The All Things Political Topic - Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.

[Guard Dog]

49 minutes ago, Gfted1 said:

 @religousnutters.

Meh, I'm still holding out hope the anti-Christ is actually a giant meteor rather than a man. I'd rather the whole 1k years of darkness thing to be literal rather than figurative. 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

21 hours ago, Malcador said:

The Antichrist is in a primary election, somewhere.

He was already potus 40 years ago, we've been living in hell all this time.

[Gfted1]

Reagan? Were your ancestors not trickled upon?

[Malcador]

2 minutes ago, Gfted1 said:

Reagan? Were your ancestors not trickled upon?

Well, guess that depends on what was trickling down.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

3 hours ago, Gfted1 said:

Reagan?

Ronald (6) Wilson (6) Reagan(6). It turns out that instead of some metal ****, hell is Marvel movies and nfts. What a disappointment.

[rjshae]

Hell is other people... and we have entirely too many.

[Malcador]

2 hours ago, KP wants Blue Velvet said:

Ronald (6) Wilson (6) Reagan(6). It turns out that instead of some metal ****, hell is Marvel movies and nfts. What a disappointment.

Boomers couldn't even leave us with a good dystopia.

[majestic]

56 minutes ago, Malcador said:

Boomers couldn't even leave us with a good dystopia.

Not sure I agree, you can choose between Brave New World and 1984 at the moment. Comparison's not perfect, but much close than it should be.

Edited May 10, 2022 by majestic

[Zoraptor]

My first reaction was that Reagan couldn't possibly have been 40 years ago, but of course he was. I think this is the first time I've officially felt old.

[Gromnir]

9 hours ago, KP wants Blue Velvet said:

He was already potus 40 years ago, we've been living in hell all this time.

bad math. bill clinton only left office in 2001.

'course for @Guard Dog, woodrow wilson would be the most likely bearer o' the potus antichrist title, with the rest getting no more than a collective, "they are all bad." 

personal, am thinking calvin coolidge, donald trump, james buchanan, william harrison, thomas jefferson and andrew jackson deserve mention way before regan. btw, is more than a few o' our scholarly indian acquaintances who insist abraham lincoln and ulysses s. grant is among the most vile holders o' the potus office, and is tough to argue they is wrong if you look at the situation through a lens colored by the indigenous people's experience.

every generation o' young americans needs a potus antichrist. from a european or canadian pov, am suspecting every post woodrow wilson potus (lending some credence to guard dog's position btw) has had the antichrist label hung on them for a time by some significant number... though obama benefits from a curious get out of jail free pass from all too many euros and kandians. 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited May 11, 2022 by Gromnir

[Amentep]

2 hours ago, majestic said:

Not sure I agree, you can choose between Brave New World and 1984 at the moment. Comparison's not perfect, but much close than it should be.

Problem is Mad Max convinced everyone to invest in assless chaps.

[Gorth]

We're all doomed...

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/apr/23/world-imf-forecasts-economic-growth

Sadly, a recent Bloomberg article (mid April) I read is behind a paywall, but the tl;dr; was about the world economy faltering and the US inflation competing with SpaceX on who can leave Earths orbit the fastest (US inflation hitting 8.5% recently, which is *not* healthy). Main causes (according to Bloomberg) were twofold, first the war in Ukraine (and the sanctions) and second, China's zero covid policy with incessant lockdowns and the resulting bottlenecks for the worlds supply chains.

 

Of course, Bloomberg may have no clue what the're talking about. I'm fully convinced the next global financial crisis, which was going to make a mockery of the 2009 one, was due in 2020. Unfortunately covid struck and the world economies went to hell anyway, with nobody the wiser (that it would have happened without covid, for different reasons). This also means, those underlying causes are still there, because they never got addressed, as covid will get the credits for wrecking economies...

[Gromnir]

6 minutes ago, Gorth said:

This also means, those underlying causes are still there, because they never got addressed, as covid will get the credits for wrecking economies...

have been perpetual kinda dumbstruck by how few lessons were learned from the great recession. 

HA! Good Fun!

 

[Guard Dog]

1 hour ago, Gromnir said:

bad math. bill clinton only left office in 2001.

'course for @Guard Dog, woodrow wilson would be the most likely bearer o' the potus antichrist 

HA! Good Fun!

Well, he did completely ruin the 20th Century. No small feat considering it was fewer than 20 years old at that point.  Of course I could just as well blame Roosevelt because if he'd stayed out of it Taft would have bee re-elected and Wilson would have f----d back off to New Jersey and never be heard from again. The US doesn't (probably) enter WW1. The war (probably) ends in a more equitable peace deal that doesn't completely destroy the Central Powers, and the conditions for the ascension of the Nazi Party (possibly) don't exist. Hard to say on that last one because the Great Depression was pretty much inevitable.  But no Nazis means (possibly) no holocaust. No WW2 as we know it so no Israel in the post war years. THAT is a game changer in the ME and the different culturally Arab regimes will fight each other more than the traditional Sunni/Shia rivalries we had in our timeline. The British would exploit regional rivalries and likely still have a lot more influence in the ME than they did in reality. Possibly even into modern times. 

Would all that be better? Who knows.  

Wilson wasn't a bad guy other than being a eugenics believer and more than a little racist. But his intentions were not bad. I guess. He also couldn't predict the future. 

Edited May 11, 2022 by Guard Dog

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

10 minutes ago, Guard Dog said:

Wilson wasn't a bad guy other than being a eugenics believer and more than a little racist

Perhaps this is a controversial statement, but those are two incredibly ****ty things that kind of make you a bad guy regardless.

[Guard Dog]

3 minutes ago, KP wants Blue Velvet said:

Perhaps this is a controversial statement, but those are two incredibly ****ty things that kind of make you a bad guy regardless.

 That was supposed to be sarcastic. It DID make him a bad guy even by the standards of the time. 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

5 minutes ago, Guard Dog said:

 That was supposed to be sarcastic. It DID make him a bad guy even by the standards of the time. 

Well you can never tell.

[Gromnir]

racism were an official part o' the democrat national platform post civil war (andrew johnson arguable being our most racist President evar) 'til fdr, who himself were a running mate o' the venomously racist james cox, initiated japanese internment by executive order, and ignored jim crow laws. and let's not forget how truman, lbj and jimmy carter all at least flirted with the kkk during their political careers.

'course most (all?) republicans were racist, but the party platform were at least offering a nod to a paternalistic view o' post civil war racial inclusivity. 

have also mentioned more than once how american eugenics inspired euro fascists and not the other way around. it is not hard to find advocates o' eugenics from both sides o' the aisle for that sin as well, particular 'mongst the so-called intellectuals o' the late 19th and early 20th century. 

HA! Good Fun!

[Hurlshort]

LBJ was such a strange case. https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/lyndon-johnson-civil-rights-racism-msna305591

[alanschu]

It's funny because even acknowledging that our past has its share of ****ed up bull**** is enough to throw many people into a tizzy.

I remember when there were protests about John A. MacDonald (our first Prime Minister who, among other things, looked to the US for inspiration on how to deal with that little "Indian problem") and my mom straight up asked me "How could he be bad if he was our first Prime Minister and we built statues of him??"  I asked her what she thought of Lenin statues haha. I actually don't know much about Lenin beyond surface level which likely has its share of rose-coloring/smearing based purely on association with USSR, but knew it'd be an example that worked for her somewhat.

Around the same time, I remember pointing out that Edmonton has landmarks named after Frank Oliver (A Liberal), known for bringing the printing press to the region... so he could disseminate racist propaganda to advocate against black immigration from the US. He also literally stole land from indigenous peoples (offered them $9/acre... the government declared the sale illegal but he somehow still ended up with the deed and didn't pay a cent) and while in office orchestrated the dispersal of two indigenous peoples off their land. I found this shut up conservatives in my mentions but also elicited some frustration from modern day Liberals.

My mom's an odd one though. She is so singular in her disgust towards Justin Trudeau (largely because Albertans have convinced themselves that his father wanted to destroy Alberta when he was PM) that she will share anything on FB that criticizes him. She once shared a post detailing how his government has abandoned support for indigenous communities. Literally the very next post that she shared was about how he bends over backwards and give indigenous communities whatever they want while hating white people. I don't go on FB much but a good friend told me I had to check out her feed.

[Zoraptor]

It was certainly an interesting experience being in the education system literally while someone's place in history was being rewritten- when I started in primary school George Grey, 3rd Governor of New Zealand was largely revered for his role, by the time I left he was largely reviled. And that was over the course of 13 years.

In that case neither view was really deserved, while a lot of bad stuff went down while he was in charge it was considerably less bad than the norms for the time; and he seems to have been genuinely sympathetic and interested in Maori (so long as they weren't anti England), learning the language and writing books about the culture and legends so was definitely not the out and out racist a lot of revisionist types try to paint him as. He did unfortunately end up stealing rather a lot of their land, but with rather more justification and rather less brutality than, say, the near contemporaneous Zulu Wars.

[BruceVC]

5 hours ago, Gorth said:

We're all doomed...

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/apr/23/world-imf-forecasts-economic-growth

Sadly, a recent Bloomberg article (mid April) I read is behind a paywall, but the tl;dr; was about the world economy faltering and the US inflation competing with SpaceX on who can leave Earths orbit the fastest (US inflation hitting 8.5% recently, which is *not* healthy). Main causes (according to Bloomberg) were twofold, first the war in Ukraine (and the sanctions) and second, China's zero covid policy with incessant lockdowns and the resulting bottlenecks for the worlds supply chains.

 

Of course, Bloomberg may have no clue what the're talking about. I'm fully convinced the next global financial crisis, which was going to make a mockery of the 2009 one, was due in 2020. Unfortunately covid struck and the world economies went to hell anyway, with nobody the wiser (that it would have happened without covid, for different reasons). This also means, those underlying causes are still there, because they never got addressed, as covid will get the credits for wrecking economies...

Gothfuscious thats why we dont like you anarchists getting involved in any economic prognostications or policy 

You guys will only be happy when the global economy  collapses and somehow we will create a " new and fairer " economic system  on the foundation of a broken Capitalist system. Remember there  is no historical evidence of a new type of   economic phoenix rising from a global depression. We dont recreate a working system, albeit not perfect,  but we do address systemic problems like in 1929 and 2008

Free market economics works and is real whether we like it or not  as we can all see with this current global inflation caused primarily by supply and demand issues created by the imprudent  lockdowns and the reality of broken supply chain problems. Putins War exacerbated this but its not the cause 

The US economy was in one of  its strongest states just before the virus started hurting all of us economically in 2020. Lets not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Globalization is our friend and it always will be 

[BruceVC]

6 hours ago, Guard Dog said:

 That was supposed to be sarcastic. It DID make him a bad guy even by the standards of the time. 

Eugenics is a  perfectly reasonable system if you an animal, not so much for human beings 

[Sarex]

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/11/shireen-abu-akleh-israeli-forces-kill-al-jazeera-journalist

[Guard Dog]

11 hours ago, Gromnir said:

racism were an official part o' the democrat national platform post civil war (andrew johnson arguable being our most racist President evar) 'til fdr, who himself were a running mate o' the venomously racist james cox, initiated japanese internment by executive order, and ignored jim crow laws. and let's not forget how truman, lbj and jimmy carter all at least flirted with the kkk during their political careers.

'course most (all?) republicans were racist, but the party platform were at least offering a nod to a paternalistic view o' post civil war racial inclusivity. 

have also mentioned more than once how american eugenics inspired euro fascists and not the other way around. it is not hard to find advocates o' eugenics from both sides o' the aisle for that sin as well, particular 'mongst the so-called intellectuals o' the late 19th and early 20th century. 

HA! Good Fun!

So, in other words they were all bad?