A bit, yes, but the question was more about what you are willing to tolerate to get your guns, less government and tax breaks (although “tax and spend” coming from the current Republican party is a joke. Now it’s just don’t tax and spend and build the deficit). Trump and his high approval rating amongst Republicans indicates that the stuff you’re willing to tolerate for that is pretty damn high. Being constantly lied to. Russian involvment in our elections. The nomination of a perjurying, sexual assaulter. Trade Wars. The gutting of departments that protect the environment, work for equality of minorities, deal with foreign relations, and education. A complete and utter ass as President. Criminal convictions for his people. A swamp made even worse by a guy who claimed he’d clear the swamp. The question was meant to get you to think about just how far you’re willing to let this kind of stuff go, and just how revolting the company you keep has to be, for you to abandon the party. Because I’m a bit shocked at what many conservatives are willing to put up with just to not “lose”.
As I said earlier, there are some conservatives who may be willing to shift their priorities. Ones who realize that it simply isn’t worth it for me to pay a tiny bit less in taxes to give a massive tax break to the rich and build up the deficit. Ones who think that maybe protecting the environment is more important than making sure businesses can do as they please. Ones who think that maybe being able to buy another assault weapon isn’t worth propping up a irrational, minority hating, human piece of garbage and his hate filled base of voters. Ones who decide that maybe factual based decision making and getting to the truth about the realities of a Supreme Court nominee and the illegalities of Russian interference in our elections are more important than having a perjuring, sexual assaulting, tantrum throwing 5 year old Republican puppet on the Supreme Court.
It doesn’t matter what you think, it matters what you do. If right-wing campaigns to curtail the rights of gays and lesbians arise, how do you oppose them?
If minority rights are threatened by right-wing campaigns, how do you oppose them?
If global warming is denied by right-wing campaigns, how do you oppose them. If any and/or all of these campaigns are deemed necessary by Republicans to win an election, WILL you oppose them?
I wouldn’t call in the region of 5% of accusations “almost zero”. And that’s just the provably false ones. That it’s a smaller issue than rape doesn’t mean it’s an unimportant one.
Having a couple of mice loose in the room can be a problem, as can having a couple of elephants. If both the mice and the elephants are in the same room, which should you focusing your attention on?
But that’s not what’s happening. Both rape and false claims of rape are serious crimes, and should be treated as such. If you have 10 blue elephants in a room and 1 red one, why would you focus on getting rid of only one colour? Get rid of all of them.
Meaningless semantics. From my POV, I am the one who is maximizing freedom. I am protecting the gay person’s freedom to go about his daily business without being discriminated against, at the cost of restricting the baker’s right to choose who to do business with. Since “freedom” isn’t a quantifiable physical thing, neither of us are right or wrong.
I think the difference between us is that you hold the* a priori* idea that restrictions of freedom caused by government regulations are somehow fundamentally worse than other restrictions of freedom. I see no reason to hold that belief. Government regulations which protect my freedom to breathe relatively nonpolluted air are very much preferable to the lack of such regulations, which protects the freedom of businesses to pollute the public airspace in order to maximize their profits.
I think I’ll go with this quote from your cite: 'False rape accusations very rarely lead to convictions or wrongful jail time"
Just a quick reading of your own cite gives a few more quotes I could use to mock you, but I’m just not into it. Became boring after the cops who shoot unarmed men debate.
Besides, shouldn’t you be finding a woman who was raped in order to spend a day in her shoes before you have opinions on the matter? Check back in when you do.
Are you saying that Jim Crow laws inconvenienced blacks to such a trivial extent that they were being silly and quarrelsome by objecting to them? I mean, that sure SEEMS to be what you’re saying, but I’m sure it’s not what you mean, right?
Or are you just objecting specifically to Rosa Parks’ action? Given that the Montgomery Bus Boycott was a spectacular success from both a legal and political standpoint, what could your grounds for that objection possibly be? Even decades after the strategy chosen by the people actually experiencing the oppression has been demonstrated to have been brilliantly successful, you’re still second-guessing them without apparent embarrassment? Good grief.
Any given example of discrimination can be made to look trivial, silly, and certainly not worth devoting years of one’s life to fighting a high profile legal battle over…*from the point of view of someone who hasn’t experienced discrimination on a daily basis throughout their entire life. *Such people are able to perceive that these trivial inconveniences are all part of the same system that produces lynchings, and any point at which the system seems vulnerable is the right point at which to attack.
OK, you’ve given three excellent reasons to vote for the Democrats, and one really bad reason to vote against them, plus one which is too vague to understand.
The Democrats do not, in fact, want to ban guns. As far as I know, no Democratic legislator at any level has ever introduced legislation calling for an Australian-style gun ban. No high profile Democratic politician has ever called for such a thing. So unless your definition of “ban guns” extends to “pass common sense laws which are supported by the vast majority of Americans”, you have nothing to worry about on that count.
Honest question: how do you perceive the government as being overinvolved in your daily life? I mean, as I go about my daily business, I rarely think “aha, there’s the government interfering with me!”. Of course, it’s all around me as I take public transportation to my job, which I qualified for due to government-backed loan programs, stopping to mail a few letters on the way. And of course, it’s taxing my income to do all this great stuff, which I definitely want it to do responsibly and efficiently. But none of that is in my conscious mind the vast majority of the time. I basically never think “Oh noes, here’s something I really want to do that the government won’t let me do!” With the exception of recreational drug users, I can’t think offhand of any large group of people who would think that that I would feel particularly sympathetic towards. So could you expand on what you mean by that.
Yes, it is minor and we really don’t disagree. You are still not seeing what I am getting at. You are stuck on “Jim crow laws were meant hurt black people” my paraphrase. You are concerned that I am disagreeing with that statement or are attempting some sort apologist rationalization to suggest that they werent so terrible, or something. Because of this, you keep repeating yourself. I explained it badly, initially. That was my fault.
What I think is causing the misunderstanding is the word “targeted.” Here is an example of a Jim Crow law from Alabama:
“It shall be unlawfully to conduct a restaurant or other place for the serving of food in the city, at which white and colored people are served in the same room, unless such white and colored persons are effectually separated by a solid partition extending from the floor upward to a distance of seven feet or higher, and unless a separate entrance from the street is provided for each compartment.”
So, who is the target? You say something like “these laws were intended to discriminate against black people. Black people are the target.”
This is true, but it’s not literally factual.
This particular law does not say anything about what black people can or can’t do, or what white people can or can’t do. It specifically names and targets restaurants. It says what they can and can’t do. As you say, the overall purpose of Jim Crow Law’s was to make life hell for black people. You don’t have to say that again, and act like you are correcting or educating me. Everybody knows that’s what they are for.
But how did they do it economically? They targeted businesses (do you see how we can use a word to mean or reference more than one thing? This is where we are getting hung up. Our relative uses are complimentary, and not, as you seem to think, mutually exclusive.)
Why not just write a law that says “it’s illegal for blacks to eat at the same restaurant as whites?”
It’s subtle, and it is an example of capitalism’s invisible hand at work. Here’s how:
If it is illegal for an 18 year old to buy alcohol. A pure capitalist, without morals or prejudice, doesn’t care. Such a person will happily sell all the alcohol kids can pay for. He’s not breaking the law. The kids are. If you want to stop 18 year olds from buying alcohol, making it illegal for them to do so does little. Instead, you target the store. You make it illegal to sell alcohol to minors. You do this because capitalism says “take the money.”
This moral agnosticism of capitalism is both it’s biggest virtue and it’s biggest vice. This is what I was trying to communicate.
Do you understand?
That’s not exactly it. Again, I don’t think this is difficult or controversial topic. You understand that a business that chases away customers makes less money, all other things being equal? You understand that this can create a void that can be filled by another business that does not chase away customers, and that business can then out compete the original and replace it?
This effect is not a universal inevitable immediate thing, but is a tendency of markets to work this way.
Again, I am confused. Are we not on the same page? Is this difficult or controversial? Why are we talking about this?
No. I have been pretty clear and consistent in pointing out that the market does not always produce an efficient or fair outcome and requires regulation. What I am saying is that government regulation is a blunt instrument, and that their are consequences to using it, that can cause real damage and hardship, so one needs to be very careful and judicious about how one uses it, so that you don’t end up doing more harm than good.
[quore]Because my response then, and now, is to point out that there is no evidence to support your ideas that capitalism would have eventually (or will now) put an end to racial or sexual discrimination, and, in fact, the opposite is true.
[/quote]
I’m pretty sure that I’m not and have not argued that capitalism is the cure for racism. The opposite is not true. As i’ve said before, capitalism is agnostic on such things.
The Jim Crow Laws also enforced racism. That’s why (as you so frequently insist on explaining) they were put in place. So, it’s not like we can claim that government regulation is this wonderful source of positive social change.
I am spending an awful lot of effort supporting the notions that:
Money doesn’t care about race
Government regulation can be good and bad
It feels like I am having to drag you kicking and screaming to those conclusions.
He shouldn’t have to wait at all. It’s not capitalism’s fault, and it’s not government’s either. People are sometimes shitty to each other. You seem to think that I am expected to have a solution to this. I don’t. It’s complex, and it’s a series of trade offs.
With this cake guy, you could make a law and force him to bake the cake, right? How are you going to phrase your law? What will it specifically say?
Answer that.
How will you craft it in such a way, as to avoid setting precedents that cause more damage than the problem you are trying to solve?
I’m on a phone, and i’ve Gotten to where I need to be, and need to deal with this larger last part later. Or maybe not.
I disagree with you about the “deep ness” of this subject. You and I seem to be stuck in the basic mechanics of markets and capitalism, and that it is difficult and dangerous to try to write magical regulations that suddenly fix everything without causing more damage than they fix.
My sincere hope is that these things we are discussing here are accepted as givens or defined with a few quick back and Forths, so that we actually do talk about the deep and interesting stuff.
Not Cheesesteak but yeah. I think they believe that Republican economic policies will bring prosperity, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I think the vast majority of them see the government taking their money and giving it to lazy black people. They see the border being opened up to floods of rapists and drug dealers. They see women and gay people being treated as if they were worthy of respect, and that enrages them. They think the Democrats want to take their guns. They think global warming is a hoax and that college-educated people have been brainwashed by liberal elites.
I wouldn’t label them as “bad and stupid” people, but they are certainly voting for bad and stupid reasons which can’t be rationally debated, because people capable of informed, rational discussion don’t hold them.
Of course, a small number of conservatives are simply obscenely wealthy and want to stay that way. A rather larger number are convinced without evidence that they will someday earn obscene wealth and are voting proactively.
And then they also include a relatively insignificant number of intellectuals who support the GOP because it aligns with their preferred legal, economic and/or theological positions. I would certainly do you the honor of putting you in this category. We could argue for years over the substance of those positions and why you are wrong about all of them(actually, I guess we have, off and on!:)). But I think you’re badly mistaken if you see people like yourself being more than the tail on the rabid dog that’s the current GOP.
Who says half the people in the US think Trump is preferable to the left? If we look at the election 3/4 of US adults did not vote for him:
So I think you’ve jumped into a very contentious position there. Hell, it’s a given that Clinton got more votes than Trump did:
And that’s before you consider that since then, Trump’s popularity has dropped a fair bit. So really, I think that claim is an exaggeration.
“Are they all bad and stupid or do they see something even worse on the left (hint, it’s the latter)”
Few issues with that too. First, you’re giving a false dichotomy. A number of them might well be bad and stupid and see something wrong with the left. A number of them might have been convinced by the whole “lock her up” spiel, or been susceptible to some of the undeniable social media exploitation Russia engaged in. A number of them might view Trump’s financial policies as likely to benefit them.
That doesn’t change the fact that a significant amount of accusations are provably false. Lying about someone committing a crime doesn’t magically become acceptable if the person you lie about isn’t actually convicted.
Obviously I can’t literally do that, but I’ve had plenty of conversations with friends and lovers who’ve been abused and raped. One result of those is that I have absolutely no time for those who make false accusations for whatever reason, whether for revenge, regret, or political gain. They are taking others’ serious pain and using it for their own benefit, admittedly at one remove. They also make it harder to believe an accusation.
It’s worth noting that most people I’ve spoken to about abuse aren’t making an accusation, they’re not naming the person who did it. They are talking about what happened to them, how it’s affected them, and other things.