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Comment by anonu | Hacker News Reader

The country may be divided. But those divisions are manufactured and exacerbated over the last 4 years by a made-for-TV president.

I couldn't help but think, in looking at various TV news channels this past week, that this is all sport. Big numbers on the score board and the play-by-play constantly flashing on the screens. We're the spectators, and the politicians are players on the field. Trump played the field better than anyone.

I hope that a new president and a new administration can show the USA that the division is not as deep and worrisome as is portrayed. We're actually all rooting for the same things here.

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I disagree. I see a narcissist and a buffoon when I look at Trump, but none of his behavior validates anything close to the crazed response we see from the primarily left-leaning mainstream media.

It's been a constant stream of catastrophizing from them for the last four years. It was like this during the Bush years as well, though they do seem to have perfected it.

What would have to be true in order for you to feel that the media response to Trump’s presidency has been appropriate?

Well, they've been presenting him as a fascist authoritarian for four years, so if that were true I'd be inclined to believe their response was appropriate.

Trump actively campaigned as the "law and order" president.

That is, by definition, fascist and authoritarian.

He was repeatedly asked if he would support the peaceful transfer of power if he lost, and he repeatedly refused to do so. That’s pretty much as authoritarian as you get.

This is such a blatantly false framing that it's impossible for me to believe you're presenting it in good faith.

It's pretty much the standard interpretation.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/24/trump-transition-us-ele...

I am very interested in seeing a “good faith” framing of his statements on the topic from you. Can you provide one?

Not GP commenter, but here's one: The "will you support a peaceful transition of power" question is designed to elicit a response which could be quoted out of context in an article inevitably headlined "Trump predicts his own election defeat; already musing about transfer of power to his Democratic challenger". For any politician to answer a question posed this way would be disaster. Trump's unique problem is that he simply refuses to answer the question rather than giving a non-answer with the appearance of substance. Whether this is by choice or because he can't pull off that common trick is perhaps debatable.

(Before downvoting/flagging, please recognize that this answer is not exclusive of other explanations such as "Trump really does have dictatorial ambitions". I take no position on such non-falsifiable claims.)

This is very similar to George W Bush's "fool me twice... I won't get fooled again" gaffe. Had he completed the quote properly he could never have escaped the clips of saying "shame on me" taken out of context (remember this is before the days of deepfakes; now it would matter much less). This was predictably spun as "Dubya is stupid!" but frankly to recognize mid-quip the minefield he was about to step in is a feat beyond the average person. Of course the difference is (again) that unlike Bush, Trump really leaves open the possibility that he really is incompetent as opposed to the 5-dimensional chess that anyone supporting him really hopes he's playing.

The only reason he was asked this question in the first place is because there was good reason to doubt that he would support a peaceful transition - doubt that is well founded as we now see.

Maybe hes smart enough not to answer the question - the problem is that it should never have needed to be asked.

> The "will you support a peaceful transition of power" question is designed to elicit a response which could be quoted out of context in an article inevitably headlined "Trump predicts his own election defeat

Then why wasn't Biden asked the same question? Or anyone else? If this was just a gaffe factory then surely it would be a staple of the presidential interview genre, no?

But it's not. Only Trump got asked that. Ever, as far as I know. And the reason isn't because we were looking for a gaffe but because there was (AND REMAINS!) significant doubt as to whether he would support a peaceful transition of power.

I mean, the current circumstances right now disprove the theory you just proposed. Read his twitter feed, for goodness sake.

> Then why wasn't Biden asked the same question? Or anyone else? If this was just a gaffe factory then surely it would be a staple of the presidential interview genre, no?

That doesn't even make sense! Biden isn't the sitting POTUS. The question "will you support a peaceful transition of power" only makes sense when asked of a sitting POTUS, not an incoming POTUS. Biden doesn't currently have any power which he's required to transmit to Trump!

I know TDS can be a powerful effect, but surely you're not asking me to believe (or to take seriously) that there's someone else other than Trump who currently holds the position of POTUS.

Just today: the president has begun purging the defense department, the attorney general has rolled back rules about interference in in-progress elections, and the majority leader has signaled support for overturning the election.

Would you care to revisit your priors as to whether or not it was appropriate to ask Trump about his support for a peaceful transfer of power?

> This is such a blatantly false framing that it's impossible for me to believe you're presenting it in good faith.

Listen to his responses again. I don't know how you can interpret it any other way.

September 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR8oIitE6mI

October 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP0G4vJ5OMw

Edit: Found a September 2016 one where he does say he will support the transfer of power - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRJ8TLCZdnI

I don't understand your position here at all. Trump is currently doing everything he can to thwart a peaceful transition of power. The fact that he is such an ineffectual buffoon is the only reason he is not succeeding.

For me, Trump trying to use the Justice Dept to investigate his enemies and thwart investigations of his friends is so beyond the pale, way beyond what any president, Republican or Democrat, has ever done that I am shocked people can think this was not a big deal. I mean, that extreme abuse of power is banana republic, end of Rome-type shit.

Put it another way: I firmly believe if a time traveler from, say, 2010 just showed up to see Trump's autocratic desires that they'd be horrified; we've just gotten used to Trump's extreme abuses. Heck, it's become something of a new favorite pastime of mine to look at Trump's own tweet storms circa 2012 and see how 2012 Trump would be condemning 2020 Trump in the harshest possible terms.

Is it appropriate now he’s declaring the democratic election invalid?

That’s what fascism is, you realise?

This really cuts to the heart of it; what does it take to get someone to change their views, when the facts don’t work?

Even if you disagree with a democratic agenda, how can you in good conscience continue to support someone who is blatantly acting like a fascist dictator right now?

I personally find it easy to distinguish Trump, who I consider an waste of air, and the GOP, who has an agenda I can appreciate.

Why is that so difficult to do?

When vote counts suddenly stop and then overnight the opponent starts surging, people tend to assume foul play is at hand. This is how it happens everywhere where an actual authoritarian cheats to stay in power, for instance: https://twitter.com/ajplus/status/1186630753523818502. For you to not understand something like this is grounds for people to question the validity of elections all over the world means that you don't understand much about the world, let alone what's happening in your own country. And I speak about this as a non-American who's simply watching it. You're being brainwashed by your media into believing things that aren't true.

The vote count turn is unsurprising since the in-person ballots could be quickly tallied while the mail-in ballots had to be hand-counted.

The reason the two types of balloting had such a difference in party-support is that the President in the Republican party had been telling his supporters not to use mail-in balloting because it would be rife with fraud. People took him at his word on that side of the political divide, so there's a resulting bias in the likely candidate supported by the mail-in ballots.

Hand counted, in the middle of the night, with no poll watchers around...

The PA, WI, MI GOP state legislatures refused to process mail in ballots before hand which is why it took so long. Look at Florida who voted R and counted their mail in ballots before Election Day and were able to report results that night. It was manufactured by GOP state legislatures to sow doubt.

Sources:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.foxnews.com/politics/pennsy...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurk...

https://www.npr.org/2020/11/04/931136905/we-ll-be-working-24...

Also worth pointing out that in the case of Florida the exact opposite happened and the original count was Biden winning handily but as the panhandle started being added the election swung the other way to Trump. It's not like the big shift in results was unexpected, as soon as the results for Miami-Dade came in even though Biden had a large lead the NY Times election needle immediately swung hard to Trump because they knew the lead would be wiped out by in person voting.

Funny how Trump isn't complaining about the exact same thing happening when it winds up helping him.

Additionally poll watchers were involved in the entire process, if you read what the Trump campaign lawyers said in court

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/fact-c...

There's a reason why countries like France and many others have banned mail-in ballots. When those ballots keep being found day after day and the vote counting keeps going and going without end, until the right candidate wins, people will say its fraudulent. There's nothing you can say or do about it because that's just how it will go. You should want to prevent the voting process from looking fraudulent at all. There should be no doubts about it. The only thing you can do to achieve that is preventing that kind of voting from taking place to great degrees in the first place, which I believe Trump wanted to do but his opponents didn't.

> When those ballots keep being found day after day and the vote counting keeps going and going without end, until the right candidate wins, people will say its fraudulent.

This is not what is happening, and if anything, in Pennsylvania in particular, the Republican legislature is responsible for this situation. PA is one of only a few states that does not allow processing mailed ballots until election day (i.e. they can't even open the envelopes). The Democratic governor asked to change the law to allow counting of ballots before election day, precisely so you wouldn't get into this situation, and the Republican legislature refused.

When I say "the right candidate" I don't mean Biden specifically. If Trump now suddenly starts overtaking in multiple states with the ballots that are still being counted, people opposed to him will also find it suspicious and be unhappy with those results. The overall point is that this kind of voting shouldn't be allowed to this degree in the first place because it only generates doubt no matter who wins. As for the PA situation, yes, that's true, but the process I described is happening or happened in multiple states, not just there.

This. I'm more alarmed and afraid that investigation into all of the allegations his campaign is bringing up will be handled lightly or handwaved as a waste of time, where nothing less than a full blown addressing and running down of every accusation should be done. I don't care who wins in the end. I care that the processes integrity is maintained at all cost. Doubt with regards to the voting process is not something any Republic can afford.

Trump made allegations about the last election as well, then followed up with his own investigation which found no evidence. Then he spent the last few months ginning up distrust of mail in ballots and instead of offering help to states to scale up their voting infrastructure he instead appointed DeJoy to head USPS who destroys sorting machines and slows down the mail.

Now he throws as many lawsuits as he can about the voting process with zero evidence. His suits are being thrown out because they are frivolous and lack credibility.

Doubt with regards to the voting process is being sown by a single person and we shouldn't doubt our institutions just because someone is screaming loudly with no evidence.

I'd still be championing the need to investigate if Trump won, and it was Biden's team calling out the discrepancies.

Admittedly, I'm still trying to track down some more info on the rumored last minute software update in Georgia I believe it was and some more info on some rather interesting age demographics.

I don't doubt that if there was an election to pique voter mobilization, it'd be this one. I just know I'd sleep more soundly knowing some of the numerical strangeness rumored to be going on was looked into wholeheartedly.

Because of the hyper-distributed nature of American elections, those with doubts can often walk down the street (or catch a bus) to the elections office, start talking to people, and find out how the process works.

Also because of the hyper-distributed nature of American elections, that's a much better way to understand how they work in one's town than to look at national news about what's happening in Miami-Dade County. If you're not a citizen of Florida (much less a resident of Miami-Dade), you might as well ask how elections are run in Germany; it'll apply about as much to how they run in your town.

Everyone knew for months ahead that this is how the votes would play out in those particular states. Nothing strange happened.

If he believes it is invalid, I'm not sure what else I'd expect him to say.

The fact that the left has been absolutely out of their minds with hatred for the man for the last four years makes it very, very difficult for people to easily trust that they are not engaging in impropriety during the election. Their motto for removing him is essentially "At any cost" at this point.

I'm not sure why you're framing his actions or words along the lines of "fascist dictator". This is simply a continuation of the vitriolic rhetoric I've been trying to combat for years now. It's crazed, and I do not understand why you - someone who can write clearly enough that you must be intelligent - cannot see it. It's rhetoric like that that is driving so many people to distrust you.

Trump will challenge the election results in court and succeed or fail. It's as simple as that. Personally, I hope it's a failure because I don't want there to have been any impropriety. If that's the case, Trump is done. There is no fascism. There is no dictator. Please stop catastrophizing.

>If he believes

This is the problem - Trump is a moron and everything he believe is suspect.

He believes he had the largest inaugural crowds ever, even after PHOTOGRAPHIC evidence proves otherwise. He believes his administration accomplished more in the first 100 days than any other one in US History. He believes COVID is a conspiracy, fading away, we've rounded the corner, doctors and hospitals are faking numbers to make money, the fake media only talks about it to hurt him and it will stop after the election. Etc.

>I'm not sure why you're framing his actions or words along the lines of "fascist dictator".

He has called for jailing or imprisonment of his political enemies, suggested the election system is rife with fraud, order troops to suppress free speech, had federal agents snatch people off the streets, tried to get other countries to smear his opponents before they got aid from the US, etc. The GOP ran a political convention when HALF of the the speakers were his relatives and advanced no agenda. If he were the President of some banana republic, we would say that is expected in a failing state led by a fascist dictator. I mean the convention alone is bordering on the type of stuff North Korea would stage.

It's not just that he's going to challenge the result in court. Please, go listen to his words- they're on YouTube. Read his tweets.

He's saying things like that he would win if it weren't for all of the illegal votes being counted. That "bad things" are happening in Pennsylvania as his lead was closing. He said, months ago, that he didn't think votes should be counted after election day, which is absolutely absurd.

He's literally trying to sow doubt about the election process and trying to make people think that Biden closing and overcoming a vote gap is suspicious, when it was totally expected.

I don't throw the term around lightly, but I don't know what else to call a blatant undermining of democracy like that other than fascism. Maybe we can discuss whether or not fascism is all that bad, but I find no way you can argue in good faith that what he's saying about the election is "ho-hum. Nothing to see here."

He has also casually suggested being president for more than 2 terms. I find that to be a statement in poor taste, at best. While the constitution is a living document by virtue of amendments, it stinks of aspirations for being dictator-for-life (when being spoken by a sitting president).

He did everything in his power to make sure this election would be a catastrophe (but failed, to the credit of Republican and Democratic state governments).

Now, he’s refusing to accept the results of the election.

He has appointed self-proclaimed facists and neo-Nazis to his inner circle.

His apparently illegal secret police force illegally detained protestors over the objections of the state governments that had legal jurisdiction over the protests.

He said he rushed the appointment of an additional judge to the supreme court so he would have enough votes to overturn the election results.

People claim he wants to be a “fascist dictator” because these are just recent examples of his four year concerted effort to dismantle our democracy.

He did all of these things in the open. There’s no “catastophizing” here. These are all, well-documented, uncontested facts. Most are documented by multiple videos of him, and members of his administration speaking about them. There are dozens of other examples of this behavior, also all well-documented.

Fortunately, it looks like he failed, and will soon be a former president.

> Trump will challenge the election results in court and succeed or fail. It's as simple as that. Personally, I hope it's a failure because I don't want there to have been any impropriety. If that's the case, Trump is done. There is no fascism. There is no dictator.

It's not “as simple as that.”

He's made baseless claims about the security of mail-based voting, suggested that shifts in tallies are the results of illegal votes — instead of a predictable effect of preventing counties from tallying ballots until election day, and clearly and unequivocally claimed that he has won the election and that any other outcome must be a result of fraud.

Working to create the appearance of fraud and then pointing to the situation as evidence is problematic, even if it is not ultimately successful.

> It’s crazed...

I hear you, and I know what you mean.

...but, I don’t think you can reasonably claim that now, even if, perhaps, you could previously.

I’m not trying to convince anyone; I’m just saying, for me, looking at what is happening right now, I cannot argue that the behaviour Trump is displaying is a) inappropriate for the potus, and b) scarily like what you would expect from a “fascist dictator”.

I can’t disagree with you more strongly than this: regardless of what has happened in the past, what is happening right now is NOT a continuation of the last four years of leftist media agenda.

notable fascist al gore.

> Well, they've been presenting him as a fascist authoritarian for four years

He literally called them the "enemies of the state". He routinely calls for the prosecution of his political enemies, and has apparently directed his own Department of Justice to that effect.

I mean, sure, it's true that he may not "be" a fascist authoritarian. But he sure acts like one. Is it wrong to report that?

he said "enemies of the people"

Oh yes, that makes it ok then. Carry on...

Trump said he would only accept the result of an election if he wins it, way back in 2016[0]; he has a pattern of firing anyone who doesn’t do or say exactly what he wants, especially when it comes to persecuting his perceived enemies[1]; he’s used his presidential power to commute the sentences of members of his personal circle who are tried and convicted of crimes[2]; he’s called into question, without evidence, the integrity of American elections[3], since even before he was the president[4]; he constantly attacks the credibility of the free press[5][6], more recently questioning even the reporting of Fox News[7][8]; he bypasses congressional checks on his appointments[9]; he has deployed the military against peaceful protesters and threatened to violate the Posse Comitatus Act[10]; his White House is being investigated for politicising the FDA and CDC[11]; last month he authorised a new executive order that would enable him to more easily fire government employees[12]; he refused to just say that he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses[13].

If this is not sufficient evidence that Trump is a proto-fascist authoritarian, what more would be needed, in your mind, to meet that bar? Or, perhaps putting it another way, can you explain to me how all of this stuff is cool and normal and not a clear pattern of proto-fascist authoritarianism?

I did my best here to source examples from multiple media outlets in order to try to mitigate against the paradox that your main complaint is that the media is distorting the truth. Once someone decides that, not just one source, but the entire media apparatus is lying, it’s incredibly difficult to source information in a way which is acceptable—which is why a free press is so important, and why it’s particularly dangerous that Trump and his party have been spending so much energy on undermining it.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQJzt48wXbA

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/all-the-presidents-d...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/article/trump-pardons-commutations.h...

[3] https://nypost.com/2020/11/05/trump-to-speak-from-white-hous...

[4] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/worl...

[5] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lesley-stahl-donald-trump-said-...

[6] https://cpj.org/reports/2020/04/trump-media-attacks-credibil...

[7] https://www.thewrap.com/trump-attacks-fox-election-day/

[8] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-attacks-fox-ne...

[9] https://www.npr.org/2020/03/09/813577462/how-trump-has-fille...

[10] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-mobilizes-mili...

[11] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

[12] https://www.globalgovernmentforum.com/trump-extend-hire-fire...

[13] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ2AvqLSjSs

I think Trump has many character flaws (and that's putting it lightly), did many not-so-good things, etc. It is fine that this is highlighted by the mainstream media.

My main problem is that the same treatment is not applied to the democrats. This means that in order to find similar stories from the other side, one needs to start (1) reading extremist-leaning news. These also contain many half-truths and outright lies, so on top of that one has to (2) try to verify themselves the veracity of those claims. Most people don't have the time to do that (obviously), so they stop at the first step.

Have you not been watching? They literally manufactured a Russia collusion story and then spent 4 years beating Trump over the head with it. Then they orchestrated a hijacking of the Democratic primary to prevent Bernie from being on the ticket. Trump is a despicable human, to a degree only surpassed by the folks running and representing American media.

I see russian bots commenting on Facebook all day every day for the last 4 years. Today one glitched and commented on a completely unrelated post under the name "hispanics for Trump" on a post for a car.

Russian bots... the lefts favorite cop out argument of 2020. Please provide an example, otherwise your claims are nothing but rhetoric.

This is HNN.

It's everywhere online https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/08/twitter-bots-use-likes-r...

You seriously believe it hasn't happened?

Dude, there actually are Twitter bots every where. I see multiple accounts posting the same exact tweet over and over. You look at their profile and its a obvious its manufactured history. Have you even tried looking?

Krebs has an article with evidence on this phenomena as well: https://krebsonsecurity.com/tag/twitter-bots/

Edit: Specifically https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/08/twitter-bots-use-likes-r...

So that is your Russiagate story? That is the collision we spent 4 years talking about?

You're getting down-voted without anyone else actually providing a rebuttal. But what you're saying matches, roughly, my understanding of what happened. Perhaps their issue is with the way it is phrased, sounding sort of like rhetoric.

So I'll add because I'm more or less with you: I'm sincerely confused how we can spend years alleging Russian interference and now that on a really close election, with contention over the way the ballots were counted, it's being called by the media without presenting doubt despite polling being pretty off? The inconsistency is concerning, in my opinion. What am I not understanding?

If I'd introduced a new system in at work (my understanding is the mass mail-in ballots are new at this scale, but please correct me if I'm wrong) and was testing it and it gave a weird result, I'd at least double check it.

The downvoting could also be because I asked a very basic question and they responded to it with a non sequitur that did not even attempt to answer the question.

There is no contention over how the ballots were counted. There are allegations which have been repeatedly thrown out or debunked by judges and press across the country, including those friendly to the parties making said allegations.

So I’d say that’s what you’re not understanding, though I’m puzzled as to how you could have missed it if you spent any time looking into it at all, since every reputable source has reported the rebuttals right alongside the allegations.

There is no question in this election. The margins are not close. They are not surprising. They were not even terribly unexpected. The only party alleging any of those things is the party that has repeatedly eschewed facts for 4 years and longer. The one that has repeatedly pushed useless investigations that they themselves conclude are baseless. And in fact it’s not even the whole party, it’s mostly the parts of the party working directly for the loser.

Does that help clarify your confusion?

Yes, that helps, thank you. I'd read of some officials denying it, but the information around judges is new to me and I will explore it further.

Who do you consider to be reputable sources? I will include them in my reading.

I'm also interested in why it was necessary to refer to the president as a "loser." I thought your point stood without it and all that did was clue me in on the possibility of bias in the rest of the response. Staunch supporters would likely discard your reasoning entirely because of it.

FWIW, I read that part in the non-insulting context, like as in "loser" versus "victor".

Oh, thank you. I can see that now. Perhaps that is how they meant it.

I did indeed mean loser as the opposite of victor, as mentioned in the sibling response, rather than as an ad hominem.

Reputability-wise I focused on the American press in general (Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, NYT, etc). My main through-line during the week was following the 538 live blog, which did a good job of linking out to a variety of sources as several of the cases unfolded during the week. A decent summary is the one at https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/election-2020-trump-campaign... . You'll find the legal challenges so far are largely about technicalities rather than actual allegations of voter fraud, despite claims otherwise, and that the ones that have been heard have mostly either been dismissed or they have resulted in minor adjustments to procedures, at times to the frustration of the presiding judge (finding in-person recounting of the proceedings requires digging deeper than the above article).

Not featuring in the legal proceedings are other allegations, such as those that certain people who were supposedly deceased had submitted votes. These have mostly turned out to be clerical errors, many of which were already fixed but hadn't necessarily propagated to the systems that the allegers were looking at. As a bonus, here's a 538 feature from 2016, when the groundwork for this kind of argument was once again being laid just in case now-president Trump lost: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/voter-fraud-is-very-rar... .

Because the polling majorly favored Biden and the results showed far more Trump votes than anticipated could rationally be interpreted to mean that mail-in ballots were flawed in a way that favored Trump.

I'm not claiming this is the case but providing an example of how subjective and spinnable any set of facts can be made.

Taking your question in good faith, it's because the argument isn't that "Russian interference" happened. It's that the argument is "Russian interference in favor of Trump" happened. So clearly, if Biden won, the belief isn't that Russia helped Biden, it's that Biden's victory was able to overcome whatever interference was still trying affect things in favor of Trump.

For those who don't recall, Russia had big reasons to endorse Trump over Hillary in 2016: Hillary was bellicose about Russia and Syria, to the point where people echoed worries she'd plunge us into "WW3". That, compared with Trump's contrarian sympathies toward Russia and irreverence about the U.S.'s moral highground (and conservatism AND clear, probable incompetence) of course motivated Russia to support him.

They also hoped that he would come to the table and legitimize Russia as a fellow superpower and usher in a new era of diplomatic relations. The fact that Trump utterly failed to do that probably chilled Russia's interest in the 2020 election though.

China has good reason to endorse Biden; should we assume that Biden has colluded with China in efforts to “hack” our election (whatever tf that means)?

Not solely because of motive, no. You'd need evidence, which is different than motive. Russia having a motive wasn't the only reason to suspect collusion, either.

"if it is what you say it is, i love it" is a real thing they admitted to and all the proof you need that the story is in no way "manufactured"

Manufactured? you should really read the Mueller report and see that there was plenty of wrongdoing. Saying it was manufactured is pretending like all of the evidence, meetings, etc... didn't happen.

Comments like these reinforce my conviction that comment threads like these are ultimately useless.

I believe that an exchange of views is possible in a way that will be illuminating to both "sides", but it just isn't possible in a forum like this.

"They literally manufactured a Russia collusion story" is an assertion presented as fact. It obviously has a very deep argument behind it that has convinced the author. But given the context of the discussion, it's impossible for the author to explain why he thinks that is true, in a way for a counterpart to verify and explore.

Similarly, those on the other side who believe the Russia collusion isn't a "manufactured story" also have very deep arguments that can't be included here.

It's the same with "orchestrating a hijacking of the Democratic primary". It's an assertion that comes across as completely ridiculous to people who don't believe it, based off of counter arguments that are also very deep having to do with the intricacies of how the primaries work.

And so then of course the conclusion is that Trump is bad but the media is worse, based off of those previous two assertions being true. And the discussion goes absolutely nowhere.

I am literally highly interested in the thinking behind why the Russia collusion story is manufactured, and how the Democratic primary is hijacked. Yes because I believe those conclusions are false, but I want to respectfully explore where in the argument I think it falls down. But to do it would take a long exchange, probably with time in between to research, that just isn't supported by forums like this.

he would've have actually had to consolidate power in any kind of meaningful way instead of simply bumbling through the logical continuation of bush/obama policies while being undermined by the intel community/ his own generals and the the gop itself every time he tried to do anything that broke from neocon consensus. his own justices even repudiated him. ironically, an actual fascist would've used the pandemic as his own reichstag fire, seized power & curtailed liberties to effectively contain the virus instead of simply mismanaging a dysfunctional, under supplied & under funded federal health apparatus that effectively let the states just do whatever. italy had tanks in the streets, south korea and taiwan created invasive ethically dubious surveillance programs to control movement. the actual white supremacists are mad that trump didn't do exactly that.

aside from the bizarre alternative-universe psychodrama that corporate media has been airing for the past years, trump in reality was basically just unremarkable and incompetent.

I agree Trump is much more of a "proof of concept" of how an actual fascist could operate. Instead, as you say, he is blisteringly incompetent and lazy. Remember he accidentally became president when all he wanted was to build a hotel in Moscow.

His tweets clearly show the mindset of someone who wants to use levers of power which are massively beyond his constitutional powers (shut down the media, overthrow elections, imprison critics). But he had neither the energy or the political skill to accomplish any of that. What he did have was the ability to convince millions of people that the US government should be turned over to a TV reality clown.

His inaction and obfuscation caused thousands and thousands of people to die from COVID.

He publicly condoned shooting unarmed protesters, and let his DOJ kidnap people in unmarked vans.

He left the Paris climate accords.

These are catastrophic.

For seven weeks in 2017 it was the official policy of our government to remove migrant children of all ages from their parents and house them in a cage. Even now the inevitable bureaucratic messups have lost some of these kids; it's possible these families will literally never be whole again. Everyone has their own horrors I guess, but this was what did it for me.

Obama started this.

https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/immigration-border-crisis/...

> The idea that this is simply a continuation of an Obama-era practice is "preposterous," said Denise Gilman, director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas Law School. "There were occasionally instances where you would find a separated family — maybe like one every six months to a year — and that was usually because there had been some actual individualized concern that there was a trafficking situation or that the parent wasn’t actually the parent."

> Once custody concerns were resolved, "there was pretty immediately reunification," Gilman told NBC News. "There were not 2,000 kids in two months — it’s not the same universe," she added.

That's not to say that the Obama administration didn't do some other cruel things to migrant families in an effort to deter them. Some of which got smacked back down by the courts, too. But separating families as a matter of policy was not one of those policies.

Total nonsense. Europe has just as many if not more cases. The idea that another president would have made any difference is pure wishful thinking.

There are many countries that have completely contained COVID, on multiple continents. It is not "wishful thinking" to follow in the footsteps of many other countries. If we could do as well as the African countries that we assisted with past Ebola outbreaks, we would have saved so many lives.

Great I can't wait for Biden to stop it.

To stop the virus, we need to treat it as a bigger enemy than we do each other. And it may be too late now, the easy time to stop it was at the beginning, when it would have taken far less mobilization and resources. Now, no matter how hard we clamp down it will remain in pockets.

I do not believe that Biden is capable of enacting any policy that will lead to the (simple) social behaviors that can stop the disease in its tracks. He can do some policy on the edges.

But if we do stop the virus, it won't be because of Biden, it will be because of the actions of a huge number of people, across the political spectrum, and a grand unification of people. We will need to build a massive virus stopping machine, and such projects are never the result of one person, anymore than the space shuttle being attributable to a single person.

I think it's possible, but I do not think it's likely.

I really don't get this constant "he didn't do anything" and "it's too late" talking points.

Nancy Pelosi was walking around Chinatown in SF after it was well known that there was an outbreak going on overseas.

The NYC department of health advised that it was perfectly safe to attend Chinese New Year celebrations shortly after.

When POTUS stopped international travel earlier than the media decided it was a legitimate issue, his political opponents called him a racist. Then you'll argue, "but but the nyc outbreaks trace to Europe!!" And I'll argue back that China has industrial factories in Italy, and ask you how the virus got to Italy/Europe in the first place. And you still won't get it. It's like the left just constant ignores common sense and hides behind reddit-teir "you got a source for that" nerdery.

All of this happened less than a year ago. It is well within living memory.

As a scientist, it causes me immense pain to see these types of points trotted out as having any sort of relevance to stopping the spread of Covid19.

Literally nothing you said here has any relevance to effective policy for stopping Covid19. Nothing. Somehow, in our modern society, you have been able to consume a very large diet of information, and have been misinformed about its basic suitability as information.

There's only one way to stop this thing: by paying attention to evidence and our best understanding, and to put aside our silly political games that have not bearing on reality. Or worse, political games that think they are the reality.

I hope that as part of the healing process, science starts having a seat at the table in these discussions.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/

You're seriously going to claim that the US wouldn't have had a better response to a pandemic had they actually had a pandemic response team?

Seems like the claim that this pandemic response team would have made a difference is the assertion that needs to be proven. I'm not terribly convinced that a bit more beurocracy would have made any difference at all.

You're not sure a team full of scientists who are experts in infectious diseases could've come up with a better plan than doing absolutely nothing? Or lying to the public about the severity of the disease? Or refusing to issue a national mask mandate? Or shutting down travel... only to China, not Europe who was also having a massive outbreak? Or flying people home on a commercial flight without any sort of precautions taken to separate them from the rest of the passengers?

You really think that would've all played out the same? I assume you didn't vote for Trump, and your opinion is based in facts and logic, and not a misguided attempt at defending his laughably embarrassing attempts at downplaying a pandemic ravaging our nation.

PS: Where's that vaccine he promised? Or were you one of the ones that thought the virus was just going to "magically disappear" after the election?

Well the WHO did such a great bang up job on letting the world know the severity, I'm sure this team would have also "followed the science" and decided it wasn't a threat either. This is government employees you are thinking that are going to do a competent job.

Under Obama, the pandemic response team that Trump disbanded stopped SARSv1 (COVID is also known as SARSv2) from spreading out of China under essentially identical circumstances.

They also stopped Ebola from spreading, which is at least an order of magnitude worse than COVID.

That team operated internationally with the cooperation of local governments. When it was disbanded, many people warned the administration that it was leaving a huge public health gap, and that the decision would result in unchecked pandemics.

We’re lucky to have ended up with a COVID pandemic, and not something much worse.

> They also stopped Ebola from spreading, which is at least an order of magnitude worse than COVID.

Pure unmitigated ignorance.

Define worse. Ebola is much deadlier, but its kind of hard to spread a virus that causes you to bleed from your face.

Ebola’s R value is 2, which is enough to create large outbreaks if left unchecked.

The death rate is 50%, which is 100x higher than COVID’s 0.5% (which has been lowered to 0.125% with improved hospital care).

In the absence of a coordinated pandemic response, I count that as “worse”.

Many problems with your comment. First SARS occurred in 2003 before Obama. It was stopped primarily because it does not spread asymptomatically. SARS-COV-2 does. That is the difference.

You left out being impeached for blackmailing a friendly country for military aid so they would dig up dirt on his rival. Also, gutting federal agencies like the EPA, silencing reports from national labs which were critical of the coal industry, and installing Dejoy as head of the Postal Service who immediately had mail equipment destroyed directly before an election which was known to most likely have large amounts of mail in ballots. Not to mention Dejoy has large stock in companies that would profit from the destruction of the Postal Service.

Edit: forgot to say numerous people close to him and his campaign have gone to jail. Steve Bannon, Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone...etc.

What do you think of what happened with the Steele Dossier?

A better question: what do you think happened with the Steele Dossier? A campaign funding opposition research isn't a problem. That the Dossier may or may not have lead to a legitimate intelligence case being opened against a Trump associate also isn't a problem. John McCain hand delivered it to the FBI. There is no fruit of the poisoned tree here.

That you don't see that something is wrong when an intelligence agency fabricates fake evidence in order to advance a political agenda against other parts of it's own government is chilling.

>fabricates fake evidence

Source? Sounds like conspiratorial nonsense.

sure.

glen greenwald: http://archive.is/58vqu

matt taibbi: https://archive.li/acKAO

While those articles certainly highlight serious problems in spying oversight and a reckless FBI, they do not support your characterization of "fabricated fake evidence in order to advance a political agenda". For example, the pee tape doesn't represent even a majority of the potentially damaging information. While the FBI probably overstated the trustworthiness of the document, those articles don't claim the document itself was an outright fabrication or that none of the claims had any credibility.

You're splitting the line quite finely

I think "what does this have to do with Trump's numerous crimes?". What a strange question to ask.

the whole thread doesn't have a lot of focus, but the OP posted about "The country may be divided. But those divisions are manufactured and exacerbated over the last 4 years by a made-for-TV president." So the context here is about division in the country and investigation of what is either causing that and/or causing people to feel like that.

Trump destroyed the United States' Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia. Without the treaty, Russia and USA can make as many nuclear bombs as they want, as long as they say they will only use them on intermediate-range missiles.

This single action by Trump imperils all of humanity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate-Range_Nuclear_For...

https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/08/02/what-does-the-demise-of...

None of it? We'll even ignore the easy ones like violating the emoluments clause and blatant nepotism.

Withholding aid to Puerto Rico. Calling for the governor of Michigan to be locked up for implementing covid restrictions then refusing to condemn the folks that attempted to kidnap her.

Charlottesville. Sending in Federal Police to kidnap folks in Portland. Refusing to impose sanctions on Russia that had bipartisan support. Refusing to condemn Russia for assassinating citizens of other nations with chemical weapons. Jamaal kashoggi. Saluting North Korean soldiers. Outright telling governor's he was withholding Federal aid unless they did him favors. Etc, etc, etc. "left-leaning media" has absolutely nothing to do with his train wreck of a presidency.

I don't think he managed to go a single month over the last 4 years without violating the Constitution.

At least there were actual catastrophes caused by Bush. Under Trump it was conspiracy theories about Russian collusion.

So covid response wasn't a catastrophe? Ok

I'm not sure if it was, really. What's the baseline? If Biden was President, how many people would have died instead? More than 0, right?

The United States has structural issues, many of them features and not bugs, that make a coordinated effort to suppress a contagious virus basically impossible. Biden never made the case for what he would have done different; he didn't really have to.

That's the thing about a crisis. When your opponent is in charge during a crisis, you can always say he was incompetent, and no one can prove that you're wrong.

There were recent headlines on a study done that estimated unnecessary deaths; deaths that wouldn't have happened had we had a reasonable response. Should be easy to find.

I know we're in like, mystical "follow the science" land, but any study on this matter can really only make projections based on a model.

It certainly can't say what Biden would have called a "reasonable response" at the time, whether he would have followed through on it, etc. We actually know what Biden was saying to do in the early days of the pandemic, and Trump's earliest actions were roundly criticized by Democrats.

My theory is that if Trump had come out hard for lockdown early on, Republicans would be pro-lockdown and Democrats would be anti-lockdown. I view the partisan divide on COVID handling as...well, purely partisan.

The WHO recently said the lockdowns Biden says he's bringing back were causing more harm than good. That should be easy to find.

The early CDC tests, during the period we might have been able to maintain contact tracing, were faulty. A different president wouldn't have changed that.

Republicans didn't embrace masks, but it's unlikely a Democrat president would've done a better job convincing them.

In my opinion Trump's worst fault here is that he lacks the temperament for one of the most important things we needed: fireside chats. Trump is a pretty good hype man, cheering on good times, but abysmal at the somber tough message delivery we needed.

FWIW, I searched for your first point, and the first google result was https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2020/10/13/who-warning...

Which implies your summary of the point is based off of one of the several misreadings out there.

The mainstream media provide unlimited and free ads to Trump. Trump is a savvy marketer. He plays the mainstream media like a fiddle. The outrageous remarks he said or tweeted are reported relentlessly by the mainstream media. The way I see it is that whatever Trump said or tweeted are like campaign ads. What the mainstream media have been doing is nothing but playing campaign ads with rebuttals. The relationship between Trump and the mainstream media is pretty symbiotic.

The things that the mainstream media have not reported enough is his corruption and incompetency. Instead, they constantly chase after his remarks. I will give you an example. The way USPS is undermined is nothing but sabotage. Trump and his officials claimed that they run USPS like business. The mainstream media simply reported it along this frame. However, no reasonable business would run like what they did to USPS. Besides, the moment they claimed that they would revert the changes, the mainstream simply reported what they said. No, they didn't revert their changes. By reading mainstream media news casually, we wouldn't know that USPS was sabotaged. Many people think that Trump administration simply tried to run USPS like business but they decided not to due to opposition. The reality is that USPS was sabotaged and the damage is done.

I'm not sure what you are referring to as the mainstream media. There were weeks of articles about USPS and how there were problems. There were years of reporting about collusion and corruption with regard to Russia and other scandals. Whether you were looking at Fox or at NY Times or WaPo or CNN or whatever, whether it was for or against, there was neverending coverage about the Trump scandal of the week, and that Trump's explanations were BS. The problem wasn't lack or reporting or criticizing Trump, it was that there was always a new scandal every week that needed coverage.

I refer to virtually all outlets except the conservative ones (e.g. the ones you listed except Fox). As I said, the problem with the coverage is that it is based on their framing, i.e. running USPS like a business. There are so many articles about whether USPS should be run like a business because of this framing. This is a false permise. Trump administration simply co-opted "business" for sabotage. Mainstream media fell into the trap. By arguing whether USPS should be run like business leads to the impression that Trump administration was running USPS like a business. Also, there are many articles in which if we read beyond headlines, we would find comments from opponents of Trump that Trump administration sabotaging USPS. This is merely both-side-ism at work. To learn the truth, one needs to already distrust Trump and disregard their statements.

Then, all of a sudden Trump administration said that they would suspend/revert the changes. The mainstream media all rushed to report the statements, even though they were lies. There were no reporting of similar scale once the lies were uncovered. This is also the reason why Bill Barr was able to destroy Mueller's investigation - by first lying that there was no wrongdoings to gain enormous coverage and then escape scrutiny when truth was uncovered due to subdue coverage. As I also said, the mainstream media knew that Trump administration lies consistently. They should really ignore what they said and simply report what they do and don't do.

In summary, the mainstream media are really poor in conveying the big picture because Trump administration successfully hacks them and because they are unable to adapt to this adversary.

>. I will give you an example. The way USPS is undermined is nothing but sabotage.

The post office was not sabotaged. They're foundering because mail volume has dropped to half its peak and they haven't been able to downsize their operations fast enough to keep making money.

The media and the Democrats spent the last year chasing this wild conspiracy theory about the USPS throwing the election for Trump. It never ever made any sense and, indeed, there's no evidence that mail in ballots were tampered with on any large scale.

> ... none of his behavior validates anything close to the crazed response we see from the primarily left-leaning mainstream media.

Yeah no ... at this point if you honestly still believe that, we have to agree to disagree, and I'm glad that more people in America disagree with you than agree with you.

> It's been a constant stream of catastrophizing from them for the last four years.

I've looked at a few definitions, and I don't see how it's an accurate description of what's happening here.

For example: “Catastrophizing is a cognitive distortion that prompts people to jump to the worst possible conclusion, usually with very limited information or objective reason to despair. When a situation is upsetting, but not necessarily catastrophic, they still feel like they are in the midst of a crisis.” (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/catastrophizing)

We have experienced “great damage or suffering” (i.e., catastrophes), not merely upsetting situations. The media hasn't been catastrophizing; they've been reporting about catastrophes.

What are the "catastrophes" that you have experienced (disregarding COVID which is a world catastrophe)?

> It's been a constant stream of catastrophizing from them for the last four years. It was like this during the Bush years as well, though they do seem to have perfected it.

And the Republicans did the same thing with Obama, which is why he is so reviled among the right. The pendulum swings harder at each cycle, and how people still cannot see how thoroughly they're being manipulated by their party of choice continues to astound me. I get the tribalism, and I get the basic cognitive gears at play, but it takes only a modicum of self awareness and attempted empathy to understand the other side enough to open up the door to doubt, and only the tiniest degree of curiosity to find more nuanced understanding of issues at play. I do see this in some places, but I see ignorant partisan propaganda far more, and the pendulum swings ever harder.

The devil is the one we make, seemingly blind to the ingredients we carelessly continue to throw into the cauldron that will continue to produce them, even as one group rejoices that the latest one has been defeated.

Trump is as much a product of the divisiveness as a cause. People initially took a shine to him because he was a "fighter". They saw a conflict already and wanted a fully willing combatant as a surrogate.

A couple weeks before the 2016 election Michael Moore (who I’m typically not big a fan of) had one of the best reads on why Trump would and ultimately did win that election. I've been politically homeless for a while now but still registered Republican as is almost all of my family. Moore's points directly map to my conversations with them better than any other explanation I've seen on the Internet.:

https://youtu.be/vMm5HfxNXY4

I think it's important to keep in mind that Trump winning the primaries in 2016 was essentially a repudiation of the entire Republican incumbency by a good portion of their base.

Just about every general "reason Trump would win" for last election looks pretty dumb with this election.

Because basically all those arguments remain true - yet Trump didn't win. These aren't argument for why Trump would win. They were arguments for why Trump has some purchase. The reason Trump won was the elites go so sloppy they let him win, they let their garbage boogieman alternative become the choice because they were addicted to having that kind of creep as their opposition.

And Michael Moore's argument in particular is crap among these. Homeless factory workers aren't Trump's base, family construction companies are his base - I see them regularly. The well-off but not college educated.

There's obviously some weirdly obsessed people out there getting air time but on the macro scale 2020's election was not-Biden vs not-Trump.

Precisely. Fortunately, it appears most of the country is ready to move on and accept Biden as President. My friends and family who are conservative are happy it’s over, and completely fine with the results. As cliche as it is, they accept that the people have spoken. The majesty of democratic voting and peaceful transfer of power is something beautiful to behold.

Hopefully Trump can accept the results sooner rather than later. His instinct to fight at all costs is not serving him well in this situation. Fortunately, it’s futile. As someone said in one of the debates, it’s not up to him whether he gets to stay, it’s up to us.

I hope the the next 4 years are more unified than the last 4.

You could be right, but I'm not really seeing a lot of evidence that "most of the country is ready to move on and accept Biden as President." Not seeing a lot of those Trump rally-goers suddenly deciding that Biden is OK. In fact what I see is a lot of Trump supporters outraged about what they believe is shaping up to be a stolen election. And a lot of comments to the effect that Trump is not Nixon (1960).

I’m confident they are a tiny yet loud minority. I hope I’m not proven wrong.

I know too many of those people in my personal life to believe that they are a tiny minority. Trump has built himself an effective cult following. People turn off their brains in order to follow him and start to believe most of what he says. They'll say that they understand that he's a liar, bu then still believe the lies. It's frustrating to watch it happen.

My pet theory is similar, but slightly more nuanced, and comes from my history of being harshly bullied in middle school.

The group dynamics of bullying are pretty straightforward. There will always be bullies at the top who want to cement their status by showing their power as a bully. To get a significant group of people to go along with the bullying, however, (think everyone laughing along when the bully makes fun of someone) that group needs to be really unsure of their place in the social hierarchy. They know bullying is wrong but at that point are somewhat terrified of ending up on the wrong side of the bullying. That's why you see so much bullying in middle school, where kids are usually just starting to find their place in the social hierarchy.

I think in the US (and many Western democracies) there is currently so much unease about economics, about finding a good, and more importantly, stable job, that the situation is ripe for a bully to come along and take advantage of people's general worries about their place in the world to think "better for me to be a bully myself than to be the person that ends up on the bottom of the totem pole". Think of the crowd laughing along when Trump mocked a reporter with cerebral palsy.

When you couple this with large, structural racial changes in the US, it's not hard to see how Trump was able to take advantage.

> We're actually all rooting for the same things here.

It's not helping anything to pretend this is true. For example, consider the spectrum of reactions you witness among your peers, not to mention on social media, the next time there's a high profile killing of an unarmed person of color by police officers. I don't think woo, it's great that we all want the same things is the feeling you're going to get.

Indeed. Historically I would have said conservatives in the US wanted the same thing (increased prosperity for all), and just had different ideas on how that was achieved.

Under Trump, it has become clear that they (edit: Republicans) want something fundamentally different: to do better than other groups of people. They care more about hurting those they disagree with than making things better for anyone.

You were right in the past. The people who want to “drink libtard tears” are a small minority, a mirror image of people on the left who want to throw Republicans into re-education camps.

It’s curious how many conclusions people draw from a binary choice on a ballot.

> re-education camps

Aka schools? Honestly, what do you do with people making $40k / year who think they’re going to be affected by tax on earnings over $400k, going to pay tax on the sale of their primary residence, and going to be affected by the estate tax?

There are a lot of people that can’t seem to figure out they aren’t rich and are never going to be.

Except that is a false equivalency, every Republican voter backed a candidate who ran on that platform and policy.

Yes, there will always be a few people at the extremes of any movement. It is very different when they control the movement.

They may have seen it as the "least-bad" option rather than actively wanting what Trump was offering, but honestly that distinction doesn't matter if they are willing to support that level of harm. You don't get to vote for Trump and claim you aren't in that group. If you enabled him, you own his policy.

Republicans just elected a congressman who addressed the world after the election by saying "Cry more, lib." [1] I question whether Democrats elected anyone advocating sending Republicans to reeducation camps.

[1] https://www.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2020/11/04/cr...

I'm a US citizen, a self-identified conservative, and I cannot stand Trump (or the fact that on average, conservatives voted for him).

Not all conservatives fit your described profile.

This is true, I probably should have specified "Republicans" in the second half. Edited.

Yeah. It seems like a lot of people think they deserve to be filthy rich with a large servant class working for them. The economics of it just don’t work though. It takes a lot of working people to sustain the lifestyle of one rich person.

Your peers might be wondering why the only killings that become high profile, are those of people of color.

Are you trying to cast doubt on the imbalance in the occurrence of these killings? That seems naive if I assume the best of intentions.

Could you quantify that imbalance? How many are killed by police, compared to the number of committed homicides (used as proxy for rate of legitimate police interventions), by race?

I am not going to reply to this because it’s a frustratingly crass response that lives up to the stereotypes of engineers. Is it that hard to believe that even in legitimate police interventions they are much more likely to use deadly force with a black person? “Black men are about 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police over the life course than are white men.” https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793

For the benefit of readers less willing to selectively ignore statistics: non-Hispanic whites are 2.4x more likely than blacks to be killed by police (2.7x more if counting only unarmed deaths), per committed homicide. Sources:

https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/nationaltrends

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

That was just an example of a controversial topic. I mentioned a spectrum of opinions that were observable amongst peers and on social media, and that is certainly one.

(The premises are false enough that it feels less like a "peers" opinion and more like a "social media rando who needs attention" opinion, but I guess that distinction illustrates the original point.)

I guess it’s true, at least from many of these comments, that many people really want division. They seem to need division to qualify what are otherwise extreme or unbalanced opinions.

That sort of division seems to have cost one party the White House and the other a lot of seats in Congress.

I have no idea what you mean. "Division" (whatever that means) seems to be something you care about, based on your other comments, but I have literally no idea what you're driving at.

Division was manufactured when Trump became president? So what do you propose as the reason for why he became president in the first place? Who is responsible for that?

Generally speaking, I would agree with you. However, it's important to remember that there is great economic angst in the United States. Workers' wages have remained relatively flat for 40 years, despite accelerating productivity and inflation.

Unless a Biden administration can begin to heal and make whole America's large working class, the angst will continue to grow and eventually boil over.

Go look at the polling for issues and ballout provisions that passed. The US isn't as divided as you think it is.

For example, these Fox News voter analysis results (and the screenshots themselves) are really something. Relatively major consensus on things like climate, renewable energy, healthcare, etc.

https://twitter.com/existentialfish/status/13237520320004505...

Fox News is considered liberal by most on the right these days. Using it as a poll for where the right stands is irresponsible at best.

Well that was inevitable with the removal of some of their more prominent sexual predators.

And yet another reason for the division right here.

This is kind of hilarious to me. Fox News is unwilling to completely ignore reality and thus it is "liberal" these days.

More like there’s better. Fox isn’t fair and balanced and never really was and they started getting sensational. The right doesn’t want a soap opera for news.

A recent example with when they called AZ by blindly listening to AP when anybody that knows basic math could see a large chunk of votes still remaining. When you prove you can’t be trusted you lose your audience.

Go look at how polls are extrapolated. Specifically give me the exact formula and raw data so I can confirm it myself, like we do in other such situations. You won’t find it. Stop trusting polls.

I lie to or hang up on pollsters every time they reach out to me. I don't trust them, and I don't know who they contract under. They often ask leading questions, regardless. If I ran into an exit pollster, I would've told them I wrote in Ross Perot.

I started doing this a couple years ago, when I was called up, and asked to take a survey. The young woman on the other end was very polite, and the questions at first seemed reasonable. The further I went into the survey, the more nakedly leading its questions became, clearly meant to support Republican talking points. I told her I was done, hung up,and since then I've only given false answers to political survey calls.

If my representative wants my opinion, they can host a town hall, or reach out to me directly. I'll send an email or call their office if there's an issue I care about.

If our politicians know nothing, and receive bad data, then they'll either cross their fingers and be more straight about their convictions, or be badly disappointed whenever they try to pander.

Given how flawed the polling for this presidency turned out to be, I don't think we should be relying on them as much for argumentation. Frankly, I am genuinely aggravated over how little was learned since 2016.

> We're actually all rooting for the same things here.

I don't think you understand half the country.

The people who most see division are those most looking for it.

The people that think everyone is (and should be!) just like them are the most delusional and insulting.

Who is that?

The guy had armies of white supremacist supporters and advisers. He told right-wing extremists to “stand by” on national TV.

Every time you gloss over this, you give a pass to it and to those who knew about it and supported him anyway.

And Biden has a history of being pro-China, and have made it clear that he wants to end Trump’s China tariffs and treat China like we did during the Obama/Biden administration. I’d say that’s far worse, and I wager the hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people suffering from the hands of the CCP agree.

President Trump was not working against China's human right violations either. I don't think a change of US leadership is going to make much of an impact on their quality of life one way or another.

Just to be clear, you are saying that having favorable trade policies with China is worse than directly associating the presidency with actual white supremacists? Really?

It may very well be why is it so surprising? What Trump was doing is just playing politics to a group of stupid people. On the other hand pro-China policies have potential to destroy the social fabric of this country for generations. (I am a Bernie guy do not be so quick to judge)

As opposed to Biden's belligerent life-long racism, which the left universally goes a great distance out of its way to ignore?

Even Kamala Harris called him a racist. She did her best to run away from that after it was no longer convenient of course.

See: Biden's statements on "a racial jungle," segregation, busing, and how he didn't want his children going to desegregated schools.

See: Biden's support of the crime bill that specifically targeted and locked up a million black people.

See: Biden's past friendships and associations with 'former' KKK memembers like Robert Byrd (someone he considered a good friend and mentor). Byrd was one of the most vile pieces of scum elected to the US Government in the past century. How's that for associating with white supremacists?

See: Biden's racist statements about Obama prior to the 2008 election.

You know, people can change. Some do, and some flatly refuse to.

Obama also worked with senator Byrd. Byrd was no perfect but he disavowed his relationship with the KKK. This kind of self correction and compromise is what has always held our country's politics and made it different than other's. Obama said it better:

"Listening to Senator Byrd I felt with full force all the essential contradictions of me in this new place, with its marble busts, its arcane traditions, its memories and its ghosts. I pondered the fact that, according to his own autobiography, Senator Byrd had received his first taste of leadership in his early twenties, as a member of the Raleigh County Ku Klux Klan, an association that he had long disavowed, an error he attributed—no doubt correctly—to the time and place in which he'd been raised, but which continued to surface as an issue throughout his career. I thought about how he had joined other giants of the Senate, like J. William Fulbright of Arkansas and Richard Russell of Georgia, in Southern resistance to civil rights legislation. I wondered if this would matter to the liberals who now lionized Senator Byrd for his principled opposition to the Iraq War resolution—the MoveOn.org crowd, the heirs of the political counterculture the senator had spent much of his career disdaining.

I wondered if it should matter. Senator Byrd's life—like most of ours—has been the struggle of warring impulses, a twining of darkness and light. And in that sense I realized that he really was a proper emblem for the Senate, whose rules and design reflect the grand compromise of America's founding: the bargain between Northern states and Southern states, the Senate's role as a guardian against the passions of the moment, a defender of minority rights and state sovereignty, but also a tool to protect the wealthy from the rabble, and assure slaveholders of noninterference with their peculiar institution. Stamped into the very fiber of the Senate, within its genetic code, was the same contest between power and principle that characterized America as a whole, a lasting expression of that great debate among a few brilliant, flawed men that had concluded with the creation of a form of government unique in its genius—yet blind to the whip and the chain."

> Byrd was no perfect but he disavowed his relationship with the KKK.

All is forgiven by the establishment if you’re a good boy and toe the line.

If it's not forgiven you fight and accomplish nothing and divide further. That's what we have seen the last 4 years.

That's why being a politician takes some skill.

The democratic party is the impeached the president during his last year, over circumstantial claims that didn't pan out. It was at that point that the gloves came off. Game set match.

Hillary Clinton herself has said so, something along the lines of "you must fight like your life depends on it for your values." The left was doing it, now the right is doing it.

> That's why being a politician takes some skill.

The only skill required is managing to pull the cover over the eyes of your constituents while you take money from invested interests.

He also directly denounced white supremacy, many times, in fact:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd0cMmBvqWc&feature=youtu.be...

https://streamable.com/sr9o2s

Are you equating support for trade with the PRC with... white nationalism?

I think that Obama was far far harder on China than Trump. Trump gave up any semblance of influence in the region, and China has gained massive power due to the absence of US leadership in the area. The tariffs are a pointless show that have done nothing to weaken China in the least. If Biden follows Obama's direction we will gain far more geopolitical power in the region, but it will be impossible to regain all the ground that we have lost on the international stage due to Trump's general weakness and unwillingness to engage in basic statecraft.

Trump's weakening of the US's global influence and dissolving its alliance with the EU has been the greatest gift to China in a generation. All China wants is to be an unchallenged world power.

>Every time you gloss over this, you give a pass to it and to those who knew about it and supported him anyway.

I feel this unique cherry picking of obviously terrible stances by President Trump is used to undermine so many trump supporters who chose to vote for him for a myriad of reasons.

Its discouraging to see

The point is it should be a disqualifier. There is nothing that can convince me to vote for a person who endorses white supremacists. I cannot compromise on equal rights for all humans.

He disavowed white supremacists, KKK, Proud Boys, etc. several times:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd0cMmBvqWc (4:10 is him denouncing Proud Boys, for example)

https://streamable.com/sr9o2s

yes, certainly he did. He also refused to.

He takes both sides of lots of issues. You could make a page-a-day calendar out of quotes where he has taken opposite sides on an issue.

It's a strategic decision, and it's very effective. The white nationalists can look at what he says and say "ah, he wants us to stand by. Sure, later he'll disavow us, but I got the message. wink wink." And then the people who oppose white nationalism can say "see, he disavowed it, so that clarifies everything - nothing he said before meant what it sounded like."

This is not mere cherry picking, these are actual statements, far outside the norm of any other politician at the national stage, that have resulted in violence and even death in the United States.

How can you be discouraged by acknowledging the full spectrum of what this president has encouraged? What are you willing to sweep under the rug to white wash clearly bad behavior?

What I fail to understand, as a foreigner, is how someone can vote for a president who is an outright liar. Look no further than his last tweets as of right now. He is denying that he has lost and is insisting that there are illegal things happening (I'm not saying there aren't, but I will go the extra mile and say he has lost it and that only a manchild would say otherwise -- this manchild).

I could not go to bed with a clear mind knowing that I voted for a lying disgusting piece of trash, even if that meant that I was voting for the one whose policies I "agreed with the most".

I guess I _get_ it if you view politics as sports. Sports fans (in the EU) will support their club to death. The president of a football club can be corrupt and they will still probably back them so that they can back the club.

In both cases, these are twisted, unhealthy stances.

I really cannot fathom how so many Americans can vote for this piece of trash human being. I don't think all these people are bigots, racists or idiots; I simply cannot understand how someone can be comfortable with having a piece of shit as the face of the country.

I used to love America and the idea of going to it. I used to think it was lead by hardworking (albeit maybe _too_ hardworking) people. I used to think that maybe healthcare wasn't "that" important because it was _AMERICA_. I can't think like that anymore because a very significant part of the country chooses to be portrayed by an _objectively and openly racist, sexist bigot_.

Heck, I think I'm right leaning on most stuff in life, but I could never ever carry a straight face knowing I contributed to this disaster.

I would rather vote blank (I'm a strong believer in doing just that), against the system, than vote "for" a pig so as to not "vote" for the opposition (a typical argument used by trump "non-supporters who vote for him"). At least the opposition wouldn't put America to shame in such a magnitude. In my country America is now used as an example of what not to be, what not to do. We tolerate its undeniable leadership in the world; we no longer worship it or look at it as somewhat of a better society. It used to be the other way around. What happened, America?

US politics is structurally messed up and there will be more escalating drama in the coming years/decades that will definitely leak internationally. With mechanical issues like the electoral college being deeply flawed, to more innate issues of the system like the two party system reducing the entirety of politics in the USA to an adversarial binary, it will just get more polarized and ensure the disenfranchisement of even more people than now. This is a minor win in a sinking ship, IMO.

The thing that will leak internationally is the rapid and unsustainable increase in the US debt. The political shuffling is just rearranging the deck chairs in comparison.

Nationalism and authoritarianism is a thing. It’s all over the world. Like the surges of salafist movements in the ME every few decades, the same is true in with democracies.

The question is whether it is an outlier or the norm. I’m old enough to remember when racism and anti-semitism was common, then not (at least vocally).

America is a diverse culture. Why Euros are confused about it, they haven’t studied history. How would a country like the US would turn out as when Puritans, Calvinists, Scots-Irish and whatever other rejects from Europe were sent or fled from their homelands?

We got the best and we got the worst.

>>. What I fail to understand, as a foreigner, is how someone can vote for a president who is an outright liar. Look no further than his last tweets as of right now.

I don't fully understand it myself, but as it's been explained to me by trump supporters is: "don't listen to what he says, look at all the good policy, look at how hard he is on China, look at how many jobs there were pre covid, etc etc". Whether or not you see his policy as good, some people do, and they are willing to overlook his madness because they think he is achieving good things. (actions speak louder than words, etc) Some of his supports do bring up his appointing of tons of federal judges, and this what I would probably consider the most valid reason for voting for him (if one is aligned to a more conservative viewpoint), as his judges are more likely to enforce (or not) the laws that align with "traditional" republican political ideals, and that's the what matters to the voters.

Or also because they've always voted R, and Biden= socialism (which is worse than satan worship according to some people's moral codes..), or Biden= Let our cites get burnt down by rioters. This goes back to the, it's easier to vote against someone than for someone. And now that I put this all in words, this second justification is probably what I heard the most during trumps 4 years, some peoples defense of trump always came down to, "but hillary would be way worse". Some level of cognitive dissonance definitely plays into it.

Also having some subset of the population support a populist, pathologically lying sociopath is not necessarily a new or uniquely American problem. It's just that the problems seem to be amplified when they are American, cuz everyone is watching.

> What I fail to understand, as a foreigner, is how someone can vote for a president who is an outright liar.

You had two choices of which both were horrid. Which bad choice do you pick and if they are both that bad is the distinction significant?

>What I fail to understand, as a foreigner, is how someone can vote for a president who is an outright liar

Politicians are liars by definition. It is part of the job description. More people abstained than voted for either candidate.

>What I fail to understand, as a foreigner, is how someone can vote for a president who is an outright liar.

American politicians lie through their teeth as a matter of fact. No one gets or delivers anything they campaign on. This is by design. However, I'm still in your camp as well. I can't understand it at all. He didn't get off the first week of his campaign before I was dead refusing to vote for him.

However, I couldn't vote for his opponents either, which is where I think a lot of people get caught out, and where I think we have a real weakness in our system. That someone like him even got to that point is a testament that apparently anyone can do it. Just be a bull headed, pathologically lying charlatan and find a way to insert yourself in the nations political apparatus when the time is right.

After Trump getting elected once and then somewhat close again, I look at the US as a could be a dictatorship soon country.

Someone like Trump but instead being a bring person, could have won the elections I think, and then, via internet surveillance, find the opposition and fabricate charges and put in prison? Combined with maybe forcing FB to show only ads pro one party?

As of now, and 2 hours ago (according to the timestamp on your post) Trump is technically correct. The best kind of correct. He hasn't lost. Votes are still being counted in something like 10 states, as ridiculous as that sounds.

Contrary to popular belief, the AP doesn't decide who is elected president. Shocking, I know.

And your point is?

My point is... responding, in particular, to the very first line of the post that I replied to.

No he isn't technically correct. He said he has won by a lot, which isn't true.

Our president not only condones white supremacist groups but dreams about harness their hate and violence. If noticing the somehow undermines Trump supporters that’s not cherrypicking it’s justice.

If you chose to vote for Trump because of his economic policies and the benefits it would get you, you chose money over the safety of your fellow citizens. You felt your fellow non white citizens were less important than your 401k. That when white nationalists were chanting “Jews will not replace us” and the president would not condemn them you stood by him.

There is a massive list of horrible things this president has done. Many acts of fraud through out his entire life. An open child rape court case. Through all of this they have supported him. It’s not one cherry picked example. Trump supporters have nothing to hold up anymore. If you are one, look yourself in the mirror and say “I have been a terrible human being and American citizen, but I will work to be better”.

Trump supporters don’t deserve sympathy or respect. Trump supporting republicans need to earn that.

Trump lost support among whites and gained support among black, latino, asian voters [1]. Whatever it is that is going on is not as simple as you make it sound. Personally, I think Democrats need to simply stop talking as much about race and gender. Trump being an asshole about the topic doesn't mean that people care. Most people don't want to hear it. As another example, CA prop 16 was also voted down, in a minority-majority state.

1. https://www.brookings.edu/research/2020-exit-polls-show-a-sc...

Democrats have been very bad at elections. This election shouldn’t have been this close.

Nothing changes the issues with Trump. People looked at Trump as a candidate and decided to vote for him regardless of all those things about him, and for that they chose to privatize themselves over the nation and their fellow countrymen.

>they chose to privatize themselves over the nation and their fellow countrymen.

Incorrect from their point of view. They saw him as a lesser threat to stability through his policy decisions. I know, because I asked. Further, it is hard to argue with the results when you had Democrat cities getting burnt to the ground and there being no effort put into curtailing it which philosophy of leadership would genuinely lead to a safer polis.

In fact, many of them voted that way, because they thought it was better for the country.

Demonization and dehumanization of the other side gets you either nowhere, or in an increasingly bad place. I strongly advise against it.

>Democrat cities

Large cities usually lean Democratic. This is like saying "cities run by male mayors." It's the statistical reality, but not necessarily related.

Which city burned to the ground?

NYTimes gives a much better overview of who voted for whom by demographics: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/...

Trump getting 12% of the black vote in 2020 is up from the 8% he did in in 2016. That sounds like going from really low to not as but still really low.

I don’t think Democrats would be taking so much about race and gender if Trump wasn’t dog whistling so much.

I'm no fan of Trump, and I have no evidence, only opinions. But, maybe not all Black people are huge fans of the activist wing supported by many Blacks and other minorities? Seems like that could explain him getting more votes, by more actively pushing back against it.

> I'm no fan of Trump, and I have no evidence, only opinions. But, maybe not all Black people are huge fans of the activist wing supported by many Blacks and other minorities?

The activist wing was defeated in the primary, and wasn't an option they were presented with. Many blacks are not supportive of the centrist wing and it's devotion to the interests of corporate capital and it near-total-absence of a working-class message, which, when it's the only thing around, makes right-wing economic populism, which does center around working class economic messaging (even if those of us on the progressive side might see it as both an ineffective platform if genuinely pursued, and much of it also a dishonest mirage being dangled as a manipulation strategy), if not exactly attractive—especially when visibly associated with virulent, violent racism—possibly seem the lesser near-term evil.

Obviously, or he wouldn’t have gotten 12% of their vote. In 2016, he got a statistical 0% of the black female vote (not sure about 2020), so that percent is probably a lot higher for black males (eg 24% if he got 0% of their vote again this year). I’m not sure what to make of that.

Edit: according to https://www.vox.com/2020/11/7/21551364/white-trump-voters-20...

Trump gained 4 points each for the black male and female vote, that would put him somewhere around 16, though I’m not sure what that article’s basis was. Still, those are starting from really low numbers to begin with, a lot of it could just be noise.

As non-white person I find the average white liberal MORE racist than your stereotypical redneck/Trump Follower.The last one is in your face, but most of the time the racism comes from ignorance or fear, cure them and you will go a long way to diminish it.

The white liberal is way different, they see themselves basically as a superior person, the summit of human ethical achievement. They interject themselves into minority problems to show how much "they care" but 99% the acts are only to "virtue-signal", when push come to shove they will quickly align with any policy that makes their life easier, no matter the impact on the world.

More insidiously, the supposed tolerance and open-mindeness are very quickly thrown out of the window once a minority sub-group fail to align to their worldview. See for example the vitriolic insults received by Cubans/Venezuelans in Florida just because they "dared" to vote for Trump.

If I were to live in America, I think I would happier and more accepted among the "racist rednecks" in Idaho or Alabama that among the NY/SF liberal crowd.

>If I were to live in America, I think I would happier and more accepted among the "racist rednecks" in Idaho or Alabama that among the NY/SF liberal crowd.

Since you don’t live in America, you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about and you should stop talking like you do.

The world is big my friend, I dont live in America but I do know plenty of Americans. Your comment reinforce my point instead of refuting it.

I'm sorry but you still have no idea what you're talking about. 'I know some Americans' doesn't cut it. Unless you've lived in Trump country for a while there's no way you've met enough hard core Trump supporting rednecks to make any kind of accurate generalization about them.

>Your comment reinforce my point instead of refuting it.

I live in one of the reddest states in the nation and come from a family full of those Alabama rednecks you talk about, and I voted Republican in every election before 2016. If you think I represent the liberal elite, you're dead wrong.

Good luck trying to get along with the rednecks you're talking about. Most of them don't want you here, and if they had their preferred immigration policy you wouldn't be allowed in. Many of the family members I talked about wouldn't even allow you to marry a person outside your race, and they'd prefer if schools were still segregated. Though they'd never say that to an outsider's face. And the majority of them outright support requiring Muslims to register with the government so they can be tracked.

This has nothing to do with the South btw, it's more of an urban rural divide.

I live in America, am a foreign-born naturalized US citizen, and I agree with them completely. Your comment is another example of the moral superiority and insults aimed at anyone who questions this soft-bigotry from the left.

Ironically, living in America usually means you have no idea about the level of violence, racism and suffering around the world, and lack much of the perspective of immigrants who sacrifice so much to move here.

live in a bright red state and the Alabama red necks make up a large percentage of my family.

Believe me if you lived in a small town with them you’d change your mind about which type of racism you prefer pretty quickly.

> Ironically, living in America usually means you have no idea about the level of violence, racism and suffering around the world, and lack much of the perspective of immigrants who sacrifice so much to move here.

It’s interesting you bring that up because if you come from a “shit hole” country, you wouldn’t even be allowed to be here if those voters had their way.

There are almost 8 billion people in the world. Even if 1% are bad, that's 80 million people. You're definitely going to encounter some, but America has way better quality of life because of the strong mix of cultures that mitigate such problems. Some "rednecks" in a small town is not indicative of the entire country, nor would you rather live in another country where that's the national norm.

The issue with immigration has been stopping illegal entry and ensuring the rest are valuable contributors to society. Nobody is stopped because of their national origin, nor has that ever been proposed. The USA still continues its green card lottery system which gives out many free slots every year. Very few countries come anywhere close to matching the immigration strength or desire of the USA.

> Some "rednecks" in a small town is not indicative of the entire country,

Neither is some asshole liberal you ran into once. Nor is the caricature of "Liberal elites" you read about in the National Review.

>nor would you rather live in another country where that's the national norm.

Who said I'd rather live in another country. You seem to be having the argument you'd like to be having rather than actually participating in a conversation.

>The issue with immigration policy has been stopping illegal entry and ensuring the rest are valuable contributors to society.

I'm sorry but if you aren't considered part of the in group, White Trump supporters won't admit this to you, but as a group they are terrified by the demographic changes in the country. Fear that their culture is being erased is the primary impetus behind their call for decreased immigration. Law and order, and calling for a points base immigration system is simply more palatable than outright calling for only letting in Whites.

>Nobody is stopped because of their national origin, nor has that ever been proposed.

Trump has instituted Travel bans multiple times. During his campaign he called for "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on." He also reportedly said "Haiti? Why do we want people from Haiti here? Why do we want these people from all these shithole countries here? We should have more people from places like Norway.”

His advisors and and multiple national Republican politicians have said they are afraid that White birth rates are lower than immigrant birth rates.

>The USA still continues its green card lottery system which gives out many free slots every year. Very few countries come anywhere close to matching the immigration strength or desire of the USA.

Again this isn't from lack of trying. Trump isn't a dictator, there are limits to what he could accomplish in 4 years.

I dont know if you realize, but the way you talk and behave here is doing nothing to strengthen your argument.

Maybe because your entire argument boils down to “Actually the people that say they want to end racism are the real American racists. The straight up racists aren’t that bad. I know I really don’t have much experience to base that claim on but I know some American liberals on the internet.”

If you make claims like that, people on the internet who have experience with actual racists will call you on your shit. They will attack you because you are acting like a complete ass. And then you will sit around smugly using those attacks to build on your confirmation bias.

Ever wonder why you keep attracting liberal assholes? If you meet an asshole in the morning, you met an asshole. If you meet assholes all day long, you’re the asshole.

Yes, because the "people that say they want to end racism" are doing far more racist things like changing laws to take race into account, something that you're accusing the "rednecks" of attempting to do.

1. The person I'm replying to has never lived here so they have no idea what they're talking about.

2. Group A systematically robbed and cheated Group B for centuries. Now that Group B has some political power and legal protections, Group A wants to pretend that "they can't see color."

Despite the fact that Group B has 1/10th the household wealth of Group A, are more likely to be arrested for committing the same crimes, receive harsher sentences for the same convictions, are much less likely to receive callbacks for job interviews, less likely to be hired for jobs they are equally qualified for, less likely to be approved for mortgages, less likely to be rented to, their dialect is considered linguistically inferior to Group A's, they are less likely to be picked up by a cab, and their children are even disciplined more harshly in fricking kindergarten.

Can you not understand how Group B isn't thrilled with the status quo with Group A's insistence that "they can't see color."

>something that you're accusing the "rednecks" of attempting to do.

1. They don't need to change laws to take race into account, because the system already does that for them.

2. Every single Trump supporting "redneck" I know supported the Muslim ban. And nearly every single Trump supporting "redneck" I know supported requiring Muslims to register with the government for tracking. According to survey's about 10% of them don't approve of mixed race marriages. And I guarantee from personal experience that the real number is much higher than that.

The only reason they don't get to enact the laws they want to, and the only reason they are afraid to publicly espouse their racist beliefs is because of the hard work of those left leaning Americans you despise.

Those left leaning American's you hate so much are the only reason most non white immigrants are even allowed to be in this country in the first place. The majority of my family doesn't even support birthright citizenship and would remove any non white citizens who's parents haven't been in this country more than a few generations if they could.

1) I live here so I know what I'm talking about. Either way, anecdotes are useless.

2) What is this nonsense about group A and B? Are we responsible for our ancestors? Are you prepared to say everyone in group B is responsible for any and all harm they collectively do? The answer is no, you would elect to treat people as individuals instead, so it seems it's you that treat the different groups differently by assigning collectively responsibility to only one of them.

3) "can't see color" is absolutely the correct way forward. We've spent decades proving that what you look like has nothing to do with your talents, motivations, interests, passions and character. We will never progress forward if you continue to discriminate and treat people by the very characteristic you claim is being used to discriminate.

4) The system is nothing but laws. Anything else would be up to how a specific individual deals with those laws, which is a problem with that person and not the system.

5) Anecdotes are useless. The travel ban is not what you claim it was, but perhaps you should look at how members of that religion handle racism first. You won't find any multiculturalism there, that's for sure. As a foreign-born naturalized US citizen, I don't support birthright citizenship either. It's unique to only the US and Canada, not the norm, and repealing it would solve many problems.

6) I don't hate left-leaning American's. This is your projection, clouded by your bias and judgement. I only hate policies that enact the very discrimination they aim to solve, created by people who are ignorant in the problems they aim to fix while ignoring all consequences of those solutions and further blocking any potential discussion or feedback.

7) No, the modern left is not responsible for any of that. America is a melting pot and has been for centuries. This is not some new development, it existed for generations before you and there are no serious attempts to stop it. Again you keep using anecdotes to say a few people are representative of the whole. Is there a country without criminals? Does that mean we all commit crime? Clearly not, so why don't we look at what actually is the reality instead.

Do you think that systemic racism exists? That is do you believe Black people when they tell you their life is harder because they are Black. Do you believe that job interviewers discriminate against Black sounding names? Do you believe that Black people receive harsher prison sentences all else being equal? Do you believe that Black people have a harder time renting homes? Because there's hard evidence to back up every single one of those claims.

All of those issues and more combine to create a reinforcing feedback loop that creates a permanent lower class within our society, that erodes trust in institutions, increases crime and, directly impacts our economic development.

What specifically do you propose we do to end that feedback loop?

2. This isn't about blame. It's about ameliorating an issue that harms all of us. And it's only indirectly about our ancestors. There are people alive today who were directly harmed by the laws that were put in place by the municipalities, states, and the country they live in today. People who were never compensated for that harm.

3. Pretending that you "don't see color" is an absurd response. Of course you do. Everyone does and everyone has implicit biases. The key is to recognize those biases, and sometimes to consciously correct for them.

4. > The system is nothing but laws.

That is naïve to the point of absurdity. I'm sure if you think about it you can come up with a few counter examples.

5. If anecdotes are useless, why do you keep brining them up?

> The travel ban is not what you claim it was, but perhaps you should look at how members of that religion handle racism first.

The travel ban that Trump called for during the campaign that won him votes was much more expansive than what was actually enacted. He also suggested that we should register all Muslims.

A survey in 2016 said that 40% of Americans called for a registry of Muslims, the results were heavily correlated with party affiliation. I'm going to give you 1 guess on which party favored registering Muslims.

>but perhaps you should look at how members of that religion handle racism first. You won't find any multiculturalism there, that's for sure.

What happened to treating people as individuals not as part of a group?

6. >It's unique to only the US and Canada, not the norm, and repealing it would solve many problems.

I thought the US was an amazing unique melting pot? There are many conservative and liberal argument for how the melting pot is helped by birthright citizenship.

https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/birthright-citi...

7. You really need to read a bit more history if you think this is true. Look up the 1965 immigration act.

> America is a melting pot and has been for centuries.

The Chinese exclusion act, and country based immigration quotas favoring European countries were the norm through most of that time.

>there are no serious attempts to stop it.

Here's a conversation between Steven Bannon and Stephen Miller (Trump's current lead advisor on immigration) --------------------------------- “Isn’t the beating heart of this problem, the real beating heart of it, of what we gotta get sorted here, not illegal immigration?” Bannon asked Miller. “As horrific as that is, and it’s horrific, don’t we have a problem? We’ve looked the other way on this legal immigration that’s kinda overwhelmed the country?”

Bannon goes on to decry the “oligarchs” of Silicon Valley and Washington and call the number of immigrants in the United States “scary.”

Miller’s response is affirmation: “The history of America is that an immigration-on period is followed by an immigration-off period,” he said. -----------------------------------

Bannon and Miller are both obsessed with preserving "western"(European) culture. If you aren't from a European country, you very likely would not have been allowed here had Steven Miller been in power when you immigrated.

> Ever wonder why you keep attracting liberal assholes? If you meet an asshole in the morning, you met an asshole. If you meet assholes all day long, you’re the asshole.

The fact you say that without even a hint of self-awareness is amusing. You seem to have unresolved anger issues by the way you approach the discussion with people who disagree with you. All in all you seem a very unpleasant fellow so I wouldn't propagandize too much your supposed liberal values. Nobody will believe them.

That’s an interesting debate tactic you have there. Walk into a discussion full of smugness and unearned confidence. Resolutely make generalizations about hundreds of millions of people with no more evidence than “you have some internet friends”. And clutch your pearls like a self satisfied concern troll when you get called an asshole.

You really sound a lot like your imagined liberal bogeymen with your patronizing concern my friend.

Thank you for saying this.

No, you wouldn’t and it would be extremely clear. Reality is not changing because of anyone wishful thinking. I sincerely hope that you would never live in such environment, you may regret very very much your view. Maybe you are not aware, but to me it looks like that you are similar to a turkey hoping for thanksgiving. Actually you remind me of that black guy that was critical about BLM and was adamant that he never had any problem with the police because he respected the law. He was shot and killed by the police: https://www.newsweek.com/jonathan-price-defended-cops-facebo... . If I were you I would be very careful about what you wish for, you’ll never know, maybe at some point your wish will be granted sadly.

Instead of the “white man’s burden” it’s now the “white liberals burden” to save all these brown people who don’t know enough to save themselves.

There was an article a few days ago that claimed Trump’s increase in minority support was because the minorities were racist too.

I mean, that’s just lazy thinking.

Except it's not... I grew up in a lower middle class, majority hispanic town in California and the racism towards black people and even their own race is very prevalent. Unsurprisingly, we had a few trump caravans drive through our town in the past few months.

Assuming that the reason people hold other opinions that differ from yours is because they are bad people, is just lazy thinking.

As a non-white person that actually lives in the US, this couldn't be further from the truth. You're comparing the ideologically extreme liberal to the moderate conservative. I've visited enough states and experienced enough racism to know that it isn't a matter of "curing their fear". But sure, keep making the same baseless claims that far right leaning media make.

The simple fact that a comment made you compare me to "the far right leaning media" (Which one is that btw?, even Fox went extremely anti-Trump) says a lot about your tolerance. Ahi nos vemos mijo.

As a non-white person that also actually lives in the US, your comment couldn't be further from the truth.

America, the land of opportunity, is an incredible place for all cultures, and the best of its kind in the world. If you're looking for utopia, you won't find it anywhere, but this is nowhere near the hell you claim it to be. I would advise you experience what racism really is like when it's the entire nation and government like in the Middle East or even countries like Japan. Maybe that perspective would help.

>America, the land of opportunity, is an incredible place for all cultures, and the best of its kind in the world. If you're looking for utopia, you won't find it anywhere, but this is nowhere near the hell you claim it to be. I would advise you experience what racism really is like when it's the entire nation and government like in the Middle East or even countries like Japan. Maybe that perspective would help.

Stop trying argue with strawmen. No one is saying that America is more racist than the middle east. It is in fact possible to be less racist than Saudi Arabia and still have racist elements.

The context of this discussion is about comparative racism between different segments of the American population. It has nothing to do with America's international position on the racism scale.

And we're saying that we would rather deal with a tiny number of outright racists (who can be re-educated or ignored) than the vast pernicious soft bigotry and racism of the modern left that is infecting everything from academia to science. It's a classic case of "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" and the complete refusal to even discuss it is a major problem.

Are you having a problem following the conversation, or do you just purposely respond to completely different points than those made in the thread you reply to?

Choosing candidates based on how well you think they’ll manage the economy is not a matter of just choosing one’s 401k over other priorities. Bad economies, especially in formerly prosperous countries, tend to lead to many much more obviously horrible things. In many ways, you can tie the rise of Hitler to the economic devastation of Germany in the aftermath of WW1. The Great Depression had some powerful effects in the US, as well - fascist and communist candidates gained a lot more traction than they had previously.

Not to say that Trump was the man for the job on any of this, just that you shouldn’t wave away people’s prioritizing of a strong economy as greed driven.

This constant obsession with race and skin color from Trump opponents is why many minority citizens voted for him in the first place.

If your entire statement breaks down at the existence of the first non-white Trump supporter than your position isn't as accurate or valid as you think.

That’s not how arguments work. There’s plenty who care more about themselves then others, regardless of skin color, race or gender. There’s the concept of f yours got mine. Also Trump just kept saying socialist even though that was so far removed from anything truthful, but people hear socialist and think that must be bad.

That's how most people vote, on all sides, and they have no responsibility to vote any other way. That's how democracy works.

Yet you clearly made a statement of all of his voters as choosing one thing over another. Perhaps you should revise that then, according to your new statement.

We have to find a way to come together and just assuming half the country is terrible doesn't lead anywhere good.

Reasons people might support Trump in spite of his many many shortcomings:

Trump has generated a middle east peace deal with UAE, Saudi etc. recognizing Israel which helps pave the way for stability in the region.

We have not entering any new proxy wars during his reign.

Trump banned lobbyists from the white house (although this one turned out to be a net negative because then the much of the white house staff members became defacto lobbyists--for instance Michael Cohen was paid around 10 million from various fortune 500 companies to help bring their interests to the president)

His stance on not murdering babies (which is how many prolife members see abortion, your mileage may vary--I am pro choice myself).

Trump has appointed many "true conservative" judges, so if you consider judicial appointments extremely important and are conservative you might support him for that reason.

What about the fact that Richard Spencer, who started and led the Jews will not replace us rally and was the leader of the white nationalist movement at Charlottesville is now a CNN contributor and endorsed Biden. And the fact the president did condemn them, repeatedly.

Trump passed the most comprehensive criminal justice reform bills of the last 20 years.

2020 Trump has the best percentage of vote share among republican presidential candidates from Hispanics, Jews, and African Americans of the past 50 years so maybe he isn't quite as racist as he seems.

You could believe that school choice is the most important civil rights issue of our time.

You think that the government has not right to be mandating lockdowns, school closures, etc. And have seen many instances of overreach from democrats.

Very low trust in the media and other "ruling" elites whom Trump seems to be constantly embattled.

There are of course lots of reasons to support Biden.

As VP he oversaw a very successfully timeframe of American history, with economic growth, political and social stability.

Trump has a tendency to say many things which are dog whistles/outright racist.

Trump speaks about women in derogatory ways.

Instead of bailing out local governments and schools during the coronavirus, Trump was pumping money into large corporations.

Biden takes climate change seriously. We are likely to see a green new deal.

Biden is likely to increase social safety nets during a time which is likely filled with economic uncertainty.

Biden isn't doing saber rattling with China threatening a second cold war.

Biden/Obama created a peace deal with Iran with the potential to bring stability to the region.

Its hard to judge policy, but Biden's character is much much more appealing than Trump's.

Biden is likely to bring a sense of dignity back to the office.

Biden is not a divisive figure and can help heal the country.

Biden is likely to bring police reform.

Trumps response to the coronavirus has been terrible. He basically left it up to the states instead of showing leadership. Moreover he was constantly spouting whatever nonsense it was that he was spouting.

Biden is likely to try and do something about the growing inequality in the country.

Biden has shown he can lead competently.

It's hard because conservatives and liberals tend to not only have differing personality traits, they tend to have underlying philosophies, priorities and thought patterns (personal anecdote not science). But we have to find ways to love each other despite our differences. Much love, I hope Biden does great things for the country and the next four years are prosperous, full of love and happy.

This is the content we need to see on the news. They are supposed to present us with these facts, not the story.

It's hard to understand China through the lens of a western upbringing (as I'm sure is the case vice versa).

Sabre rattling with China. I'm no expert but have spent 15 years doing business in China.

A very firm position is the only one they respect (although they will claim otherwise). If you offer them concessions they will take them and at the same time respect you less. In many western countries concessions are met with good favour. This is rarely the case in China in my experience.

> Trump has generated a middle east peace deal with UAE, Saudi etc. recognizing Israel which helps pave the way for stability in the region.

No, Trump had virtually nothing to do with that...

Anyone with even a passing familiarity of the Gulf region knows that the UAE and Israel have not been at war. On the contrary, the countries have had diplomatic relations under the table for quite some time now. The UAE even hosted an unofficial Israeli embassy at IRENA in Abu Dhabi.

The reason why full diplomatic relations took so long is that the UAE government had to gradually prepare the populace for the announcement. Everything else was in place way before Trump became president.

So why was it announced that way? My guess: Trump claimed that he brokered this “deal” to earn brownie points with Americans, and the Emiratis/Israelis got to earn points with Trump. Win-win.

Well stated. And in fact many of the things Trump has done, I would support. But I can't get past his worst characteristics.

My money, my family, and my health is far more important to me than my fellow citizens, and especially my fellow “non citizens”.

This whole comment thread shows divisions won't be going away anytime soon.

That reminds me of the McGregor’s legacy joke (a bit vulgar but https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/feuz6/whats_that_jok...). The gist is that people are noted for the horrible/crazy/strange things they’ve done, even if they’ve done other things as well (eg Hitler is never going to be noted for his work on animal rights and vegetarianism).

What valid reason brings you to vote for a racist? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Donald_Trump

Certainly, even the semblance of Trump's association with white supremacy is reason enough for him to go. We saw this evil rear its head in Charlottesville and elsewhere.

But my point is, I very much doubt this is representative of 100% of the Republican electorate. I think its probably something like way less than 1%.

Trump's implicit support of them elevated and amplified them and made them much bigger than they really are.

It's far far more than 1%. Vast legions of his supporters cite him saying things that others are not willing to, and that all comes down to his racist views.

It takes a special sort of doublethink to not acknowledge which views he states that no other politician is willing to say.

Agree, pulling a number out of my backside it feels like at least 10% of the country have some sort of white supremacist leanings.

It really doesn't take that many engaged voters to dominate a conversation if it's allowed. 99.5% of the republican base will vote for anyone with an R next to their title.

I think that’s true of both parties

When you have an openly racist candidate, shouldn’t that outweigh a voters political party loyalty? Cause that’s basic human decency.

> I very much doubt this is representative of 100% of the Republican electorate. I think its probably something like way less than 1%.

Maybe or maybe not, but 100% of the people that voted for Trump were, by definition, willing to tolerate his white supremacy ... otherwise they wouldn't have voted for him.

People who voted for Trump believed that what Biden represented was worse than what Trump was represented. Personally, I think they were terribly wrong.

Is someone gonna explain the flaw in my logic here?

You do know Biden gave the eulogy for a klansman right? The hypocrisy from the left is thick.

That's misleading / false: https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-afs:Content:9545480...

It isn't false at all. Byrd was a KKK member and Biden did speak at his funeral. It's in no way false or misleading.

It's misleading because Byrd renounced his beliefs. The NAACP says: "Senator Byrd reflects the transformative power of this nation. Senator Byrd went from being an active member of the KKK to a being a stalwart supporter of the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and many other pieces of seminal legislation that advanced the civil rights and liberties of our country."

You didn't read the linked article, did you? Byrd changed his ways and was even praised by the NAACP for his capacity to change:

  “Senator Byrd reflects the transformative power of this
  nation,” read a statement by NAACP president Ben Jealous.
  “Senator Byrd went from being an active member of the KKK
  to a being a stalwart supporter of the Civil Rights Act,
  the Voting Rights Act and many other pieces of seminal
  legislation that advanced the civil rights and liberties of
  our country.”

It may not be false to say that Biden spoke at Byrd's funeral, but it's definitely misleading to call it hypocrisy.

>But my point is, I very much doubt this is representative of 100% of the Republican electorate. I think its probably something like way less than 1%.

Some people just want the trains to run on time. I understand that. However sometimes there are more important issues. In those instances it is hard to see people ignore those issues in favor of the train schedule.

Many of the people that voted for him, "support" him only by means of rejection of the other side.

If you are against one party, you will vote for the other. The feeling of being against something is generally much stronger than the feeling of support.

This is not just a Trump issue but a bipartisan one, as I wager most of the 75 million that voted for Biden, simply voted against Trump and the GOP as well.

I think the true evil here is the two party system, where people have no outlet to express and advance anything more nuanced than us vs them mentality. But I don’t think that will change any time soon, if ever...

Eliminating first past the post is necessary if we want >2 parties. Maine just started doing ranked choice, maybe others will follow.

Australia has ranked choice and we also have a 2-party system for all intents and purposes. I don't think ranked choice is the answer, but the voting system (mixed-member proportional) used in New Zealand and Germany seems to be doing a much better job of getting a good variety of voices in their respective legislatures.

That is certainly true, and the downsides of a two-party system are not small. On the other hand, multi-party systems have a tendency to build less stable governments, which was one of the reasons for the downfall of the Weimacher Republik and the rise of the NSDAP.

With the addition of more parties to the German political spectrum, building coalitions has been harder in recent years, forcing essentially the two most central mainstream parties, CDU/CSU and SPD, to build a "great coalition". The problem of this is that people not happy with the results necessarily have to vote more extreme, and we did see a lot of protest votes, swinging from the very-left Die Linke to the ultra-right Afd, for example.

Observing the political process in the US, it seems that the primaries leave the final candidates always somewhat worse for wear, maybe more so on the Democrat side than on the Republican side (Infighting seems to be a worldwide phenomenon more prevalent on the left). By necessity, most winning candidates must then do a dance from the more extreme positions they expressed to win the primaries to the center. This is almost by construction, as the voters in the primaries will almost always be more extreme than the voters in the presidential election, even if reduced to those which would consider to vote for the party in the first place.

The idea of a grand coalition _seems_ odd, because I think we’re all accustomed to our major political parties fighting rather than cooperating, but if they can work together isn’t that a rejection of extremism on both sides and an embrace of centrism, which, perhaps, is what the German majority actually want? I know very little about German politics so I’m just asking the question here - but I’m genuinely curious, what’s the downside?

For short term, I think these coalitions can work. But there are two problems: First, in a normal big party/small party coalition, the small party typically has a very specific agenda. For example the Green party with environment protection. So it's easy to make a combined program: The program of the big party + that special thing. With two "we do everything" parties, where each party wants to appear as "having made their mark", it's much harder to combine to a big program. And because everybody wants to leave their mark, there is a lot of fighting, so that in the next election, you can rule alone or with a small party, so you'll have more power.

Second: There will always be people not happy with the government. Maybe because they really got handed the short stick, or because they just tend to pick the short stick. That is true even if they are better off than before, just if other people are more better off, people will not be happy. These people want to vote for an opposition. Who should they vote for? They can only go to an extreme party.

> There will always be people not happy with the government.

> Who should they vote for? They can only go to an extreme party.

That is what extremists want you to believe. But the belief that both big parties are corrupt exists in the USA as well, and it helped Trump. The fact of the matter is, if you are unhappy with what a grand coalition does, you can still vote for the party that you agree more with to have it gain more power next time around. Only if you believe that cooperation and compromise themself are bad things, you have to vote extreme.

That is easy to observe in German politics. Yes, some people vote for the party they agree with more, but many do not. This has nothing to do with "the party is corrupt", but with "the party doesn't do what I want them to do".

> That is certainly true, and the downsides of a two-party system are not small. On the other hand, multi-party systems have a tendency to build less stable governments, which was one of the reasons for the downfall of the Weimacher Republik and the rise of the NSDAP.

I'm no longer convinced that this is a good argument, given that a two-party system just gave rise to the Trump party over the past four years - and it was 'rejected' by a mere ~60,000 votes in a country of 350 million.

> On the other hand, multi-party systems have a tendency to build less stable governments,

That's the popular myth, based largely on a combination of conflation of parliamentary and multiparty systems (the two have no essential connection) and the fact that parliamentary systems tend to use different language around a government/administration than presidential systems do.

Measured by either cabinet or head of government turnover rates, multiparty parliamentary systems among established democracies are more stable than the US.

> which was one of the reasons for the downfall of the Weimacher Republik and the rise of the NSDAP.

Two party systems have at least as much problem (really, more) forming moderate-to-opposing extreme coalitions against extremists from one side, which is how extremists of the Right have progressively hijacked a major party in the US, with nothing like the level of externally-imposed stress that produced the NSDAP in Germany. [0] At least in a multiparty system, forming a coalition across tribal identity boundaries formed by party labels is expected.

[0] see, https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/10/31/the-repu...

Americans for some reason have fixated on FPTP as the cause of the two-party system and hope RCV/IRV will extract them from it.

The basis of a two-party system is actually single-member electorates. Because each seat can only have one representative and the economics of campaigning and organising make it hard for a third party to make appreciable inroads.

Australia's Parliament demonstrates the differences: the House of Representatives is composed of single-member electorates and is dominated by the two major political organisations (and this is for the good, as the government is formed in the House and a two-party system almost guarantees that a government can be formed and sustained easily after each election). The Senate, by contrast, is composed of multi-member electorates, one for each state, elected on a proportional basis. While the major parties typically have the largest share between them, the nature of a proportional multi-member electorate is that it creates more room for minor parties to obtain one or two seats.

RCV/IRV does not this promote more moderate candidates, from any given party.

Thanks for the thoughtful response. I agree that there are other structural challenges in the way of making additional parties really viable. My theory is that changing from FPTP would sort of break the ice and allow other parties to gain momentum, normalize the idea of other parties not being totally fringe, and maybe pave the way for some other enabling changes once it’s no longer strategically a terrible idea to vote for the candidates you prefer but almost certainly won’t win. It’s not the only change that would help, to be sure.

Why do Canada and the UK have more than two viable parties when they use FPTP?

Because people are failing to vote strategically. In Canada the 3 party system even more heavily favors the right (Conservatives), as our center-left parties (NDP, Liberal) are very similar and split the vote. In strategic elections this narrows considerably.

We also have a parliamentary system, where these parties can make coalitions and essentially pool votes, which softens (but doesn't eliminate) the need for strategic voting.

Canada has 5 parties. Bloc, lib, con, ndp and green not to mention another protest right party. A few years ago the cons were split into two parties.

Rarely outside of BC does lib-ndp vote split work in the con favour and often works the other way for the lib in Quebec with the bloc.

The ndp and lib seem like they are progressive and the idea that one should vote for the other to block the cons misses the differences. And your vote is worth a few dollars so vote for what you want... because funding matters.

That sounds more like an eventually 2-party system which hasn’t reached equilibrium yet. Granted, I know zilch about the rest of the voting system.

Neither Canada or the UK have a separate executive chamber that they vote for. The PM and his cabinet is 'just' a set of MPs that their own party delegated executive responsibility to.

POTUS, on the other hand, is personally entrusted with substantial levels of power.

It's very dubious as to whether the UK per se can be said to have "more than two viable parties".

The constituent countries each have a nationalist bloc that will often be successful in local government but not really at the UK level unless whoever is running the UK as a whole is antagonistic to the nationalist position. This results in silliness like Wrexham (which is technically over the border into Wales but nobody there speaks the Welsh language) being required to have Welsh-speaking bureaucrats and signs in Welsh even though the most likely language you'd hear there besides English is... Polish. Why do this? A few million quid on symbolic gestures defuses Welsh nationalism, cheap at twice the price.

But those nationalists won't work together and have almost nothing to say about the UK's larger politics. The closest is probably either the Scottish Nationals objecting to the consequences of Brexit (since Scotland didn't vote for it, and it destroys at least one of the claimed benefits of voting against independence for Scotland in its previous referrendum) or the DUP (a Northern Irish party which opposes Irish independence and is closely affiliated with the Conservative Party) offering a Confidence & Supply deal to keep the Tories in power.

Beyond that, there's the Liberal Democrats, but they aren't very big, and the only time Brits gave enough Lib Dem MPs the nod, they were obliged to throw their lot in with the Tories†, who aren't stupid and used this to ensure most of the blame for the resulting Tory policies landed on Lib Dem MPs who promptly lost in droves. They are nowhere close to being a "viable party" in the sense of able to govern, though they do have majorities in some local governments.

And then what, one Green MP? I mean, she's competent, her policies make sense, all credit to her, but on her own she is not a "viable party" in that sense. Her constituents (Brighton) are going to vote for her because they trend hippier than most of the UK (also gayer, but I don't think the Green Party is especially pro-LGBTQ), because she's good at her job and incumbents are always harder to defeat but that doesn't result in a Green UK government, just one MP.

So no, really there are two viable parties, the Conservative and Unionist Party (Conservatives, "Tories") or the Labour Party. I think they're both a bit screwed because they both subscribe to beliefs about the importance of Work and I believe we're at the end of the era in which the capability of humans to do Work is necessary or perhaps even relevant to prosperity.

† The existence of numerous smaller groups some of which I did not mention means that the Liberal Democrats could not have formed a working coalition with Labour, because that coalition would lack the votes to beat a "No Confidence" motion from Tories and other rival parties, forcing fresh elections. With the Conservatives they had more than enough, so the only alternative to a Tory coalition was fresh elections. In hindsight that would have been the correct choice perhaps, but wisdom at the time was that the one thing voters hated more than the other party was elections, so never force fresh elections unless you're confident you can win them.

Wrt Canada, because of Quebec. The bloc has an alignment that's neither liberal or conservative, and Quebec has a huge amount of seats.

Agreed, plurality voting has to go. St. Louis just adopted approval voting [1] which is even better than ranked choice voting (no need to rank and avoids the non-monotonic problem of RCV). So things are looking up!

[1] https://stlapproves.org/

All systems lead to two party systems. Even countries with multiparty system, turn into two major parties with dozens of fringe parties. These fringe parties do nothing more than splitting votes, forming coalition when one of the major party didn’t win majority typically creating unstable governments.

The current New Zealand government is the first in 26 years of MMP where a party gained a majority alone. The previous was made up of 3 very different minority parties. In every other election, the largest has sought the support of smaller parties to govern. I can’t speak for other countries, but MMP has not lead to instability here.

> All systems lead to two party systems

I don't think that's true at all:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Assembly_(Switzerland)

It’s not true - it just seems inevitable when you’re within the 1 person, 1 vote and winner take all system of the US.

If you believe that someone voting for whom they believe in is splitting the vote, then you don't believe in democracy right? You are thinking like a marketing strategist it sounds like.

Score Voting where candidates are given a score 0-99 transcends bicameralism when averages are taken, similar to scores in the Olympics. And it is the superset of all voting methods.

Parliament seat count for parties in Finland [0]:

40, 38, 38, 31, 20, 16, 10, 5, 1, 1

The 4th largest party with 31 seats was the largest one in the previous parliament.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_of_Finland

> I think the true evil here is the two party system, where people have no outlet to express and advance anything more nuanced than us vs them mentality. But I don’t think that will change any time soon, if ever...

I don't think that's necessarily because of the two party system. I think it's more a result of a period of extreme partisanship/polarization reflected through a two party system.

As recently as a few decades ago, you still had significant numbers of conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans in office, and I feel that helped a lot with bipartisanship. Maybe it was a mistake to get rid of stuff like congressional earmarks, which maybe took pressure off officeholders to be so ideologically strident and combative.

> I think the true evil here is the two party system

America has had a two-party system for 200 years. Has it been this polarized for most of those 200 years?

For a significant portion of that time, quite possibly. In the lead up to the Civil War, there were many debates about ending slavery through the 1820’s and 30’s. There were even mini wars over the issue in the 1850’s, and then the actual event beginning in the 1860’s. This was then followed by a new subjugation of free people in the South beginning in 1875 and the Jim Crow period. During this post Civil War period is the ongoing Wars with Native Americans to expand the land of the US (though this was supported by both parties mostly). Then women’s suffrage coming to a head 1920’s (along with huge issues related to the ban on alcohol at the same time). Also during this period is a huge debate going on between banks and farmers during the Great Depression. Then following WWII the beginning of demands for equal rights in the South to get rid of Jim Crow, gaining major steam in the 50’s and 60’s, and then being joined with Women’s liberation.

And then we come to the huge divide that starts more recently during the Bush administration and the demand for LGBTQ equal rights (brewing strongly since the ‘70s) and more recently a revisiting of policing and criminal justice which brings us to today. There are periods where the divide seems to ebb and flow. Probably 10-20 year spans, and then a recognition by the greater community that things remain unfair for various groups.

It’s hard to say, but let’s say more than 50% of American history is a divide of some sort on various issues. Is it due to two parties? Or do the parties coalesce around the issues that are brewing at the most extreme boiling points? Or worse, do the two parties use various issues as wedges to create divide where one might not otherwise exist? (All of this is from my own memory and study, so I’m sure there are major things I’ve glossed over or missed not being an expert in the area)

This assumes party identification and party goals are arbitrary.

That might be true in some cases (at least if “arbitrary” includes accidents of biography and consequent trust), but I suspect there are more supporters of both parties who actually identify with the explicit platform goals or projected values than there are people who are only against the other party.

I will go further here: the idea that there is a mass of people out there waiting to support a third party that would somehow better represent Americans is entirely without merit. How can you tell? Simple. Watch primaries. Any spoiler effect should be weak there. You can feel free to cast your ballot for whoever you like most without worrying that the candidate from the party you like the least will win without you supporting your second least.

But in spite of that freedom... we still see third party primary participation that’s multiple orders of magnitude down from primary participation focused on the big two.

I think the most straightforward explanation for this is that a vanishing fraction of Americans are ever likely to support more than two parties.

You're underestimating the total number of people who just associate themselves with a party arbitrarily and vote down the party line IMO - but even ignoring that I disagree that people wouldn't vote for third parties if they were truly viable alternatives. A LOT of people in the Republican party in fact are repulsed by Trump; and there is also an obvious distinction in the Democratic party between AOC/Bernie-style progressive factions, and centrists and moderates in the party like what Biden represents. The super-crowded Democratic primaries made that pretty clear.

I think the big problem with the system as it stands is that people rightfully understand that if they vote for a third party candidate, that candidate is a) guaranteed to lose, b) guaranteed to be unable to enact any change in government without having a literal majority in the senate, and c) guaranteed to steal votes from a candidate who you may not love but is the lesser of two evils (plenty of libertarians do not agree with Biden much at all, but would rather have him than Trump/vice versa, and then vote down the party lines to avoid disaster).

Third party votes are often cast as a waste of a vote - and I don't blame people for thinking that way, because the system encourages it.

> This assumes party identification and party goals are arbitrary.

No, it just assumes (which is true) that people care about different aspects of the party platform. All over the developed world, people on both sides of the aisle want to reduce immigration. Left-leaning parties in Denmark and New Zealand (the beloved Jacinda Ardern) campaigned and won on platforms calling for reduced immigration. Mainstream center-left politicians like Macron have shifted to calling for increased integration.

In the U.S., that left has radicalized that debate. Democrats have dismissed all such concerns are racist. The moderate candidate Democrats ran didn't push back on any of that or acknowledge there was a legitimate debate to be had over immigration levels. And nearly everyone who ran in the Democratic primary embraced far-left positions such as decriminalizing illegal immigration and universal healthcare for undocumented immigrants--positions only 1-2 EU countries have embraced. (Due to a lack of any pushback on those positions from Biden, it was easier to get those primary positions to stick to him.) Biden wouldn't even take the completely mainstream Democratic position of condemning illegal immigration and calling for secure borders, which Obama embraced.

At that point, what do you do? A party isn't a single person or policy position; its an entire ideology (and the Democratic Party has become increasingly ideological).

I will go further here: the idea that there is a mass of people out there waiting to support a third party that would somehow better represent Americans is entirely without merit

A huge number of Americans are socially conservative and economically liberal and there is currently no party that really supports that point of view.

https://www.storybench.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/polcom...

>"support" him only by means of rejection of the other side.

It's more than that. He hurts them. He is their kryptonite. A shiv in their side. Blocking the other side from enacting their agenda is one thing, and any republican can do that. he causes liberal tears, and they love it. It's like voting for poison ivy instead of sidewalks made of ice. They dont like him, they like the pain he causes others. And by extension that makes him admirable, despite not actually giving two anythings about him as a person.

So they rejected someone with a plan to control the virus and address climate change? Cool.

I am personally more aligned with ideas more progressive then Biden, so I certainly don't think people rejecting control of the virus and addressing climate change is "cool".

But when people are effectively given a binary choice, they will simply side with whomever aligns against the direction they don't like. It's not cool, but if we claim that all those choosing that direction are endorsing Trump, we're saying that there's no democratic choice whatsoever for those that recognize his failures.

In my opinion, there is something wrong with the two-party system much more so than there is something wrong with "republicans".

I agree with the two party system being terrible, and wish the Dems had a more progressive candidate, but Trump’s effects on the democratic process and the climate and COVID deaths needed to be stopped.

True. On that point, let us celebrate that this episode is over.

Thank you for spelling it out for people. The seeming binary choice is part of the cause for all this. First election of Trump was a real cry that some seem to have forgotten. I am genuinely not sure how this is simply glossed over and simply explained as 'racism','anti-science',or w/e. I still remember driving through Ohio and seeing signs along the lines of 'Help us Trump' pre-2016.

And the simple reality is that until it is addressed, we will have a non-zero chance of another Trump or Trump-like candidate in the future. Worse, we will have a candidate, who is much, much smarter, who saw all the new avenues and the ways things could be done..

Instead, we have this weird sports event with confused crowd cheering equivalent of 'my team won'. It is fucking depressing. I may be bitter, because I genuinely hate sports too.

I rejected someone who voted for wars every time one was on the table.

https://www.wral.com/fact-check-did-biden-support-wars-in-ir...

https://www.factcheck.org/2016/02/donald-trump-and-the-iraq-...

the other guy supported at least some of those wars publicly also. But since he parachuted into politics, who knows how he felt about these things until it was convenient to have an opinion favorable to his base.

Yes, having a president who did not start a single war for the first time since Reagan is "favorable" to a voter such as myself. And last time I voted specifically against this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DXDU48RHLU. There are now _slave markets_ in Libya: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S2qtGisT34

Does motivation matter? If a voter claims that they are casting a "protest vote", and that vote contributes towards some outcome, why should we believe that they didn't actually support that outcome?

Hacker News political discussions are worthless because we are not allowed to explore the possibility that people sometimes act in bad faith.

Boo to this, if you're against one party, abstain from voting for it.

Ask your self, how against the democratic platform do you need to be in order to justify affirming this guy?

Spoil your ballot.

When you seek the consensus of 150M voters you're never going to get the one you really want. There was a stark difference in tone and policy and voters made their intentions very clear. People who voted for Trump meant it. Look back to 2016 when they elevated Trump above other GOP options. They could have had a generic conservative who would oppose liberalism but govern with at least a modicum of dignity and professionalism and they declined.

Indeed, I noticed many of the people dancing in the streets had signs saying "no more trump" as Robert Heinlein said "If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for ... but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong."

This has made me think... I think a lot of the Trump supporters are against many of the things he's doing just because "at least it's not the dems". I think democrat voters will turn a blind eye on an incredible amount of things because "at least it's not Trump".

Trump got more support this year among every demographic but one—white males.

This opinion that Trump is a white supremacist, is just that... an opinion. Very few of his supporters saw him as a white supremacist. Trump disavowed white supremacy many times. This is divisive language is something I’m glad to see Biden avoiding, so far.

> Trump disavowed white supremacy many times.

Source? (Preferably in the form of a video, since there is a lot of misinformation about this, and he explicitly espoused white supremacy on live TV during the first presidential debate of 2020.)

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/02/trump-has-condemned-white-...

The fact that the whole racist and white supremacist trope gets pushed around this much means that the media has been very effective at lying to entire populace. Think about what else they may have lied about.

Ah yes, I must’ve been hearing things all those years ago when Trump called for a “complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the country”. Extremely non-racist thing to say. Get over yourself.

Islam is a religion, not a race.

It was 7 counties identified by the previous admin as high risk. Lots of Muslims were still allowed to enter. I should know, I’m middle eastern myself.

I read your link carefully. He never actually condemns white nationalists. He agrees they should be condemned, but never actually condemns them.

There is one exception: A press release he clearly did not write condemns white supremacy.

Again, during the debates (after all the examples cited in that article), he again refused to condemn white supremacy, even when Fox’s Chris Wallace handed the opportunity as a soft ball, and even when Biden reduced it to a simple yes/no answer for him by naming a group to condemn.

All he had to say is “I condemn the Proud Boys” (or any other group he could name).

In the most visible public forum available to him, he chose not to do so, which is the same as condoning them all.

He does condemn them directly (several times), see the videos I linked above in reaction to your initial comment.

As Chris Wallace is asking him Trump says “sure” three times. He’s interrupting, which is unfortunate, but the goal posts on this have moved endlessly. I’ve never seen you, hedora, condemn white supremacy. Does that mean you support it? By the way, if you condemn it, I’m going to be the arbiter on whether you did it well enough or if you’re still tarnished in the court of public opinion.

Honestly I expect more from HN than to fall into Kafkaesque arguments about these things but perhaps the problem lies within my own expectations.

https://youtu.be/ihHyMOPQ55M

He disavowed white supremacists, KKK, Proud Boys, etc. several times:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd0cMmBvqWc (4:10 is him denouncing Proud Boys, for example)

https://streamable.com/sr9o2s

1) Observe that the country is divided

2) Make a divisive statement accusing the other side of creating division

3) Throw racism and identity politics into the mix, that always helps

4) Repeat as necessary

"Trump Is Losing Ground With White Voters But Gaining Among Black And Hispanic Americans" https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-is-losing-ground-...

Yes he now has 8% of the African American vote up from 6%. It’s remarkable you can find 92-94% of such a large and diverse diaspora that agrees you’re a bad fit.

The increase in the support levels among Latinx is definitely more substantial, and likely has to do with the fact that the right wing has been ginning up fear around “socialism” to a group historically seriously injured by it. (Bearing in mind of course that the definition of socialism which has caused harm in Latin America is the state owning the means of production, and there is absolutely unequivocally zero support for that among Democrats — who range from center-right to at most a flavor of social democrat).

That's fine. People can hold different opinions. Accusing people who disagree of being racist isn't just divisive, it is nonsensical.

Who are these voters racist against?

The premise makes even less sense if you're calling out divisive rhetoric.

One thing that I found really interesting is the way right wing television is explaining to the public how Trump cannot possibly be racist because he has African-American voters. This is the same way you can’t be racist because if have a black friend.

This cuts both ways as you point out. People vote for all sorts of reasons, and people are willing to overlook racism because they have higher priority issues. Just because the president is a racist doesn’t necessarily make you racist for voting for him. It just means you have things you consider more important.

Having African American voters doesn’t make you somehow not a racist, and voting for a racist doesn’t necessarily make you one. That’s how far the American political system has fallen.

Having a white person who wears their compassion on their sleeve call you racist or 'not black' for a refusal to cosign their hatred of Trump takes the cake. Hard to get over that one.

Mere indifference has become controversial.

Not a good look for sure. I’ll wait and judge him by what he does in the next four years though.

That kind of ignorance is nothing compared to literally forcing migrant women to have hysterectomies along the southern border. That’s a different kind of racism. [1]

[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/09/16/913398383/whistleblower-alleg...

> the definition of socialism which has caused harm in Latin America is the state owning the means of production, and there is absolutely unequivocally zero support for that among Democrats

A fundamental tenet of ownership is having control of it and the proceeds from it. It's not just the name on the masthead.

And once more literally no democrats count even a little bit as socialists. That notwithstanding it’s utterly disingenuous to equate social democrats with Maduro. The kind of “socialism” espoused by democrats is further right than substantially all of Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Far from failed, folks there enjoy a general higher standard of living than Americans.

> literally no democrats count even a little bit as socialists

1. taxation takes the proceeds from the property - the higher the taxes, the more socialist.

2. Rent control.

3. California specifies the gender makeup of boards of directors.

4. Single payer health care.

There are lots more, these are just examples. You can argue that the benefits of such abrogation makes it worthwhile, but they are socialism. The more of them, the more socialist.

> Far from failed, folks there enjoy a general higher standard of living than Americans.

The US then shouldn't be such a popular destination for immigrants looking for opportunity.

With reference to the definition of socialism: “any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods”

1. taxation takes the proceeds from the property - the higher the taxes, the more socialist.

Not a socialist issue, for instance Donald trump raised taxes by capping the SLPT deductions, and imo has nothing to do with the state owning the means of production.

2. Rent control.

Not a federal or Democratic Party policy issue, just a stupid approach to control cost of living. The real answer is just supply and demand, and to permit building. This isn’t partisan it’s bad policy and has nothing to do with the means of production.

3. California specifies the gender makeup of boards of directors.

That has nothing to do with the means of production and isn’t a federal issue.

4. Single payer health care.

Not a left vs right issue IMO any more than a socialized fire department or police department are socialist. This is evident in the fact both democrats and republicans love Medicare which is literal socialized medicine for folks over 65.

My personal opinion is that medical care does not fall under “means of production” and should instead fall under basic infrastructure which supports and facilitates the private ownership of the means of production.

> The US then shouldn't be such a popular destination for immigrants looking for opportunity.

This doesn’t prove or disprove anything. People often come to the US hoping they will do better than average. I suggested on average folks are better off elsewhere and your statement doesn’t prove or disprove that. Worse, immigration was basically wholesale suspended.

> Not a socialist issue

Trump doesn't define what socialism is or is not. Taxes are a taking of the proceeds of an enterprise, the more taken the more the owner is defacto the government.

> Not a federal or Democratic Party policy issue

It's local and state Democratic policy, and it certainly is socialistic.

> That has nothing to do with the means of production

Of course it is. It applies to business and how they are run.

> Not a left vs right issue

Of course it is. It comes from the left.

> This doesn’t prove or disprove anything.

Requiring them to all be wrong should perhaps give pause.

Anyway, you're clearly focused on federal socialism. So I'll bring up Biden's plan to spend $2 trillion on all kinds of centrally planned economic initiatives, such as electric car chargers all over the place. The government has tried central planning of energy production and distribution before, back in the 70's. The DOE decided, for each and every gas station in America, how much gas it was allowed to sell. It was a disaster - gas lines and shortages everywhere. This all ended overnight with Reagan's first Executive Order.

And I mean literally overnight the gas lines disappeared and never returned. I remember it well, it was wonderful not to have to plan for an hour wait for gas. The DOE proved simply incapable of putting gas where people needed it.

Do you believe Biden's central economic planners will put the charging stations in the optimal place? I don't. But I suppose we'll see. In any case, it's still $2 trillion worth of socialism.

> This is evident in the fact both democrats and republicans love Medicare which is literal socialized medicine for folks over 65.

Of course Medicare is socialism. You are pushing the idea that Republican actions define socialism. I disagree - socialism is an economic system, and is not defined by who implements it.

By the way, I'd be a greener President than Biden. But I'd use market based solutions, as using a carrot is cheaper and more effective than the stick.

For example, a carbon tax is a market based solution.

I thought taxation was socialism :)

Thanks for reading my posts carefully :-)

First off, the government needs revenue to function. It has to tax something to get it. Taxing pollution "internalizes the externalities" and serves two goals - providing revenue for the government, and discouraging pollution.

Isn't that better than discouraging productive behavior?

> Trump doesn't define what socialism is or is not. Taxes are a taking of the proceeds of an enterprise, the more taken the more the owner is de facto the government.

In a socialist society there is no concept of individual property and therefore no concept of taxation. The concept of taxation is unique to a capitalist society. Beyond that, I'd say that what the taxes are used for defines whether it leans socialist or not.

Further, I disagree, taking the proceeds does not exert control or ownership until the level is substantially higher than it is now. Either way, a business' income apportionment doesn't matter as much these days thanks to the rise of equity.

> [Rent Control] It's local and state Democratic policy, and it certainly is socialistic.

Rent control is interesting, as I firmly disagree with it -- for being bad policy. I can see how this policy diminishes the value of personal property, though I could get behind it if it worked. The most effective approach I've seen that strengthens private property rights while also providing for the average citizen is the Singapore HDB model. [1] 78% of Singaporeans live in HDB government housing, and the rest have zero government imposition whatsoever.

> [California Gender Law] Of course it is. It applies to business and how they are run.

This is a state issue, as you pointed out. I will say though, that I tend to subdivide regulations into "for the greater good" type redistributive regulation (which I think you could make a claim is socialist leaning in a mixed economy), and "capturing externalities" regulation. The free market has shown a total inability to capture externalities, and as such, certain classes of regulation are required for a property functioning market economy. IMO doing so actually net strengthens property rights.

> [Single Payer] "It comes from the left"

I mean, agree to disagree on this one. I see it as the same degree of socialist as a DMV, police station or fire station. A necessity for a functioning free-market economy, and not a business. I believe having a socialized healthcare system strengthens private property ownership, private enterprise and the free market on the whole.

> Do you believe Biden's central economic planners will put the charging stations in the optimal place? I don't.

I don't believe Biden will have "central economic planners" -- the Democrat's will do the same thing government always does in the US. Find a private company, and have them do it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore

> The free market has shown a total inability to capture externalities

Yeah, which is why I regularly propose taxes on pollution to "internalize the externalities".

Free market capitalism requires a functioning government, at the least to provide protection of our rights and enforcement of contracts. This requires police, a court system, and a military to defend it all.

Single payer health care is not a necessity for a functioning free market economy, any more than the government must run collective farms.

> Find a private company, and have them do it.

Government contracting is not free market, and suffers from most of the ills of the government doing it directly.

> I don't believe Biden will have "central economic planners"

Of course Biden will. You can't oversee $2 trillion in spending otherwise.

> Single payer health care is not a necessity for a functioning free market economy, any more than the government must run collective farms.

See this is where we disagree. I believe healthcare is necessary for a an functioning capitalist system to exist. I do not describe the existing setup as functional.

To be fair, a lot of that harm was caused by the US reacting to the state owning the means of production

Yep for sure, remember how Chiquita had the CIA start the 40 year long civil war in Guatemala? Then the CEO walked out of his 40th story office window in the Pan Am building in New York.

He had “white supremacist advisors?”

To call Stephen Miller a white supremacist is probably actually an understatement. Same goes for Steve Bannon:

Yeah; Bannon just got banned from social media for calling for Fauci’s (and someone else’s) beheading.

Miller has published neo-Nazi propaganda in the recent past. I think he’s the one who says Hitler’s chief of propaganda is his primary role model, but I might have him confused with someone else in Trump’s inner circle.

Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller

Seriously?

Yes.

There is real evidence of Steve Miller being a white supremacist; notably, emails have leaked where he warmly cited _Camp Of The Saints_. Reportedly, Miller was instrumental in the Trump policy of using family separation as a deliberately deterrence rather than a grotesque expediency. The burden on accusations against Miller has probably shifted towards his defenders.

Bannon is a goblin but I preemptively concede that there's not much evidence of his problems being racialized. But Miller you can't say that about.

No he didn’t. This is a lie allowed to continue unabated and it’s done an incredible amount of damage to just simple civil dialogue in this country.

Nah, he did. Matter of public record.

He didn’t. Any person honest with themselves will admit to this.

I lean more conservative and had my own issues with Trump and his presidency, but I looked at his policy, words, and his actions. I still voted for him because I felt he aligned with the policies I wanted to move towards.

Falling into such a blatant lie about his racism though exposes any person that keeps repeating it as intellectually weak, easily manipulated, and wholly dishonest.

Frankly, I’m disappointed to see it repeated and upvoted on Hacker News. I come here to see intellectual comments and discussion, not low brow Twitter and Reddit garbage.

Why do you think he didn't? Is it that you didn't see that interview with him, and you cannot believe he'd say such things?

Personally I listened to when he said "stand back, stand by".

I'm no trump fam, but I think he's too dumb to notice the subtlety on those words

It's just more inane rambling

he does ramble a lot. but it's way past the point of subtlety

good people on both sides? STIll saying the Central Park Five are guilty - originally paying to advocate the death penalty? Being the #1 pusher of Obama birther-ism? and so so so much more here is just one list of the worse: https://www.vox.com/2016/7/25/12270880/donald-trump-racist-r...

>but I looked at his policy, words, and his actions. I still voted for him because I felt he aligned with the policies I wanted to move towards.

You mean like actively refusing and convincing ~half the country NOT to wear masks? Even though the worst case scenario is.. you are wearing the mask and it doesn't help?

Trump himself said he thinks wearing a mask looks weak. And that's why he didn't want to do it.

So, instead of being a LEADER and leading by example- wearing a mask. He made it into a political issue because he thinks people looks weak doing it. And has no doubt cost peoples lives by CONVINCING others not to wear masks. To this day (in his recent rallies) it's the same damn thing.

I mean, I can go on and on about the CHARACTER of Trump, but let's leave it at one.

You sound like someone who is like "eh I like his policies so he can act however the hell he wants and that's OK".

THAT is what you and I can never agree on.

This is basically the liberal version of "he won't condemn Islamic terrorism." Guilt by association.

Which part of the statement are you disputing? That he didn't say "stand by"? That the proud boys aren't right-wing extremists? That the meaning of "stand by" was somehow misconstrued?

For what it's worth, here's how the proud boys interpreted the comment: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/29/us/trump-proud-boys-biden...

It’s the constant moving of the goal posts and redefinitions.

Is the argument that Trump is racist or right wing? They aren’t the same.

You can argue Proud Boys are right wing if viewing it in relation to Antifa for instance, but they aren’t racists. They are pretty diverse as a group, they just may not hold your values.

KKK and Neo Nazis are not right wing, but they are very racist. Both organizations are historically tied into the democrat party.

It’s the constant conflating of the two that has twisted up people into pretzels and turned this argument into pure trash honestly.

Trump is not going to align with your political values if you are left, but it doesn’t make him a racist.

He pardoned Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Who was specifically in jail for refusing to stop racially targeting minorities for police harassment.

You can't pretend there isn't systemic racism, and that Trump isn't racist, when he is doing things like that.

There is no other way to interpret that action.

There are many reasons for such actions, and many ways to interpret them, you just chose one(s) that suits your agenda.

Please elaborate on the many non-racist reasons for pardoning Joe Arpaio who was convicted specifically for racist actions.

In what world is that not an overt endorsement of Joe Arpaio's Racism?

So now we are at the point that reality is part of an agenda?

Has the democratic party been involved with nazis or neo nazis since the 60s? Is that a meaningful point when they all swapped over to the republican party?

The right courted the racists. The racists might not be inherently right wing, but the modern right actively seeks their support and will do what the racists want in exchange for tax cuts and forcing women to keep parasites

The left is on the side of critical race theory, the most racist ideology on the planet today.

Trump is a racist. It’s a fact: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Donald_Trump . If you are trying to mud the waters, maybe because you don’t want to think that you voted for a racist, it still doesn’t change reality.

> It’s the constant moving of the goal posts and redefinitions. > > Is the argument that Trump is racist or right wing? They aren’t the same.

I see three points in the "grandparent" comment:

1. “The guy had armies of white supremacist supporters and advisers.”

2. “He told right-wing extremists to “stand by” on national TV.”

3. “Every time you gloss over this, you give a pass to it and to those who knew about it and supported him anyway.”

I would consider these the arguments being discussed in this comment tree, not "Trump is racist" or "Trump is ... right wing".

> You can argue Proud Boys are right wing if viewing it in relation to Antifa for instance, but they aren’t racists. They are pretty diverse as a group, they just may not hold your values.

I don't think that even the proud boys would dispute a label of "right wing".

I don't really know how to respond to the claim that they aren't racists. Gavin McInnes is on the record with NBC in 2017 as saying "I’m not a fan of Islam. I think it’s fair to call me Islamophobic." and Islamophobia is anti-Muslim racism.

More recently, Enrique Tarrio has said they're not racist, but they've just gotten more careful with how they express their racism; they use dog whistles and veiled references.

If you look through archives of their early 2019-era merch store, you'll see things like multiple versions of the "Honkler" incarnation of Pepe the Frog — commonly used as a neo-nazi dog whistle, a picture of a black silhouette with the caption "Don't monkey this up, America!" — a reference to the racial slur that Ron DeSantis experienced backlash for using in late 2018, references to lynching, references to QAnon, and a joke about Muhammad being a Pedophile. (You'll also find a pile of sexist and transphobic content.)

> KKK and Neo Nazis are not right wing, but they are very racist.

From the wikipedia page on Neo-Nazism: "Neo-Nazism is considered a particular form of far-right politics and right-wing extremism." (citing: https://www.verfassungsschutz.de/en/fields-of-work/right-win...)

How about the fact that the "leader" of this proud boys LARP group identifies as afro-cuban and grew up in Miami. How delusional can you be to think that they are a white supremacist group? More processed media taken at face value by consumers.

A prominent German politician and his cabinet were hardly blonde-blue-eyed Aryan uber-mensch, but hypocrisy and lack of logic has never been much of an obstacle for racists.

It's quite possible to be a jew and an anti-semite, a woman and a misogynist, and a non-white white supremacist. It's easy, actually - just define an out-group that, for some contrived bullshit reason or other, doesn't include you.

The leader of the proud boys is black.

I have no idea if that is true or not, but it is irrelevant because it is quite possible for black people to be racist and also to take part in anti-black racism.

The proud boys leaders name is Enrique Tario, he's afro-hispanic I believe. Regardless, the proud boys appear to be a multiracial group of Western chauvinists, believing that Western ideas and culture are superior. Progressives seem to believe that Western = white, and that is how they make the leap to white supremacy in this context. Whether Western is about ideas vs skin color isn't a debate I'm interested in, just wanted to provide context.

> Progressives seem to believe that Western = white, and that is how they make the leap to white supremacy in this context.

I'll note that my comment did not directly link proud boys to "white supremacy". Instead, I (and the comment I replied to) used "right-wing extremists". I think that's an accurate description that does not require an assumption that "Western = white".

I agree that's what you said. Conversely, Trump was asked about them specifically in the context of white supremacy.

For anyone curious about their beliefs:

https://proudboysusa.com/tenets/

Minimal Government

Maximum Freedom

Anti-Political Correctness

Anti-Drug War

Closed Borders

Anti-Racial Guilt

Anti-Racism

Pro-Free Speech (1st Amendment)

Pro-Gun Rights (2nd Amendment)

Glorifying the Entrepreneur

Venerating the Housewife

Reinstating a Spirit of Western Chauvinism

I have seen my fair share of brown neo nazis down here in Brazil, so I don't believe that's relevant.

Please say more about the point you're making. On the surface, it's not clear how it relates to anything I said in the comment to which you've replied.

honestly there's nothing really that 'extreme' about them. they are just crusty retards.

Could you provide some sort of source or citation for this? The Southern Poverty Law Center, Anti-Defamation League, and FBI all seem to consider them extremist.

the ADL also thinks a cartoon frog is a hate symbol, they are not a serious organization. plenty has been written about the problems with the SPLC. as for the FBI? that story has a lot to do with framing,

>https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/12/08/fbi-says-pr...

>https://www.opb.org/news/article/portland-fbi-proud-boys-cla...

“In that briefing there was a slide that talked about the Proud Boys,” Cannon said.

The slide was intended to characterize the potential for violence from individual members of the Proud Boys, according to Cannon, and not to address the group as a whole.

“There have been instances where self-identified Proud Boys have been violent,” he said. “We do not intend and we do not designate groups, especially broad national groups, as extremists.”

generally speaking i tend to assume that feds have and always have keep a close watch on pretty much any sizeable right-leaning organization, most especially ones that are frequently involved in street violence with other organizations. maybe this is the legacy of ruby ridge and timothy mcveigh, maybe it just looks good on a quarterly review. but even aside from that you can find plenty of accounts over the years from BLM and occupy activists about being surveilled. how many of these are credible? it is hard to say. we do know that there has been a large injection of funds for the purpose of increased surveillance following months of blm related riots

>https://theintercept.com/2020/09/13/police-surveillance- technology-operation-legend/

personally i believe the fbi that went after the black panthers and mlk is not materially different from the fbi of today and should be treated with heavy skepticism no matter what your political leanings.

Let's try this differently: what would you accept as evidence that they are extremists? What evidence can you cite that they are not?

first we need to establish an operable definition of what is considered 'extreme'. were those of us who participated in the occupy movement extremists? many of the people involved had very strong anti government leanings, there were regular clashes with law enforcement, activists were subjected to surveillance efforts. is greenpeace extremist? what about animal rights activists? both have certainly engaged in far more concerted, adversarial and questionably legal efforts for their causes than a bunch of cringey and belligerent migapedes who offend the cultural sensibilities of coastal bloggers.

this becomes a problem as well, proud boys have been involved in violence... against other groups who were also actively seeking to enforce street violence. is this the result of a concerted campaign or does a group founded around crudity and bravado attract absolute knuckledragging choads who are likely to get into fistfights?

I agree that "stand by" does sound problematic, but I would let is slide as a slip up, given that the moderator asked whether he will tell them to "stand down" -- it's an easy mistake to make (and talking about slip ups, Joe Biden has more than enough of them as well).

You can see Donald Trump denouncing Proud Boys here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd0cMmBvqWc&feature=youtu.be...

I'm glad it's not just me who thinks this. I think Trump is an absolutely foul human being, but "stand by, stand back" was clearly a fumbled response to the moderator's request that he call on them to "stand down".

Painting it as some siren call for white supremacist supporters to rise up and take the nation by force is just as disingenuous and hypocritical as Trump himself.

The next day, he was asked point-blank by reporters what he meant and whether he misspoke. His response was to:

1. Say that he didn't know who the Proud Boys are. Even the most generous interpretation of this doesn't look good. He was asked to denounce them during the debate and either (a) attempted to do so (fumbling the response) without knowing who they were or (b) it was an intentional dodge — and either way, he didn't follow up with his staff to learn more.

2. Say that they need to "stand down" and "let law enforcement do their work", but not condemn them (i.e., still fall short of the ask during the debate, when given a chance to correct the fumbled response).

3. Dodge an explicit question about whether he misspoke when he said "stand by" (again, failing to fully correct the fumbled response).

4. Continue to shift away from criticism of right-wing groups to left-wing groups.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-pres...

> Painting it as some siren call for white supremacist supporters to rise up and take the nation by force is just as disingenuous and hypocritical as Trump himself.

When right-wing groups interpret it as a siren call and he fails to unequivocally correct that interpretation, it's not disingenuous to be concerned.

That just simply reinforces my view that Trump is just a childish buffoon who will never admit he made a mistake about anything, and is incapable or unwilling to give a straight answer to any question.

He's the type of person that screams until he's blue in the face that water isn't wet, simply because someone not on Team Trump said that it is. That doesn't mean he's some secret conspiratorial white supremacist talking in code. It just means he's a juvenile idiot.

I'm not saying that the second is somehow better than the first. It's not. They're both equally despicable and I have zero respect for Trump being the former. But it's equally reprehensible to have a crowd on the sidelines chomping at the bit to exaggerate, fabricate or concoct stories, simply because they don't like someone.

It's "he's not our guy, so the end justifies the means", and it's an incredibly disturbing trend that goes beyond Trump.

> That doesn't mean he's some secret conspiratorial white supremacist talking in code.

> ...

> But it's equally reprehensible to have a crowd on the sidelines chomping at the bit to exaggerate, fabricate or concoct stories, simply because they don't like someone.

I'm confused. Where in this comment chain does what you describe seem to be happening? The closest I can find is the great-great-great-great grandparent, which states “The guy had armies of white supremacist supporters and advisers. He told right-wing extremists to “stand by” on national TV.”

From my perspective, the key here is that right-wing extremists interpreted his words as code — and he refused to correct that interpretation. From the point of view of the extremists, it was intentional, and that's enough to embolden them.

Even though it was likely the result of a mistake and stubbornness, it was damaging to the country and the impacts are worth acknowledging.

At this risk of taking a bit of a tangent: it's not as if this is the only time his carelessness with his words and stubbornness to correct the way they were interpreted caused problems. In those cases too, we need to acknowledge both the cause and the effect. Accidentally causing damage and intentionally causing damage are distinct problems, but they're both problems — especially when you're the leader of a country.

> I'm confused. Where in this comment chain does what you describe seem to be happening? The closest I can find is the great-great-great-great grandparent, which states “The guy had armies of white supremacist supporters and advisers. He told right-wing extremists to “stand by” on national TV.”

There was torrential, indignant outcry on my Twitter feed that Trump was literally sending the message to armed white supremacist militias to standby and that they would be called upon to take arms shortly.

But even that GP comment is a good example. "He told right-wing extremists to stand by" - is a partial truth at best. Either way, it's misleading. Why did GP choose the words "stand by" and omit the words "stand back"? Because s/he wanted to paint Trump as a racist, and the latter didn't fit the narrative. It's intellectually dishonest.

> At this risk of taking a bit of a tangent: it's not as if this is the only time his carelessness with his words and stubbornness to correct the way they were interpreted caused problems. In those cases too, we need to acknowledge both the cause and the effect. Accidentally causing damage and intentionally causing damage are distinct problems, but they're both problems — especially when you're the leader of a country.

In this respect, I agree completely. I'm not saying that puerile stubborness is somehow any better than militant white supremacy. If his speaking carelessly causes issues, it is certainly his responsibility to undeniably, unconditionally refute it.

My gripe is with the continual exaggeration, misrepresentation and outright misinformation from the anti-Trump brigade. Any facts which don't fit the narrative are conveniently discarded. It's not limited to Trump, either. Countless people described the Kenosha shooter as firing indiscriminately and unprovoked into a crowd, which is a patently absurd distortion of reality. Or the complete fiction that Nick Sandmann (the kid in the MAGA hat) approached the Native American guy and start making racist taunts.

Many Anti-Trumpers are hypocritically engaging in exactly the same dishonest behaviour as Trump/Trumpists. Frankly, I don't believe anything I read any more, and that's an absolute travesty.

I'd be more willing to let is slide as a slip up if not for the surrounding context — both during the debate, and during the days following.

The whole premise of the question (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIHhB1ZMV_o) was his criticism of Biden for not specifically calling out antifa and other left-wing extremist groups, and whether he'd be willing to "condemn white supremacists and militia groups" and "say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence".

Mistake or not, he didn't condemn the proud boys during the debate. If it was his intent to do so, when it became clear that large portions of the country misunderstood his remarks — including the proud boys themselves — he should have clearly communicated his intended message, instead of dodging questions about his remarks for 2 days. (See, e.g., https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-pres...)

Isn't it amazing when a "white supremacist" improves his vote share of _every_ minority demographic (getting the highest share of GOP minority vote since the 60s), and does worse with white men. A goddamn miracle. This is the same guy who received awards from black community organizations before he ran, and had a black girlfriend for a while.

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-vote-rising-amon...

Yes. It is pretty amazing.

Yeah, an increase to 8% of the African American population from 6% is definitely a miracle. He's clearly a figure of black activism now.

For a "white supremacist" it is. For a GOP candidate it is, too - we haven't seen anything like this for 60 years. I mean, another explanation is maybe you've been gaslit by the press, but that's a "conspiracy theory", right?

“Thousands of men of Jewish descent and hundreds of what the Nazis called ‘full Jews’ served in the military with Hitler’s knowledge. The Nazis allowed these men to serve but at the same time exterminated their families,” Rigg said. [1]

Did the former German soldiers of Jewish heritage gaslit this journalist too? Or am I being gaslit by the journalist? So many layers!

[1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-12-24-mn-12209-...

Yes, the fact that you reached for Hitler to compare to the guy whose daughter and son in law are Jewish, and for whom there are _parades_ held in Tel Aviv does indicate you're rather severely gaslit.

https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stor...

I reached for the nazi comparison simply because it's apt, not because I think he or his supporters are Nazis themselves. That just feels like you're projecting your own expectations onto me which makes me think you're just a debate lord. Hopefully I'm wrong :)

Nah just a bunch of Facebook trolls who convinced 49% of Americans to vote for him .

These things you say aren't even true. He's condemned white supremacists at least 27 times. Listen to the entire speech post Charlottesville speech. You are an example of the problem you just believe what you hear with out checking out facts. Trump has a lot of faults. Stop making stuff up. Also you might want to look at the "white" supremacists proud boy membership roles you might be surprised at how diverse it is.

I honestly don't know if Trump did this or just unleashed it. The thing that has kept me up at night isn't Trump himself but the millions of people who think he's the most qualified person to be president.

The division is manufactured by both political parties. It’s naive to think anything has changed.

We aren’t all rooting for fascism. Speak for yourself.

Trump was attempting to fix the broken H1-B Visa system, raising the wages that one must earn which is only a start.

H1-B Visa, by law, is only for those jobs where there are no Americans to fill the role, eg. theoretical physicist PhD with masters in data science.

But firms and hospitals use this to get foreigners at cheaper wages to supplant Americans from their jobs from programmers to doctors (MDs).

Biden, Schumer, Harris, all wish to make the job market and wages worse for American STEM workers/doctors (MDs).

During the 2016 primaries, when Disney CEO Bob Iger replaced about 200 American STEM workers with H1-B Visa abuse replacements, it was Trump and Sanders who complained vociferously about the illegal use of H1-B, which the Obama DOJ did nothing about, perhaps because Clinton received a $100,000 donation from the same Bob Iger for the Hilary Victory Fund.

Trump recently fired the CEO of the federal TVA for attempting to replace 200 American STEM workers H1-B Visa abuse foreigners and then made an exec order to prohibit any federal agency from doing so.

Biden, Schumer want to increase the number of H1-B Visas (Schumer wants to triple them). VP (and former Sen Harris) was Democratic sponsor of senate bill S.386 which seeks to double the number of Indians who get green cards.

The moves of Trump helps Americans. The moves of Biden, Schumer, Harris harms Americans.

Those are the facts, irrefutable, as have been presented above. So, ask yourself, do I want an American President that give in to donors like Bob Iger and brings more foreigners into the country or do I want someone like Trump, who cannot be bribed and does what is best for Americans and not foreigners.

You do realize that once those people get green cards, they are a good ways down the path toward being American, right? Immigration is economically very good for the US, as well.

None of this things matters, or will bring people together. These are minor issues compare to those who living on minimum wages, and without health insurance.

You should check all the red counties that voted for Trump and education level plus medium income. Compare that to the blue counties.

At least one reason why there’s division is because the left keeps pointing at education, and that Trumps supporters “lack any”. Regardless of the facts, it’s insulting. You are also implying that you go to school and learn to be liberal. Brainwashed is another word for this which is considered conspiracy theory. You’re also assuming that the entirety of present company is “educated”. Assuming this means college degree, this is most definitely not true on HN.

So, to what benefit do you or anybody have to point out the education level of any voter?

> None of this things matters, or will bring people together. These are minor issues

Ok, I'm about as far from a Trump supporter as one can get, but think about how this comment sounds to people on the other side. You just outright dismissed a fairly big topic that this person views as important.

> VP (and former Sen Harris) was Democratic sponsor of senate bill S.386 which seeks to double the number of Indians who get green cards.

Is that something that you perceive as bad or negative? Please explain why that is the case.

To extend your analogy, the players on the field only have so much they can do--Trump included. Might be worth asking who is in the owner's box, who is betting on the game, and why are we in the stands cheering so aggressively for either side in the first place.

With Trump out in January, I hope more people are critical and skeptical of the various institutions in our country that wield the actual power. For a more in depth analysis, would highly recommend Glenn Greenwald's take: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/no-matter-the-liberal-metri...

We are one country that's been divided by a news media telling us what to believe. Look no further than the dead wrong "polling data" -- again -- to see there's an agenda playing out in our hands and living rooms. If you still believe what you see on MSM, I've got a bridge to sell you.

We don't talk to others anymore. We tweet, we Facebook, we Instagram, we believe what we read on screens and we've made companies feeding us what we want to hear rich.

There is a game being played, you've just missed the players.

> Look no further than the dead wrong "polling data" -- again -- to see there's an agenda playing out in our hands and living rooms.

I think this is a tired, lazy argument. First, while the polls were skewed they actually weren't that wrong, and many of the differences are magnified by the fact that the electoral college forces us to chop up one large poll (the national results) into lots of small ones (the states) where statistically you're likely to see more variance no matter what. And as for the skew, the generally accepted explanation that it's easier to poll urban, more highly educated people than rural, lower educated people makes much more sense than there being some coordinated conspiracy.

Don't kid yourself. The polls were dead wrong, they predicted Joe Biden would win an overwhelming popular vote. Believing otherwise is naive.

There is no "generally accepted explanation" for the polling skew, let alone one as obvious as "it's easier to poll highly educated, urban voters than lesser educated rural voter". Believing pollsters are dumb enough to not consider this when conducting polls is lazy thinking.

> The polls were dead wrong, they predicted Joe Biden would win an overwhelming popular vote.

But Biden did win an overwhelming popular vote.

The fact that's your lone point of dispute is reassuring. Thank you.

He's up over 4 million votes. Glad you are reassured.

"lone"? That was the only point you made about how the polls were right or wrong! They disputed all of your one point(s).

> The polls were dead wrong, they predicted Joe Biden would win an overwhelming popular vote.

Major poll-based forecasts (which not only aggregate polls but incorporate modelling of non-sampling error in polls, which only report sampling error in the margin of error) were not “dead wrong” (naively looking at polls as predictions might be dead wrong, but the fact that polls don't work that way is why poll-based forecasts like 538 exist.) The low end of the 80% confidence interval (the 95% CI is what is usually used to state a “margin of error” when a CI isn't explicitly identified and would be much wider) for the 538 forecast for Biden’s vote share was ~50.9%. His actual vote share at current count is ~50.7%.

Results a hair outside the 80% CI doesn't indicate that a forecast is “dead wrong”.

EDIT: While I think 538 has made some progress in simplifying it's reporting to help deal with this, aside from deliberate misinformation (which is a substantial factor in the “criticism”), I think the main problem remains that people really, really don't grasp uncertainty even when it's shoved in their face, and are prone to criticize something for not being a precise oracle even when it's expected error range is prominently presented.

He's up over 4 million votes, though?

In an election with (currently) 146,592,751 votes. I'm sorry but 4 million is _not_ "overwhelming". It's a difference of less than 3% of total voters.

That very much depends on how much of those original 146 odd million votes are 'mobile', and with the way people vote straight 'R' or 'D' for life the margins are a lot thinner than you might expect. > 40% of both parties voters would never in a lifetime vote for the other party no matter how terrible the candidate for 'their' party.

Point taken.

What division? Nobody I know, in person, goes to protests or stops talking to each other because of how they vote. I literally mean nobody. No division. The most extreme is that some people I know cry when an election doesn’t go their way and then their friends make fun of them.

Division is a perception created by keyboard warriors and news that needs something to report on and the rest of us find crazy people entertaining. If you turn the news off and step away from social media the artificial insanity goes away.

I do understand some major metros have witnessed massive protests this year with large scale property destruction. From the outside looking in it looks like communities with a lack of diversity and severe economic stratification. I say that because I live in a major metro that experienced none of that insanity and this major city is either or about to be the most diverse major US city and is very healthy economically.

> Nobody I know, in person, goes to protests or stops talking to each other because of how they vote.

Good for you. But some of us have friends who will literally die if the ACA is repealed, so, yes, I have cut people out out of my life for supporting the Republicans.

Then the division, according to you, is self inflicted.

Self-inflicted? No. The cutoff at that point is merely formalizing the destruction of social niceties already achieved by supporting people who literally want to kill one of my friends.

You are, according to you, destroying relationships intentionally over a difference of opinion. Isn’t that the very definition of intolerance?

This is a difference of basic morality, not 'opinion'.

Wow. This is an unbelievable sentiment by a normal, plugged in American citizen. I'm absolutely positive that the vast majority of American's have had massively strained relationships due to politics in the past 5 years, issues that weren't there before.

That sounds like a baseless assumption. On what data do you come to that conclusion? I heard people express the same nonsense during the Bush years and it was just as absurd then. If anything it’s crazy people cutting themselves off.

I mean there's countless anecdotes, which is not good data, but its something. Many, many people (many people are saying..) have noted how crazily divided we have been in the past 5 years. And my above comment got a bunch of upvotes in the last hour so there's more anecdotal evidence I guess.

If it’s on social media then it has to be true. Logical fallacies don’t increase in validity merely because an echo chamber grows or else everything mentioned in r/thedonald could never be a lie.

A small collection of keyboard warriors see division because they want to. Without something to ground their baseless opinions they becomes just as absurd as they appear outside their echo chamber.

Coincidentally my same opinion is also well upvoted in a different thread. That doesn’t make it more of anything.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25018920

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