tpaine posted:"you can also add some extra christmas stuff like...sausages..."
tpaine posted:made it to 40s
TROT_CUMLOVER posted:henry you really needed arguments about whether or not to vote for someone who picked a lawyer for chiquita for attorney general? c'mon son
love them nanners
getfiscal posted:romney will not have an attorney general because the US prosecutor's system will be suspended in favour of giving police arbitrary execution power
hey guess what gutty fatscales. you dont have an attorney general, yeah. thats right. attorney general rights revoked. how do you like them nanners
shennong posted:every crown i know is an obscene alcoholic
lol
babyfinland posted:tpaine posted:"you can also add some extra christmas stuff like...sausages..."
why does every girl i fall in love with, turn out to be fictitious. konata...
KilledInADuel posted:what if roseanne barr won the election?
Also bear in mind that I'm talking about tendencies of thought in relatively broad general terms, not hard lines of demarcation. My understanding for instance is that while the data shows ~25% of the population as being authoritarian thinkers they don't break 100% to the Right (it's like 75% if memory serves) so there are rigid doctrinaire thinkers on both sides of the political divide.
The jury is also still out on how much of this is nature and how much socialization and environmental.
I also suspect that there is a relatively large more middle (moderate) group who do not have particularly strong tendencies one way or the other. The science here is of quite young and I'm by no means an expert so a lot of this just conjecture and inference on my part that could of course be entirely wrong.
But I digress.
The point I'm trying to make in answering your post regarding the lack of an ideological core on the Left, is that the specific doctrines on what has been "left" and "right" ideology through our history have been moving targets. Neo-conservatism was once neo-liberalism, federalism and libertarianism as well as Objectivism and Marxism were all at one time ideologies of what would be considered "the Left" hell at one point even feudalism would have been the "leftist" position.
Which is why I find attempts to try and define the Left or the Right for that matter, with a fixed ideological doctrine problematic. As the human species has developed socially what we collectively value as human beings has shifted as a result of our technology and understanding of our own nature and existence. It is only reasonable to conclude that as we continue to exist and our social structures adjust to our further technological development that our values will continue to change.
Consider the formation of this very Republic, in 1776 the liberals of that time had developed values that stressed the importance of autonomy and freedom of landed white men. The plight of poor white men, women or other races were not something they were concerned with and by today's standards they would be the worst sorts of regressives. But by the standards of their society they were the far left of their age.
This is not to say that the Left doesn't have an ideological core, it's just that the Left's ideological core tends to be very diverse and fluid. This is both a weakness and a strength of the Left that it can abandon failed ideas and accept new ones so that it can adapt to the changing circumstances of our world. It also makes it a hard target for the Right to nail down and permanently destroy. The weakness being that it also tends to be fractured and thus has a much harder time coordinating with itself to achieve success since it often can not reach consensus on what even qualifies as success.
One of my favorite sci-fi authors, Gordon R Dickson had a concept that ran through his Childe Cycle books. That human social evolution was the result of two diametrically opposed "historical forces" interacting, The outward looking change hungry "Creative" force and the inward looking urge towards safety and security oriented "Destructive" force.
In many ways I see the dynamics of human politics in that frame of the Left pushing forward for change and "progress" while the Right cautious, plodding, fearful of the monsters in the night resists movement into the unknown.
There is almost a rhythm to the oscillation of their influence over the human gestalt between progressive over-reach and conservative backlash. The period between the 30s and 80s was a turbulent time with massive cultural and technological change, Reagan and Thatcher and the modern Conservative movement was a reaction to that turmoil as many of our fellow humans wanted to crawl back into their safe little caves where everything made sense again and people knew their place in the world.
Currently I see the Left ascendent as the progressive forces of our gestalt have found the drive and ability to push forward again once again through technological advances. Of course the conservative aspect is doing what it has always done and will continue to do, fight to hold things back in order to maintain what it sees as stability and security.
I simplify a lot for the sake of explanation because I actually think that the interplay between these two dynamics of human behavior is far more granular in practice and the larger trends that result in what we see as human politics being the aggregate influence of all those smaller interactions and conflicts.
You claim that creativity is "just the meaningful recombination of ideas" I disagree, Creativity is a willingness to take risk, to try new things, to experiment and step out into the darkness to see what makes the bump in the night. That curiosity and urge to know what makes the word tick the drive to ask the uncomfortable questions, to push against boundaries and borders both physical and behavioral.
This is why scientists tend to be liberal, while engineers tend to be conservative. Engineers recombine ideas, scientists think of new ideas. Risk taking requires a certain degree of fearlessness which is very much counter what we know about how conservative brains function and frankly quite in keeping with the corollary.
Each is useful and necessary, without the scientists the engineers run out of ideas, without the engineers the scientists never really fully utilize their discoveries because they are out looking for new ones.
Risk takers also tend to ... well ... get culled, since sometimes the thing goes bump in the night is a hungry lion. So a society made up of nothing but risk takers would be one on a fast track to extinction.
Alternatively risk aversion tends to cause stagnation and rigidity, creating a society that would be incapable of adapting to change and thus be on a path of eventual decline and if not a fast track tract to extinction then a slow one.
The above informs and shapes my view on politics and is the prism through which I analyze events. Could it be utter bullshit, sure but thus far it's proven quite useful as an explanation and predictor of trends.
The Right in America has at it's core hardline authoritarians, that's the hard base I've mentioned before. The religious conservatives and all the ditto heads and racists who "cling" to their old ways and that imagined golden age when the world made "sense" to them. Fear is their core motivation and drives all their beliefs and opinions, fear of change, fear of the other, fear of pretty much everything that doesn't fit into their existing mental framework. Around that core are more moderate thinkers who while cautious are not as afraid of change but are conservative wanting to stick with change that is known, Like an engineer they want to apply those "solutions" they are already familiar with.
The Left on the other hand has at its core the risk takers and creative thinkers the ones who are ready to unshackle themselves from existing paradigms and limitations, who are ready and willing to try new things, to experiment and find new solutions to problems. Hope is their motivation, hope for a better world, hope for freedom, hope for prosperity for all. Around that core are also more moderate thinkers (notice a trend here?) who while still open to new ideas and willing experiment but are somewhat more cautious and in their approach.
Note how these fundamental cores play out in the messaging from the campaign and their utter lack of ability to find common cause. The Left focuses on "moving forward", "hope and change", "building a better tomorrow". While the Right focuses on "Restoring America", "Reinvigorating Capitalism", "Defending American Values". One forward looking creative hopeful, the other backward looking nostalgic and fearful.
Now I've described a relatively clean demarcation above, As I said earlier I don't see the demarcation quite so clean. there is over lap there are very "conservative" thinkers, who for what ever reason identify more with those on the left and very "progressive" thinkers who end up on the right and of course all the mushy middle that moves form one sphere of influence to the other depending on specific circumstances. There are probably at least 20-25% of minorities who would naturally ally with the Right if it weren't for how the Right has historically treated them, and it's going to be interesting to see how things sort themselves out and realign in the coming years.
*continues to digress into an avalanche of paragraphs whilst screaming "ima fuckShIT!! Im A FUCKSHIT"*
but how could i stop after
hell at one point even feudalism would have been the "leftist" position."
TROT_CUMLOVER posted:attorneys general. poets laureate.
whoppers jr.
this will be my first election. i am very excited.
but something i have been grappling with. (i am a greenhorn at smashing the state)
how to explain to someone with like Actually Important vested personal interests in stuff like domestic social issues such as abortion + gay rights that obama only nominally stands for those things?
this hypothetical someone would more or less Get that he is a Bad Guy Imperialist acting out of Corporate Interests and is Just Like All The Others et al but would also be too marginalized and depressed to care very much about abstract arguments concerning shit like "legitimizing the system"--yet not enough to be entirely disenfranchised from said system, oddly, on reflection.
this hypothetical someone would only see that The Other Guy is standing on a official platform of misogyny and social regression that if implemented as policy would more than just offend this person's noncommittal ideals, because this person, again, has Actually Important vested personal interests in the stuff. This person knows that the Real Agenda is the same no matter how the election goes, understands the insignificance of voting on some level, but believes that he/she will be personally more adversely affected by a republican administration than a democratic one.
a noncommittal half-liberal, then, with pragmatic concerns that are actually kind of concrete and important. How to cogently explain why these concerns are no reason to Vote For The Lesser Of Two Evils.
How to do this without shrugging "he's going to win anyway why bother"
I am making myself vulnerable here please dont make fun of me
"We are always thinking that it is either going to attack our homes or whatever we do. It’s going to strike us; it’s going to attack us.... No matter what we are doing, that fear is always inculcated in us. Because whether we are driving a car, or we are working on a farm, or we are sitting home playing ... cards–no matter what we are doing we are always thinking the drone will strike us. So we are scared to do anything, no matter what."
http://leanforward.msnbc.com/_news/2012/09/25/14068343-report-pakistanis-in-drone-stricken-areas-live-under-cloud-of-fear?lite
or how about how the largest voting turnout in the past 40 years was 56.8%? and even then, that was during a global economic crisis
so, you tell me, who do you think is personally invested in it and who is completely delusional? to think that (in the age of the Diebold machine especially), that a single vote for president is *anything* but symbolic, that is delusional. to think that it is even possible to vote strategically, when the only way one can afford to be strategic in an election is to have deep pockets or a large organized movement, that is delusional. Obama doesn't even have to win the popular vote to win the election! think about what people do when they ignore this simple fact and talk about voting for the lesser evil: they buy into a hysterical delusion
to vote for Obama is to symbolically support everything both him and the system stands for, in theory, in practice, their ideas and their consequences. strategy and staving off the "greatest evil" doesn't figure into it, it'll suck your soul out your damn eye sockets. you can rationally feel one way, but the way you Act has deep consequences on your life. you may believe you are a good person, but if you don't act like a good person you are not a good person.
you don't have to convince your friends, in the end they can do as they please. but you have a definite say in your own life. evil will fall by the wayside, on its own. strike it down, of course you should, but you cant save the lost
getfiscal posted:let's be careful not to turn the dysfunction of america, a nation of little white lords and creepy millionaires straddled over blacks, latinos and apallachians, into something intrinsic in voting. in lots of countries voting changes important things. god bless voting.
i don't have any problem with voting unless you're talking about specifically america. i believe saddam's elections have been fair and transparent. i am not sure about the canadian system, i'm not well-read on it because it's really boring