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I think a lot of the rhetoric comes from: 1) the way that Fox and other right wing institutions have behaved ever since a black Democrat was elected to the White House has primed a large audience for hard Right xenophobia 2) bad economic conditions exacerbate everything else 3) The fact that these attacks occurred in the middle of the Republican primary with a Democratic administration in Washington. The institutional Right had more of an incentive to dampen racist or xenophobic rhetoric because doing so gave Bush more room to manoeuvre. 4) The success of ISIS, which is scarier than Al Qaeda since it actually holds territory 5) The GOP has undergone structural changes thanks to the Tea Party, Citizens United, the growth of right wing media etc. The result is that party elites are having a lot more trouble keeping out guys like Donald Trump and Ben Carson. The success of these candidates has put pressure on every other candidate to move rightward. Remember that before Trump there was no indication that immigration would be such a central focus of the GOP primary. Trump, even if he losses, has changed the terrain upon which the battle for the GOP nomination is being fought. asdf32 posted:Very articulate description of all bad ideology. Including the left. If you have axes to grind then why don't you start your own thread instead of trying to change the topic of this one?
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Nov 22, 2015 19:47
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At this point even if Trump he may permanently shifted the internal dynamics of the Republican party by opening up a larger space for so called "white nationalist" rhetoric at the national level. If you look at Barry Goldwater, the ultra-right wing conservative who clinched the Republican nomination in 1964, you'll notice that he suffered one of the most devestating defeats in American history to Lyndon Johnson. But despite Goldwater's failure to get elected his supporters had gained a foothold in the party and they were eventually able to nominate Ronald Reagan (who had stumped for Goldwater) and Reagan ultimately carried through many of the same reforms. Meanwhile the liberal wing of the Republican party, which was until then very progressive on race issues and mostly associated with the North East and with guys like Nelson Rockefeller, William Scranton and George Romney, became the party of the white backlash, and it's geographical centre shifted to the South and Midwest, where it remains today. Even if Trump losses the damage might already be done. Especially if the Republicans retain control of so many state legislatures and governorships. The Democrats might continue to hold the presidnecy but will that matter if the GOP has the House of Representatives, is competitive in the senate, and controls most state governments? And in the longer term who knows how far some of those state governments will go to suppress minority voters. Things could get very ugly.
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Nov 25, 2015 17:20
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Supreme Court nominees still require the Democrats to have a presence in the senate, and if the GOP controls state governments then they can employ all kinds of dirty tricks to suppress voter turnout. Who knows how far a demographically shrinking Republican party might go in suppressing voter turnout and redistricting the House... especially if white nationalists take on a larger role in the party. When I said "does it matter" i was being rhetorical. Yes of course it makes a difference who sits in the White House. But my point is that future Democratic presidents will have extremely limited room to maneuvre, and it can't even be taken for granted that Democrats will maintain their lock on the White House if every other major lever of the federal government remains in the hands of the GOP.
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Nov 25, 2015 18:04
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computer parts posted:No, all it requires is for the Republican Supreme Court justices to die first. What happens when the Republican controlled Senate Judiciary Committee decides to indefinitely filibuster the Democratic President's nominee for the Supreme Court?
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Nov 25, 2015 19:54
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computer parts posted:Then at worst, no SCOTUS decisions are made.  I guess the Democrats don't need to worry about losing control of the House, the Senate and many of the State legislatures that will control the redistricting process that is vital to the Democrats ever winning back the House, because hey, Scalia and Thomas might simultaneously drop dead from heart attacks.
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Nov 25, 2015 21:45
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I have zero sympathy for the Democratic party but your whole "gently caress the Democrats" shtick will entail a lot of collateral damage among the very groups that you're saying the Democrats abandoned. Also those of us living in the rest of the first world would prefer not to have our world hegemon being run by a weird Christian-Fascist death cult, thank you very much.
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Nov 25, 2015 21:52
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I'm not an American.
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Nov 25, 2015 21:55
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Talking Points Memo posted:Armed Texas Mosque Protestor Shares Home Addresses Of Local Muslims
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Nov 25, 2015 22:14
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This hand wringing over Sharia law isn't exactly on topic. I would agree that it's not a good thing to have people settling their disputes at private religious courts but given that "they're gonna impose Shariah law!" gets used all the time as a right wing scare tactic maybe instead of making GBS threads up a thread on Islamophobia ya'll could start a new discussion thread specifically on private religious arbitration. It's certainly a topic worth debating. DrProsek posted:Okay, so are you in favor of abolishing contract law? You can raise the exact same objection to contracts and yet I don't recall anyone saying we need to do away with contracts. As far as I know there actually have been some issues raised with the growing tendency for firms to write clauses into contracts demanding private arbitration to settle disputes. It's become a way of avoiding the stricter (and much more public) oversight of the legal system.
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Nov 26, 2015 00:08
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Generally speaking I would like to live in a society where your phenotype and your ethnicity do not have much, if any, statistical impact on who you have sex with or work with or live next to. For obvious reasons that means that implies a largely secular society in which traditional cultures take a backseat and people associate with each other based on other criteria (shared interests, geographical proximity, etc.). So let's say we start this discussion from the perspective that greater cultural integraiton is a good thing, and that in the longer term stuff like Sharia Law, even if practiced on a voluntary basis, is not something to be encouraged. It's not very clear to me how people posting in this thread right now propose to bring that society about. We've got posters -- some, based on their rap sheets, with a long track record of racist trolling -- attacking multiculturalism and claiming some cultures are just terrible and backwards. Well, what's the alternative policy for integrating people and getting them to live together? Other than trying to sound tough by telling what you obviously think are the hard cold truths about those backwards minorities, what, substantively speaking, is the alternative approach to actually creating a more level, welcoming and secular society?
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Nov 26, 2015 20:39
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Black Baby Goku posted:Don't allow religious tribunal systems outside of the actual law of the land? Don't allow religions to treat women as second class citizens, and most importantly stop pretending that all cultures mores and social aspects are compatible with western society? How do you actually go about implementing this? Seems like you're going to drive these practices underground when, if anything, greater tolerance might encourage the kind of social mingling that speeds up the process of integration. Large populations of Catholic Irish and Italians weren't integrated by outlawing papism. If anything it's the opposite - as racism and active discrimination against these groups declined they lost most of their distinctive identity outside of a few occasions like Columbus Day or St. Patrick's Day.
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Nov 26, 2015 23:01
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What exactly is the practical implication of saying western culture is superior? Are you planning to deport all members of the inferior cultures from the west? Ban them from entry? Are you going to somehow magically force them to abandon all their cultural practices and beliefs over night? Great, you're convinced that the culture you grew up in is the best culture ever. That's an almost universal intuition among human beings. I have it to in fact. But so what? Other than whatever satisfaction you apparently get by posting these hard truths you've gleaned here on the internet what exactly does it matter that you think "the west" has a better culture than Islam? How is that relevant to this discussion of Islamophobia?
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Nov 27, 2015 19:17
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Cat Mattress posted:Given that a key argument of people recruiting for the cause of bigotry against Muslims is that they're trying to erase Western culture and replace it with Islamic culture through the twin weapons of mass immigration and terrorism, you should find it extremely relevant. I'm not asking "how is Islamophobic rhetoric relevant to a discussion on Islamphobia", I am specifically challenging the osters in this thread who are claiming that western culture is superior to explain what they think the actual practical implications of that belief are. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that they are right. So what? What are they saying should be done about this fact?
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Nov 27, 2015 22:09
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Tei posted:I will respond, but you will not like the answer: Can you be specific? This answer leaves me no closer to understanding your position. What does "defend personal privacy" mean in practice?
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Nov 27, 2015 22:27
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Tei posted:- You probably should not use your real name in social networks like Facebook. Doing so open yourself to get a lot of data indexed that will get in bad hands or use against you. What does this have to do with the discussion everyone is having about Islamophobia? I assumed that when you brought up "protecting personal privacy" you were saying this in connection with the claim that "western culture" is superior to "Islamic culture". What you've typed here would seem to have absolutely nothing to do with the discussion in this thread.
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Nov 27, 2015 23:46
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The most striking thing about the last four pages of this thread is all these posters come out of the woodwork to talk about how inferior Islamic culture is, only to melt away the second someone actually asks them to explain how they would put their beliefs about Muslim inferiority into practice. I can only conclude people get off, in some small way, by imagining that they're slaying some kind of SJW sacred cow. Honestly though unless you are advocating some kind of action then what is the point of zeroing in on a particular religion and proclaiming it uniquely bad? The most anyone has said so far are some really vague bromides about "respecting privacy" or "protecting women". Well gee, no loving poo poo that's a good thing to do, but how are you proposing to do it? It's particularly obnoxious because this was supposed to be a thread about Islamophobia and now it's basically a place for people to actually preach Islamophobia. If you're going to hijack a thread and turn it into the the exact opposite of what it was intended to be then could you at least have a loving point to your posting? If all you want to do is express yourself then go to loving E/N, or if you want a more relaxed debating atmosphere go to GBS.
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Nov 28, 2015 21:00
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Truly the creeping menace of Sharia Law is a danger so severe that it's worth lending your voice to the most odious kinds of right wing nutcases. Just look at all the places in America where Sharia is already the law of the land. Remember the only way to integrate devout religious minorities is to make them feel as isolated, socially alienated and despised as possible. This is exactly how Catholics, Jews, and other religious groups were integrated in the past  Mandy Thompson posted:That is a really ugly and bigoted thing to say. I am not right wing, in fact I am a communist. My church took me in when I came out of the closet as a lesbian. I am going through homelessness now and my pastor is helping to connect me to the right people. We're participating in the black lives matter protest too. These forums can produce interesting discussions on a lot of topics but the threads involving religion almost always turn out very poorly. I'm not a person of faith but I've seen the benefits that religion has brought to the life of some of my relatives and I live in a country where healthcare and other social services were implemented, in part, thanks to the legacy of Christian socialists, so I appreciate the role that faith plays in many people's lives. Especially if religion is personally important to you then I would suggest mostly avoiding the topic unless you've got a very thick skin because you're inevitably going to end up with a bunch of ignoramuses or trolls spewing New Atheist garbage. Tei posted:Because the western society is not made by assholes, we invented these things. You read it correctly, the declaration of the human rights is just a invention that humans created, because they are cool. Are you in high school or something?
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Nov 28, 2015 21:13
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I think any discussion of Islamophobia would be a welcome respite from all the actual Islamophobia we're getting in this very thread.
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Nov 28, 2015 21:25
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Tei posted:I think you want a safe space If I wanted this thread to be a hugbox then I'd find a more polite way of telling you that I think you're an idiot. The problem here isn't that you're not being politically correct, the problem is that you have nothing insightful or interesting to say. You've been asked what the practical implications of your beliefs are and you didn't have poo poo to offer. Average Bear posted:What sort of discussions do you want? I think I've made that pretty clear by this point. If you don't support things like Sharia Law (and I would agree that Sharia law has no place in a secular country) then what are you actually proposing to do about it? Everyone keeps coming in here and making these white noise garbage posts about how Islam is a religion of backward savages. Yet any time I ask what material steps they can propose to deal with it they shut up real fast and try to change the subject. The fact is that religious toleration is a strategy for assimilation, and it's been a relatively effective one in the past if you just look at the history of religious minorities like Catholics or Jews. If people want to argue for something different then have the balls to actually say what you're advocating for. Also I don't think it can be ignored that stirring up hysteria about the non-existent threat of Sharia law in America is playing directly into the hands of the crazy Christian fundamentalists who actually have real political power and are more than willing to use it.
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Nov 28, 2015 22:25
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Squalid posted:You targeted Islamic arbitration specifically, rather than religious arbitration generally for opposition. When you realized the hypocrisy of this you rightly broadened your criticism. Unfortunately the real-world debate is not about banning religious arbitration in general, but about whether we should target Muslims alone. We should rightly oppose all attacks on sharia specifically for being hypocritical and incompatible with secular values. I feel like this is taking things a bit far. I think it's reasonable to oppose religious tribunals, including sharia tribunals, while still emphasizing that the fear of sharia law being imposed on non-Muslims in America is a silly distraction. That doesn't mean we should refrain from any criticism of another person's beliefs, it just means that we should be conscious about what the impact of our criticisms will actually be. And more generally, the point I keep harping on and which most people are reluctant to engage with is that there's a world of difference between saying "this belief system is problematic" and concluding that the best way to deal with said belief system is to persecute or demonize its adherents. As I said above: religious toleration is a strategy for integrating cultural minorities. If anything it's an approach that shows a great deal more faith in western secularism than the people who ironically think that western society is on the verge of being over run by scary alien beliefs like sharia law. mrbradlymrmartin posted:undermining the rights of muslims to peacefully practice their religion in the us undermines the 1st amendment rights of everyone, and atheists are likely to lose their rights next Banning prayer in schools is undermining the rights of Christians to peacefully practice their religion but it's still a good idea. It's possible to oppose religious practices while continuing to recognize that religious believers are actual human beings and treating them as deserving of dignity and respect. We don't need to choose between either sweeping demonizations of Muslims or a policy of absolutely never criticizing anything they do or believe.
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Nov 28, 2015 23:43
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Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:But that's not what's happening, it's banning faculty-led prayers as an official function. You can pray all you want to. You just can't have faculty use the school's resources for it. It amounts to the same thing as far as I'm concerned. Remember that if you're following most American variations of Christianity then it's your obligation to actively preach to the unsaved about the dangers of Hell and the urgent need for them to redeem themselves by accepting Christ. Telling a Christian teacher they can't minister to children is directly interfering with that teacher's ability to follow through on their beliefs as a Christian. Luckily for us most religious people are just like secular people, i.e. they're hypocrites.
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Nov 29, 2015 01:03
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The utility of the term "Islamophobia" is that it specifies a particular form of racism, i.e. the irrational demonization of Muslims, and thus helps focus our attention on the particular complex of forces behind this demonization, i.e. the politicians, media and private individuals who benefit from Islamophobia. It's the same reason that calling certain anti-gay actions or terms "homophobic" is more illuminating than merely calling them "prejudiced". Homophobia is obviously a kind of prejudice but when we specify that it's homophobia that allows you to focus directly at how particular cultural norms or institutions encouraged this behavior. If there's a local preacher who keeps emphasizing that all gays are child molesters, for instance, and then someone from that preacher's congregation proceeds to attack someone as they exit a gay bar, then it should be clear that there's more going on here than mere "prejudice". Likewise, if we want to understand why there's such a particular emphasis on the danger of sharia law being imposed in America, whereas concerns about Mormons, Catholics, Scientologists, etc. are seemingly quite muted, then it might be helpful to use the label "Islamophobia" rather than just "racism" because the term "Islamophobia" helps direct our attention toward the behavior of the specific causes of prejudice.
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Dec 2, 2015 01:04
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Cat Mattress posted:And? That's pretty much my point. If they are also afraid of someone who is culturally Muslim (but who is actually atheist, or even why not a convert to Christianity) then it's obvious the real issue isn't a supposed fear of Islam, but plain old racism. I guess this would be a reasonable position if numerous prominent members of one of America's two major political parties and one of it's largest news organizations were not constantly declaring that the nation is at war with "radical Islam" and that the President is betraying the nation by not saying so.
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Dec 2, 2015 16:02
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Cat Mattress posted:That's just dog-whistling. Should we call racism against black customers in restaurants "Canadianophobia"? The point of labeling something Islamophobia is to highlight the particular set of interests and relationships that are implicated in spreading this particular form of racist dog whistling. I can almost imagine that if somebody asked you to pass them a Philips head screwdriver you might respond by saying "Why are you calling it a Philips head? What difference does it make? They're all screw drivers!"
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Dec 2, 2015 21:39
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Cat Mattress posted:There are different kinds of screw drives and they need appropriate screwdrivers because you can't use a torx driver in a cruciform head or whatever. For the analogy to hold, you need to demonstrate that similarly, you can't call someone who hates Arabs cannot be called the same thing as someone who hates Chinese people; that it just wouldn't work. This also assumes that none of them hate both Arabs and Chinese people simultaneously (as well as Africans, Latinos, Roms, and Jews). You don't quite "get" analogies, do you? Anyway this is growing tedious and you can refer back to my earlier post if you're still confused but there are very simple and straightforward reasons why the term is used and they have nothing to do with your bizarre conspiracy theory that it's somehow about making "Islam the victim".
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Dec 3, 2015 18:03
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Cause he's a goon, just like the rest of us.
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Dec 3, 2015 18:32
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Thank you, Tei, for bringing us the latest analysis from the finest minds at Flyover State High. In other news I heard Kimmy is a total slut and that Hank and Rebecca are going to be Prom King and Queen.
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Dec 3, 2015 20:21
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Popular Thug Drink posted:if cultures can be bad, whichever culture spawned you is the worst While this is hard to argue with at some abstract theoretical level I think most people are comfortable evaluating cultural norms on a couple basic questions like how well these norms support individual autonomy, bodily security, a sense of mental well being, etc. Speaking personally I'm not ready to go all the way down the culturally relativist rabbit hole because the logical endpoint of that perspective seems to be that we can never form any evaluations of anyone ever, since each person is irreducibly their own individual with their own perspective on the world. I think the simpler solution to this debate is to disengage from it altogether because it's a total loving distraction in the context of this thread. Tei and other idiots like him don't have anything to actually say on the topic of islamophobia so they're trying to change the discussion to a topic they are actually comfortable discussing: in this case some really dumb and reductive examples of baby's first cultural anthropology. It's a waste of time, especially in a thread that was supposed to be about rising anti-Muslim sentiment in the US.
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Dec 3, 2015 20:35
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Eh, I can't entirely agree with you on that one. Most traditional religions, whether it's Catholicism, Anglicanism, Calvinism, Orthodox Judaism, Hinduism, Shia or Sunni Islam, etc. have some pretty serious issues with patriarchal attitudes, mistrust of outsiders, and subordination of individual interests to the preservation of the culture or group. I don't have much interest in defending or protecting those attitudes. I wouldn't dismiss any culture outright but I also think that we in the west can sometimes forget just how awful things were in the very recent past (and how awful they continue to be in many places in the west where religion still dominates public life). If you look at Catholicism in Quebec or Ireland, or Mormonism in Utah, or Baptism in many towns in the South, then it's pretty clear that there are some really awful cultural values on display. For that matter, there's lots of problems with Islam. We don't need to shy away from admitting this. The place where I do agree with you is that, in reality, most of the discourse surrounding Muslim culture right now, including what's coming from people in this thread, is absolutely " an attempt to "pseudointellectualize their bigotry in abstract and impersonal terms". However, I think we can point that out without subscribing to full-scale cultural relativism. I'd suggest the real issue with Tei isn't that he's claiming some cultures might be "better" or "worse" than others, it's that he's just making really dumb and sweeping arguments that don't really serve any purpose in this thread except to distract us from the original topic of discussion: the growing political movement to demonize Muslims in the USA. It's a serious topic and it's worth discussing without hearing somebody's High School level opinions on foreign cultures. All this talk about Muslims from supposed atheists is a really great way to ignore the fact that one of the most powerful voting blocs in America are evangelical Christians, who control numerous local governments and who have a significant impact on the politics of the Republican party at the state and national levels. They also mostly ignore the extent to which America's primary middle eastern ally, Israel, is a state that literally elevates one religion and ethnicity over all others by declaring itself as "Jewish" state, and it's biggest client state in the region is Saudi Arabia. That's what's so pathetic about these discussions. The people bashing Muslims in this thread have no sense of perspective or context. They're eager to leap on the Muslim hating bandwagon because it's simultaneously a relatively safe topic and yet, at least on these forums, it has the intoxicating whiff of contrarianism that let's you feel like you're revealing some kind of forbidden truth. Meanwhile the much more pressing issues of our time, like the Republican partys slow drift into outright fascism, get largely ignored or papered over.
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Dec 3, 2015 22:20
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quote:Fox Contributor: Call The Cops If Someone Named Syed Leaves Your Party
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Dec 4, 2015 00:22
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Remember to pass the joint after two puffs Tei.
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Dec 4, 2015 00:42
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Ablow claims to have "resigned in protest" from the American Psychiatric Association several years ago. A quick perusal of his wikipedia should tell you everything you need to know about him. For instance, he said in 2014 that Obama wasn't protecting America from ebola because he felt a stronger affinity for Africa. The fact this guy is a regular commentator and columnist for Fox is a great example of how Islamophobia has become both an important political tendnecy in America and a sort of a cottage industry for cranks who know they can make bank on telling the racists what they want to hear, especially in situations where they can offer a patina of scientific or intellectual legitimacy. The late Christopher Hitchens used to do the same thing, albeit pitched at a more high fallutin liberal leaning audience than the one Ablow caters to, and there's a more than passing similarity between Hitchens and some of the posters in this thread.
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Dec 4, 2015 02:00
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It's cool that the thread about Islamophobia is largely dominated by people arguing that maybe Muslims really are subhuman monsters and all, but back in the real world the political hysteria being whipped up over Islamophobia is driving some really frightening political developments. quote:Trump Calls For Total Ban On Muslims Entering The U.S. quote:Group Trump Cites Has Been Whipping Up Extreme Anti-Muslim Fervor For Years
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Dec 8, 2015 02:29
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Talking Points Memo posted:Trump Has His Riefenstahl
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Dec 8, 2015 19:31
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Almost no one thinks Trump can win. Of course no one thought he would rocket to the top of the primary and stay on top for months. There's this truism among politicos that a politician with high name recognition (and Trump's was very high before he entered the race) cannot dramatically change their favorable / unfavorable rating among voters. It's supposed to be much easier to define yourself when voters have never heard of you before; if you're someone like Trump or Hillary Clinton then, so the theory goes, your numbers should be relatively stable. So when Trump came along people looked at the very high percentage of voters, even within the Republican primary, who viewed him unfavorably, and concluded he had little room to grow. Turns out Trump isn't constrained by the normal dynamics of a regular politician, because the more racist poo poo he says the higher he rises in the polls. He transformed his numbers almost overnight with his "the Mexicans are sending their rapists to America" announcement speech, and since then he's been riding high. Something like one in four Republicans are deadset against him and plenty of other Republicans would prefer someone else to him, but it's clear a very large and solid block of the GOP base love Trump. More importantly, their love has less to do with any policy he proposes and more to do with the man himself. Republican pollster Frank Luntz claims, based on focus groups he conducted, that it's basically impossible to shake Trump's supporters. You can tell them anything about the man, mention any unorthodox or unpopular past position he's taken, any bad thing he's done, and they'll continue to say they support him. At this point he really could be the nominee, and almost by default Presidential races are close things. The right mixture of events -- a bad misstep by the Democratic candidate, an unexpected terrorist attack, etc. -- and who knows what would happen. And even if Trump losses, he didn't create the xenophobia he is exploiting. All he's done is reveal just how viable the xenophobia strategy is. The GOP might not take the Presidency but if they can hold onto a lot of state houses and Congress then not controlling the presidency really just frees them from the responsibility of even pretending to govern. And given that the Democrats are on the verge of nominating one of the weakest candidates in modern memory, I think there's genuine cause for concern.
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Dec 8, 2015 19:52
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The Democrats have won the popular vote in 5 of the last 6 Presidential elections, and Bush only won the popular vote in 2004 thanks to a highly unusual and manipulated set of circumstances... And yet the Democratic party is in crisis and most of it's followers seem to have trouble even acknowledging that fact. The party's probably got a firm hold on the White House in 2016, but even that isn't guaranteed, and it's position almost everywhere else is incredibly tenuous.
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Dec 8, 2015 20:00
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I'm not a close enough follower of state politics to comment intelligently on which Democratic controlled legislatures are currently the most vulnerable, but the overall numbers really speak for themselves.quote:If you want to understand how destructive the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections were to the long-term downballot prospects of the Democratic party, all you need to do is look at this chart via Pew's terrific Fact Tank site. Democratic control of the Presidency isn't sustainable in the long run if they are almost totally shut out of legislative power both federally and in the states. Also they're never going to regain control of the House of Reps if they are consistently shout out of most state governments. Meanwhile the Republicans, to counter their declining demographic base of support, will enact ever more overt forms of voter suppression, and they'll try to retain the loyalty of blue collar whites by making ever more racist xenophobic appeals. You'd better hope the Democrats don't lose control of the Supreme Court -- and that the Democrats can actually get a decent judge appointed when the new, take-no-prisoners GOP controls the senate -- or you guys are really hosed.
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Dec 8, 2015 20:38
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I don't know what to tell you. For reasons that aren't clear to me you keep trying to act like it isn't a big deal that, in the aftermath of two disastrous wars and an economic crisis, all of which were direct byproducts of the modern GOP's unhinged ideology (an ideology that's been adopted by a number of Dems as well since the 1980s), the main result has been for the GOP to grow more radical and, for the most part, more electorally successful. And those GOP successes also put them in control of the ultra-important process of 1) nominating federal judges and 2) controlling how districts are designed for the House of Representatives. While you aren't quite saying it explicitly, you keep making posts that seem to imply you don't think this is a big deal. I don't know if you're just trying to be contrarian or if you genuinely don't think this is cause for alarm. But if the last decade wasn't enough to destroy the brand of the GOP then your country is hosed.
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Dec 8, 2015 20:46
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Certainly Hillary wants to replicate Obama's / Howard Dean's strategy of having a strong grassroots army of door knockers and envelope stuffers in all 50 states but that's not going to solve the Democrat's bigger problems, which are 1) the fundraising infrastructure that the GOP has put in place to win state elections and 2) the fact that the Democratic party is riddled with contradictions, not least of which is their reliance on big money donors, which puts them at a structural disadvantage compared to the GOP. The fact Hilary is going to be the nominee is, in and of itself, a pretty clear indication of how poorly prepared the Democrats are. Hilary can win if enough frightened minorities and women turn out to elect her but she embodies practically every bad political decision the Democratic party has taken since the 1980s, painted over with a thin veneer of Sheryl Sandburg style Lean In feminism.
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Dec 8, 2015 21:35
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Starshark posted:This thread is now about the US election. It's hard to maintain a clean division between a discussion of Islamophobia and a discussion of the US election, for reasons that should be clear.
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Dec 8, 2015 21:52
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