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Ciprian Maricon posted:than the same logic can apply to China or Russia or any other country. Those two are actually authoritarian. China presents an alternative model to liberal democracy that might (or might not) be more viable and that’s what we all get to find out in the coming decades. DarkCrawler posted:United States is not a democracy. It's a...I don't know what to call it, incremental apartheid anti-urbanization police state where the votes of cities, composed of multi-racial, multicultural constituencies, is diluted in favor of rural whites. Sometimes you get outcomes that the majority supports, sometimes not. With increasing amounts of not, these days. Couple that with bizarre poo poo like there being no campaign finance limits, political judicial appointments with redistricting/stalling/repealing power, and the party in power deciding where and how to vote, and it is to me a miracle anyone is still buying the "democracy" argument. It absolutely has serious problems. But if we actually become an authoritarian state you’ll be able to tell the difference. And uh we all may get to see that happen in our lifetimes or hell maybe in this decade.
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May 21, 2022 19:01
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How would you be able to tell the difference? What is the essential, material, difference?
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May 21, 2022 19:06
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For the purpose of this conversation, we need to settle on a definition of authoritarianism so we aren't talking past each other. I would use this one from Furio Cerutti's Conceptualizing Politics: An Introduction to Political Philosophy (2017):quote:Political scientists have outlined elaborated typologies of authoritarianism, from which it is not easy to draw a generally accepted definition; it seems that its main features are the non-acceptance of conflict and plurality as normal elements of politics, the will to preserve the status quo and prevent change by keeping all political dynamics under close control by a strong central power, and lastly, the erosion of the rule of law, the division of powers, and democratic voting procedures. And bear in mind that something doesn't need to be authoritarian to be a bad action taken by the government.
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May 21, 2022 19:12
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Josef bugman posted:How would you be able to tell the difference? What is the essential, material, difference? Well me personally I board ships. So I meet people from every country you can think of regularly. This loving idea that oh woe is us how will we tell? What’s the material difference? It’s laughable. Also look at the phrasing of your question. “essential, material, difference”. You want the essence, the universal idea, of the material difference? Y’all ain’t gonna get a satisfying answer to an inherently contradictory framing like that? You’ll get idealist answers (which will tend towards defining it as opposing freedom) or contextual specific answers about particular material situations in specific countries. Edit corrected since autocorrects Bar Ran Dun fucked around with this message at 19:28 on May 21, 2022 |
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May 21, 2022 19:20
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So it's like pornography, you can't define it but you'll know it when you see it. Enlightening. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 21, 2022 19:21
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Josef bugman posted:How would you be able to tell the difference? What is the essential, material, difference? Let's say that the police were to read your post history here. - Could they execute you since your posts are critical of the government they represent? - If they did, would it be kept secret from the general population or would they freely admit their intent as a warning to others? - If others did learn the circumstances of your death, would they be executed or detained for trying to inform others or advocate on your behalf? - If the cops simply detained you, would you be denied the ability to publicly represent yourself or have others represent/advocate for you? - Would the government just throw you in jail with no hearing/trial/sentencing/etc.? Look, I know that you'll cite individual examples that counter each of the above. Believe me, I know. I'm from the south and I've seen some poo poo. We are FAR from perfect. But there is still the freedom to inform, organize, and advocate for others. In 2018, our three term Republican sheriff lost his reelection to a Democrat that promised reform in the form of no longer referring undocumented immigrants to ICE. Now that the new sheriff busted heads in the BLM protests, he's about to lose his primary to someone who campaigned on being kinder to protestors and his slogan was "no more weed arrests". If we lived in an authoritarian government, that kind of change would not be possible. Granted, our death penalty loving county DA won her primary, but that doesn't make our government authoritarian either. Complain and nitpick all you want. When people organize and put in the work, there are real actual choices, not just the illusion of choice.
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May 21, 2022 19:48
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Koos Group posted:And bear in mind that something doesn't need to be authoritarian to be a bad action taken by the government. I think it's useful to add also that an action can be pushing a country in an authoritarian direction without having fully pushed it there yet. I'd say one of the most significant material differences between our current situation and 'full authoritarianism' is that in the latter, dissent is both monitored and punished much more consistently. You can say that the definitional line is drawn in a way to make western nations look good, but you can't argue that no line can be drawn at all between the current states of the US and Russia, without getting into heavy conspiracy theorying, source cherry picking, and/or "conceptually zoom out so far that everything is the same as everything else" activity. Flying-PCP fucked around with this message at 19:58 on May 21, 2022 |
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May 21, 2022 19:54
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"the one thing keeping us from being an authoritarian state is that the government doesn't consistently murder people for dissent" isn't a very persuasive position for anyone trying to say the US isn't authoritarian. The state does routinely murder marginalized groups (minorities, people with mental health issues, people with addictions, the homeless, etc.) and also murders poor / lower class whites frequently. Hundreds / thousands per year. When these murders occur, those responsible almost never see charges and even fewer are convicted, leaving the only form of redress being cash payouts that come from the very citizens being subjected to this violence. If a cop shot me for no reason in front of my kids, and there was no video proof of my innocence, it wouldn't make the national news.
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May 21, 2022 20:19
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Look at it this way in very personal terms you are on a web forum openly criticizing the state. Are you being retaliated against, censored, or otherwise prevented from doing that? Do you have to worry about losing your job, or getting arrested, for participating in this conversation?
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May 21, 2022 20:26
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FLIPADELPHIA posted:"the one thing keeping us from being an authoritarian state is that the government doesn't consistently murder people for dissent" isn't a very persuasive position for anyone trying to say the US isn't authoritarian. Ok but if you were murdered without redress by the state as thousands are each year I would be permitted to tweet about it (only tweet not change anything about the current status quo), and after all isn't that all that matters?
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May 21, 2022 20:26
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I think it's safe to say that given everything I know about both countries that I'd prefer to live in the United States over China but using one or the other as a defining measuring stick kind of misses the point. Drawing attention to how, ostensibly, that America is the "land of the free" but jails, by several orders of magnitude, more of its own citizens than any other one doesn't in and of itself fog up the definition of authoritarianism or establish the bar. None of that has any real bearing on how "free" China is because it's loving not by any measure. I think the US is becoming increasingly more and more so and has planted a lot of roots for that tree to grow, going all the way back to our inception but I suppose we're mainly arguing about degrees. Paging Prester Jane to the thread to elaborate.
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May 21, 2022 20:27
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Ciprian Maricon posted:Ok but if you were murdered without redress by the state as thousands are each year I would be permitted to tweet about it (only tweet not change anything about the current status quo), and after all isn't that all that matters? The problem with the cop example is that the rules coming from a specific Supreme court decision are being followed. They aren’t arbitrarily being enforced and aren’t arbitrarily created they’re still poo poo rear end garbage. All systems are eventually oppressive and they don’t have to be authoritarian to be lovely
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May 21, 2022 20:33
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FLIPADELPHIA posted:"the one thing keeping us from being an authoritarian state is that the government doesn't consistently murder people for dissent" isn't a very persuasive position for anyone trying to say the US isn't authoritarian. If a cop shoots you because you're a threat to their own silo of power, that's not authoritarian. That's corruption. They're not shooting you because you're a threat to Joe Biden and Joe Biden gave the order and they complied with the order because the police force's explicit purpose is to preserve the president's authority. In other words, who gave the police authority to shoot you and why? volts5000 fucked around with this message at 20:38 on May 21, 2022 |
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May 21, 2022 20:36
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SourKraut posted:Care to explain? I had always heard that it had been named after Hindenburg by the anti-Nazi founder of the company that manufactured Zeppelins. Basically the liberal establishment went along with everything the Nazis did. But they gave little gently caress yous when they could. I believe the Hindenburg originally was going to be called the Adolf Hitler but the owner of zeppelins named at the Hindenburg instead. Even though he was Nazi associated he wasn't a big time Nazi. It's a longer story than that, but in a nutshell the liberal establishment of Germany shook their fists when their party was banned and didn't do poo poo.
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May 21, 2022 21:00
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WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:Basically the liberal establishment went along with everything the Nazis did. But they gave little gently caress yous when they could. I believe the Hindenburg originally was going to be called the Adolf Hitler but the owner of zeppelins named at the Hindenburg instead. Even though he was Nazi associated he wasn't a big time Nazi. What a shame. We could have witnessed two Adolf Hitlers self destruct in a single lifetime.
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May 21, 2022 21:41
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I can't find the quote online amidst all the weird (libertarian?) essay results, and this thread will have moved on in the time I'd spend flipping through pages,, but to roughly paraphrase Spinoza reckoned that a society that allows freedom of dissent via speech would work itself out. Seems he reckoned wrong. A global order like the one we've established was beyond beyond the imagination of many historic thinkers. However, pollution and climate change wasn't! Thinkers in the 1800s questioned the effects of global industry wrt pollution/climate change. It's pretty discouraging to read but I will try to find my sources, if only to prove the unstoppable March of growth and innovation will not be hampered by wisdom, caution, or mutual interest. I understand we've been living beyond physical material sustainability as a species/world for as long as I've been alive, but then I never finished "the limits of growth" because I get unconstructively sad and angry.
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May 21, 2022 22:38
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WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:Basically the liberal establishment went along with everything the Nazis did. But they gave little gently caress yous when they could. I believe the Hindenburg originally was going to be called the Adolf Hitler but the owner of zeppelins named at the Hindenburg instead. Even though he was Nazi associated he wasn't a big time Nazi. I'm really not sure to what extent Hugo Eckener represented the "liberal establishment" or what power he had in 1936 to meaningfully resist Hitler. In fact, I don't know that there is a "liberal establishment" in Germany in 1936. I'm not even sure you can say there was a "liberal establishment" in 1932. There was the left wing of the People's Party, which was small local businessmen, and the left wing of the Center Party, which mostly drew its base of support from Catholic trade unionists put off by the secularlism and revisionist Marxism of the Social Democrats. So who's the "liberal establishment" in 1932, and what power do they have to really stop the Nazis?
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May 21, 2022 23:41
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FLIPADELPHIA posted:"the one thing keeping us from being an authoritarian state is that the government doesn't consistently murder people for dissent" isn't a very persuasive position for anyone trying to say the US isn't authoritarian. By this metric any country with over a certain number of millions in population and/or square mileage is automatically authoritarian. Which, yknow, maybe it is. I feel like people constantly underestimate the role of the totally unreasonable size of the US/Russia/China in how impossible it is to 'fix' things in these 'nations'.
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May 22, 2022 06:27
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FLIPADELPHIA posted:I didn't realize the governments of countries like Canada, Australia, the UK, or France routinely enable the blatant murder of citizens by police. I mean sure, we have rural county sheriff's departments with higher body counts than the police forces of these entire countries but no way that makes us authoritarian! FLIPADELPHIA posted:"the one thing keeping us from being an authoritarian state is that the government doesn't consistently murder people for dissent" isn't a very persuasive position for anyone trying to say the US isn't authoritarian. Even if I took your first claim of Canada/Australia/UK/France law enforcement not murdering its citizens as true (  I do not), what does that have to do with having an authoritarian government? You can have a weaker central government that loves murdering its citizens or a strong central government who don't murder its citizens. An authoritarian government is not, by definition, full of bigotry. And a non-authoritarian government can absolutely embrace bigotry. Especially if most of its population agrees that that bigotry is justified.
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May 22, 2022 06:45
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Honestly the debate this thread is having reminds me of an old Cold War joke.dad joke posted:An American tells a Russian that the United States is so free he can stand in front of the White House and yell "To hell with Ronald Reagan." (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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May 22, 2022 06:49
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'Authoritarian' is yet another useless term from the Cold War panoply of snarl words and catchphrases.
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May 22, 2022 06:54
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Ghost Leviathan posted:'Authoritarian' is yet another useless term from the Cold War panoply of snarl words and catchphrases. Huh? Didn't the term authoritarianism gain popularity with Linz's study of Franco's Spain? And how is your comment related to the current discussion? It seems like you're trying to make a random claim in an attempt to discredit everything about it. Kalit fucked around with this message at 07:03 on May 22, 2022 |
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May 22, 2022 07:00
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Bar Ran Dun posted:. I agree it isn't authoritarian for all of its citizens, which I guess makes it not authoritarian by strictest definitions, but it certainly is that for multiple groups. It's the same divide in practice, since the white rural conservatives are treated with silk gloves by literally every other facet of society. It however is not a democracy by any definition, which is the term I was having a problem with. DarkCrawler fucked around with this message at 14:15 on May 22, 2022 |
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May 22, 2022 14:13
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https://twitter.com/borgposting/status/1528375309875265537?s=20&t=4DkngpDoUxQRQDRHcIq4bg I filled out my ballot yesterday, and I felt that part of my responsibility was to avoid voting for politicians who worship police, whether through needless budget increases, performing the usual groveling in front of a stage full of cops, or Klobuchar's "OUR TROOPS" kind of nonsense. It was disappointing to see how many candidates sprinkled this police garbage onto otherwise progressive platforms. I probably threw most of my votes away because I could not bring myself to choose whatever rich white man had spent the most money, or the Democratic incumbent coasting along doing nothing to push back against the GOP horrors.
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May 22, 2022 15:13
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DarkCrawler posted:It however is not a democracy by any definition, which is the term I was having a problem with. Nah it’s representative democracy with many many problems. The list of problems is long, the two party system, structural inequities, a lot of of issues coming from federalism (which has imploded in other places), gerrymandering, voting friction, etc. We still (though barely now) accept the results of elections. And organizing can still change our circumstances even if it is made much harder than it should be. Something occurs to me. Do you live in the states or are you looking at us from outside?
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May 22, 2022 16:35
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Kalit posted:Huh? Didn't the term authoritarianism gain popularity with Linz's study of Franco's Spain? while its original usage was from linz, the movement that brought the term out of academia and into popular use was the same right wing push that gave us the term 'libertarian' as we all know and love it today. both terms share a goal and an ideological foundation, that being a conflation of the New Deal and the Third Reich as comparable impositions on the rights of man. the reason asking which of China and America is more authoritarian is a stupid question is that the term authoritarian is an agonizingly vague snarl word, one whose functional definition is 'government I don't like,' and attempts to dress it up as more than that inevitably spiral into statements like 'jailing more of your people than the next several countries combined, unilateral death sentences passed on citizens by executive fiat, and a program for purging the nation of unwanted ethnic groups don't make you authoritarian.' no government can successfully defend itself against the charge of authoritarian behavior, because the term was designed to condemn the concept of government as an inherent evil.
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May 22, 2022 16:54
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Dick Trauma posted:
This is where I'm finding myself and, right now, fully intend to "waste my vote" as well. People talk about getting involved locally and I do that to the extent that I can. I've been invited to a Wednesday afternoon brainstorming/meeting/discussion thing with the local Democratic party but I don't think they'll like much of what I have to say. I'm not gonna sit there and loving defend Nancy Pelosi, Shumer or Joe Biden and pretend this is all Trump and the Republican's fault either because I don't feel that way. I'm not giving them any loving money (because I have none) and this county is so blood red it almost feels like a waste of time. Still might check it out just for kicks though if I have the time and I've offered to do some graphic work for them to no response. My biggest concerns locally are over- development, climate change (I live near the beach), over aggressive cops, traffic (over development again) and the dramatic increase in my anecdotal experiences of people openly calling for political assassinations. Also, my son's school looks like a loving fortress or a bank now because of gates and glass they put up in the wake national of school shootings and I hate it. There's an armed cop in the lobby. We're turning this quiet little tourist town with a rich history and a lot of culture into Dayton 2.0 at an alarming pace I don't think that 90% of this zip code shares my concerns or priorities. Not sure how that conversation might go.
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May 22, 2022 17:03
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Ghost Leviathan posted:'Authoritarian' is yet another useless term from the Cold War panoply of snarl words and catchphrases. Not really. We have a few nations that are clearly and unambiguously authoritarian, even if that list does not (yet) include the usa
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May 22, 2022 17:04
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Is this the same government whose agents were black bagging protestors a few years ago? Who have vast computerized networks collecting data on just about every person? Whose highest courts have whittled down the rights of those harmed by the police and indeed are poised to remove a right altogether? Whose constituent governments are passing laws to remove the rights of an entire gender and also criminalize healthcare? And whose constituent governments are giving themselves power to override elections?
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May 22, 2022 17:12
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Oh, wait, it's the government that says money is speech and corporations are people, allowing for infinite funding to flow through the political landscape and also limiting liability to the point where it's impossible to actually hit the people who made the decisions, nevermind almost impossible to get a corporation to pay for malfeasance. It's the one that favors healthy corporations and the words of corporate lobbyists over the needs of it's own people. The one that says it's not bribery unless there is quid pro quo tantamount to saying "I accept this bribe in exchange for..." It's definitely authoritarian, it's just controlled by a different group of people than traditionally expected.
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May 22, 2022 17:18
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Cranappleberry posted:Is this the same government whose agents were black bagging protestors a few years ago? Yeah, it's that one. The U.S. is inarguably authoritarian and becoming disturbingly more so. My takeaway reading this is that some posters are arguing that we're "not as bad 'x' or 'y'". Yet. And I still think that's largely true but the door is closing way too loving fast and with too huge of a lock on it for my liking. It's like watching a boat capsize or flood waters rising to me where all I can really do is maybe find and grab a bucket. But the buckets are too expensive and controlled by a monopoly.
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May 22, 2022 17:23
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Remember when a mentally ill dude walked into a first grade classroom in Sandy Hook and killed a bunch of tiny children with a loving machine gun? And then remember when the polls right after that were like "90% of voters including 75% of Republicans want some stricter background checks to keep this from happening?" And then remember how the NRA made a single phone call and nothing even made it to the floor of the Congress despite the clear indication the overwhelming majority of the populace wanted something done? That's called democracy. It's when their dollars outweigh your votes, regardless of the numbers of those two things. And if you like that, then good! Because that's what we've got. And all we've got!
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May 22, 2022 17:42
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JonathonSpectre posted:Remember when a mentally ill dude walked into a first grade classroom in Sandy Hook and killed a bunch of tiny children with a loving machine gun? This seems like a very superficial understanding of American democracy. Money doesn't outweigh votes, money buys votes, and often at a very cheap rate. What money usually outweighs is public opinion, because widespread public frustration isn't nearly as effective at getting people to the voting booth as advertising is. Votes are always the object of the game. If money outweighed votes, Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton would've been President from 2017 to 2021. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 17:51 on May 22, 2022 |
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May 22, 2022 17:47
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JonathonSpectre posted:Remember when a mentally ill dude walked into a first grade classroom in Sandy Hook and killed a bunch of tiny children with a loving machine gun? Money absolutely outweighs popular approval or else broadly popular things like Medicare for All would be law. However its worth noting for Sandy Hook that it wasn't a machine gun and the weapons were legally purchased so background checks wouldn't have done much here.
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May 22, 2022 18:07
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Civilized Fishbot posted:This seems like a very superficial understanding of American democracy. Money doesn't outweigh votes, money buys votes, and often at a very cheap rate. What money usually outweighs is public opinion, because widespread public frustration isn't nearly as effective at getting people to the voting booth as advertising is. Votes are always the object of the game. Well, no. Money buys politicians. After they have been elected so it supersedes votes. If a company or conglomerate or sector says to a politician, before or after they are elected, "hey we'll offer you a million-a-year do-nothing job plus stock options after you retire from congress" plus you already get excellent healthcare, that is a huge incentive to vote for their position while you're in congress. Let's say you've made enough "friends" and they offer that to your relatives, too. Your failsons and faildaughters. Let's say these companies or groups are part of the machine that makes party politics in your area or state or nationally go. There is literally no escaping them if you hope to succeed in the party (this is what happened to AOC). Sure you have to get votes to be elected but in a 2, 4, or 6 year span you can give them immense handouts in exchange for being taken care of and also mindfuck yourself into not believing it really hurts anyone or that it's for the benefit of all your constituents. Or let's say they contributed to your campaign via PAC or Super PAC far in excess of what individual voters can do to "buy" votes. Even if you lose that's huge graft potential for everyone involved. It also means that you have a clear, massive advantage. Cranappleberry fucked around with this message at 18:42 on May 22, 2022 |
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May 22, 2022 18:29
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Cranappleberry posted:Well, no. Money buys politicians. After they have been elected so it supersedes votes. I think there are two ways money influences politicians: 1. Campaign donations, which are powerful only to the extent that they buy votes 2. Promises of high-paying positions after the politician leaves office. In case 2, money can supersede votes. And that happens all the time of course. But I think 1 is why the NRA, AIPAC, and other lobbies are so influential (especially because there's a carrot-and-stick angle to it - the lobby can give money to your opponent and destroy you). In that case it's ridiculous to talk about money superseding votes because the candidate uses the money exclusively to buy votes. The problem here is not that money supersedes votes, as if an incumbent who loses reelection can pay money to keep the position anyway. The problem is that votes are hard to earn but cheap to buy. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 18:48 on May 22, 2022 |
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May 22, 2022 18:39
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https://twitter.com/christianjhall/status/1527693064197881858?s=20&t=agWmY57LX3sPOIMbgwTk0Q https://twitter.com/StrikeDebt/status/1528042649835515912?s=20&t=NclPQoPf0ZIiEYhGQswRCA It would be nice if the Biden administration acted on this sooner rather than later. Now even the CBC is declaring for it, which, hopefully, should allay some of the assumptions that only well-off white people care want their student debt paid off.
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May 22, 2022 18:44
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Civilized Fishbot posted:I think there are two ways money influences politicians: who cares if they lose if they get what they want, the party gets what it wants and things keep rolling as normal (see my edits)? Also, you're blaming the voters subject to a massive psy-ops, with little individual impact that can only do so much to educate themselves on or avoid. They are voting as individuals. They are not, generally, part of the machine. Often they are taken for granted as such. This is particularly true in state-wide elections. Even though a ton of democratic, third party, disenfranchised, nonvoters and etc exist in red states, they remain unheard except in local enclaves, often without party support. In presidential elections, it means the focus is on bombarding a few "swing" states (actually a few key voters in those states) with propaganda and attention even though little is actually going to be done to help them. There the money, especially from corporations looking to get tax breaks or subsidies or are employing local people is felt all-the-more.
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May 22, 2022 18:47
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Cranappleberry posted:It's definitely authoritarian, it's just controlled by a different group of people than traditionally expected. The word has a very clear meaning which some people itt just don't want to accept because its a cool word they want to use. Authoritarian requires a widespread and harsh crackdown on every citizen who merely expresses an illegal political opinion (not counting things like terrorist threats or plots) In Russia, China, North Korea, etc you can be grabbed from your apartment and thrown in jail for posting criticism of the government on the internet, not by a rogue cop, not against a small group but as a matter of government policy against every person. THAT is an authoritarian government. I know you want to use the word, but its simply not applicable to the United States right now.
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May 22, 2022 18:50
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Cranappleberry posted:who cares if they lose if they get what they want, the party gets what it wants and things keep rolling as normal (see my edits)? I think we agree on what's going on in reality - money is very valuable in politics because you can use every dirty trick that advertisers know to get people to vote. So it's totally wrong to say money outweighs votes, as if one input in an election is how many votes you got and another input is how much money you have and the second one matters much more. The reality is that money buys media and campaign offices, which control votes. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 18:55 on May 22, 2022 |
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May 22, 2022 18:52
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