US CE Spring 2022: I'm convinced it's useless which is why I argue about it all day every day

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > US CE Spring 2022: I'm convinced it's useless which is why I argue about it all day every day

Jarmak: Jan 24, 2005

A big flaming stink posted:

Jayxon, I'm straight up skeptical of the severity of Jan 6. Maybe it is a big deal, but the behavior of the Democrats is not consistent with that being so. If the Democrats are behaving as though it is merely fundraising fodder, and that is consistent with my intuition, why shouldn't I come to that conclusion?

They impeached a president over it, started the largest criminal investigation in FBI history, and are holding Congressional hearings on it. That's pretty much every lever of taking it seriously the Democrats have the ability to pull.

This idea that they're "not taking it seriously" is based on them not doing the things you think should be done. That's not evidence of them not taking it seriously, that's evidence of them not agreeing with you about what should be done about it. They are very much doing the things you do if you take things seriously according to what they believe should be done.

Your argument only follows if you think the Democratic establishment has the same ideological and political beliefs as you. Not doing things your way doesn't mean someone doesn't care, it might just mean they think your way is dumb.

Jarmak fucked around with this message at 23:36 on Jun 9, 2022

# ¿ Jun 9, 2022 23:30

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 00:36

Jarmak: Jan 24, 2005

Gumball Gumption posted:

You could argue about why it's dumb instead of deconstructing the existence of what a disagreement is. Yes, two people have different perspectives that make them disagree.

Personally I think historical precedent shows that the response so far hasn't been enough. Legal and illegal paths to power are being left open for the perpetrators and history says that fascists will try again and become more successful if you do that. They only need to be lucky once.

Except the person I'm responding to was very much acting like there weren't two different perspectives, so that the only disagreement could be about whether to take it seriously. And I have to explain why their argument necessarily implies that otherwise I'll be accused of not responding to what was actually argued.

# ¿ Jun 10, 2022 01:09

Jarmak: Jan 24, 2005

Gumball Gumption posted:

Is your avatar ironic or something? We can't punish the guy who tried to commit a coup because he has too many sympathizers in power is an awful excuse. I just don't give a poo poo about giving brownie points and "you tried" credit to people who say they have the ability to punish a fascist coup, use that to run for office and win, and then completely fail at it. "100 percent of the Democrats voted for impeachment" won't keep anyone alive when the fascists take power.

We can't punish the guy who tried to commit a coup because he has too many sympathizers in power is a pretty drat ironclad excuse. In fact I'm struggling to think of a better excuse for not doing something than "literally do not have the power to do it". Those sympathizers in power have/had enough power to block those consequences, even when the democrats voted in complete unity.

Going after his supporters is one way of attempting to weaken that power. Selling the American public on the legitimacy of treating his behavior as a crime is one way of weakening that power. I'm not sure if you're the one who said it but someone said earlier that law has power only as much as people believe in it. This is absolutely true, but that doesn't make that power any less real. It's not enough that the truth is real crimes were committed and he's lying about it being political, if people do not believe that and that you're acting with legitimacy those who value that power and believe in that power will turn against you.

That's why even the fascists have to provide of veneer of legitimacy to their bullshit.

This:

Gumball Gumption posted:

Anything else is just show even if it's locking up foot soldiers for sedition

Is an incredibly myopic view that ignores how pretty much any takedown of a large criminal organization has been done in history, not even getting into those criminal organizations that managed to accumulate significant political power. Imagine if we treated literally anything other than convicting Al Capone for murder as a completely useless just for show action.

# ¿ Jun 11, 2022 20:21

Jarmak: Jan 24, 2005

Gumball Gumption posted:

Yes, fascists taking power is the fail condition. I seriously do not know how people hold both "1/6 was an attack on democracy and the closest we've come to losing it" and not doing anything about it is fine. If Trump gets charged I'll eat my hat but we're walking down the exact same path in history that many liberal governments have made after failed right wing coups and all it got them were successful coups or peaceful transfer of power to fascists. They didn't get Capone on murder but they still -got- Capone. (Also the tax evasion charges meant a shorter sentence and probably he ordered a revenge murder a week after release and didn't stop his crime operation at all but why let historical fact get in the way of making the same mistakes)

They got him on tax evasion because that was literally the best the could manage to do, that's the point.

Also I wasn't really referring to the tax evasion part specifically, but rather the fact it was a long operation that hit many of the "foot soldiers" before they got a shot a Capone. If viewed with the same lens are you're using to describe 1/6 you'd think they were just doing all that for show until one day they just randomly decided to put him in jail, rather than a long sequence of events and actions that led to that point.

# ¿ Jun 11, 2022 20:49

Jarmak: Jan 24, 2005

Gumball Gumption posted:

Protecting trans people in America, a thing he was elected to do. The process doesn't matter here, it's just if we're getting the results we were promised or not.

The process is how you get the results. There's no avoiding that.

If you don't understand the process you don't understand what needs to be done to get your results, so you have no idea whether someone is doing a good job of achieving them. You have no idea whether they're dragging their feet or going as fast as possible.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2022 20:33

Jarmak: Jan 24, 2005

Gumball Gumption posted:

I think you're understanding the way expectations should work in a representative democracy as very backwards. Government is a system. Human systems are incredibly complicated and messy things prone to error. They're like living creatures we need to take care of. A representative democracy is picking people in our society to take care of this system that gives us order. The natural world is chaos and this system exists to implement order to protect us. I do not need to understand the process. I only need to observe the outcome of a system to understand what a system does. If we don't like the outcome of the system we then have the ability to replace those in charge of it. Right now one of the outcomes of the system is killing children.

And you're absolutely right. Understanding process gives you a better idea of who is doing good or bad within the existing process. But that process is also living so we need to judge them also on their ability and efforts to change process to their favor and improve the system.

Those in charge also have the ability to petition to maintain their position by explaining process, what and how they want to change it, and why they should be the ones to do it. Again, it's not my responsibility to know process if I want to change the outcome. It's on those who want to maintain the current order or change it to explain what they will do.

And to bring it back to the real world the Biden admin is currently failing horribly at that last part. Roe v. Wade is up on the chopping block, life is hell and short for so many children right now, and the general consensus is Democrats being on the losing end of the next round of elections. All that and the bully pulpit is being used to tell me the deficit is down, jobs are up, and "someone do something" about gun violence. It's rudderless at a time of needing rallying cries.

The system kills kids and keeps the deficit down. I don't think I want that.

I disagree, what has your understanding of the way expectations work gotten you? Have you gotten what you wanted? Has the system changed? Do you feel listened to?

And why should anyone listen to you? Do you think no one realizes the current process kills kids? Do you think everyone's happy with that and is just hiding the "make everything better" button? You have every right to be mad but without understanding the process by how things change you're just the guy yelling "throw the ball" at the quarterback.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2022 22:22

Jarmak: Jan 24, 2005

Yinlock posted:

Where do you think the fascists got that experience? The U.S government may be a total clownshow but if the ruling class gets spooked it suddenly becomes a precision clockwork mechanism when it comes to stomping down on the left.

e: You're right that a genuine mass movement is extremely hard to control, which is why the U.S has a whole toolbox of horrifying options that they regularly deploy to "discourage" leftism and stop that from happening.

The US doesn't need a toolbox to discourage leftism, they have leftists for that.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2022 01:09

Jarmak: Jan 24, 2005

TheIncredulousHulk posted:

This is an unbelievably ahistorical take for someone finger-wagging others about "knowing how the system works"

Do you think underhanded political poo poo is unique to leftism in the history of the US?

# ¿ Jun 13, 2022 02:22

Jarmak: Jan 24, 2005

Gumball Gumption posted:

America won the cold war by funding those under handed tactics across the world. You really are showing your own rear end if you chalk up failures of the left as

The cold war ended 30 years ago. You keep talking about not caring about process and only results, but when it comes to leftists actually achieving any results it's all about how the process is unfair.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2022 02:36

Jarmak: Jan 24, 2005

I wasn't referring to leftist infighting, I was referring to leftists being incapable of appealing to the mainstream or building coalitions with mainstream political interests. But sure, I suppose the left also has a history of not being able to build coalitions with itself.

I can think of no other political group that devouts so much time and energy to demonizing the people most likely to work with them.

# ¿ Jun 13, 2022 12:20

Jarmak: Jan 24, 2005

Gumball Gumption posted:

We really lost the plot on the original discussion about why children are open season in America if we think the shiftless left who can't organize and only love in-fighting, drama, and hot chip are somehow responsible for it. It's real "all my enemies are weak feckless idiots and also control my life" poo poo. Either the left are so useless they can't organize a trip to the grocery store or they're responsible for failing to save kids, you can't have both.

Literally no one has argued this

# ¿ Jun 13, 2022 15:26

Jarmak: Jan 24, 2005

Ghost Leviathan posted:

It really sounds like an inability to understand the actual problems with progressive orgs because they're ultimately the same problems with liberal ones; the culture of a reverence for hierarchy and personal ambition means you end up with everyone in charge pursuing their own prestige, enrichment and arbitrary personal goals at the expense of the overall organisational ones, and no one, especially in mainstream media, is even able to recognise this is a problem, let alone call it out. After all, that's what you're supposed to do. Make that money, Obama.

The problems of infighting and factionalism are invented and repeated because they are useful to distract from that and to perpetuate the stereotypes used to dismiss the left. The problem is they're not submissive enough to their betters, they keep letting their morals and priorities get in the way of the smooth running of the organisation, whining about things like 'we're not actually doing any of the things we're supposed to do'. COINTELPRO as functioning is basically indistinguishable from corporate America, and probably for many of the same reasons- and the culture is perpetuated to make that culture normalised, and any pushback is irrational, dangerous and must be shut down immediately.

This is a whole lot of text to say that people have individual personal interests that they place above the organizational goals.

People absolutely recognize that as a problem, it just doesn't get a lot of oxygen except for egregious cases because it's expected. It's like busting in here with the revelation that gravity is the real reason we can't all fly like Superman.

If your goals require all organizations being staffed by purely altruistic people then you're in trouble. Part of the reason corporate structure and "social enterprises" have been gaining popularity is they harness people's self-interest towards productive ends.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ¿ Jun 15, 2022 13:22

Jarmak: Jan 24, 2005

Josef bugman posted:

It shouldn't be expected though. It should be told to gently caress off. If you arent able to listen to the people implementing things you aren't doing progressive activism well.

You seem to be saying "well harness self interest towards good ends" which, let's be blunt, is not as possible as a lot of us would like.

It's a lot more possible then telling everyone to gently caress off and getting anything done.

# ¿ Jun 15, 2022 14:09

Jarmak: Jan 24, 2005

Epic High Five posted:

I saw those floorplans and I'd say the biggest issue was the whole "only two entrances that are also the only exits" thing. People can live without windows but fire recognizes no boundaries and possesses no mercy.

To be fair, it's also a part of the mockup that I figured would never, ever make it to groundbreaking

Aw hell, well I stand corrected. It's a sort of planned community thing where I could see it working in very specific circumstances but that was one of them. I'd probably never live in one if only because I know for a stone cold fact that if it was a general population situation each shoebox would be $2200/month

It's basically a billionaire's pet sociology experiment. To be fair it's not about soulless efficiency, the idea is to encourage people to leave their personal areas and spend more time in common areas.

But I don't think there's really any real research behind it, just someone with a lot of money thinking it must mean they're really smart. Theoretically could be right, probably in actuality a nightmare.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2022 03:23

Jarmak: Jan 24, 2005

theCalamity posted:

Is the Green Party well funded? I doubt it. They might have trouble getting that kind of money for each race.

That is an absolutely tiny amount of money for a national election. If you can't scrape together five grand for a senatorial campaign what are you even doing?

# ¿ Jun 20, 2022 03:39

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 00:36

Jarmak: Jan 24, 2005

Koos Group posted:

You still need to precise with your wording, and when you're corrected, acknowledge it fully.

They're not the one that said it. They are pointing out, rightly, that the mistake made by LT was immaterial to the overall point.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2022 00:46

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > US CE Spring 2022: I'm convinced it's useless which is why I argue about it all day every day