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Grand Prize Winner posted:There's at least one church like that in every US city. Probably more. Baptists who don't believe in adult baptism, sincere faith securing sacraments, emulating biblical worthies, or any of the vital components of baptist theology are more common in the US than actual baptists. The real tell is "You cannot know the mind of God." with emphasis on you.
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Sep 3, 2018 19:19
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The largest group of Baptists in the US is the Southern Baptist Convention This group literally only exists because it's a split that occurred over slavery, the Southern Baptists said slavery was fine. Andt hat really tells all you need.
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Sep 3, 2018 19:59
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Maybe if it hadn't been Sweden it wouldn't have even raised the eyebrows of outsiders enough to get reported, or maybe the group wouldn't have felt the need to go so undercover with their outer narrative, to the point that they'd be saying those quiet parts loud and then the real quiet parts would become calling for genocide and white supremacy like you have here in the south. The guy on the phone getting defensive sounds like outer narrative pushback, "how dare you expose us" poo poo and gaslight denial of reality to your face that they do to deflect and win debates, in response to the inner narrative being exposed by the recordings.
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Sep 3, 2018 20:11
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Yeah, in America there are entire communities that just...are that way.
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Sep 4, 2018 00:02
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So, I am concerned on what happens if this actually goes the way it should. Say Trump uses executive privilege to stop the investigation. He fires Mueller, or does something else to gently caress it up big time. What exactly happens? What can we do? Trump has made some rather blatant 'call to arms' statements, where if he's found guilty there'll be hell to pay and he'll ruin everything. What exactly *could* he do?
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Sep 4, 2018 13:26
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It's a constitutional crisis. I think the framers of the Constitution assumed that, generally, elected officials would act in good faith in the face of a tyrant.
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Sep 4, 2018 14:26
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We're already in a constitutional crisis. The GOP has been rigging the game in their own favor and weaponizing procedure for decades. Trump is really just the logical conclusion of their policy; they're the Trump Party now. Trump is exactly the kind of incompetent dangerous narcissist that burns down democratic systems because "gently caress you."
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Sep 4, 2018 15:55
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The only thing that can stop Trump (assuming our government holds together) is a Congressional impeachment. The Mueller investigation is just gathering evidence of any crimes that were committed related to collusion with Russia, and will probably produce a report about it for Congress so they can decide what to do. Democrats winning back Congress, and not just rolling over as usual, is critical.
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Sep 4, 2018 23:43
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:It's a constitutional crisis. I think the framers of the Constitution assumed that, generally, elected officials would act in good faith in the face of a tyrant. This is it. Our constitution was written with a glaring flaw: if everyone involved in a party refuses to play by the rules, you are hosed.
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Sep 5, 2018 12:37
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pop fly to McGillicutty posted:This is it. Our constitution was written with a glaring flaw: if everyone involved in a party refuses to play by the rules, you are hosed. This. Also it was probably incorrectly assumed, at the time the constitution was written, that a tyrant in Trump's mold would not be as popular amongst the voting public as he unfortunately is.
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Sep 5, 2018 15:10
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they assumed exactly that but the conclusion they reached was the solution was that few people should be allowed to vote
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Sep 5, 2018 15:13
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Berke Negri posted:they assumed exactly that but the conclusion they reached was the solution was that few people should be allowed to vote Yes, I know that, that's why I specified "the voting public" instead of the public at large.
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Sep 5, 2018 15:27
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The problem is, really, there's no way to control for that. Yes, the constitution was naively written assuming both that political parties wouldn't be much of a thing and that all government actors would be placing their nation above other considerations, but even then, there's really no way to structure a ruleset so that it can endure a plurality or majority of bad faith actors. Like if you're playing a game with other people and most of them are cheating openly, there's really not much else you can do but stop playing, because appeals to the rules won't accomplish anything since they've already made clear they don't care about them. Sadly, not playing isn't an option here. Like the only real way to prevent something like Trump ever happening again is to ensure Republicans and people like them are kept out of government. No matter how well devised your ruleset is, it cannot contend with people who refuse to adhere to them. Rules only work when people agree to abide by them.
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Sep 5, 2018 15:32
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PT6A posted:This. They also didn't trust voters to pick the president, hence the electoral college. People have been criticizing that for a while because it's possible for a candidate to get demolished in the popular vote but still win the college like, you know, Trump literally just did. What the GOP is doing isn't so much cheating as it is extreme rules lawyering. Anything that isn't a codified rule only applies when they need it to because, hey, it isn't an actual law. Any actual law will be mangled and twisted into whatever they need it to be. They've put party ahead of the country. Look at what they did to Obama for 8 years; they literally just turned off Congress. Now they're trying to act like their slight majority gives them the right to do absolutely anything they want with no regard to even what reality is.
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Sep 5, 2018 17:05
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pop fly to McGillicutty posted:This is it. Our constitution was written with a glaring flaw: if everyone involved in a party refuses to play by the rules, you are hosed. That's literally every constitution ever. Unless you know of some country who managed to enchant theirs with literal magic force to compel obedience, I guess.
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Sep 5, 2018 19:10
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fishmech posted:That's literally every constitution ever. The Vatican is a country
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Sep 5, 2018 19:26
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pop fly to McGillicutty posted:This is it. Our constitution was written with a glaring flaw: if everyone involved in a party refuses to play by the rules, you are hosed. The American Revolution was little more than a coup by a handful of capitalists who didn't like the British insufficient enthusiasm for slave states and seizing land from native population. Canada wasn't independent of the Crown until the 1980s, a different set of holidays and developing in more concentrated and sustainable ways is basically the difference. Fundamentally the bad guys won: if Trump overthrew the US and installed himself as dictator, give it a couple hundred years of propaganda and he'd be seen as a respectable quasi-deified founding father figure despite being a grossly corrupt bloated inbred pig-man gangster in bed with a foreign mafia, like the founding fathers.
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Sep 5, 2018 20:23
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ToxicSlurpee posted:They also didn't trust voters to pick the president, hence the electoral college. People have been criticizing that for a while because it's possible for a candidate to get demolished in the popular vote but still win the college like, you know, Trump literally just did. That also got us GW Bush and Rutherford B Hayes. I would not be surprised if the next Republican president after Trump also only wins because of the electoral college.
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Sep 5, 2018 20:32
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pop fly to McGillicutty posted:This is it. Our constitution was written with a glaring flaw: if everyone involved in a party refuses to play by the rules, you are hosed. It has other glaring flaws, or at least 3/5ths of one
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Sep 5, 2018 20:34
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Dumb Lowtax posted:The Vatican is a country The Papal States proved quite vulnerable to people refusing to play by their rules. Halloween Jack posted:It has other glaring flaws, or at least 3/5ths of one That little bit really isn't a flaw.
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Sep 5, 2018 21:17
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RandomPauI posted:That also got us GW Bush and Rutherford B Hayes. I would not be surprised if the next Republican president after Trump also only wins because of the electoral college. Probably, and the discrepancy between popular vote and electoral is only going to get worse.
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Sep 5, 2018 21:34
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The electoral college wins are happening on purpose because the system is heavily jerrymandered and that is the only way they can still cheat their way to victory convincingly
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Sep 5, 2018 21:56
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Ignite Memories posted:The electoral college wins are happening on purpose because the system is heavily jerrymandered and that is the only way they can still cheat their way to victory convincingly For the House sure, but the EC is state level popular vote isn't it?
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Sep 5, 2018 22:04
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ocrumsprug posted:For the House sure, but the EC is state level popular vote isn't it? Some states award them per congressional district with 2 votes going to the statewide winner (e.g. as though it were for reps and senators) but yeah vast majority of states are winner take all.
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Sep 5, 2018 22:17
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Some states have straight up consistently blocked people from voting properly, so that said states can deliver the electoral college votes to a given party. For example North Carolina almost certainly did that in 2016, and probably did it in 2012 as well. Some people call that "gerrymandering" because they think it means all forms of voter suppression.
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Sep 5, 2018 22:39
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Every state gets two senators so sparsely populated states that only get one rep still get three electoral votes. Those states tend to be very rural and pretty red. This is why the GOP loves the status quo and talk like they're resisting liberal tyranny. California itself gets 55 votes which is over a tenth of them. New York gets 29 so that's 84 in two states. However because of how the election works the vote of a person in Montana counts for more than a vote from California. Other than Texas populous states are either blue or purple. This is part if why the Republican party can use a tiny majority in the Senate to burn down whatever they want and why the vote of a Republican voter is heavier than a dem vote. Coupled with obscene gerrymandering and you have a party with more influence than it deserves. So they use that do rig the game harder. This is a good time to point out that they did things like gerrymander Pennsylvania so bad that it was mathematically impossible for it to be worse. PA is a small majority blue state that swings like a saloon door but still had only a handful of Democrat representatives. Actually looking at that more closely it leans blue more than red. Still, purple as gently caress but SOMEHOW sends a lot of republicans to Congress. Hmm, odd... U.s. voters are by raw numbers a slight majority Democrat. This is shifting as the main GOP demographic is literally dying. Aside from that as humanity overall gets more urban that disconnect is just going to keep growing.
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Sep 5, 2018 23:39
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ToxicSlurpee posted:the main GOP demographic is literally dying Keep telling yourself that, but the right wing hate machine is minting new converts every day.
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Sep 6, 2018 15:44
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Guys, I was in no way saying the Constitution is perfect beyond one flaw. I just meant THAT flaw is such a gigantic oversight it's amazing it took criminals this long to figure it out. Anyhow, TREASON?
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Sep 6, 2018 15:51
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fishmech posted:Some states have straight up consistently blocked people from voting properly, so that said states can deliver the electoral college votes to a given party. For example North Carolina almost certainly did that in 2016, and probably did it in 2012 as well. it doesn't help that places like that are usually also gerrymandered
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Sep 9, 2018 16:10
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LordSaturn posted:it doesn't help that places like that are usually also gerrymandered Yeah, here in PA, well...where I went to college there was usually a polling place on campus. Nice central location that was "in town" so it was easy for basically everybody to get to except for the people who lived 10 miles out in the middle of the woods. In 2016 it just so happened that the polling place was a 90 minute walk away from campus pretty far out into very rural territory. College students of course frequently vote liberal and frequently don't have cars.
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Sep 10, 2018 02:32
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Every state gets two senators so sparsely populated states that only get one rep still get three electoral votes. Those states tend to be very rural and pretty red. This is why the GOP loves the status quo and talk like they're resisting liberal tyranny. California itself gets 55 votes which is over a tenth of them. New York gets 29 so that's 84 in two states. However because of how the election works the vote of a person in Montana counts for more than a vote from California. Other than Texas populous states are either blue or purple. This is part if why the Republican party can use a tiny majority in the Senate to burn down whatever they want and why the vote of a Republican voter is heavier than a dem vote. Coupled with obscene gerrymandering and you have a party with more influence than it deserves. So they use that do rig the game harder. This is a good time to point out that they did things like gerrymander Pennsylvania so bad that it was mathematically impossible for it to be worse. PA is a small majority blue state that swings like a saloon door but still had only a handful of Democrat representatives. Actually looking at that more closely it leans blue more than red. Still, purple as gently caress but SOMEHOW sends a lot of republicans to Congress. Hmm, odd... It's more than even population. The financial heart of the country are in the coastal cities. NYC alone is responsible for almost 10% of the US GDP. California would be the worlds 5th largest economy. It's really insane.
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Sep 11, 2018 02:01
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:Like if you're playing a game with other people and most of them are cheating openly, there's really not much else you can do but stop playing, because appeals to the rules won't accomplish anything since they've already made clear they don't care about them. Sadly, not playing isn't an option here. In fact that might be the best outcome we can hope for. It seems unlikely that the fascists are ever going to be defeated in this country except by violence, and that would entail 70% of this country killing the other 30%. I don't think we have it in us.
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Sep 11, 2018 20:38
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Well, the other 30% sure do. (Fortunately, a lot of them are loving old and hate functioning healthcare systems.)
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Sep 11, 2018 20:58
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MSDOS KAPITAL posted:In fact that might be the best outcome we can hope for. It seems unlikely that the fascists are ever going to be defeated in this country except by violence, and that would entail 70% of this country killing the other 30%. I don't think we have it in us. 100% willing to reclaim my middle of the country homeland from Sinclair Broadcasting.
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Sep 11, 2018 21:17
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Halloween Jack posted:Well, the other 30% sure do. We just need Obama to take a firm public stance against chugging bleach
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Sep 11, 2018 21:31
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Just chiming in as someone who used to lean "right-wing", people are more interested in making sure their own livelihoods are met than in basic constitutional fairness, let alone any sort of social welfare. I used to work for a smaller branch of a large defense contracting company in the Orlando, FL area. At least 70% of the full-time employees there identified as Republican / "conservative". They made comments at work or posted memes on facebook about how taxation is bad, capitalism is great, and we need to support our troops. At the end of the day, they signed their timecard to bill the government for their labor, with 20% of the billing going to the company's self-admitted number one goal: increasing shareholder value. Protecting the warfighter was second, and would temporarily become our first whenever any military customers came to the facility, otherwise it was increasing shareholder value. The bulk of our products ended up in a warehouse never even being used for training purposes, let alone combat. The single biggest shock to me was when, after a big layoff, they announced we'd lost one of our older product lines to a new company that had a better, lower-priced option. Our solution was to lobby the government and say, in the Ground Vehicle Manager's words, "This isn't fair. We've been your primary contractor for years on this." The government's response was to make us a second source for the batch of systems they shipped to Saudi Arabia, so we still had some follow-on work for that contract. Most everyone in the room cheered. This hit me on multiple levels - exporting arms to Saudi Arabia, head exporter of terror, openly telling the government they should keep buying from us even though our product was inferior / more costly, and the fact that the people in the room, most of whom gave lip service to fiscally conservative values, were completely in tune with this to keep up their livelihood. Hell, around that time, bin Laden was killed and people were literally upset that this might cause public opinion of our overseas operations to drop and demand for our products to fall. The point is, cognitive dissonance is a powerful thing. Government spending is bad unless it benefits them. Public funds for a confederate general statue? Go for it. Government regulations to help people whose parents had good credit ratings get lower interest loans? Go for it. Public funds for vouchers to send your kids to a private religious school or to support that public college you went to and help keep its football games going? Go for it. A massive military industrial complex that produces wasted laser systems that sit in a warehouse? Go for it. Public funds or government regulations to help people struggling in an over-priced health system? Absolutely not, healthcare isn't a government concern, we don't want socialism here.
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Sep 12, 2018 05:01
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Jolly Jumbuck posted:Just chiming in as someone who used to lean "right-wing", people are more interested in making sure their own livelihoods are met than in basic constitutional fairness, let alone any sort of social welfare. I gotta harp on it a little more: Catch 22 from freakin' 1961 posted:Major Major’s father was a sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age. He was a longlimbed farmer, a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist who held that federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism. He advocated thrift and hard work and disapproved of loose women who turned him down. His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. Build bombs monday through friday, get drunk on saturday, church on Sunday. There has never been a snowflake as special as the non-serving, defense industry white American conservatives who are literally the basis of the Homer-Simpson-boob that is the ugly American. I'm so sorry that you had no idea that your co-workers are the parody of the American idiot living the blind-to-it-socialist-dream. Sneakster fucked around with this message at 08:03 on Sep 12, 2018 |
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Sep 12, 2018 07:21
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Socialism for me but not for thee.
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Sep 12, 2018 18:10
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Sneakster posted:Build bombs monday through friday, get drunk on saturday, church on Sunday. There has never been a snowflake as special as the non-serving, defense industry white American conservatives who are literally the basis of the Homer-Simpson-boob that is the ugly American. I'm so sorry that you had no idea that your co-workers are the parody of the American idiot living the blind-to-it-socialist-dream. Nice quote. It took awhile to come round, but when you're mired in a pool of self-contradictions and making a decent living off of it, it's hard to see outside of that field of view sometimes. The people in that industry may be relatively small in number, but their economic impact on our taxation / debt structure is enormous.
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Sep 12, 2018 23:30
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Jolly Jumbuck posted:Nice quote. It took awhile to come round, but when you're mired in a pool of self-contradictions and making a decent living off of it, it's hard to see outside of that field of view sometimes. It's not a relative small number, actually. Entire regions of States in this country would be absolutely devastated if we cut back all the pork procurement the Feds engage in or, God forbid, retool the military to fight modern engagements. This is the box we're all living in. The thing that gets me just just how terrible people inside defense contracting are. It's never "Man, I'm lucky and thankful," it's always terrible.
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Sep 13, 2018 01:23
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