https://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/25-biggest-blunders-in-wikipedia-history/
None of your links is evidence that this particular Wiki link is wrong. Where is your evidence that this particular Wiki link is wrong?
And to support your point, in this day and age, it shouldn’t be hard to confirm the mere existence of a Chinese idiom if it were true. I casually asked my mom (native speaker) about this a few years ago, and she also said she’s never heard of it or anything similar. It ought not to be hard to dismiss it as a old white guy invention of “ooh, exotic orientialism! Confucius say…”
Edit: Didn’t we just have a thread about this not too long ago? Oh wait, it’s from 2001… 'May you live in interesting times!'
Yes, because a multiparty system gives such great leaders as Boris Johnson, aka “trump-lie” and Netanyahu.
Trump, obviously.
Hence my desire to neuter the executive. As long as humans remain corruptible, power shouldn’t be concentrated so tightly.
I dont buy it. You come in here and attack Biden with vehemence . But you dont say anything bad about trump. You suggest a manner of voting that would help trump and hurt biden.
If you truly didnt care for either party candidate you would be a equal opportunity hater , but you are not, you only bash Joe.
You statements are at odds with the reality of your posting.
How about listing all the reasons not to vote to trump?
Why bother? I’d just be preaching to the choir, here. And plus, right after the 2016 election, I was nearly banned from the board because of what I said about Trump then.
But, if you insist, I hate Trump because: he’s a rapist, he doesn’t believe in science, he killed a hundred thousand Americans, he’s vision-less and platformless and relies on GOP puppeteers for what passes as strategy, he’s the most corrupt president of any country I’ve ever learned about, he’s a racist-nationalist-authoritarian-fascist-sexist-classist piece of shit, he has no experience with human empathy, no grasp of the importance of our alliances in foreign affairs, no desire to help Americans beyond making them wear his brand, an extensive history of backstabbing his own supporters, a penchant for replacing competent career civil servants with corrupt yes-man insiders, he’s destroyed any of American leadership in climate change, renewables, income inequality, healthcare reform, anything really, he’s too friendly with not just Putin but other authoritarians, he’s a traitor… I could go on and on. Shorter to just say the one thing I actually liked about him, and that’s his coining of “covfefe”.
I’ve always attacked candidates who I thought would lead the country further into disaster, whether that’s Trump or Hillary or Bush or Biden. I can’t really prove that to you, but I don’t really think it’s relevant in 2020.
Also, I think there is something to be said about the counter-Trump effect. If Hillary had won in 2016, I do not believe we would see the level of civic engagement, discontent, and uprising that we have today. Sometimes (often?) it’s easier to rally people around a common enemy than a weak leader on your side.
Part of “why attack Biden and not Trump” is that the GOP is a lost cause for improvement. The moment they decided it was strategically preferable to sacrifice country for party and power, they went full in on it and rapidly became terrifyingly good at doing so. It makes sense in their hierarchical and patriarchal world view to worship strong leaders, not strong laws, and to form a strong in group based on those principles. They will always have that advantage over big tent parties like the Democrats. It’s trivially easy to unite the right by channeling white fear, it’s nearly impossible to unite the left. I don’t bother with attacking Trump on this board because there is nothing to be gained: watching him for a day is far worse than anything I could say.
But the Democratic Party has been in upheaval since 2016 and close to destruction, so it still had a chance of being reshaped or at least fractured into multiple smaller parties. A disaffected electorate is a necessary if unfortunate precursor to system collapse, which is the real solution. The GOP or whatever comes after it will always have the racists and rapists and religious zealots and they will be relatively more united as long as a single black trans atheist lives. Nothing I can do about that except to break the system that gives them power.
I think you’re living a fantasy if you think by “ burning it all down” something better can be created that will solve all the ills of society. Good luck getting 300 million people to agree on anything. The country is split 50/50 on abortion. Which way does that go in this new utopia you’re imagining? How about immigration? Another issue dividing the country. Is the new utopia pro or against?
Easy to say we will do what is “right” and “good” and “fair” when nobody can agree on what those are.
And what happens when this new utopia is built and this new society formed by the people has values in opposition with your own? Will it be another “failed” system in your eyes?
Power doesn’t “go away.” It just gets re-distributed. If you neuter the executive, you make Congress that much more powerful. If you strip power from Congress, the courts take it up. If you weaken the Federal Government, states become more powerful.
Anarchism is a foolish fantasy.
I think a somewhat wrong angle is being taken with Reply here. The thing about accelerationists is that they believe that the people who suffer and die under Trump, Biden, or a collapsed system are entirely equivalent, so they don’t fear the collapse or accept any responsibility for its results, no matter what they are, because it’s all pretty much the same to them. That’s why pointing out that what rises from the ashes could be a totalitarian dictatorship doesn’t matter to them. “They were going to suffer no matter who was President; at least I gave them a chance.”
The summer of 1969 called. Apparently one of their hippies escaped to 2020 in a time machine. They want him back. He took all the good weed, too.
The wish for radical change – albeit for all the wrong reasons – with no rational action plan, no workable agenda, no pragmatic roadmap for incremental productive change – is what got Trump into power in the first place, and created the unprecedented disaster that the US is in right now, putting at risk not only the lives and well-being of millions, but the future of democracy itself.
"Is there anything I actually admire about Biden?" - Yes there is:
Biden is qualified for the position of President of the United States by abilities that he has acquired through experience. Biden is no stranger to the Presidency. Biden is comfortable in the office because he does not need it. Biden fully understands the dichotomies of the office. Biden is a rational, courteous, empathetic human being. Biden understands our history. Biden has a natural professional demeanor.Biden is an admirable citizen.
Biden is not alone. The Democrats have offered others who, in the sum, are equally qualified. I find much to admire in the lot. Biden, however, is unique for this moment in time. Biden will form a government with a functioning cabinet that bears Senate approval. Biden will communicate with the legislature and the agencies to get the ship of state back on an even keel. Most importantly Biden will mentor more than one individual to be a choice as his successor.
I find much to admire in Biden.
Agree with what you said. Biden has been in the system for so long he knows exactly what works and what doesn’t. He’s not going to waste time chasing dramatic pipe dreams if he knows they have no chance of garnering the support they need. He knows who he needs to compromise with, who to make deals with, who he can count on, who he can push against, etc. He’s the ultimate insider.
Biden won’t use the office of the presidency to scam billions – trillions – of dollars from taxpayers for his own benefit.
Biden won’t run the executive branch like a protection racket.
Biden won’t turn the DOJ into a political weapon used to persecute his personal enemies.
Biden will resurrect the firewalls between DOJ and the executive branch.
Biden will restore the rule of law.
Biden knows who to call and who to appoint to quickly restore agencies of prime importance, such as the EPA, Departments of State, Defense, Energy, the Interior, Housing and Development, of Education, Agriculture and all the rest, to some semblance of function and normalcy.
Biden will work hard to restore our important traditional alliances and to strengthen our interests abroad.
Biden will punish the fuck out of Russia.
Who is coming is us. And there’s no where to move out to.
The Cuyahoga River doesn’t catch on fire, race relations look worse to white people because we’ve been made to notice them, education looks worse because people are now arguing about the crappy stuff which they often weren’t before, healthcare is certainly better than it would be if we burned the hospitals down, income inequality and corruption are a continuous battle that goes in cycles and will do so no matter what you burn, and even more people, Americans and otherwise, will die if Trump gets elected.
What specific alternative actions are you claiming we should take that will actually result in fewer deaths, not more?
I wasn’t calling for civility. Go ahead and be uncivil if you want, if it’s in a useful direction. I was calling for fixing the roof that the rain’s pouring in through instead of pulling the roof off the house entirely in the middle of the storm. There is no other house to move into. We need to build the damn thing before tearing the old one down.
Oh, nonsense. It would signal to them that they should have gone further left, or further right, or nominated somebody who didn’t have x disadvantage, or somebody who didn’t have y disadvantage, and they’ll argue about which. It won’t signal to them that they need to dismantle the two-party system.
That’s exactly why the executive’s not supposed to be neutered. The division of power into three branches is designed precisely to minimize that problem.
It can’t get rid of it, of course. Nothing can, until and unless we mutate into some more sensible species. Each of the three branches, and especially the legislative and executive, will keep fighting to take over the others’ power. But neutering one of them will only make that problem worse. And it won’t make Congress step up and do its job – though electing more Democrats, at the moment, might be a move in that direction.
Biden wont send Federal Agents to shoot peaceful protestors in Oregon.
Later on July 11, a federal officer shot a protester in the head with a projectile,… reportedly sending that person to the hospital for facial reconstructive surgery.
In the wake of that shooting, Wyden strengthened his condemnation. “The consequences of Donald Trump unilaterally dispatching federal law enforcement into U.S. cities played out in Portland with a peaceful protester shot in the head,” Wyden wrote. “Trump and Homeland Security must now answer why federal officers are acting like an occupying army.”
Gov. Kate Brown also lamented violence committed by Homeland Security officers.
It’s not so much about differences between citizens, but over-concentration of power and corruption. We’re not very far from a dictatorship.
Yes, it’s kinda the point. Congress has its own share of problems, but each individual congress critter is less powerful than the president, and is subject to checks and balances from their peers.
It’s not like the checks and balances we have right now are really working. If you can’t even convict someone like Trump, what legitimacy does the system have?
I’m not sure why you believe more representation equals anarchy.
Eh? It’s a process. It took France six times to get it right, no? We still haven’t. There are no easy, overnight solutions. Doesn’t mean “doing nothing” is the right decision.
You really think wishful hippie thinking got us Trump? More like decades of federal failure to take care of American citizens, more and more displaced and devalued.
And how exactly do you think Biden and the current Democratic Party structure would prevent next-Trump, coming back twice as strong and five times as fascist, in a few years? The man doesn’t even believe the system is broken, much less being willing to discuss structural overhaul. There is no sort of incrementalism that can tackle corruption this entrenched.
Hey, finally we agree on something. The same sort of Ultimate Insider that’ll further exacerbate American working-class despair, setting the stage for Trump v2.
IOW Biden will set up fragile band-aids without addressing any underlying structural causes, and he’ll lose those gains twice over with the next Republican president. “Hey, Obama got us Trump, so maybe Obama-lite will fix things!”
“Restoring” things means, what, winding the clock back to 2016, with all the same social conditions still there, but worsened after four years of Trump, worsened by climate change, worsened by the coronavirus, worsened by our foreign relations… but hey, at least he’s not Trump? Play this out… what exactly do you think will magically happen in 4 years?