John Mace wrote: “One thing that keeps the two sides apart is the need to exaggerate, often grossly, the position of the other side. That was an excellent example you gave. I think you hit the nail on the head! That post was purely illustrative of that tendency, right?” And others have mentioned “strawman arguments”.
The problem is that every position that reasonable conservatives see as an exaggeration or a strawman is actually held and articulated by what Al Gore once called, in a rare moment of political incorrectness, the “extra chromosome set”. Don’t believe me. Read the comments section on any news article. Those can’t all be liberals posting insane shit just to make righties look bad.
I’m not saying that there aren’t extremists on both sides, just that there’s only one side where they’re drivin’ the bus. QED the nomination of donald trump.
That’s not pedantry, that’s a useless generalization – it’s saying “most people are stupid”, which might be some kind of generic truism but isn’t at all helpful.
The pertinent fact here is that if one examines these comments on a typical site, in my experience one tends to see a pattern of low information and illiteracy fairly consistently coming much more from one side of the political spectrum than the other. Make of that what you will. Maybe intelligent and informed conservatives are too busy to comment on news sites, but they seem to be a rare species in those places.
I think we all remember when Fox News had to ban commenting altogether because of the amount of illiterate hate posts. The problem with being an intelligent conservative is the company one is associated with, and the representation one has in government, like the current Congress and the executive branch, filled with anti-science bigots and self-serving miscreants. When I hear bright conservatives like David Frum or Ben Sasse speak, they always sound vaguely uncomfortable having to deflect embarrassing questions and trying not be forced to defend the crap that their side seems always to be perpetrating. In his recent interview with Bill Maher, Sasse was doing more deflecting than the starship Enterprise in full battle mode.
For the record, I actually do. However this would not be a near-term outcome; things would have to get significantly further out of whack than they currently are to disrupt various natural cycles enough to make agriculture impossible.
As noted below, you not only implied that the Paris agreement was unquestionably a treaty and must be treated like one, but chastised me for failing to comprehend that ostensibly self-evident fact, and re-iterated that Obama “short-circuited” this treaty process:
I suspect you will go down in 2018, but not primarily because of the Paris accord. As you and many others frequently like to remind us, most of us are not single-issue voters and are willing to take the good with the bad to get policies that are important to us. Indeed, did you not claim that was why you voted for Trump and rather astoundingly reaffirmed that you would do so again?
You may have yourself convinced that the majority oppose the withdrawal because the question was biased; you might even convince yourself that the question about impact on the economy was biased, too, wherein more people believe this will be damaging to the economy than good for it. I don’t. I think more people believe Obama than the orange cheeto, for obvious reasons. I also think this policy will be helpful only to small numbers of horrible dead-end jobs like coal mining, and will stifle high-tech jobs and progress in the important clean-energy sector. I would also remind you that we’ve pretty well covered over here the fact that most of the announcement about the withdrawal was a shameless pack of lies, half-truths, and generally very misleading information.
Humans as a species are pretty resilient, but we’re pretty fragile as individuals in large populations. I think the discussion about human extinction should be put aside in favor of discussions about widespread hardship and suffering in the human species due to climate change, economic impacts, and significant extinctions and loss of biodiversity in non-human species, as well as loss of agricultural capacity and major impacts to food crops. Most of those changes are on the horizon within the next hundred years.
Velocity wrote: "Not to be pedantic, but comment sections, in general, on any side, on any topic, are what Star Wars might call a “wretched hive of scum and villainy.”
An argument I might have made myself prior to the election of an individual, as President of the United States no less, who represents an ambulatory exemplar of said hive. It is myopic at best to say that such thinking is outside the mainstream when it has taken effective control of one bank.
Not even close. I implied that he ought to have, that it would have been better that if he had, I never got anywhere near suggesting it “was unquestionably a treaty and must be treated like one”. You are completely misrepresenting my position.
This sounds an awful lot like an admission that the “strong popular support” is a bit more ephemeral than you were letting on earlier. If it doesn’t change many votes, then it shouldn’t surprise anyone that elected officials in Washington largely ignore it.
There are three basic tests of whether an international agreement may be concluded as an executive agreement. They are: does the President have the authority to conclude the agreement under his constitutional authority? Or his statutory authority? Or in keeping with other existing treaty commitments?
I have not examined the Paris Accord carefully in these respects, but it seems totally plausible that the Accord is consistent with US commitments under the UNFCCC. Again, I’m not vouching for that argument, but it has been made and on the face of it seems reasonable.
Contrast this to HurricaneDitka’s theory on foreign relations: if it is important, it ought to be a treaty. This facile argument overlooks the obvious cases in which a President can make international agreements of great consequence while correctly relying on the three tests mentioned above. And I pointed out one agreement that has a lot more significance to the US that was not negotiated as a treaty.
It is simply political posturing to argue that a non-treaty that had a direct impact on whether many, many thousands of troops risking their lives in Iraq is somehow less of a deal than a non-treaty that allows signatories to set voluntary targets for carbon reductions that are enforced only to the extent that the state wishes to make itself pay any penalties.
Of course, I have very little doubt in my mind that HD’s position on this matter is heavily influenced by blatant partisanship, as opposed to the merits of the matter.
here’s a question for all those who gave up being civil to Republicans because they voted a “misogynist, racist, internet troll” President. What exactly was their option? Let’s pretend for a second that I was a Republican (because I don’t want to put any words in the mouths of anyone else) and I didn’t like Trump any better than you. And I didn’t vote for him in the primary. And I was just as appalled at his “grab 'em by the pussy” tape as you were. Come Nov 8, just what were my options? He’s on the ballot.
Let’s say I am in favor of sensible immigration reform which includes stepped up deportation of people who are here illegally, and stronger measures to prevent possible terrorists from entering this country. I’m for better health care options for more Americans, but I believe that the federal govt overstepped its authority with the ACA. I recognize that man has had some roll in effecting the climate, but I do not believe it’s as dire as some scientists claim, and I’m not willing to risk our economy on untested and ineffective technology shifts. Laws restricting who can purchase guns and what kind of guns they have access to are not going to take away the problem of violence we have here in America.
If I hold all these reasonable positions, what exactly am I to do? On my ballot there are 4 choices for President. Should I vote for the Democrat? It would be nice to have a woman for President; but this particular woman has said she will try to enact legislation that would continue to move away from the positions I have enumerated above. Should I vote for the Green Party Candidate or Libertarian? Well the Libertarian is closer to my political view, but either candidate is unlikely to win. So, I’m stuck with the odious choice of Donald Trump, who I may consider a wreck of a human being, but he has promised to concentrate on the issues I think are important.
Do you really believe Republicans should have turned their backs on their beliefs because of him? Did you really think they would have? If the shoe was on the other foot, would you?
Learning to compromise can be tough. It requires people who are willing to commit to an effort to reach a compromise. Not everyone can make that effort.
A “My way or the highway” stance will not lead to a successful compromise. Name-calling solves little. Use of terms such as facists, loons, wingnuts, nazis, etc. all but guarentee that no compromise will be reached.
In a democracy, when no compromise is possible, or desired, the only legal option is to outvote your opponents. But how do political parties increase the desire of voters to vote for their candidates? What compromises are the political parties willing to make? Especially if the political parties are unwilling to compromise?
You have it the other way, some report that there is no need to do anything, and I have seen that out of those few a good number are usually in the pockets of the fossil fuel companies.
As for risking the economy, as Citibank reported recently, not dealing with the issue now will hurt the economy more in the future. (yes, that big corporation that must be a commie front [sarcasm])
Well, this scientist, who is a Republican from BYU, decided to not vote for him. And he had his reasons.
I thought that perhaps a creative re-interpretation of your statement would be forthcoming, and there it is! I have nothing further to add except that your original post is there for all to read. The words “ought to have” or “should have” are nowhere to be found, although “should have” appears quite prominently in your new re-interpretation. What there is instead is a lecture about the Constitution and the importance of the Senate supermajority prescribed by the Constitution for treaties, and remarking on my apparent inability to see this. Nor was there any mention of the 17,300 international executive agreements signed since WW II with no particular squabbles about them – it was like that sort of thing was never done. It’s clear to me that you regarded the Paris accord as a treaty, and even accused Obama of “short-circuiting” this process. Perhaps others might come to a different conclusion. I don’t.
“Admission”? “Ephemeral”? Is it supposed to be an awesome admission or revelation that Republican voters know as little about the Paris accord as they do about climate change in general, and care even less? If you read the poll numbers, support for the US staying in is overwhelmingly among Democrats with additional support coming from independents and some Republicans, but not enough of the latter for the incumbent Republicans to care. The sad fact is that this is a truly important issue but most voters don’t see it as such, and Republicans don’t see it at all. I don’t know why I’m supposed to be ashamed of this or something, and “let on” otherwise.
In the end, I suspect that this will just be another element of lunacy that helps drive rational voters away from Republicans in 2018 and 2020, but as bad and dishonest as this move is, there are far more egregious and extreme things going on in this administration that are dominating the news and the voters’ mindset. Which in itself is kind of scary.
In reading through your cite, I think it did a pretty good job of fleshing out the (to borrow your simplistic phrasing) “if it is important, it ought to be a treaty” line of analysis.
Here is what it said:
How would you rate each of those items (a-h) on whether they’d tend to suggest a treaty would be the better solution, or an executive agreement, with respect to the Paris Accord?
I have been as clear as possible that I haven’t done a detailed reading of the matter and that the argument that this non-binding set of commitments under the accord seem to be consistent with the UNFCCC.
If you want to make a detailed analysis on those various points, knock yourself out. I look forward to reading it.
Yes, because the Republicans put as their candidate somebody really bad for your country. Sometimes you have to vote for the good of the country. In the last election here in Canada a lot of my NDP supporting friends voted for Trudeau even though they don’t agree with him in order to oust Harper. If you don’t think you’re country is worth it to vote against Trump, well, I’m not sure what to tell you.
I have nothing further to add except that your original post is there for all to read. The words “ought to have” or “should have” are nowhere to be found, although “should have” appears quite prominently in your new re-interpretation. What there is instead is a lecture about the Constitution and the importance of the Senate supermajority prescribed by the Constitution for treaties, and remarking on my apparent inability to see this. Nor was there any mention of the 17,300 international executive agreements signed since WW II with no particular squabbles about them – it was like that sort of thing was never done. It’s clear to me that you regarded the Paris accord as a treaty, and even accused Obama of “short-circuiting” this process. Perhaps others might come to a different conclusion. I don’t.