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Helsing posted:Having money or control over media outlets or otherwise commanding influence is no guarantee of getting the outcomes that you expect. Being rich and powerful is sort of an entrance fee to US politics -- you won't have much influence without those things -- but it doesn't guarantee you'll get the outcomes you wanted. And even a seemingly stable situation like the GOP being dominated by an alliance of business money and Christian evangelism can blow apart very suddenly, which is what we've been watching since the end of the second Bush administration. An alternative narrative: Economic fundamentals and the stranglehold on power white people had made 60's social welfare situation what it was. Both broke down. Civil rights made white people less inclined to support welfare that went to 'others' and simultaneously pushed them to ally with the right business elite while increasing foreign competition undermined the power of labor. That removes the human agency (business elite action) which is so often post-hoc in history and provides a more unifying explanation for why the rest of the western world is different than America. A large part of the reason is comparative lack of diversity encouraging voters to support high levels of social welfare. Yes money in politics is like gravity and like gravity it's actually pretty boring. People in power....have power. You can take money out of the equation or change any law or legal structure you want but modern society will have individuals with power. People who are in charge of the military or the media or any large institution have 'currency' and motivation to use it to further their own interests. That's a reality that's not going anywhere I don't know where to look in history to find an example otherwise (certainly not real life socialism). Thus I generally think you've got the bar set a bit to high on what you think democracy is supposed to look like (note how much less trump spent than his primary opponents). The white middle class voluntarily allied with the business elite for real reasons. And broke off that alliance when they they chose to (all the Jeb Bush spending in the world wouldn't have stopped them).
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Aug 24, 2016 01:07
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Wrong thread
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Aug 24, 2016 01:35
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Munkeymon posted:I was basically describing lobbying - quite possibly one of the least idealistic activities in our system Did you lose track of your argument? You were responding to somebody who said the Democrats are ignoring fast food protesters by saying "constituents have to demand things of their representatives in government in order to get those things". So your suggestion is that fastfood protesters asking for a living wage should... hire their own lobbyists? Yeah, you're right, that doesn't sound idealistic at all. It just sounds straight up stupid. quote:I was also talking about lobbying local and state politicians, not nationally, and yeah, I was also being flip because "I don't see why we can't just increase the base cost of labor by 30%+ right loving now" is an absurd position economically and quite possibly politically suicidal, depending on the area. And to be clear, I'm just talking about the 'right loving now' part. Spread that out over a few years and it's a good idea whose time has hopefully come. And yet the Democrats have been extremely proud of Obamacare, which does dramatically change labour costs, and they also have supported free trade deals which effectively cut the cost of labour dramatically. So this idea that politicians will prudently avoid any kind of economic disruption is just wrong because in situations where it benefits the right people they're happy to play along. asdf32 posted:An alternative narrative: Economic fundamentals and the stranglehold on power white people had made 60's social welfare situation what it was. Both broke down. Civil rights made white people less inclined to support welfare that went to 'others' and simultaneously pushed them to ally with the right business elite while increasing foreign competition undermined the power of labor. There was a crisis in the 1970s, and it was certainly tied into white racial anxiety and increasing international competition, among other things. But the particular shape of the response of that crisis was in part dependent on power relations within society. Much in the way that the Russian revolution was a combination of a particular political tendency combinign with a particularly crisis-moment in history to produce a unique and contingent outcome (the USSR) which wasn't necessarily inevitable. In the case of the 1970s there was a pre-existing network of activists and donors that had come into existence in reaction to the New Deal and which had already made a conscious decision to take over the Republican Party and make it a vehicle for their movement. So while the particular historical forces you point out are obviously important to explaining what happens, that doesn't mean we should ignore the actions or statements of the specific people who were participating in that historical moment. Saying "Oh, race relations broke down in the USA and international competition increased" is not really an adequate explanation for neoliberalism / neoconservatism / whatever labels you want to apply to the political developments of the late 20th century. quote:That removes the human agency (business elite action) which is so often post-hoc in history and provides a more unifying explanation for why the rest of the western world is different than America. A large part of the reason is comparative lack of diversity encouraging voters to support high levels of social welfare. Business interests did mobilize though, and there are measurable impacts one can look at related to specific actions like electoral races, major labour disputes, etc. Like, you're free to type out a couple sentences making an unsupported assertion about how everything is determined without any human agency whatsoever if you like and I'm really not sure how to respond to a claim that is so sweeping and vague. Presumably we can agree that the events of the last 40 years weren't engineered single handedly by some sinister capable of rich-people Illuminati executing some kind of grand world conspiracy. But it's pretty hard to dispute that a specific movement with specific intentions arose and seized the moment that hte 1970s offered them, and used it to carry through their ideas, and central to their political project was a desire to destroy the labour movement and roll back the New Deal. And this isn't hypothetical, they were pretty open about what they wanted to do. Sure, they wouldn't have been able to do it without the breakdown of the liberal post-war order, but that doesn't mean that movement conservatism was just some epiphenomenon surfing on the wave of 1970s discontent. quote:Yes money in politics is like gravity and like gravity it's actually pretty boring. People in power....have power. You can take money out of the equation or change any law or legal structure you want but modern society will have individuals with power. People who are in charge of the military or the media or any large institution have 'currency' and motivation to use it to further their own interests. If I understand the implications of what you're saying correctly, then this is an incredibly silly position to adopt. There are clearly differences across time and space in terms of how widely political power and influence are distributed. You're basically saying "well if we can't remove 100% of inequality then there's no point trying to reduce the inequality that does exist" which is absurd and I think is a pretty clear example of motivated reasoning on your part. As you often do you start from the undefended assumption that we already live in the best possible world (I assume you wouldn't phrase it this way yourself but this is how it comes off). Also, as a sidebar: you seem to think I'm making some kind of simplistic claim like x dollars spent directly translates into y amount of political influence. That would obviously be wrong. I think the contingent flow of historical events plays a huge role in determining outcomes and any attempt to reduce politics to a simple model in which one factor determines another factor in a clean and mechanical way, like one ping pong ball hitting another, is a dangerous and usually foolhardy exercise. Actual politics and history is very messy and confused and even in a situation where money and power are strongly correlated the rich don't always get what they want. But that doesn't mean the converse -- the idea that money is irrelevant -- is true or even plausible sounding.
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Aug 24, 2016 21:23
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Helsing posted:There was a crisis in the 1970s, and it was certainly tied into white racial anxiety and increasing international competition, among other things. But the particular shape of the response of that crisis was in part dependent on power relations within society. Much in the way that the Russian revolution was a combination of a particular political tendency combinign with a particularly crisis-moment in history to produce a unique and contingent outcome (the USSR) which wasn't necessarily inevitable. In the case of the 1970s there was a pre-existing network of activists and donors that had come into existence in reaction to the New Deal and which had already made a conscious decision to take over the Republican Party and make it a vehicle for their movement. And I think the reasons I gave are a decent explanation for why the whatever you want to call it conservative movement took hold. What I'm saying isn't super interesting is that the movement existed in the first place. The motivations for that kind of organization among conservatives and businesses is obvious. Secondly, cabals of powerful people are in no way unique. Expectations are everything. If I were to rant about 'government waste' a correct response would be: "Tough poo poo". Large institutions have waste (all of them) and it's not going anywhere. It would be possible to adopt this properly calibrated stance while still having plenty of leeway to advocate specific reforms. Meanwhile adopting the wrong expectation sends people into the ideological woods believing they have every reason to be there (another example: vitriol towards hillary which seems based on the fantasy that she's uniquely deceitful as a politician). So I'm not willing to get super alarmed about the state of American democracy with respect to power concentration at the moment when a large neglected class of people (working class) are flexing their democratic muscle in a stunningly visible way.
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Aug 27, 2016 01:36
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 ok, sure.Get back to me when the entire elected federal government isn't run by millionaire and when the main activity of Congressmen isn't soliciting more donations and maybe we can talk about American democracy. Here's a pro-tip though. Most classical theorists of democracy would say that the point where the ruling class has bungled things so badly that wealthy demagogues start appearing and agitating against the system is generally not considered a sign of health in a Republic.
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Aug 27, 2016 16:59
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And your action is what? If it's address inequality because inequality is a problem that's great. If it's to pretend that you can shield voters from the influence of powerful people then you might be misguided.
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Aug 27, 2016 17:11
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You're setting up this completely false binary, as though the only options on the spectrum are "some idealized utopia that will never happen" and "the exact conditions we're living in now". There's a spectrum of influence and power here which varies from country to country or across time. You're seemingly trying to pitch this debate at the most abstract and general level possible. As for what is to be done? That's a massive question. It may be that this is a tragedy rather than a dilemma. Vast, centuries long historical processes like the lifespan of a political system can't necessarily be fixed over night. But as long as we're diagnosing problems we should try to be clear and suggesting that Donald Trump is some kind of vindication of democracy is insane on so many levels. Especially since he's just a rival billionaire (well, "billionaire", his fortunes are exaggerated) riding high on a wave of apocalyptic racism and cultural despair. Broadly speaking though, just about every meaningfully democratic country in the 20th century had a powerful labour movement and some kind of populist political party (or at least faction within a political party) so the absence of those things is a plausible starting point for discussing what went wrong. Whether these conditions can be recreated is debatable but they provided a countervailing political influence which is sorely lacking at the moment.
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Aug 27, 2016 17:25
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How is it not a democratic success story when voters get what they want against the interests and will of the existing elite? That's the whole purpose and the ultimate test of the system. In this case the people exercised their interests in a decisive and almost effortless fashion against remarkably public opposition (and massive spending) from the existing elite. People told them to gently caress off, and they got what they wanted. I think trump is as terrible as you do. But moneyed opposition stood in his way and lost. That makes it hard to diagnose moneyed interests as the problem here.
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Aug 27, 2016 18:27
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You're describing a private organization's system for choosing it's candidate and using it as some kind of weird vindication of the entire US electoral system, which doesn't make any sense on multiple levels. And you're just straight up refusing to engage with the fact that with a few exceptions you basically can't be a politician on the national level in America unless you're already independently wealthy, or the fact that re-election usually hinges much more on how effectively you can fundraise than anything else. Or the fact that studies show the popular will of the bottom 50% of the population aren't reflected at all in government decisions. Or the fact that there's a massive imbalance of wealth where one percent of the population owns forty percent of the wealth. Your entire argument seems to amount to "this rich aren't literally all powerful, therefore how can you say democracy isn't flourishing?" which is such an insane standard I honestly can't take your position very seriously. Especially since Trump was only in a position to do what he did thanks to his private wealth.
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Aug 27, 2016 18:45
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Heh of course the republican party is part of the american political system. Then you list the things I things I already pointed out arn't new (seriously the fact that politicians are richer than average voters wouldn't have been news in Athens or Rome or been surprising to the founding fathers) with a thesis that they stem from 70's organization of business interests and one thing (wealth inequality) which I already called out as a problem that should (and can) be addressed directly.
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Aug 27, 2016 19:16
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You're speaking at a ridiculous level of abstraction where in one sweeping sentence you're comparing Ancient Athens, Ancient Rome, Eighteenth Century America and modern America. And your conclusion is "they all had inequalities of money and power, therefore money and power are irrelevant." Just like your case for the robust health of American democracy is entirely reducible to "one billioniare who most other billionaires disagree with was able to win the Republican primary, therefore money in politics is irrelevant". Or when I point out that the average elected officeholder in the federal government is a multimillionaire your only answer is that the average politician is always, on average, richer than the average person. That's an answer which is technically accurate in the most autistic way possible and completely ignores that while there's always some discrepancy, in most democratic societies it isn't anywhere close to as large as it is in the USA. There's a lot of evidence suggesting that the American political system isn't very responsive to popular pressure and anyone with eyes to see can recognize the impact that lobbying and corporate influence have had on how the American government functions in the last 40 years. If you want to keep making these extremely vague justifications of the situation you can go ahead but they just don't seem terribly convincing.
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Aug 27, 2016 19:59
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asdf32 posted:If it's to pretend that you can shield voters from the influence of powerful people then you might be misguided. That's basically tautological. "Powerful" effectively means able to influence large groups of people, directly or otherwise.
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Aug 27, 2016 20:23
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Helsing posted:You're speaking at a ridiculous level of abstraction where in one sweeping sentence you're comparing Ancient Athens, Ancient Rome, Eighteenth Century America and modern America. And your conclusion is "they all had inequalities of money and power, therefore money and power are irrelevant." You're spinning age old realities in a narrative of decline. quote:Just like your case for the robust health of American democracy is entirely reducible to "one billioniare who most other billionaires disagree with was able to win the Republican primary, therefore money in politics is irrelevant". Trump has raised and spent vastly less money than either Hillary Clinton or Obama (at this point in his campaign). Keep yelling 'billionaire'. It's scary. It completely misses the point. Trump just now caught Ben Carson in total spending this cycle and is still behind cruz. If your takeaway is to chalk up Trump's success to money he didn't spend you're delusional. quote:Or when I point out that the average elected officeholder in the federal government is a multimillionaire your only answer is that the average politician is always, on average, richer than the average person. That's an answer which is technically accurate in the most autistic way possible and completely ignores that while there's always some discrepancy, in most democratic societies it isn't anywhere close to as large as it is in the USA. Cite it. quote:There's a lot of evidence suggesting that the American political system isn't very responsive to popular pressure and anyone with eyes to see can recognize the impact that lobbying and corporate influence have had on how the American government functions in the last 40 years. If you want to keep making these extremely vague justifications of the situation you can go ahead but they just don't seem terribly convincing. And you think this is worse than when, pre-emancipation 19th century? The era before direct senate elections or women's suffrage? pre-civil rights 50's? When. Describe how reality and history match your narrative of american democratic decline (noting our sitting black middle class president about to be succeeded by the first women president (god willing)).
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Aug 27, 2016 21:30
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Subjunctive posted:That's basically tautological. "Powerful" effectively means able to influence large groups of people, directly or otherwise. Yes (a good thing for my point) and no. Power is inevitable. That's a point that some people are dumb enough to lose track of (the right freaks out about government corruption, the left business). Every society has mayors, managers and military leaders with more power than workers. The question is the extent to which their power from one role spills into other areas. I'm saying that to a certain extent its inevitable. There is an appropriate level of concern and action. And there is over-reaction. Exactly like my analogy to government waste (similarly inevitable) earlier.
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Aug 28, 2016 01:58
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asdf32 posted:Yes (a good thing for my point) and no. Power is inevitable. That's a point that some people are dumb enough to lose track of (the right freaks out about government corruption, the left business). Every society has mayors, managers and military leaders with more power than workers. The question is the extent to which their power from one role spills into other areas. I'm saying that to a certain extent its inevitable. There is an appropriate level of concern and action. And there is over-reaction. Exactly like my analogy to government waste (similarly inevitable) earlier. And by a shocking coincidence, any attempt to suggest there is a problem in this, the most perfect of possible worlds falls in the category of overreaction. Seriously, this is some straight-up Doctor Pangloss intellectual laziness, man.
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Aug 29, 2016 14:26
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asdf32 posted:You're spinning age old realities in a narrative of decline. If you're going to carry on this ridiculous line of argument then it's on you to justify your positions. Literally anyone can see that the US government is differnet now than it was twenty or forty or one hundred years ago. If you want to argue everything is the exact same and that there's no difference in conditions then that's your argument to make. Literally any expert from any side of the political spectrum I can think of would agree that there have been huge changes in how power is exercised in Washington since the mid-20th century so you're going to have your work cut out for you but I look forward to seeing what you come up with. I realize you're never going to put the in the necessary effort to actually justify a completely ludicrous position such as the one you've staked out but that would be the necessary condition for this discussion to actually progress. You're the one who is going up against the received wisdom of literally everyone that US government and politics have changed over time in non-trivial ways. If you want to seriously argue that there's no meaningful differences between the current era and ancient Rome then that's on you to demonstrate. quote:Trump has raised and spent vastly less money than either Hillary Clinton or Obama (at this point in his campaign). Keep yelling 'billionaire'. It's scary. It completely misses the point. Trump just now caught Ben Carson in total spending this cycle and is still behind cruz. If your takeaway is to chalk up Trump's success to money he didn't spend you're delusional. Trump's entire "brand" is built on decades as a prominent and wealthy businessman. He didn't have to spend as much money in the primary as his opponents because he built his brand up over the last several decades. There's absolutely no reason to believe that some random yahoo with a 30,000 a year annual salary would have gotten anywhere peddling the same ideas. Trump was able to run a highly unconventional campaign precisely because he was already a known quantity and because he could lean heavily on his established brand as a tough businessman, something he largely established through his connections to reality television and the media. Your argument doesn't even stand up to the most basic critical thinking. You're blind if you think Trump's wealth is irrelevant to his success. And this argument is even dumber when we consider that Trump's opponents are by all accounts winning handily. So here we have a study by well regarded academics showing that the American political system is completely unresponsive to the political will of half the electorate and rather than acknowledging that study you're trying to fixate on a single unusual presidential race which doesn't even support your argument. And now you're demanding I provide what would essentially be a book-length thesis just to prove to you that there are significant differences between how political power and inequality operate in 16 AD and 2016 AD. Yeah, no thanks. If you're going to pursue these inane and silly arguments ("all societies have inequality therefore we can completely ignore inequality in our analysis!  ) then I'm honestly happy to let your arguments stand on your own because I'm pretty sure anyone lurking in the thread can decide for themselves why you're full of poo poo.quote:Cite it. Politicians have continued to get wealthier even as the net worth of the average US household stagnated or declined. This makes sense given that the average seat in the house costs more than a million to win and the average seat in the senate costs more than 10 million to win based on these 2012 figures. Also the net worth of politicians understates the extent to which their future incomes are based on speaking fees and lobbying gigs they get after leaving office. quote:And you think this is worse than when, pre-emancipation 19th century? The era before direct senate elections or women's suffrage? pre-civil rights 50's? When. Describe how reality and history match your narrative of american democratic decline (noting our sitting black middle class president about to be succeeded by the first women president (god willing)). America has never been a particularly democratic society, assuming we're measuring it by it's own self stated image of itself, but at least in the mid 20th century there were overlapping institutional arrangements which provided a very rough kind of balance between major interest groups in society, which was reflected by a much more even distribution of income. That system started breaking down thanks to a variety of factors including racial tension and heightened international competition, regulatory changes and campaign finance law changes. The result were a series of changes to how lobbying and fundraising in Washington worked. While this period of countervailing influence, in which consumer groups, activists, unionists, independent media, etc. provided a very rough and approximate check on the institutional power of the wealthy didn't last more than a few decades, and was deeply flawed at the best of times, it provided some outlets for reforming the system further. Various groups, including women, minorities, etc. began to take advantage of this relatively open period in politics and agitated for further reform. That heightened the general sense of crisis within the system (which was already being pushed to its limits by economic changes) and the result was a period of political instability during the 1970s and 1980s. That culminated in corporations taking a much greater and more direct interest in political outcomes and in lobbying. Again, there's some simplification going on here because this is such a massive historical process, but the end result was that from the 1970s onward there were explicit and conscious steps taken to deradicalize politics and to restore some stability to the system. This was made easier by changes that were already occuring in the economy and society at large. That combination of conscious effort and historical coincidence combined to produce the current, post 1980s era, which is itself now looking almost as unstable as the old system did when it broke down in the late 60s / early 70s. Articulating this at any length would take a lot of time and energy and I'm not really going to commit to that kind of major effort posting when you're making such unbelievably shallow and silly arguments to begin with. If you can't sharpen and specify your own arguments and offer something a bit less Panglossian than what you've served up so far then why would I waste my time writing up something you won't even both to read in any detail? If you can't even recognize that there are differences between now and the past (including the extreme past of thousands of years ago) then why should anyone try to explain complicated historical processes to you? You can't adopt an intentionally stupid attitude and then demand people invest huge amounts of time disproving completely asinine arguments that you put zero effort or thought into. Helsing fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Aug 29, 2016 |
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Aug 29, 2016 19:16
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You understand that democracy is a distinct piece of the American political puzzle right? I'm having trouble getting more than "I liked the 60's, therefore democracy must have been good" from this post. Democracy can be functioning perfectly and outcomes can be terrible. Or vice versa. First, I'm not saying nothing has changed which was made obvious when I listed a number of things that have changed since America's founding (when it wouldn't have qualified as 'democratic' by modern standards). Second for someone obsessed with labor power it seems critical that you properly diagnose what's happened since its heyday - which is what's at stake here. The answer is a lot. Containerization let anyone on the planet compete with American workers and simultaneously, instead of turning to the left to strengthen their institutions the American white working class charged into the arms of the right during civil rights There is a direct connection between these things and a weakening power of labor that anyone can see. Meanwhile a breakdown in democracy isn't as clear in a time when we've moved away from of suppressed black vote and centralized media control while continuously adding rights for previously disenfranchised groups including women and homosexuals. The Powell Memo, the thing I can see echoing in your mind, was.....a memo. Basic reason means that bad things about the current state of democracy need to be new to explain changes and the reality that the elected class is richer than the worker (and less in tune with them) isn't. This is also 'received wisdom'. Removing money from politics is only a good thing but it's not going to do what you seem to think. Which brings us back to Trump. It's simple. Until the moment he spends significant money on his campaign money didn't get him there. Celebrity and his toxic but popular rhetoric did. Both exist even if money doesn't. It would be a dream if the problems today could be explained by money, which can be regulated away or outlawed in any number of ways but they can't.
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Sep 2, 2016 02:43
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37241727quote:Hanjin ships, cargo and sailors stranded at sea what the gently caress
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Sep 2, 2016 06:24
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Ehh it's less of a big deal than you think.
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Sep 2, 2016 06:36
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One of the bigger lines will aquire that poo poo and 3.6 percent of the world's containers will start moving again.
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Sep 2, 2016 06:41
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Time to become a pirate!
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Sep 2, 2016 17:16
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So the orthodoxy during the last couple of decades has been central bank independence from government. I see the current central bank overdrive as a reaction to a bad environment but also the logical response to the circumstances, including stupid austerity. Not defending it, mind you, I want to ask, isn't this what central banks are supposed to do, under the circumstances? And, do you guys think that they'll be blamed next time things collapse? (Meaning Tuesday)
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Oct 13, 2016 06:26
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I guess it's time to discuss the election's impact on the economic prognosis of America and the world.
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Nov 17, 2016 08:38
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Grouchio posted:I guess it's time to discuss the election's impact on the economic prognosis of America and the world. There's not really anything to discuss until January though? So far the prospective stock market collapse has been thwarted by Trumps victory speech and on the currency markets it is clear that people are stocking up on dollars. As we literally don't know how many election promises Donald plans on enforcing or what of them he will be able to actually successfully affect anything could happen next year.  Expect worldwide economic collapse if the US actually puts up tariffs.
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Nov 17, 2016 08:53
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MiddleOne posted:
Or by China imploding.
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Nov 17, 2016 09:05
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I'm worried that he'll go for entitlement reforms during his first 100 days to please Paul Ryan and the conservative base while he still enjoys goodwill from winning the election. Privatizing the safety nets will work great for everyone because Ayn Rand!
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Nov 17, 2016 09:30
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Grouchio posted:Worse for the world or worse for America? I'm just wondering how hard we'll be hit by that. Mostly worse for the world. The EU could probably be fine it wasn't so busy circling the drain with austerity.
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Nov 17, 2016 09:34
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MiddleOne posted:Mostly worse for the world. The EU could probably be fine it wasn't so busy circling the drain with austerity.
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Nov 17, 2016 17:12
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Of the concerns listed in the OP. It looks to me like the most immediate danger 11 months later is the collapse of the Italian financial sector.
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Nov 26, 2016 08:25
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OhFunny posted:Of the concerns listed in the OP. It looks to me like the most immediate danger 11 months later is the collapse of the Italian financial sector. eh, italy's been in continuous crisis since the early 90s, what more could a bank collapse or two do? worry about le pen more
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Nov 26, 2016 08:55
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It could lead to the fall of the überleveraged Deutsche Bank. I mean, at the end of the day, the whole point of the austericide in Greece, Spain, etc. Was to avoid disturbing the DB's house of cards. About Le Pen, her win is to my mind a given. I mean, Fillon, her most likely opponent, is racist, homofobe, russophile and wants to destroy the public sector, France's saving grace. Le Pen is just racist. I could see a large part of the French electorate not willing to vote Satan just to keep Lucifer out of power.
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Nov 26, 2016 09:50
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Le Pen + Italy will be two negatives becoming a positive, as Le Pen realizes that rather than simply abandoning the EU, the French can oust the Germans as leaders and remake the EU as an extension of French power. 35-hour workweek for all.
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Nov 26, 2016 10:21
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With a UNSC comprising of Trump, Putin, May, Le Pen, Jinping, it seems like a stunning repudiation of globalism
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Nov 26, 2016 10:46
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Or maybe you're a bunch of whiny fantasists
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Nov 26, 2016 14:58
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shrike82 posted:With a UNSC comprising of Trump, Putin, May, Le Pen, Jinping, it seems like a stunning repudiation of globalism
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Nov 26, 2016 22:41
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Diastasis against the post war consensus.
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Nov 26, 2016 23:35
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Grouchio posted:I am surprisingly okay with this. I'm not sure where you're coming from but no it's a bad thing and makes the world a whole lot more dangerous for everyone.
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Nov 26, 2016 23:42
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Bip Roberts posted:I'm not sure where you're coming from but no it's a bad thing and makes the world a whole lot more dangerous for everyone.
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Nov 27, 2016 00:05
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Grouchio posted:I am surprisingly okay with this. Do you mean because they will strongly disagree with each other 100% of the time, causing security council activity to grind to a complete halt?
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Nov 27, 2016 14:09
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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We're almost done with 2016.
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Nov 27, 2016 17:26
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