The US Election 2016, Part IX

[HoonDing]

Trump gonna win bigly.

[Guard Dog]

 

Excellent long dialogue on what the Russian government is trying to get out of mucking with U.S. elections.  Excerpt:

 

We had wrongly assumed that Russia’s confrontation with the West was about ideology. But it has always been about the threat that a Western system of governance, based on the rule of law and human values, posed to the Soviet and current Russian system, where the rule of law is subjected to the powers of the state. In the 1990s when Russia embraced democracy, the West ceased to be a threat. After the reactionary restoration of the 2000s, the West once again poses a threat.

 

I suppose the main difference between Russia and the Soviet Union is that the Soviet Union was trying to demonstrate that its system was different and better than the Western one, while Putin is trying to show that there is no difference between Russia and the West today. Russia doesn’t have a vision for the future; Russia doesn’t have an appealing ideology. All he needs to do is show the West as hypocritical, as cynical as Russia is—that we’re all the same. It’s sort of [a] lower denominator.

 

His aim is to discredit the U.S. election process. I don’t think he really thinks he can get Trump into power. I don’t think he particularly cares, frankly. In some ways, Hillary Clinton might be just as good, if not better [from Putin’s perspective], because Putin constantly needs a confrontation with somebody. If Hillary wins by a narrow margin and has a limited room for maneuver, Putin may be just as happy. So at the moment, he is confronting the whole American election system. The dirtier the election, the messier it is, the better.

 

If this is a grand Russian master plan the ambitions and abilities of these folks have been drastically overstated. All that has happened is some embarrassing e-mails  hacked and released. Like I keep saying, if the Clinton camp and the DNC were not doing EXACTLY what they were accused of doing this would have amounted to nothing. If there are no skeletons in the closet you don't have to worry about Russian hackers opening the closet. If they even have.

 

As dastardly plots go this one is pretty unimaginative. Now if this gets Trump elected and it turns out he's a Russian spy named Yuri secretly planted in the US as a child by Kruschev and guided towards the Presidency all his life to lead the US in a failed war that results in Soviet expansion into Western Europe and Asia THEN I'll be impressed.

 

Actually no, I wouldn't. I'd still look at Trump and say "Really Nikita? This is you you sent?"

Edited November 7, 2016 by Guard Dog

[ShadySands]

In summation, if true then their foreign policy is as awful as our foreign policy?

[Raithe]

[HoonDing]

It's only common sense that countries like Russia, China, North Korea, Zimbabwe and Philippines support Trump. He's gonna make a lot of great deals.

[Meshugger]

It's only common sense that countries like Russia, China, North Korea, Zimbabwe and Philippines support Trump. He's gonna make a lot of great deals.

 

Western Europe cannot into deals

[Hiro Protagonist]

 

Excellent long dialogue on what the Russian government is trying to get out of mucking with U.S. elections.  Excerpt:

 

 

An opinion piece. Straight to the bin.

[Zoraptor]

 

Cherry picking is possible when there is so much information that person can't reasonably spent enough time to internalize it themselves, so they turn to somebody else that has that time and they trust will tell them what that information contained.

 

 

It really isn't. You can cherrypick from any set of data, you don't need a big set. All you really need is an agenda, some information that supports your agenda and a basic knowledge of propaganda techniques. A small set of data makes it more difficult to convince informed people as it is easy to check, yes, but such techniques are not really aimed at informed people anyway as it gets progressively more difficult to convince people the more informed they are. It also has a flip side though, more data means it's easier to show cherrypickjing is happening, indeed that is one reason why there's a lot of distrust of media.

 

 

Yep, and that's the crux of the matter. They're real documents and emails, and there's never been a serious effort to discredit WL information as being false or altered, all the effort has gone into obfuscation rather than denial. If they were false that would be the defence, and it would be a complete one that would discredit WL far more than any amount of neo Red Scare McCarthyism and claims of bias could.

 

I think it is fair to point out, it'd be impossible to prove the emails were fake.

 

 

It would be impossible to convince everyone, but you could do a pretty good job of it if they were fake as it's impossible to do large volumes of made up information accurately. You could easily show that you were in place X when you were meant to be in place Y, that you only met person Z later or they were somewhere else, that person V wasn't at that job yet, etc etc. There's too much detail to get it right, and the instant response to fake emails is to say they're fake as that is both a complete defence and discredits WL.

 

 

Excellent long dialogue on what the Russian government is trying to get out of mucking with U.S. elections.

 

 

 

 

Meh, interview is rubbish. Basically just wank saying what people want to be true, plenty of the usual self contradictory stuff as well- Russia's economy is crap, but simultaneously upper-high; they have nothing to fear from the west, except the west is ruining their economy; Putin needs constant confrontation (examples from his first two terms? No?) while the west presumably doesn't despite having far more wars over the past 20 years than Russia. It's that sort of crap that gives Russia ammunition and is part of the problem.

 

[late edit: the thing I disliked most was using 'isolationism' to describe Russia not liking the west, which is overt occidentcentrism and pure narrative pandering. Isolationism is something like DPRK where nobody likes them and few tolerate them or Eritrea where the country is locked down as entirely as they can make it; Russia's relations with most of the world are absolutely fine. There are even still discussion of a FTA with us, as we're not part of the sanctions regime. There's no fundamental desire to disengage with the west that isolationism implies, just a deep- imo justified- scepticism about their motives]

 

Plus of course it doesn't mention that even if there were Russian hacking it wouldn't matter if there wasn't bad stuff to hide. If the worst was Huma and John's Spirit Cooking there simply wouldn't be a story.

Edited November 7, 2016 by Zoraptor

[Wrath of Dagon]

Western system of governance, based on the rule of law and human values,

Ha, ha, ha

while Putin is trying to show that there is no difference between Russia and the West today. Russia doesn’t have a vision for the future; Russia doesn’t have an appealing ideology. All he needs to do is show the West as hypocritical, as cynical as Russia is—that we’re all the same. It’s sort of [a] lower denominator.

I'd say he's succeeding pretty well. At least we don't yet kill political opponents, but with Hilzilla "can't we just drone him", suicide in the back of the head I'm not so sure.

 

So at the moment, he is confronting the whole American election system. The dirtier the election, the messier it is, the better.

I'd say Democrats have taken care of that a long time ago, no need for Putin, take a break Vlad.

[Malcador]

Watching this rant, I am curious about one thing, what's everyone's problem with common core?

[BruceVC]

 

 

 

Excellent long dialogue on what the Russian government is trying to get out of mucking with U.S. elections.

 

 

 

 

Meh, interview is rubbish. Basically just wank saying what people want to be true, plenty of the usual self contradictory stuff as well- Russia's economy is crap, but simultaneously upper-high; they have nothing to fear from the west, except the west is ruining their economy; Putin needs constant confrontation (examples from his first two terms? No?) while the west presumably doesn't despite having far more wars over the past 20 years than Russia. It's that sort of crap that gives Russia ammunition and is part of the problem.

 

[late edit: the thing I disliked most was using 'isolationism' to describe Russia not liking the west, which is overt occidentcentrism and pure narrative pandering. Isolationism is something like DPRK where nobody likes them and few tolerate them or Eritrea where the country is locked down as entirely as they can make it; Russia's relations with most of the world are absolutely fine. There are even still discussion of a FTA with us, as we're not part of the sanctions regime. There's no fundamental desire to disengage with the west that isolationism implies, just a deep- imo justified- scepticism about their motives]

 

Plus of course it doesn't mention that even if there were Russian hacking it wouldn't matter if there wasn't bad stuff to hide. If the worst was Huma and John's Spirit Cooking there simply wouldn't be a story.

 

Obviously you will reject this article, it raises valid and real criticism of Putin and his objective of Russian hegemony

[HoonDing]

Trump will get along fine with Putin.

[Amentep]

Watching this rant, I am curious about one thing, what's everyone's problem with common core?

The general complaints I've heard are -

*National standards take away states rights and states control

*One size fits all standards don't allow room for adjustments to classroom demographics

*National standards places even more standardized testing in the path of over-tested students.

*Does nothing to address the incentives to move students on regardless of achtievement

*Common core standards weren't tested in the classroom before implementation.

*Common core relies on rote learning methods and doesn't allow room for creativity.

*emphasis on certain subjects leaves little room for the arts or computer science in the curriiculum

*textbooks will most likely be aimed at two largest school markets (texas, California) leaving no room for inclusion of local history or authors

[Malcador]

Ok, figure I'd ask some of you here as googling that means I have to sift through zealotry and am not fit for that at the moment

[Guard Dog]

 

Watching this rant, I am curious about one thing, what's everyone's problem with common core?

The general complaints I've heard are -

*National standards take away states rights and states control

*One size fits all standards don't allow room for adjustments to classroom demographics

*National standards places even more standardized testing in the path of over-tested students.

*Does nothing to address the incentives to move students on regardless of achtievement

*Common core standards weren't tested in the classroom before implementation.

*Common core relies on rote learning methods and doesn't allow room for creativity.

*emphasis on certain subjects leaves little room for the arts or computer science in the curriiculum

*textbooks will most likely be aimed at two largest school markets (texas, California) leaving no room for inclusion of local history or authors

 

Those are all true. To add to is there are some bat**** crazy methods of explaining simple algebra and logic problems that IMO make them a lot harder to comprehend. It's like they decided to find the most abstract method on purpose. I get that the idea is to start teaching algebra at earlier ages but they are building the house without a foundation. My formal education is Electronics Engineering. So I am no stranger to math. And the one thing I absolutely learned is every new thing you are taught is predicated on the last thing you were taught all the way back to memorizing multiplication tables. To speed up the advanced math Common Core is cutting out a lot of the early learning and replacing the years or repetition learning of Associative Rule mathematics with some weird abstract logic method. I think that is a bad idea. The teaching methods we were using go all the way back to ancient Egypt and were working fine.

 

I remember a very long time ago asking my 5th Grade teacher Mrs Lutsky why I needed to learn fractions. She couldn't really give me an answer. I remember asking my 8th Grade teacher Mr. Johnson why i needed to learn Geometry. He didn't really give me an answer. I asked my 9th Grade Algebra teacher, Mrs. Hubbard, why we needed to learn Algebra. She couldn't give me an answer. Now I know. I needed to learn fractions and geometry to learn algebra. I needed to learn algebra so I could lean how to solve matrices and Trigonometry. I needed to learn those so I could learn Calculus. I needed Calculus to learn Physics and differential equations. I needed those to learn Statics, Dynamics, Fluid Mechanics, Materials Science, etc. Without Trigonometry RF electronics as we know it would not exist. And I wouldn't be sitting on my porch typing this message on my wifi connected tablet. 

 

We lean the simple things so we can learn the hard things. We can't jump straight to the hard things. That's my $.02 on Common Core. But everything Amentep said was right too.

[BruceVC]

I'm feeling more confidant around a Democrat victory but of course its early days, Trump is getting nailed hard by the Latino vote

 

This could be the primary reason he loses and this is directly related to his initial diatribe against the entire Latino community when he called them criminals and rapists 

[Volourn]

He didn't call the entire Latino community criminals and rapists. L0L Not that what he said was good as it wasn't. It was dumb and foolish and ignorant but you lying is also dumb and foolish and ignorant.

[Malcador]

Well, his saying stupid crap that had him rolling dice to piss off Hispanics certainly will bite him a little.

[Longknife]

You guys know what today is? Today's the day we get to choose if we wanna die via a corrupt political machine provoking a nuclear war with Russia or via an idiot with a dumb haircut accidently hitting the nuclear launch button and accidently bombing ourselves.

[BruceVC]

He didn't call the entire Latino community criminals and rapists. L0L Not that what he said was good as it wasn't. It was dumb and foolish and ignorant but you lying is also dumb and foolish and ignorant.

 

 

Well, his saying stupid crap that had him rolling dice to piss off Hispanics certainly will bite him a little.

Malc is correct, he didnt technically call the entire Latino community criminals but he made several disparaging comments about them and the general perception  is that he insulted the entire Latino community 

[Volourn]

The sad thing is most of us posting on this forum don't even get the 'honour' of choosing how the world ends. L0L

 

 

P.S. The world/US will survive no matter who wins.

 

 

 

"Malc is correct, he didnt technically call the entire Latino community criminals but he made several disparaging comments about them and the general perception  is that he insulted the entire Latino community"

 

You DO realize that is EXACTLY what I said. I just pointed out your usual lies. There was no 'technically' about it;. he did not call the entire Latino community that. Stop perpetrating that lie. Spamming it doesn't make it so.

Edited November 8, 2016 by Volourn

[Agiel]

 

Why Electing Donald Trump Could Make Political Correctness Worse

We could see further polarization and entrenchment from both an increasingly militant cultural left versus an increasingly nasty and brutish Trumpian right.

by Cathy Young

 

Among the many reasons offered for holding one’s nose and voting for Donald Trump is that he’s our last, best hope for stopping the juggernaut of political correctness. We’ve all come across such opinions on Twitter. I’ve even been accused of opposing Trump for self-interested reasons because I’ll have “nothing to discuss and no money to make if Trump actually crushes political correctness.”

 

Pundits such as The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger have expressed similar ideas on a more sophisticated level. In an August column, Henninger blamed Obama administration policies for the “campus pillaging of free speech” and the gutting of due process for students accused of sexual offenses. A Hillary Clinton victory, he predicted, would further empower the forces of PC. While the column did not mention Trump by name, Henninger clearly implied that a President Trump could rein in the campus witch-hunts. In an earlier column, he had hailed Trump’s candidacy as a symbol of the “revolt of the politically incorrect.”

 

The spread of cult-like “social justice” progressivism obsessed with purging speech, thought, and everyday behavior of anything that could be deemed “oppressive” is a very real problem, not just on college campuses but in many other areas, including popular culture and “geek culture.” Thus, shaming people for various offenses against goodthink, both in the social media and in online publications, has become standard practice.

 

Just recently, for instance, actress Hillary Duff and her boyfriend Jason Walsh had to offer profuse apologies after dressing up as a “sexy pilgrim” and a Native American for Halloween. But could a Trump presidency really “crush political correctness”—or, perhaps, make it worse?

 

Presidents Have Little Effect on Political Correctness

 

First of all, the occupant of the White House, whoever he or she is, generally has a very limited effect on the country’s cultural climate. The first wave of campus PC, including the college rape panic, rose in the 1980s and the early 1990s, mostly under Republican presidents (it waned somewhat by 2000 on Bill Clinton’s watch).

 

Under President Obama, the Department of Justice and the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights have undoubtedly helped create a chilly climate for “offensive” speech on campus and for students accused of sexual misconduct, by issuing sweeping guidelines for enforcing anti-discrimination laws and threatening to withhold federal funds from noncompliant schools. But is this the only or even the main source of the present-day campus culture of trigger warnings, safe spaces, and sprawling definitions of sexual assault? Certainly not.

 

Indeed, to his credit, Obama has criticized the trend of trying to shut down and exclude unwelcome or unpopular viewpoints in universities. And the Obama White House is certainly not responsible for the PC takeover of popular culture.

 

Trump, for all that he bemoans “political correctness,” has actually barely touched on the subject of campus PC. His complaints mainly seem to be directed at excessive reluctance to collectively blame Mexicans or Muslims for various ills. At an Ohio rally in October, Trump promised free speech in college as an afterthought to comments about lower tuition and student loan repayment. I believe that’s the only time he has raised the subject, which means Obama has said a lot more on the issue.

 

Trump’s Version of Anti-PC Reinforces It

 

What’s more, in many ways, Trump is practically the poster boy for PC. Remember that obnoxiously smug Google Chrome extension set up to auto-replace “political correctness” with “treating people with respect,” a variation on a left-wing leitmotif? Trump validates that Chrome extension with the entirety of his behavior. If anyone ever creates a Chrome extension that replaces “political incorrectness” with “being a bullying jerk,” they should call it Trump 1.0.

 

Trump has, at various times, painted Mexicans who live illegally in the United States as a horde of violent criminals and rapists; impugned a judge’s impartiality because of the judge’s Mexican background; suggested banning all Muslims from entering the United States; speculated that the mother of a fallen American Muslim soldier who appeared with her husband at the Democratic National Convention didn’t speak because “she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say”; mockingly mimicked a disabled reporter for challenging Trump’s false statement that thousands of Muslims had danced in celebration on September 11; and insulted the looks of his female primary rival Carly Fiorina with the jeering comment, “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?”

 

When a man who behaves this way is held up as a fighter against political correctness, it lends credence to the leftist fallacy that the alternative to PC is unabashed bigotry and male chauvinist pig-erry. Yes, it’s very true that the cavalier, anything-goes abuse of such loaded words as “bigotry,” “racism,” “sexism,” “misogyny” etc. by the cultural left has greatly weakened the stigma and impact of those terms. (If you can get “called out” for racism for wearing dreadlocks while white, there’s not much shame in being called a racist.)

 

But Trump-style “political incorrectness” can easily have the reverse effect, especially if Trump is actually elected president: it can be invoked as proof that demeaning and hateful attitudes toward minorities and women really are rampant in America and that PC is the thin rainbow line that stands between us and the triumph of such ugliness.

 

We Do Need Some Social Taboos

 

In 1990, during the first surge of political correctness in America, I gained a new perspective on the issue after making two trips to what was then still the Soviet Union. On one occasion at a dinner party, an educated professional in his thirties calmly told me, apropos of demands for independence in the republics of Central Asia, that “all those Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Tadjiks and so forth need to be ruled by the iron fist of the white man, just like your Negroes.” Having gotten used to American norms after a decade of living in the United States, I wouldn’t have been more stunned if he had casually unzipped his pants and urinated on the floor.

 

Another time, a college student moonlighting as my driver told me that a student at his university had been arrested for raping a 60-year-old woman. The driver remarked, “At that age, you’d think she’d send him a thank-you note instead of going to the cops.” All of a sudden, I was starting to appreciate at least the milder forms of PC—not the aggressive scrutiny of innocuous speech for potential offense, but the social taboos on frank racism and sexism. I suspect Trump and Trump supporters are likely to have a similar effect domestically.

 

Indeed, this has already happened with regard to sexism and so-called “rape culture.” The release of the 2005 video that showed Trump bragging crudely about how his celebrity status allows him to “do anything” to women, including grab their genitals, and the subsequent accusations of sexual harassment and assault coming from several women, sparked a new round of feverish denunciations of “rape culture” in America. (Never mind that the disgusted reaction to the video, for which Trump had to offer a rare apology, hardly suggests cultural tolerance for such behavior.)

 

Writing in The Daily Beast, Erin Gloria Ryan, the former editor of Jezebel, sarcastically thanked Trump for providing “a living demonstration that sexism is real and that women who complain about facing it aren’t just making stuff up.” Several people skeptical of the feminist narrative of supposedly rampant and tacitly condoned sexual violence in our culture have privately expressed concerns that the Trump scandal would boost this narrative.

 

Indeed, when the Harvard men’s soccer team’s season was canceled last week for some players’ heinous crime of rating the sex appeal of their female counterparts in private exchanges, some of the coverage explicitly mentioned Trump as an emblem of the sexist culture Harvard and other universities were combating. “It’s less that [Trump is] an exception,” one female Harvard sophomore told The New York Times, “but more just an extension of everybody.”

 

Electing Trump Would Validate Social Justice Warriors

 

Under these circumstances, what would happen if Trump won? One Trump supporter assured me that his election would deprive gender-war feminists and social justice warriors of their power of public shaming, since it would be “a repudiation of their claims of ‘moral majority.’” But that’s highly doubtful. Same-sex marriage opponents were being shamed when majorities were still voting to limit marriage to heterosexual unions.

 

Especially since Trump voters skew older, white, and male, the anti-Trump “rainbow coalition” would could be readily portrayed as the “moral majority” of the future. The election of a president widely seen as a misogynist, a bigot, and a sexual predator would only make them more zealous.

 

Meanwhile, a Trump administration—which could ill afford to alienate moderates, Republican women, and many others—would be in an exceptionally bad position to take any steps that could be portrayed as weakening protections from sexual harassment and sexual violence. Even social conservatives would likely view such steps as highly suspect coming from Team Trump. (Can you imagine the headlines?)

 

Indeed, Trump’s candidacy has almost certainly already damaged the ability of congressional Republicans to remedy the current federal overreach in this area. No one wants to be seen as enabling an army of Trumpish frat guys to grab college girls by their private parts.

 

It is also worth noting that some of the most vocal opposition to both PC speech-policing and the excesses of the feminist War on Rape has come from pro-free speech, pro-civil-liberties liberals—both journalists and lawyers or law professors. A Trump victory in the election might well cause the “progressive” side to circle the wagons.

 

Another reason Trump is a poor choice for taking on PC is that both his rhetoric and his appeal are strongly connected to the culture of victimhood. The result would certainly not be a defeat of political correctness, but further polarization and entrenchment on both sides: an increasingly militant cultural left versus an increasingly nasty and brutish Trumpian right, rooted not in the principles of individual liberty and morality but of a white, far-right version of identity and grievance politics.

 

Under a Clinton administration, policies that encourage political correctness would almost certainly continue. But the political, cultural, and legal resistance to PC already has a strong momentum on its side. That momentum will grow if the Trump phenomenon makes more liberals realize (as it should) that PC allowed to run amok will breed a dangerous backlash.

 

The results of a Trump victory are, of course, hard to predict. But it’s very unlikely that it would lead to much institutional rollback of PC—and, culturally, it would almost certainly make things worse.

 

Emphases mine.

Edited November 8, 2016 by Agiel

[BruceVC]

The sad thing is most of us posting on this forum don't even get the 'honour' of choosing how the world ends. L0L

 

 

P.S. The world/US will survive no matter who wins.

 

 

 

"Malc is correct, he didnt technically call the entire Latino community criminals but he made several disparaging comments about them and the general perception  is that he insulted the entire Latino community"

 

You DO realize that is EXACTLY what I said. I just pointed out your usual lies. There was no 'technically' about it;. he did not call the entire Latino community that. Stop perpetrating that lie. Spamming it doesn't make it so.

You couldn't have said that volo, that would have  made you right and we both agreed that is highly unlikely ?

 

http://www.reuters.com/video/2016/02/09/polls-open-in-dixville-notch-new-hampshi?videoId=367336819

 

This video is old but I just watched this voting at Dixville Notch, 8 people voted 4 for Hilary and 2 for Trump and 2 for other candidates 

[Malcador]

Never thought I'd see Social Justice Warriors being used by people not on Internet forums.

[BruceVC]

Never thought I'd see Social Justice Warriors being used by people not on Internet forums.

 Its true, that word is almost  inclusively used on the Internet