disjoe posted:

I'm a white guy who grew up in MS. I went to high school with a guy who grew up in MN, who moved to MS because his dad took a job. He was one of the most openly racist people I've known.

I asked him about it one time. He said it was because "we didn't have to deal with black people in Minnesota"

I'm not smart enough to draw any broad conclusions from that because I think racism is complicated. But what you wrote made me think of that.

Andrast posted:

booseek posted:

~66 million for Clinton, ~68.5 for Obama in 2012.

PT6A posted:

No one's blaming the people who are systematically disenfranchised for not voting, just the people who could and chose not to.

disjoe posted:

I'm a white guy who grew up in MS. I went to high school with a guy who grew up in MN, who moved to MS because his dad took a job. He was one of the most openly racist people I've known.

I asked him about it one time. He said it was because "we didn't have to deal with black people in Minnesota"

I'm not smart enough to draw any broad conclusions from that because I think racism is complicated. But what you wrote made me think of that.

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

I think it was 6 million less than Obama 2008.

Bishounen Bonanza posted:

I'm from MS too, so hello I guess.

The main source of despair in this thread seems to be that a lot of people are upset by the unfairness of the fact that the forces of good always have to work harder than the forces of evil to achieve the same results. Creation is always harder than destruction.

Dr. Kent M. Keith posted:

The Paradoxical Commandments


People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

I think it was 6 million less than Obama 2008.

AstheWorldWorlds posted:

Hey guy, you're the one harboring delusions that the United States is in fact not locked down by the right wing due in part to the very structure of our government at the foundational level. I'm merely stating that in the 100% fantasy scenario of the west coast and northeast splitting they would have more latitude than being trapped in a structure they would be powerless in.

Don't you think it's telling that so far all the plans people have been throwing around for unfucking the union hinge upon a decades long plan with a staggering amount of moving parts requiring an unprecedented level of peaceful political mobilization in a fractured and precarious environment, arguably the largest mass movement in history. You all know this is unlikely as gently caress.

CalvinandHobbes posted:

Pardon my ignorance, minor thread necromancy, and the derail but could you explain this a bit? I know very little about Japanese politics.

RuanGacho posted:

We don't even remember what our dreams are.

Wark Say posted:

Shinzo Abe, known among some of my bros in Japan as "That loving Goblin", is a well known denier of the crimes Japan has committed in the past, including (but certainly not limited to!) denying that the Rape of Nanking was a thing. Him and Shintaro Ishihara (former governor of Tokyo) are loving awful. Since I have a ton of friends living in Tokyo, Saitama and Chiba, I tend to keep up with Japanese politics.

e: Holy poo poo, this thread moves fast. But yeah, he's an Extreme (some will deny it, but he loving is) Right-Wing nutjob who would probably use "Yamato Damashii" the same way Trump used "Make America Great Again!" if he could get away with it.

AstheWorldWorlds posted:

The dream of the United States was always for only the wealthy and white. Maybe we should build a new dream instead?

Tiny Brontosaurus posted:

Except you, literally every single loving chance you get.

AstheWorldWorlds posted:

Written while sitting on a prostrated black man and shooting a native toddler in the chest with a flintlock pistol for kicks.

The dream of the United States was always for only the wealthy and white. Maybe we should build a new dream instead?

Google Butt posted:

He's a Rape of Nanking denier? Holy poo poo.

Google Butt posted:

He's a Rape of Nanking denier? Holy poo poo.

Killer-of-Lawyers posted:

Everything is hard. Civil Rights was hard. The Emancipation of Slaves was so hard it cost us a civil war and a president. Independence required fighting the British Empire.

Anyways, the first step to unfucking the country is to vote in local elections and midterms. That's not exactly a tall order if you aren't a minority being targeted by voter suppression.

So no, I don't think anything is telling. You just do it. Nothing good is easy, and this isn't some monumental task. We've fought these forces before, we can do it again.

PT6A posted:

I'm trying not to, but I admit I may have some blind spots.

There's obviously a huge movement to keep people from voting, both through legislative means like insane voter ID requirements and disenfranchising felons, and just by making it difficult to actually vote by restricting early voting, not setting up enough polling places, etc. Given the degree to which that is dangerous to any functioning democracy, the amount of effort that people are putting into fighting it, and the amount of effort (and lives) people put into guaranteeing the right to vote for everyone, it just frustrates me to see people who could easily vote, choose not to simply because they don't believe their vote will make a difference. That being said, I admit I was wrong to assume that someone who didn't vote didn't have a good reason why they didn't vote.

Trabisnikof posted:

Except, due to our electoral college there are a bunch of people who can logically say their vote is worthless.

Why begrudge someone not voting against Trump in California, Texas or New York? (Aka our most populous states)

AstheWorldWorlds posted:

And the United States is still a right wing empire where communities are more segregated than before Jim Crow and if you haven't noticed the black folks just got locked into a different sort of slavery.

That your primary prescription is mindlessly contributing to the same system that generates these outcomes as a matter of policy speaks to a kind of poverty wrt political imagination. That you say it's all we have is kind of my point.

AstheWorldWorlds posted:

Hey guy, you're the one harboring delusions that the United States is in fact not locked down by the right wing due in part to the very structure of our government at the foundational level. I'm merely stating that in the 100% fantasy scenario of the west coast and northeast splitting they would have more latitude than being trapped in a structure they would be powerless in.

Don't you think it's telling that so far all the plans people have been throwing around for unfucking the union hinge upon a decades long plan with a staggering amount of moving parts requiring an unprecedented level of peaceful political mobilization in a fractured and precarious environment, arguably the largest mass movement in history. You all know this is unlikely as gently caress.

Quorum posted:

Voting sometimes: a plan that is more complicated and with more moving parts then somehow managing to peacefully dismantle the world's largest economy.

AstheWorldWorlds posted:

The scale, consistency, and duration for that voting to unfuck the union is equal to that in terms of complexity, yes. Things are that bad.

Quorum posted:

Voting sometimes: a plan that is more complicated and with more moving parts then somehow managing to peacefully dismantle the world's largest economy.

RuanGacho posted:

I disagree. Your perspective is myopic at best.

AstheWorldWorlds posted:

More robust plans I've seen talk in terms of decades of sustained voting in an environment where said coalition has not even been built and a federal structure instrinsically hostile to most redisitribution schemes. That this the only peaceful method we have should chill you to the bone.

PhazonLink posted:

So are coat of arms like vanity plates and just something (stupid) people pay the gov. for?

Groovelord Neato posted:

my mom's from minnesota. she didn't meet a black person (or a jew) until she was 20.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

No. Coats of arms sometimes go back like 1,000 years. Very old families that have their origins in nobility (be they currently nobility or otherwise) tend to have one. These are those wealthy families that have fingers in many pies throughout the world that make up much of the European aristocracy. Trump desperately wants to be in that club but he can't because his family's money is relatively new. Trump's granddad was an immigrant to America that started as a barber here but managed to get into business and get rich. Not the kind of ancestry that usually gets a coat of arms, a very long family heritage, and a lineage that traces back to dukes and kings. There isn't some ancestral family estate that has been in the family for 500 years nor some bank account that dates back to something like the East India Company.

Put simply; Trump is not old money but is trying to act like he is.

There is a certain amount of vanity to a coat of arms in that being from a family that has one generally means you're part of the world elite. Like business symbols the important ones tend to have legal protections. I think. It'd make sense if they did so people couldn't just invent entire noble houses or pretend they're a member of one. Trump, being Trump, probably just decided he not only deserved one but deserved to use a prestigious one he liked.

farraday posted:

This would be from the vast store of people who don't vote for President but vote in every other election for every other office?

Groovelord Neato posted:

lemme vote from my cell phone thanks.

Groovelord Neato posted:

lemme vote from my cell phone thanks.

disjoe posted:

I'm a white guy who grew up in MS. I went to high school with a guy who grew up in MN, who moved to MS because his dad took a job. He was one of the most openly racist people I've known.

I asked him about it one time. He said it was because "we didn't have to deal with black people in Minnesota"

I'm not smart enough to draw any broad conclusions from that because I think racism is complicated. But what you wrote made me think of that.

Xae posted:

Any form of electronic voting is incredibly dumb and bad.

The security risks are not worth it.

Young Freud posted:

The other hilarious thing about disjoe's story is that there's definitely more black people in Mississippi than in Minnesota. It's the second state with the highest percentage of African-Americans residents to total population, only second to District Of Columbia. About 2/5ths of the population is black in Mississippi, on average with the state. Jackson, MS, supposedly has 80% of their population being African-American.


It used to be that the nouveau riche could buy or marry their way into titles, especially when the nobility had nothing but their titles. I'm guessing all the nobility has been bought up. That or no one wants to sell to Trump.

Julio Cruz posted:

Not to mention what happens if a couple of cell towers in Detroit or Cleveland "coincidentally" go offline on Election Day.

Trabisnikof posted:

When the choices on your ballot are "Republican" and "Libertarian" with no Democratic option, I don't begrudge someone staying home when they're not involved in party politics.