***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[brendasdeadbaby]

ninjahood

You for or against the ny constitution convention??

 

[ninjahood]

ninjahood

You for or against the ny constitution convention??

seems liberals feel they got more things to lose as far as consumer protections and abortion rights...



he's da live version of da show i listen to in da mornings breaking everything down.

me personally i feel it should be left alone, just cuz any unintended consequences might be worse than whatever you'd gain...

tbh NY voters are indifferent to Albany corruption as long as da jobs are here, da rent is affordable, and da streets are clean.

 

[elpablo21]

Another detail from the Brazile story.

These buffoons Brazile and Warren threw grenades for nothing (well, not for nothing, they both have motivations for their actions), a week before the elections.

 

[Methodical Management]

This article is offensive ... I am surprised to not only see it posted, but endorsed ...

That being said, there is absolutely an epistemic crisis occurring ... And both sides of the isle are to blame ...

Statistics are fascinating, but you can't be serious subscribing to that article ... It completely and conveniently disregards sheer access - Aside from the scattered bubble where only a trained eye can deduce that the prevalence of Left leaning media far outweighs the Right ...

It is a scientific and evolutionary fact that cornered species tend to react aggressvely
... Think about a situation where you were the minority ... Now think about the same situation where you were the majority ... One possible example might be a classroom debate environment ... Would you act differently? Your actions would, subconciously, be totally different ... From the volume and tone of your voice to your nonverbal cues ...

Now expand that situation to the current media landscape ... As people are less represented, their actions seem more abnormal ... There's no room to be "moderate" because time is finite ... In short, the more balanced the representation, the more balanced the viewpoints ... Media is nowhere near balanced from an access perspective and this fact promulgates extreme views ...

But for this article to adopt the "Dems are holier than thou" mindset is alarming ... To purport that there is only one side to blame for this epistemic crisis is laughable ... Let's ust take a very real and recent example ... The uranium one deal was a nothingburger and dismissed as normal dealings resting on a single, succinct argument - no uranium left the US ... I fell victim to believing that and dismissed this story as nonsense ... Now, after digging by honest journalists, it turns out uranium did leave the US, for Canada and the Europe and Asia ... This is precisely why people don' trust the media they consume or the politicians they hear speak and revert to their tribal corners ...

You appear to agree with the article's author that 1) there is an epistemic crisis in America and 2) that the extreme right wing media is behaving, in your words, "abnormally," then what, exactly, is so wrong with sharing the article to encourage a broader discussion?

I didn't share it because it "bashes Republicans." I could have chosen any one of countless articles to serve that purpose. I chose to share this one because the underlying issue should be of concern to everyone, as it affects our ability to collaborate and coexist together as a society.

It appears your primary grievance is a perceived "holier than thou" attitude, yet, if you read the article, you'll find that its author both addresses the alleged biases within the "mainstream media" and explains why the focus of this particular piece is on right wing outlets.

The primary source of this breach, to make a long story short, is the US conservative movement’s rejection of the mainstream institutions devoted to gathering and disseminating knowledge (journalism, science, the academy) — the ones society has appointed as referees in matters of factual dispute.

In their place, the right has created its own parallel set of institutions, most notably its own media ecosystem.

But the right’s institutions are not of the same kind as the ones they seek to displace. Mainstream scientists and journalists see themselves as beholden to values and standards that transcend party or faction. They try to separate truth from tribal interests and have developed various guild rules and procedures to help do that. They see themselves as neutral arbiters, even if they do not always uphold that ideal in practice.

The pretense for the conservative revolution was that mainstream institutions had failed in their role as neutral arbiters — that they had been taken over by the left, become agents of the left in referee’s clothing, as it were.

But the right did not want better neutral arbiters. The institutions it built scarcely made any pretense of transcending faction; they are of and for the right. There is nominal separation of conservative media from conservative politicians, think tanks, and lobbyists, but in practice, they are all part of the conservative movement. They are prosecuting its interests; that is the ur-goal.

Indeed, the far right rejects the very idea of neutral, binding arbiters; there is only Us and Them, only a zero-sum contest for resources.

There is nothing we as humans experience that is not subject to interpretation. If an objective reality exists independent of experience, what we, as humans, perceive is filtered through our experience and is, thus, subjective.

This isn't a new debate. The author of this particular article did not, and has not claimed to, "discover" epistemology. The objectivity of the society's "neutral arbiters" has long been contested, and in ways that defy the facile right/left dichotomy.


We are, for example, still grappling with racial typologies rooted in the pseudoscience of phrenology. Many scholars have called out the subjectivity of academia, as well as the self-perpetuating biases and disparities in how scholars are credentialed and knowledge is verified. Patricia Hill Collins, for example, reminds us that, "Two political criteria influence the knowledge validation process. First, knowledge claims are evaluated by a community of experts whose members represent the standpoints of the groups from which they originate. Within the Eurocentric masculinist process this means that a scholar making a knowledge claim must convince a scholarly community controlled by white men that a given claim is justified. Second, each community of experts must maintain its credibility as defined by the larger group in which it is situated and from which it draws its basic, taken-for-granted knowledge. This means that scholarly communities that challenge basic beliefs held in the culture at large will be deemed less credible than those which support popular perspectives."

Women, generally, have been historically excluded from the academic fields that have sought to define them. As Donna Haraway wrote, “Like race, sex is an ‘imaginary’ formation of the kind that produces reality, including bodies then perceived as prior to all construction. ‘Woman’ only exists as this kind of imaginary being, while women are the product of a social relation of appropriation, naturalized as sex. A feminist is one who fights for women as a class and for the disappearance of that class."

You may take this ongoing, longstanding criticism (of supposedly "left leaning" academia by "further left" scholars) to suggest that our "neutral arbiters" are not, in fact, "neutral," and most would likely agree - albeit for very different reasons.

Is it possible that a large number of accredited journalists have "liberal" beliefs? Sure. Correlations between educational attainment and political ideology have long been sought. (e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/opinion/why-are-the-highly-educated-so-liberal.html) It's also nonetheless true that journalists in our society have historically been majority White. You can look at how people of color are portrayed by media outlets and publications that are disproportionately staffed, owned, and operated by White people and argue that coverage is too often skewed by bias and stereotype. You can look at how Fox news distorted the faces of Jewish and Muslim people they disliked and point out that their organization represents - unapologetically, if not admittedly - Christians.

The critical distinction, here, lies in the proposed solution. Do you want society's "neutral" referees to be more neutral? Do you believe that neutrality is an illusion and would you instead prefer to see each source properly situate itself as subjective?

Or would you, instead, prefer to set fire to the whole thing and declare that we no longer agree to society's shared assumptions, rules, and standards of logic/reasoning?


In order for society to function, we must accept some shared standards and definitions, lest we all descend into solipsism.

To many people, there is nothing more objective than numbers. That's probably why numbers are so often invoked to highlight epistemic breaches - and media bubbles:



As we all know, the number line stretches infinitely in both directions. As humans, however, our experiences are finite - so we've attempted to bracket and partition an infinite continuum into distinct, measurable units. We can observe the difference between two of something and three of something. There is, however, an infinite degree of variability between two and 3 - between 2.5555555555555555555555555555555555555555556 and 2.5555555555555555555555555555555555555555557.

We wouldn't be able to have this conversation across a computer network without at least a provisional agreement on the fundamental premise of binary code, for example, that something is either "on" or "off," that it either "is" or "isn't."

Even if they don't represent the "objective" state of the universe, typologies have value to us as a society. There's value to differentiating between red and orange, or red and green, between 3 and 5, between F and C#. Words are symbolic approximations - yet our communication largely depends on our willingness to accept them and agree upon common definitions.

CNN's now famous "this is an apple" commercial relies on the shared definition of an "apple." It's implied that there exists only one correct, factual interpretation.

If you disagree, you could disagree for a wide variety of reasons. You might accept the typology, but reject the label: "it's not an apple, it's a pomme." You could reject the typology itself: "it's just as valid to say it's a banana because there's no such thing as an apple. It's just matter, and you can't meaningfully differentiate between it and anything else." You could reject the object's permanence: "I refuse to agree that it's an apple because you can't prove to me that the apple in question actually exists. How do we know it isn't a banana that's been squished into an apple shape and meticulously painted? How do we know it isn't just CG? There could be nothing there."


For as long as people have played baseball, they've criticized the neutrality or competence of umpires. Whatever team you follow, members of your team have criticized the umpires. All of them, however, profess to want the same thing: greater neutrality, stricter adherence to the rules, more accurate calls, and, above all, fairness. Most baseball players and fans want to feel that each call is as accurate as possible.

What's at issue here is that the peddling of outright falsehoods, as determined by what was once considered to be shared standards of logic and reasoning, does not represent an attempt to promote "fair and balanced" officiating, but is, instead, an act of retribution.

Even if painstaking video review reveals a pitch to be a strike according to the definitions specified by the rules that everyone had, presumably, agreed upon, the team could still choose to reject it - for no other reason than because they can and they feel like it.

"You've been bullying me for too long. I don't care what you say anymore. I say it's a walk, so I'm walking. If you want me to stop, make me."

At that point, you're no longer playing baseball. You're dealing with a resentful mob armed with bats.


This is behavior we're accustomed to seeing when children play. "I got you." "Nuh uh!" "Yuh huh!" "Well, I got you earlier and you lied and said I didn't, so now you're it!"

It's typically at this point that one or both children will either fight or declare "this game is stupid."

"They STARTED IT" is not a halfway position. It's the child rationalizing their decision to break frame.

Do the rules matter, or don't they?


If sexual assault matters, then it matters regardless of who's responsible. It doesn't matter if it's Harvey Weinstein, Anthony Weiner, Bill Clinton, Bill Cosby, Bill O'Reilly, Roger Ailes, or Donald Trump. As Malcolm X said, "wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it."

If MSNBC chose to cover a hamburger emoji debate over ethical concerns raised by the DNC's arrangement with the Clinton campaign, everyone should call that out - but it doesn't grant cover or excuse for "the other side" to do whatever they believe to be "the same thing."

At some point, everyone ought to ask themselves: do you believe in values or have you merely sworn an unwavering allegiance to a particular political/cultural faction?

Values can't exist within an endless spiral of whataboutism. "Yeah, he lied, but why does that matter when they lied that other time? If lying matters, then it should've mattered then. But it didn't. So now lying doesn't matter anymore - but, for the record, it's your fault that lying doesn't matter because you started lying first."

Incidentally, it's rather ironic to use "dems did it first" to deflect from this, given that's also included in the article, as part of the author's list of predicted responses to any direct evidence demonstrating collusion: "They might say Mueller is compromised. It’s a Hillary/Deep State plot. There’s nothing wrong with colluding with Russia in this particular way. Dems did it first. All of the above. Whatever."

I also find it a bit puzzling that you're attempting to use "objective science" to argue the inevitability of a right wing media bubble in which "objective science" has no currency. Of course there's a cottage industry for right wing conspiracy theories that become widely accepted by millions of people, it's a "scientific and evolutionary fact that that cornered species tend to react aggressvely [sic]." Is it?

We've all witnessed cornered individuals behave aggressively. What constitutes a cornered "species?" Do all members of an endangered species react aggressively, regardless of their individual circumstances? Does a white rhino in captivity react aggressively to the plight of other white rhinos in the wild or vice versa? Is it always the case that cornered individuals behave aggressively? What of learned helplessness? If you corner a butterfly, does the butterfly become more aggressive? How are you defining "corner?"

Here, you're cloaking a very common experience (the aggressive reactions of a cornered individual) as "objective scientific fact." Is that not the sort of bias you're alleging of "left-leaning" academics?


If you're against those things, the solution isn't an "equal and opposite infraction."


As a society, we have to decide if we want to play baseball or just beat each other with sticks.

 

[dacomeup]

At some point, everyone ought to ask themselves: do you believe in values or have you merely sworn an unwavering allegiance to a particular political/cultural faction?

Question of 2017 and the future.

 

[IATT]

 

[elpablo21]

 

[gry60]

I don't have twitter. Otherwise, I'd be spamming her account with pics of Pocahontas

 

[aepps20]

Nothingburgers from Regular Degulars and INNUENDO AND CONJECTURE fries and a Honker Shake.

 

[gry60]

But there were signs of dishonesty from the start. The first document Guccifer 2.0 published on June 15 came not from the DNC as advertised but from Podesta’s inbox , according to a former DNC official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

The official said the word “CONFIDENTIAL” was not in the original document .

Guccifer 2.0 had airbrushed it to catch reporters’ attention.

https://www.apnews.com/dea73efc0159...low&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=AP_Politics

 

[Belgium]

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...ussia-probe-may-face-challenges-idUSKBN1D401W
Manafort money laundering charge in Russia probe may face challenges

 

[RustyShackleford]

Well sanders is running again an this time he will be the front runner and the DNC will likley be in his pocket (for what little that is worth) so maybe then ebrnie bros will move one.


I hope he learned how to talk to black people this time.

-He still struggling with this. Famb needs to work on his sentence structure.

He keeps sounding like he is calling white people "regular everyday Americans" and "working class people" and then everyone else is other. Like an afternoon of media training can correct this.

-And because he has become popular with black people, seems like Bernie and his supports have decided polls are enough, and they are not going much outreach in with black constituents compared to people in the Rust Belt.

Cory Booker in the cut ready to finesse this situation.

 

[dacomeup]

Please no Booker.

 

[RustyShackleford]

The 2020 Dem race gonna be a open field. There are probably gonna be over a dozen candidates, every flavor of Dems, some non traditional ones.

However wins that, especially if they take out Bernie, then salute to them. Booker is way better than the Grand Bigot anyway, so if he manages wins, I will happily support him.

But I am just using him to make the point that a person can gain large momentum if they run on civil rights in 2020, especially if progressive really show up talking that "no identity politics" shtick

 

[aepps20]

Only BARSON in 2020 can save us from OBUMMER CREATED RACISM, SEXISM, POVERTY, INNUENDO AND CONJECTURE. I would be happy with another Don term as Libbies won't have a chance when Coal flows through the street like Libbie Tears.

 

[trueprada]

 

[JND1]

The 2020 Dem field will only be large if Bernie isn't running. If he does, he's going to have all the built-in advantages that Clinton had in 2016. A large portion of his support is baked in, he has the name recognition, most Party leaders/superdelegates will support him, etc.

Any potential challengers will be aware of this going in. Some will chose not to run because they think it's "his turn!" just like what happened with Clinton. I expect them to start with 4-5 candidates at the 1st debate and then everybody that doesn't like Bernie will focus in on their favorite pretty quickly. It will take a talented candidate to beat him.

 

[RustyShackleford]

The 2020 Dem field will only be large if Bernie isn't running. If he does, he's going to have all the built-in advantages that Clinton had in 2016. A large portion of his support is baked in, he has the name recognition, most Party leaders/superdelegates will support him, etc.

Any potential challengers will be aware of this going in. Some will chose not to run because they think it's "his turn!" just like what happened with Clinton. I expect them to start with 4-5 candidates at the 1st debate and then everybody that doesn't like Bernie will focus in on their favorite pretty quickly. It will take a talented candidate to beat him.

Nah, even with Bernie being popular he won't be that big a force. The establishment is not rallying around him, he is weak with black voters, and he is not a Democrat, he won't have a monopoly on the progressive vote. I think people are overestimating how much political power Bernie has.

And the dynamics are different when you run against an incumbent Republican president. Anyone on the margin has to shoot their shot because either you are locked out of the next election, or you blow you shot to raise your national profile. That will hurt against someone that probably came close to winning the nomination, but didn't last time around.

Hillary Clinton was very popular going into 2008 people thought she was a shoe in and the 2008 field had about 8 people. So I say we get at least that.

John Delaney already announced he is running. And I think Martin O'Malley, Booker, Bullock, and Cuomo are locks

 

[chao7]

Nah, even with Bernie being popular he won't be that big a force. The establishment is not rallying around him, he is weak with black voters, and he is not a Democrat, he won't have a monopoly on the progressive vote. I think people are overestimating how much political power Bernie has.

And the dynamics are different when you run against an incumbent Republican president. Anyone on the margin has to shoot their shot because either you are locked out of the next election, or you blow you shot to raise your national profile. That will hurt against someone that probably came close to winning the nomination, but didn't last time around.

Hillary Clinton was very popular going into 2008 people thought she was a shoe in and the 2008 field had about 8 people. So I say we get at least that.

John Delaney already announced he is running. And I think Martin O'Malley, Booker, Bullock, and Cuomo are locks

Thoughts on Kamala Harris?

 

[RustyShackleford]

I really don't know that much about her to form a judgment of her as a potential president, especially on the Federal level. And I have not spent anything researching her record before coming to Congress.

I find it strange leftist have zeroed in on slick talking her so soon though.

 

[whywesteppin]

Bernie is far from a lock. his pie-in-the-sky policies don't sit well with many on the left and his increasing age, which is already starting to show, is only going to be worse in 3 years.

 

[shoefreakbaby]

80 yr old candidate.......

 

[rexanglorum]

For me, politics is a means to an end. I want Americans politics to be accountable to everyone who lives within the jurisdiction or is subject to the power of the United States.

What I see right now is a Republican Party that is accountable to about two or three percent of the Country and a Democratic Party that is accountable to the most affluent tenth of the Nation. The former wins elections by appealing to white resentment politics. The latter uses people of color's justifiable fears of white supremacy married to state power to gain the bulk of their votes.

There is no way to spin or apologize for the fact that the Democratic party has failed the majority of workers, let alone failed to help those who are even more marginalized. No amount of comparisons to the GOP, can excuse the Democratic Party's decades of professional class bias in its economic policies.

I and millions of others want to change the dynamics of American politics and we see that the Democratic Party as the most viable vehicle for change. We supported Bernie Sanders' 2016 bid because he represented a challenge to the Democratic Party's brand of economic royalism. If Sanders had won the nomination, we would see the Democratic Party's relentless professional class bias weakened.

Obviously, that was not the case. Clinton cobbled together enough of a coalition by pitting economic justice against social justice (the negative consequences of running a scorched Earth wedge campaign in a primary keep manifesting themselves and may continue to do so for years or decades to come). Clinton is gone from the scene but the "third way" mentality that she represented remains and the centrist bigwigs seem hell bent on winning nominations, monetizing their political clout and antagonizing those who demand economic justice.

Clinton is gone. Sanders may very well not run in 2020 but the issues that defined 2016 and 2020 and beyond do not seem likely to go away any time soon. The left needs the Democratic Party to do well in future elections and the Democratic Party can do that by embracing the left. sadly, both groups are having a lot of trouble making it work.


Also, let me add that, these new revelations from Donna Brazile are not proof that the 2016 primary was rigged. There is absolutely no evidence that the DNC falsified vote totals for any of its 50 plus primaries and caucuses. What is more important about this news is that it confirms the fact that the Democratic Party will stop at nothing to preserve its status quo which is to work to improve the lives of America's managerial and bourgeois classes and no one else. The experience of 2016 was not the story of a rigged primary or caucus, it was confirmation that the Democratic Party is an effective bulwark, for the capitalists elites, against egalitarian leftism. On matters of economics, The Democratic Party does the dirty work of the Republican Party and that is the take away from 2016 primaries and the 2017 post mortems simply confirm that fact.

 

[rexanglorum]

-He still struggling with this. Famb needs to work on his sentence structure.

He keeps sounding like he is calling white people "regular everyday Americans" and "working class people" and then everyone else is other. Like an afternoon of media training can correct this.

-And because he has become popular with black people, seems like Bernie and his supports have decided polls are enough, and they are not going much outreach in with black constituents compared to people in the Rust Belt.

Cory Booker in the cut ready to finesse this situation.

I do wish that Bernie would take to the heart the mantra that a black or Latino waiter or car mechanic in New York or San Francisco is no more or no less regular or American or working class than a white welder or farmer in Middle America.

As far as optics go, he should deliberately focus on working class people of color when he is making campaign stops and visits that are focused on working class issues. Meanwhile, Bernie needs to be seen telling white folks that they have privileges that exist outside of their economic lives. Bernie has the clout, that no Democrat has, to explain that white folks can simultaneously be an oppressed proletariat and still enjoy privileges on account of their race.

Bernie is far from a lock. his pie-in-the-sky policies don't sit well with many on the left and his increasing age, which is already starting to show, is only going to be worse in 3 years.

Bernie's age is a question but his policies are far from utopian. Affordable college, decent wages and single payer are all doable.

 

[hipstermike]

If the DNC won't let go of the stuff during primaries and between Bernie and Hil then we have no shot at moving forward ever. Why are these constant talking points for people? LET THIS **** GO AND FOCUS ON MOVING FORWARD