AOC speaks the truth-We need another party to enact change

[RiotAct]

21 hours ago, SectionC3 said:

We have other parties in NYS.   Tons of them.  Be a WFP.  Or a green.  Or a conservative.   Build a party.  

is that like Build-a-Bear?

[SectionC3]

On 6/7/2020 at 4:11 PM, bilzfancy said:

AOC is a socialist and not a very bright one either, she thinks we can send astronauts to the sun, if they went at night.

Almost as dumb as suggesting that we drink bleach to fight the virus.  Seriously. 

12 hours ago, TakeYouToTasker said:

Speaking as an individual who sits above the fray, and views both parties from an economic and social vantage, through an Enlightenment moral lens, you are absolutely out of your mind if you believe this to be true; or have redefined the political spectrum in such a way which renders all formerly understood terms meaningless.

 

Please explain yourself, and provide definitions and context.

What does an enlightenment moral lens have to do with the questioning the orientation of the two major political parties in the United States?  

[Chef Jim]

2 hours ago, SectionC3 said:

Almost as dumb as suggesting that we drink bleach to fight the virus.  Seriously. 

 

Yeah that’s really dumb. Who suggested that?

[GG]

9 hours ago, Chef Jim said:

Yeah that’s really dumb. Who suggested that?

 

I think it was CNN.

[BillStime]

The two party system WILL destroy this country. 
 

ps: it already is...

[The Guy In Pants]

12 hours ago, Chef Jim said:

Yeah that’s really dumb. Who suggested that?

Not a soul said it. Some people as so obsessed  with making him look stupid so when he says “do that inside the body” meaning; working to find a way to have the same results with their treatments as the results of these agents on surfaces.....which is what they were discussing at the time.

 

Unfortunately for them; when you take the full statements of everyone involved in the discussion in context, there is not really much to make about them. However; when you have an audience as these main networks do; it’s easy to manipulate fact and twist it into put them in a frenzy. Panty twists if you will.

 

They tried the same thing with Obama but, it was only a few and not a concentrated effort as it is with Trump. Which should suggest to anyone without an agenda that maybe Washington’s failures over the last few decades are not because of Trump and instead; realize that the lies and manipulation have been coming from the career politicians who have been in the position to enact changes to benefit the country but have not.
 

These same career politicians are now lying and manipulating the public to hate a man simply because he doesn’t conform to their standards; which have been less about beneficial decisions for the country and more about greed and control.

 

People eat it up because emotion is stronger than critical thought in 2020. Emotions are always thought of as either a weakness or a strength. When you can utilize them as a weapon, that is called control.

 

For example; an abusive husband can manipulate a woman into submission mentally just as easily as he would physically but manipulating her with her own emotions. Likewise and on a less negative plane; a good salesman can manipulate a person into a purchase they wouldn’t otherwise make.
 

On the same concept but on a larger scale; this is what they’ve done to us. 
 

The wonderful thing is; people with half a brain see right through it all. The not so wonderful thing is; there may be less of them than previously thought.

Edited June 9, 2020 by The Guy In Pants

[ComradeKayAdams]

On 6/8/2020 at 9:07 AM, SoCal Deek said:

Thanks Kay...nice and concise! ?

The problem with all such government centric proposals is that they become a grab bag for every idea that comes into some legislators or staffers or lobbyist heads. I far prefer a people centered proposal. You want to be green? Start at home, with your own life. 

 

I am now instituting a “too long didn’t read” (TLDR) feature at the top of my super lengthy posts. You’ll love it!

 

I don’t quite understand your people-centered proposal. We both agree that one should first get their own affairs in order before hypocritically judging other’s affairs. I bet we also share way more in common than you think concerning authoritarian governments stepping over individual liberty. But I’m asking from a very practical perspective here: how effective can a lone individual’s actions really be on solving systemic problems at the level of large and complex societies?

 

You might be impressed to know that I always score very highly on those sustainability quizzes and questionnaires! My biggest weakness is my water usage in the kitchen and bathroom. I could also make do with a lot fewer clothes.

 

On 6/8/2020 at 9:17 AM, TakeYouToTasker said:

Speaking as an individual who sits above the fray, and views both parties from an economic and social vantage, through an Enlightenment moral lens, you are absolutely out of your mind if you believe this to be true; or have redefined the political spectrum in such a way which renders all formerly understood terms meaningless.

 

Please explain yourself, and provide definitions and context.

 

Sure, happy to do so. My detailed step-by-step rationale for the statement you’re challenging:

 

1. I defined the Republican Party by Trump’s policies and the Democratic Party by Biden’s historical policies.

2. I divided all public policy issues into 3 categories of domestic economic rights, foreign policy, and social/personal rights.

3. For each issue, I gave each political party’s stance a numerical grade on a scale ranging from most libertarian to most authoritarian. Note that this was all done intuitively in my head. I never actually sat down and methodically wrote assigned number values for every issue. That would be insane.

4. I mapped these grades to a 1-dimensional line of left versus right, with the left section being defined as economically authoritarian, non-interventionist on foreign policy, and libertarian on social/personal freedom issues. I defined the right section as having the polar opposite position for these 3 categories: economically libertarian, interventionist on foreign policy, and authoritarian on social/personal freedoms. Again, note that this was all done intuitively in my head. I did not actually draw a line on graph paper with dozens and dozens of blue and red dots. Eek!

5. I then subtracted all the personal freedom/SJW issues in my analysis. I did so partly to match up with the OP’s characterization of the two parties, since I feel the Democrats HAVE successfully shifted the Overton window left for both parties on the culture war issues, following the height of the Moral Majority/Christian Coalition and the Just Say No drug wars of the 80’s. I also eliminated this entire set of personal freedom issues because I don’t feel that a left-wing position on social issues these days so easily equates to the “less government intrusion into personal freedoms” definition on this left-right line (chief example: PC policing of free speech).

6. I then averaged all the grades out for each party, with certain issues weighted more than others depending on perceived importance, and then I mentally placed a final mark on my left-right line for both parties. Notice the high level of subjectivity here and the obvious potential for discrepancy between final grades from different graders. Your political party grades for each individual policy issue will likely be different than mine, and this is especially true for the weights given to these issues. Example: I probably place a much higher value on left-wing positions for health care, education, the environment, progressive taxation policies, and foreign non-interventionism than most other PPP members. This will skew my final assessment of the two parties to the right of the left-right line compared to others here.

7. Ok, so having acknowledged the inherent subjectivity in our grading scale on the left-right political spectrum, it’s best to normalize the two dots for context. Using the exact same grading standard from earlier, I re-centered the left-right line for all of the many different major political parties of the Western world (US, Canada, all of the EU countries, Australia, New Zealand, also Japan and South Korea and Singapore because why not). When you do this, you’ll find that the Democrats are right of center and the Republicans are far right compared to everyone else mentioned. This international context was the argument I made in my original post and isn’t at all controversial if you talk to citizens from these other countries I listed. This assessment actually still holds when you put the various social policy issues back into the equation, since the cultural grip of Judeo-Christian religious morality is comparably weaker in much of the rest of the more secularized West. If you were to include all of the countries of the world, however, then yes our Republican and Democratic parties would both shift leftward on the line and back around the center.

 

19 hours ago, Koko78 said:

Wait, so they're not going to let me collect a paycheck for being unwilling to work?!?

 

If you’re referring to UBI, it’s often considered a peripheral GND component and is not included in a majority of GND proposals. I’m personally not in favor of any permanent form of UBI, though more on the grounds of economic inflationary technicalities instead of this idea that it will make all these people not want to work. For the vast majority of humans, work gives one’s life meaning and nobility (in addition to the increased opportunity and financial security). This is what I don’t think Andrew Yang fully appreciates, even though I’m grateful for him having brought the idea to the political fore.

 

12 hours ago, SectionC3 said:

What does an enlightenment moral lens have to do with the questioning the orientation of the two major political parties in the United States?  

 

Dunno. I interpreted the Enlightenment moral lens comment to mean he approaches public policy issues from a classical liberal point of view. That is, he believes what a modern-day American political libertarian would believe on negative rights, positive rights, property, labor, the individual, the collective, and the social contract. But I’ll let TakeYouToTasker take us both to task(er) on what he meant.

[Cinga]

22 hours ago, Joe Miner said:

There’s too much stupid in the Democratic party today.

 

We need a new overflow third party to handle that much stupid.

[Chef Jim]

12 minutes ago, Cinga said:

 

Stupid should hurt.