rolling explaining conservatism

I need to know when and how to use to dr

tl;dr rather

Thread got better, I blame me

i find it's pretty hard to get a good grasp on whether 'dems should move left to solidify the base' is like actually objectively strategically true, or if i just believe that because it's what i want them to do anyways

― flopson

i'd actually prefer centrism, were it possible. acting like getting 41% on the left is a "mandate", the way the republicans do when they get 41% on the right, is not a recipe for good governance. if we're going to be brutally honest here, the only real way either of the poles on the u curve can effectively govern here is if they were to somehow manage to make the other pole on the u curve... go away somehow. centrism, on the other hand, works under the assumption that if someone doesn't agree with you, you talk with them and work out your differences, reach a mutually acceptable compromise. that ain't happening under current circumstances.

I have no idea what happened to this thread

http://i.imgur.com/bQU790A.jpg

"If 2016 showed Republicans anything, it's that there is no PC Police, they should never have been this scared, and as long as they gerrymander and disenfranchise enough poor people, they are invincible no matter what the media says."

I can only imagine what John of Patmos would've come up with if his visions had included that picture of five alpacas

Take a hint: the power elite aren't carrying you all on their backs anymore.

Stop eating so much.
Stop drinking so much.
Stop smoking so much.
Work out 3-4 days minimum.
Take responsibility for your health in both the short and long-term.

When you unhealthy takers stop demanding healthcare for your quadruple bypasses, then maybe the elites will chip in their tax dollars for a healthcare program.

Honestly, I don't disagree. Cuba spends only a tenth as much on healthcare, and lives longer. Their health improved when their economy collapsed.

When doctors go on strike, mortality declines. Annual health exams don't improve outcomes. If people had healthy lifestyles, and avoided the healthcare industry unless symptomatic, it would cut costs markedly without producing worse outcomes.

It would also make public financing of preventative medicine, or care for those with treatable ailments, far more plausible even in countries subject to neoliberal delusions.

centrism, on the other hand, works under the assumption that if someone doesn't agree with you, you talk with them and work out your differences, reach a mutually acceptable compromise. that ain't happening under current circumstances.

that's not a political position, that's a meta-political position that is only attractive because the radicalism and intransigence of the right have undermined the power of the left to achieve any goals with good-faith efforts at mutually acceptable compromise

Stop eating so much.
Stop drinking so much.
Stop smoking so much.
Work out 3-4 days minimum.
Take responsibility for your health in both the short and long-term.

This approach to improving health is statistically valid when applied to large groups. Whether it works in the case of an individual is totally hit or miss. You can do all these things religiously and still be stricken with a wide variety of chronic, debilitating and/or hellishly expensive health problems, ranging from quadriplegia to dementia. So, while you can take full responsibility for your actions, but you have only limited control over your health. Ergo, gtfo with this shit talk.

iow, even ironic stanning for that idea is nagl.

can Plasmon weigh in

I can commit to working out 3-4 days.

(A year, right?)

Hope not, 3-4 a year is way too often

I can do 3-4 days a week and then when I get depressed or my anxiety kicks in thanatos takes over and I decide I'd rather be dead and it's back to being sedentary

yay look at me drivin up the cost of healthcare

The majority of Trump supporters aren't working class, so I think focusing on them misses a lot.

The Trump supporters I know personally are like, someone who graduated at the top of their class at MIT and contributed to technology we use evetyday. Fancy private art school graduate. Successful entrepreneurs, etc.

What I've seen is, the appeal with Trump is the visceral thrill of total domination, control, and destruction for its own sake. The joy of the ultimate power trip with no repercussions.

What Trump is really offering is the luxury of hedonistic power over others. Putting black people "back in their place" after Obama, hunting down Muslims and immigrants, atomping down women again. And now here's the special treat: the chance to finally do this to "liberals" and intellectuals!

Trump is offering a fuckton of orgasmic stuff to these people. Plus the exciting gamble of finally getting those fruity egghead leftists under the thumb.

These are not sympathetic people in the least. They're fucking dangerous.

As always, larry, your unique insights are truly un-price-able.

was that a post or a transcribed Immortal Technique song

xpost

Literally the chyron on MSNBC just now

KAISER: TRUMP SUPPORTERS "DANGEROUS, NOT SYMPATHETIC"

would love to make a deal to wall off a good chunk of the US, rebrand it Trumpland, and let the Trumpkins move there if they'll let us have our country back

sry appleton infected me

I think that's the basic theme of that new show from HBO by the GoT showrunners that isn't happening anymore

I understand why you guys would want to ignore everything going on around you right now. Doesn't change a thing, though.

how the fuck *could* you ignore everything around you if you wanted to rn

Well then, wtf?

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/08/01/end-trump-gop-honeymoon.html

https://www.prri.org/research/lgbt-transgender-bathroom-discrimination-religious-liberty/

Halfway down there's a fascinating graph about which groups face "a lot of discrimination."

Republicans think Christians are tied for most discriminated against (with transgender people) and black Americans the least, but it's more notable that they just think there's half as much discrimination in the US across the board with all groups equally discriminated against (except, again, black Americans). Democrats see loads of discrimination except for whites and Christians.

They believe in a just world. God wouldn't allow truly good people to suffer needlessly, therefore people who are suffering must've done something to deserve it. To think otherwise would be to admit that life is random and without inherent meaning or direction.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/08/03/christians-are-more-than-twice-as-likely-to-blame-a-persons-poverty-on-lack-of-effort/?utm_term=.b2d457dc31e4

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/08/04/would-even-care-if-was-guilty.amp.html

getting off the thread topic and just veering directly into the NRO's The Corner rubbernecking territory

I can only imagine what John of Patmos would've come up with if his visions had included that picture of five alpacas

― El Tomboto

i don't know that picture looks pretty indistinguishable from el greco's rendering of "the opening of the fifth seal" to me

They believe in a just world. God wouldn't allow truly good people to suffer needlessly, therefore people who are suffering must've done something to deserve it. To think otherwise would be to admit that life is random and without inherent meaning or direction.

― reggie (qualmsley)

the just world fallacy is genuinely a huge factor in the conservative worldview. it's fascinating how it's applied, though. they believe that the just shall prosper in this world. therefore, anybody else who isn't prospering is clearly a bad person and deserves to fail. however, when _they_ fail to prosper it's never as a result of their own actions, because they are good people and they deserve all the good things in life.

On the whole "rationalization and defense of privilege" tip

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/05/opinion/sunday/white-resentment-affirmative-action.html

That so many of these policies are based on perception and lies rather than reality is nothing new. White resentment has long thrived on the fantasy of being under siege and having to fight back, as the mass lynchings and destruction of thriving, politically active black communities in Colfax, La. (1873), Wilmington, N.C. (1898), Ocoee, Fla. (1920), and Tulsa, Okla. (1921), attest. White resentment needs the boogeyman of job-taking, maiden-ravaging, tax-evading, criminally inclined others to justify the policies that thwart the upward mobility and success of people of color.

The last half-century hasn’t changed that. The war on drugs, for example, branded African-Americans and Latinos as felons, which stripped them of voting rights and access to housing and education just when the civil rights movement had pushed open the doors to those opportunities in the United States.

Similarly, the intensified war on immigrants comes, not coincidentally, at the moment when Latinos have gained visible political power, asserted their place in American society and achieved greater access to schools and colleges. The ICE raids have terrorized these communities, led to attendance drop-offs in schools and silenced many from even seeking their legal rights when abused.

The so-called Election Integrity Commission falls in the same category. It is a direct response to the election of Mr. Obama as president. Despite the howls from Mr. Trump and the Republicans, there was no widespread voter fraud then or now. Instead, what happened was that millions of new voters, overwhelmingly African-American, Hispanic and Asian, cast the ballots that put a black man in the White House. The punishment for participating in democracy has been a rash of voter ID laws, the purging of names from the voter rolls, redrawn district boundaries and closed and moved polling places.

Affirmative action is no different. It, too, requires a narrative of white legitimate grievance, a sense of being wronged by the presence of blacks, Latinos and Asians in positions that had once been whites only. Lawsuit after lawsuit, most recently Abigail Fisher’s suit against the University of Texas, feed the myth of unqualified minorities taking a valuable resource — a college education — away from deserving whites.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/08/11/nsc_conspiracist_rich_higgins_interview_with_ginni_thomas_great_stuff.html

it's all the left's fault. they have normalized hate and racism. the left's insistence that a vote for trump was a vote for racism has convinced real racists that millions of americans are on their side. you libtards have given them permission to stage a hate fueled rally by lying to them and yourselves about the reality that most republicans loathe them as much as you do

the comments. oh my god

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/08/14/donald-trump-condemns-hate-groups/

there was a time when i would wade into that. but i just can't

Yeah I just don't feel like I owe it any of my mind space anymore.

You should pay rent in my mind.

hey I'm struggling enough to pay my rent irl

wading in that cesspool is how I spent my early to mid twenties. I remember even encountering KKK members on fucking ESPN's NBA message boards when I popped on to talk about Tracy McGrady. the shit was and is everywhere and you eventually have to disengage from it or you'll feel overwhelmingly sick all the time.

on the other hand it taught me that people are generally garbage so I guess it was useful to a degree.

"George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington now lose his status? ...Are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him? OK, good. Are we going to take down his statue, because he was a major slave owner. Now we're going to take down his statue. So you know what? It's fine. You're changing history, you're changing culture, and you had people — and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally — but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, OK? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.

"You had a group on one side and you had a group on the other and they came at each other with clubs and it was vicious and it was horrible and it was a horrible thing to watch. But there is another side. There was a group on this side — you can call them the left, you just called them the left — that came violently attacking the other group. So you can say what you want, but that's the way it is…I think there's blame on both sides. I don't have any doubt about it and you don't have any doubt it either. And if you reported it accurately, you would say it."

pure cut "conservative" derp

"America did not go to war against the naziss because of their ideals. America went to war to boost its economy, to regain lost posessions in Asia and new ones, because the American public were duped to believe that Germany might invade the USA at some point and because Roosevelt didn't want any European power to become the most powerful nation in the world, not even the British. He wanted America to become the most powerful nation in the world."

martin luther what?

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/gotta-watch-this

ooo - gloves are coming off

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/08/25/gary-cohn-criticizes-donald-trumps-response-charlottesville/

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2017/09/07/curse-of-the-woke-conservatives-n2377758

May the world not be destroyed by a man given ultimate power by people hypnotized by theoretical love for other people's unborn children.

— David Dark (@DavidDark) January 27, 2017