrants is sound and should be maintained". Seems like a pretty big shift to me!
The Republicans of today, even moderate Republicans, are not the Republicans of yesterday, or yesteryear. It would be political suicide to run on some of the most successful Republican platforms from even 30 years ago.
So again I ask, how can you reconcile in your mind the idea that ye olde Democrats are pro-slavery and ye olde Republicans are the party that fought against the South in the Civil War with your claim that they have in no way changed positions over the years?
Both parties have altered their message and platform over the years for various reasons.
But no one argued that. No one argued that the Democrats changed so the Republicans said "oh man, guess we have to switch too". It was a gradual shift over decades to the point where Democrats are now the civil rights party when they used to be the pro-slavery party and the Republicans are now the party of holding back civil right progress when they were literally willing to start a war to abolish slavery.
Setting aside the one point that literally only you are arguing, I'm glad we've come to the point where we can realize that we actually do agree. Our only disagreement is that you think the word "switch" implies a sudden and coordinated effort to flip places.
Democrats and Republicans, through decades of policy shifts, now represent views they have historically been against. The point of that is "the party of Lincoln" and "the party of Reagan" is Republican in name only, not in actual policy, and the Democrats surely are not the pro-slavery party anymore.
That's the part I'm disagreeing with. I'm not arguing against a "sudden switch" as you put it. I'm arguing against the entire notion that the two parties switched at all, be it suddenly or over decades. The two parties have adjusted over time to their needs over the years to the point that, fundamentally, they are not that much different other than their fringe elements, which does not define them as a whole.
You know, in Seattle there is a rather grand looking statue of Lenin. He was a rather evil guy. Who gets to decide which statue stays and which goes?
Less controversially, there is actually a political process here, and in the normal manner the city had decided to remove the statue. The white supremacists decided to demonstrate against this, sparking the violence.
The statue recently pulled down in Durham NC is a different Confederate statue.
The Seattle Lenin is privately owned, so not parallel to the Lee statue in Charlottesville.
> Who gets to decide which statue stays and which goes?
The owners of the statues?
I realize that a large portion of young social media posters have already forgotten about this. Probably because John Oliver doesn't talk about it, and that's often their primary source of news analysis. But the Majority Whip for the U.S. Congress is STILL in recovery from a mass shooting over two months ago, by a deranged left-wing activist.
In Dallas last year, 5 police officers were assassinated and another 9 injured at a BLM protest march (the deadliest incident for U.S. law enforcement since 9/11), by an Army veteran who openly cited racial hatred as his motive. I went to church the following Sunday. I was a member of a Unitarian Universalist congregation, one of the most liberal American sects. The sermon more or less boiled down to, "Meh, they had it coming". I have since left the UU community, after more than a decade of fellowship there.
Where is the balancing point, at which you can declare "equivalence"? I don't know, and don't really care. But the narrative that polarization and extremism are entirely one-sided needs to go.
As a moderate, BOTH extremes in the U.S. scare the shit out of me right now. I'm a bit sick of being told that I'm "normalizing" awful things by not locking arms with one side, shutting my brain off, and chanting along with the mob. The mob has the intellect, the morality, and the attention span of a goldfish.
Key word there, also I'm not aware of anybody on the left who even thinks about giving support to that short of action let alone dares to voice it.
> As a moderate, BOTH extremes in the U.S. scare the shit out of me right now.
This is painfully ridiculous. The lunatic with a rifle is not representative of Sanders or his supporters, or the left in the U.S. I don't think an honest person of any political stripe would listen to Sanders condemnation of the guy and wonder whether he really meant it.
The Nazis and the Klan... are the Nazis and the Klan. Murder is what they do, and the best that could possibly have been said about the ones marching the other day was that they were just some kind of weak wannabes, not the real thing. Which would have been a smarter thing to say before they killed somebody at their rally.
I just cannot fathom some of the over-intellectualized naivete I'm reading here.
And nazis aren't representative of Trump or his supporters. To say otherwise would insinuate that _half the country_ are nazis.
According to PBS, "far-right extremists tend to be more active in committing homicides, yet Islamist extremists tend to be more deadly."
Are we comparing percentage of deaths or number of events?
Personally, I think both sides are fueled by religious beliefs. Their hate is cut from the same cloth.
[0] http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/analysis-deadly-threat-f...
I don't think that 8 right wing extremism homicide events over the course of 2 years shows that _half the country_ are right wing extremists.
Just like how 5 Islamist extremist homicide events over the same period of time don't show that all Muslims are extremists.
It’s actually not clear if this is the case. It took three days and a ton of media pressure to get Trump to say he condemns Nazis, and then he immediately said that he only made the statement because “bad people” in the media forced him to.
A very logical conclusion is that Trump actually does support Nazis.
I think it's just as possible that not all facts were available on Saturday afternoon. Once the facts were available on Monday, the President made a definitive statement.
Also, since when did days become inclusive? I count 2 days (48 hours) between noon Saturday and noon Monday. Another media concoction.
Putting aside the issue of his supporters, a charitable reading of Trump (whose true beliefs are well-concealed by ineloquence and constant displays of self-contradiction and dishonesty) would be that authoritarianism, nationalism, xenophobia, and many other fascist traits resonate strongly with him and he therefore feels some unconscious reluctance to criticize these guys who ought to be really, really easy for him to denounce by name. That's the charitable reading, which is consistent with him not really believing in their stated goals.
The behavior the press harps on - Trump being oddly appreciative of the qualities of "strongman" politicians when he speaks of them - is a common enough talking point, but I was shocked when Trump told the mass-murderer Duterte he was doing a great job. At some point the question of whether Trump is an amoral, dangerous idiot or an evil, dangerous idiot starts to feel a little academic.
That's precisely it. There is a line where incompetence becomes malice but once you're far enough across the line it no longer matters where the line itself is.
Who was the speaker of that sermon? I'd love to email them and get the real story, because that smells suspiciously like confirmation bias in your summary.
Anyhow, a UU sermon that is dismissive of terroristic violence is novel enough that requires a citation. In fact the only thing I could say to generalize about the variety of topics I've heard in various UU sermons is that none of them could possibly be characterized with the word "meh" in the summary. If anything it is the "Church of Anti-meh." And I'm not even a member, so I'm sure I've only heard the tip of the iceberg.
It was probably more along the lines of, "Making your bed and lying in it" or "When you poke the lion ten times, expect to get bit"
When someone trots out crimes of the left, it smells like "and you too!" that somehow the Right, which has the rule of force as their platform gets a pass with 1:100 ratios.
This is not about some general vague problem with "extremism" of which supposedly all sides are guilty. This is about the emergence of an Islamic terrorist movement which has already committed several attacks. When your first reaction to this is to to bring in some unspecified crimes of the US, then this calls into question whether you understand the seriousness of the situation. There is a real chance that real, actual radical Islamists kill many more people and perhaps even gain more political power. We can talk about this without engaging in some false equivalence.
"Trump has not denounced white supremacist terrorism" is the equivalent to "Obama has not denounced radical Islamic terrorism".
It's a media trick used to derail any conversation about whatever the president is trying to get done and make everybody talk about something incendiary for a while.
There is no useful policy anybody is going to put in place against fascism that hasn't already been there since World War II. Terrorism is already the most illegal of things. Do we really need to encourage Republicans to pass another law against terrorism? One Patriot Act is already too many.
But he has a black friend who will fix Chicago violence in a week!!
I don't know about this Twitter account, but I do personally consider it racist when reporting or discussions are angled to only report ethnic group targets (or other tribes) negatively. Whataboutism like this is also a signal to me.
http://www.businessinsider.com/richard-spencer-says-trump-di...
Also, if you are not familiar with "white nationalism" or Richard Spencer, this interview should help: https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/a-frank-conversation-wit...
This argument has never made any sense. White supremacists are concentrated in states that Republicans win by such large margins that victory is assured regardless of how the minority sporting swastika tattoos votes.
So tell me: what kind of President would select a guy like this as his Attorney General?
[1]https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/09/magazine/the-voter-fraud-...
That bad people fit the cartoonish representation pushed by tag team of media and stereotyping?
Well yea, Obama, like George Bush before him, didn't use those exact words because it's a pointlessly offensive term. There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. Almost all of those 1.6 billion people are peaceful, responsible humans, just living their lives. Obama and Bush denounced terrorism all the time. But both of them, being somewhat more thoughtful than Trump, decided not to lump those 1.6 billion in with a tiny group of murdering lunatics, by naming those murdering lunatics after peaceful group's religion.
It would be as if we called KKK lynchings to Radical Christian Terrorism, as the KKK's makes all kinds of claims relating their batshit ideology to Christianity. Doesn't mean it has anything to do with Christianity though.
In short, your comparison doesn't hold up at all, as Obama consistently denounced terrorism by Al Qaeda and ISIS in clear, strong terms.
Trump got pitched a total softball, and he somehow managed to screw it up. Violence at a rally organized by white supremacists? Seems pretty cut and dry.
Or in the sense that "white supremacist" besmirches white people the way that "Radical Islamist" besmirches Islam? Ok, I'm not against referring to them just as "racists" or the groups by their respective names (Neo-Nazis, KKK, and so on).
In either case, your comparison between Trump and Obama doesn't hold up.
> "Trump has not denounced white supremacist terrorism" is the equivalent to "Obama has not denounced radical Islamic terrorism".
Obama DID denounce "radical Islamic terrorism," though he did not use that exact term, for the reasons described above. For example, Obama said the following regarding the San Bernardino shooters:
> So far, we have no evidence that the killers were directed by a terrorist organization overseas, or that they were part of a broader conspiracy here at home. But it is clear that the two of them had gone down the dark path of radicalization, embracing a perverted interpretation of Islam that calls for war against America and the West. They had stockpiled assault weapons, ammunition, and pipe bombs. So this was an act of terrorism, designed to kill innocent people.
Trump denounced the racists in Charlottesville on Monday, but his statement Saturday did not.
It just vaguely criticized "hatred and bigotry," without referencing the fact that in this case the hatred and bigotry was that of Neo-Nazis, KKK, and other racist groups. To me, his statement sounded like he thought the counter-protesters were equally guilty of "hatred and bigotry", and I think many other people felt the same.
If Trump's statement Saturday had been like the one on Monday, there would have been no controversy.
> Or in the sense that "white supremacist" besmirches white people the way that "Radical Islamist" besmirches Islam? Ok, I'm not against referring to them just as "racists" or the groups by their respective names (Neo-Nazis, KKK, and so on).
It's that the larger group gets painted with the bad acts of the malicious minority.
And it's more about the motte/bailey thing than the specific words in the name, which makes "racism" the same problem.
When you have serious people arguing that all white people are racist because they benefit from structural inequality, that word isn't adequately distinguishing what the KKK does from everyone else.
We need something that means "definition by motives" and not the other ones:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/06/21/against-murderism/
Bigotry might be a good alternative -- but that's the one he used.
> Obama DID denounce "radical Islamic terrorism," though he did not use that exact term, for the reasons described above.
Trump did denounce white supremacist groups, both before and after Friday.
> It just vaguely criticized "hatred and bigotry," without referencing the fact that in this case the hatred and bigotry was that of Neo-Nazis, KKK, and other racist groups. To me, his statement sounded like he thought the counter-protesters were equally guilty of "hatred and bigotry", and I think many other people felt the same.
And maybe this is really the crux of the matter -- it isn't about "Trump fails to denounce white supremacy", it's that he implicitly criticized the people protesting it.
But only if the counter-protesters are guilty of "hatred and bigotry" -- and if some of them are, why is it wrong to criticize that?
If after the San Bernardino shootings, Obama had said: "We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious violence and use of force on both sides," I don't think it would have been accepted by the public, not just with the partisans, but more generally. Because it makes it sound like Obama considers the police that shot the terrorists to be as bad as the terrorists.
I think we have the same situation here. "Racism" sometimes is used to label non-racist people, but that is not the case here. The protesters were actual racists, like Nazis, KKK, white nationalists and so on. I.e. groups that really do want to racially discriminate and worse, i.e. racists i.e. bigots. These people should be denounced because they are bigots and because they became violent.
The counter protesters aren't bigots. If counter protesters were instigating violence (I don't think they were), then I of course don't support that. But even in that case it only makes sense for Trump to clearly word the statement in a way that makes it clear he is only denouncing the counter-protesters for being violent, not for being bigots.
I'm sure the counter-protesters aren't perfect people, but that doesn't mean we can't differentiate between these groups. http://lesswrong.com/lw/mm/the_fallacy_of_gray/
Obama's rational for his decision is widely known: That the criticism of an outsider, denouncing their culture as extremism and terrorism will, in the ears of even the most progressive, secular muslim, only be understood as an insult, and will therefore only lead to further the narrative of a "Clash of Civilisation" a la Fukuyama.
That statement can be argued with. But to feign ignorance can only be considered bad faith.
Note also that nobody is demanding any laws. What people are clamouring for are honesty, decency, and leadership.
The problem with Obama's argument isn't that it's wrong, it's that it's all too symmetrical. Trump was barely accepted by the Republicans -- he's from New York. He's the outsider.
And Democrats have been doing a motte and bailey thing with racism for years, where denouncing racism is the motte and redefining racism to mean anything they disagree with is the bailey.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey
So on one hand, anyone who e.g. believes there should be equality of opportunity but accepts that it may not lead to equality of outcomes, or doesn't support unlimited immigration, or voted for Trump, is labeled a white supremacist. On the other hand, everyone is required to overtly denounce white supremacists, even though we just got through telling anyone who voted for Trump that they are a white supremacist.
This reminds me that during his rallies, Trump would point to a camera that he knew was contractually obliged to point only at him, and tell the crowd that the fake news media didn't want to show his crowd.
Just in case you think that he's just a total idiot, who regularly complains about the sitting President following military advice. No, he's a mendacious demagogue who intentionally riles his idiotic followers up by pretending that Obama following military protocol is either cowardice or complicity in terror.
Please stop. I guess all the rioting, arson (of which at Berkeley nothing was done about by law enforcement), and assaults (by mainly people hiding their face, mind you) carried out by the anti-Trump crowd this year don't count right? And this isn't to marginalize what happened over the weekend either, but people with polarizing narratives like you are a large part of the problem. We didn't get to where we are while in a vacuum.
Antifa also does some nasty things. However, it's worth noting that they hide their face because they don't want to be doxxed by groups such as The_Donald and /pol/.
Fortunately, the Nazis on this weekend's rally weren't so smart, so now quite a few of them have lost their jobs and faced other types of backlash from their friends and neighbors.
I'm not American, but have spent quite a lot of time in the country. From my point of view, most of the media is moderate left -- and they have a very loud voice indeed. The extreme left exists but has very little visibility compared to France, for example. (That is convenient for right-wing press like Breitbart, because it lets them paint boogeymen inside the outlines of shapeless outrage-based movements like Black Lives Matter.)
American moderate right is a strange group. Polls suggest they have a lot of support, but their leaders seem to have decided not to use their voice. It's not like they're being silenced -- more like they're afraid to speak up. A few people like Senator Jeff Flake are a counterexample that shows what the American right could be, if they decided to stop pandering to an incompatible mishmash of base instincts at the fringe of their party.
I think you're understating how much of the American right dislikes Trump. Actual conservatives supported Cruz and Rubio (both of whom have been very consistently critical of Trump's shenanigans). Ben Sasse and Rand Paul are also very vocal.
In print, National Review, The Federalist, Commentary, and similar news organizations have been against Trump since the Republican primary, not in small part to his playing footsie with racists.
It's not a conspiracy. You can have emergent bias as much as planned bias. That's basically the position of various HR departments who offer unconscious bias training.
At any rate, every study I've seen has confirmed that most media orgs at least lean left. Have you seen any that disagree?
For example, I've noticed that a lot of Americans think of Angela Merkel as a leftist. But she's a right-wing conservative from a party called "Christian Democratic Union"!
In a way, the American media has been successfully gerrymandered: the extreme right has been pulling the left/right demarcation line towards them for decades.
So things that seem rather moderate to a European (nationalising some industry) is a brand new thing in the American context.
There are also complexities in that America doesn't really have a clearly defined racial, religious, or ethnic identity. The common identity in America mostly centers around ideas and individual rights, so the American right has much more interest in liberty, relatively, compared to the European right.
When was the last time an entire industry was nationalized in Europe? I can't even think of a post-WWII example off the top of my head. (I'm sure there are examples, considering the success of Communist parties in some West European countries in the decade after 1945.)
It's true that there are more state-owned corporations in Europe... But some of the largest American corporations are so intricately tied to government deals and lobbying that there's no practical difference. I'm thinking of Lockheed, etc.
Compare Airbus and Boeing. One started as a multinational state-owned consortium created by European governments; the other has always been a private company. But they've ended up in basically the same position -- public corporations propped up by deep government subsidies in various disguises.
American and European capitalism isn't very different at all. Individual liberties are essentially the same with some tweaks. We're much closer than many think.
In the healthcare debate, the American right argued that the national government didn't (and shouldn't) have the power to take certain steps. The European right mostly argues from practical or identity-based reasons. So healthcare controversies involve levels of funding, pay for workers, coverage for refugees, and things like that.
So Scalia agreed that you're allowed to burn a flag in America. That's great -- but how did this ever even become a Supreme Court case? If you burn a flag in Sweden or France, nobody would think to sue you. The fact that this freedom had to be weighed at the highest possible level shows that Americans have serious blind points around their perception of freedom. Similarly, European countries have individual historical taboos on speech, such as the ban on Nazi symbols in Germany.
In the US healthcare debate, the right's constitutional argument seems to revolve around Obamacare's individual mandate -- but that's just is a clumsy artifact of how the system was overlaid on existing pseudo-private healthcare systems. With a properly designed tax-funded public healthcare system, the problem would go away.
1) Links to studies?
2) Having a leaning in op-eds doesn't mean a bias in facts reported. I'd assume if you have 0 bias there would be no point in lying about facts, but regardless of left-leaning or right-leaning organisations, the real issue is whether you present truth or not.
http://time.com/money/4533729/hillary-clinton-journalist-cam...
There are plenty more if you Google around. And they go back way before Trump was on the scene.
I'd be interested to see studies that dispute these findings. I haven't seen any.
A fair reporting of Trump comes across in a very bad light. I guess that's unfortunate for him, but it's of his own making.
The real question is whether anything reported on him (or the right at large) are erroneous, as he has claimed hundreds of times ("lies" and "fake" specifically), because the very few times it has happened, it was publicly retracted, and most often people got fired for it. I think that's a marker for healthy news.
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2010/09/media-professionals...
http://dailycaller.com/2010/08/28/obama-democrats-got-88-per...
May I suggest that it's not causation?
Other large outlet headquarters:
Fox News: New York City
Breitbart: Los Angeles
Infowars: Austin
A slight change in your text:
> virtually all large [any type of corporation] are clustered around liberal metropolitan areas
Is that really true? Just off the top of my head, Lindsey Graham has been pretty vocal the last few months. I would paint him as a poster boy of the American moderate right (holding fairly conservative positions but clearly opposed to the more extreme American right).
If you mean the actual leadership, e.g. Paul Ryan, well I think it's obvious why they've stayed silent.
I think those moderate voices are just being drowned out.
#1
Gerrymandering has enabled polarization. Previously, some competition in the general election ("left" vs "right") moderated the candidates.
Now the real election is in party primaries ("right" vs "more right"), which are low turnout events of mostly "the base". Result elected officials have become more extreme.
#2
The money game changed. Tom DeLay and others took control of the campaign contributions funnel. At the same time, cost of running campaigns continues to rapidly increase. So any one who wants to hold office has to kiss the ring.
#3
The resulting polarization has made legislating far more difficult. Best explanation I've read so far is Unorthodox Lawmaking, Rulemaking
http://columbialawreview.org/content/unorthodox-lawmaking-un...
--
How do we fix this?
Biggest step is independent redistricting commissions, with citizen oversight (approval). Gerrymandering is mostly incumbent protection schemes. Citizens (voters) hate the result. Support for independent commissions is something like 80/20 (no-brainer).
Next biggest step would be to eliminate the two party system by replacing our winner takes all (FPTP) form of elections with Approval Voting. Cite Duverger's Law. Some people advocate other systems, like proportional representation. Great idea; I think Approval Voting is an easier sell.
Reduce the costs of campaigning. So much we can do here. Restore fairness doctrine, time box campaigning, better GOTV/voter education efforts, unify & simplify voter registration (eg automatic, universal), etc.
Seeing as there seems to be some disagreement to this post, let me back it up with recent US election pages from politicalcompass.org:
https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2016
https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2012
https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2008
https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2004
There are a few choices for very minor candidates (Bernie Sanders notwithstanding) but very little mainstream choice that’s not wedged over to the right hand side.
the only voice that matters is the voice of wall street and the voice of the corporate elite.
as long as politically irrelevant people on the left and right are busy yelling at each other about irrelevant issues that have no effect of wealth and income distribution then everything is going according to plan.
Again?
Honestly, it's probably too soon to be making political points. But then people are looking for political wins in the aftermath (resignations and shunning I guess?), so I don't see how that sort of thing is on the table. Seems like uneven expectations about what decent people should do in the face of tragedy.
I'm sure it does. Now, who exactly is doing the polarizing here?
> Honestly, it's probably too soon to be making political points.
On the contrary, it is probably way too late. Now the question is how much damage will be done before the landslide is arrested. My sense of that: all bets are off.
> But then people are looking for political wins in the aftermath (resignations and shunning I guess?), so I don't see how that sort of thing is on the table.
Giving up on the administration is not a political win, it is damage control.
> Seems like uneven expectations about what decent people should do in the face of tragedy.
It depends on your definition of 'decent' how you read that.
I gave up on Trump in the winter of 2015/2016. I'm way ahead of you there.
I'm just saying people have valid thoughts (polarization in general leads to t his) that might be considered premature. But if we're going to be evenhanded, angry left-wing people need to honor a cool off period for a while.
Keep in mind that moderates who dislike Trump from the start can fairly blame left-wing shenanigans, at least partly, for the rise of Trump. Lumping them in with racists and downvoting them isn't healthy dialogue.
> Keep in mind that moderates who dislike Trump from the start can fairly blame left-wing shenanigans, at least partly, for the rise of Trump.
Yes, but it would be a fig-leaf. A large number of them are pretty much on the record as being pissed off that a black guy became president. America really has a race problem even if on paper it is all pretty good. Especially the heartland. Denying this is allowing it room to grow.
> Lumping them in with racists and downvoting them isn't healthy dialogue.
Well, if you purposefully skew the weighting of the responses of the various parties to the point where you feel the violence on the 'left' is the equal of the violence on the 'right' then you're part of the problem. It becomes an 'us versus them' thing and staking out a position in such a polarized environment is something that you should do with great care. I'm not aware of any left leaning politician that has tacitly or openly condoned any violence on the left and some (definitely not all, for instance the Scalise shooting) was a direct response to other violence.
To toss that all onto the same heap is disingenuous at best.
If you want 'healthy dialogue' you're going to have to come to terms with inherent biases first. But that's hard to do.
To be fair to the GOP, Trump basically did a hostile takeover with a plurality of the vote on the right against a very fractured field.
I'm not advocating for a pissing contest over who is more violent. I'm advocating for people to treat each other decently even if they disagree. I'm advocating for rational dialogue.
I think this isn't the moment to win points for the left. Partly because I think the case isn't strong, but also because I don't see it solving the real problem of divisive American politics. The left can't "win" enough to forever banish Trumps from power. It only causes escalation, at least so far.
Ok, I thought it was rather very visible earlier on, such as before he even decided to run for president.
> To be fair to the GOP, Trump basically did a hostile takeover with a plurality of the vote on the right against a very fractured field.
They did not have to nominate him.
> I'm not advocating for a pissing contest over who is more violent.
Ok
> I'm advocating for people to treat each other decently even if they disagree. I'm advocating for rational dialogue.
It's pretty hard to have a rational dialogue when one side of the dialogue discards all facts as 'fake', brings their own 'alternative facts' to the table, tacitly and openly supports violence against their opposition and in general does whatever possible to polarize the society they are nominally supposed to lead.
> I think this isn't the moment to win points for the left.
This stopped being about 'points' long ago, this is about the future of a country.
> Partly because I think the case isn't strong, but also because I don't see it solving the real problem of divisive American politics.
Agreed, that problem starts at the top and it will take a serious amount of soul searching for the GOP to decide how far they will let this slide before they will put a stop to it. Chances are that it is already past the point where it can be arrested anyway but maybe there is still an outside chance the problem can be contained before it spills over.
> The left can't "win" enough to forever banish Trumps from power. It only causes escalation, at least so far.
This is not about left versus right, if that's your frame of reference today then you really should wake up and start paying attention, the damage to the United States as an institution both at home and abroad is immense.
Being sued for racial discrimination in 1973 was a pretty big clue. But the birther nonsense should really have tipped everyone off about what was going on.
For me the one is a response to structural unequal treatment by law enforcement, the other is the vilest element in society seeking a platform and a way to spread their hateful ideology.
Do I? I just know people are outgrouping and arguing through violence and I'm opposed to that regardless or what policy changes they feel are appropriate.
I don't feel the need to judge that political violence is worse in one case than in another case.
That doesn't mean you should be happy about it, it should be a means of last resort and it should be practiced only when all other avenues have not born fruit.
> [...] then you're part of the problem. [...]
> If you want 'healthy dialogue' you're going to have
> to come to terms with inherent biases first.
You just said that somebody was 'purposefully skewing' as if they did not really believe what they said. This is textbook bad faith arguing. You could do with reading what everybody is saying and imagining that they actually honestly believe these things and then go from there.
My own two-cents are that left-wing violence and anger is partly to blame for both his rise and the deeper polarisation we are now seeing since it enabled the alt-right to play the victim and fight a war of optics [0]. However, it's not the only cause: a large component of what we're seeing is that Trump coming to power has emboldened the worst of the Right [1].
[0] Look at how they manage their image with propaganda, and their attempts to use the Left against itself: https://mobile.twitter.com/sebinsua/status/89716402244070195...
[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/bswud/status/747790921190744064
Reminds me of the time someone cited the Rodney King riots as examples of left-wing hate speech.
Or when the protestors at the WTO summit had to physically prevent some testosterone filled teenage agitators from Oregon, self-described "anarchists", from breaking crap because the police wouldn't act.
(Almost as if allowing some violence to make the evening news served their purpose. Hmmmm.)
I ask because I'm hoping someone can explain the mental gymnastics required to believe such nonsense.
Since you so clearly perceive those would you mind exposing them?
> My own two-cents are that left-wing violence and anger is partly to blame for both his rise and the deeper polarisation we are now seeing since it enabled the alt-right to play the victim and fight a war of optics [0].
That does not mesh with my reading of the facts as presently available at all.
> However, it's not the only cause: a large component of what we're seeing is that Trump coming to power has emboldened the worst of the Right [1].
That we can agree on, and this is in large part due to the use of various 'dog whistles'.
And frankly, I have a hard time coming to terms with people self describing as 'moderates' who voted for Trump, that is some kind of cognitive dissonance. Trump is about as far away from moderate as it gets.
> frankly, I have a hard time coming to terms with
> people self describing as 'moderates' who voted
> for Trump, that is some kind of cognitive dissonance.
> Trump is about as far away from moderate as it gets.
I do think you can be moderate and point out that there are certain tactics used by the Left which have been weaponised against them, and that this has been a key driver in support for the alt-right.
> That does not mesh with my reading of the facts
> as presently available at all.
In any case I did link you to a tweet referencing two instances as an attempt to substantiate what I said. The first demonstrates that alt-right supporters from /pol/ are trying to "get normies onto [their] side" by trying to appear 'peaceful' and 'good' in comparison to their attackers ("and if antifa attack the white families, they're going to look like monsters"). The second demonstrates a time in which @SwiftOnSecurity received a message from a white nationalist trying to incite an offended quote-tweet as a way of maximising the audience of one of their memes.
I can't source it because it was a long while back, but during the election and immediately after it, I also saw various accounts attempting to use instances of left-wing violence at protests to persuade others that they were unfairly threatened or attacked for their beliefs and to try to present antifa as violent thugs. I saw stories about families of Trump supporters trapped at protests and 'fearing for the lives of their children'. I saw photos of Trump supporters violently wounded. Frequently I see the photo of Richard Spencer being punched doubled against a tweet by some out-there radleft implying that anybody righter than them is a Nazi.
I think it's really important to realise that anything you do or say can be turned into propaganda against you.
Edit: The term "concern troll" could be used against me here, so all I ask is for people to evaluate what I've pointed out and decide for themselves whether it's useful or not. My opinion of course is that the alt-right substantially grew in popularity through the techniques I described and that if you care about this you should avoid being part of it.
The instances you quote have nothing whatsoever to do with debating this in a facts and reason based way on an internet forum.
If people are concerned with their kids getting wounded when attending mass rallies of whatever plumage then it is time to spread the word that whenever you assemble a mob, whether it is the 'good guys' or the 'bad guys' does not matter, the mob is its own enemy when panicked and when two mobs encounter each other violence is the predictable outcome.
That idiots then use this to incite further violence is an obvious conclusion without much weight in practice.
Each side will do what they can to victimize themselves and lay blame with their opposition, it has been so since the first man picked up a stick to wage war on his neighbors.
> I refuse to be squelched because some
> Neo Nazi could use my words against me.
While you might not care about your own personal risk, as a citizen of the world you should care about having your actions used to create political material that radicalises people towards the alt-right cause as this threatens people other than you.
It doesn't matter whether they are idiots or not, it matters whether bad players have an easy or hard time making their case and recruiting supporters. Make it difficult, not easy!
> The instances you quote have nothing
> whatsoever to do with debating this
> in a facts and reason based way on an internet forum.
I feel like what people who behave as you are miss is that it could just be ignorance. Ignorance can be cured but not with aggression. Did you see the story where a black man befriended a bunch of KKK and they all ended up leaving the organization at the end? He didn't get that result with righteous indignation even if he had every right to be righteously indignant.
But the kind of behavior I'm seeing now is a bit saddening. I remember when HN guidelines said something to the effect of "Instead of saying 'C++ was created after C, idiot' you can shorten it to 'C++ was created after C'". But I see posts in the tone of yours which say something like "The left has isolated incidents of violence by deranged people, blasted by leaders on the left while the right has much more dangerous and common events which seem to be supported by the leadership. To put these two together is disingenuous and could only be done by a fascist.", where that last sentence could just be left off.
The issue is assuming the absolute worst of everyone you talk to online that doesn't hold your opinion. Maybe the poster just has ignorant friends/family and really doesn't know any better. Maybe they have opinions right now that they're going to be really embarrassed about in 10-20 years. But if you immediately group them together with people like Hitler (didn't this used to kill the thread?) then you give up any hope of educating them (or, more importantly, other people on the fence who are reading the exchange). So I have to wonder what is even the utility of such posts except to signal to others which camp you're in.
> Maybe the poster just has ignorant friends/family and really doesn't know any better.
That's quite possibly true. But regardless, at least they don't stoop to putting words in my mouth that I never used in that particular order and with that particular goal.
> Maybe they have opinions right now that they're going to be really embarrassed about in 10-20 years.
Let's hope not, it would be painful for all involved.
> But if you immediately group them together with people like Hitler
Well, when Neo Nazis walk the land waving flags and re-living the past as much as they can invoking Hitler is fair game.
Mind you: The pre World War II Nazis of old (and their sympathizers) to some extent could be forgiven because they could claim they had no idea what it all would lead to.
But the present day Nazis and their sympathizers have no such excuse.
> So I have to wonder what is even the utility of such posts except to signal to others which camp you're in.
To try to convince someone to see things in a slightly different light. And if you had been reading this thread with a bit more attention you could see some of that at work. It's not going to be a large change but speaking out about this stuff is the least that we can do.
No, I explicitly stated that I was grouping your posts in with others that seem similar to me (and acknowledged that I could be in error on that).
>But regardless, at least they don't stoop to putting words in my mouth that I never used in that particular order and with that particular goal.
You're a software developer, right? So think a bit more abstract. I suspect my point fits to things you've written in this thread.
>Let's hope not, it would be painful for all involved.
Why? Thinking stupid things is part of growing up. The much more important bit is eventually correcting as many of those things as possible.
>But the present day Nazis and their sympathizers have no such excuse.
Here we're in agreement. If someone identifies as a Nazi then the game changes. But I just see a lot of e.g. Trump supporters right now that I can't shake the feeling that they're not being evil they're just ignorant on a lot of things the rest of us aren't.
>It's not going to be a large change but speaking out about this stuff is the least that we can do.
Please don't take my replies as trying to shut you down. My point is entirely about tone. Nothing else.
What? The rise of Trump was entirely down to the GOP - for years - stoking both racial and anti-liberal resentment with only one goal - to dismantle anything Obama touched.
And I think you're ignoring a lot of things the left has been up to. The IRS scandal was a big deal, for example.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy
> The Republican majority on the House Oversight Committee issued a report, which concluded that although some liberal groups were selected for additional review, the scrutiny that these groups received did not amount to targeting when compared to the greater scrutiny received by conservative groups. The report was criticized by the committee's Democratic minority, which said that the report ignored evidence that the IRS used keywords to identify both liberal and conservative groups.
> In January 2014, the FBI told Fox News that its investigation had found no evidence so far warranting the filing of federal criminal charges in connection with the controversy, as it had not found any evidence of "enemy hunting", and that the investigation continued. On October 23, 2015, the Justice Department declared that no criminal charges would be filed.
Meanwhile: http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/346544-dreamhost-cla...
Classic misguided whataboutism. Fox News did it again.
The Damore who sourced real science in an effort to try to legitimize his own non-sequitor opinions in a memo?
The Damore who made a t-shirt comparing a company with snack bars, lego corners, project choice and hundreds of thousands of dollar salaries with communist forced labor camps?
I don't disagree with you on Eich. I think supporting prop 8 is abhorrent, but likewise was the online shaming campaign. I'd support anyone boycotting Mozilla if they chose too, and those who resigned when he was promoted to CEO, but he also wasn't fired, he resigned.
The researcher Damore cites:
> It is unclear to me that this sex difference would play a role in success within the Google workplace (in particular, not being able to handle stresses of leadership in the workplace. That’s a huge stretch to me),” writes Schmitt.
And Eichs belief that gay people shouldn't be allowed to marry, meaning they should have less rights than straight people?
It is neither a left problem, extremism problem, or even a problem.
If you discriminate, you should get fired. The fact that this can even be claimed as a political/partisan issue is frightening. And if it somehow is partisan, the left isn't the issue.
It seems to me that "I condemn Nazis and the KKK" is pretty much a "motherhood"[1] statement and you'd have to be pretty extreme not to make it. Even Jeff Sessions condemned it, and many of those on the left consider him a complete bogeyman.
So while increased polarization might be a problem in US politics, I'm not at all sure we can see that here.
Edit: And who on earth downvotes a comment like this? I don't need to complain about downvotes, but what on earth are people thinking here? Is it people who support Nazis who downvote this, or is there some subtle point here I'm missing?
[1] Motherhood statements are those statements that politicians make that "everyone" agrees with; eg "I think motherhood is great"
There are certainly a lot of people on here who are very keen to point out that the Nazis aren't that bad because [bullshit reasons], yes.
But surely no one is arguing "Nazis aren't bad" on HN?
If they are fair then it's just equivalence, not false equivalence. I feel like this has become the new vogue term thrown around since Charlottesville happened, and it's seeing a lot of misuse. Most people don't even bother to explain why the equivalence is false, thus attempting to shut down the conversation in the manner of the fallacy fallacy.
> If they are fair then it's just equivalence, not false equivalence.
I think you are misparsing my statement. The "and" separates two sub-statements:
1) I see lots of false equivalence arguments,
and, additionally
2) I see lots of (possibly fair, possibly not) criticisms of political violence from left-leaning groups
Not so openly. Plenty of dog whistles, though.
If your first instinct is to minimise the Nazis (historical or new) by way of comparison to [anything else], then yeah, I would say they're arguing exactly that.