posted
In an election between Trump and McMullin, I'd actually have to think about it before voting.
Off the cuff, I'd say I'd probably end up supporting McMullin, but to me it wouldn't be a no-brainer. Trump is a crazed loose canon, but his ideological bent is so unfixed that there's no telling what laws might get passed or what he'd actually do that would affect most people's lives (short of actual war).
But McMullin stands for almost everything I oppose, and having him in there, just as likely as Trump to start a war and with clear vision and focus on enacting a series of laws, every one of which I'd oppose, would force me to at least think for a moment before voting for him.
And that's why I get the sticky situation a lot of conservatives are in vis a vis Trump and Clinton. But at the end of the day, I think I'd still find it impossible to vote for Trump. We survived 8 years of Bush, damaging though they were. I think we could survive 4-8 of McMullin with less damage than Trump. And I'd hope most conservatives would come to the same conclusion about Clinton and Trump.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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If McMullin alone was against Trump, in Hillary's place there is no question for me. Yeah, he needs some serious, serious vetting (and given my vote is cast, I do not care to), but I assume he 1. knows we can't just nuke them 2. gets that most Muslims are not terrorists 3. thinks smoking is bad for you and 4. does not work for Putin. 5. pays taxes. 6. knows where Aleppo is. 7. is motivated by love of America vs his reflection.
I don't have a desire to burn my country down, and while I suspect I disagree with McMuffin on a lot of things, the incompetent super villain is worse than competent, well meaning person I disagree with.
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posted
Just for argument's sake, what if you replace the incompetent super villain with Cruz, the actual super villain?
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I think if you live in Utah and you have the chance to deny Trump some EV's it isn't like you risk putting him into the WH.
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Wait, are you asking Cruz vs McMullin? That's easy, McMullin a million times.
Cruz vs Trump is a lot harder (I can't pick Kasich, can I?), I'm not sure if the damage Cruz will do deliberately is worse than the damage Trump would do collaterally. Fortunately for me, both are rather blatantly despised by their own party.
Posts: 1757 | Registered: Oct 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: i just noticed this part here
quote:Many Americans will not be able to vote for McMullin, or even write him in. But he seems poised to be able to carry at least one state, Utah, with a serious chance at several more, mostly in the American west.
i honestly wonder where he gets fed an image of the election at this moment that makes him think this isn't essentially pure fiction. mcmullin stands a long-shot chance of possibly winning utah, and will not win any other state, period. there is no serious chance at any other state.
quote:So they're going to vote for a person who really is prepared -- in training, in temperament, in character -- to govern the United States of America in a way that most of us could be proud of and happy with.
mcmullin is a straightforwardly strict cultural conservative, a supply-sided follower of Hayak and Friedman and an ossified retro paleocon, with policies overtly in the camp of people who want to do away with the separation of church and state and make america a soft theocracy based on christianity, complete with a strong anti-abortion component. pretty much nobody would like him except old white christian american males who want the country back the way they feel it was in the Good Old Days.
nearly nobody else would like him.
you basically almost have to be an old white christian with little real understanding about why other groups of people aren't conservative to be able to think this way.
I don't know that you've pegged him down quite right. He hass said he has no intention of revisiting Proposition 8 or the Supreme Court decision on the matter, which is very much not in line with the official GOP party line on same-sex marriage.
538 has him at up to a 25% change of winning. That's not a long shot at all. Anything with a 25% shot that comes true is perfectly consistent with its model (which makes the current 538 polls for Trump very very very scary).
Also, if McMullin's mom is a lesbian as the white nationalist Robocalls say, I'm not particularly worried about him rolling back gay rights any time soon. Honestly, if Republicans want to stop alienating young people, they have to drop a lot of the "family values" garbage, including the anti lgbt platform.
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quote:Originally posted by theamazeeaz: Wait, are you asking Cruz vs McMullin? That's easy, McMullin a million times.
Cruz vs Trump is a lot harder (I can't pick Kasich, can I?), I'm not sure if the damage Cruz will do deliberately is worse than the damage Trump would do collaterally. Fortunately for me, both are rather blatantly despised by their own party.
Cruz is like, Underwood. But more visible in his backstabbing stabby stabbyness.
I can't decide if this makes him more or less competent though, Underwood in season 3/4 made it hard for me to watch.
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I find it depressing that given the chance to go back in time and make a different decision, a large portion of the Republican Party would be heartily behind Cruz. Being faced with the knowledge that you accidentally made the worst possible choice and wishing that you could have instead made the second worst possible choice suggests a commitment to blind self destruction that is just unfathomable to me.
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zlogdanbr
unregistered
posted
I have specially enjoyed how OSC bashed Steve Jobs. I find it annoying and insulting people calling him "a technological guru". I can say that because I am one of those guys that work hard in the background writing pieces of code so that guys like Jobs take the prize.
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quote:Originally posted by Elcheeko75: I find it depressing that given the chance to go back in time and make a different decision, a large portion of the Republican Party would be heartily behind Cruz. Being faced with the knowledge that you accidentally made the worst possible choice and wishing that you could have instead made the second worst possible choice suggests a commitment to blind self destruction that is just unfathomable to me.
i would have enjoyed watching cruz fail too
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Cruz would've had to follow the rules of a normal election and I think we've seen less emails.
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I wonder if the Russians would have preferred a President Cruz with a rubber stamp House to a President Clinton under a perpetual House investigation.
Now that I think about it, it's pretty much a win-win for the Russians. They either get President Trump or a Clinton who is going to be stuck in this e-mail morass for at least the near future.
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Nah, Clinton has the freedom and willingness to stand up to them in an effective way; Cruz would do so in an entirely uneffective way.
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It took me about two minutes to find an example of Card's writing something critical of Obama within two years of his election. All I had to do was look for a title with a remotely political sounding title. In this case it was Nov 2009, the one about Soviet Jokes.
I could look for more but, eh. I think the point is made.
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I give him two or three articles before he Comes Around on trump because he likes something awful Trump and his administration is doing.
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I bet soon trump is doing stuff which violently polarizes the country and Orson Scott Canard, the man who called Obama the most divisive worst president ever, makes an article saying he likes how Trump is trying to heal the country's rifts. He's a uniter!
Meanwhile Trump is probably going to be doing some crazy Duterte level shit and setting us up for real problems.
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quote:Originally posted by Parkour: I give him two or three articles before he Comes Around on trump because he likes something awful Trump and his administration is doing.
quote:After Obama was elected in 2008, I refrained from writing anything critical of him for a couple of years.
oh
does card just forget and construct a new reality for himself or is he just lying here
Sadly, the concept of "I reject your reality and substitute my own" has become a viable political strategy, and looks to be the basis of much of the current administration's platform.
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quote:Originally posted by Parkour: I give him two or three articles before he Comes Around on trump because he likes something awful Trump and his administration is doing.
Nope. Gays. His cabinet is full of anti-gay people ready to take back all the progress we've made over the last several decades.
Also who says coloured? How antiquated.
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quote:"As American as Motherhood and Apple Pie" - that used to be a saying. Now half of America is against motherhood and is willing to kill the babies to prevent it.
I... don't even know what to say to that. Does he seriously believe that?
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Even if he does, it's amusing that he says 'now'. It's been a generation or more since half of America was 'against motherhood' in the way he means.
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Admittedly I feel the same sort of annoyance when pro-choice folks start mind reading and say or imply things along the lines of "people who want to ban abortions don't really care about babies, they just want to control women's bodies!" (Usually accompanied by some factoid showing that not all pro-life folks are 100% consistent in all their beliefs and actions, and therefore must be devious rather than, you know, human) But that logic is at least somewhat coherent - I mean, by virtue of placing a fetus' right to live above a woman's right to chose they *do* want to control women's bodies, it's just that a lot of them believe that that control is a mostly regrettable consequence rather than the motivation. And we do see some people (a surprisingly large number as of late) who really, truly do want to hamper women's access to any form of birth control because they think controlling women's sexuality is a biblical principal. So the argument at least makes sense.
But I can't make heads or tails of where he comes up with "half of America is against motherhood." Does he honestly believe the goal of half the population is to keep as many women from becoming mothers as possible? Because that's some next level conspiracy theory stuff there. Is that Mormon dogma or where is that belief coming from, exactly?
Posts: 2222 | Registered: Dec 2008
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I really couldn't say. But the truth is Card's commentary on national level politics has been characterized by profound laziness or dishonesty for some years now. There's simply no other way to arrive at a belief that country is evenly split on abortion and birth control than to know better and lie about it, or to be lazy (which also encompasses conspiracy thinking).
It's always hazardous to generalize such large groups anyway, leading to problematic 'gotchas' like you're describing, but this is a bit different I think.
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quote:Originally posted by Dogbreath: But I can't make heads or tails of where he comes up with "half of America is against motherhood." Does he honestly believe the goal of half the population is to keep as many women from becoming mothers as possible? Because that's some next level conspiracy theory stuff there. Is that Mormon dogma or where is that belief coming from, exactly?
That particular belief isn't Mormon doctrine, but it is Mormon doctrine that the family is central to God's plan and that Satan seeks to destroy the family. But getting from those beliefs to "half of America is against motherhood" is quite a leap.
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I can imagine if one were inclined one could construct an explanation of that line something like:
* He's being flippant and expects the audience to pick up on it
* He is lumping together progressive and feminist views on the traditional belief that the best/highest duty of a woman is to be a mother as, flippantly, being against motherhood
* He is lumping the typical pro-choice argument together with the above views on gender roles, assuming that pro-choice reasoning is motivated to prevent women from being tied into motherhood
flippantly
* He's not talking to you if you're going to do anything other than nod and agree how much worse things are now
f l ippantly
But it's too much work. He's being cranky and he doesn't like how things are different and how it's a lot of work to understand and fairly represent people (and yep I'm saying that here too, but generally I do try to avoid hyperbolic stereotypes as a starting point, so I think he's the one making it particularly hard in this case).
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Dogbreath: But I can't make heads or tails of where he comes up with "half of America is against motherhood." Does he honestly believe the goal of half the population is to keep as many women from becoming mothers as possible? Because that's some next level conspiracy theory stuff there. Is that Mormon dogma or where is that belief coming from, exactly?
That particular belief isn't Mormon doctrine, but it is Mormon doctrine that the family is central to God's plan and that Satan seeks to destroy the family. But getting from those beliefs to "half of America is against motherhood" is quite a leap.
I'm probably using the wrong word here, but I'm using "dogma" in a way not meant to be synonymous with "doctrine." To clarify, I read an article a few months ago (I think it was in the November issue of the Atlantic) that delved into the psyche of Glenn Beck, and argued that a lot of the seemly bizarre or otherwise inexplicable of his beliefs and actions are actually inspired by his understanding of Mormon Dogma. By which I mean, a set of non-doctrinal, prophetic beliefs or theories about the future/the end of days that have been interpreted or extrapolated from various opaque, ambiguous statements made by early church leaders and are essentially treated as if they were doctrine. Especially by folks in more conservative, occult groups of the Church.
I thought this was really fascinating, and since then whenever I read a seemingly nonsensical or absurd statement from Card I wonder if it's because he's been drawn into one of those groups, and is consequentially interpreting current events through that lens. Like maybe Oliver Cowdery once said "and lo it shall come to pass that one half of the nation shall turn their hearts against their mothers and slay their children, and in those days the golden man of flaxen hair shalt descend from on high upon a moving stair..." or something like that. I dunno.
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I don't think OSC's words reflect any particular prophetic or doctrinal speculation, other than the general belief that the world will go downhill until Christ's second coming.
However, there is often a theme in talks from church leaders that the traditional family is under attack - this encompasses gay marriage, fornication, single parenthood, abortion, and high divorce rates. I can sort of see how believing in that theme of social changes might contribute to the thought that society is turning against motherhood, although I think OSC's phrasing is both extreme and novel.
I do sort of think he's going for rhetorical effect rather than literal claims a lot of the time, but the problem is that even if you consciously dial back what he says on that theory you're still left with offensive and problematic beliefs IMO.
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Uh, how the heck is motherhood American anyway? I think other countries have mothers. I wish they'd look at the things that really make families suffer. Sometimes it's their doctrine that hurts people more than a whole parade of gay bears. Especially pushing that every woman should have to be a mother even if they don't want to.
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Thanks, that's definitely it! But I could have sworn that I read that article several months rather than several weeks ago. (January was one of the craziest months of my life to date, which probably contributes to the sensation of time dilation)
quote:I do sort of think he's going for rhetorical effect rather than literal claims a lot of the time, but the problem is that even if you consciously dial back what he says on that theory you're still left with offensive and problematic beliefs IMO.
I'm reminded of a guy I knew in high school who would often make bizarre or deeply personal, hurtful comments about folks, and then once he saw he had hurt them and/or suspected they were about to confront him about it, would immediately laugh and punch your arm and say "I'm just messing around, man! Don't take it so seriously! It's just a joke!" I was always perplexed by that sort of behavior and it took me a while to realize it was a sort of moral cowardice: he got all the sadistic pleasure of being able to hurt people, while at the same time avoiding the consequences of that bullying.
In the same article Card also talks how he had an interview with a reporter recently in a McDonalds, and he complains about how the reporter mentioned him being weirdly rude and demanding towards the employee at the register, "The reporter wrote about the incident as if I were some kind of spoiled-brat diva. She wasn't film-savvy enough to get the reference to Five Easy Pieces - she didn't know I was following a script."
Except he also talks in an almost-bragging way about how upset and confused the girl behind the register seemed - wouldn't that be a cue for a normal person to realize the other person *isn't* picking up on your "script" and to apologize and behave decently rather than complain about everyone else just not being sophisticated enough to get your humor? Like, I sometimes quote movies in interactions with people, but those people are usually friends, and I don't do quotes that might offend them unless it's a private joke between us. (As an example: A few years back I was close friends with my Battalion's armory clerk, so sometimes when I would go draw my rifle or pistol from the armory I would slam my ID and weapons cards down on the counter and shout"GATOR NEEDS HIS GAT, YOU PUNK ASS BITCH!" This is something I would decidedly not choose to do when talking to someone I don't know)
Or his now-infamous "thought experiment" a few years back about Obama establishing a dictatorship by deputizing black gang-members and beating up or assassinating political dissidents. He was just writing a sci-fi piece, right? he's a sci-fi writer and makes up stories all the time. Anyone who read that as anything more than idle speculation was clearly just misinterpreting him, right? Except that it was published in a conservative newspaper where he frequently *does* write very seriously about his political opinions to an audience who might very well take it at face value...
I dunno. I mean, it's a subject that's been rehashed many, many times here. And I'm just as guilty of hyperbole as anyone else, but usually I can at least derive an authors' intent or actual beliefs from the hyperbolic statement, but this one was so off the wall that it really bothered me. Maybe I'm just sleep deprived and fixating on something more than I normally would.
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quote:When Trump, on a whim, orders something illegal or unconstitutional, the people around him won't obey him. He'll hate it, but mostly they'll keep him from being an anti-constitutional dictator like Obama and Hillary want so badly to be.
Of course he'll fire them, but as long as he remains a Republican he'll keep having that same "problem" with anyone he appoints. The military especially do not obey illegal orders.
But Democrats have long since proven that they don't care about integrity or honor in their public officials. Lyndon Johnson. Barney Frank. Bill Clinton. Over and over again, corrupt orders from corrupt Democratic politicians are not just obeyed but covered up or dismissed as nothing.
Elect narcissistic liar Trump, and he'll probably be contained within reasonable limits.
I'll give him credit for understanding Trump for what he is (nobody should need credit, because the truth is so unbearably obvious, but we're in an odd reality now).
I just wonder how his faith in the imagined integrity of the Republican Party is doing...
Posts: 89 | Registered: Apr 2013
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quote:Originally posted by Dogbreath: I'm probably using the wrong word here, but I'm using "dogma" in a way not meant to be synonymous with "doctrine." To clarify, I read an article a few months ago (I think it was in the November issue of the Atlantic) that delved into the psyche of Glenn Beck, and argued that a lot of the seemly bizarre or otherwise inexplicable of his beliefs and actions are actually inspired by his understanding of Mormon Dogma. By which I mean, a set of non-doctrinal, prophetic beliefs or theories about the future/the end of days that have been interpreted or extrapolated from various opaque, ambiguous statements made by early church leaders and are essentially treated as if they were doctrine. Especially by folks in more conservative, occult groups of the Church.
I thought this was really fascinating, and since then whenever I read a seemingly nonsensical or absurd statement from Card I wonder if it's because he's been drawn into one of those groups, and is consequentially interpreting current events through that lens. Like maybe Oliver Cowdery once said "and lo it shall come to pass that one half of the nation shall turn their hearts against their mothers and slay their children, and in those days the golden man of flaxen hair shalt descend from on high upon a moving stair..." or something like that. I dunno.
Okay, I see what you're saying, though scifibum already kind of answered your question. No, I wouldn't say that there's a Mormon folk doctrine that half of America is against motherhood, though as scifibum said, there are certainly a lot of beliefs, both official and unofficial, about the importance of the family and the threats to it.
So while I've never before heard anyone say anything like "half of America is against motherhood", I certainly see how Mormons who believe in certain folks doctrines could come to that conclusion, even if I still think it's quite a leap.
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posted
Also considering how so far its been mainly Democratic/Obama appointee Federal judges reigning him in, the GOP have stood by and let everything happen.
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quote:Originally posted by tertiaryadjunct: Jumping back to July for just a moment...
quote:When Trump, on a whim, orders something illegal or unconstitutional, the people around him won't obey him. He'll hate it, but mostly they'll keep him from being an anti-constitutional dictator like Obama and Hillary want so badly to be.
Of course he'll fire them, but as long as he remains a Republican he'll keep having that same "problem" with anyone he appoints. The military especially do not obey illegal orders.
But Democrats have long since proven that they don't care about integrity or honor in their public officials. Lyndon Johnson. Barney Frank. Bill Clinton. Over and over again, corrupt orders from corrupt Democratic politicians are not just obeyed but covered up or dismissed as nothing.
Elect narcissistic liar Trump, and he'll probably be contained within reasonable limits.
I'll give him credit for understanding Trump for what he is (nobody should need credit, because the truth is so unbearably obvious, but we're in an odd reality now).
I just wonder how his faith in the imagined integrity of the Republican Party is doing...
i laughed at this for like a solid two minutes. the republicans in congress have lined up to rubber-stamp his cabinet and it's still a mystery as to whether or not the republicans will vote soon with less than three defectors on the singularly most inept, unqualified, and undesirable cabinet appointee in my living memory.
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quote:Originally posted by Elison R. Salazar: Also considering how so far its been mainly Democratic/Obama appointee Federal judges reigning him in, the GOP have stood by and let everything happen.
Except the Washington judge who stopped the Muslim ban was a Bush appointee.
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Though it does bear mentioning: a GOP appointee facing neither reelection nor the prospect of having to work with Congress.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Even if he does, it's amusing that he says 'now'. It's been a generation or more since half of America was 'against motherhood' in the way he means.
And abortion rates are :checks the wind with a finger: At a 40 year low.
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Stupid question: how much of that decline in abortion rates is attributable to laws restricting access to abortion, and how much is attributable to things like better sex ed or easier access to birth control?
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somewhere between 'largely' and 'almost entirely' depending on region. removing the ability to have an abortion apparently according to sociologists cannot reduce abortion rates down below a homeostatic rate of performed abortions, whether these performed abortions are legal or 'back alley.'
this homeostatic rate is fixed almost entirely on the rate of unwanted pregnancy
guess what impacts unwanted pregnancy positively? comprehensive sex ed and birth control coverage. in some states it has more than halved the rate of unintended or unwanted pregnancy. guess what conservatives want to get rid of? comprehensive sex ed and birth control coverage.
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I don't think that's a stupid question at all.
I wonder what happens to that homeostatic rate when *unplanned* pregnancies are taken into account? I imagine there is significant overlap between unplanned and unwanted, however the behaviors might differ, with more unplanned pregnancies making their choice based on access. In those cases, then, I would think restrictive access might make an impact on the abortion rate.
I do completely agree with Samp on what impacts unwanted (and unplanned) pregnancy. I'm really just pondering a more specific answer to Jon Boy's question, wondering what all information one needs to get at the answer.
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How antiquated.
