Redeeming the Republicans

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Lago PARANOIA
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

Occluded Sun wrote:A setup where everyone participates, but does so by flipping a coin, is a disaster in the practical and moral senses.
First of all, your premises, both the obvious (people would vote by not flipping a coin) and hidden one (this is what it effectively works out to, because they're not informed) are incredibly weak.

What makes you think that people who aren't participating right now are doing so because they're uninformed? I know I'm skirting the lines of disaster by asking this question to someone who recently thought that the ideological battlelines of the American Civil War weren't a big deal, but I can't let this premise go unchallenged.

Secondly, what makes you think that uninformed voters would stochastically vote in such a way that their contribution would be akin to flipping a coin? As I mentioned in a post just a few lines back, voter non-participation is skewed by class and by political orientation.
It won't lead to sensible political decisions being made, nor does it grant power or agency to the people 'taking part'.
Here's a question for you: if the American citizenry right now is so uninformed such that going from 50-55% eligible voter participation in Presidential Elections to 80%+ would result in suboptimal policy, was the American public ever sufficiently informed to participate in democracy? Today's citizens are more informed, more literate, more educated, and more potentially organized and plugged in than any citizenbase in history. And short of catastrophe our descendants will be more so. Should the relatively high voter participation rates of the Antebellum period and Gilded Age not have happened if uninformed voters are a bad thing?
Last edited by Lago PARANOIA on Wed Feb 04, 2015 2:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by violence in the media »

Lago PARANOIA wrote: Here's a question for you: if the American citizenry right now is so uninformed such that going from 50-55% eligible voter participation in Presidential Elections to 80%+ would result in suboptimal policy, was the American public ever sufficiently informed to participate in democracy? Today's citizens are more informed, more literate, more educated, and more potentially organized and plugged in than any citizenbase in history. And short of catastrophe our descendants will be more so. Should the relatively high voter participation rates of the Antebellum period and Gilded Age not have happened if uninformed voters are a bad thing?
It's easy to get high voter turnout when you're automatically excluding 60%+ of the population from participating.

I look forward to Occluded Sun's vigorous defense of the merits of allowing only landowning white males the vote.
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Occluded Sun
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Post by Occluded Sun »

Lago PARANOIA wrote:What makes you think that people who aren't participating right now are doing so because they're uninformed?
1. You've missed the point. The example demonstrates that merely getting more people to vote isn't in itself a good thing, as you suggested.

2. I don't think that the people who don't vote are uninformed - or at least they're no more likely to be uninformed than the people who do. If anything, I think they're MORE likely to understand the political situation and the value of voting.
I know I'm skirting the lines of disaster by asking this question to someone who recently thought that the ideological battlelines of the American Civil War weren't a big deal
See, this is the problem with arguing with fools. They use their failure to comprehend arguments as evidence against the point. And then you're stuck trying to refuse an endless stream of nonsense arguments that have nothing to do with what anyone said.

I encourage you to develop a close and personal relationship with a garbage disposal.
Last edited by Occluded Sun on Thu Feb 05, 2015 11:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by tussock »

I don't think that the people who don't vote are uninformed - or at least they're no more likely to be uninformed than the people who do. If anything, I think they're MORE likely to understand the political situation and the value of voting.
That's almost certainly not true. There's a bunch of money and influence spent on discouraging or preventing people from voting, like a lot of what Fox does is to drive down voter turnout. Low turnouts suit conservatives. So when more people don't vote, it's social-liberals and progressives (at least relatively so) who make up a good majority of them.

If you think that's because no politicians will ever be progressive or socially liberal, you're just ignorant of history. People can totally vote in liberals and progressives, and have done in the past and still do in other countries and the old east coast states. But when those sort of voters can be relied on to stay home, that type of politician can't even get through the basic selection process. They can't win, so they're not on the ballot. More people voting would change that.

Which is something that people who don't vote, they don't seem to know it.
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Occluded Sun
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Post by Occluded Sun »

tussock wrote:Low turnouts suit conservatives. So when more people don't vote, it's social-liberals and progressives (at least relatively so) who make up a good majority of them.
Wrong. Politicians only 'care' about increasing voter turnout when people who purportedly would support them aren't showing up. In locales and on topics where the non-voters are opposed to candidates' and parties' goals, they don't work to get them to show up.

If voting 'worked' - if it were a viable means of directing society - it would be illegal. It continues to exist only because the people behind power structure can manipulate it enough to ensure they get what they want while simultaneously keeping the masses pacified.

Democracy is a terrible way to make decisions, but a great way to keep people from declaring revolutions.
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Post by hyzmarca »

We'd get a lot more liberal voters if we allowed voting through the internet.
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Post by Fwib »

hyzmarca wrote:We'd get a lot more liberal voters if we allowed voting through the internet.
You'd get a lot more votes from hackers, too.

I wonder who 4chan would elect as president?
Last edited by Fwib on Fri Feb 06, 2015 2:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by RadiantPhoenix »

Fwib wrote:I wonder who 4chan would elect as president?
Either a cat or Rick Astley.
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Post by Shrapnel »

Is this wretched demi-bee
Half asleep upon my knee
Some freak from a menagerie?
No! It's Eric, the half a bee
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Post by fbmf »

Occluded Sun wrote: I encourage you to develop a close and personal relationship with a garbage disposal.
Explain what you meant by this, please. if you prefer to reply by private message, that is fine.

[/The Great Fence Builder Speaks]
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Post by Occluded Sun »

It's an insult, intended to convey that I do not respect the target and have no intention of communicating further or making a show of courtesy.

I find 'go die in a fire' to be both excessive in the extreme and aesthetically unpleasant. I like this version better than the one I've heard with a chainsaw.
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Post by fbmf »

[The Great Fence Builder Speaks]
Be advised:
Rules Thread, ATGD wrote: Wishing death on someone is not allowed. This includes telling someone they should "Die in a fire" and similar sentimeants.
[/TGFBS]
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Occluded Sun
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Post by Occluded Sun »

What about maiming and mutilation?
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Post by tussock »

Just tell 'em to go suck a barrel of cocks, OS. To enjoy the deep and nurturing relationship they have with their pillow. Question their literacy, enumerate their ever-growing list of errors, celebrate the one thing they actually got right for a change. Ask if boo-boo needs their baw-baw. Preferably while including some solid argument about why you are right and everyone else on the internet is wrong.

Or just keep skirting the limits of getting yourself banned until fbmf gets sick of it and turfs you. Either way, really, it's all good.
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Post by fbmf »

Occluded Sun wrote:What about maiming and mutilation?
Sorry. Just now seeing this. On the off chance that this was a serious question...

[TGFBS]
In general, no, that's not allowed either.
[/TGFBS]

Game On,
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Post by Occluded Sun »

All right then.
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Post by Maxus »

It occurred to me today, somewhat belatedly I admit, that a lot of Congress is going to be at a loss when President Obama leaves office, especially in the House.

In 2010, they made a huge gain in seats, based on hating President Obama. Their policy is in large part defined as "being against whatever President Obama is for."

So we have huge chunk of representatives who won't have any experience in anything other than hating President Obama (well, given how many votes they've had to get rid of the ACA, they've got some proficiency in public masturbation, too.)

So yeah. I wonder what happens when the thing they were elected for doing best--hating President Obama--is no long relevant.
Last edited by Maxus on Fri Mar 13, 2015 5:18 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

Obama's just a cipher for conservative obstruction; this is a zeitgeist that's been coalescing since the rise of the religious right, not something that formed because of Obama's tenure. Don't expect anything to change no matter who's in office nor how much they accede to conservative demands. The defeated Confederacy got an actual collaborator into office and even they opposed Johnson from start to finish. And make no mistake about it, the modern Republican Party has fully internalized the morals and tactics of the post-ACW Confederacy.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by MisterDee »

I imagine they'll do stuff like the back-benchers of the Conservative party do in Canada: an endless procession of proposals to make abortion illegal, to make Christianty the state religion and assorted inanities that get killed by their own party because the non-insane leadership realizes that it would only make them look bad with the voters they need to convince.
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Post by angelfromanotherpin »

Maxus wrote:In 2010, they made a huge gain in seats, based on hating President Obama grotesque gerrymandering.
FTFY.

If Hillary is the next POTUS, they'll just keep going without missing a beat. Hillary's been a boogeyman of the right for literal decades, and the hate machine pointed at her has never really stopped running; just look at the Benghazi clown show. What the GOP loses in racial-tension anxiety they will make up for with virulent misogyny and long practice.

If the Dems nominated a white dude, there would be a new hate machine constructed to point at whoever that was, but it would have to start more-or-less from scratch and I imagine a lot of the lunatic energy would dissipate. Maybe not down to Clinton levels, given how much more batshit the GOP has become since then, but a lot of it. At the same time, it's important to note that Clinton also faced rabid obstructionism, in amounts that only look reasonable when compared to what Obama has faced.
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

angelfromanotherpin wrote: If the Dems nominated a white dude, there would be a new hate machine constructed to point at whoever that was, but it would have to start more-or-less from scratch.
Ahem. The Biden/Kerry/Gore/Dean hate machines have all been up and running HARD for years. Rahm Emmanuel is easy enough to tie to both Obama and that whole Blago scandal that they wouldn't need to take a single breath.

You'd have to get down to lower-profile candidates like Andrew Coumo, Martin O'Malley or Russ Feingold to force them to shift gears at all.
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Post by Occluded Sun »

Maxus wrote:In 2010, they made a huge gain in seats, based on hating President Obama. Their policy is in large part defined as "being against whatever President Obama is for."
That assertion is ridiculous, and is really nothing more than an excuse to swipe at people you don't agree with politically.

Obama's policies - and there are rather a lot of dodgy policy decisions emanating directly from the Executive Branch in this administration - will have consequences long after Obama himself is gone.
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Post by Lago PARANOIA »

Erick Erickson: Everything Obama Does Is to Humble the Arrogant Crackers
"Barack Obama believes the United States of America is a destabilizing, arrogant force in the world. We need our comeuppance and we need to be humbled," Erickson said while guest-hosting "The Rush Limbaugh Show."

"And so everything Barack Obama does domestically and in foreign policy is designed to humble the arrogant crackers who have always run the United States," he said.

"Barack Obama looks at the United States and sees bad and intends to fundamentally transform it into something good, and in so doing take us down a peg," he added.
Man, if only. If there's one group of people right now that needs a bitchslap, it's Traditional America. These people need to be told to permanently shut the fuck up because they're vile and idiotic dinosaurs who don't know anything that doesn't involve feeding their bloated egos and jerking off to their pathetic tribal dominance. And they're the ones who, with their emotionally and intellectually stunted development and pathetic tribal morals, are in fact the ones who are bringing down the America they supposedly love so much.

Nah. Obama really does believe in that bipartisan, bringing together America bullshit. Or maybe he, like most 'respectable' American blacks, are skilled in hiding their well-deserved contempt for these goatfelching yokels, these cultural parasites who confuse heredity with competence, these quislings and capos who are willing to sell the fate of humanity down the river for another hit at their crackpipe of social dominance. It's not like Traditional America is non-retarded enough to tell the difference. Maybe that's why they project this distinctly South American white racialist attitude onto Obama; they're playing it safe.
Last edited by Lago PARANOIA on Sat Mar 14, 2015 6:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
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Post by PhoneLobster »

I don't know if this is the right place to mention this... but I feel like if there are quotes about Obama conspiracy theories...

...so anyway I enjoy watching youtube conspiracy nut videos, and not just the classy ones like "Stuff They Don't Want You To Know" but the actual genuine grass roots nutter created videos.

One franchise of nutty youtube conspiracy I rarely pay much attention to is right wing nut jobs who believe that Obama is a New World Order warlord bent on using FEMA concentration camps to steal their guns and crush them forever beneath his totalitarian heel of democracy hate and freedom killing.

But anyway I noticed some of the more recent products in the sub genre and if I could put together a brief timeline I think it looks a bit like...

1) There has always been a conspiracy where FEMA will steal their gun penises and imprison their manly fluids
Secret big government anti gun rights anti freedom anti-capitalism New World Order conspiracies have always been a thing with at least some hard right nutters, even back in the day this stuff has been around AT LEAST since Clinton, it if anything grew even under Bush (especially when Bush became unpopular late in the piece and the nuttier end of the right wing spectrum couldn't deal with it and flipped out, more). But it was... smaller and more fringe.

2) Holy shit Obama is the fucking anti-christ, worse, a fucking popular anti christ, FLIP THE FUCK OUT (again)
So Obama gets in and the entire USA extreme right has a nervous breakdown because Black Satan Osama Bin Laden is now president and people seem to like him even, how the fuck dare they am I rite?

New World Order/FEMA is out to steal our guns and concentration camp us all until we are re-educated into totalitarian state loving HIPPIES reaches a new fever pitch and Obama becomes front and center a key figure because, fuck it he MUST be secret satan he just GOTTA be rite?

3) Hm, this FEMA/NWO/Obama Satan take over has been, hm, not turning up as repeatedly predicted, maybe we should rethink our world v... no wait FLIP THE FUCK OUT SOME MORE, THE END IS NIGH THE END IS NIGH!
So yeah, the fever pitch panic over a black man being president cannot sustain them forever, especially when Obama uses the masterful delaying deception of NOT (yet) taking all their guns, kicking them in their man penises and locking them in FEMA concentration camps to re-educate them for gay turtle marriages.

But... Obama won't BE president forever, and their FEMA/NWO panic has freaked the fuck out over him so much that they can no longer imagine it without him (don't worry, they will be fine, they'll move on to Hillary, or the ghost of Al Gore, or some random nobody from the UN, they aren't going anywhere).

So since Obama is the public leader of NWO/FEMA takeover plans, and he is about to not be president anymore then that means THE TAKEOVER IS IMMINENT!!!!

The prediction videos, a cyclic thing with this sort of thing, has set it's latest date for the end of the world USA apocalypse of federal emergency conspiracy and totally gonna steal their guns and forcible make them all into communist feminazis for sure this time

And yep, it's 2016.

Obama, in his master plan has deceived us all while he personally militarized the police, prepared the military to invade it's own nation, prepared FEMA of all agencies to lock up the right thinking rednecks and execute them all, and did all the extra hard secret mind wishing required to lay the foundation for totally taking all their guns he hasn't even tried yet.

All to prepare for that moment when his second term ends and he just says "nuh uh, I'm president for life and Imma taking your guns and locking you up in the FEMA, because this nation is now run by NWO... FEMA Nazis!!! (who are communist hippies that are also the UN and a secret Illuminati style cult)".

Yep. The ground work is in for the big event, both in the CLEARLY real actions of Obama and the NWO ninjas AND in the rising panic of youtube conspiracy nutters.

Expect to see the conspiracy nutters gradually rise to a crescendo of panic over the course of the year, you know, the usual 2012/Planet X sorta escalation.

But don't expect to see FEMA or Obama Hitler's plans UNTIL IT IS TOO LATE!!!111!!1!
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Post by Vnonymous »

PhoneLobster, do you think that Edward Snowden is a lying liar who just made up every last one of the documents he leaked?

We're already living in a surveillance state. You can rant and rave about how those stupid rethuglican tinfoilers think that the government is going to read their emails and listen to their phonecalls, but the government is actually doing that. It isn't even a matter of debate anymore. Candidate Obama said that he'd roll back the national security apparatus and encourage whistle blowing. President Obama did the exact opposite and has done nothing to prevent targeting them with espionage charges. Edward Snowden will get an espionage charge if he ever comes back to the USA, and Julian Assange is still in the Ecuadorean embassy.

The totalitarian surveillance state isn't some horrible grim future, it is the present and has been for more than a decade now. Police are already using information that has been given to them by the NSA's surveillance apparatus, and they make sure to lie in court about the source of their information to make sure the courts, media and defense never find out about it. Police abduct and torture people in secret facilities without giving them any access to a lawyer, and they've done this shit to political protestors as well as petty criminals (and lots of minorities as well). There was an FBI plot (never carried out) to snipe the leaders of several Occupy protests. Civil asset forfeiture is a real thing that is happening right now. Government agents are stepping into online debates and attempting to control discourse and shift opinions.

The police state is already here and well established. If you took George Bush at his word when he said that the NSA wasn't doing anything bad you were a fucking moron. If you actually believe Obama's talk of reigning in the intelligence community when all he's done in response to the Snowden leaks is attempt to make more of that shit legal then you're still a moron. I know that it must be satisfying to mock those "conspiracy nutters" like Assange, but they are completely correct and have been for a long time. When shit like this happens it really is hard to believe that Obama isn't also a lying liar who lies and does exactly what the deep state tells him to.
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