Democratic Candidate 2020

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Millennie Al
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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by Millennie Al » Sun Apr 12, 2020 4:36 am

secret squirrel wrote:
Sun Apr 12, 2020 4:16 am
I agree that there's an obvious sense in which the stories about Mora were 'news'. They were true, and of interest to a sizable group of people. When the author says they are not really 'news' he's using the word in a different, more idealistic way. There's no hope of pinning it down exactly, and I doubt there's even a fully coherent concept at the bottom of it, but it seems like most of us often have a vague sense of what the general 'truth' of a situation is, and we expect reported 'news' to reflect that 'truth', or at least not support a narrative that is counter to it. We can't view the Mora story without taking the context into account. Namely, that there were many people looking to support a narrative of abusive 'Bernie Bros', and while the Mora story didn't logically support that narrative, if you accept the author's version of events anyway, the story would be used to support it. In other words, the 'true' story would be used to support a 'false' narrative, and would therefore fail to be 'news' according to this idealized version.
If you decide to publish stories on the basis of what effect they will have, you're not in the business of producing news, you're in the business of producing propaganda.

News is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

If a true story is used to support a false narrative, then the remedy is to explain the greater truth not suppress the lesser one.

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by secret squirrel » Sun Apr 12, 2020 4:41 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Sun Apr 12, 2020 4:29 am
I didn't sugest you would vote for him, I asked why you supported him. But in a first-past-the-post electoral system with only two possible winners, failure to vote for Biden is equivalent to half a vote for Trump, and certainly assists Trump more than voting for Biden would.
Yes but then, by this logic, by not voting for Trump I'm also supporting Biden.

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by secret squirrel » Sun Apr 12, 2020 4:43 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Sun Apr 12, 2020 4:36 am
secret squirrel wrote:
Sun Apr 12, 2020 4:16 am
I agree that there's an obvious sense in which the stories about Mora were 'news'. They were true, and of interest to a sizable group of people. When the author says they are not really 'news' he's using the word in a different, more idealistic way. There's no hope of pinning it down exactly, and I doubt there's even a fully coherent concept at the bottom of it, but it seems like most of us often have a vague sense of what the general 'truth' of a situation is, and we expect reported 'news' to reflect that 'truth', or at least not support a narrative that is counter to it. We can't view the Mora story without taking the context into account. Namely, that there were many people looking to support a narrative of abusive 'Bernie Bros', and while the Mora story didn't logically support that narrative, if you accept the author's version of events anyway, the story would be used to support it. In other words, the 'true' story would be used to support a 'false' narrative, and would therefore fail to be 'news' according to this idealized version.
If you decide to publish stories on the basis of what effect they will have, you're not in the business of producing news, you're in the business of producing propaganda.

News is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

If a true story is used to support a false narrative, then the remedy is to explain the greater truth not suppress the lesser one.
You can't report all the true events that might be of interest to some people though. I make this point in a part of my post omitted by your quote here. All news reporting has an unavoidable element of propaganda.

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by Bewildered » Sun Apr 12, 2020 5:57 am

secret squirrel wrote:
Sun Apr 12, 2020 4:41 am
Millennie Al wrote:
Sun Apr 12, 2020 4:29 am
I didn't sugest you would vote for him, I asked why you supported him. But in a first-past-the-post electoral system with only two possible winners, failure to vote for Biden is equivalent to half a vote for Trump, and certainly assists Trump more than voting for Biden would.
Yes but then, by this logic, by not voting for Trump I'm also supporting Biden.
Yes but to some approximation there are only two possible outcomes, trump is elected or Biden is elected, and of your three easily available options that can influence which one happens you are not choosing the one which makes it least likely that trump will win. If we simplify it down to just these outcomes and just those actions I guess you would need to be really 50:50 on the two candidates* to choose the middle option of not voting.

Of course I know there are more outcomes, because vote numbers are interpreted in various ways and affect how things progress in future. I guess your statement is not just an emotional reaction or a provocation it is along these lines. But I am curious what precisely the calculation is?

* or have much more trust in the opinions of other voters than your own or just make a selfish decision that voting is too much effort and too diluted in impact to be worthwhile.

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by secret squirrel » Sun Apr 12, 2020 6:10 am

Bewildered wrote:
Sun Apr 12, 2020 5:57 am
Yes but to some approximation there are only two possible outcomes, trump is elected or Biden is elected, and of your three easily available options that can influence which one happens you are not choosing the one which makes it least likely that trump will win. If we simplify it down to just these outcomes and just those actions I guess you would need to be really 50:50 on the two candidates* to choose the middle option of not voting.

Of course I know there are more outcomes, because vote numbers are interpreted in various ways and affect how things progress in future. I guess your statement is not just an emotional reaction or a provocation it is along these lines. But I am curious what precisely the calculation is?

* or have much more trust in the opinions of other voters than your own or just make a selfish decision that voting is too much effort and too diluted in impact to be worthwhile.
Yes, as sketched out in a previous post, the conflict is between the obvious short term benefit of a Democratic president vs a Republican president*, and correcting the long-term drift of the Democratic party into neoliberalism. So the short term answer is always to vote Democrat, but the Democratic party has now got to a point where they're nominating people like Biden, so at the same time, something is going very wrong.


*I think the 'anyone but Trump' stance is a little misguided, because I don't see him as worse than the mainstream Republicans in matters of policy, though obviously his administration is unusually dysfunctional and he has numerous personal shortcomings. Trump only survives as president because he's substantially following the Republican agenda.

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by Squeak » Sun Apr 12, 2020 8:52 am

SS, I can see why, from a policy perspective, you might view him as no worse than another Republican. In terms of acts like removing inspectors general and attacking other checks on presidential power, do you also see him as no worse than any other Republican?

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by Bewildered » Sun Apr 12, 2020 9:42 am

secret squirrel wrote:
Sun Apr 12, 2020 6:10 am
Bewildered wrote:
Sun Apr 12, 2020 5:57 am
Yes but to some approximation there are only two possible outcomes, trump is elected or Biden is elected, and of your three easily available options that can influence which one happens you are not choosing the one which makes it least likely that trump will win. If we simplify it down to just these outcomes and just those actions I guess you would need to be really 50:50 on the two candidates* to choose the middle option of not voting.

Of course I know there are more outcomes, because vote numbers are interpreted in various ways and affect how things progress in future. I guess your statement is not just an emotional reaction or a provocation it is along these lines. But I am curious what precisely the calculation is?

* or have much more trust in the opinions of other voters than your own or just make a selfish decision that voting is too much effort and too diluted in impact to be worthwhile.
Yes, as sketched out in a previous post, the conflict is between the obvious short term benefit of a Democratic president vs a Republican president*, and correcting the long-term drift of the Democratic party into neoliberalism. So the short term answer is always to vote Democrat, but the Democratic party has now got to a point where they're nominating people like Biden, so at the same time, something is going very wrong.


*I think the 'anyone but Trump' stance is a little misguided, because I don't see him as worse than the mainstream Republicans in matters of policy, though obviously his administration is unusually dysfunctional and he has numerous personal shortcomings. Trump only survives as president because he's substantially following the Republican agenda.
As far as I can tell he has done less harm the GWB so far. However I do think he is different to regular republicans in ways that are troubling, e.g.
- the things he gets away with (corruption, lying, mis-treatment of the press, etc) but are setting dangerous precedents,
- the level of support he had from neo nazis and they way he emboldens then
- the somewhat personality cult and fanaticism amongst some of his following
- he did get his Muslim ban through in some for, and it did do significant harm
- he is influencing more nasty abuses and harsh behaviour by immigration authorities

Regarding the benefit, I think it should be less in the US than other countries because they do have primaries where you can vote alternative candidates to get the nomination. At the same it’s unclear to me that your intended message of not voting in the presidential election would send the message you want it to. It could also go in the direction of the part of the electorate that doesn’t vote getting cut off and marginalised. Isn’t that what happened with evangelicals until Karl Rove got them engaged and used them to win the election for GWB?

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by secret squirrel » Sun Apr 12, 2020 11:46 am

Squeak wrote:
Sun Apr 12, 2020 8:52 am
SS, I can see why, from a policy perspective, you might view him as no worse than another Republican. In terms of acts like removing inspectors general and attacking other checks on presidential power, do you also see him as no worse than any other Republican?
Trump is certainly 'worse' in that regard, but there are some other perspectives on this. First, Trump only gets away with this kind of thing as far as it suits the Republican policy agenda to keep him around. The establishment of both parties, and the top brass of the military and intelligence services don't seem to like him very much on a personal level. If the Republicans wanted him gone, he would be gone. So while the next Republican candidate president will likely be much more presentable, I expect the attacks on inconvenient institutions to continue, or even escalate, albeit in a more subtle and insidious form.

Second, how good is the US status quo, really? I would argue that the status quo is pretty bad domestically, and extremely bad globally. In the latter half of the 20th century and beyond the USA has been a global ogre. There's a reason why protesters all around the developing world burn American flags, and it's not because they're 'jealous of their freedom'. This status quo is maintained by the current set of 'democratic' institutions. They did not prevent officials from the Bush administration failing to relinquish significant involvement with arms companies then taking the country on a tide of lies into a war where the atrocities of American troops are well documented. They did not prevent establishment Liberals from socially rehabilitating the man on whose watch this happened. They did not prevent previous administrations from supporting fascist coups against democratically elected governments all over the world. They did not prevent them from using their economic muscle to impose damaging 'free market economics' on developing countries, supposedly their allies. And so on, ad nauseam.

It has already been pointed out that 'the Left' could not expect to get anything significant done because the way the American system is organized prevents things being effectively changed from the top. This is a situation that overwhelmingly serves the Republican agenda. So while Trump attacks institutions for bad reasons, that doesn't mean they are not bad.

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by secret squirrel » Sun Apr 12, 2020 12:02 pm

Bewildered wrote:
Sun Apr 12, 2020 9:42 am
As far as I can tell he has done less harm the GWB so far. However I do think he is different to regular republicans in ways that are troubling, e.g.
- the things he gets away with (corruption, lying, mis-treatment of the press, etc) but are setting dangerous precedents,
- the level of support he had from neo nazis and they way he emboldens then
- the somewhat personality cult and fanaticism amongst some of his following
- he did get his Muslim ban through in some for, and it did do significant harm
- he is influencing more nasty abuses and harsh behaviour by immigration authorities

Regarding the benefit, I think it should be less in the US than other countries because they do have primaries where you can vote alternative candidates to get the nomination. At the same it’s unclear to me that your intended message of not voting in the presidential election would send the message you want it to. It could also go in the direction of the part of the electorate that doesn’t vote getting cut off and marginalised. Isn’t that what happened with evangelicals until Karl Rove got them engaged and used them to win the election for GWB?
The GWB administration is the low watermark. The more you dig into it the worse they appear. Even little known stuff like the deterioration of relations with North Korea. I quote from William J. Perry's autobiography (sorry for the formatting, I'm copy-pasting from a pdf):

"Colin Powell, who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs when I joined
the Clinton administration, was now the designated secretary of state in the
George W. Bush administration. I brought him up to date on our negotiations,
and he told me that he planned to follow up on our negotiations with North
Korea and try to bring them to a successful conclusion. Just six weeks after
President Bush’s inauguration, South Korean president Kim Dae Jung visited
Washington for reassurance that the new administration would follow through
on the North Korea negotiations that I had started. Secretary Powell appar-
ently gave him that assurance, which led to the next morning’s Washington
Post headlines reading: “Bush to Pick up Clinton Talks.” That same afternoon,
when President Kim met with President Bush, the latter told Kim flatly that
he was breaking off all dialogue with North Korea, and for two years there
were no discussions with the North. I was confused and angry as I saw our
long and carefully conducted diplomacy being summarily rejected, and I was
despondent at what the future would bring in Korea as this opportunity for
diplomacy slipped away. I appealed to my long-time friends in the State De-
partment, Colin Powell and Rich Armitage, but they had no real option but to
comply with the president’s decision."


Trump's rhetoric does seem to be associated with louder voices on the far-right. Which is obviously bad. It's hard to say whether he's a symptom or a cause. This has obviously been bubbling away for a while. It's probably a bit of both. It's hard to say to what extent that genie can be put back in the bottle in the near future though. Immigration officials have always been awful in the US. Again, Trump may or may not be making things a bit worse, but then also he may or may not be drawing attention to some stuff that was going on before.

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by noggins » Sun Apr 12, 2020 12:56 pm

Imagine the us electorate is you , your identically thinking partner, and 98 other voters. If you hold your nose and vote for biden, trump needs 51 votes. If you abstain/3rd party etc Trump needs 50. Therefore, 1 abstention= 1/2 a vote for trump.

Not voting for biden in a swing slate makes you a trump enabling fool.

Yes, trump is particularly bad, and while a biden win might help the right of the Dems, a trump second term will help the right of the Reps. Having the dem president is only half the battle. The other half is not getting the worst of the reps.

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by jimbob » Sun Apr 12, 2020 4:05 pm

noggins wrote:
Sun Apr 12, 2020 12:56 pm
Imagine the us electorate is you , your identically thinking partner, and 98 other voters. If you hold your nose and vote for biden, trump needs 51 votes. If you abstain/3rd party etc Trump needs 50. Therefore, 1 abstention= 1/2 a vote for trump.

Not voting for biden in a swing slate makes you a trump enabling fool.

Yes, trump is particularly bad, and while a biden win might help the right of the Dems, a trump second term will help the right of the Reps. Having the dem president is only half the battle. The other half is not getting the worst of the reps.
Exactly. The GOP had all three pillars of government and is stacking the Supreme Court.

It's a similar argument to here, when, despite my dislike of Corbyn, I still voted Labour in my marginal constituency - which turned Tory by less than the number of votes for the Green candidate.
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by Woodchopper » Sun Apr 12, 2020 5:08 pm

secret squirrel wrote:
Sat Apr 11, 2020 4:46 pm
Woodchopper wrote:
Sat Apr 11, 2020 3:50 pm
secret squirrel wrote:
Sat Apr 11, 2020 1:59 pm
What have I said that is wrong? My only claim about abolitionism is that it started fringe. Obviously it grew. I never made any specific claim about the timeline. I could understand it if people were arguing my claim was so obviously true and weak as to be irrelevant, but actually false? Come off it.
The subject is the abolition of slavery in the United States.

The United States became independent in 1783. At that point four states had already passed legislation to abolish slavery, they were followed a year later Connecticut and Rhode Island, and 15 years after that by New York. As the US expanded westwards those Northern states ensured that new territories to the north of Kentucky and Virginia were free of slavery.

In the North, abolition was a popular and successful mass movement right from the first day the US was independent.

However, the problem for those northern abolitionists was that the southern states entrenched slavery and made it almost impossible for the northern abolitionists to prevent it.
Look, I respect that you are someone who posts in good faith and generally has interesting and on-point things to say, but this feels like you're gaslighting me. What in the two sentences I wrote this about is incompatible with any of that?
secret squirrel, I'm not trying to gaslight you.

You wrote that
My only point is that abolition was initially a fringe ideal of fairly radical people who were mostly laughed at by right-thinking centrists.
In contrast, as dyqik suggested, that doesn't apply to the north where there was a long history of people who didn't support slavery. The northern states banned slavery from independence, or soon after. One reason they did that was because slave ownership wasn't widespread during the colonial period either. For example, in the mid-18th Century in New England slaves accounted for about 3% of the population. Owning slaves was unusual.

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by Woodchopper » Sun Apr 12, 2020 7:18 pm

Squeak wrote:
Fri Apr 10, 2020 2:37 pm
dyqik wrote:
Fri Apr 10, 2020 1:25 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Fri Apr 10, 2020 12:46 pm

I agree with all of this, FWIW, especially the bit in bold. I've certainly not intended to suggest that the party shouldn't be doing those things; my point is that it's not enough.

If the USA takes 20 years to drastically reduce its contributions to climate change, the planet is toast.

Twenty years is a generation. If I were a young USian saddled with insane quantities of debt, massive and growing inequality, unaffordable healthcare an increasingly f.cked climate, continuing mass incarceration and slavery (especially of minorities) and so on, I would find it hard to swallow that "we're working towards it gradually and hope to get there in 20 years" is the best the largest party in the country can manage. The difference between that and doing nothing genuinely isn't very significant if you need help now. It's throwing a whole generation under the bus. It's very difficult for young people to have hope for their lives when so many issues that affect them, such as inequality and the environment, are getting worse at a faster rate than politics seems able to keep up.

It's notable that the centre-right of the Democratic party tends to be older. It's a generation that didn't face the same problems to the same extent, has exacerbated them for the next generation, and won't be alive to have to cope with the worst consequences of climate change. They complain about young people's anger and mock their ambition, and then talk about the importance of building alliances, but apparently without actually offering anything of immediate tangible consequence, without listening, and without empathising.

So yes, great, let's chip away at electing more Democrats. But while they're working on that, what else are they doing?

Alternatively, if the Democratic party is determined to focus solely on winning elections, some other movement is needed to improve society and the environment. But if the Democrats want loyalty from the left they need to earn it, and being or supporting that movement seems to me a more promising approach than the kind of hostility seen currently.
There's literally no other option than a 20-30 year effort to deprogram the US from the 30-40 year effort by the GOP and far-right to make themselves the establishment. Seriously, you are a fantasist if you believe that substantial change can happen and stick in significantly less time. You need to wait for judges to retire, build media ecosystems, build state level parties and take over state houses, state senates and state executives. Then significant change at the national level is possible.
Until the last couple of months, I would have agreed with you Dyqik. Covid does have the possibility of being sufficiently awful for the US to cause a step-change in political possibilities. Of course, that step-change could go on either direction.
Yes, there could be dramatic change. And I agree it could go either way.

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sun Apr 12, 2020 10:18 pm

NYT has finally published a piece on Tara Reade's allegation that she was sexually assaulted by Biden while working for him as an assistant.

Paywalled, so I haven't read it yet.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/us/p ... laint.html
We have the right to a clean, healthy, sustainable environment.

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by secret squirrel » Mon Apr 13, 2020 2:35 am

Woodchopper wrote:
Sun Apr 12, 2020 5:08 pm
secret squirrel, I'm not trying to gaslight you.

You wrote that
My only point is that abolition was initially a fringe ideal of fairly radical people who were mostly laughed at by right-thinking centrists.
In contrast, as dyqik suggested, that doesn't apply to the north where there was a long history of people who didn't support slavery. The northern states banned slavery from independence, or soon after. One reason they did that was because slave ownership wasn't widespread during the colonial period either. For example, in the mid-18th Century in New England slaves accounted for about 3% of the population. Owning slaves was unusual.
I realize that you’re not deliberately trying to gaslight me, and that there is a genuine miscommunication going on, for which the vagueness of my original claim must carry a lot of the blame. To fill in the gaps in my argument you, and presumably dyqik too, seem to be interpreting me as saying that slavery was initially widespread, or even ubiquitous. This is obviously not historically correct, and is refuted by glancing at Wikipedia. But that’s not what I’m saying. I’m using ‘abolitionism’ in a stronger sense than ‘slavery not being the norm’. For example, in Britain (in my original post it’s not even clear whether I’m even talking about the US) slave trading had been formally illegal since the middle ages. And yet nevertheless the British became one of the dominant slave trading nations. Despite court rulings from the Elizabethan period and beyond that slavery was not recognized in England, people routinely brought slaves bought elsewhere into England, and the Colonies of course ran on slave labour. There are even several documented cases of adverts for the sale of slaves in English newspapers. Quoting from David Olusoga’s ‘Black and British’ (chapter 3):

In 1744 a notice in the Daily Advertiser read,

To be sold. A pretty little Negro Boy, about nine Years old, and well limb’d. If not dispos’d of, is to be sent to the West Indies in six days Time. He is to be seen at the Dolphin Tavern in Tower Street.4

This advertisement for the sale of a child from a London pub was sandwiched between a listing for Scottish linen, ‘of the best Fabrick and Colour’, and an offer of employment for ‘Two Journeymen Taylors’ who might be willing to ply their trade in the West Indies. It is not unique. Historians have found around forty listings like it in English newspapers, and eight in Scottish periodicals, all from between 1709 and 1792.5 There are without doubt others that lie as yet undiscovered. In 1709 the Tatler offered ‘a black boy, twelve years of age, fit to wait on a gentleman’. That child could be procured from ‘Dennis’s Coffee-house in Finch Lane’. Half a century later the London Advertiser carried a notice of ‘a Negro boy age about fourteen years old, warranted free from any distemper’ who, it was assured, ‘has been used two years to all kinds of household work, and to wait on table; his price is £25, and would not be sold but the person he belongs to is leaving off business.’ Those interested were casually instructed to, ‘Apply at the bar of George Coffee House in Chancery Lane, over the Gate’.



So who were the early British abolitionists? To my mind people like Granville Sharp, who saw that despite the law slavery was alive in England and wanted to do something about it. It is notable that at this time in England, despite slavery having been illegal since the middle ages, it required tremendous personal effort from people like Sharp to protect the rights of slaves and former slaves. Quoting now from Wikipedia:

Sharp was not completely alone at the beginning of the struggle: the Quakers, especially in America, were committed abolitionists. Sharp had a long and fruitful correspondence with Anthony Benezet, a Quaker abolitionist in Pennsylvania. However, the Quakers were a marginal group in England....

This seems to support the idea that active opposition to slavery was not common in Britain, being confided largely to fringe religious groups. Again, despite slavery having been illegal in England since the middle ages.

Hopefully this makes it a little easier to see where I’m coming from.

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by JQH » Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:06 pm

Millennie Al wrote:
Sun Apr 12, 2020 4:01 am
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Fri Apr 10, 2020 1:46 pm
But seriously, given that the planet's future habitability depends on this view being incorrect,
The planet's future habitability is not in doubt. It has been a lot hotter than the most extreme alarmist predictions and our presence here today shows life did not go extinct.
Temperatures are rising a lot more rapidly than any time in the geological past, making it even harder for life to adapt. And while life as a whole may not disappear, individual species will go extinct; the lack of trilobites proves that.
And remember that if you botch the exit, the carnival of reaction may be coming to a town near you.

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by dyqik » Mon Apr 13, 2020 4:20 pm

secret squirrel wrote:
Mon Apr 13, 2020 2:35 am
Woodchopper wrote:
Sun Apr 12, 2020 5:08 pm
secret squirrel, I'm not trying to gaslight you.

You wrote that
My only point is that abolition was initially a fringe ideal of fairly radical people who were mostly laughed at by right-thinking centrists.
In contrast, as dyqik suggested, that doesn't apply to the north where there was a long history of people who didn't support slavery. The northern states banned slavery from independence, or soon after. One reason they did that was because slave ownership wasn't widespread during the colonial period either. For example, in the mid-18th Century in New England slaves accounted for about 3% of the population. Owning slaves was unusual.
I realize that you’re not deliberately trying to gaslight me, and that there is a genuine miscommunication going on, for which the vagueness of my original claim must carry a lot of the blame. To fill in the gaps in my argument you, and presumably dyqik too, seem to be interpreting me as saying that slavery was initially widespread, or even ubiquitous.
This is not what I took issue with from your post. I took issue with your claim that abolitionism was a fringe view (in the historical context of the run up to the US civil war). The link I have shows that abolitionism was common, common enough to adopted by one of the larger religious groups in Pennsylvania almost 200 years before the US civil war, and almost 100 years before independence, and only 50 years after they arrived in the US.

It wasn't the dominant view among the powerful at independence, but it wasn't a fringe view either. John Adams was an outright abolitionist, Thomas Jefferson wanted slavery to be abolished within a generation after independence, despite owning slaves*, and tried to insert propaganda about England forcing the institution of slavery on the colonies into the Declaration. Washington freed his slaves.

Now, maybe you didn't mean fringe view in the way I take it to mean - a view that isn't part of the political mainstream.

*People are complicated.

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by lpm » Mon Apr 13, 2020 10:06 pm

Sanders breaks ranks with Secret Squirrel and commits to voting for Biden.
So to me, for all of those reasons and so many more, a president who doesn’t apparently has never read the constitution of the United States who believes he’s above the law. A president who lies all of the time, a president who has at least shown me that he is a racist and a sexist and a homophobe and a xenophobe and a religious bigot. I mean, for all of those reasons or more, we’ve got to make Trump a one term president and we need you in the white house. So I will do all that I can to see that happens, Joe. And I know that there is an enormous responsibility on your shoulders right now and it’s imperative that all of us work together to do what has to be done not only in this moment but beyond this moment in the future of this country.
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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by shpalman » Mon Apr 13, 2020 10:28 pm

lpm wrote:
Mon Apr 13, 2020 10:06 pm
Sanders breaks ranks with Secret Squirrel and commits to voting for Biden.
So to me, for all of those reasons and so many more, a president who doesn’t apparently has never read the constitution of the United States who believes he’s above the law. A president who lies all of the time, a president who has at least shown me that he is a racist and a sexist and a homophobe and a xenophobe and a religious bigot. I mean, for all of those reasons or more, we’ve got to make Trump a one term president and we need you in the white house. So I will do all that I can to see that happens, Joe. And I know that there is an enormous responsibility on your shoulders right now and it’s imperative that all of us work together to do what has to be done not only in this moment but beyond this moment in the future of this country.
Has anyone seen #sorrybernie on twitter?
having that swing is a necessary but not sufficient condition for it meaning a thing
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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by Martin_B » Tue Apr 14, 2020 12:15 am

lpm wrote:
Mon Apr 13, 2020 10:06 pm
Sanders breaks ranks with Secret Squirrel and commits to voting for Biden.
So to me, for all of those reasons and so many more, a president who doesn’t apparently has never read the constitution of the United States who believes he’s above the law. A president who lies all of the time, a president who has at least shown me that he is a racist and a sexist and a homophobe and a xenophobe and a religious bigot. I mean, for all of those reasons or more, we’ve got to make Trump a one term president and we need you in the white house. So I will do all that I can to see that happens, Joe. And I know that there is an enormous responsibility on your shoulders right now and it’s imperative that all of us work together to do what has to be done not only in this moment but beyond this moment in the future of this country.
With reports that Biden and Sanders will have "policy discussions" on areas like healthcare and social reform. Of course, that doesn't mean Biden will amend his positions, but may mollify the left-wing without scaring too many centrists into backing the tea-party president.
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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by Millennie Al » Tue Apr 14, 2020 12:18 am

JQH wrote:
Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:06 pm
Millennie Al wrote:
Sun Apr 12, 2020 4:01 am
The planet's future habitability is not in doubt. It has been a lot hotter than the most extreme alarmist predictions and our presence here today shows life did not go extinct.
Temperatures are rising a lot more rapidly than any time in the geological past,
Really? Disprove this then: about 1,000,000,000 years ago fo a period of 200 years the temperature rose at twice the speed it has over the last 200 years, before equally rapidly falling again to its previous level.

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by dyqik » Tue Apr 14, 2020 12:29 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Tue Apr 14, 2020 12:18 am
JQH wrote:
Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:06 pm
Millennie Al wrote:
Sun Apr 12, 2020 4:01 am
The planet's future habitability is not in doubt. It has been a lot hotter than the most extreme alarmist predictions and our presence here today shows life did not go extinct.
Temperatures are rising a lot more rapidly than any time in the geological past,
Really? Disprove this then: about 1,000,000,000 years ago fo a period of 200 years the temperature rose at twice the speed it has over the last 200 years, before equally rapidly falling again to its previous level.
Well, we could always look at the history books to see how that affected human agriculture and civilization.
Last edited by dyqik on Tue Apr 14, 2020 12:38 am, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by Millennie Al » Tue Apr 14, 2020 12:37 am

dyqik wrote:
Tue Apr 14, 2020 12:29 am
Millennie Al wrote:
Tue Apr 14, 2020 12:18 am
JQH wrote:
Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:06 pm
Temperatures are rising a lot more rapidly than any time in the geological past,
Really? Disprove this then: about 1,000,000,000 years ago fo a period of 200 years the temperature rose at twice the speed it has over the last 200 years, before equally rapidly falling again to its previous level.
First you have to prove it did happen, and that it affected human civilization. Until then, it's just an orbital teapot.
No. I don't have to prove any such thing. I am challenging the statement by offering an assertion which is inconsistent with it. If the statement is true, then obviously the assertion can be disproved. There was no mention of human civilisation in the statement - quite the contrary: it referred to "the geological past".

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by dyqik » Tue Apr 14, 2020 12:40 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Tue Apr 14, 2020 12:37 am
dyqik wrote:
Tue Apr 14, 2020 12:29 am
Millennie Al wrote:
Tue Apr 14, 2020 12:18 am


Really? Disprove this then: about 1,000,000,000 years ago fo a period of 200 years the temperature rose at twice the speed it has over the last 200 years, before equally rapidly falling again to its previous level.
First you have to prove it did happen, and that it affected human civilization. Until then, it's just an orbital teapot.
No. I don't have to prove any such thing. I am challenging the statement by offering an assertion which is inconsistent with it. If the statement is true, then obviously the assertion can be disproved. There was no mention of human civilisation in the statement - quite the contrary: it referred to "the geological past".
Wrong. You are whatabouting with an example that is utterly irrelevant to both this thread, to climate science and to the effects of climate change on the world.

I was editing my post above, by the way, and I can't be arsed to change it back.
Last edited by dyqik on Tue Apr 14, 2020 12:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Democratic Candidate 2020

Post by dyqik » Tue Apr 14, 2020 12:48 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Sun Apr 12, 2020 4:01 am
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Fri Apr 10, 2020 1:46 pm
But seriously, given that the planet's future habitability depends on this view being incorrect,
The planet's future habitability is not in doubt. It has been a lot hotter than the most extreme alarmist predictions and our presence here today shows life did not go extinct.
By the way, this is false. Because we don't give a f.ck about habitability for bacteria, viruses etc. or other non-human life and you'd have to be a complete idiot to consider that the appropriate meaning of "habitability" in the context of BOAF's posts here.

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