Senate Going Postal: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election

I think Trump will likely be dead before his second term is up. Dude twitter rages so much he's gonna pop and aneurysm. Or go into steep(er) mental decline.

 

Vivec is just trying to get everybody to vote for Sanders, which is fine. He's just going about it in typical viveccy fashion.

 

Why do you talk about me so much

 

Yeah I get WHY you picked that metaphor. but the comparison is flawed as we are not talking about war, we are talking about general elections. Like I said in the comment you quoted, I will vote against Trump no matter what. However people did not have the binary choice of Roosevelt or Hitler. And opposing Hitler is not the same as siding with Roosevelt. THAT is my point, I can loath both, everyone here seems to be willing to fight Trump, just they will also fight Biden. I mean look at your Frenchmen who refused to give up their vessels over Churchill's paranoia, I find them to be some of the bravest of the war, cause they did not equate opposing Hitler with allowing Churchill to get whatever he wanted.

Yes but a discussion is based around those involved. Vivec has certainly said stuff like this, but he was not a part of this convo in particular till after. The people I believe you are being unfair to are the ones that you actually where talking in response to. Not the nebulous nature of what Vivec thinks but has not said yet at the time of writing.

This right here. Yeah he is better than Trump, and honestly it is better to pick him over Trump any day of the week. But we cannot just resign ourselves to that fate, we cant accept Biden as a candidate. If we already a year out, start to shrug when it comes to him, then the DNC will have already won. Yeah if the time absolutely comes, but if it comes down between mecha hitler and robot Putin, I would pick robot Putin - but I am not going to entertain Putin as a worthwhile person or anything less than an enemy of the common good just cause he potentially could be put against someone in a binary situation in which he is preferable.

 

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/22/hud-homeless-transgender-1468568

So:

Government bad, religious charities good.

Religious charities: if you’re gay or transgender, no can do. Go find another shelter.

HUD: shelters can say no if they don’t like you.

Rot in hell, Trump and Pence.

 

Yup. I’m sure Jesus is waiting to high-five Mike Pence for all he’s done for “the least of them.”

 

Ben "Oreo?" Carson bears some blame too, I think, as nominal head of the department.

 

Yeah, he sucks too. For a neurosurgeon, he’s pretty dumb.

 

Events inform the possibilities of decisions made by men, but they don't make men.

 

The bickering over the past couple of pages is why I have authoritarian tendencies and sometimes regress and just say "To hell with what people want just put in charge a genius benevolent dictator". I want to be a democratic socialist, but that only works if people have sense.

Basically I only see the point in people voting if they vote for what I want anyway. And not the illusion of choice. I want everyone to actually agree with me. Otherwise **** it, they (you) don't get a say.

 

I'm far more fine with authoritarianism than most people here, I'd imagine.

 

My current personal opinion is functional democracy > authoritarian system > flawed democracy (what we have).

So I'll push for more democratic systems while we're in the flawed democracy (campaign finance reform, representative/reasonable districts, ranked choice voting, etc.) but will also fairly easily go to "You know if we can't do that then **** it just go completely the other direction."

 

People tend to be fine with authoritarianism until the point someone in their family - and possibly themself - doesn't make it back home.

 

This is not an authoritarianism-only feature

 

Yeah sure, but pontifications don't change the fact that when we look to events that inform us, their worth in the argument is dependent on their relevance. Simply bringing up that historical events, while not exact, can influence and reflect the present, does not make your claim nor the event you chose actually applicable.

They inform the possibilities, but the possibilities yielded differ, and those yielded by opposing Biden, are not the same as letting Hitler gain power. It is not a matter of the metaphor not being exact, it is that the metaphor does not even inform the discussion properly as people DID oppose Roosevelt and Churchill and history has seen many of them respected. That and if you try and squeeze your allegory into this situation, then this would mean that ostensibly your point is paramount to not voting against FDR due to internment camps, because Hitler is worse. I know you don't think that, but the comparison can so easily lead to that given how poorly targeted it is.

Your overly simplistic metaphor simply shows how utterly ready to strawman and misrepresent people all through the veneer of pulling out the Hitler card. Despite the fact that the people you are talking to are ones who are more radically left, whereas those who did nothing about Hitler and those who preached american non-interventionism were centrists.

No one here is choosing between Hitler and FDR. The choice is not binary, and doing the same cheap argument towards those opposed to Trump is just lazy. Yeah the past informs us, what a brilliant observation........and the past has shown us that in that scenario allowing american exceptionalism and traditional liberalism to reign ends up just enabling more fascism.

Trying to draw a link between opposing Biden, and picking Trump or Hitler in his stead is just plain harmful, BS, and utterly unfounded. I am pretty sure that the Soviets did not have the highest opinion of FDR, and yet....oh yeah they played the rule of the steamroller in crushing Germany. The Greek KKE party was one of the two resistance movements that freed Greece, they fought against imperialist and capitalist backed resistance movements and the idea of another occupying force in the form of the allies showing up and trying to puppet Greece just like the Nazis had, and like how the allies had at the end of the last war. The radical left among the French Resistance had no love for FDR, the French navy had lots of reasons to hate Churchill, there where those in the Royal Navy who disliked the likes of Churchill and FDR.

All these people put their lives on the line and some like Captain Leach died tragically, mostly due to the saber rattling of men who get so much praise, and yet lacked the true heroism and bravery he displayed. Simply put, yeah history informs us, and the history of the fight against fascism tells us that defending Roosevelt or Churchill or the like and their double standards, and disgusting policies; is NOT necessary to fight fascism.

I abhor the comparison and the notion that it informs the idea that one should not oppose and fight against Biden, as that argument intrinsically equates the likes of Roosevelt and Biden to all who fight fascism. It is unfounded, and just plain nonsensical. If you seriously think comparing opposing american exceptionalism is akin to letting Hitler win, then you have already killed the fight against fascism, and simply made it an exchange of who is the new fascist ruler.

If one must either pick Roosevelt and support him beyond voting as an absolute necessity in 1940 in order to get involved. Keep in mind he won in 1944 despite having already shown his true colors with the internment camps. So voting against him is not the same as opposing fighting fascism, and doing anything more than voting if necessary all the while opposing his actions beyond getting involved sure as heck is not the same as opposing righting Hitler.

I am not denying history influencing our possibilities, but what that specific historical comparison says has to actually be relevant and fair. When using history in an argument, it has to actually coherently mean something, but the comparison does not mean anything here, at least the way you used it: as in neither case is the choice binary.

But whatever I am done with this as this is exhausting and pedantry in place of actual relevant discourse

 

You're assuming I would condone any authoritarian system that wasn't also thoroughly anti-death. I would not.

I like the idea of authoritarians who share my ideals. That's all. Not authoritarianism for authoritarianism's sake. I've said before that I care about end goals more than the system they're accomplished under. Democracy, dictatorship, oligarchy, technocracy, it's all the same to me. The policies they implement are what matter. I tend to think that functional democracies are probably the best practical method, but that's all. I have no philosophical opinion about them one way or another.

And to that end I love FDR; he's my favorite president. There are a lot of black marks on his record that I don't overlook and that make him a complicated figure for me, but I admire him personally and much of what he did. The way he did it doesn't matter to me. And I think of him and Hitler as day and night, or at least evening and midnight. To say that FDR is much worse than Biden is to me laughable.

 

If there's anything we've learned from history - and we haven't - it's that people that are granted authoritarian powers never abuse those powers.

 

I wouldn't, if it were me, nor would someone who truly shared my ideals, because that would be missing the point.

 

We're already granting "people" authoritarian powers. They're called corporations, and they control a large portion of our lives.

 

This certainly wasn't an easy-to-follow parallel - on which I intended to put emphasis on personalities that are easy to document oneself on, not their historical accomplishments, but I don't have a way to express what exactly my thought process was there which is suitable to this kind of board. I'll readily admit I would not convince anyone anyway.

I will, however, say this: accepting a worse short-term alternative does not mean you aren't also contributing to the worse long-term alternative. No one knows the future; all you get to act upon is, in the end, belief.

You might be the one assuming there. It's 2019, making someone a nonperson without killing them has never been easier. I am not, however, going to give practical guidelines as to how, and as to how to handle the nonpeople.

You are human, and therefore both corruptible and fallible. It also applies to anybody you would be working with - in addition to their truly sharing your ideals to an individual being materially impossible to verify with absolute certainty.

We did not need to grant them anything. They seized those powers, and have defended them successfully. Just look at Google and Facebook for more recent examples; nobody voted to give them the level of control over our lives they seized for themselves until well after it was possible to take that power away from them. And the same type of stories have been going on with regards to private entities granting themselves powers that were never possible to strip away from them since the infancy of banking.

 

I don't know if I should feel like that deliberately misses the point because that's not acceptable either or if I simply shouldn't care because they're still not dead. I think the former? I never even implied allowing such things. Though honestly I wouldn't be against the idea of capturing and imprisoning people who were deemed threats to the system so long as they weren't killed and were treated humanely (as I understand the term). I don't even mind the idea of indefinite detention, so long as it isn't truly permanent and there is always an option and strategy for eventual release.

Now this definitely misses the point, though not deliberately I don't think. It's not a matter of being human, it's a matter of sticking to a system. Fallibility is an issue, obviously, but corruptibility isn't so much. In my personal experience if you live by ethical categorical imperatives as I do decisions about morality are generally clear-cut and there's little room for second-guessing. The only failures arise from incapability or lack of information, in other words some sort of practical problem that needs to be solved, rather than what is right or not. But decisions are made for you and are fairly simple.

Look, I'll illustrate what I mean. This is what I personally care about. Just break it down like this, in terms of priorities:
1. Prevent deaths of humans/intelligent life at all other costs.
2. As long as it can be done without breaking the above rule, aim to give all people reasonably comfortable and free lives through whatever means possible (e.g. give people a good standard of living).

So on the one hand yes it is broad and general and vague, deliberately so, but it also clears away any clutter. Being willing to work with anyone, or against anyone, being willing to hold up any law, or break any law, or create any law or rule or system, or take from wherever, or give to wherever, or put anyone in power or take them out of power, those are all irrelevant circumstantial details. I mean they're all important, in the sense that they're the means to the end, but that's all they are. Why should we care how something is done; just get it done. In my personal case that thing is keeping people alive and, following and alongside that, giving them quote unquote good lives as I see it (which of is something that can be debated about, to an extent).

By definition my system is pacifistic and even protective of people, and considers people dying as a failure, so the idea of causing or even being willing to not prevent such deaths would always be ruled out out of hand in any course of action. It's hard to corrupt that without going outside it/ignoring it, which one could never do.

Even if you disagree with my personal priorities you can create your own list of them. Once you codify them and commit to them then things become clear. So long as you always keep them in mind and don't break them then you will never be corrupted. You are simultaneously fettered by the small list of things you must uphold and unfettered in that literally everything else is on the table and able to be done to meet those original goals. Now imagine someone (or some people, or an organization or governmental body, whatever) in power with such a system. I suppose in theory the U.S. does have one in the Constitution, but it is too vague and open for interpretation and doesn't cover enough and so the people in power can twist it to what they want, if they're even good enough to follow it at all. That's not what I want; I want something more tangible than that, and I want people in charge who make it their everything, who live for nothing else. I want zealots in charge. So long as the system they follow is one I myself like.

 

They're noble principles. I have no objections to the second in theory. It's the practical implementation I don't think has been thought through. I have a strenuous objection to the first: "all other costs": we've already eliminated half of our contemporary species. We've done enough damage, and need to learn responsibility for and restraint over non-intelligent life yesterday.

I'm going to delineate an alternative - a monstrous one.

1. No humans are involved in running the system governing them. Its rules are set, and AI-implemented with systems capable of self-restoration but not self-programming.
2. There is only one system governing all. No divisions such as tribes, nations or states exist.
3. Those systems include regulations planned for extraterrestrial expansion and contact with other sentient species, terrestrial (as a resut of evolution) or extraterrestrial (what we know of physics says such contact isn't possible, but we don't have perfect knowledge)
4. Human standards for living have to be comfortable and entirely non-discriminatory. Private ownership only exists for non-essential personal commodities.
5. Outlets have to exist for ingrained human instincts to avoid their being turned against other humans or the system.
6. Human population is strictly restricted to numbers permitting a verifiable neutral environmental footprint while staying in accordance with point 4.
7. Humans continue to be permitted creation and invention as long as it does not goes against the system's rules. As technological advancement permits reduction of individual footprints, the cap on population rises.

 

You might call it monstrous but I actually have no objection to any of that, since they all fall in line with my secondary principles and some like restricting human population growth would eventually be necessary for my first (though to be clear this means controlled or nulled population growth, not the culling of living people which is of course out of the question). I would perhaps harbor some initial skepticism towards an AI running things, and it wouldn't be my first choice, but I could be convinced upon seeing it in action. As for everything else I consider it perfectly reasonable. Also as a sidenote I don't believe you're correct in your suggestion that contact with extraterrestrials is impossible.

I would like to clarify and extend my first principle, if I may. I do agree that we shouldn't take nonhuman life for granted. In fact, my ultimate desire is to extend the first rule to all life with certain possible exceptions like perhaps certain bacteria. In any case certainly all complex multicellular life with independent thought. And the "intelligent life" mention is really to include possible sentient AI and extraterrestrial life if any is invented or discovered. But the immediate concern is keeping humans, the only known sentient species, alive. To that end I think environmental considerations including the preservation of other life is actually broadly necessary. However I think it is necessary specifically to ensure the survival of humans and not for its own sake. And even moreso I don't care about the planetary body of Earth itself at all, obviously, except as a habitat for life. So the point of "at all costs" does not mean everything will have to be sacrificed, just that things are able to be sacrificed if necessary, while in fact it can be argued that other things should be preserved for the sake of humanity so it's a moot point. But truthfully I wouldn't really be comfortable with killing cattle or clearing forests or whatever, and I certainly wouldn't want to, because I do put some value in all life (and completely honestly my fantasy is to keep everything alive and eventually uplift everything to sentience so they can fully appreciate being alive too from an intellectual perspective [and so I can hang out with them]. Obviously I don't really entertain that with any level of seriousness; it would just be nice). But not wanting to do something doesn't mean I'd hesitate either if there was no way around it.

I would argue that the goal of preserving humanity specifically is, for the moment, both easier and more practical, because it puts specific priorities into focus for the former and because it's an easier sell to the masses for the latter. I think it's easier to get people to fight for other humans than for capybaras or ostriches, and even moreso than for willow trees and mushrooms. And in any case for the moment until we can grow all food artificially in labs we have no choice but to kill something to sustain ourselves. We can only try to minimize the impact for the moment, which is a good argument for vegetarianism and for reducing food waste among other things. Of course long-term I would love to just synthesize everything and kill nothing, and just stop breeding livestock altogether (just let the last generation live until they die naturally, whenever that is). None of this is where society, or most people individually so far as I can tell, is yet though. So just start with the first, and easier priority of focusing on humans until that at least is stabilized.

And the reason why I care about it in the first place is I suppose from my own personal philosophy and desires. It's well documented on these boards that I don't like death, and also that I care about how well people are living in terms of specific policies and so on.

As for the vagueness in terms of implementation, that's somewhat by design, as I said. Think of them as a guiding principle, a prime directive that everything else is built from. It isn't a Constitutional document or a policy description (though it could and should certainly be codified in some form) but the philosophy behind such things, the foundation that everything is built from and by definition cannot stray from.

I realize that all of this has all been off-topic. I was just thinking about it because all of your arguing about what is practical and pragmatic and strategic and right was just so inane to read through, even from people I agreed with on the subject eventually, and I can't help but think upon these larger philosophical issues and "Wouldn't it be nice if this conversation just didn't have to exist?" by way of not getting a say in the first place, which lead me back to the things I actually care about most.

So I apologize for derailing a bit and waxing desire and I'm going to do my best to stop now, but I guess my point is can all of you please shut up about general election strategy against Trump (or not as some are semi-but-not-really-I-think making the point for) at least a little bit right now, since A. it's a ways away before it even matters and, far more importantly for me personally, B. it's gotten really annoying. Let's just talk about the primaries right now please. You want to argue about whether Biden is a good candidate or not, okay, you want to argue about whether he'd be able to beat Trump compared to someone else, that's fine too, but to argue about who is better or worse and strategic voting and third-parties and the electoral college and ALL OF THAT is just getting waaaaaay ahead of ourselves. I mean I know this is the general 2020 thread but can we at least wait till like September of next year before we argue about that another 60 times?