[Exophase]

Dr Lancer-X, on 28 September 2016 - 09:48 PM, said:

I couldn't believe what I was seeing there. I mean, people have theorised for a while that Hillary's online team has a Trump mole somewhere in it making her look bad on Twitter etc. but even that doesn't explain how it managed to get through, I assume, multiple people and find its way up on the official campaign website and STAY there...

The worst thing about it is that it's probably pretty effective. If you look at the comments section of related articles a lot of people are accepting it uncritically. The whole people who are dismissing it are those who understand how the meme actually works or are already skeptical of media narrative crafting. Even a lot of Trump supporters will think that Trump is being tricked into white supremacy.

The Daily Caller article that exposed the informants to be trolls/satire helps, but this story deserves better than being on a lesser conservative site.

[T-Bone]

In Canada we were just eating popcorn and watching the American debates for the sake of entertainment.

[Dr Lancer-X]

T-Bone, on 30 September 2016 - 10:48 AM, said:

In Canada we were just eating popcorn and watching the American debates for the sake of entertainment.

Lots of people saying they'll be heading your way if Trump wins. If I were you I'd start building a wall.

[Bramble]

Dr Lancer-X, on 28 September 2016 - 02:00 AM, said:

America has turned the presidency into a reality TV contest and it's no real surprise that a reality TV star would be really good at that sort of thing. Trump is good at saying outrageous things and getting a lot of attention and it's not immediately clear how well this translates over to the set of skills required by a president, whatever they are. Something needs an overhaul. I'm just glad the presidency is a relatively impotent position.

If/when Trump does win I think I'll laugh uncontrollably for a minute or two, then try not to think about the implications.

Yeah, a lot of people are probably thinking, "How has this happened? What went wrong?"

The election process seems to have gone from something that was kind of serious -- but everyone sort of saw through -- to this all-out, no holds barred television contest. I mean, it was always sort of that. But Trump's presence seems to have highlighted the cardboard nature of presidential contests and stripped away any effort to keep things sincere.

He's like the epitome of why some people don't take America seriously.

It is unclear to people what's required of the president. If lots of people knew the skills required, there would be an analysis of how Trump's abilities match up with a specific job description. And then a lot of people probably wouldn't vote for him. As is, that job description seems obscure. Maybe I'm just ignorant -- dunno.

I am grateful in an abstract sense that the president doesn't have some kind of absolute power, or else Trump would be flicking his wrist sending tanks down the street to kill people who are not white who he claimed looked at him wrong. #ThanksFoundingFathers

These are just some jumbled thoughts of disenchantment, I guess. Feel free to whatever with them.

Anyway, well put.

[asgromo]

just kidding, jesus christ, why can't we delete our posts anymore. because we admins need an excuse to stay relevant lmao i thought i got older and more respectable or something

[Verasev]

We can't have our meritocracy unless we know who can get it right the first time, asgromo. No deletions and any edited posts are marked as such.

[Verasev]

And, anyway, I understand wanting to be fair to Trump's supporters. Just, like, how fair?
http://www.lgbtqnati...QXU_kQ.facebook

[Bramble]

lol wat

[Exophase]

Verasev, on 30 September 2016 - 06:50 PM, said:

And, anyway, I understand wanting to be fair to Trump's supporters. Just, like, how fair?
http://www.lgbtqnati...QXU_kQ.facebook

There's nothing unfair about opposing this. Honestly not really sure what those two things have to do with each other.

[Verasev]

Sorry, sorry. Here, something on topic:

OFFICIAL STATEMENT & CALL TO ACTION: Following the dangerous and dehumanizing attacks from the Clinton campaign and the MSM, a young man was severely beaten last night for his peaceful political involvement. We demand an apology and immediate cessation of this irresponsible behavior.

https://www.reddit.c..._following_the/

[Exophase]

Verasev, on 30 September 2016 - 09:29 PM, said:

Sorry, sorry. Here, something on topic:

OFFICIAL STATEMENT & CALL TO ACTION: Following the dangerous and dehumanizing attacks from the Clinton campaign and the MSM, a young man was severely beaten last night for his peaceful political involvement. We demand an apology and immediate cessation of this irresponsible behavior.

https://www.reddit.c..._following_the/

No need to stay on any real topic, feel free to take this where you want ;p

I just feel like I'm missing something with the last post and this one. I miss a lot though.

I don't see any reasonable way that BLM protesters beating up a Trump supporter can be blamed on the Pepe nonsense or the Clinton campaign in general. It'd be smart (and appropriate) for Hillary to strongly denounce this, but they're obviously looking for some kind of admission of guilt and there's nothing to admit there.

Now as for the incident itself, that's a whole different matter of what incites this kind of behavior...

Anyway, I guess the underlying question in all of this is supposed to be whether or not a campaign should go after their opponent's supporters. And I do think that's not a very good idea, regardless of legitimacy behind the claims. For one thing, if the opponent has enough support to be a credible threat in the first place then the message is basically that the next president will have outright disdain for a large percentage of the general population. And even if they're careful with their language it's going to be difficult for the statements not to be taken as generalizations applied to supporters. And then people will be afraid to admit support out of fear of being lumped in with the criticism. Which can be an effective campaign strategy, but a pretty shitty one.

[Dr Lancer-X]

Well, it's the usual accusation of 'rhetoric'. Same sort of thing as claiming Sarah Palin is at fault for the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords because she published an image with crosshairs over people she wanted voted out. Basically, the idea is that when a campaign contributes to a reduction in the level of discourse by trying to whip their base up into a frenzy by making all sorts of hyperbolic claims about what the other person is doing / will do if elected, they can then be blamed for violence that occurs to that candidate or that candidate's supporters.

Is there any legitimacy to this kind of argument? I mean, it's undeniable that the level of ridiculous hyperbole about Trump coming from Clinton's campaign is pretty insane (it's actually on the level of the kinds of things the nuttier Republicans were saying about Obama before he took office), but you know what? That ship has already sailed. That level of discourse is where we are nowadays and nobody has clean hands*. You can't really accuse someone else unless you're also willing to say 'okay, if someone physically harms a Hillary Clinton supporter, that's on us, that's our fault' and I have a feeling they aren't willing to say that. Which is fine, they don't have to, and neither do Clinton's supporters.

And no obviously Hillary Clinton doesn't need to disavow Black Lives Matter, that's ridiculous. I have no idea if it would (tactically-speaking) be a good campaign move for her to Sister Souljah them - maybe. I suspect that by this point they're so hated that if Hillary Clinton can get BLM to start attacking her it would be a net positive for Clinton, sort of like how Jesse Jackson Jr. attacking Obama and calling him a racist made Obama more popular. To be honest I don't think it would change things all that much, though; Hillary could say that BLM are a domestic terrorist organisation and if she is elected President she will issue executive orders for every last one of them to be hunted down and killed with drone strikes and it still wouldn't stop those detractors from linking them to her.

also lol reddit.

*Bernie Sanders ran a clean campaign. Perhaps that's why he lost. If you aren't willing to dredge up all the Clinton muck then perhaps you aren't motivated enough to win- this is what this election is telling me, anyway. A lot of people were very frustrated the most damaging revelations only came out after the convention and I can kind of understand that. I love Julian Assange but couldn't he have perhaps been a little quicker?

[Verasev]

Exophase you're not necessarily missing anything. I'm a disorganized thinker. I thiiinnnkkk i was drawing an extremely tenous link between trump doing things that actually persecute lgbt folks and the way some of the his followers feel "persecuted"/unfairly treated with this pepe the frog thing. Like how can they see that connection with meme, however real or unreal it actually is, and still think Trump is pro LGBT (failing to see those connections)? What did the guy getting beat up by BLM even have to do with that frog meme anyway?

[Verasev]

Also, BLM becoming this hated is pretty damn sad. Not sure how it could have gone differently, not when people are convinced the riots and that incident where those cops were shot mean they can ignore what the movement was about in the first place. Lancer's talk of rhetoric and that one leader of BLM jokingly asking God to help her not to kill all these white people... I don't know. It's depressing.

[Exophase]

Dr Lancer-X, on 01 October 2016 - 08:33 AM, said:

*Bernie Sanders ran a clean campaign. Perhaps that's why he lost. If you aren't willing to dredge up all the Clinton muck then perhaps you aren't motivated enough to win- this is what this election is telling me, anyway. A lot of people were very frustrated the most damaging revelations only came out after the convention and I can kind of understand that. I love Julian Assange but couldn't he have perhaps been a little quicker?

It's interesting to speculate, but the single biggest factor in Bernie's defeat was that black voters - about 27% of the primary voter base - voted about 80% against him. So he'd have to needed 61% of the votes from everyone else to compensate for that, and given Hillary's other demographic advantages I don't think it would have really been possible. I'm not even sure Biden could have beaten her, although that would have been a pretty interesting primary season.

People could tell pretty early on that the DNC was not giving Bernie a fair shake with the debate schedule, but that didn't really move voters. His defeat in many deep south states came swiftly and crushingly and starting out way behind from that (and the superdelegates) would have sagged later support no matter what. Maybe if more of his worst states came late in the primary season when more people knew who he even was and he wasn't suffering so much from being behind he'd have done better, but I still doubt it would have been enough.

And I don't know if there was really anything Bernie could have done to win over black people, at least not without starting many years in advance. Hillary came in with such a huge advantage with this demographic.

Verasev, on 01 October 2016 - 02:56 PM, said:

Exophase you're not necessarily missing anything. I'm a disorganized thinker. I thiiinnnkkk i was drawing an extremely tenous link between trump doing things that actually persecute lgbt folks and the way some of the his followers feel "persecuted"/unfairly treated with this pepe the frog thing. Like how can they see that connection with meme, however real or unreal it actually is, and still think Trump is pro LGBT (failing to see those connections)? What did the guy getting beat up by BLM even have to do with that frog meme anyway?

Well personally I don't think Trump is pro-LGBT, any of that is just dumb political talking points. I also imagine Trump doesn't really care about being anti-LGBT, but is to try to win parts of the Republican base. I don't really know how the alt-right tends to feel - my guess is that they don't care at all about what rights LGB do or don't have, but don't respect T and eg think they shouldn't be allowed bathroom rights.

The connection they were making between Pepe and the BLM beating was Hillary's whole "basket of deplorables" line, that the "alt-right co-opted Pepe as a symbol of white supremacy", basically just a way of saying Trump supporter = alt-right = white supremacist -> gets beaten up by BLM on sight. It's a ridiculously strained set of connections that isn't really fair.

Verasev, on 01 October 2016 - 03:11 PM, said:

Also, BLM becoming this hated is pretty damn sad. Not sure how it could have gone differently, not when people are convinced the riots and that incident where those cops were shot mean they can ignore what the movement was about in the first place. Lancer's talk of rhetoric and that one leader of BLM jokingly asking God to help her not to kill all these white people... I don't know. It's depressing.

It just goes to show that a grassroots, easily entered movement with limited organization is always going to attract bad elements. And the people who oppose that movement are always going to zoom in on those elements to discredit it. I agree with some parts and disagree with other parts of BLM's general stance and message, but I really sympathize for the majority of supporters who aren't doing anything wrong and getting smeared by the small minority who are.

[Dr Lancer-X]

This FADA act is an interesting thing, because Donald Trump opposed it during the primaries, then switched his support to it just recently. Normally when pivoting for the general election you go the other way...

I will point out that the FADA act is just as anti-same sex marriage as it is anti-premarital sex - it doesn't discriminate against the former any harder than the latter, so it could be described just as accurately as an anti-premarital sex bill. This doesn't make it any better, mind, it's just that it may have an unforeseen impact on things like the provision of women's health services and I haven't really heard anyone talking about this.

[Exophase]

Dr Lancer-X, on 01 October 2016 - 06:30 PM, said:

This FADA act is an interesting thing, because Donald Trump opposed it during the primaries, then switched his support to it just recently. Normally when pivoting for the general election you go the other way...

It's not really surprising. Trump has no real chance of winning over pro-LGBT people and that approach won't get anyone to defect from Hillary to third-party/no-votes either. Instead he's going anti-LGBT to try to secure as much as he can of the religious right from going third-party/no-vote themselves.

Dr Lancer-X, on 01 October 2016 - 06:30 PM, said:

I will point out that the FADA act is just as anti-same sex marriage as it is anti-premarital sex - it doesn't discriminate against the former any harder than the latter, so it could be described just as accurately as an anti-premarital sex bill. This doesn't make it any better, mind, it's just that it may have an unforeseen impact on things like the provision of women's health services and I haven't really heard anyone talking about this.

Those extra consequences only hurt its already flimsy odds of passing in congress. Even the more religious politicians are going to be afraid of what will happen if people can be discriminated against because of pre-marital or extra-marital sex.

In fact, FADA seemed to have already been amended to support same-sex marriage anyway (https://www.lc.org/n...ses-supporters), meaning it'd only be about discriminating against sex outside of marriage. The wording is confusing, but this was enough to get it to lose supporters.. and I guess Trump could claim that it's why he flip-flopped, although he'd certainly be pulling a fast one on the people he's trying to sway with it now. He could also say that he doesn't so much support it, but simply supports congress to the extent that he wouldn't veto it.

[Verasev]

Nevermind, found it

This post has been edited by Verasev: 02 October 2016 - 12:55 AM

[Verasev]

Exophase, on 01 October 2016 - 01:20 PM, said:

It just goes to show that a grassroots, easily entered movement with limited organization is always going to attract bad elements. And the people who oppose that movement are always going to zoom in on those elements to discredit it. I agree with some parts and disagree with other parts of BLM's general stance and message, but I really sympathize for the majority of supporters who aren't doing anything wrong and getting smeared by the small minority who are.

This right here is something that plagues social justice circles online and off. It's hard to strike a balance between openness to new people and new ideas and keeping out the "bad elements," especially when the bad elements don't make things nice and convenient by advertising themselves as such before they drag a movement into some shit. How would you make a movement with BLM's goals harder for the troublemakers to enter?

The other thing that plagues sj circles? Toxic, abusive leaders and role models.

Which parts of their stance and message do you disagree with? I'd be more inclined to disagree with their methods... If I could figure out a better way to accomplish their goals, which I can't.

This post has been edited by Verasev: 02 October 2016 - 02:28 AM

[Exophase]

Verasev, on 01 October 2016 - 10:24 PM, said:

This right here is something that plagues social justice circles online and off. It's hard to strike a balance between openness to new people and new ideas and keeping out the "bad elements," especially when the bad elements don't make things nice and convenient by advertising themselves as such before they drag a movement into some shit. How would you make a movement with BLM's goals harder for the troublemakers to enter?

The other thing that plagues sj circles? Toxic, abusive leaders and role models.

It doesn't really matter if you keep people out anyway, when people can act alone and refer to a movement without anyone else in that movement knowing anything about them. Then others in the movement are blamed, and become resentful because they didn't do anything and people are demanding they make up for it somehow.

The alternative is for people to create some kind of actual institutions, like non-profit foundations, that have actual memberships and organization structures, and grow out in subsidiaries. Then they can make it very clear what events are and aren't linked to them, and when someone in their ranks does something bad people above can remove them.

A kind of twisted example is PETA. While their reputation is horrible it's also pretty much almost completely under their control and it works exactly how they want it to. I could give better examples probably, but that came to mind.

I think BLM will largely be okay because most of the media (save the worst right-wing sites like Breitbart, who are a minority among overall page views) promotes them without claiming they're entirely about violence or whatever. But it's still a thorn in their side.

Verasev, on 01 October 2016 - 10:24 PM, said:

Which parts of their stance and message do you disagree with? I'd be more inclined to disagree with their methods... If I could figure out a better way to accomplish their goals, which I can't.

I think that there are issues with the way they frame issues with law enforcement in America as being strictly due to racism, or at least only focus on that aspect. While they can of course say that racism is the only fight that they're focusing on, it's really hard to look at these issues in isolation. It's led to a lot of assumptions that when a black person is wrongfully (or at least questionably) shot by law enforcement it's due to racism and not other problems like corruption, poor training, poor selection of officers (beyond selecting racists), lack of resources or funding, lack of oversight, and I'm sure many other possible issues. There's been a mounting feeling that across the country black men are being exterminated in an act of deliberate racial genocide and that may have contributed to some people becoming more afraid of and resistant to police, which is not a good solution. Even if racism is the major or a major component it's not really effective to focus on this because in most cases it's not evident that anything could have been done to screen for racism. Instead a more reasonable strategy is to find ways to better minimize the damage that possibly racist cops can do.

[Dr Lancer-X]

Exophase, on 02 October 2016 - 04:25 PM, said:

I think BLM will largely be okay because most of the media (save the worst right-wing sites like Breitbart, who are a minority among overall page views) promotes them without claiming they're entirely about violence or whatever. But it's still a thorn in their side.

The most horrifying thing about the modern media landscape is how often I've seen events most accurately reported on by Breitbart. They're biased as fuck and you can bet will pretty much only report stuff that's favourable to the narrative they want to push... but they actually seem to be practicing journalism. Compare that to the alternative and, well...

I don't want to get my US election news from a website named after a guy who spent the last months of his life going to Occupy Wall Street protests and screaming "STOP RAPING PEOPLE" so I'd like it if this shit was stopped. I was originally going to say "In the long term, this undermines confidence in the fourth estate" but I think we all know that's going out the window the way things are going. In the future we will subscribe exclusively to news outlets that deal news tailored only to affirming our identity. plot twist the future is now

The reason Narcissus decided to focus solely on his own reflection is because the rest of the media was biased and the polls were skewed.

Exophase, on 02 October 2016 - 04:25 PM, said:

I think that there are issues with the way they frame issues with law enforcement in America as being strictly due to racism, or at least only focus on that aspect. While they can of course say that racism is the only fight that they're focusing on, it's really hard to look at these issues in isolation. It's led to a lot of assumptions that when a black person is wrongfully (or at least questionably) shot by law enforcement it's due to racism and not other problems like corruption, poor training, poor selection of officers (beyond selecting racists), lack of resources or funding, lack of oversight, and I'm sure many other possible issues. There's been a mounting feeling that across the country black men are being exterminated in an act of deliberate racial genocide and that may have contributed to some people becoming more afraid of and resistant to police, which is not a good solution. Even if racism is the major or a major component it's not really effective to focus on this because in most cases it's not evident that anything could have been done to screen for racism. Instead a more reasonable strategy is to find ways to better minimize the damage that possibly racist cops can do.

The main problem here is that the police shoot first and ask questions later, and there's all sorts of reason for that; the main one is that they're worried about being shot by the criminal they're apprehending. (as usual, the solution here is gun control. and by solution i mean there is no solution because your country has ~300 million privately owned firearms. might as well ban mosquitoes. or get in a time machine and go back 100 years when gun control might have worked)

Things wouldn't be fixed if police started shooting more white people to balance things out, but if you told this to the people who believe it is primarily racial they would answer that the overall problem would probably be fixed faster if that started happening. They might be right, too! Most of all it needs to happen to wealthy people - if they feel they face a real danger of being killed if they get stopped by police some solution will probably arise.

It's hard when there are obvious problems without obvious solutions... I think that leads a lot of people to try and jump on a solution that is probably not correct, because we need to do something, and this is something, therefore we need to do it.

[Verasev]

Lancer, just wait until augmented reality takes off and people can tailor every part of their experience to their viewpoint.

[CJA]

that is gonna suck honestly

i could run through a sparkling rainbow land instead of a dim street, but then why run at all if other people can just go to Settings -> Display fat dudes: OFF

[Dr Lancer-X]

I tried watching the VP debate but found myself falling asleep. Kaine and Pence are incredibly boring and uncharismatic people.

[Verasev]

Transcript: https://www.washingt...ript-annotated/

I'll see if I can find a less biased fact check on it.
Edit: Here you go:
http://www.politifac...p-debate-runni/

This post has been edited by Verasev: 05 October 2016 - 03:46 AM

[Dr Lancer-X]

Verasev, on 05 October 2016 - 01:42 PM, said:

Transcript: https://www.washingt...ript-annotated/

I'll see if I can find a less biased fact check on it.

I've only just reading it but... yeah, it seems more like a self-important journalist's commentary reel rather than real fact checking. I admit that some of the points made by Aaron Blake have merit, but considering he totally skips over many things that I think anyone would consider to be 'statements of fact' and really should be analysed - even just to say 'yes, this is correct'.

EDIT:

Verasev, on 05 October 2016 - 01:42 PM, said:

Edit: Here you go:
http://www.politifac...p-debate-runni/

Ah yes, this looks much better - although Politifact have been considerably less impressively lately, they seem to have handled this debate alright (so far. It's currently still pretty incomplete)

EDIT 2: ok i was going to lay down my judgment of who won this debate but i've decided no-one won. what a fucking mess of people interrupting each other. also nobody cares about the vp debate so it won't shift the polls, why bother having it

[Lachesis]

i had class tonight and couldn't watch the debate, but it sounds like i didn't miss anything important anyway

[Exophase]

Dr Lancer-X, on 04 October 2016 - 11:50 PM, said:

also nobody cares about the vp debate so it won't shift the polls, why bother having it

Have to make these people feel important somehow.

The moderator launched by reminding the audience that the only real value the VP has is to act as president if something happens to the real one. But rather than spend much time talking about how they'd handle that position they mostly just served as a standard negative campaign ad against the opponent's running mate. Especially Kaine, who was less likable than I thought he'd be. Not that that should really matter but it seemed like that was made into some kind of selling point for him.

[Dr Lancer-X]

Exophase, on 05 October 2016 - 04:34 PM, said:

Especially Kaine, who was less likable than I thought he'd be. Not that that should really matter but it seemed like that was made into some kind of selling point for him.

I had never heard of Tim Kaine before he was selected as Clinton's running mate and I have to say my impression of him from this debate was somewhere between neutral and negative, while my opinion of Mike Pence actually went up a little - although he is incredibly boring. Having someone who projects a more stable / boring image than Trump selling Trump's policies is probably good for Trump - and nobody other than his VP nominee could really do it with any authority.

I'm sure both of them are exceptionally qualified for the esteemed job of doing nothing. Sarah Palin is probably the only VP nominee to raise serious questions about whether someone was up to the task.

[Graham]

Exophase, on 04 October 2016 - 10:34 PM, said:

The moderator launched by reminding the audience that the only real value the VP has is to act as president if something happens to the real one.

I could see either of the candidates having serious health problems during their presidency. Trump might be in good shape, but he is 70 and that could change quickly. And I really buy the conspiracy that Hillary has Parkinson's.