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>> No. 90075 Anonymous
26th July 2020
Sunday 5:10 pm
90075 in 100 days time
This man is going to become the President of the United States, and it's going to be fucking awesome.
Expand all images.
>> No. 90076 Anonymous
26th July 2020
Sunday 5:27 pm
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No, it won't be, it'll just be a return to sanity.
>> No. 90077 Anonymous
26th July 2020
Sunday 5:39 pm
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Here's some reasons he might not be:

1. Gerrymandering
2. Voter suppression
3. Electoral College
4. Conservative leaning SCOTUS

3 and a bit months is a long time in today's politics so we will see. I am cautiously optimistic though.
>> No. 90078 Anonymous
26th July 2020
Sunday 5:45 pm
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I absolutely love that they're just trying to swap one senile sexual predator for a milder senile sexual predator.
>> No. 90079 Anonymous
26th July 2020
Sunday 6:34 pm
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Trump is trying very hard to give himself an excuse to declare martial law, meaning there'd be no election, and seems to be succeeding.
>> No. 90080 Anonymous
26th July 2020
Sunday 6:39 pm
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Oh is he.
>> No. 90081 Anonymous
26th July 2020
Sunday 6:40 pm
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Trump landslide. No way is Biden getting in.
>> No. 90082 Anonymous
26th July 2020
Sunday 6:44 pm
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>>90077

5. People not wanting to vote for a senile Obama re-run who is also a paedophile

Trump is hanging on by a thread and yet still somehow, by some incredible feat of determination, the Democrats have fielded a candidate who could plausibly lose. It's mesmerising.

Classic case of fighting the last election to be honest. If he was on the ballot in 2016 we might not have been here, but it's not 2016 any more.
>> No. 90083 Anonymous
26th July 2020
Sunday 7:04 pm
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>>90082

>Classic case of fighting the last election

It does look like this could be the last election, if Trump has his way.
>> No. 90084 Anonymous
26th July 2020
Sunday 7:05 pm
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>>90082
It's not so much about them fighting the last election, Bidens the candidate because he's next on the list.
>> No. 90085 Anonymous
26th July 2020
Sunday 7:40 pm
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>> No. 90086 Anonymous
26th July 2020
Sunday 7:59 pm
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>>90085
A similar gap to Clinton at this point.
>> No. 90087 Anonymous
26th July 2020
Sunday 8:47 pm
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I feel like this election has been a total letdown compared to the madness of 2016. It can't just be Covid that has done this, even the democratic primaries felt muted and BLM didn't crash any speeches as far as I'm aware.

This will hurt Trump I think. He needs headlines and extreme statements otherwise there's no thrill of voting for him over the creepy American preacher. When are we doing our predictions? Maybe we can superforecast the result and win some bets.
>> No. 90088 Anonymous
26th July 2020
Sunday 9:21 pm
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Are you all seriously unaware of the protests happening over there?
https://twitter.com/AWKWORDrap/status/1286108931450961927
This isn't a normal election year.
>> No. 90089 Anonymous
26th July 2020
Sunday 9:23 pm
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>>90087
The best thing to happen would be for Trump to start believing he isn't going to win, then he'll go full blown unhinged and bring in unpredictability.
>> No. 90090 Anonymous
26th July 2020
Sunday 9:40 pm
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>>90088
>Are you all seriously unaware of the protests happening over there?

Aware and don't care. Portland isn't voting Trump and crusties vs police isn't going to influence the election.
>> No. 90091 Anonymous
26th July 2020
Sunday 9:45 pm
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>>90090

But it can.

>>90089
>The best thing to happen would be for Trump to start believing he isn't going to win, then he'll go full blown unhinged and bring in unpredictability.
What happens when Trump believes he isn't going to win is, when there's some civil unrest, instead of doing what the US Army Manual, FM3-24: INSURGENCIES AND COUNTERING INSURGENCIES says, which is to just leave it alone because

>The urban (daft militant wog) approach is an approach in which insurgents attack government and symbolic targets (for example an important religious building) to cause government forces to overreact against the population. The insurgents want the government’s repressive measures to enrage the people so that they rise up and overthrow the government. Although this type of method may develop popular support against a government that is particularly brutal or corrupt, it may only result in shallow support for the insurgency. The population may only see the insurgency positively because of the brutal response, not because they identify with the insurgency.

Instead of leaving that alone, he's doing the opposite. That means it'll get bigger. Probably not enough to overthrow the government, but that's not the point, the point is so he can justify declaring martial law and cancelling the election.
>> No. 90092 Anonymous
26th July 2020
Sunday 9:57 pm
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>>90090

It's also not just in Portland and hasn't been, that's just a focal point.
https://thehill.com/homenews/news/509094-protests-erupt-nationwide-in-solidarity-with-portland-demonstrations
>> No. 90093 Anonymous
26th July 2020
Sunday 10:18 pm
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>>90091
He can't cancel the election. As in, there is literally no way of cancelling it. Whether he likes it or not, his term ends on 20 January 2021 unless he receives the votes of 270 electors when the ballots are presented to the House in January.
>> No. 90094 Anonymous
26th July 2020
Sunday 10:41 pm
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>>90093
He'll either declare it cancelled ahead of time or declare the results invalid due to postal vote fraud. I don't know if you've noticed but things being illegal haven't stopped their nor our leadership from doing them anyway in some time now.

Whether or not the feds back him up is another question.
>> No. 90095 Anonymous
26th July 2020
Sunday 10:51 pm
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>>90094
No, I think you've misunderstood me. I'm not saying there's some legal restriction on cancelling the election, I'm saying it's literally impossible. If the state governors want people to vote on election day, then people will vote on election day, even if they've got to deploy the National Guard to make sure of it.

Come 20 January, if Trump doesn't want to leave office, I'm sure some friendly generals will be on hand to help him out.
>> No. 90096 Anonymous
26th July 2020
Sunday 11:03 pm
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I don't know what you lads think Trump is, but I think he's a mortal man like any other, even if he has all the money under the sun. He has been briefed and knows well what happens to US Presidents who don't do as they're told.

Besides that it's pretty glaringly obvious he can't be fucking bothered. He found out pretty sharpish that being president wasn't all it was cracked up to be and more than likely wants to lose. I really don't get what it is with people who hate Trump so viscerally as some people do- He's just some thick rich twat, not the devil incarnate. He's not even half as knowingly evil as Obama, let alone Gee Dubya, nevermind the Clinton dynasty. He's the only US president in just about the last 70 years who hasn't started a foreign war.

I'm not some kind of alt-right neckbeard, in fact quite the opposite, I'm a massive rotten pinko commie. But Trump is just another oligarch in a position of power, he's not a particularly clever or even very threatening one. I really don't know what people are basing their opinion of him on.

People seem to live in a parallel media narrative reality these days entirely divorced from the real world you can see and hear and taste. Americans don't like Trump much these days. But they really don;t like Biden either. Could go either way, but he's not American Hitler for fuck's sake, he doesn't even appear to want to be American President #45 most of the time.
>> No. 90097 Anonymous
26th July 2020
Sunday 11:37 pm
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>>90096

He's a thick, childish racist, and the thick part is worrying because it means he's easily manipulated, the childish part means there's no guarantee he will just follow the rules, and the racist part is just more reason to criticise him.
>> No. 90098 Anonymous
27th July 2020
Monday 1:08 am
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The only good news this year is that Trump has handled the virus so badly, he has gone from a shoo-in for re-election to a likely one term president. I can't see him recovering anything in the next three months.
>> No. 90099 Anonymous
27th July 2020
Monday 8:29 am
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>>90095
I'm not really sure how it is you think dictators in any other situation come to power despite most countries having laws against it.

>>90096
It's a fairly moot point if this is something he wants to do or is being manipulated into doing by virtue of being a "thick rich twat". Particularly if you concede that he has been briefed, as has his cabinet and they therefore know that coming down hard on all the protesters around the country is just going to make it blow up but have been doing it anyway.
>> No. 90100 Anonymous
27th July 2020
Monday 5:03 pm
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>>90099
>I'm not really sure how it is you think dictators in any other situation come to power despite most countries having laws against it.
They come to power either through the front door or with the aid of the military. If you want to know where the US Army stands on Trump, a few weeks ago they issued a memo reminding soldiers that their duty is to the country and not the President, with a hand-written date on it.
>> No. 90101 Anonymous
27th July 2020
Monday 6:20 pm
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>>90100
Where do the police they've militarised stand on Trump?
>> No. 90102 Anonymous
27th July 2020
Monday 6:54 pm
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Are the recent Trump hatchet jobs worth reading at all? The one by his niece and the one by Bolton - there was a lot of buzz about them but since they've been released I've barely heard about them.
>> No. 90103 Anonymous
27th July 2020
Monday 7:14 pm
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>>90096
> But Trump is just another oligarch in a position of power,
> but he's not American Hitler for fuck's sake

Incidentally I feel the same way about BoJo. On the wider, international, internet I often see him being lumped in with Trump, Bolsonaro, and Duterte; I'm not exactly BoJo's biggest fan but comparing him to utter lunatics like Bolsonaro or Duterte seems a bit out there.
>> No. 90104 Anonymous
27th July 2020
Monday 7:54 pm
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>>90101

On his neck, I assume
>> No. 90105 Anonymous
28th July 2020
Tuesday 2:58 am
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>>90101
At the risk of repeating myself, it is literally impossible for Trump to cancel the election. If the states say the election is going ahead, he has no means whatsoever, legal or illegal, of stopping it from happening.
>> No. 90106 Anonymous
28th July 2020
Tuesday 3:21 am
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>>90103

If there's one thing the mainstream political media hates more than an actual fascist, it's a populist.

I might sound a bit tinfoil hat here, but fundamentally the "problem" with people like Trump is that they were elected on, and subsequently (although incompetently, ineffectively and to an extremely limited extent) began to implement plans and policies that the unwashed masses wanted; instead of the interests of the people who are supposed to be in charge. Four years ago I was saying Trump was largely a protest vote, he was a middle finger to the establishment by the disenfranchised masses, and I still believe that to be the case. People knew it wasn't really in their best interest but wanted to tell the government fuck you, it's still "we the people".

For BoJo it was Brexit, for Trump it was protectionism and THE WALL, I'm sure the others have their equivalents. In short it's just because they're at odds with the interests of the people who control the media narrative.
>> No. 90107 Anonymous
28th July 2020
Tuesday 11:25 am
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>>90106

I agree with you, with a minor addendum: I think the reason that someone like Trump can get in was because his "positions" (pro-business, pro-security, aimless contrarianism, all serviceably vague) were just tolerable enough to the establishment to have him serve as a conveniently distracting hate figure. I don't think the big Republican swing to Trump was the result of a mastermind strategy as much as straightforward political opportunism.

Compare that to Sanders, an equally "populist" candidate but someone with virtually no financial backing, whose surprising success was very deliberately sidelined by media, and who was ultimately sabotaged by the Democratic party. Sanders was considered an unworkable candidate because he dared to propose modest social and economic reform.

Something similar happened in the UK with Boris Johnson. Brexit served as a brilliant distraction -- dissent had already been channelled into a debate which was largely irrelevant to the majority of the population. There was no such thing as "left" or "right" Brexit, only a "hard" or "soft" Brexit, the focus being on trade deals and legal arrangements well above the heads of the general public. Brexit was allowed to happen because it is essentially one group of business interests versus another.

Again, compare to Corbyn: a lifelong anti-dolphin rape and anti-war campaigner who faced extremely severe media treatment, being branded everything from an anti-semite to a "security risk", for daring to raise the populist issues of healthcare, working conditions, and issues that actually matter to the everyday life of the public.

I don't want to sound cynical, but I am fully prepared for the next great dissenting movement of people to be dispersed by some manufactured political crisis in a way that overwhelmingly preserves our economic and military arrangements. It's a strategy that we should all be familiar with by now, but it seems to work remarkably well.

There's also nothing tin-foil hat or conspiratorial about suggesting media bias; it's not so much about a cabal of people deciding the editorial line as it is about institutional pressures which promote certain views of the world while excluding others.
>> No. 90108 Anonymous
28th July 2020
Tuesday 3:08 pm
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>>90106
>>90107

Do you both believe that BoJo became Prime Minister purely based on the popularity of Brexit? I've been following the buffoon since his first appearances on HIGNFY some good fifteen years ago; was a hijacked Brexit ticket really his only key to success in gaining the Tory party leadership?
>> No. 90109 Anonymous
28th July 2020
Tuesday 4:08 pm
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>>90108

Yes. Nothing to do with his popularity, more just that he wouldn't have been allowed to come anywhere near the leadership if the house wasn't already burning down. Both parties have been remarkably and noticeably bereft of real talent in recent years as politics has become more divisive and toxic; the savvier players don't want to get their hands dirty in all of this.
>> No. 90110 Anonymous
28th July 2020
Tuesday 4:15 pm
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>>90107
>Again, compare to Corbyn: a lifelong anti-dolphin rape and anti-war campaigner who faced extremely severe media treatment, being branded everything from an anti-semite to a "security risk", for daring to raise the populist issues of healthcare, working conditions, and issues that actually matter to the everyday life of the public.
Oh look, it's this shitty meme again.

Pro tip: If you protest for a group after they've explicitly told you not to, and your response to justified charges of dolphin rape is to just deny you're a racist, you're not actually an anti-racist ally.
>> No. 90111 Anonymous
28th July 2020
Tuesday 4:23 pm
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>>90110

Oh look, it's this shit for brains bootlicker doublethink narrative again.
>> No. 90112 Anonymous
28th July 2020
Tuesday 4:43 pm
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>>90111
Go home Lansman, you're drunk.
>> No. 90113 Anonymous
30th July 2020
Thursday 12:05 am
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>>90109
> Yes. Nothing to do with his popularity, more just that he wouldn't have been allowed to come anywhere near the leadership if the house wasn't already burning down.

Interesting. I vaguely remember him being shortlisted for the leadership contest that Theresa May won, and that he took himself out of the running early because it was a shit time to be PM.

It could possibly be argued that he didn't have a chance of winning at the time, but I have to ask myself if he could possibly have fucked things up any worse than May did.
>> No. 90114 Anonymous
30th July 2020
Thursday 9:29 am
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The broadband thing really encapsulates the problem with Corbyn. He presented a completely bollocks idea that no one cares about and that proves stupid. Of course, he got slandered for suggesting such a stupid idea, anyone with half a brain could see the absurdity of it. I'm sure he doesn't mind though because he loves to paint himself as a martyr virtue is signalled.

But no, the big horrible media brainwashed the masses, didn't it? Much like the unemployed obese chauvinist that can't attract a partner, the poor lad is constantly slandered— he's not doing anything wrong, it's the system!

Corbyn would have gladly stopped or watered down Brexit (despite being a lifelong skeptic). I wonder why that is? It really boggles the mind to think about how the modern elite (media outlets, unions, the civil service) might want to maintain the status quo. Perhaps it's the EU's dense bureaucracy and its controlled markets? Perhaps it's the EU's leniency on China and other oppressive regimes? I really can't think about why people intent on a big state would want to encourage a big state. Wasn't Corbyn anti-establishment?

But no, poor Corbyn has been hounded by the big bad media. The left have lost countless elections at home and abroad for over ten years now, and rather than actually think about themselves to see where they're going wrong, they're trying to find any possible excuse. Rather than form a credible opposition, they're painting the public as plebs misled by Murdoch and co. You're too stupid to vote correctly.

The early divisions within the Tory party over Brexit and the fact that they are effectively centre-left shows you the real issue. The media and the elites want their way, why should they care what banner it flies under?
>> No. 90115 Anonymous
30th July 2020
Thursday 9:55 am
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>>90114

You have spaghetti hoops where your brain should be, lad.
>> No. 90116 Anonymous
30th July 2020
Thursday 10:04 am
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>>90114
>Corbyn would have gladly stopped or watered down Brexit (despite being a lifelong skeptic)

If Labour had a different leader would Remain have won?
>> No. 90117 Anonymous
30th July 2020
Thursday 12:42 pm
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>>90114
Go and have a walk outside or summat mate, not healthy to be this het up about Jez still. You won, he's out so is any vaguely left leaning person in Labour. Give it a rest.
>> No. 90121 Anonymous
30th July 2020
Thursday 3:40 pm
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>>90114

Imagine being this angry about someone who resigned a whole year ago. You're going to turn yourself into a gammon from all the steam pouring from your ears, lad - that's how it happens.
>> No. 90126 Anonymous
30th July 2020
Thursday 5:16 pm
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>>90121
Has it been a year since January already? This whole pandemic thing has really screwed with our perception of time, hasn't it?
>> No. 90130 Anonymous
30th July 2020
Thursday 7:19 pm
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>>90126

Christ, it really has.

I also don't think six months is a reasonable time to still be that angry, however.
>> No. 90131 Anonymous
31st July 2020
Friday 10:08 am
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>>90121
I'll have to remember this post the next time I hear someone gripe about Thatcher. We've got gammons running around who weren't even born before she resigned.
>> No. 90132 Anonymous
31st July 2020
Friday 10:10 am
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>>90131

At least Thatcher was actually in power.
>> No. 90133 Anonymous
1st August 2020
Saturday 12:09 am
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It's when the crowds stop turning up, he has to worry. Not so long ago, this would have been a fully "rally" - his base are deserting him.

It's delicious to watch, but Biden can't be complacent. This is his election to lose now.
>> No. 90134 Anonymous
1st August 2020
Saturday 4:31 am
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>>90133
I don't see the bright side at all, or even the darkly comic one. I think Trump might well turn out to be, in a very loose sense of course, the Sulla to some later inheritor's Julius Ceasar. The idea that a man like Biden stands any hope of ameliorating the countless problems up and down American scoiety is an absurdity not worthy of consideration. In his own words; "No one's standard of living will change, nothing would fundamentally change", that may have been a year ago, but men as old and conservative as Biden are not prone to revalation. I simply do not see Trumpism being put back in the bottle, I don't think the Democrats offer and effective resistance of any kind and the American left is, well, what of it?

Trump has shown that a man with enough charisma, cash and willpower can get away with far more both personally and politically than any American realised and hardly suffer at all for it. Any suggestion that this all goes away with him is ignorant and naive I'm not saying you are btw just generally speaking. I think we are sliding towards a far-right world in which progress will be undone and villainy unleashed. I know this manner of end of days thinking is common to many people at many times in history, but I don't see any kind of comeback on the cards. People claim there's an overwhelmingly left-wing generation just getting started in the world, but to my mind we simply haven't seen the awakening of those that will make up the bulk of the right of twenty years from now.
>> No. 90136 Anonymous
1st August 2020
Saturday 2:54 pm
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>>90134
>I simply do not see Trumpism being put back in the bottle

I agree with a lot of what you say, particularly this point - but he has done badly enough over the last 8 months to rule out most chances of re-election. Biden isn't a perfect candidate by any means, and we have to hope he heralds a new left-wing generation thats a lot less male, old, and a lot less white. Given the pain of the past three years, it's a start.

The virus will also prompt (hopefully) some soul-searching over what a public health system looks like. I don't like much of what is going on politically right now, but Trumps abject failure this year means that some change is coming, and I can be optimistic at that.
>> No. 90137 Anonymous
1st August 2020
Saturday 3:05 pm
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>>90136
>hope he heralds a new left-wing generation thats a lot less male, old, and a lot less white.

And then, for no reason at all, people voted for Hitler.
>> No. 90140 Anonymous
1st August 2020
Saturday 3:30 pm
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>>90137
Well done lad, Godwins Law is all yours.
>> No. 90141 Anonymous
1st August 2020
Saturday 3:48 pm
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>>90136
>hope he heralds a new left-wing generation thats a lot less male, old, and a lot less white.
I'm hoping for a reform left that won't pander to this trendy nonsense, personally.
>> No. 90142 Anonymous
1st August 2020
Saturday 4:03 pm
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>>90141
You mean a left that is primarily concerned with old-fashioned issues like income inequality and workers' rights instead of identity politics? Outrageous!
>> No. 90143 Anonymous
1st August 2020
Saturday 4:04 pm
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>>90141
>> No. 90146 Anonymous
1st August 2020
Saturday 7:06 pm
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>>90141

Obviously you need to reassess your racially derived bias in life experience, m8.

You lads jest, but the American neo-liberal establishment has already successfully mind-broken its more progressively inclined subjects into believing support for policies like universal healthcare, and therefore people like Sanders, is rooted in the supremacy of white men. This stuff isn't a joke any more.
>> No. 90147 Anonymous
1st August 2020
Saturday 8:01 pm
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>>90146

Can you provide an example of this? I'm fascinated by how economically progressive agendas are detailed by identity politics.
>> No. 90149 Anonymous
1st August 2020
Saturday 8:45 pm
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>>90147

Do you remember the manufactured outrage about "Bernie Bros" terrorising the country saying mean things on the internet?
>> No. 90175 Anonymous
8th August 2020
Saturday 3:43 pm
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Listen up, fat. I don't want my grandkids growing up in a jungle. A racial jungle. I got hairy legs that turn blonde in the sun, and the kids used to come up and reach in the pool and rub my leg. And I’ve loved kids jumping on my lap, you lying dog faced pony soldier.
>> No. 90176 Anonymous
8th August 2020
Saturday 3:49 pm
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>>90175
gb2 Twitter.
>> No. 90177 Anonymous
8th August 2020
Saturday 10:54 pm
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In the most horrible way possible, President Trump has just played an absolute blinder. He's just signed an excutive order to continue unployment insurance at $400 a week, meaning the Democrats need to take him to court to prove that the excutive branch can't just give away money to whoever or whatever it wants, which it can't by the way. Or they simply hold their tongue, accept that he's completely undone this long established norm and Trump still gets all the credit for getting folk their cash.

>“If we get sued, it’s somebody that doesn’t want people to get money, OK?” he said. “And that’s not going to be a very popular thing,”

Meanwhile Biden's still essentially running the "I'm not Trump" non-campaign.
>> No. 90178 Anonymous
8th August 2020
Saturday 11:12 pm
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>Biden's still essentially running the "I'm not Trump" non-campaign.

It feels like in this country we've had at least a decade of Labour running on "we're not the Tories" and the Tories running on "we're not Labour."
>> No. 90179 Anonymous
8th August 2020
Saturday 11:53 pm
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>>90177
>Meanwhile Biden's still essentially running the "I'm not Trump" non-campaign.

It's a very different political system there - that is literally all he has to do now to win.
>> No. 90180 Anonymous
9th August 2020
Sunday 2:44 am
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>>90177
>He's just signed an excutive order to continue unployment insurance at $400 a week

He's signed a non-legally binding order to contribute $300, if the home state that person lives in agrees to contribute $100. Most of them can't afford to do that. The devil as ever is in the detail.
>> No. 90181 Anonymous
9th August 2020
Sunday 1:29 pm
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>>90177

That wouldn't harm the Democrats much, if anything it'll probably help them. American politics in general is radically to the right of ours, this is not analogous to Labour challenging the Tories on over-generous benefits. Giving out free money is commie talk.
>> No. 90182 Anonymous
9th August 2020
Sunday 2:27 pm
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>>90181
>Giving out free money is commie talk.

On the contrary this isn't a controversial tool in America at all. It's popular like tax cuts with the same collective dissonance based around rebates which is why Bush isn't viewed as a socialist for his 2008 stimulus package. It's a different system entirely.

It's not like here where you pay absurd taxes in a low-wage economy that typically disappear up the arse of a banker/"community leader".
>> No. 90183 Anonymous
9th August 2020
Sunday 2:39 pm
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>>90182
The UK has pretty low tax rates compared to European standards.
>> No. 90185 Anonymous
11th August 2020
Tuesday 9:45 pm
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Trump is going to be humiliated.

Kamala Harris is a great pick for VP and in all likelihood, will become the first female president.
>> No. 90186 Anonymous
11th August 2020
Tuesday 11:02 pm
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>>90185
>Kamala Harris is a great pick for VP

No, no shes the worst possible candidate. Hence why she lost the presidential nomination. She's Raab.


There's an argument that she will be the law and order candidate to Biden (because obviously he's a left-wing radical?) but she's from California so I don't see her doing well with moderates.
>> No. 90187 Anonymous
11th August 2020
Tuesday 11:08 pm
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>>90186
You're highlighting Tulsi Gabbard by comparison? She is a joke, literally a Russian asset.

>she's from California so I don't see her doing well with moderates

Have you ever been to California?
>> No. 90188 Anonymous
12th August 2020
Wednesday 12:20 am
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>>90185
She is not well liked and for good reason. This just seems like the dems giving more opportunity to Trump again.
>> No. 90189 Anonymous
12th August 2020
Wednesday 12:40 am
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>>90187
California is nothing but wishy-washy liberals, only in the eyes of the paranoid delusionals in the Republican party is it anything more.
>> No. 90190 Anonymous
12th August 2020
Wednesday 12:41 am
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>>90189
You are confusing SanFran and the bay area with California.
>> No. 90191 Anonymous
12th August 2020
Wednesday 1:15 am
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>>90190
Exactly this. The peace-loving hippy stereptype for California is a facile, juvenile stereotype which becomes immediately obvious the minute you visit the place; those people exist in certain parts, and while you're less likely to meet/communicate with outright rabid right-wingers there, it's one of the most prosperous states in the country and as a result most people are what they call moderate.
>> No. 90192 Anonymous
12th August 2020
Wednesday 1:59 am
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>>90188
I'm not sure "she's half-Black and has a track record of diverting people away from the school-to-prison-and/or-death pipeline" really counts as "good reason", m8.
>> No. 90193 Anonymous
12th August 2020
Wednesday 2:55 am
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American here

AMA
>> No. 90194 Anonymous
12th August 2020
Wednesday 3:19 am
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>>90193
When are you leaving?
>> No. 90195 Anonymous
12th August 2020
Wednesday 3:45 am
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>>90194
Sorry sweetypie, but I'm staying here for your little political discussion because the UK amuses me.

(A good day to you Sir!)
>> No. 90196 Anonymous
12th August 2020
Wednesday 4:36 am
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>>90195
Well, at least be useful to us then.

If you had to vote today, who will you vote for? And why?
>> No. 90197 Anonymous
12th August 2020
Wednesday 5:34 am
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>>90196
I would actually vote for nobody because nearly all the candidates are old and senile, their ideologies are also badly aging. Both the GOP and DNC need a drastic reforming of themselves, if America is to prosper.

Any more questions, James?
>> No. 90198 Anonymous
12th August 2020
Wednesday 8:13 am
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>>90197

Voting for nobody isn't a solution, you know?
>> No. 90199 Anonymous
12th August 2020
Wednesday 8:19 am
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>>90197
>nearly all the candidates are old and senile

I've seen a few news outlets describe Kamala Harris as a young up and coming rising star. She's 56 this year.
>> No. 90200 Anonymous
12th August 2020
Wednesday 8:35 am
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>>90199

The median age of a president is 55 years old, so I suppose it's all about context.
>> No. 90201 Anonymous
12th August 2020
Wednesday 9:19 am
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>>90191
SF and the wider Bay Area has a lot of liberals, but they're white liberals, and occasionally wealthy faux-liberals. Southern California is more socially conservative. The far north and the rural inland of the state might as well be Alabama.
>> No. 90202 Anonymous
12th August 2020
Wednesday 9:20 am
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>>90197
>I would actually vote for nobody

Sounds about white.
>> No. 90203 Anonymous
12th August 2020
Wednesday 1:43 pm
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>>90197
>I would actually vote for nobody

And this is why it'll be 2016 all over again.
>> No. 90204 Anonymous
12th August 2020
Wednesday 3:01 pm
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You're mad if you think Trump isn't going to win.
>> No. 90205 Anonymous
12th August 2020
Wednesday 4:11 pm
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>>90204
Polling suggests a comfortable victory for Biden.
>> No. 90206 Anonymous
12th August 2020
Wednesday 4:23 pm
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>>90205

The problem with this is Hillary beat Trump by 2 million votes and still lost, so polling data isn't representative in American "democracy". All that matters is passing the tipping point in swing states.
>> No. 90207 Anonymous
12th August 2020
Wednesday 7:13 pm
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>>90205
Shy trump voters ladmnine.
>> No. 90208 Anonymous
12th August 2020
Wednesday 7:29 pm
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>>90207
There are plenty of those for sure, and it'll be a closer contest than it looks now; but Trump can't claim that the "chaos" isn't his own. He won last time in part by being the change candidate, the new guy, not like all the others - we haven't heard of drain the swamp for a while.

Whatever might have happened - his fallback position would always have been "the economy", the booming stockmarket; COVID19 has seen all that off.

It won't be long before he is blaming everything, including his loss, on the Chinese.
>> No. 90209 Anonymous
12th August 2020
Wednesday 8:49 pm
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>>90187
>You're highlighting Tulsi Gabbard by comparison?

No, I'm highlighting that Harris is, as the Americans call her, a cop. This isn't a new development, all those silly meme pages just recycled content from a months back.

>Have you ever been to California?

Have many Floridians and Pennsylvanians? It seems you don't understand how American politics works despite having your nose buried in their establishments arse.

>>90202
>>90203
>And this is why it'll be 2016 all over again.

The Democrats will ignore that they chose an absolutely shit candidate, had a shit programme, and had an electoral strategy that shit on everyone but die-hards? And then of course scream that more people didn't vote for Blue-Tie Hitler.

I'm not even a green but I hope Howie Hawkins does well.
>> No. 90210 Anonymous
12th August 2020
Wednesday 8:51 pm
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>>90209
>The Democrats will ignore that they chose an absolutely shit candidate, had a shit programme, and had an electoral strategy that shit on everyone but die-hards? And then of course scream that more people didn't vote for Blue-Tie Hitler.
This would be a fantastic point if it were even remotely true.
>> No. 90211 Anonymous
12th August 2020
Wednesday 8:56 pm
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>>90210
Thanks but it is.
>> No. 90212 Anonymous
12th August 2020
Wednesday 9:16 pm
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I don't like her because her name is apparently pronounced Komola. Fucking Septics butchering how to pronounce the letter a yet again.
>> No. 90213 Anonymous
12th August 2020
Wednesday 9:31 pm
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>>90211
If you say so, m7.
>> No. 90214 Anonymous
12th August 2020
Wednesday 10:30 pm
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>>90187
Surely if Russia is manipulating US elections, picking a Russian asset for the impotent job of VP would be a good move?
(In normal times anyway. When you've picked your Presidential candidate with the knowledge there's a good chance he'll call it quits before 2024 maybe it's not such a good idea.)

>>90210
Let me guess, Clinton was an excellent candidate and the swing voters were just idiots for not picking the obviously superior candidate?
>> No. 90215 Anonymous
12th August 2020
Wednesday 11:16 pm
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>>90214

>the swing voters were just idiots for not picking the obviously superior candidate?

Let's be honest now. They evidently were.
>> No. 90217 Anonymous
13th August 2020
Thursday 2:36 am
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>>90212
I actually fancy her. Not even a guilty would.
>> No. 90221 Anonymous
13th August 2020
Thursday 11:20 am
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The cognitive dissonance is striking amongst American political commentators right now.

That's identity politics for you.
>> No. 90224 Anonymous
13th August 2020
Thursday 12:11 pm
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>>90221

Those statementa are 2 years apart I think Twitter creates an illusion of dissonance when none exists. The reality is human beings aren't that consistent and talk in hyperbole. There just has never been the same kind of record before.

Also I willing to belive there are considerably more examples of republicans flip flopping on trump and what trumps positions are. So don't start your democrats are disingenuous innuendo bollocks, this picture is Russia troll farm material.
>> No. 90225 Anonymous
13th August 2020
Thursday 12:21 pm
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>>90221
It's almost as if he realised he'd got his facts wrong on Kamala Harris, and that her career is characterised by actively reducing mass incarceration.
>> No. 90227 Anonymous
13th August 2020
Thursday 12:30 pm
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>>90221
I wouldn't say British political commentators are much better. How they view things depends entirely upon how it affects their side and who said it.

Owen Jones has to be the most fickle that I'm aware of as he's very influenced by whichever bellwether he's wrapped himself up in.
>> No. 90228 Anonymous
13th August 2020
Thursday 12:30 pm
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>>90225

Indeed I think America had a massive wake up call about how fucked up their justice system is over the last year. Hardly surprising people have changed their positions.
>> No. 90229 Anonymous
13th August 2020
Thursday 3:50 pm
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>>90224
>illusion of dissonance

I fucking hate the idea that peoples views can't change or evolve over time. They do, and its a healthy, normal thing to happen to someone; we are growing in some way all the time. People who dredge up historical posts in this way are almost always intellectually bankrupt pricks.
>> No. 90230 Anonymous
13th August 2020
Thursday 5:43 pm
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>>90229
In fairness those Tweets are from Shaun King, a man with a past shadier than a black hole.
>> No. 90231 Anonymous
13th August 2020
Thursday 7:06 pm
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>>90229

While that's perfectly valid and true, in this case it's quite transparently not what has happened.

What has happened in this example is a man with absolutely no strongly held beliefs or principles to speak of whatsoever, besides being on "the good side" (i.e the democrats), has done a completely cynical, heel face turn on an issue he was quite clear about as recently as a year or two back, because... Well, because he has to, and it reveals how hollow everything he says actually is.
>> No. 90232 Anonymous
13th August 2020
Thursday 8:29 pm
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>>90231
Why do you care about him?
>> No. 90233 Anonymous
13th August 2020
Thursday 9:03 pm
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>>90232

They don't. They just want trump to win and since he has no redeaming qualities to big up, as his USP is that he is a sneering bully, the only play is to sow doubt in the democrats.
>> No. 90234 Anonymous
13th August 2020
Thursday 9:28 pm
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When Trump wanted to reach Russian President Vladimir Putin, via a secret back channel, I was tasked with making the connection in my Keystone Kop fashion. I stiffed contractors on his behalf, ripped off his business partners, lied to his wife Melania to hide his sexual infidelities, and bullied and screamed at anyone who threatened Trump’s path to power. From golden showers in a sex club in Vegas, to tax fraud, to deals with corrupt officials from the former Soviet Union, to catch and kill conspiracies to silence Trump’s clandestine lovers, I wasn’t just a witness to the president’s rise—I was an active and eager participant.

https://disloyalthebook.com/download-the-disloyal-foreword-written-by-michael-cohen/

Well, this is going to be interesting.
>> No. 90235 Anonymous
13th August 2020
Thursday 9:32 pm
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>>90233
>the only play is to sow doubt in the democrats

Watch out, lads. Here's onto our sinister plot to suppress Democrat voters in Britain!
>> No. 90236 Anonymous
13th August 2020
Thursday 10:04 pm
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>>90233

What are you on about you blithering idiot. I'm just pointing out how vapid a lot of the "takes" on this are.

It actually baffles me we have so many die hard DNC establishment supporters for a niche British image-board. From this side of the Atlantic, it should be pretty easy to see there is no lesser evil in American politics, just different kinds.

Sometimes, I get my kicks walking under ladders.
>> No. 90237 Anonymous
13th August 2020
Thursday 10:38 pm
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>>90236
Probably those /pol/ posters from the other place innit. I've noticed this too though.
>> No. 90238 Anonymous
13th August 2020
Thursday 10:42 pm
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>>90236

Nice deflection lad, I don't think anyone noticed.

>It actually baffles me we have so many die hard DNC establishment supporters for a niche British image-board.

We don't, we just have a lot of people who hate trump enough and think he is terrible enough, that saying "UM THEY CHANGED THEIR OPINION! 2 YEARS LATER" isn't going to convince us that the dems candidate isn't a better choice than trump you thicko.
>> No. 90239 Anonymous
13th August 2020
Thursday 10:57 pm
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>>90238
It's just performative copycat racism for the most part. Many of them don't have a single original thought or opinion - that's what is disappointing.
>> No. 90240 Anonymous
13th August 2020
Thursday 11:12 pm
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>>90238
>We don't, we just have a lot of people who hate trump enough and think he is terrible enough, that saying "UM THEY CHANGED THEIR OPINION! 2 YEARS LATER" isn't going to convince us that the dems candidate isn't a better choice than trump you thicko.

He's right, you are an idiot. It's not just falling into a two-party paradigm but your apparent failure to recognise that America's problem is systematic and won't be fixed by blue-tie man and his cop VP. You're just a screaming ideologue that can't spot the joke.
>> No. 90241 Anonymous
13th August 2020
Thursday 11:40 pm
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>>90240

Oh please, Obama was fine. Bill Clinton was fine. Trump was the worse thing to happen to the free world in my life time. Cut the "they are just as bad as each other" bollocks.
>> No. 90242 Anonymous
13th August 2020
Thursday 11:44 pm
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>>90240
>It's not just falling into a two-party paradigm

It IS a dichotomy. That is what it is, the time for your bollocks was during the primaries, now you have 2 choices, it is a zero sum game, if you are attacking the Democrat you are supporting the republican it really is so simple even the Americans can understand it.
>> No. 90243 Anonymous
13th August 2020
Thursday 11:52 pm
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>>90241
You think a president who says mean things on twitter is worse than two presidents with a penchant for warmongering?
>> No. 90244 Anonymous
13th August 2020
Thursday 11:57 pm
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>>90241
>Obama was fine. Bill Clinton was fine

No they weren't.
>> No. 90245 Anonymous
13th August 2020
Thursday 11:59 pm
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>>90244
Yeah thanks for that professor.
>> No. 90246 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 12:01 am
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>>90241

I suppose if you are both cynical and blindly idealistic enough to call the Nobel peace prize winner who signed off the bombing of a hospital operated by Medcines Sans Frontiers "fine", there's no arguing with you.
>> No. 90247 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 12:22 am
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>>90243
Obama didn't start any wars, so lets not make shit up.

No I think the president who is mismanaging a pandemic, and denied aid to his own contrymen because their state was the wrong colour, Is in bed with the russians and neo Nazis is worse.
>> No. 90248 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 12:26 am
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>>90247
Today's stuff about how he is witholding funding from the US Post Office, because he doesn't want postal voting is (even by his standards) a new fucking low. Nothing Clinton or Obama (or Bush, let's not be partisan about it) comes even close to Trump's narcissism and bullshit.
>> No. 90249 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 2:15 pm
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>>90248

I love how you lot are so desperate to paint Trump as the actual anti-Christ that you're even rehabilitating George Doubleyou Fucking Bush. That bit really beggars belief. You're just relying on people who don't remember as far back as 2000-2008 aren't you.

Are you the same lot behind the Corbyn Wants Holocaust 2.0 campaign?
>> No. 90250 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 2:26 pm
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When was the last time a president suggested cancel an election? and what do we call the sort of people who do?

I assumed that your sort would repent for your sins long before the point he had killed 100,000 americans through mismanagement and neglect. But no I guess you'll go on sneering till the end as the western world crumbles.
>> No. 90251 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 2:40 pm
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>>90250
Do you get all your news from CNN?
>> No. 90252 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 2:45 pm
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>>90249
Nobody is doing that - we're just drawing comparisons with previous presidents to highlight the point, without necessarily making it a partisan issue.
>> No. 90253 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 2:48 pm
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>>90251
Which bit of his post is wrong? And what does CNN have to do with?

Trump suggested cancelling/moving the election. He is actively trying to get the US Post Office to interfere / slow down the flow of postal ballots. Over 100,000 Americans are dead (I'm quite sure the real number is far higher) because of his extremely poor leadership on the issue. All this is fake news?
>> No. 90254 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 3:23 pm
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>>90249
>I love how you lot are so desperate to paint Trump as the actual anti-Christ that you're even rehabilitating George Doubleyou Fucking Bush.
Mate. Trump is a literal fascist. Not a hyperbolic-I-don't-agree-with-you fascist, but an actual according-with-legitimate-definitions fascist. Saying he's worse than Bush isn't "rehabilitating" Bush, it's stating an objective fact.
>> No. 90256 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 4:23 pm
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>>90254

If Trump is a fascist he's the shittest fascist the world has ever seen. Get a fucking grip lad.
>> No. 90258 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 4:55 pm
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>>90256
No, I think you'll find that Tommy Robinson has him beaten hands down on that front.
>> No. 90265 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 7:36 pm
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>>90258

Oswald Mosley would be heartbroken to see the sort of ingrates carrying the torch for him these days, no doubt about that.
>> No. 90266 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 8:12 pm
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>>90256

That didn’t happen. And if it did, it wasn’t that bad. And if it was, that’s not a big deal. And if it is, it is not his fault. And if it was, he didn’t mean it. And if he did. You deserved it.
>> No. 90269 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 9:22 pm
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>>90266

My favourite part of 1984 was where O'Brien drunkenly slurs nonsense at Winston before flushing a copy of Kamala Harris' birth certificate down the memory hole.

"I'm just saying, you know, it's... It's just something I'm saying, you know, that we ought to be saying. I mean, you tell me. We need to think about that."

"... What?" Winston replied, frowning deeply.

Honestly you lot are off your fucking rockers. I'm as lefty as they come and from where I'm sitting the Yanks are between a rock and a hard place on this one. I genuinely don't understand where you guys are coming from- It is inconceivable to me that anyone could possibly support the status quo of this nightmare dystopia we live in, and you're not making any logical arguments, you're just bleating hysterics.
>> No. 90270 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 9:34 pm
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>>90269
Yeah, I can see how it's a tough choice for them this time around. On the one hand, a handsy old bloke with enough party loyalty to wave through whatever Congress passes and a prosecutor with a record of trying not to send people to prison for minor stuff; on the other, an actual fascist and a religious fundamentalist. Proper rock/hard place stuff.
>> No. 90271 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 9:38 pm
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>>90270

War with Iran by 2022 then, triffic.
>> No. 90272 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 9:40 pm
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>>90269

It fits fine with Steve Bannon's "Flood the zone with shit" or if you want to put it down to the hypernormalisation of Putin's mate that was in the theatre or something, whether they're doing it on purpose or are incompetent idiots doing it just because they can't do any better, the end result seems to be the same.
>> No. 90273 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 9:41 pm
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>>90271
Guest spot on Live at the Apollo guaranteed there, m9.
>> No. 90274 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 9:41 pm
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>>90270
I couldn't agree with you more.
>> No. 90275 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 9:41 pm
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>>90270

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2015/12/10/9886152/donald-trump-fascism
>> No. 90276 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 9:44 pm
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>>90275
>Updated May 19, 2016

Trump's administration is currently on 13/14 of the Fourteen Characteristics. The only one he's missing is "fraudulent elections", though it seems his fuckery with the postal system is getting there.
>> No. 90277 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 9:50 pm
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>>90275
>>90276
Can we just agree that it's bad, instead of arguing over whether it fits one specific definition or another?
>> No. 90279 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 9:57 pm
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>>90275
> vox.com
A neutral source!
>> No. 90280 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 9:57 pm
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America has already been a fascist country for well over forty years, the election of a nice old grandad and his slightly mocha VP won't change a thing. The only difference with Trump is that he's too much of a numpty to hide it; or as some have suggested, the security services that really wield power over the nation are using him as a scapegoat to push the boundaries of their power.

This really is a case of making bets in a burning house.
>> No. 90281 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 10:02 pm
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>>90279

A very liberal leaning source, which is why it makes it all the more credible to find them saying no, Donald Trump is not a fascist.

The man's a cunt, but saying he is a literal fascist* just makes you sound like a tosser fresh out of Uni who gets their worldview from too much time on Twitter and zero knowledge of history.

*Imagine I said that in the same voice Jim Sterling says Triple A
>> No. 90282 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 10:02 pm
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>>90280
>or as some have suggested, the security services that really wield power over the nation

This is the part where you showed you have been listening to unhinged people.
>> No. 90283 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 10:05 pm
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>>90282

This line of defence lost all credibility post-Snowden, try again.
>> No. 90284 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 10:07 pm
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>>90281
They're specifically saying that, as of December 2015, Donald Trump was not a fascist. Which was indeed true.
>> No. 90285 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 10:09 pm
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>>90283
Snowden showed us many things, but mostly that the security services are incompetent.
>> No. 90286 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 10:09 pm
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I feel like the argument, he's not a fascist 'because he is only threaterning to remove democracy he hasn't done it yet' is pretty weak.

It sits up there with 'It doesn't count as perverting of the course of justice when he attempted to meddled with the Muller report, because he failed in his attempt to pervert the course of justice'. It is a specious reasoning that only appeals to indoctrinated, and has the obvious catch 22 of if he succeeds he gets away with it and there is no capacity to dispute it then.

You can call it a complete disregard for the rule of law and convention, and a disregard for the truth instead if you like. Either way it make for a dangerously unaccountable leader that is worse than the presented altenative, if you care at all about principals in society.
>> No. 90287 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 10:18 pm
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I want whoever will run the American hegemony into the ground and leave it a humbled, smoking wreck the fastest to win. That looks like Trump right now.

B-but Russia! B-but China! Please. Russia is barely a threat, and we've already voluntarily bent over for China by selling them pretty much our entire industrial base. It's far too late to be worrying about that by propping up the final, decaying imperialist power.

What America does in its death throes will be truly dangerous for us all, and I'd rather they fall swiftly. I want them out of the running before they start World War Three.
>> No. 90290 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 10:38 pm
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>>90287

>I want them out of the running before they start World War Three.

Surely the current administration is more likely to take themselves out of the running by doing exactly that?
>> No. 90292 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 11:34 pm
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This is fucking hilarious (and awkward, even for the crowd that was there, you can hear a pin drop).
>> No. 90293 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 11:38 pm
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>>90290

I don't recall even at the height of the cold war either side expressly playing chicken with the threat of launching nuclear weapons. Obviously there was the Cuban missile crisis but that was about the freedom of deployment never talk of pressing the button.
>> No. 90294 Anonymous
14th August 2020
Friday 11:55 pm
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>>90292

I love this but I can also fully imagine this being the primary slogan for the GOP at this point.

VOTE TRUMP FOR RUMP
>> No. 90295 Anonymous
15th August 2020
Saturday 12:02 am
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>>90292
Mate, the Yanks are off the farm, he's talking to people with brains there, no concsience, but a brain. The maniacs will, excuse the pun, eat this nonsense up. This isn't over by any stretch. Although Mike Pence does come across a bit Frankenstein's Monster in his mannerisms which isn't exactly a boon for your campaign.
>> No. 90296 Anonymous
15th August 2020
Saturday 12:09 am
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>>90293

Actually, Dwight D. Eisenhower did pretty much exactly that in 1953 to end the Korean War.

Just imagine if he'd had access to twitter.
>> No. 90302 Anonymous
15th August 2020
Saturday 4:28 am
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>>90294
It's the rhetoric that is just hilarious - the bit right at the end where he gives it WE'RE NOT GOING TO LET THEM CUT AMERICAS MEAT like it's a deeply serious statement - nobody in the audience says anything, like, is he talking about PENIS? Is this about COCK? You can hear how afraid they are of the idea.

Saturday Night Live or any other comedian couldn't top that. It's just so contrived and awkward.
>> No. 90303 Anonymous
15th August 2020
Saturday 11:56 pm
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I'm 99% certain the Democrat supporters in this thread would find a way to rationalise and justify voting for Hitler himself if he wore a blue tie and ran against Trump, at this stage.
>> No. 90304 Anonymous
16th August 2020
Sunday 12:12 am
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>>90303
>justify voting for Hitler himself

You've outdone yourself lad - you have so little original thought to present that you've invoked Godwins Law! Great work!
>> No. 90305 Anonymous
16th August 2020
Sunday 12:19 am
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This thread is awful and I'm finally convinced I'm the smartest person here (still stupid mind you).
>> No. 90306 Anonymous
16th August 2020
Sunday 12:26 am
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>>90304

The Internet collectively agreed a new rule in 2017, that anyone who still plays the Godwin's Law card and thinks they're clever, automatically loses whatever debate they were in.
>> No. 90308 Anonymous
16th August 2020
Sunday 10:50 am
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>>90303

Hitler could manage a economy and a national crisis better.
>> No. 90309 Anonymous
16th August 2020
Sunday 4:28 pm
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903099030990309
I saw this and thought of this thread.
>> No. 90310 Anonymous
16th August 2020
Sunday 6:15 pm
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>>90306
The internet collectively decided that there are Two Sides Only, and your are With Us Or Against Us. No compromise, you're my tribe or an outsider. Antisocial media drives people to take extreme positions because that's what gets them attention. And attention and profit seeking is all the internet is these days. Mostly. Not around here. But get involved in "Social Media" and it hopfully it'll become apparent that it's commodifying relationships. That thin veneer of "stay in touch" should not blind you to notion that these platforms are not utilities. Their interest is in making money of you, if you don't pay for it you can be sure they make money of you some other way. It gets a but /boo/, but there comes a point where viewing the odd ad doesn't pay for it anymore because how they really make money is by selling who you are to the highest bidder who wants to influence you. And it's long past buying this or that detergent.
>> No. 90311 Anonymous
16th August 2020
Sunday 9:00 pm
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>>90310
>The internet collectively decided that there are Two Sides Only

But which is better?
Pictured: typical Internet cryptofascist.
>> No. 90312 Anonymous
16th August 2020
Sunday 9:02 pm
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>>90310

You're only just realising these things now, mate? Not to sound condescending, but anyone with their eyes open realised this about five or six years ago, and it's no longer even controversial. It's no longer tinfoil material- But therein lies the rub, because most of your ordinary people are just prepared to accept it by now.

Right now is a terrible time for young people to be getting into politics, anyway. Especially the American flavour. Things are so hyper-polarised and tribal that they're going to grow up thinking it's absolutely normal and correct to think of political; parties the way you would a sports team, or your preferred computer hardware vendor, viciously attacking their detractors and insulating yourself from criticism in reality tunnel sub-Rebbits and Discord channels.
>> No. 90313 Anonymous
16th August 2020
Sunday 9:09 pm
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>>90312

People will grow up thinking it's normal to go to war over politics? That's unheard of!
>> No. 90314 Anonymous
16th August 2020
Sunday 9:11 pm
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>>90310
I don't think that's a new phenomenon. Especially in the context of a presidential election in a representative two party democracy, "with us or against us" is essentially how politics works by definition.
>> No. 90315 Anonymous
16th August 2020
Sunday 9:11 pm
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>>90312
> You're only just realising these things now, mate?


No, just stating the obvious.
>> No. 90316 Anonymous
16th August 2020
Sunday 9:20 pm
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When you're a certain breed of old fashioned socialist, you find an incompetent conservative far less offensive than a competent liberal. That perspective certainly accounts for a lot of the anti-Democrat left. The confusion arises because liberal types always think they're the good guys, and simply can't comprehend why someone might think otherwise.

>>90313

In the past, there were meaningful distinctions worth fighting for.
>> No. 90317 Anonymous
16th August 2020
Sunday 10:09 pm
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>>90316
>That perspective certainly accounts for a lot of the anti-Democrat left.
I don't think it does. It's more like left-wingers see the writing on the wall for the current socio-economic system and know meaningful changes have to be made. Biden clearly isn't going to make those kinds of changes so the left feels it's only a matter of time before another Trump comes back around. Even if they don't things just get worse and worse without a arch-bastard in charge but the end result is the same; lower standards of living and more civil strife. I think people find it easier to stomach conservatives doing awful things because half of them are idiots and the other half do it with a nod and wink like a panto villain, whereas, as you say, the centrist liberals can't imagine any of their ideas not alleviating people's misery, least of all contributing to it.

Pic related is a good example of the kind of thing I mean. It's like polishing your hub caps while the car's engine is on fire and someone's left a python on the back seat. Still, whatever happened to Kamal Harris anyway?
>> No. 90338 Anonymous
19th August 2020
Wednesday 11:07 am
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>>90312
Honestly the more I've learned about political history, the more I've concluded the only way to rationalise my support for my preferred party is to treat it as a sports team. The last faction within it that I could muster any enthusiasm for was more or dead by the time I was born. Most parties across the world have been hollowed out to the point that the most compelling reasons to support them are they used to be good, or that the incumbent has been in office too long.
Increasing polarisation has at least made things interesting. American style wedge issues are tedious, but with the light of hindsight the 2017 and 2019 election campaigns were much less depressing than the 2010 and 2015 campaigns in terms of the breadth of choice available to the public.

My god though, policy and party management aside you really have to wonder about the decline in political personalities over the years. Biden/Trump, it's not exactly Carter/Reagan.
>> No. 90339 Anonymous
19th August 2020
Wednesday 11:57 am
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>>90316

>The confusion arises because liberal types always think they're the good guys, and simply can't comprehend why someone might think otherwise.

So do right wingers know they're the baddies?
>> No. 90340 Anonymous
19th August 2020
Wednesday 12:30 pm
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>>90339
The way I see it, at least in this country is that lefties think they're morally right so anyone who disagrees with them is not just wrong, they're evil. Evil Tory scum. Righties tend to think they're intellectually right so anyone who disagrees with them is naive, foolish and not experienced in how the world works.
>> No. 90341 Anonymous
19th August 2020
Wednesday 1:43 pm
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>>90339
>>90340

Liberal these days pretty much means the "enlightened centrist", they like to think they're the left, but fail to realise they only actually are in so much as they're not the right. Hence they can't comprehend leftist critique, and jump to the conclusion that anyone critical of them is a MAGA/Brexit populist right winger.

Then again, the left itself is in an absolutely pitiful state these days. Truly disgraceful levels of infighting and toxicity.
>> No. 90342 Anonymous
19th August 2020
Wednesday 3:14 pm
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>>90339>>90340
If you really want to trigger people, tell them you've voted for both sides recently. I'm a tactical swing voter, I don't think I have ever voted for the same party twice in a row.
>> No. 90343 Anonymous
19th August 2020
Wednesday 3:18 pm
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>>90342
>tactical swing voter

Aye, but who are you tactically trying to get in?
>> No. 90344 Anonymous
19th August 2020
Wednesday 3:50 pm
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>>90343
Pretty sure that the next time I vote it will be Keir Starmer. The previous time round it was Boris.

A bit like the US election, to bring it back on topic, I think you should vote for the best of a bad lot, rather than make blind ideological choices.
>> No. 90345 Anonymous
19th August 2020
Wednesday 3:57 pm
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>>90344
Yes, incentivising politicians to just be the least bad has done us all so well so far.
>> No. 90346 Anonymous
19th August 2020
Wednesday 4:30 pm
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>>90345
Get over it, Jezza.
>> No. 90347 Anonymous
19th August 2020
Wednesday 4:37 pm
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>>90342

What I don't get is what on earth you think is at all tactical about that. You're just voting for whoever you like the most like everybody else, and don't have any party loyalty.

It's a bit daft in this country because we all still try keep up this pretence that were voting for the best MP in our constituency, which is blatantly not true. We're voting for who we want running the government. It might as well be a presidential election at the end of the day.
>> No. 90348 Anonymous
19th August 2020
Wednesday 5:12 pm
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>>90344
>I think you should vote for the best of a bad lot, rather than make blind ideological choices

I've ended up taking the opposite view after a long-time of weighing up options. The problem is that every party will have something you fundamentally disagree with and when you get to the level of trading those off it's just silly because your vote clearly doesn't matter to them.

Naturally parties are big tents and you can have impact if they can stomach party politics (or so the pamphlet goes). The thing is, there's third parties who at least promise to break the system through electoral reform or who will otherwise trip up the establishment. You might even support their policies. They will almost certainly have more nuts than a meccano set and chances of getting into power are slim but it beats propping up a broken system and some people will get impossibly angry at you for doing it.
>> No. 90349 Anonymous
19th August 2020
Wednesday 5:37 pm
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>>90346
As the Power grows, its proved friends will also grow; and the Wise, such as you and I, may with patience come at last to direct its courses, to control it. We can bide our time, we can keep our thoughts in our hearts, deploring maybe evils done by the way, but approving the high and ultimate purpose: Knowledge, Rule, Order…
>> No. 90363 Anonymous
20th August 2020
Thursday 1:47 am
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>> No. 90364 Anonymous
20th August 2020
Thursday 5:59 am
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>>90344
You can't "vote for the best of a bad lot, rather than make blind ideological choices" because blind ideology is what tells you which option is the best of the bad lot.
>> No. 90367 Anonymous
20th August 2020
Thursday 8:46 am
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>>90364

What an absolutely absurd position.
>> No. 90369 Anonymous
20th August 2020
Thursday 10:41 am
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>>90367
Go ahead and reveal your non ideological system for deducing which choice is the best of a bad lot then. Use any UK election you like as your example.
>> No. 90371 Anonymous
20th August 2020
Thursday 11:33 am
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>>90369
Apple and oranges. But the answer is competence.

We don't need a mechanism for removing an incompetent PMs at elections because we don't vote for them we vote for the party. parties remove them before that point and present a new one in their place. When we vote we vote for the whole organisation. when they vote they vote for a single person.
>> No. 90372 Anonymous
20th August 2020
Thursday 11:43 am
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>>90371
Competence at what? Actual competence (of the sort you might find in a good administrative leader with no PR skills), or competence at creating an impression of competence amongst the electorate? (which honestly is where most politicians stand) A "competent" set of policies, or will you take any policy package so long as it's delivered competently?

(I'm aware of how tedious this is, but it might be a fun exercise.)
>> No. 90373 Anonymous
20th August 2020
Thursday 12:02 pm
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>>90369
For the US this year, this is fairly easy.

The current administration is objectively awful, and Duverger's Law reduces it to a choice between two, so you vote for whichever candidate is "the other one".
>> No. 90430 Anonymous
25th August 2020
Tuesday 9:54 am
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It boggles my mind that America tolerates the Trump children, to the extent with which they do - in any other country this would be seen dangerous nepotism.

Or are they just aiming to becoming Royal and therefore just as flawed as our system? Donald Trump Jr wouldn't be given the time of day here as a serious political person. Is he Prince Andrew in disguise?

Were I the Democrats I would be going very long on this point.
>> No. 90431 Anonymous
25th August 2020
Tuesday 10:07 am
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>>90430
America has a bit of a thing for political dynasties.
>> No. 90432 Anonymous
25th August 2020
Tuesday 10:18 am
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>>90431
One of the kids should stand for election then - the least you can say about the Kennedys/Bush's is that they stood for lesser/local elections first. Granted they would have had a lot of help.

I can't see DonJr or Ivanka suddenly standing to be a governor or a representive somewhere - they don't have the patience (or mental ability, obviously).
>> No. 90433 Anonymous
25th August 2020
Tuesday 10:32 am
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>>90432
They probably don't see the point in doing the legwork if Trump managed to become President with no real experience.

Plus, I believe it's the White House or nothing as they're afraid of going to prison once Trump is out.
>> No. 90434 Anonymous
25th August 2020
Tuesday 10:43 am
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>>90430
Well Biden's kids spoke at the DNC, so it's not really an angle they can work.
>> No. 90435 Anonymous
25th August 2020
Tuesday 1:26 pm
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>>90434
Perhaps - but a good move on his part would be to say that he isn't about to staff the White House with his children.
>> No. 90450 Anonymous
25th August 2020
Tuesday 10:31 pm
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>>90434
Biden's late son was an elected official who rejected calls to step into higher positions, and he spoke at 2008 and 2012 in support of his father. The other two mostly gave a sentimental piece about him this year.

Baby Trump was effectively lining himself up as a potential successor. He said almost nothing about family life.

Some of the speeches had a tone and presentation reminiscent of the Nuremberg rally, and lots of the inserts seemed like something you'd find on state TV in North Korea.

I'm not saying it's turning into a dictatorial personality cult, but the party has said they're not putting forward a manifesto at all and will instead just back The Donald in whatever he says or does.
>> No. 90451 Anonymous
25th August 2020
Tuesday 10:36 pm
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>>90450
>North Korea
>Baby Trump was effectively lining himself up as a potential successor. He said almost nothing about family life.

He looks and sounds coked off his nut, it is one of the most unhinged things I have ever seen.


>> No. 90454 Anonymous
25th August 2020
Tuesday 11:43 pm
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>>90451
The first thing he even did into the mic was sniff.
>> No. 90458 Anonymous
26th August 2020
Wednesday 9:18 pm
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>>90451


This one is perhaps worse - she is his partner. What's weird about these two is that they were pre-recorded and made to an empty room of people.
>> No. 90459 Anonymous
27th August 2020
Thursday 12:55 am
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>>90458
Oh and this picture is great. Way before she decided she was a Republican and got with MiniTrump, she was married to the governor of California (which she spoke of at length during this speech), who is a Democrat.

Nice picture. Monstrous woman.
>> No. 90460 Anonymous
27th August 2020
Thursday 6:06 pm
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>>90451

Fucking hell, I didn't expect it to be that bad. I feel almost exactly like I've been cornered at a party.
>> No. 90882 Anonymous
25th October 2020
Sunday 6:05 am
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https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/oct/24/johnson-will-wait-for-us-election-result-before-no-deal-brexit-decision

I agree with this view very much. When Trump loses, Boris is toast. We're about to get a two-for-one deal.
>> No. 90883 Anonymous
25th October 2020
Sunday 6:52 am
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>>90882
The trouble is that after the purge last year we'll be lumbered with another Tory shitbag for the next four years.
>> No. 90884 Anonymous
25th October 2020
Sunday 6:56 am
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>>90882
Cue that one poster who hates American politics being discussed because we're a separate country and their problems have nothing to do with us.
>> No. 90885 Anonymous
27th October 2020
Tuesday 8:24 pm
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One week to go.

Genuinely excited.
>> No. 90886 Anonymous
27th October 2020
Tuesday 8:34 pm
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>>90885
It'll probably take another week or so for them to count all of the postal votes.
>> No. 90887 Anonymous
27th October 2020
Tuesday 8:35 pm
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>>90882

Johnson is Biden his time!

>>90884

US Politics is fucking shit compared to that video of the Irish assembly having a fight and calling each other BAHSTORDS.
>> No. 90888 Anonymous
27th October 2020
Tuesday 8:45 pm
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>>90886
One of the interesting quirks about presidential elections is that technically it always takes a couple of days to count all the votes - but the TV networks conduct massive amounts of exit polling and "call" the result early, using statistical analysis and results of counts as they are published - in many states the counts are published as they are counted, unlike ours - many states will also publish postal votes they HAVE counted as soon as the polls close.

Trump tried to insinuate today that it is "against the law" to not count and publish all the votes on the same day, but it's another thing he is just wrong about and how they have always done it.

They'll be rightly reluctant to do this too early next week, but I think we'll know the result by much earlier than people are thinking right now.
>> No. 90889 Anonymous
27th October 2020
Tuesday 8:57 pm
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>>90888
Also, this is good on early voting. In some states, early voting is already very close to entire turnout last time around (eg Texas, 87% of total turnout last time)

https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/index.html
>> No. 90890 Anonymous
27th October 2020
Tuesday 9:09 pm
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>>90889
Turnout is generally better for Democrats, which is why the Republicans have been trying to make it so hard for people to vote. If Texas has been firm on refusing to consider the existence of the pandemic a legitimate excuse for postal votes and is still somehow in play, that's saying something that TXGOP would really rather people didn't get to hear.
>> No. 90891 Anonymous
27th October 2020
Tuesday 10:18 pm
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>>90890
>Turnout is generally better for Democrats

Agreed - I think turnout will be the story of this election. I don't necessarily think that is motivated by a love for Biden, but instead deep dislike of Trump generally - they have just had enough of him.
>> No. 90892 Anonymous
28th October 2020
Wednesday 12:17 pm
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I still reckon Trump is going to win it and by and even bigger margin than last time.
>> No. 90893 Anonymous
28th October 2020
Wednesday 12:27 pm
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>>90892
Well, this time next week we'll know for sure whether it's better to read the polls, or foreign chans.
>> No. 90894 Anonymous
28th October 2020
Wednesday 12:33 pm
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>>90892
Bookies odds are pretty good at the moment if you want to put your money where your mouth is. Personally I reckon it will be a contested election so I'm not sure I can be arsed waiting until January to know.
>> No. 90895 Anonymous
28th October 2020
Wednesday 12:40 pm
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>>90894

15/8 for Trump to win, 6/1 to get the majority of the popular vote.
>> No. 90896 Anonymous
28th October 2020
Wednesday 12:44 pm
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>>90894
>Bookies odds are pretty good at the moment

Good for the bookmakers, but I'm not sure anyone else.
>> No. 90898 Anonymous
29th October 2020
Thursday 9:01 am
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>>90896
I think this comparison is interesting. For reference, the RCP he refers to is RealClearPolitics, another poll aggregator like 538, but considered more overtly conservative.

Trump is toast. He'll now ramp up the legal assault.
>> No. 90974 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 2:17 am
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>>90898

U WOT M7

&feature=emb_logo&fbclid=IwAR3fxb320erfgQWUUW1nvX6HbHbXW9rgYPvCTt3YlcLA_yRL62_1llW2kBI
>> No. 90978 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 7:07 am
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>>90974

I do like a nice pickup, pretty jealous of the low cost in the US relative to here.

Back to the thread, Trump is winning this, easily.
>> No. 90979 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 8:10 am
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>>90974
Here's what the Texas republican party had to say about it. For reference, the people whose house was "stormed" are that angry couple who went outside and pointed guns at people, that's what it's talking about. Presumably the rest is about as connected to reality as that.

In other news, Q just asked if qanon are "ready to finish what [they] started?".
>> No. 90980 Anonymous
1st November 2020
Sunday 10:48 am
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>>90898
So these are about the last polls we'll see this election cycle, thank goodness.
>> No. 90989 Anonymous
2nd November 2020
Monday 9:13 am
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>>90979
This is actually from the Republican party? That is literally insane. There are no words for haw far the US has fallen.
>> No. 90990 Anonymous
2nd November 2020
Monday 9:21 am
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>>90989
Yes.
https://www.texasgop.org/statement-biden-bus-incident/
>> No. 90991 Anonymous
2nd November 2020
Monday 9:33 am
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>>90989
And yet you can see today's Tories copying this kind of shit.

Patel constantly going on about "activist lawyers", for one.
>> No. 90992 Anonymous
2nd November 2020
Monday 9:37 am
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>>90991

Same goes for trying to paint XR as daft militant wogs the year before (I'm sure it has older examples too); going overboard and acting totally hysterical over harmless things furthers their politics.
>> No. 90993 Anonymous
2nd November 2020
Monday 10:05 am
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>>90989
>There are no words for haw far the US has fallen.

"Hilarious."
>> No. 90996 Anonymous
2nd November 2020
Monday 11:45 am
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>>90989
> There are no words for haw far the US has fallen.
Yeehaw!
>> No. 91021 Anonymous
3rd November 2020
Tuesday 1:04 pm
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>>90980

m8 how many times do we have to go over this? Trump supporters are far too ashamed to admit to pollsters what their voting intentions are. Also, pic related. In conclusion, last time the polls said Hillary would rape Trump. Now they are saying Biden will only gently sniff spank Trump. Polls are shit.
>> No. 91022 Anonymous
3rd November 2020
Tuesday 1:08 pm
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>>91021
Are they? I'd accept that to have been true in 2016 but that image you attached doesn't exactly support what you're saying.
>> No. 91023 Anonymous
3rd November 2020
Tuesday 1:13 pm
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>>91021
You say this as if the pollsters didn't adjust their models in response to their failure last time.
>> No. 91025 Anonymous
3rd November 2020
Tuesday 1:25 pm
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>>91021
>Trump supporters are far too ashamed to admit to pollsters what their voting intentions are.

Maybe the first time, but not this time.

Anyway, we'll all know the answer in about 12 hours.
>> No. 91026 Anonymous
3rd November 2020
Tuesday 1:27 pm
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>>90989

The US hasn't fallen, the mask has slipped.
>> No. 91027 Anonymous
3rd November 2020
Tuesday 1:32 pm
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>>91025

I wouldn't be so sure m7.

>Come election day soccer mums across the US will have to decide if they want a president that grabs adult women by the pussy or a creepy old man who likes to sniff children.
>> No. 91028 Anonymous
3rd November 2020
Tuesday 1:49 pm
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I keep looking at Third Place betting and realising that Libertarian is a licence to print money. Problem is you need to put down a couple hundred to win pizza money.

Think I'll stick to betting on the markets. I reckon FTSE is pretty much a Trump bet today.

>>91021
All this talk of so-called democracy when the real news is that Amish women now have the vote and I imagine the communities won't be able to put that genie back in the bottle.

Hope you lads are ready for global politics to return to the 18th century. I'm ready to bury the hatchet with the Dutch, are you?
>> No. 91029 Anonymous
3rd November 2020
Tuesday 1:59 pm
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>>91028
>I reckon FTSE is pretty much a Trump bet today.

Disagree - the market is pricing in a Biden victory today, and particularly on Wall Street, if he wins, we'll see it further extend in anticipation of a larger stimulus package.
>> No. 91031 Anonymous
3rd November 2020
Tuesday 3:15 pm
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>>91029
I'm thinking in terms of what a Biden win means for FTA negotiations with the EU and US. Stimulus news will make it rain but in terms of comparative performance of UK companies.
>> No. 91032 Anonymous
3rd November 2020
Tuesday 3:36 pm
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>>91031
>FTA negotiations

I think you might be a cleverer investor than me - I can see the stocks that might suffer if a Trump win tonight (he is going to come after the tech companies, if only out of revenge), and conversely will get some of the short term bounce should he lose. I think there is probably a BIG PHARMA play in there somewhere. My impression is that a Biden win will scupper any of Boris's dreams of a Brexit trade deal too. Tricky. I think I'll just bottle it and buy some indices.
>> No. 91037 Anonymous
3rd November 2020
Tuesday 6:20 pm
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>>91032
Which indices?
>> No. 91040 Anonymous
3rd November 2020
Tuesday 7:37 pm
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>>91028
>Hope you lads are ready for global politics to return to the 18th century. I'm ready to bury the hatchet with the Dutch, are you?

Peace with the Clogg Munchers? Over my dead body.
>> No. 91041 Anonymous
3rd November 2020
Tuesday 8:52 pm
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I keep forgetting which is democrat and which is republican and all of twitter just turns into this blur of obvious garbage.
>> No. 91042 Anonymous
3rd November 2020
Tuesday 9:03 pm
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>>91041
I can't forgive them for switching the colours around. The lefites are blue and the righties are red, it's all so confusing.
>> No. 91045 Anonymous
3rd November 2020
Tuesday 9:38 pm
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>>91042
It's all Big Walkers doing. Or should I say Lays!
>> No. 91058 Anonymous
3rd November 2020
Tuesday 10:53 pm
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I was worrying earlier in the evening, but I'm feeling a lot better about it given the ludicrous election polls.
>> No. 91133 Anonymous
4th November 2020
Wednesday 3:21 pm
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Biden has won.
>> No. 91134 Anonymous
4th November 2020
Wednesday 3:23 pm
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>>91133
Where'd you get this from lad?
>> No. 91135 Anonymous
4th November 2020
Wednesday 3:24 pm
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>>91133

I'm sure he'll get on twitter and call for counting to be shut down any minute now.
>> No. 91136 Anonymous
4th November 2020
Wednesday 3:26 pm
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I mean this is technically true but he would win by a single electoral college vote. It's still too close to call right now.
>> No. 91137 Anonymous
4th November 2020
Wednesday 3:32 pm
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>>91135
Of course he will - which is why it was super-dumb for him to claim irregularities before all the votes have been counted.
>> No. 91139 Anonymous
4th November 2020
Wednesday 3:52 pm
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>>91137

Biden?
>> No. 91140 Anonymous
4th November 2020
Wednesday 4:19 pm
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>>91139
He's just Biden his time.
>> No. 91141 Anonymous
4th November 2020
Wednesday 4:21 pm
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>>91140
Bet no-one can trump that pun.
>> No. 91142 Anonymous
4th November 2020
Wednesday 7:44 pm
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It looks at the moment like Biden might win with exactly 270 electoral college votes.

The margins are so small in some areas though that it could tip either way.
>> No. 91143 Anonymous
4th November 2020
Wednesday 9:26 pm
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I think one key reason why votes for the Democrats are completely behind everybody's and their own expectations is that in a way that was not dissimilar to the Clinton campaign in 2016, they were too far up their own arse about their own moral superiority. It's all well and good arguing that nobody can in good conscience vote for an old white male chauvinist, shady deals making, minorities disrespecting blowhard who's in a questionable mental state. And I agree that you shouldn't. But if you're a member of the opposing team, you need to stop agreeing with each other and start getting out there and finding out why nigh on half of the electorate don't seem bothered by any of that. Voters that don't agree with you don't want to be judged and talked down to. If you're lucky, they care enough that they'll want you to tell them why they should vote for your guy. And that's when you need to have strong selling points at the ready.

Americans are suckers for a good sales pitch. The first thing you notice there when you get off the plane and barely drive a few miles down from the airport in your hire car is the barrage of billboard adverts on the roadside, and punchy in-your-face FM radio adverts. They're a nation based on selling each other anything from a thirsty V8 SUV to a fancy new cereal. And with great success. Which makes it all the more embarrassing when a political party then drops the ball by mistaking its own perceived moral superiority as its main selling point.
>> No. 91144 Anonymous
4th November 2020
Wednesday 9:43 pm
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>>91143
There's still over 20 millions votes to be counted. I'm expecting a late swing towards Biden owing to the fact that the Democrats were encouraging people to vote by post and the Republicans were encouraging people to vote in person, which will suit Trump's narrative of the election being stolen from him by fraud.
>> No. 91145 Anonymous
4th November 2020
Wednesday 10:00 pm
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This is literally too close to call at the minute. It's a bit mad that the incumbent president might lose, but the Republicans keep the senate. White male voters have left Trump in their droves, while he trended up with every other demo.

Part of the aftermath of this is going to unpacking why that is. I think the strong economy that Trump was talking about and the old trickle down economics spiel isn't actually working for most white male Americans in the 18-49 demographic.
>> No. 91146 Anonymous
4th November 2020
Wednesday 10:26 pm
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>>91143

>But if you're a member of the opposing team, you need to stop agreeing with each other and start getting out there and finding out why nigh on half of the electorate don't seem bothered by any of that.

Having known quite a number of Americans, I'm inclined to believe that the simple answer is "because at least half the electorate are absolute shits". If a lot of the electorate really do want a cruel, callous demagogue, a slick re-brand isn't going to do much for the Democrats.

It gives me absolutely no pleasure in saying it, but I think that most Trump voters honestly don't care if COVID runs rampant and corporations loot them, they just want their Two Minutes Hate. They actively want to live in a country that just sneers at problems rather than trying to fix them, they want to live in a country that dismisses poverty and sickness as something for losers.

Trump is just a symptom of decades of rot at the core of American civic society. Whether or not Trump wins this election, American democracy is in an incredibly fragile state; the age of American hegemony is over, but their only cultural reaction is denialism and aimless rage. I feel like America is rapidly headed towards the same destination as Russia - a former superpower lying in ruins, because they couldn't work out what to become next.
>> No. 91147 Anonymous
4th November 2020
Wednesday 10:28 pm
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>>91143
It's not about "moral superiority", the Republicans are always doing that too. It's that the Democratic platform was once again as thin, dry and meagre as a communion wafer. It's so depressing; each US president has the ability to potentially change history in ways so radical that entirely different worlds ebb and wane on the stroke of his or her pen, but instead we end up with Lord Humungus minus the eloquency or a man who declared "nothing will fundementally change" to his monied interests last year and is so old his swearing in ceremony will have to be conducted via a seance. Ultimately the Democrats ran a "I ain't Trump, Jack" campaign it looks to have nearly cost them immensely. I'm less certain Sanders would have won this time around, although I've got no doubt he would have in 2016, but in Florida there was a referendum to increase the minimum wage to $15 and it passed by 61%. Many Americans might turn into panicky turkies when their officials say the words "socialism", but many of them also just desperately want solutions for the problems their nation has. And, given the way US domestic politics echoes into the wider world, that could mean solutions to problems other nations have.
>> No. 91148 Anonymous
4th November 2020
Wednesday 10:39 pm
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>>91147

>Many Americans might turn into panicky turkies when their officials say the words "socialism", but many of them also just desperately want solutions for the problems their nation has.

That's the fundamental paradox of American politics - the electorate want solutions, just none of the solutions on offer. They want a reduction in violent crime but not gun control or rehabilitation-oriented criminal justice, they want affordable healthcare but don't want government regulation, they want an end to the COVID pandemic but don't want masks or social distancing or test-trace-isolate.

The Democrat platform is a slurry of dull incrementalism because the electorate have comprehensively rejected anything that might actually improve life for the average American. It's either that or the vacuous sloganeering of "Make America Great Again" or the delusions of "build a wall and make Mexico pay for it".
>> No. 91149 Anonymous
4th November 2020
Wednesday 10:51 pm
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>>91146

You're still being dishonest about it with yourself. You're still not willing to step back and view it on a larger and more impersonal scale.

It's not that they are bad people, per se. It's not that they want a Two Minute's Hate. It's that they are good Americans. That's what a good American is.

Their entire society is built upon a myth of self determination and manifest destiny; a belief that success is both the grace of God and personal achievement, and that failure is deserving lack of effort. The more repulsive elements of their politics are a natural consequence of their beliefs.

America is too young to wield the kind of influence it does in the world.
>> No. 91150 Anonymous
4th November 2020
Wednesday 10:52 pm
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>>91148
But they haven't "comprehensively rejected" it, they've never been offered it. The incrementalism comes from the top down and if the Democrats actually fought, even a little, they might actually make a difference. However, the truth is they don't want to make a difference.
>> No. 91151 Anonymous
4th November 2020
Wednesday 11:32 pm
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>>91145

Nah, that's an incredibly easy one to answer. The only reason he won in the first place is because he was against Hilary, the kind of person only marginally more popular than Osama Bin Laden.

This change in demographic support simply represents what happens when you go back to a neutral, sensible candidate nobody hates. It's almost as if all the identity politic hand-wringing is a load of shite to begin with.
>> No. 91152 Anonymous
4th November 2020
Wednesday 11:37 pm
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>>91151
>This change in demographic support simply represents what happens when you go back to a neutral, sensible candidate nobody hates.
You barely win against a deranged idiot and fail to capture any other governmental institutions meaning your term of office could well be a complete dud?
>> No. 91153 Anonymous
4th November 2020
Wednesday 11:55 pm
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>>91150

Gun control had bipartisan support until well into the 1970s; current gun laws are less strict today than at any point since 1968. LBJ passed Medicare and Medicaid in '65; Carter, Clinton and Obama have all tried to get some kind of universal healthcare proposal through the house.

If Sanders' platform is so popular, why couldn't he win the primaries?
>> No. 91154 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 12:31 am
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>>91153
Because in the 1960s and 70s the USA's intelligence and police services erradicated many of the African-American community's most prominent and radical thinkers, before spending the 80s flooding the streets with crack and other narcotics, this, combined with ramptant systemic poverty, much of it dressed up as laws to counter the "drug epidemic", has left the black citizens of the United States politically unegaged.

Also Sanders ran a milquetoast campaign that failed to reach out.
>> No. 91155 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 12:42 am
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>>91143
>But if you're a member of the opposing team, you need to stop agreeing with each other and start getting out there and finding out why nigh on half of the electorate don't seem bothered by any of that.
I wouldn't say that it necessarily works this way in modern US politics.
You don't need to win over the other team, you just need to win. Turnout at this election hit the highest since before Women could vote. I think you're right about the need for better sales pitches, but you don't need to go get people to stop voting red and start voting blue, you just need to scrounge up enough blue votes wherever you can find them. Rather than gut your platform for the illusory Reagan-Clinton swing voters of 30 years ago, just build an appealing platform, have a virulent man front it. Do that at every level. The only barrier to this strategy for the Democrats is voter suppression, but the moderate parts of the democrats who tend to prefer feeling morally superior to the left than to the right are far more concerned about market based solutions to climate change or some other wank with far too many words than they are about making sure people can actually vote for them.
>> No. 91156 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 3:26 am
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>>91155

>Rather than gut your platform for the illusory Reagan-Clinton swing voters of 30 years ago

The idea of coaxing moderates through seizing the middle ground is dead in America, it has been replaced by paradigms that are so stark in contrast that it is impossible to know where the truth is. The political parties sell narratives that are so counter to each other that debate can not happen.

If you genuinely believe Donald Trump is a traitor working for the Russians / Hillary Clinton had Jeffery Epstein to stop his testimony that the democrats are all didlers where is the middle ground for the pragmatic? There isn't one, all you can do is get people to buy your version of reality.
>> No. 91157 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 6:29 am
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>>91156

And yet it seems quite easy to sell that one candidate is simply more competent than the other, I still believe those extremes you mentioned are minorities in the polling booth.
>> No. 91163 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 8:57 am
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Half the voters are idiots.

That's it. Stop the hand-wringing. If you willingly vote for a fascist, that makes you a fascist. The alternative to 66 million fascists is 66 million idiots.
>> No. 91164 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 8:58 am
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>>91163
>The alternative to 66 million fascists is 66 million idiots.
What about 65 million and umpty nine fascists and one idiot?
>> No. 91165 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 9:06 am
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>>91164
The Germans say that if 10 people sit down with a Nazi, you have 11 Nazis.

If you side with 65 million and umpty fascists, you're a fascist.
>> No. 91166 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 9:10 am
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>>91165
>>91165
>> No. 91167 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 9:32 am
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>>91163

The white people protesting in Detroit against the counting of predominantly Black votes are the children and grandchildren of people who cheered at lynchings. In 1971, the Ku Klux Klan bombed a school bus depot near Detroit in an effort to prevent the integration of the Michigan school system; they were ultimately vindicated by the Supreme Court, who placed strict limits on the ability of the state to integrate schools. We act like the US is a normal developed nation, but it isn't - it's a nation that is still (often very reluctantly) emerging from a system of apartheid.

We can't make sense of American politics without talking about race and they can't move forward until there's a comprehensive programme of truth and reconciliation.

https://www.chalkbeat.org/2019/7/25/21121021/45-years-later-this-case-is-still-shaping-school-segregation-in-detroit-and-america
>> No. 91168 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 9:42 am
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Posted without comment.
>> No. 91169 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 9:52 am
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>>91168

Does this mean white men are good again?
>> No. 91170 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 9:52 am
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>>91168
Exit polls are taken in the polling station, apparently. Given that Trump explicitly told his voters to vote in person and not to mail them in, those numbers are going to be misleading.
>> No. 91173 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 10:16 am
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>>91168
So you're saying he lost the election, but won the argument? Now where have I heard that before.
>> No. 91174 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 11:12 am
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>>91167

You also have to remember that in America, mind-bogglingly stupid people are much thicker on the ground than they are in Britain. And if Donald Trump told his supporters to march to polling stations in Pennsylvania with torches and pitchforks to stop the count, a critical number of them would jump at it.

Just like that big buzzword of "socialism" that some Republican politicians keep using, including Trump. If you asked the stereotypical two-bit Bible Belt redneck why he doesn't like the Democrats, one of his top answers would likely be "I don't like socialism what tham thar Dammuhcruds is doing". But he would probably be at a loss to put in his own words even the most basic ideas of actual socialism.
>> No. 91175 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 11:37 am
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>>91174

Not stupid per se, just sheltered. The highly stratified and segregated nature of human geography and media in the US means that a lot of people just aren't exposed to opposing views. The chances are quite good that your Bible Belt redneck doesn't know a single person who voted Democrat at the last election, doesn't know any non-white or non-Christian people and has never met an openly gay person. If you live in rural Utah, then San Francisco or New York might as well be on the moon.

It's a lot harder to live in that kind of bubble in the UK. The most insular and nationalist Brits are rather cosmopolitan by US standards; it's not particularly weird for an American to have never travelled abroad or never eaten a curry. It's one of the reasons why both Corbynites and Kippers are so keen to abolish the BBC - for all its faults, the Beeb is still committed to impartiality, represents a wide range of viewpoints and is watched and trusted by the overwhelming majority of British people.
>> No. 91176 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 11:44 am
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You can see the clear split between urban and rural populations.
>> No. 91177 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 11:51 am
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>>91175
>it's not particularly weird for an American to have never travelled abroad

Or even the state they live in.
>> No. 91178 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 11:55 am
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Not sure about the awesome, it'll just be less shit than if Trumplethinskin gets in again...
>> No. 91179 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 11:57 am
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>>91178
It's just the commonly used format we have for this kind of thread (>>64250). A bit of an in-joke, if you will.
>> No. 91180 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 12:03 pm
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>>91175

True enough. Some U.S. states have population densities that you just cannot compare to Europe. Wikipedia says that Wyoming is roughly three fourths the size of England, with a population of no more than 587.000. There are rural communities and small towns everywhere in the U.S. which are sometimes hundreds of miles away from major cities where you would get to meet people who aren't like you.

Another problem is that people wield a much bigger influence on local public institutions. Parents can decide the curriculum of local high schools, and the people directly get to elect local officials like district attorneys or even police chiefs. While there's maybe something to be said for taking democratic principles to that kind of grassroots level, it also means that there's a danger of narrow-minded people electing their own kind who pander back to them.

I remember reading a few years ago that parents in a Bible Belt state were picketing a local school because the social studies faculty had the audacity to teach high school students about Islam and Arab culture. It seemed to those parents like the end of all that was good and holy that their children were being exposed to that evil religion of turban wearing, smelly brown-eyed people wishing death to America. I think some of them even informed Homeland Security that that kind of thing was going on at their local school.
>> No. 91181 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 12:05 pm
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>>91180
>three fourths
>> No. 91182 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 12:09 pm
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>>91180
>It seemed to those parents like the end of all that was good and holy that their children were being exposed to that
I ran into some twitter leftists recently who were outraged at someone for arguing that Hitler was actually good at something. I can't remember what specifically but it was to do with how he got into power. It seems a weird and outright dangerous attitude.
>> No. 91183 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 12:21 pm
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>>91182

>for arguing that Hitler was actually good at something

Hitler did have the gift of the gab. You don't mobilise millions to erect a totalitarian state and put Jews in concentration camps if you're not a convincing talker. Even during his layabout days in the mid-1920s when he had just joined what later became the Nazi party and was essentially destitute and living in a bedsit, his associates noticed that he had an uncanny ability to draw people in. Of course not in a Ronald Reagan or Tony Blair kind of way. Even then, most of it was vitriol and unmitigated, unmasked hate. But he still managed to get all kinds of people behind him who saw in him a charismatic new leader who was showing great promise in rectifying the disgrace of a lost world war.

Another thing that you wouldn't normally think he was capable of was that he was apparently very good with children. Most of his contemporaries said so. There is film footage shot by Eva Braun from the Obersalsberg that showed him playing and cuddling with children and being every bit a nice old uncle.
>> No. 91184 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 12:25 pm
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This dog is on benzos.

Donald Trump is going to win. I've seen it, through gates of time-space and in that which is the atom's atom. I wish it were another way.
>> No. 91186 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 1:29 pm
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https://tfr.faa.gov/save_pages/detail_0_5137.html

Confirmation from the Federal Aviation Authority that the new President is currently sitting in Wilmington, Delaware.

They have specifically labeled the temporary flight restriction as "National Defense Airspace".

He has won.
>> No. 91187 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 2:01 pm
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>>91186

You don't think this could just be a safety precaution?

What if they don't declare flight restrictions, and then a plane crashes into his house, and a few hours later counting has finished and it comes out in his favour?

Even the FAA doesn't know at the moment which way the mail-in votes will go. Even the strongest, and arguably not outlandish assumption that they come out in Biden's favour is useless if it turns out the other way.
>> No. 91188 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 2:37 pm
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>>91187
Not him, but it's over. Biden has won.

Trump needs to win everything that's outstanding, and that isn't going to happen.
>> No. 91189 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 2:47 pm
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>>91188
It woz Michigan wot dun it.
>> No. 91190 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 2:48 pm
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>>91188

CNN just said that at this point, Trump would effectively have to sue every state that is still outstanding, hope for a judge to back him in that state, and at the end of it actually manage to have votes that were legally cast declared invalid. Which would not only damage his opponent, but tarnish American democracy itself.

And it would pose the question why America has kicked up such a fuss about the possibly fraudulent election in Belarus just recently, when its own incumbent President is seen stooping almost to that kind of level.

What we're seeing here is probably very plainly Donald Trump's luck running out.
>> No. 91191 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 2:54 pm
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>>91190
>Trump would effectively have to sue every state that is still outstanding, hope for a judge to back him in that state, and at the end of it actually manage to have votes that were legally cast declared invalid. Which would not only damage his opponent, but tarnish American democracy itself.
I can't muster the energy for a sarcastic or silly comment I'm just going to say: Trump's won.
>> No. 91192 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 2:56 pm
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>>91190
He will have a go at doing all of those things, and have maximum recounts where he can - but given they have lost all the legal challenges so far, it seems far fetched that he's about to win a bunch of these again. Secretly he is hoping he can get any/all of these cases to the Supreme Court, where as we know, he has gamed the system enough that he stands a much higher chance of winning legal arguments.
>> No. 91193 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 3:15 pm
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>>91189
Posted for a silly internet picture from months ago becoming reality. Voting third party must be tremendous fun in America with the political machine and whoever lost raging against you for not picking their team - I won £29 for betting on third place so will be having a takeaway tonight and listening to Rush to celebrate my genius.

Maybe the Libertarian votes will swing the Republican platform next election, especially when so many states passed propositions on drug decriminalisation. By the looks of it they haven't done this well since the days of Bush.
>> No. 91194 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 3:18 pm
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>>91193
>£29

Well done! I'm only glad it wasn't that bellend Kanye in third.
>> No. 91195 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 4:03 pm
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>>91191
He's won a lot of things, but a second term isn't one of them.
>> No. 91196 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 4:39 pm
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>>91195
Can you imagine the atmosphere in the White House right now? A Downfall-style video won't even do it justice.

By now it will just be dawning on the staffers that they aren't getting out of this alive. Meanwhile Donny has been up all night, mainlining Diet Cokes and TV networks, shouting at his kids and Rudy.

Melania will have everything packed, barely able to contain her glee at getting the divorce and being able to finally move in with Hank Siemers.
>> No. 91197 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 5:05 pm
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>>91196
>By now it will just be dawning on the staffers that they aren't getting out of this alive.
Some of them have seen the writing on the wall and CVs have been flying around, but nobody's been taking their calls.
>> No. 91198 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 6:01 pm
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>>91196

>Can you imagine the atmosphere in the White House right now? A Downfall-style video won't even do it justice.

Much as I and everyone hopes you are right, we just aren't there yet. Even ARE Prez doesn't know what's in those mail-in ballots, nor his advisors. Everybody at that level will still be guessing, much as we are here.

That said, they probably have many more channels of information available to them, so that it's a somewhat clearer picture for them at a given moment than for us.
>> No. 91199 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 6:15 pm
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>>91196

I don't understand why there's a truck there - aren't they supposed to be in office until january?
>> No. 91200 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 6:17 pm
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>>91199>>91199
Can't put it past the Donald to quit rather than lose.
>> No. 91201 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 6:35 pm
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https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/05/politics/donald-trump-election-2020/index.html

>Entrenched at the White House with no public events on his schedule, Trump has personally dispatched advisers to battlegrounds across the country hoping to wage legal battle in places where the margins remain tight. Despite skepticism about the efficacy of his strategy, Trump has remained intent on waging a prolonged fight, viewing it as his only option.


Desperate times call for desperate measures, eh?

He'll not just be remembered as a shit property tycoon and President, but also as a bad loser.
>> No. 91202 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 7:05 pm
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>>91201
>a bad loser

Of course he is. He's a pathological narcissist with nothing to lose - he will now adopt a scorched earth policy, basically fucking everything he can along the way, with the final act being a series of pardons.
>> No. 91205 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 7:53 pm
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It feels like we're on the vinegar strokes, lads.
>> No. 91206 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 8:52 pm
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looking over the results map on the BBC, it becomes really obvious just how fucked up the demographics of the USA is, almost all of the major cities in every state are overwhelmingly voting democrat, the republicans are relying on votes from the millions of americans who live in the bumfuck middle of nowhere. This probably goes part of the way to explaining why the pollsters have been over-estimating the democrats too.
>> No. 91207 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 8:54 pm
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>>91157
>I still believe those extremes you mentioned are minorities in the polling booth
Are you really saying ~65 million people (let's say ~3.8 million nutters make up the difference) had non-nutter reasons to believe that Trump was more competent than Biden?
>> No. 91208 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 9:17 pm
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>>91207
If you're a Republican are you really going to change your worldview because Biden is more Competent than Trump?

I thought Theresa May was more competent than Jeremy Corbyn but I sure as shit wasn't gonna vote Tory because of it.
>> No. 91209 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 9:25 pm
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>>91206

>almost all of the major cities in every state are overwhelmingly voting democrat, the republicans are relying on votes from the millions of americans who live in the bumfuck middle of nowhere.


And how is this diametrically different from the UK, or indeed most Western democracies?

Even if you account for the Tory win in 2019, many constituencies in or near larger cities were won by Labour last year, as they tend to be in most elections. With some degree of certainty anyway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_general_election
>> No. 91210 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 9:34 pm
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>>91209

The moral of this story is just that country folk are dicks, isn't it.
>> No. 91211 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 9:38 pm
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>>91208

>If you're a Republican are you really going to change your worldview because Biden is more Competent than Trump?

Not your world view, but apparently there were many Republican voters who were voting Republican not because they liked Donald Trump or approved of his achievements during his first term, however thin they were, but because they just feel more in line with the Republican Party platform in general. Just the same way you had Tory voters here last year who thought BoJo was a fucking joke but it didn't discourage them from voting Conservative.

Republican voters aren't solely your Billy White Trash who dropped out of school and spends his days fucking his sister in a trailer in rural Mississippi. They also aren't just your Evangelical nutjobs who think Trump was sent to them from God. It's something that can get overlooked with a guy like Trump at the helm, but there are educated, double-income Republican voters who believe that the Republicans' stance on things like free enterprise and fiscal policy is the way forward, and who can put more than two sentences together telling you that they've given their political preference a good bit of thought. And who still think that Trump has been an unmitigated disaster, and that the GOP would have deserved better.
>> No. 91212 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 10:06 pm
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>>91211
>because they just feel more in line with the Republican Party platform in general
The "Republican Party platform" this year, inasmuch as there was one, was "Whatever he says. [gestures toward Trump]"

Results also suggest a very significant amount of ticket-splitting this year - i.e. voting Biden for President but Republicans for Congress.
>> No. 91213 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 10:58 pm
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The Democrats are so absolutely doomed once the Republicans run someone with more than 10% remaining grey matter. I think you'd have to be equally as stupid to be heartened by this election.
>> No. 91214 Anonymous
5th November 2020
Thursday 11:14 pm
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>>91213

I agree. The Republicans had absolutely no platform this year. My gut /boo/ feeling is that they'd rather let the Democrats deal with the next four years of fallout then step back in with a half-decent candidate and a ready-made platform of "look how bad the last four years have been" and really clean up.
>> No. 91216 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 12:01 am
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>>91214
If I was a Democrat who'd spent the last ten years harping on about demographics and the "most racist president in history" had managed to increase his vote share amongst every demographic except white men, I'd be sweating bullets. This is not some kind of radical do or die push from the left of the party, Biden is as "safe" as you can get and yet this election rests on a knife edge, and that's before Trump and the Republicans pull any dirty tricks.

Personally I think Republicans wanting to lose so as to further their game of 4d chess is a bit of a stretch, but with pic related and the Supreme Court, they won't be crying themselves to sleep over Trump going the way of the Dodo.
>> No. 91218 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 12:28 am
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>>91217
It was deranged, but I think the in next twelve hours we'll see the numbers move to a point where other Republicans will start to feel confident enough to speak out.
>> No. 91219 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 12:29 am
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I just watched Trump's address on TV.

"Batshit crazy" fails to capture his state of mind accurately at this point in time. He was carrying himself like Lukashenko on acid.

As otherlad has said, he's going down, and he is taking America's democratic system with him. He's not just going out with a bang, he is going out with a full-on nuclear blast.

So sad.
>> No. 91220 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 12:59 am
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>>91219
I'd be surprised if Pence isn't thinking about trying to oust him, if for nothing but to stop the madness.
>> No. 91221 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 1:15 am
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>>91214

That has basically been the way they have always operated.

Fuck up everything in a way that will take a few years to play out and blame the next guy for it, and take credit for things the last president did that came to yield during your term.
>> No. 91222 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 1:17 am
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>>91216

The exit polls aren't remotely accurate, because an extremely large proportion of the Democratic base voted early or by mail. If Trump actually increased his vote share amongst black voters, I'll eat my hat.

With that said, this is an election without a winner. Trump lost, the Democrats woefully underperformed and America has done little to avert the slide towards a failed state.
>> No. 91223 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 1:38 am
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>>91216

>the "most racist president in history" had managed to increase his vote share amongst every demographic except white men

It takes a special kind of cunt to do what you have just done. To both directly equate racist with being white men as if that somehow proved he wasn't, and to spin what is still the largest group after shrinkage by some margin as if it were somehow meaningful that they got slightly smaller.

if hypothetically 2 black men instead of 1 the previous time and 9,999 instead of 10,000 white men, whilst it would be true "he has doubled his share of black male voters, where as he has lost white votes" you would still be an equivocating prick.
>> No. 91224 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 3:23 am
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>>91216

>"most racist president in history" had managed to increase his vote share amongst every demographic except white men

Based on exit polls at physical polling stations, which you'll agree is hardly representative due to the circumstances of the times. Why even bother trying to pull the wool over our eyes on here, unless you're actually suckered in by their bullshit too?
>> No. 91226 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 9:41 am
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>>91223>>91224
I don't really see what you pair are upset about.

Currently it appears that Trump's total vote had a higher proportion of non-white men and women than last time. Given the Democrat's entire strategy is "be less racist than the other lot" this is an ill-omen. I didn't "directly equate racist with being white", unless you're a complete fucking idiot. However, I take it as assumed by all parties that when we're talking about Trump's racism we all know he's not a Black Israelite or a Han chauvanist and therefore if his racism is going to appeal to or be ignored by anyone it will be white people.
>> No. 91227 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 9:54 am
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>>91226

If you know that those figures aren't representative, it seems pretty silly to say they're how things "appear" or that they're an omen of anything. If I paint a picture of someone starting with their arsehole and you look over my shoulder knowing I'm going to move on from there but start talking about how you reckon the entire picture is just going to be arsehole, that's disingenuous at best.
There are plenty of reasons to criticise how little Biden's lot have won by but the exit polls aren't one of them.
>> No. 91229 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 10:05 am
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>>91227
You know, your metaphors are painfully laboured.
>> No. 91230 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 10:07 am
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>>91229
So no rebuttal or justification for what you were saying, just whining about metaphors?
>> No. 91231 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 10:18 am
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>>91230
I genuinely don't have time this morning to get into a debate about how race is going to factor into post-2020 US elections. I can't be arsed looking up citations and graphs and whatever else I need to, so yeah, I'm just "whining" and leaving. I don't owe you any sodding debate practice, not unless you're going to give me a job at the end of it, you arrogant bellend.
>> No. 91232 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 10:21 am
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>>91231
>I genuinely don't have time this morning to get into a debate about how race is going to factor into post-2020 US elections.
Nobody's asked you to, we're specifically talking about you making false inferences from the exit polls.
>> No. 91233 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 10:26 am
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>>91226

Even if we take the exit polls on face value (which we definitely shouldn't, because they're totally misrepresentative of the electorate as a whole) then Trump increased his share of the black vote from 4% to 8%. The Democrats only getting 92% of the black vote really isn't a ringing endorsement of Trump's non-racist credentials.

I wish I could sage twice.
>> No. 91234 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 10:42 am
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>>91231

"I will cite misleading analysis of statistics and then when they are questioned have a teary I am not a stastician and have no responsibility for my own inference".

Fuck off Shapiro
>> No. 91235 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 10:48 am
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>>91234
How dare you expect me to explain or defend the things I've said! That sort of behaviour is clearly beneath me you arrogant bellend!
>> No. 91238 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 11:42 am
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>>91231

Don't fucking come on here and tell us the numbers say something and then immediately tell us you can't be arsed to defend the numbers when we point out they're wrong.

Seriously, genuinely fuck off with that shit. Absolute cunt.
>> No. 91240 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 12:38 pm
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CUNT OFFS HERE!
CUNT OFFS THERE!
CUNT OFFS EVERY-FUCKING-WHERE!
>> No. 91242 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 12:40 pm
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>>91240
It warms the cockles of my dark heart.

Once this election is over, which sounds like it could finally be today, the healing will begin.
>> No. 91243 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 1:48 pm
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I was going to explain myself and expand on what I said after I'd been to the pharmacy, walked the dogs, done the washing up and looked for a fucking job, but I'm going to bake some gingerbread instead and the arseholes ITT can starve.
>> No. 91244 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 1:56 pm
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>>91243
Not likely, I PACKED_MY_RICE weeks ago and have enough shortbread jammie dodgers to last the winter.
>> No. 91247 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 2:01 pm
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>>91243

"I was going to totally explain myself after I get back from hanging out with becky, but you are all too gross so I decided that you don't deserve an explanation"

No you weren't because you can't. Now fuck off Shapiro.
>> No. 91248 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 2:10 pm
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>>91243

Fucking hell mate. Sort yourself out. Or just admit you got suckered in by yank moonfruit lies.
>> No. 91249 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 2:17 pm
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>>91242
>Once this election is over, which sounds like it could finally be today, the healing will begin.

And by healing you mean Irish-Americans sticking their oar into Northern Ireland. It's going to be shitstorm, lads.
>> No. 91250 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 2:18 pm
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>>91240

SO WHAT?
SO WHAT?
SO WHAT? SO WHAT? YOU BORING LITTLE CUNT.

Animal has not aged well.
>> No. 91251 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 2:19 pm
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>>91250
I got bit in the arse by a dog whilst listening to that song.
>> No. 91252 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 2:22 pm
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>>91251

You can't just leave the story there.
>> No. 91254 Anonymous
6th November 2020
Friday 2:28 pm
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>>91252
I was walking through a park, minding my own business, and there was a pair of dog walkers (I think?) with 10-15 dogs all loose, off their leads. One decided it didn't like me I guess, and charged at me. I got turned around enough to avoid a bite on the front, but it still got my left cheek. All the walker had to say was "oh sorry mate", the cunt.

Adrenaline got me out of there before I could get details and as there were now about a dozen riled up dogs, none of which were on leads, I didn't fancy sticking around anyway.
>> No. 91294 Anonymous
7th November 2020
Saturday 4:25 pm
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CNN HAVE CALLED IT.
>> No. 91295 Anonymous
7th November 2020
Saturday 4:45 pm
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So what does this mean for Brexit?
>> No. 91296 Anonymous
7th November 2020
Saturday 4:48 pm
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>>91295
IT MEANS BORIS IS TOAST
>> No. 91298 Anonymous
7th November 2020
Saturday 4:51 pm
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>>91295
It means the negotiators crawling back cap in hand and getting a deal done with Brussels, because Joe Biden is a staunch United Ireland advocate and any trade deal will hinge on the Good Friday agreement remaining unmolested by Brexit.
>> No. 91299 Anonymous
7th November 2020
Saturday 5:19 pm
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>>91298
Worse still is the risk that the US will deprioritise our relationship and leave us adrift without access to US capabilities or even the possibility of concluding a trade deal in 2021. We've gone from a fair chance of favourable trade deals with the EU and US to damage mitigation and a President we've not had access to throughout the campaign due to covid.

If it all goes well and we get in the CPTPP rapidly and without a shitstorm over regulation it still poses an enormous gulf where some sort of trade deal is needed with the US. Hopefully there's been planning for this.
>> No. 91300 Anonymous
7th November 2020
Saturday 5:22 pm
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>>91299
>Hopefully there's been planning for this
Audible mirth.
>> No. 91301 Anonymous
7th November 2020
Saturday 5:23 pm
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>>91299
>We've gone from a fair chance of favourable trade deals with the EU and US to damage mitigation and a President we've not had access to throughout the campaign due to covid.
We were never going to get a "favourable trade deal" with the US under Donald "America First" Trump. They would have steamrolled us. If we struggle to get favourable terms with the US now, it'll be because Boris shat the bed. Now we're all going to have to sleep in his shitty bed.
>> No. 91302 Anonymous
7th November 2020
Saturday 5:43 pm
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>>91299
Biden will rightly give Johnson very short shrift.

>Hopefull there's been planning for this.

Yeah, because strategic planning has been the hallmark of our current PM and government. Boris is fucked.
>> No. 91303 Anonymous
7th November 2020
Saturday 5:46 pm
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>>91301
I don't see any evidence that Biden will go easier on us. Especially not with how Congress and Senate have landed that necessitates Theresa May levels of backroom deals.
>> No. 91304 Anonymous
7th November 2020
Saturday 5:49 pm
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>>91303
I don't know if he'd "go easier on us" but the attitude certainly isn't going to be "you give us the NHS and accept our shitty food and be grateful".
>> No. 91305 Anonymous
7th November 2020
Saturday 5:54 pm
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A good trade deal is pretty much fucked with Joe "United Ireland" Biden in the White House.
>> No. 91306 Anonymous
7th November 2020
Saturday 6:10 pm
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>>91304
You're high if you think the entire Democratic Party isn't the pocket of Big Pharma or that we're not going to get maximum pressure over a precautionary principle the US has fought for decades. Just look at the language being used:
https://www.uschamber.com/precautionary-principle

I know Labour put a lot of propaganda out featuring Trump front and centre but it's much more complicated than that and messaging is liable to change in a few weeks.
>> No. 91307 Anonymous
7th November 2020
Saturday 6:17 pm
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>>91302>>91305
We're going to be on the same deal Hong Kong had with China by April, knowing Johnson.
>> No. 91308 Anonymous
7th November 2020
Saturday 6:43 pm
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I wish I had placed a bet now.
>> No. 91314 Anonymous
8th November 2020
Sunday 2:24 am
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Based ladm9 flying over North West England
>> No. 91315 Anonymous
8th November 2020
Sunday 2:33 am
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>>91314
More money than sense.

What exactly is to be achieved by flying that over Liverpool?

N1 M8 U RLY SHOWED THOSE DEMS
>> No. 91316 Anonymous
8th November 2020
Sunday 3:10 am
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>>91315

To be fair there's probably a lot of studenty types with brightly coloured hair who will be TTT over it, which is only funnier because it's happening somewhere nobody should really care.
>> No. 91317 Anonymous
8th November 2020
Sunday 4:27 am
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>>91314
>based
Stop that.
>> No. 91318 Anonymous
8th November 2020
Sunday 8:27 am
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>>91316
Who'll be what over it?
>> No. 91319 Anonymous
8th November 2020
Sunday 9:02 am
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>>91316
I love imagining I've owned people. Just sitting in the dark and thinking "heh, I bet they'd hate that" without ever having to find out if I have.

Also what's a fucking "studenty type"?
>> No. 91320 Anonymous
8th November 2020
Sunday 9:19 am
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Would Trump have won if it wasn't for coronavirus?

About 240k Americans have died from it, with however many on top currently hospitalised, with the demographics suggesting that the majority of those who've died were Trump supporters. The margins in some of the key States doesn't seem that large.
>> No. 91321 Anonymous
8th November 2020
Sunday 9:43 am
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>>91319


>> No. 91322 Anonymous
8th November 2020
Sunday 10:22 am
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Hearing Harris talking about women is reminding me of Lois talking about 9/11 in Family Guy.

"Women, women... women women. The women." You imprisoned people when their kids bunked off school, psycho, like you give a shit.
>> No. 91323 Anonymous
8th November 2020
Sunday 10:32 am
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>>91318
Trolled To Tears

>>91320
If Trump hadn't consistently denied, and handled the virus so badly, he might have won would be a better way of putting it. Seniors are a very big voting bloc in the US, like many countries.
>> No. 91326 Anonymous
8th November 2020
Sunday 12:28 pm
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>>91322
>You imprisoned people when their kids bunked off school, psycho
Yes and no. It wasn't so much threatening to throw parents in prison as offering them support to get their kids back into school, which the parents pretty much always accepted willingly, since they had themselves been desperately trying to get the kids back into school. The last resort was a letter threatening prison, which the parents would show to their children. It turned out that even stubborn kids didn't really want their parents locked up.

When the systen went statewide, there were a handful of cases where people ended up in prison, but it was because they really weren't trying.
>> No. 91327 Anonymous
8th November 2020
Sunday 1:04 pm
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>>91326
>It turned out that even stubborn kids didn't really want their parents locked up.
This seems like bollocks.
>> No. 91328 Anonymous
8th November 2020
Sunday 1:09 pm
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>>91327
So does your mum.
>> No. 91338 Anonymous
8th November 2020
Sunday 4:39 pm
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Smells Brexity.
>> No. 91339 Anonymous
8th November 2020
Sunday 4:50 pm
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>>91338
What racist comments about Obama?
>> No. 91340 Anonymous
8th November 2020
Sunday 4:53 pm
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>>91339
Presumably it's
>Boris Johnson suggests 'part-Kenyan' Obama may have 'ancestral dislike' of UK
but in all fairness Obama has every right to be pissed off about the more general racist things he's said.
>> No. 91341 Anonymous
8th November 2020
Sunday 4:53 pm
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>>91339
A summary is mentioned in >>91302 - at the time that Trump was just getting started on the whole "Obama was born in Kenya" birth certificate stuff, Boris joined in.
>> No. 91346 Anonymous
8th November 2020
Sunday 5:39 pm
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>>91320
I remember it being discussed as an almost certainty that Trump would get a second term before all this fuckery. We're probably in a weird time at the moment as incumbents are definitely not advantaged by the world falling to poo.

>>91341
I feel the need to defend Boris on this.

His suggestion was that Obama had a certain hatred for Britain on account of his grandfather being tortured - this being in step with a perception people held since the fiasco with gift exchanges where Brown was given a cheap DVD boxset and the bust of Churchill has hastily removed. Then during the Brexit referendum he gave a speech in Parliament threatening a 'back of the line' on any trade deal.

This all seemed a bit conjecture at the time but after he left office we learned that Britain was mocked behind officials backs:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/obama-us-uk-joke-special-relationship-officials-mocked-britain-jeremy-shapiro-a7994876.html
>> No. 91347 Anonymous
8th November 2020
Sunday 6:36 pm
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You know, I think it would be a good thing if we're at the "back of the queue" and the new president doesn't like us and all that.

We're the abusee in a toxic relationship here, we stand to gain practically nothing from our relationship with America. The best thing that could happen is them walking out on us.

This is one of the things that most constantly frustrates me about mainstream British politics. Our leaders simply have no fucking shame or dignity when it comes to the US. It's pathetic.
>> No. 91348 Anonymous
8th November 2020
Sunday 6:45 pm
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>>91347
Okay then, tell us who we're to replace the US with. Who can provide an alternative to the enormous capabilities, science and trade the US offers? Shall we work with the Chinese on going to the Moon?
>> No. 91349 Anonymous
8th November 2020
Sunday 6:46 pm
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>>91320
I would say yes. Biden wasn't a strong candidate and incumbents tend to win re-election.
Even if you set aside the people who died, economic slowdowns tend to disadvantage the incumbent even if they aren't the incumbent's fault.

>>91346
I always find it slightly cathartic to learn that the Americans treat us with the contempt we deserve behind our backs.
Before getting upset that we don't respond in kind, that our nation is run by a bunch of sycophants for a country that has always served to undermine us when it suits them because it knows it can patch it all up by talking about a "special relationship" just as they do with every other western nation. Our position might be defensible if America was just a clumsy giant that hurt its friends because it didn't know its own strength, because you could eventually perhaps get across that they're hurting us, but when you see that hurting us is the point and that we still run with it - well, the smug feeling of "I was right" is almost enough to offset the second hand embarrassment and the desire to emigrate somewhere less pathetic.
>> No. 91350 Anonymous
8th November 2020
Sunday 6:57 pm
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>>91348
Not him: If there was a do-over the smart move would've been supporting European integration from the outside (in the hopes it becomes a small sort of third power between America and China) while maintaining the sort of relationship that NZ has with the yanks: "friends but not allies", functional trading partners but still willing to tell the yanks to go fuck themselves once in a while (As NZ has done over nuclear ships)
>> No. 91351 Anonymous
8th November 2020
Sunday 7:01 pm
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>>91348

If only we were part of a multinational trading bloc with a population of over 500 million and a higher GDP than China.
>> No. 91352 Anonymous
8th November 2020
Sunday 7:08 pm
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>>91351
If it was just a trading bloc we'd still be part of the EU.
>> No. 91353 Anonymous
8th November 2020
Sunday 8:17 pm
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>>91350
So...what we do already but we'll ineffectually bat away a US ship so everyone think we're well 'ard? Who will play our Australia?

Should point out that NZ is a founding member of Five Eyes and aggressively pursuing a free trade agreement with the US which it had hoped to attain with the CPTPP - an organisation we're looking to join anyway.

>>91351
The one that signed a common fisheries agreement just before Britain joined to trap us? That one that can't even exert influence over the Balkans and remains utterly dependant on US leadership and capabilities? The one where the French are adamant on locking us out?

And here I thought you lads knew what you were talking about.
>> No. 91356 Anonymous
8th November 2020
Sunday 9:26 pm
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>>91353
We don't do that already. There's zero chance of a UK politician ever showing half as much of a spine as the Kiwis did in politely telling America to take their boats elsewhere. (Or in condemning the Iraq war)
It's hard to think of any major questions over the past 50 years where we've had the spine to tell the yanks they're taking the piss. There was an angry phone call about invading Grenada without telling us first, I suppose? But they said sorry without promising that they'd never ever do it again, so, you know, special relationship at work.

We don't need an Australia, we don't even need to be as independent-minded as the Kiwis, I'd settle for being as awkward as the French even if it does mean having to pay to bash up a Libya once in a while.
>> No. 91357 Anonymous
8th November 2020
Sunday 9:44 pm
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>>91348

>the enormous capabilities, science and trade the US offers?

For clarity, can you provide specific examples of where the UK benefits from close partnership with the US in these areas? What exactly do we get out of it?

>Shall we work with the Chinese on going to the Moon?

Yes. Space should be the unifying force of international co-operation.

Besides that China is where the smart money is, America is a crumbling soon to be ex-superpower.
>> No. 91366 Anonymous
9th November 2020
Monday 10:24 pm
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>>91357
How much CNY was deposited into your account?
>> No. 91367 Anonymous
9th November 2020
Monday 10:30 pm
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>>91357
I'm not the person you're replying to but we have a substantial trade surplus with the US, and primarily they purchase high value-added technological and pharmaceutical products from us. So a smoothing of economic relations there is certainly in our interest.

How much we benefit from our ties in academia and science is harder to quantify.
>> No. 91396 Anonymous
11th November 2020
Wednesday 4:25 pm
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Trump is projected to get 3 votes from Alaska. Apparently this is the fightback.
>> No. 91397 Anonymous
11th November 2020
Wednesday 4:30 pm
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>>91396
How's that news? He was always projected to win Alaska.
>> No. 91403 Anonymous
11th November 2020
Wednesday 5:01 pm
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>>91396

Georgia’s secretary of state announces full hand recount in state with Joe Biden leading by 14,000 votes

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/us-politics/us-election-georgia-s-secretary-of-state-announces-full-hand-recount-b65970.html
>> No. 91408 Anonymous
11th November 2020
Wednesday 7:19 pm
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>>91403
Never in a thousand million years is a recount going to turn over 14,000 votes - maybe 14.

In other news, Trump lost yet another court case. His lawyers are just having one last cash-in basically.

https://www.democracydocket.com/cases/montgomery-county-board-of-elections-vote-count/
>> No. 91409 Anonymous
11th November 2020
Wednesday 8:10 pm
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>>91396
Did he already win it? What's 3 additional votes?
>> No. 91410 Anonymous
11th November 2020
Wednesday 8:24 pm
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>>91409
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_College
>> No. 91415 Anonymous
12th November 2020
Thursday 12:14 pm
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>>91409

Alaska was projected to go to Trump as early as the election night. There was little doubt that he would get it, even as votes were still being counted this past week.

The key issue isn't whether or not Trump still wins a state or two that took its time to count votes. But that even the states that are still a toss up will not get him to the threshold of 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. Biden is irrefutably past that mark, and as outstanding states like Georgia or Arizona will be decided, that lead is only going to grow because those states favour Biden by thousands of votes, while recounts as such have in the past merely led to differences of a few hundred votes at best.
>> No. 91418 Anonymous
12th November 2020
Thursday 3:57 pm
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>>91408

>The real vulnerability is people’s trust in the system, because that is easy to attack. Just wave around unsupported anecdotes, and harp on the mistakes that are bound to happen in a system this large and complex. Ignore the numbers, since there’s no way for a few hundred alleged incidents to affect an election decided by hundreds of thousands of votes.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/11/2020-was-a-secure-election.html#comments
>> No. 91419 Anonymous
12th November 2020
Thursday 4:54 pm
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>>91408
I'm amused that the Democratic National Committee's response to the lawsuit begins simply "Here we go again."
>> No. 91420 Anonymous
12th November 2020
Thursday 4:58 pm
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>>91418

You are going to have inaccuracies and (attempted) fraud both by using voting machines and with mail-in ballots.

The question is always how widespread that fraud will be. And what kind of percentage of fraudulent votes you are prepared to accept before an election result can no longer be considered the expressed will of the people. In a country the size of the U.S. with an electorate of over 150 million people, even 100,000 inaccurate or fraudulent ballots amount to no more than 0.06 percent of the total vote. While it's true that that number of ballots can easily flip a state which could be key in getting enough electoral votes in a Presidential race, it will probably be very difficult to get that kind of concentrated voting fraud past observers and auditors in any one state. What we've seen so far is that even the most fervent attempts by Trump's lawyers to claim voting fraud have not produced any kind of substantial evidence, so it's by and large fair to assume that it just doesn't happen that way.

In the end, the only way to make dead sure people vote correctly is to have everybody vote in person, and somebody looking over your shoulder inside the polling booth. But not only is that irreconcilable with free and fair elections as we understand them in Western democracies, but just because voters cast their votes correctly, does not mean that there can't be voting fraud at the level of governments. Look at Lukashenko in Belarus, who very probably had his government very drastically doctoring the results.
>> No. 91421 Anonymous
12th November 2020
Thursday 5:27 pm
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>>91420
Sorry I'm not following why it would be necessary to have someone watch you vote. Going by the way we do it in this country, someone turns up and gives their name, they are issued one ballot paper, they vote in secret, and then return one ballot paper to the ballot box. Then when the ballot box is taken to the polling station, the ballots are counted against the number of issued ballot papers, to ensure no-one has stuffed it with any extra.

Apart from spoiling, which I'd argue people have the right to do, what is watching people vote supposed to prevent happening at any part of this process?
>> No. 91424 Anonymous
12th November 2020
Thursday 8:09 pm
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>>91421 what is watching people vote supposed to prevent happening at any part of this process?

Making sure the voters are alive? I'm very confused about some of these fraud accusations.
>> No. 91425 Anonymous
12th November 2020
Thursday 8:44 pm
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>>91424

In case some cartoonishly villainous character in a trench coat and foreign accent tries to covertly slip a thousand fake ballots he had tucked up his sleeve into the box while cackling to himself.

We really are dealing with that level of base, irrational paranoia here.
>> No. 91431 Anonymous
13th November 2020
Friday 12:07 am
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>>91425

But you don't need to watch people vote to prevent that. If you slip a thousand fake ballots into the box, the number of ballots collected won't tally with the number of ballots handed out. Ballot papers have a serial number printed on the back which is tallied against the voter when they are handed out, making it trivial to identify the fake ballots.

Tom Scott did a brilliant pair of videos on why electronic voting is a bad idea, which also explain why our existing paper-based system is fantastically resilient - it's not particularly difficult to slip in one or two fake votes, but there aren't any attacks that scale up sufficiently to swing an election.




>> No. 91432 Anonymous
13th November 2020
Friday 1:47 am
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>>91431

What part of irrational don't you get mate?

Personally I don't even think most of them believe it themselves, it's judt The Narrative they're rolling with. That's more or less how things work nowadays it seems, we create our own truth through noospheric consensus on Twitter.
>> No. 91437 Anonymous
13th November 2020
Friday 9:22 am
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>>91432
>What part of irrational don't you get mate?
Not him, but someone said we should watch people vote, and I asked why, and you responded with a scenario that I had already addressed (ballot-stuffing), so either you were joking (in which case it's not funny) or you're quite dense (in which case the lad above decided to explain it in more detail for you).
>> No. 91439 Anonymous
13th November 2020
Friday 10:42 am
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>>91431

>which also explain why our existing paper-based system is fantastically resilient

I guess like many things, it is simply getting sacrificed on the altar of modernity.

Just like cash money. The system of banknotes and coins worked very well for hundreds of years, but many governments, spurred on by big banks and think tanks, are considering phasing it out entirely in the long run.

You always have a bit of crime and illegal transactions that are facilitated by cash, but in the end, you have to weigh that against the freedom of just being able to give your neighbour's kid a tenner for mowing your lawn. To make every single quid you spend traceable may prevent money laundering to some extent, or the financing of terrorism, but you're really going after that with a blunt sword by banning physical cash money entirely. Because the two are criminal offences in their own right, with or without physical money changing hands. What you're really doing is create untold amounts of data, and once that data about every single one of your transactions is out there, it can be used against you.
>> No. 91440 Anonymous
13th November 2020
Friday 10:45 am
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>>91437

Oh, I didn't read that far back. I had assumed we were addressing the question from the point of view of someone who believes the vote was rigged and that it doesn't matter how sensibly you demonstrate that it makes no difference, because they still have the idea in their head that the scenario I described is going on.
>> No. 91441 Anonymous
13th November 2020
Friday 10:56 am
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>>91439
That and cash money doesn't allow for negative inflation. Sweden is all but cashless these days and some bank accounts have negative interest. I read something about people hiding whatever cash they could get in kitchen appliances.
>> No. 91442 Anonymous
13th November 2020
Friday 11:04 am
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>>91439
If government-backed paper currency ever does get completely phased out, do you think locally-backed currencies will pop up to fill the niche? The Bristol Pound and the like.
>> No. 91443 Anonymous
13th November 2020
Friday 11:15 am
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>>91441
They also have a problem of people and companies overpaying tax because the government becomes the best place to store money:
https://www.ft.com/content/dfeb2376-f8f5-11e6-9516-2d969e0d3b65

It's like some mirror universe where the government splashes out on social programmes and low corporation tax yet still runs a surplus.
>> No. 91444 Anonymous
13th November 2020
Friday 11:21 am
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>>91441

>That and cash money doesn't allow for negative inflation

Theoretically no, but practically, they are trying to figure out a way to devalue cash so that it becomes unattractive as an alternative to bank deposits.

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2018/08/27/Monetary-Policy-with-Negative-Interest-Rates-Decoupling-Cash-from-Electronic-Money-46076

>Monetary policy space remains constrained by the lower bound in many countries, limiting the policy options available to address future deflationary shocks. The existence of cash prevents central banks from cutting interest rates much below zero. In this paper, we consider the practical feasibility of recent proposals for decoupling cash from electronic money to achieve a negative yield on cash which would remove the lower bound constraint on monetary policy.


In short, one idea that's being floated is that, say, for every 100 quid you withdraw, £103 are marked off your account balance, and the £3 difference is your negative interest on your cash. On the other hand, when you deposit cash, you have to prove how you came by that cash and when it got into your possession, and you then get negative interest deducted for the period of time that that cash money was in your possession, and the £100 you deposit only translate to a balance of maybe £97 in your account. And if you cannot provide proof of when the £2,000 under your pillow became yours, the negative interest will be much more than that, the idea of course being that people would then rather spend that money instead of taking it to a bank. Which is kind of the objective of all that zero-interest IMF monetary policy in the first place, to get people to spend all their money to keep ailing economies from collapsing entirely, thereby offsetting the glaring failure of zero-interest policy as such.

Greedy bastards.
>> No. 91445 Anonymous
13th November 2020
Friday 11:22 am
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>>91442

It's more likely to be something horrific like an Amazon crypto coin.
>> No. 91446 Anonymous
13th November 2020
Friday 11:55 am
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>>91445
Crypto? No, the blockchain doesn't assign any value to physical notes and coins, does it?
>> No. 91447 Anonymous
13th November 2020
Friday 11:57 am
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>>91445
Bezos hates crypto currencies, so that will never happen. He has a background in financial markets, so understands the idea pretty well.

Almost twice a year at Amazon all-hands meetings, he does open Q+A with all the staff and regularly gets asked whether they would ever accept cryptocurrencies as payment or launch their own, by some newbie member of staff, who promptly gets shot down by him in flames - he (quite correctly) hates the idea. I have witnessed this spectacle a few times.
>> No. 91448 Anonymous
13th November 2020
Friday 12:52 pm
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>>91447

Facebook then.
>> No. 91450 Anonymous
13th November 2020
Friday 1:31 pm
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>>91448
Didn't they launch a crypto years ago already? Whatever happened with that?

I, for the record, know basically nothing about crypto but that's because all economics is lies so I don't have to.
>> No. 91451 Anonymous
13th November 2020
Friday 1:51 pm
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>>91446
You'd have to have some "bank" that issues the notes that can be traded back for the cryptocurrency. But that would create problems a) by having a central authority which is against what crypto is generally about, and b) the bank might overprint notes once they realize that notes circulate without being traded back for the crypto.
>> No. 91460 Anonymous
13th November 2020
Friday 5:52 pm
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Posting this image in the right thread.

Biden winning over Trump means it suddenly became a lot harder for Boris and Brexit.

Bye Dom, don't let the door hit you on the arse on the way out.
>> No. 91464 Anonymous
13th November 2020
Friday 6:04 pm
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>>91460
This isn't the right thread you carpet-bagger. It's unlikely Biden can influence negotiations and it's doubtful he even has the political clout to block an FTA given the interest groups involved.
>> No. 91466 Anonymous
13th November 2020
Friday 6:19 pm
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>>91464
I don't believe that Biden is directly involved in any of this - but the political ground has shifted greatly, which is why Dom is now unemployed.
>> No. 91474 Anonymous
13th November 2020
Friday 11:41 pm
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>>91466
The theory I've heard is that Trump didn't care too much about upholding the good Friday agreement, meaning we could potentially get a trade deal with the US even if we left the EU with no agreement in place and border issues in Ireland. The motivation being that we could get rid of all those pesky EU regulations like food standards, data protection and worker protections which stop big businesses from shafting the general public for extra profit.

Biden has closer ties with Ireland and is apparently quite popular with Irish-American voters, so it's unlikely we'd get a deal with the US under Biden unless we have some kind of agreement with the EU to allow free movement in line with the GFA. This would probably mean the UK would still have to follow at least some EU directives, throwing a spanner in the works for those who stand to benefit from totally leaving the EU.

Since Biden has said a deal with the UK isn't a priority (i.e. not happening by January) the only options are to take whatever the EU offers or leave with no significant trade agreements and turbofuck the economy even more as detailed in the Yellowhammer report.
Either way it looks like Cummings and Cain know there's no way they can come out of this looking good and want to distance themselves before January.
>> No. 91475 Anonymous
14th November 2020
Saturday 12:05 am
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>>91474
This is positive, right?
>> No. 91476 Anonymous
14th November 2020
Saturday 12:07 am
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>>91474

It's a comforting thought if you are thoroughly wed to the EU, but Biden's Irish American posturing is about as substantial as any of his other policy positions. Which is to say not even slightly, and besides, the average Yank (even the ones who think they're Irish) has an understanding of the Troubles and Good Friday Agreement about as in depth and nuanced as a child's understanding of nuclear physics. It's simply not something I can even imagine registering on their radar.

It's really grasping at straws to think that issue is the one it will all hinge on. Upholding the agreement is in our own best interests first and foremost, so I doubt anyone seriously wants to undermine it other than as a bargaining tactic.

My own more cynical view of what's happening here is simply that it's rats fleeing a sinking ship. Anyone who's been paying attention knows the government has been falling apart since mid summer at least, under the weight of covid as well as looming Brexit. It's no coincidence that the deadline is up and the people behind it are all making excuses not to be in the room- The government is going to be going into next year limping, and by this time next year I won't be surprised if Starmer's (evil Blairite centrist) Labour party (who are no good to anyone and definitely won't win anything because they're worse than the Miliband days yes even Bacongate have you heard his voice) have a no confidence motion and general election up for the taking.
>> No. 91477 Anonymous
14th November 2020
Saturday 12:18 am
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>>91476
It's incredible proof, really, that no matter how big the crisis facing the nation, the Tories will not avoid any opportunity to waste money on outsourcing contracts to their friends. If we were in Threads the Tories would outsource the cleanup of irradiated farms to the bombed-out remains of Serco.
>> No. 91478 Anonymous
14th November 2020
Saturday 12:18 am
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>>91476

>I doubt anyone seriously wants to undermine it other than as a bargaining tactic.

Both the DUP and Sinn Fein are genuinely concerned about the future of the GFA. If those obdurate arseholes are agreeing for once, we should take note.
>> No. 91479 Anonymous
14th November 2020
Saturday 12:19 am
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>>91474

>Yellowhammer

Eeek.
>> No. 91488 Anonymous
14th November 2020
Saturday 2:07 pm
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>>91476

>It's a comforting thought if you are thoroughly wed to the EU, but Biden's Irish American posturing is about as substantial as any of his other policy positions. Which is to say not even slightly

That, and besides, Americans have a very limited understanding of what it means to be "Irish", "Italian", or any other nationality that contributed a notable share of immigrants to the U.S. in the past.

Americans you meet over there will be quick to tell you they're "Italian", or "German", or even Scandinavian. It does not fully occur to them that they are really not, that they are very simply Americans, and that they are basing their claim on the fact that somebody in their family came to the U.S. three or four generations ago from that country, and so today they still think they can just wear that heritage on their sleeves, however diluted it really is.

If Biden feels a connection to his Irish Catholic roots, that's great, but other than having personal sentimental value for him, it should not cause him to interfere in other countries' internal matters. Especially when you think that we're barely one generation on from the end of the Troubles. And somebody like Biden now barging in and wanting to live out his wank fantasy of a united Ireland is going to do much more damage than he'll ever realise.
>> No. 91499 Anonymous
14th November 2020
Saturday 8:59 pm
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I've been watching CNN a lot during and after the election.

My perception is that while I share their disdain for Trump, they have a quite unmissable left-wing/liberal bent, in a way that is actually annoying and doesn't exactly keep the promise of delivering impartial news. It's all just a bit too "on the nose", the way they report the latest post-election news and Trump's ongoing antics with a weird mixture of left-wing snobbery and carefully dosed exasperation.

What I am saying is, just because I agree with them, doesn't mean they seem like a neutral news source to me that I will keep following when all this election drama is over.
>> No. 91500 Anonymous
14th November 2020
Saturday 10:17 pm
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>>91499

The hyper-partisan nature of American politics has made neutrality essentially impossible.

The BBC is accused by Brexiteers of being a cess-pit of lefty PC propaganda, but also accused by Corbynites of being a mouthpiece for corporate interests and the Tory party. While the BBC's political coverage is far from perfect, they're doing a reasonably good job of splitting the difference. That's only possible because there is a reasonable middle-ground position in British politics.

How do you split the difference between "guns should be illegal and healthcare should be free" and "the Jews are ritually sacrificing babies in secret tunnels under the Pentagon"? The American right have mainstreamed batshit insane conspiracy theories and repudiated the idea of objective truth, to which the only reasonable response is exasperation.


>> No. 91501 Anonymous
14th November 2020
Saturday 10:33 pm
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>>91500

On the subject of the Hyper-partisan nature of American politics
https://thehill.com/homenews/news/525878-charles-koch-regrets-his-partisanship-boy-did-we-screw-up
>Charles Koch regrets his partisanship: 'Boy, did we screw up!'
>> No. 91502 Anonymous
14th November 2020
Saturday 10:47 pm
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>>91499
Holy shit lad, catch up.
>> No. 91503 Anonymous
14th November 2020
Saturday 10:49 pm
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>>91500
>The BBC is accused by Brexiteers of being a cess-pit of lefty PC propaganda, but also accused by Corbynites of being a mouthpiece for corporate interests and the Tory party. While the BBC's political coverage is far from perfect, they're doing a reasonably good job of splitting the difference. That's only possible because there is a reasonable middle-ground position in British politics.

It is both. On the news front it is largely a government mouthpiece but the majority of its other broadcasting is achingly right on.
>> No. 91505 Anonymous
14th November 2020
Saturday 11:56 pm
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>>91500

>The American right have mainstreamed batshit insane conspiracy theories and repudiated the idea of objective truth

Not to be overly simplistic, but that's quite fitting for a political movement whose followers quite frequently believe with unshakable certainty that the Earth was created in a single week a few thousand years ago. Evidence as we understand it does not go a very long way in those circles. And if you do present it to them in an attempt to prove them wrong, they'll indeed just say that that's all Liberal media hokum.

I think the biggest problem is the two-party system. Unlike in Britain, where the Conservatives, for all their faults, are still comparatively moderate and the far right is confined to insignificant splinter parties that are their own entities and will probably never be part of government, the Republicans in America comprise all those currents under one roof, from left-/centrist conservatives to far-right extremists. Even the completely deranged Tea Party movement was in the end just a movement within the Republicans, and not a new formation outside mainstream conservativism, like the Brexit Party now tries to be in Britain. And if you have all those batshit rightist currents in one big party, then it also makes it easier for them to gain influence over the party as a whole.

Political extremism as such seems to be much less acceptable in Britain than in the U.S., and so the biggest two parties in Britain which still like to think of themselves as representing the majority of the population have a true incentive to distance themselves from fringe parties on both ends of the spectrum. While those fringe movements themselves have no way of influencing policy from within Labour or the Conservatives, because they're in completely different parties in and of themselves.
>> No. 91506 Anonymous
15th November 2020
Sunday 12:02 am
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>>91500
In principle I honestly prefer the nature of US politics other than the few moments where it makes me question the very foundations of my sanity. The insanity of Trump is transparently obvious to the bulk of sane people while the insanity of Nick Clegg or David Cameron (which is approximately where you wind up with splitting the difference) is more subtle and so all the more dangerous for its appearance of sanity. All would gladly captain the ship of state into an iceberg, but you've at least got a fighting chance of the crew staging a mutiny against the one who talks to himself.
>> No. 91507 Anonymous
15th November 2020
Sunday 12:25 am
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>>91505

We've both got a very broken FPTP electoral system, but they're broken in diametrically opposite ways. Our system tends to converge in the middle, with two near-identical parties fighting over the tiny handful of floating voters in marginal seats. Theirs diverges to maximise turnout, radicalising the core voters against each other.

I think the key difference is funding and broadcast rules - American politicians can spend mind-bending amounts of money on attack ads.


>> No. 91521 Anonymous
15th November 2020
Sunday 3:51 pm
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>>91507

> American politicians can spend mind-bending amounts of money on attack ads

Right, American attack ads can be pretty nasty, in a way that would no doubt be banned by Ofcom.

They can almost literally be something like, "Did you know that candidate X ate the brains of babies while having underage prostitutes wank him off".

Americans value freedom of speech very highly, but there is something to be said for having a minimum of reasonable boundaries for that right.
>> No. 91522 Anonymous
15th November 2020
Sunday 4:00 pm
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>>91507
>>91506

If American politics is so polarising, why then is it that there's absolutely no substantial difference between the parties in terms of the way they actually govern?

This is the thing, on the surface of it you'd think these parties are worlds apart, one's covered in rainbow flags and wants to right all the wrongs of racism and women's rights and all that stuff. The other is practically full of KKK members and Christian anti-abortion gun nuts. Couldn't be any more different could they?

Except that once they're in, nothing changes. Not even a couple of percent here and there on tax brackets. Everything that actually matters to the running of a country is functionally identical. It's all complete smoke and mirrors, style over substance with American politics.

At least with British politics, they might do something with tax credits or tinker with the tax-free allowance, stamp duty or benefits caps. In America there's none of that. They're both fundamentally the same centre-right party under the hood.
>> No. 91523 Anonymous
15th November 2020
Sunday 4:16 pm
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>>91522

A cynical man might suggest that the culture war has been orchestrated by corporate interests to help perpetuate the economic status quo.
>> No. 91524 Anonymous
15th November 2020
Sunday 4:52 pm
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I think this is about as close as we're going to get to a concession of loss. He is at least in the acceptance stage of grief, I guess.
>> No. 91525 Anonymous
15th November 2020
Sunday 5:16 pm
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>>91522

>Except that once they're in, nothing changes. Not even a couple of percent here and there on tax brackets. Everything that actually matters to the running of a country is functionally identical. It's all complete smoke and mirrors, style over substance with American politics.


While it may again sound too simplistic, politics in the U.S. is owned by big corporate business. And if you are part of corporate America, like any company, you are interested in political stability beyond election outcomes. Although capital generally favours conservative governments, it still has to put up with a democratically elected left-wing or socialist government. So you usually lobby both major political factions to keep things on the straight and narrow so that your business not only keeps thriving and is safe from unwelcome policy surprises, but ideally gets an ever increasing slice of the pie no matter who is in power. And this is also why schemes that would genuinely do something for the poor usually fail, and especially so in the U.S.. And that's not even addressing the fact that Americans get to elect both the members of Congress and of their Senate, which often sees a party's majority flip in mid-term elections and enables the opposition to block everything an incumbent President and administration does.

Ironically, it wasn't solely big-business Republicans from about the Reagan era onward who sold poorer Americans down the river. While everybody thinks the two Bushes brought full-on decepticonservativism into American politics, the Clintons first and foremost, and also many people in Obama's administration heralded in a strong shift from traditional left-wing liberalism towards decepticon and neoliberal ideas.
>> No. 91526 Anonymous
15th November 2020
Sunday 5:19 pm
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>>91524
I like the way that he seems to have insulted Texas there.
>> No. 91527 Anonymous
15th November 2020
Sunday 5:21 pm
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>>91522
Well in the US there's separate votes for president and congress. So if those don't align, the president can't get things passed as easily.
>> No. 91528 Anonymous
15th November 2020
Sunday 5:52 pm
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>>91524

Spoke too soon.
>> No. 91529 Anonymous
15th November 2020
Sunday 7:19 pm
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>>91528


"claim about election fraud is disputed" is far too non commital language. It makes it sound like there is a real debate and his position is the majority view.
>> No. 91530 Anonymous
15th November 2020
Sunday 7:21 pm
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Everyone plays up US polarization, but I don't really see it in the parties.
Institutionally, the Democrats still have the Clinton mindset that they need to compromise with Republicans to get things done, even as the Republicans have realised that the best way to get what they want is to be intransigent little shits.
So the Democrats piss about trying to court swing voters rather than trying to boost the turnout of their own people and spend as much time attacking AOC and their own tiny left wing than they do attacking Republicans.
Even on social issues, where they're more willing to diverge, they're not willing to really get into it. Their high ranking people don't hate Republicans in the way that Republicans are willing to hate them.

Democratic representatives usually give the impression of being the sort of insufferable well-to-do cunt who'll have a little cry about political incivility (from both sides!), but feel absolutely nothing about millions of Americans going without medical care, going hungry, or going to jail. Republicans, for all of their utter insanity, are at least good at the game.
>> No. 91531 Anonymous
15th November 2020
Sunday 8:14 pm
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>>91530

>Democratic representatives usually give the impression of being the sort of insufferable well-to-do cunt who'll have a little cry about political incivility (from both sides!), but feel absolutely nothing about millions of Americans going without medical care, going hungry, or going to jail.


One reason why there was such a massive pendulum swing back towards a strong Republican win in 2016 was that the Democrats spent most of Obama's reign in a filter bubble where they thought that what was good for the liberal urban intelligentsia was also good for the small town Missourian factory worker. But very many people in America's conservative, often rural heartland just didn't feel represented by the liberal elite's vision for racial equality and women's and minority rights that they thought nobody could possibly have anything against. Trump exploited that, and many who had nothing to gain from the wet dream of itself that the liberal left were having voted for Trump. Having a black President in the White House, and then possibly a woman President with Hillary Clinton, did nothing to give the average working class person more job security or better medical care. And then of course you also have America's conservative traditionalists, who already saw it as the end of all that was good and holy that they first had a black President, to be followed by, the horror, a woman.
>> No. 91532 Anonymous
15th November 2020
Sunday 8:53 pm
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>>91531

The part you have to grapple with and honestly, frankly acknowledge is that neither did the Republicans.

I still maintain that Trump was a protest vote for this reason- Those small town and working class types didn't have anything to gain from voting for Trump, but more importantly, they had nothing to lose by abandoning the Democrats. When neither of the parties is offering anything substantial, it doesn't cost anything to send a message that says "Fuck off with your coastal liberal circle-jerk."

This is the reason something much, much worse is brewing in America in 2024. Biden is about as bland and empty of a candidate as possible, because the Democrats can't stomach the idea of providing a substantially leftist platform any more than they can beat the Republicans at their own game. The same resentments are going to exist by the time of the next election.

The thing is it's not like America hasn't had real social democrat leadership before. FSR was practically a communist compared to the likes of Clinton or Obama, even Nixon ran on a 4 day work week. Fucking Nixon. The American electorate is more receptive to leftist policy than either party can afford to admit, which is why the battleground is always drawn, by a mutual agreement, on social policy and the personal likeability of the candidates.

https://www.salon.com/2020/11/12/chris-hedges-on-the-task-ahead-will-biden-surrender-to-plutocrats-and-paralysis/
>> No. 91539 Anonymous
15th November 2020
Sunday 10:08 pm
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>>91532

Another thing is that socialism has always been the bogeyman of American politics. The country's self image and historical narrative is that it is the antithesis to anything to do with government-forced wealth redistribution or a strong state.

There were workers rights movements in 1880s to 1900s America almost the same as there were in much of Europe, and you could argue that they were the closest thing to a socialist movement that the U.S. has seen to this day. It's incredibly easy in America to demonise anything as socialism that is even remotely a genuinely good idea for once to help the poor by taking a small smidgeon from the rich. And the political establishment gets away with it mainly because socialism is so demonised that it's difficult to even find something in writing in the mainstream media that explains neutrally what the political and social system of socialism actually is. It's a bad word, but it remains an empty phrase because the majority of people in the U.S. who use it would probably not in a million years be able to tell you in a few short sentences what the word really means. It's mainly used to shut people up that you don't agree with in an argument over the role of government.

And so, the poor working class rural white trash will continue to vote for filthy rich Republican candidates who care diddly squat about them, and be almost entirely oblivious to the fact that the political establishment on both sides of the political divide is screwing them over. They will think that Obamacare is socialism, and never realise that they of all people benefit the most from it.
>> No. 91544 Anonymous
15th November 2020
Sunday 11:04 pm
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>>91539

It's always been harder for socialism to take hold in America, thanks to the likes of union busters like the Pinkertons and what have you in their formative industrial years; and even more recently many of their industrial unions have actively harmed the groups they are supposed to represent by acting as much like another faction wrestling for control of capital and not the interests of the workers. It's not uncommon to hear miners or car industry workers who deeply mistrust unions.

But it's only relatively recently, in the post-war period, that you see socialism utterly demonised like this. Proper anarchists and communists were regularly arrested and kept out of harm's way in the 20s, but you could still have a president like Roosevelt elected, who oversaw a period where the government was literally paying people for bullshit like scaring pigeons, alongside conducting some of the biggest public investment in infrastructure America has ever seen. It seems barmy to consider but America probably wouldn't even have fucking motorways without him.

It's hard not to draw comparisons with Brexit. I think it's pretty direct, if not as clear cut over here. The people voting Trump against there better interests weren't doing so as a coherent desire (even if a loyal korps of true believers insist they did) but more because the prevailing liberal establishment and its values left a bad taste in their mouth. It's not because they all hate gays and blacks, but because being told those things are the most important issue when you can't afford your medications is an insult.

In the same way, the Northern voters who chose Brexit weren't really doing so because they think it's better for us, or because they're racist, but because all the rhetoric about the EU's benefits sounded utterly out of touch to people whose community still hasn't recovered from the Thatcher years.

Both of them have been described as self harm, and that's actually a perfectly apt description if you stop for a moment to consider the reasons a person usually commits self harm.
>> No. 91550 Anonymous
16th November 2020
Monday 11:54 am
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>>91544

> It's not because they all hate gays and blacks, but because being told those things are the most important issue when you can't afford your medications is an insult.

That's what I was trying to say further up in this thread. It's without a doubt an advancement for a developed country when women, gays, and ethnic minorities are more and more given the respect they deserve, but having travelled the heartland of America extensively myself and having spent time chatting with the locals, I can attest that the people there simply genuinely do not fucking care if the liberal East Coast and West Coast elites celebrate it as an all-encompassing milestone. Life is still tough for the average blue collar small town person who lives paycheck to paycheck and can't even afford regular dentist visits. And especially in the Bible Belt, if you tell them that their country is surely a better place now for treating gays with respect, a good number of them will spout Bible verses at you, and possibly even tell you to fuck off back to Britain and take your gay loving ways with you.

There's a massive disconnect between what liberal elites think is good for the country, and what the average Joe in a rural red state sees happening in his own life. And that is why the Democrats, ostensibly still advocates for the poor, lost the South and much of the Midwest a long time ago. Until a few decades ago, those were among the poorer states with a tradition of strong Democrat turnouts in elections, but there are places there now where you will almost literally be run out of town if you say you are a registered Democrat voter.
>> No. 91552 Anonymous
16th November 2020
Monday 12:12 pm
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>>91524

Well now don't you feel silly.
>> No. 91553 Anonymous
16th November 2020
Monday 12:19 pm
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>>91552
Seems like his lawyers have just abandoned most of their legal case in Pennslyvania.

He is never going to stop claiming that it was rigged and he won. But there will also be some kind of fudge in the next few days so the transition can begin.
>> No. 91554 Anonymous
16th November 2020
Monday 12:40 pm
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>>91553

>He is never going to stop claiming that it was rigged and he won

Agreed. He will probably claim until the day he dies that he was cheated out of a second term. Not that it will have any kind of relevance with a view to him actually getting to serve a second term, but he'll keep yammering about it. And he will keep damaging America's democracy in doing so, by sowing mistrust in the voting system, which, for all its faults, still seems to be able to guarantee free and fair elections.
>> No. 91555 Anonymous
16th November 2020
Monday 1:24 pm
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Could Biden sue him for defamation if he keeps at it? Presumably at some point Trump should be called out for actual proof.
>> No. 91556 Anonymous
16th November 2020
Monday 1:57 pm
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>>91555
He can when Trumps not the president anymore, but by then it would be petty compared to some of the other things they could probably find to throw at him.
>> No. 91557 Anonymous
16th November 2020
Monday 2:04 pm
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>>91555
Interestingly, there isn't really a federal (ie US-wide) law around defamation. Some states sort-of have it; ditto libel, it isn't as consistent or strong as we have in the UK, which is why so many libel challenges end up in UK courts, there is a much higher chance of winning them. I think in another thread, someone highlighted the mental negative-attack adverts that appear there around politicians, their tolerance for this sort of behaviour is completely different to ours and our defamation/libel laws would stop many of those kinds of adverts appearing here.

As >>91556 says, it sounds like Trump will be in a lot more trouble with his taxes, links to Russian money, operation of his companies and others once he leaves the job. I don't think Biden cares, but the damage is already done - millions of thick Americans believe that the vote/count wasn't observed correctly, even if the Trump lawyers have repeatedly said in court now that wasn't true and they did actually have observers of their own in the room.
>> No. 91558 Anonymous
16th November 2020
Monday 2:06 pm
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>>91556

Biden will have more important things to do as President than sue Trump for defamation.

Biden is probably going to display good sportsmanship, even if Trump patently doesn't, and just move on.

Also, Trump has been digging his own grave enough that he's wide open to all kinds of tax and financial fraud prosecution once his immunity as President ends. No need for Biden to then kick Trump when he's down.
>> No. 91560 Anonymous
16th November 2020
Monday 8:43 pm
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Hasn't Biden already said he'll pardon Trump?
>> No. 91561 Anonymous
16th November 2020
Monday 8:54 pm
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>>91560
No.
>> No. 91562 Anonymous
16th November 2020
Monday 9:43 pm
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>>91560
He has not said that - additionally, a presidential pardon only applies to federal crimes, whereas most of the things he will be prosecuted for (by the Southern District of New York) are state crimes.
>> No. 91563 Anonymous
16th November 2020
Monday 10:58 pm
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>>91554

>And he will keep damaging America's democracy in doing so

Gosh I can feel the single manly tear well in up in my golden eagle's eye. You've been reading too many overly sentimental Yank rags, give yourself a break eh? It's over now.

People are preposterously thick the world over. Earlier today I saw one of those Facebook posts about a paedo or something and in the comments someone started their post "Unfortunately, it's innocent until proven guilty". People like Trump, Murdoch, saville and the like add a bit of evil to the world, but perfectly ordinary people still manage to think the right to fair trial is "unfortunate" of their own free will.

It doesn't do to dwell on things.
>> No. 91564 Anonymous
17th November 2020
Tuesday 2:13 am
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>>91563

>but perfectly ordinary people still manage to think the right to fair trial is "unfortunate" of their own free will.

It's the assumption that some crimes are so heinous that not even innocence is a defence, yes. Very dangerous path to go down, but there are always enough thick people who think you lose all rights the moment somebody accuses you.

It's the same kind of argumentative freewheeling really with which Trump now tries against all hope to save his presidency. Fuck evidence, I said it, so it's true. And all the thick Republican supporters lap it up with not even a hint of doubt.
>> No. 91565 Anonymous
17th November 2020
Tuesday 2:29 am
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>>91563>>91564
I think perhaps decades of our belligerent print media telling people that the first thing that'll happen to anyone who gets sent down will be the delivery of a memory foam matress and a brand new PS5/Xbox Whatever the Fuck (their choice), assuming of course their setence was longer than half an hour, which it probably bloody wasn't! People like Trump, Murdoch, saville both feed off and create cultures where "innocent til proven guilty" is a negative thing. It's not like we just have a set number of complete bastards in society that will be around forever that we just have to put up with. Sadly tackling the causes behind reactionary thought requires more money and focus than the left has coughed up since Atlee and Bevin and pals where large and in charge. As far as I'm concerned we lost the war in 2016, everything since then has just been a build-up to the final coup de grâce, whenever that might be.
>> No. 91566 Anonymous
17th November 2020
Tuesday 9:36 am
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>>91565
Something like 1984 I expect. The proles singing outside our windows in the muck while we scribble futile thoughts of revolution on darkwebfa.gs.
>> No. 91567 Anonymous
17th November 2020
Tuesday 11:16 am
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>>91565

It's said that a society shows its true civility in the way it treats its prisoners. I'm not saying put prisoners on an island like they do in Norway that's reallly more a holiday resort where they get to bask in the sun half the day. Your overall quality of life as a convicted criminal in prison should be significantly less than that of the average person on the outside, in no small part to deter people from doing things in the first place that will get them into prison. But how far do we take that idea. We have to remember that we expect the majority of prisoners to become rehabilitated after their sentence is served, and that they integrate back into society. But you are not going to achieve that by just locking them up and throwing away the key. If we deny them a minimum of respect and human rights during their prison term, then how can we expect somebody like that to get out again and then respect others. So why not give them a good but simple mattress to sleep on, and the ability to have a TV to keep up with what's going on outside during a longer prison term. And a video games console isn't standard issue when you check into prison, it will most likely have come from a relative, or they will have worked for it at their prison. Which in itself is a valuable lesson for many inmates, that honest work enables you to buy things that are then legally yours.

It's always low hanging fruit for the Murdoch rags to demonise people and generate rage bait that will have people frothing at the mouth that prisoners get any kind of humane treatment at all. And therein lies the danger. If you brought back public executions tomorrow, the voices of the shocked human rights intelligentsia would be drowned out many times over by the unwashed masses who'd be cheering enthusiastically that finally, this country knows how to treat criminals again.
>> No. 91568 Anonymous
17th November 2020
Tuesday 11:31 am
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>>91567
>I'm not saying put prisoners on an island like they do in Norway that's reallly more a holiday resort where they get to bask in the sun half the day.

And why's that?
>> No. 91571 Anonymous
17th November 2020
Tuesday 2:01 pm
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>>91568

Well, it hardly worked out quite so well when we pioneered the idea a couple of hundred years back.
>> No. 91572 Anonymous
17th November 2020
Tuesday 2:14 pm
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>>91571
I'd appreciate a serious response to my question. The post above appears to be in favour of human rights and keeping prisoners in decent conditions, but caveats it with Norway's example as 'a step too far', despite Norway being one of the most successful systems. Why?
>> No. 91576 Anonymous
17th November 2020
Tuesday 3:47 pm
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>>91572

It's worth noting that the Norwegian prison island is a small colony for specially selected low-risk offenders.

> Inmates must apply to serve their time on the island. Applications are denied if officials believe the prisoner poses a threat. In the 38 years the prison has been operating there has only been one attempted escape. The inmates know how easy they have it and fear the consequences of escaping. If caught escaping, the inmate is sent to one of the most strict prisons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bast%C3%B8y_Prison


This is not an approach that will be possible to implement for the majority of prison inmates. It's really more a social experiment than it is an answer to the prison crises in some Western countries, notably the U.S.

As I understand it, Norway doesn't have one of the lowest recidivism rates just because you can apply to go to an island resort by another name, but because prison strongly focuses on rehabilitation and reintegration into society. It's that whole collectivism thing in Scandinavian society, where you keep looking after each other even when somebody runs afoul of social rules, and penal law.

American prisons in particular are more concerned with punishment than they are with rehabilitation. Thanks to decades of showboating, tough-on-crime politicians ramping up prison sentences and riding on the public fear ticket, many states now have three strikes laws which can result in you going away for life because of serial petty felonies like compulsive shoplifting or small time drug possession. One in thirty Americans is now "in the system", ranging from incarceration to being on parole or on a violent (or sex) offender register.

The biggest push towards mass incarceration has been the privatisation of American prisons. There are big corporations that run these prisons, and they know how to protect their investments, in that they are verifiably lobbying politicians for tougher laws, longer prison sentences, and smaller rehabilitation budgets. In short, private prison companies have no interest in people rejoining society, they are interested in maximising prison occupancy. And that's why the U.S. prison crisis has been known about for three to four decades, but nobody has made any meaningful changes to the way things are. But also, the American populace has a much more deeply set fire-and-brimstone approach to crime. Any mainstream politician campaigning to truly reform the prison system runs the risk of losing their entire career if they appear soft on crime.
>> No. 91582 Anonymous
17th November 2020
Tuesday 8:14 pm
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>>91572

Being less flippant I'd say it's generally hard to compare the idea like for like with how a UK based equivalent would perform, in terms of outcomes. You're probably familiar with how much more... Collectivist, for lack of a better word, Scandinavian society tends to be compared to ours, and I would wager that that has a huge impact on the viability of such a scheme.

I'm all in favour of rehabilitation by the way, and I'm not the person who made the post you were questioning. If it were up to me prison would be all about learning life skills, which I believe is what most delinquents and general riff raff are lacking to end up in the life of crime in the first place. If you made prison into more of a re-education institution, I'm sure that would be punishment enough in itself for some, but overall it's hard to say it'd be inhumane.

The point in question however seems to be the requirement of some punitive element to criminal justice. I'm an "eye for an eye would leave us all blind" type of guy, but I think if you were to ask the British public probably a good 90% of them would say criminals have to suffer in some way in retribution for what they've done out of moral principle. Vengeance and retribution seem to be at the core of our ideals about justice, as a society, to the point that people often use the word "justice" to mean exactly that.
>> No. 91583 Anonymous
17th November 2020
Tuesday 8:39 pm
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>>91582

>a good 90% of them would say criminals have to suffer in some way in retribution for what they've done out of moral principle. Vengeance and retribution seem to be at the core of our ideals about justice, as a society, to the point that people often use the word "justice" to mean exactly that.


It's a thin line, you're right to allude to that. I, too, happen to think that society benefits more if the stated main goal of a prison sentence is to keep offenders from returning to a life of crime once they are released again, and as you said, the resaon they went to prison in the first place is often a lack of basic life skills. And younger offenders in particular often don't have any kind of formal job training, so if you offer them a chance to learn a skill or trade, something that makes them immediately employable when they get out, then that's one of the best insurances against that person reoffending.

But even if I consider myself progressive on the issue, I still think there should be an element of punishment when an offender goes to prison. It's all well and good to give them a perspective for when they get out, but they also need to be given something to think about so they know their sentence isn't a holiday. Otherwise, prison would really just be a shit boarding school.

The reason why all that kind of reasoning doesn't fly in America, however, is that poor and lower class people on the outside there already struggle to pay for a roof over their heads and food on the table, and to obtain any kind of formal training to get a job that goes beyond working a supermarket till or flipping burgers. It regularly incites outrage among the lower classes and the wealthy alike in the U.S. when you then say that yes, prisoners already get free room and board, AND the government should give them a free formal education to boot.

Which really also tells you that America doesn't give a shit about its poor, if they think a free formal education is an undeserved handout.
>> No. 91585 Anonymous
17th November 2020
Tuesday 9:56 pm
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Imagine someone breaks into your house and murders your spouse, parents, or siblings. Then gets sent to a holiday prison on an island for being a naughty boy.

The average person won't agree to this, nor would I.
>> No. 91586 Anonymous
17th November 2020
Tuesday 10:00 pm
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>>91585
What does them agreeing have to do with owt? The victims aren't the judge or jury.
>> No. 91587 Anonymous
17th November 2020
Tuesday 10:17 pm
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>>91585
I'm sure people said this about the death penalty until they didn't.
>> No. 91588 Anonymous
17th November 2020
Tuesday 10:20 pm
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>>91586
I didn't know we lived in a dictatorship.
>> No. 91589 Anonymous
17th November 2020
Tuesday 10:22 pm
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I have this slightly mad idea where I'm more keen on corporal punishment or jail-as-punishment for rich people when it comes to less violent crimes where fines are normally applied.
The underlying logic is something like: fines are trivial to the rich, even if you make them fairer than they are now. So to actually punish rich people, you have to take another avenue - losing a few hundred pounds or 20% of your income can screw the average person massively without much hurting a multi-millionaire, but both of them will have roughly the same sensitivity to a good caning or being locked up in a prison.

I'm not saying I'd actually support anything like that, there's something barbaric about it and the rich still have the advantage of being able to lawyer their way out of it. It's more a vague thought about the principle.
>> No. 91590 Anonymous
17th November 2020
Tuesday 10:52 pm
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>>91589
I'd rather we put them in a reverse Hunger Games scenario.
>> No. 91591 Anonymous
17th November 2020
Tuesday 11:03 pm
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>>91588
But surely you're aware of the justice system?
>> No. 91592 Anonymous
17th November 2020
Tuesday 11:46 pm
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>>91585
"Those who seek revenge should dig two graves."

But we're trying to advance beyond the need for things like revenge and violent outbursts, or at least I am anyway. I don't think we ought to run society based on our darkest impulses, even the ones that seem like the most natural things in the world. I quite agree that if someone committed a heinous act against someone I love I'd want to cause them equal or greater harm, but it's up to society prevent me from doing so, even if I don't like it. Society's benefit is more important than my own desire. Don't extrapolate that out into meaning "oh! So I can't eat cake no 'cus I might get fat, huh!?!"

>>91589
I kind of agree, but once you start moving people into special legal brackets based on things like that you've basically shited up the entire system. I think we should just focus on making sure no one's life can fall to bits over a two-hundred-quid fine instead.
>> No. 91594 Anonymous
17th November 2020
Tuesday 11:53 pm
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>>91585

You underestimate my power to form rational thoughts even when being emotionally distressed, tory.

If the island fixes them then I can't think of a better solution. Death? That's not going to help me, I'm not after revenge. Life imprisonment? It obviates the risk of them doing it again, so long as you don't count other prisoners as people, but it's costing me, it's costing us to keep them in there for decades.

Obviously the exercise is moot because as pointed out, they don't send murderers to the island - they just get a sentence in a 'nicer' prison with emphasis on rehabilitation. I suppose the main question here is do you think a murderer is a fundamentally defective human who needs to be removed from society for the greater good, or if they are damaged but fixable.

Random, unmotivated murder happens a lot less than blood frothing tabloids want you to think, there's usually motivating factors. I would assume Iceland's low recidivism rates are as much to do with how their society looks as a whole, not just whether inmates get a PlayStation or not.

Moreover, people talk of rehabilitation focused prisons as if there is no element of punishment, but I think removing someone's basic freedom is a far greater punishment than many people think it is. Imagine if you couldn't leave your own home under any circumstances. I'm a hermit that spends 95% of my time at home, but even I'd go mad pretty fucking quickly if the ability to choose to go outside on a whim was removed from me. Perhaps the real issue is that even criminals don't see the reality of that punishment from the outside, so there's no deterrent.

I don't know, I'm high on painkillers.
>> No. 91595 Anonymous
18th November 2020
Wednesday 12:54 am
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>>91594
>Obviously the exercise is moot because as pointed out, they don't send murderers to the island - they just get a sentence in a 'nicer' prison with emphasis on rehabilitation. I suppose the main question here is do you think a murderer is a fundamentally defective human who needs to be removed from society for the greater good, or if they are damaged but fixable.
They should definitely be removed. I'd go as far as asking for revenge retribution.

>Random, unmotivated murder happens a lot less than blood frothing tabloids want you to think, there's usually motivating factors.
Then it shouldn't be that bad to hang those handful of murderers a year.
>> No. 91596 Anonymous
18th November 2020
Wednesday 1:32 am
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>>91592
>But we're trying to advance beyond the need for things like revenge and violent outbursts, or at least I am anyway. I don't think we ought to run society based on our darkest impulses, even the ones that seem like the most natural things in the world.

I've felt alone in this for some time, I have nothing to add I'm just glad you specifically pointed this out, thank you.
>> No. 91597 Anonymous
18th November 2020
Wednesday 1:35 am
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>>91595
Unless you're god, you don't have a method of hanging only the guilty, and if you are god you've got better things to be doing than criminal justice - like giving me that house i've been praying for.
>> No. 91598 Anonymous
18th November 2020
Wednesday 1:45 am
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>>91592

>Don't extrapolate that out into meaning "oh! So I can't eat cake no 'cus I might get fat, huh!?!"

Listen when I'm in charge you can eat all the cake you bloody well want, and it'll be free too because I will have abolished money.

But if you get fat, that's when you get sent to the camp. It's all about teaching people personal responsibility, you see. Good communism doesn't work if people aren't good individuals.

Thatcher was right, she just had it all backwards and upside down.
>> No. 91600 Anonymous
18th November 2020
Wednesday 3:04 am
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>>91597
A small margin of error is acceptable for the greater good.
>> No. 91601 Anonymous
18th November 2020
Wednesday 7:38 am
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>>91600

That's the sort of thing a murderer would say.
>> No. 91602 Anonymous
18th November 2020
Wednesday 8:23 am
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>>91601
I'm not sure it is really, but they do tend to come out with pseudo-intellectual bollocks like that too, so I can understand how you might misdiagnose otherlad's posts.
>> No. 91603 Anonymous
18th November 2020
Wednesday 8:29 am
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>>91602

He's supporting the inevitable murder of innocents as acceptable losses on the path to revenge. He might not be a murderer himself, but he's certainly not as against it as he thinks he is.
>> No. 91604 Anonymous
18th November 2020
Wednesday 8:32 am
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>>91600
Look, if you want to roll back the law to an earlier state, how about 1760?
>It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.
>> No. 91605 Anonymous
18th November 2020
Wednesday 8:37 am
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>>91603
I know, m8, I was just being facetious.
>> No. 91606 Anonymous
18th November 2020
Wednesday 8:50 am
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>>91605

Sorry, my mistake. I'm not used to people being facetious on britfa.gs.
>> No. 91607 Anonymous
18th November 2020
Wednesday 9:37 am
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If you support the death penalty, then Shaun has a few words for you.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L30_hfuZoQ8
>> No. 91608 Anonymous
18th November 2020
Wednesday 9:44 am
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>>91607
I agree with Shaun on most things but he's also a tedious bore who I wouldn't subject anyone to listen to.
>> No. 91612 Anonymous
18th November 2020
Wednesday 6:05 pm
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>>91608
Really? For someone who does long-form essays on dry subject matter, I think he's got a great sense of humour.
>> No. 91616 Anonymous
18th November 2020
Wednesday 6:52 pm
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>>91612

I like his Twitter feed and enjoyed watching him play FFVII Remake
>> No. 91617 Anonymous
18th November 2020
Wednesday 8:51 pm
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>>91607
>>91608
If Shaun's not your style, Penn & Teller did a great Bullshit! episode on why the death penalty should be abolished. Plus, they are libertarians so it's not just a BLOODY SOFT LEFTEYE argument.
>> No. 91618 Anonymous
18th November 2020
Wednesday 9:28 pm
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>>91617

Not the people you are talking to. But I find that show quite insufferable. It is a victim of it's own premise. Because the stance they take on any topic is pre-decided by the format it means they take an aggressive stance that isn't based on good faith consideration of evidence but begging the question (how do we prove this weeks topic bullshit?) This leads to strawmanning opposing positions all the time.
>> No. 91619 Anonymous
18th November 2020
Wednesday 10:28 pm
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>>91618
Oh I don't disagree; some of the arguments they make are straight up wrong -- the taxes episode, in classic libertarian style, completely misrepresents (or, if I'm being kinder, misunderstands) how a progressive rate tax system works.

The death penalty episode was generally quite good, though. Of course, the episodes about anti-vaxxers or mystics (or creationists) work best because there is no 'fair' argument to be made -- it really is bullshit.
>> No. 91690 Anonymous
22nd November 2020
Sunday 11:07 am
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Saw this cartoon on Twitter. Made me chuckle.
>> No. 91710 Anonymous
23rd November 2020
Monday 11:14 pm
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It's over, transition officially begins.
>> No. 91714 Anonymous
24th November 2020
Tuesday 7:30 am
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>>91710 Written by a drunkard or simpleton?
Real?
>> No. 91715 Anonymous
24th November 2020
Tuesday 7:36 am
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>>91714
They've probably grown accustomed to writing things at a reading level Trump can understand.
>> No. 91736 Anonymous
24th November 2020
Tuesday 12:32 pm
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>>91710

Oh well, I guess come January we go back to making fun of Americans.
>> No. 91750 Anonymous
24th November 2020
Tuesday 9:31 pm
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Are Spanairds not white then?
>> No. 91751 Anonymous
24th November 2020
Tuesday 9:51 pm
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>>91750
Depends entirely on your narrative.
>> No. 91752 Anonymous
24th November 2020
Tuesday 10:53 pm
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>>91750

I don't even think Yanks would count Spaniards as Latino.

Yank racial ideology is about as cart-pulling-horse as it's possible for anything to be.
>> No. 91753 Anonymous
25th November 2020
Wednesday 12:58 am
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>>91750
Americans are supreme weirdos. Most Europeans identify as German, French or, god forbid, British, but if you asked a Spaniard if they thought they were white, especially Murcians, they'd reply "obviously" or whatever that is in Spanish.

The only Europeans who aren't white are Moor Portuguese people, it's fucking asinine. Americans don't even consider Slavs to be white.
>> No. 91754 Anonymous
25th November 2020
Wednesday 1:10 am
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>>91753

It's sort of a cultural translation thing, that looks really asinine and bullshit to us (because it is, but I'm arguing a kind of devil's advocate here), but really it's just because we're foreigners looking in on their culture.

In America, white doesn't simply mean colour, and most of them tacitly understand that, because it's just bashed into them. White is defined by its others, in the same way over here we define being a "respectable" person by the otherness of chavs and pikeys. That's why there has to be an entirely seperate category for "white trash", where you had the entry requirements, but somehow failed to live up to the expectations set by it.

There's an element of Schroedinger's race about every "ethnicity" Yanks commonly talk about, as though they view every racial group like a Labour member trying to figure out if "Jewish" refers to and old desert religion or a meaningfully distinct genetic category. I don't think anyone is ever really sure- But that's why the colours of the skins don't matter as much as fitting the profile.

To qualify as latino that chap just needs a few stories about his mama's quesedillas or some shit, and he could have been born on Pluto for all it matters to Yank racialists.
>> No. 91755 Anonymous
25th November 2020
Wednesday 8:19 am
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>>91754

I've said this before, but one of the best books I've ever read on race in America is "How The Irish Became White" by Noel Ignatiev. Americans can't talk about class, so their discourse on status and disadvantage is seen entirely through the prism of race.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Irish-Became-White-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415963095/
>> No. 91756 Anonymous
25th November 2020
Wednesday 3:17 pm
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>>91753

Americans make a sub-division among people they consider white, in that somebody with blonde to auburn or light brown hair is considered "Caucasian", while others are just, well, white. If that. Italians were considered just barely white in parts of the country for a long time, which also had to do with the fact that many of them took up low-paying agricultural jobs in the South after the slaves were freed and plantation owners actually had to start paying people to do the work.

"Caucasian" goes back to an anthropologist in the 19th century who went on an expedition to the Caucasus Mountains, which are right on the border between Europe and Asia, so that you pretty much have a European Caucasus and an Asian Caucasus. People on the European side have lighter skin and hair, while those on the Asian side are noticeably darker and look more like Mideastern or Central Asian ethnicities. Only, the anthropologists didn't really bother going over to the Asian side, and went home assuming that all Caucasians were white people with brown hair. So it's basically a misnomer, but it was then assumed from the expedition's findings that most white Europeans were descended from people from the Caucasus region.

The other annoying thing in the U.S. is people's concept of what it means to actually be "French", "Italian", or any actual nationality. They'll tell you "Oh yeah, I'm Scottish", but they will base that on the fact that two or three generations ago, one of their granddads came over from Scotland.

One of my great-granddads was Alsatian, but it'd be kind of a stretch to me if I told people today that I'm part French, or part German even.
>> No. 91757 Anonymous
25th November 2020
Wednesday 3:20 pm
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>>91756
>but it'd be kind of a stretch to me if I told people today that I'm part French, or part German even.
They'd think you were barking mad.
>> No. 91758 Anonymous
25th November 2020
Wednesday 3:26 pm
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>>91755
Bernie talks about class, but he's a genuine socialist so of course he understands that stratification.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/24/bernie-sanders-working-class-win-back-from-donald-trump
>> No. 91759 Anonymous
25th November 2020
Wednesday 3:40 pm
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>>91758

That article is wonderfully concise statement of a manifesto, in a time of constant bullshit, how very refreshing.
>> No. 91760 Anonymous
25th November 2020
Wednesday 3:42 pm
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>>91756

It's so odd, my dad is Irish but it never once occurred to me to describe myself as "half irish" until I met Americans that declare their heritage in nanofractions. I perhaps have a bit more of a foot in their culture than most people born in England, but the absolute insanity of people talking about how Joe Biden might dabble in irish politics because his grandad lived there is horrifying.
>> No. 91761 Anonymous
25th November 2020
Wednesday 5:28 pm
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>>91760

>but the absolute insanity of people talking about how Joe Biden might dabble in irish politics because his grandad lived there is horrifying.

As I said further up in this thread, it's great if Joe Biden is proud of his Irish Catholic heritage. Good on him. But it must not be anything more than a personal romantic sentiment. You can't just suddenly start meddling with Irish or British internal affairs just because you're President and feel like wearing it on your sleeve that somewhere way up your family tree, somebody came from Ireland.

We're only about one generation on from the Troubles, and it's not entirely inconceivable that some of the old animosity could flare up again if an outsider like him gets his hands in it the wrong way. I'm not saying you can compare it, but look at the kind of ignorance with which the U.S. has handled its foreign relations with the Middle East the last 80 years or so. A big reason why that whole part of the world is a powder keg today is that Americans have an astonishingly limited grasp of other people's regional history.
>> No. 91762 Anonymous
25th November 2020
Wednesday 7:37 pm
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Lads, come on its not hard.

America is a tribal society similar to places like Kenya where people identify as from a common descent in addition to the country. So you have Irish-American, Italian-American etc. that all carry distinct histories, traditions and politics. There are obvious historical reasons for this in a new world country largely devoid of a unified concept of nationhood (or ethnic/religious super-majority dominance for much of its history) which it replaces with a near-religious reverence to the regime and consumerism. Sometimes it even proves quite fluid as German-Americans became Americans for a bit or how Roma/Gypsies don't register in the national psyche at all outside of storyteller motifs because they were absorbed.

That is one of the key ingredients to the success of the US as all groups can unify around a common identity not bound to descent. Essentially proper bongo-enriching multiculturalism only it actually works because there's common icons and ideals and if you reject those you'll be shot. This runs into problems as true minorities are grouped into more established labels like Spanish becoming Latin-American or (black) Africans/Jamaicans becoming African-American but they'll be absorbed into those flavours of Americanism whether they want it or not.

Tribes can bundle into super-groups when it suits which you see with the concept of whiteness but really means European cultural roots in the same way Arabs and African are supergroups. This is obviously most apparent in contemporary American politics when groups face real or imagined threats despite them all being filthy colonials without a dash of pedigree.

>>91760
>but the absolute insanity of people talking about how Joe Biden might dabble in irish politics because his grandad lived there is horrifying.

You must've forgotten how Biden has himself spoken of his Irish heritage, the cross-party committee on Ireland that like to threaten us and how some Irish-Americans thought it a terribly fun game to up the 'RA until 9/11. Never underestimate an Americans potential to jab his bloated sausage fingers into situations he doesn't comprehend - especially when it involves his ancestral memory of eating corned beef on St Patrick's day.
>> No. 91763 Anonymous
25th November 2020
Wednesday 10:09 pm
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>>91762

>German-Americans became Americans for a bit 

German Americans got under pressure to assimilate into mainstream America around 1917 when the U.S. joined WWI and Germans were suddenly the baddies. Before that, German Americans were a distinct group similar to Irish or Italian Americans, holding on to and celebrating their ancestral culture with similar enthusiasm. It's easy to overlook today that Germans were the second biggest group of immigrants after Brits for much of the 19th century, and over 50 percent of white Americans today have some German ancestry.

What few people know is that in the 1930s, when resentment against all things German began to fade again, there were racist extremist groups among German Americans who tried to emulate Germany's Nazi Party, and even held rallies wearing similar uniforms and waving similar flags. It was again really only from about 1941 that that sort of thing was then banned by authorities.

Some white supremacist groups in the U.S. today can trace their roots back to those movements, although they are now made up of any number of different white ancestries.
>> No. 91766 Anonymous
26th November 2020
Thursday 4:55 pm
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>>91765
I'd unleash her dual krakens IYKWIM!
>> No. 91767 Anonymous
26th November 2020
Thursday 5:40 pm
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>>91765

Interesting website. The "news" articles seem to consist entirely of Biden smears, conspiracy theories and crypto-currencies. There's even one about how triggered Random House staff were by Jordan Peterson. Every article is attributed to Tyler Durden. Why are you reading this?
>> No. 91768 Anonymous
26th November 2020
Thursday 5:50 pm
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>>91765

The comments on that article are staggering, even by BTL shitpost standards. I hope it's just Russian trolling, otherwise America is even more fucked than I thought.
>> No. 91798 Anonymous
28th November 2020
Saturday 4:19 pm
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>>91768
I seem to recall Max Keiser going through articles from that site quite often when he wasn't shilling for Big Silver. The site's always been unhinged and seems to appeal to the sort of person who enjoys lazy right-wing confirmation bias and ridiculous grand deep state narratives because of Cultural Marxism™ (Brietbart, Prison Planet etc.).

I think the only consolation is that print media has always been pretty crackers and more often than not completely disingenuous, guilty of a lot of things published in bad faith - so it's no surprise that online shitpost blogs like this do the same.
>> No. 91800 Anonymous
28th November 2020
Saturday 4:28 pm
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>>91762

>Never underestimate an Americans potential to jab his bloated sausage fingers into situations he doesn't comprehend

This. If you've followed Mideastern political events at all in the last 20 to 30 years, Americans simply have no understanding of centuries-old structures, alliances, and sensibilities in that region. Just take the 2003 Iraq invasion. At least the more naive minds at the White House and the Pentagon fully believed that they'd drop a few shedloads of aerial bombs, send in a few tanks and ground troops, remove Saddam, and everything would be hunky-dory, people would cheer in the streets that finally, America in its benevolent greatness brought them democracy. When in reality, it was only the start of much of the unmitigated clusterfuck we're still dealing with in that region nowadays.

Condoleeza Rice, Secretary of State under Bush jr., said once in an interview that her administration's goal was to reshape the rest of the world in America's image, and once that would have been achieved, it wouldn't have mattered anymore what country you were, because everybody would just follow America's leadership.

And that's the kind of thinking that is prevalent in their circles of government. Republican or Democrat. It's America first, and that also goes for fifth-generation Irish Americans still feeling somehow emotionally attached to the Homeland they never actually experienced personally.
>> No. 91814 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 4:54 pm
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>>91800

I think that's a naive interpretation of American power. It's not so much that they have no understanding of the histories of other countries, as much as an indifference. If it's not serviceable to American empire, why would they care?
>> No. 91815 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 5:47 pm
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>>91800

The depressing part part is how oblivious your average American people are to all this.

I watched The Boys a bit ago and it struck me how directly on the nose of a caricature the Homelander character is- An almost omnipotent unstoppable force everyone fears, yet who's childish and naive and doesn't know how to handle that power, whose powers are a result of Nazi science from Operation Paperclip and falls in love with an actual Nazi. He's not just a Captain America/Superman stand in, he is America.

It's really very blunt, but most Yank viewers interpret it as a topical jab at Trump supporters.
>> No. 91816 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 6:12 pm
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>>91814
In fairness, their lack of understanding often undermines their imperial ambitions.
Think of the way they basically fired everyone who knew anything about Southeast Asia during the McCarthy era because they were too sympathetic to commies, with the result that America spent an unreasonable amount of time being afraid of China and utterly ludicrous amounts of blood and treasure fighting in Vietnam to contain an entirely imagined communist monolith. The first thing China did after America left Vietnam was invade Vietnam themselves, in a twist that shocked everyone since China and Vietnam have traditionally been the best of friends, having only been fighting one another since... before the birth of Christ.
>> No. 91817 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 6:22 pm
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>>91816
The domino effect is real and should be feared though, that's why everywhere in the Old World from Kamchatka to Cape Town fell to the Reds after Vietnam was done and dusted and why Russia and China are still very purely communistic to this day.

It's easy for me to joke about but the stain of McCarthyism is still very much part of contemporary political discourse and the illusion of the dichotomy of choice the American two-party system promotes works wonders in propping that up.
>> No. 91818 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 6:49 pm
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>>91817

>The domino effect is real and should be feared though

нет
>> No. 91819 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 7:01 pm
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>>91815

If you like a glaringly obvious, but on the other hand ingeniously implicit caricature of America's view of sand people, you should rewatch the original Stargate film from the mid-90s.

Roland Emmerich is an unsung hero of taking the mickey out of the Americans completely unbeknownst to them. Not only did the satirical message of the original Independence Day completely elude them, but he really nailed it with Stargate where the people who pass through the Stargate, all of whom U.S. military and scientists, come to the rescue of an unwashed desert tribe against their alien oppressor. It brilliantly sums up America's perceived sense of superiority by juxtaposing its high-tech military prowess against tent-dwelling, bearded, foreign-talking tribespeople on another planet who are only a few steps removed from the Stone Age.

Put in the context of the 1990 Kuwait invasion and the Allied response, it doesn't take much to realise what Emmerich was really taking a dig at in his film three years later.
>> No. 91820 Anonymous
29th November 2020
Sunday 8:04 pm
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https://www.ft.com/content/e8e5cf90-7448-459e-8b9f-6f34f03ab77a

>The EU will call on the US to seize a “once-in-a-generation” opportunity to forge a new global alliance, in a detailed pitch to bury the tensions of the Trump era and meet the “strategic challenge” posed by China.

Between this and the RCEP it's looking like us Britlads may be doubleplusfucked on the global trade front.
>> No. 91823 Anonymous
1st December 2020
Tuesday 10:32 am
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Social media will be the death knell of liberal society.
>> No. 91844 Anonymous
9th December 2020
Wednesday 4:11 pm
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>>91823


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppPWvkeF2NQ

I think if someone showed me clips from contemporary American Politics and told me it was excerpts from the latest David Lynch experimental film I wouldn't even question it.
>> No. 91845 Anonymous
9th December 2020
Wednesday 4:24 pm
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>>91844
It's more Cronenbergian to my eyes, but I quite agree. Not to confuse the director metaphor even further but I'd almost think I found my new glasses in an abondoned church the way things are going.
>> No. 91846 Anonymous
9th December 2020
Wednesday 5:24 pm
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>>91823

>the death knell of liberal society.

Good, liberalism has been a scourge upon decency ever since the bourgeois French Revolution.
>> No. 91847 Anonymous
9th December 2020
Wednesday 5:45 pm
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>>91846
Yeah, man, I'm sure France was going to flip straight from feudalism into socialism at any moment.
>> No. 91848 Anonymous
9th December 2020
Wednesday 6:02 pm
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>>91847
given the reference to dency it would seem far more plausible we're dealing with a Monarchist.
Perhaps a Monarcho-Socialist like Her Maj' of course.
>> No. 91849 Anonymous
9th December 2020
Wednesday 7:31 pm
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>>91848

No, simply pointing out that liberalism, as we've known it since the time of the "enlightenment", was not a good place to stop. It's less miserable than feudalism, arguably, but the seemingly common belief that it's the endpoint of social progress is offensive at best.

The French Revolution is commonly mythologised as the birth of the modern republic, liberty and all that nonsense. It's no coincidence that in reality it went straight from DeSade to Bonepart. There was no freedom afforded to the common man, only a coup to transfer power from the old aristocracy to the new mercantile class.

Being a little bit facetious obviously. But not by much.
>> No. 91850 Anonymous
9th December 2020
Wednesday 9:45 pm
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>>91849

>If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown from within. Its enemies, if it had any enemies, had no way of coming together or even of identifying one another. Even if the legendary Brotherhood existed, as just possibly it might, it was inconceivable that its members could ever assemble in larger numbers than twos and threes. Rebellion meant a look in the eyes, an inflection of the voice; at the most, an occasional whispered word. But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They need only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it.

Every revolution has been a displaced bourgeois removing elites creating utter chaos and destruction before the class system re-establishes itself. Proletariat have never ousted the ruling classes, it's always middle class LARPers who quickly become the kind of despot they deposed. (e.g. Tsar > Communist > Oligarch) This is never clearer than when you hang out with lads that work for Momentum who jokingly cheer on Mao and Stalin, but haven't done an honest days work in their lives.

In some sense Brexit was the great revolution of our time in that it was a group of counter elites who encouraged the masses to smash it all to bits in the name of change and now we're about to enter the equivalent 'reign of terror' period.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGLGzRXY5Bw
>> No. 91853 Anonymous
10th December 2020
Thursday 10:11 am
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>>91850
Paolo Freire sums this up rather nicely in the opening pages of Chapter 1, and the rest of the work talks about ways in which violence, of the structural or actually physical kind, might be mitigated after a revolution. Worth a read, it's short.

https://envs.ucsc.edu/internships/internship-readings/freire-pedagogy-of-the-oppressed.pdf


The really sad fact of Brexit is that it's still proles being led by, in this case, the decayed aristocracy and their representatives in the Tory Party. Why do politics seem to boil down to ruling elites tapping into a reserve of pent of anger and rage whenever it suits an agenda? Left or right, it's still an agenda that is generally formed by, as you say, "people who haven't done an honest day's work". There have been outliers like the Post-War consensus in the form of the welfare state, but was that ultimately a Bismarckian move to stop actual political violence?

The powerful allure of coups and revolutions is that it's another chance to get things right, until whatever "rational" idea from left or right meets reality, and more importantly, people and realises that we are at best irrational and at worst neurotic. Look at John Nash's game theory, early participants in his experiments acted altruistically, even though it was against their "rational" self-interest as Nash would've hoped, we are not one thing or the other, but each of us living contradictions of both. Add the class system, social hierarchy, social mores and taboos to this and you've got a lot of anger there when the veil slips.

[/adamcurtis]
>> No. 91854 Anonymous
10th December 2020
Thursday 10:44 am
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>>91853

People generally do act in their own rational self-interest most of the time, which is the fundamental problem with revolutions. Any power vacuum will be filled by the nastiest bastard in town, backed by an army of inadequates who see an opportunity to boost their own status. It might be in our collective best interests to work towards the utopia, but a lot of people will see that it's in their individual interest to don the uniform of whoever looks most likely to take power.

The problem with Nash's early experiments was the lack of meaningful stakes, so there was no incentive to "win" and lots of incentive to be seen as having done the right thing. The aviation industry independently discovered this many years ago. If you test the evacuation routes of a passenger plane with a group of volunteers, they'll form orderly queues at the exits; if you offer a small cash prize to the first people off the plane, they'll fight like wild animals.


>> No. 91855 Anonymous
10th December 2020
Thursday 10:52 am
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>>91854
Offering cash prizes is equally flawed because they know perfectly well nobody's going to die in the test situation. People are entirely capable of realising that nasty people are trying to fill the power vacuum and need to be prevented by non-nasty people, it's rational self-interest to do so and a microcosm of the revolution that brought them there in the first place. Your cynical, hobbesian view is long outdated.
>> No. 91856 Anonymous
10th December 2020
Thursday 10:59 am
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>>91855

>People are entirely capable of realising that nasty people are trying to fill the power vacuum and need to be prevented by non-nasty people, it's rational self-interest to do so and a microcosm of the revolution that brought them there in the first place.

Tragedy of the commons. It might be in our collective interests to stop the nasty people from getting into power, but not many people are going to risk death for the greater good unless someone offers them a personal incentive.

I'm not a Hobbesian, just a behaviourist - people usually do what they're incentivised to do. We can't make better people, but we can build better systems of incentives.
>> No. 91857 Anonymous
10th December 2020
Thursday 12:13 pm
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>>91856
>Tragedy of the commons.
Like I said, your views are outdated.
>> No. 91858 Anonymous
10th December 2020
Thursday 12:20 pm
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>>91857

I've read Ostrom's Governing the Commons. I suspect that you haven't. Common pool resources can only be sustainably managed if there are institutions in place to facilitate it. Those institutions don't need to be centralised or imposed from the top down, but they do need the ability to impose meaningful sanctions on transgressors.
>> No. 91859 Anonymous
10th December 2020
Thursday 12:29 pm
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>>91858
I only read Assyrian and Hittite cuneiform tablets as it happens. I suspect that you are unable to.
>> No. 91860 Anonymous
10th December 2020
Thursday 1:27 pm
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>>91858
I dunno if boasting about having read a thirty year old book is the best defence when someone's calling you out of touch.
>> No. 91861 Anonymous
10th December 2020
Thursday 2:02 pm
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>>91860
To be fair I'd argue Ostrom is the foremost political economist to have studied and written about the commons.
>> No. 91862 Anonymous
10th December 2020
Thursday 2:31 pm
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>>91861
Maybe but the other lad seems to be off his head if he thinks that "Well, actually ..."
>... Those institutions don't need to be centralised or imposed from the top down, but they do need the ability to impose meaningful sanctions on transgressors.
contradicts the statement
>People are entirely capable of realising that nasty people are trying to fill the power vacuum and need to be prevented by non-nasty people, it's rational self-interest to do so and a microcosm of the revolution that brought them there in the first place.
Anyway, I'm off to give blood. Nobody is incentivising me to do it.
>> No. 91863 Anonymous
10th December 2020
Thursday 2:46 pm
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>>91862
Sponging a cup of tea and biscuits that I paid for now are we?
>> No. 91864 Anonymous
10th December 2020
Thursday 3:13 pm
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>>91863
I'm going to take two imitation Club bars just to spite you.
>> No. 91865 Anonymous
10th December 2020
Thursday 4:11 pm
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>>91862

The question is whether, after the established order is overthrown by a revolution, we're capable of establishing the infrastructure necessary to prevent the rise of totalitarianism faster than someone else is capable of establishing a totalitarian regime. Historically, we've had a pretty poor success rate.
>> No. 91866 Anonymous
10th December 2020
Thursday 6:03 pm
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>>91850

>This is never clearer than when you hang out with lads that work for Momentum who jokingly cheer on Mao and Stalin, but haven't done an honest days work in their lives.

Which one was it that had intellectuals working in the paddy fields? Pol Pot?

He had the right idea.
>> No. 91867 Anonymous
10th December 2020
Thursday 6:56 pm
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>>91866

I was thinking about this post today and I felt bad because I think that the Corbynistas hearts are in the right place, but that they are just a bit young and operating solely from a place of idealism with no pragmatism.

I would like to amend my example to be that of Lulzsec hackers based in western countries being integral in the overthrow of governments during the Arab Spring.
>> No. 91868 Anonymous
10th December 2020
Thursday 10:08 pm
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>>91867
Corbynites aren't completely lacking in pragmatism (they are after all the ones in the Labour party rather than the ones hawking socialist worker at every protest going.) Their big problems are being mediocre at media management and occasionally preferring a new and gimmicky policy idea over a fine one from the 1970s that got orphaned in past Labour factional struggles, rather than fundamentally believing in some kind of utopian nonsense.

I'm not getting at you specifically, it's just that there's an idea floating out there that Corbynites becoming more pragmatic would mean "selling out" (to be glib about it) and accepting that they can't except the government to achieve very much, which is an awful way of looking at it. The Corbynite who decides to try and slip free broadband into the back of Starmer's 2024 manifesto in ambiguous language and takes a few public speaking lessons will be ten times the pragmatist politician that the mumbly former-Corbynite who moved dramatically to the right on policy in the hopes of nabbing a cabinet job will.

Full disclosure: I didn't care for the 2019 Labour manifesto, nor did I vote Labour. I just couldn't be bothered trying to pick a historical analogy for the progressive lowering of political expectations, which is what I really dislike. I could make similar points for the right, though (especially in the US) they tend to be more successful at incrementally working towards a long-term goal where the left usually just abandon hope after a few losses.
>> No. 91869 Anonymous
10th December 2020
Thursday 11:20 pm
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>>91868

All the Labour infighting makes me sad, but I have recently realised that this has been standard for as long as there has been a Left. Look at the schism between Marx and Proudhon.

Marx was a wealthy lad that adopted the cause of the working class, whereas Proudhon was a pleb who adopted the rhetoric of bourgeois intellectuals.

The people on the left who best understand the correct long term strategy are the least socially connected to the masses, whereas the people who are most apt at rallying the populace are not generally so prone to this kind of holistic thinking or long term strategy.

IMO University educated middle class Labour idealists would do better to be campaigning in Tory heartlands instead of alienating Northerners, but I am also a cynic and everything is terrible.
>> No. 91870 Anonymous
11th December 2020
Friday 4:43 pm
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>>91866
He also had literally everyone else in the paddy fields though. Howver, if Britain goes that way we'd easily be able to replicate his army of teenage boys on drugs.
>> No. 91871 Anonymous
11th December 2020
Friday 6:53 pm
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>>91868
>>91869

There is a lot of "well fuck this I'm taking my ball and going home" on the left, in general, to be very vague and abstract about it all. That's why there are so many shit little splinter parties that will only ever see a couple of thousand votes.

Too many of these people fail to realise the merits of the "big umbrella" or whatever the fuck they call it of the Labour Party. Fair enough it might be run by people you'd spit on as little more than common garden market liberals, but you're not going to pull them left from the outside of the party.

Funnily enough most of these people were pro-EU and always made the argument "but we're better off trying to change it from within!" when challenged by the fundamentally neo-liberal nature of that institution; but when it comes to the Labour party they're all about cancelling their membership and fucking off to vote Socialist Workers Democratic Worker's Democratic Socialist Party Party because Keith is a big evil racist.
>> No. 91872 Anonymous
11th December 2020
Friday 7:02 pm
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>>91871
I know people came up with names like Dear Leader for Corbyn, but calling Starmer Keith/Kieth is a really bollocks moniker and I'm kind of surprised it's taken off.

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