Vilageidiotx

B!tchfest: a healthy release for our non-roleplay annoyances.

<Snipped quote by Vilageidiotx>

And particularly with AHCA, certain parts of it are pretty popular even among republicans (notably the pre-existing conditions clause). I would expect that within the first 100 days as promised, he kills the enforcement arm of the bill (the penalty aspect), and puts a moratorium on the rest. Then cherry-picks the popular things, like pre-existing conditions, and puts them to congress piecemeal. Because the democrats can't very well vote that down or filibuster it, and there's no real GOP opposition to those elements -- the cost would be a concern, sure, but you can throw out the bathwater without killing the baby. Once the bill-cutter-upper comes out onto the table, I guarantee you, the Left will magically produce about a hundred better ideas than AHCA, and the Right already has several. This will not be a crisis.

.....anyway if you look at Trump as an experienced business mogul, instead of an inexperienced politician, all sorts of crazy shit starts to make sense. Pretend Mexico is the corporation owning the skyscraper next to Trump Tower. "We're gonna make Mexico pay for the wall" is a negotiation tactic. Mexico comes back with something like "Uh.... look we're not gonna pay for it, but build what you want." "Well can you at least pay for the paint on your side?" "....Do we get to pick the color?" "Sure." "Okay. But the wall can't be _______, we wanna talk about some things...." Now the wall is a reality, and that's all he was ever after -- consent to build a new wall. Politicians in this country haven't done that kind of negotiating in my lifetime anyway..... apparently it's effective so far? I mean we'll see but...... look all of NAFTA is already showing up to the table and it's been two days. Fight Trump on any backwards social shit, I'm there with ya, but... I mean I think he's got some chops. I think we're seeing it already and it has not been long.

@mdk

I have serious doubts that business negotiation will translate to political negotiations, but I mean, fuck it, he won his chance to try fair and square, time to see what happens.

I gotta say though, since this is the Bitchfest thread after all, addressing my fellow lefties here: This isn't time to lash out. I've been seeing too much of that the last couple of days, Dems throwing fits or lashing out at third-party voters (fight me) or people who rode out the election, or the midwest, or florida, or the other side for that matter, and really gotta say that strategy is entirely useless. You can't browbeat people into voting, that only makes them disinterested. The Dems lost this election on their own accord. Clinton was a bad candidate, that's the long and short of it. The last few elections are really showing that a popular base is very valuable in modern politics, and the number of left-wingers all over who couldn't (or still can't) talk about Clinton without saying "I don't like her, but..." should have been a massive fucking red flag. What we gotta do isn't to brow beat, or freak out. It's time to look to our own camp and clean house and make it a party that people want to vote for. 2018 is midterms, that's the next chance to say something. Not just in November, but in the primaries too, because it's the primaries when you get to decide what your party represents. This election season has been such a knock-down drag-out that it has taken people I thought to be completely apolitical and swept them right up into it. It's no time to be complacent and lose that energy. One of the take-aways from this election is that the people still ultimately define politics, and if they have a hankerin', they can do some cool shit. So lets do some cool shit.

B!tchfest: a healthy release for our non-roleplay annoyances.

<Snipped quote by Tulpa>

Well I mean, it's also misconception and fabrication and violence and more violence with censorship and lies and other lies and probably a bunch of other things, but I'm getting tired of linking.

But what it boils down to is: almost literally the entire media was in Hilary's pocket, and it turns out they were spreading hate too. They're still doing it, too. Don't believe everything you see on TV. The people who did are positively losing their minds.

edit: Last one. This has all happened before and it will all happen again.

@mdk

2002 to 2006 would be the only time the Reagan era Republicans had the run of it likes this, correct? I mean, Republican President, House, Senate, and court?

Those'd be the years to look at in terms of what to expect for partisan policy making on the right. I suspect there will be far less walking back things then people realize (social security, wade vs roe, whatevs) because really the bird has flown the coop on those policies: they are popular, they are here to stay. Besides, it was a conservative court that enacted Roe vs Wade in the first place (albeit in the pre-Reagan days when there was less partisanship.)

If I had to guess, they will spend a lot of time trying to unravel Obamacare, and Trump will play with his pet initiatives (anti-TPP, Immigration, Border Wall). You can't really just rip up Obamacare without hurting the millions of people who wouldn't have access to healthcare without it. Trump said himself he is about Repeal and Replace. I don't know what he could even replace it with though. Fuckit, the guy's President, we'll see.

The big question I have right now is, you know, who is it exactly we just elected? You can't look back at Trump's policy record like you can another politician, just the shit he has said, and that doesn't... well, he's said a lot of random shit. He also has years of basically being a celebrity, so his public personality is to some extent groomed (hard to tell how much). And there is the question too of how things will go with such a historically inexperienced President.

18th Century Ice Age

Probably just a

Name:
Place:
Bio:

I'm not into big character sheets.

Your Political Ideology: Redux

Kameraden. There's definitely some issues regarding the methodology and the linking of questions to political ideals. Some questions can find a variety of different political lenses in agreement with each other (see: nationalist and environmentalist regarding multinational corporations and their exploitation of land). The test is imperfect, but it's popular enough that most people don't want to find a substitute.

@Didgeridont

I think it is difficult to test, really. It'd probably be more effective for people to just pick where they think they are on the grid tbh.

18th Century Ice Age

Okay, so I think I'm starting to get out of the post-election fugue. I like launching RP's right before the weekend just so people have a couple of days of free time to get going right after the OP drops.

what is spams patronus

Wait, does that make the mods the dementors

@KnightShade

naw, just demented

I'm going to become an anarchist

@Vilageidiotx then that definition of anarchy is, per definition of the word, not correct and they should change it. Anarchy =/= super democracy. Though I do think you are right. But again, there are many anarchists that do believe governments should fall and we should return to city-state esque governments.

Furthermore I'd like to highlight that this kind of naive thinking will follow the same chronological order of events as communism. Communism is great and all, but when you give power to the people, people that are good at tyranny and mobilizing people will end up taking power, greed takes over, and you end up with shitty shit.

We're just replacing one set of shitty people (modern politicians) with other shitty people (I mean, lets face it, do we really want an anarchist running the country?) The context for shittiness changes (so instead of shitty economical progress, we'd have shitty cultural progress, FOR EXAMPLE, I'm not sure what the anarchists would suck at but it'd probably be something).

When I was at the 1% protest shits here in The Hague, I ran into some anarchists and they said we should get rid of governments, and every local community should govern themselves. These are the people I understood are the hardcore 'real' anarchism anarchists, where as every other stream of anarchy is more for a removal of governance in a certain area, i.e. economics or private capital and shit.

@Buddha

Dictionary definitions usually aren't a good place to go for government philosophy; they are usually waaay simple, worded from the perspective of the writer and his society, and besides that they get mixed with other definitions. Anarchism in the dictionary doesn't mean that because the dictionary gives a very basic definition of political anarchism, but if you talk to anarchists themselves you'll get a version of what I described above.

I will say that, yeh, Anarchism is a helluva uphill battle. I completely agree there. I think most anarchists would probably agree. They are also difficult to talk about historically because, though we've had anarchist societies to judge, they usually don't last more than a generation. Not because they crumble, so far they've usually done pretty well economically, but rather because they tend to happen in civil wars and they almost always get crushed by the end of the war. It's difficult to judge a system of government entirely by the generation that formed it, because the first generation is usually the dedicated one. But from what we have seen, Anarchists are pretty good organizers when it comes to economics and culture. What anarchists suck at is military organization. They'll usually keep their area the paradise of their particular war, where it is the place you absolutely want to be if you have to be anywhere, but their localized militias squabble and refuse to cooperate efficiently, and they get swept off the board. As far as I know the only exception is the modern one, Rojava, that's been pretty good at not only holding their ground but also gaining ground.

I'm going to become an anarchist

<Snipped quote by Doivid>

Correct and incorrect.

Anarchists are for total random chaos.
But there are many many different sub-groups like anarcho-capitalists (ANCAP's) and such that are for anarchism in other ways. So you are right. It just depends on what stream you look at.

There are total anarchist people that believe total random chaos is best. Those people are fools.

@Buddha

Not quite.

Anarchists believe that systems of authority are more or less illegitimate and unnecessary, and that if you got rid of them society would not only still function, but it would function better because the suppressive nature of force wouldn't be keeping the population from realizing it's full potential. It isn't like "If we get rid of parents we can have a wild party", it's "The guys making the rules are just bending everything for their own benefit at the expense of society, if we get rid of them and make the rules ourselves we can actually make them work."

Anarchism is more like super-democracy, still requiring rules but putting them in the hands of the masses rather than selected (or self appointed) con artists. You can say you think that would cause random chaos, but that's not the same thing as saying anarchists are for random chaos.

An-Caps believe basically the same thing, but just about government. So an an-cap believes that all governing bodies are illegitimate, but private capital is completely separate from government and should be maintained by common consent and private security. They are totally fine with the anarchist system of super-democracy, they just don't want it to touch private capital.

B!tchfest: a healthy release for our non-roleplay annoyances.

Always remember that Hillary won the popular vote. Rub that shit in every alt righter's face every chance you get. Do you think they let Obama ever feel he won? No. So let them see what it feels like.

TRUMP LOST THE POPULAR VOTE.

HILLARY LOST BY NARROW MARGINS IN THE MOST CONSERVATIVE OF STATES.

Their presidential win was slim.

@Tulpa

What's interesting about this time around is that Trumps popular vote is actually kind of low. Like, it's about what McCain got, and a decent amount lower than Romney's. But though she won, hers is pretty low too

When it comes down to it, Hillary couldn't bring out the numbers.

I'm going to become an anarchist