US Election & Presidency

Sure is a growing list of platforms Trump is banned from. But let's not forget the first... his wife's bed!

Soon it will only Be grindr he is allowed on

Maybe he will pardon Assange so he can go on Wikileaks

(09-01-2021 19:42 )Goodfella3041 Wrote:  Well, this is the harm. When you legitimise lies and conspiracy theories by refusing to denounce them (because that might cost you some votes from the lunatic fringe) or actually initiate and spread them (as a fundraising grift), then you ought to own the outcome: four dead protestors and one dead cop.

Even if Trump had denounced these conspiracy theories it wouldn't have made much difference.
The people that believe these theories always have an alternative route (explanation) as to why events unfold the way they do. "Trump has been bought" - "He's had death threats" - "It's not Trump, it's a clone" etc, etc.

So these people are not just fighting for Trump, they are fighting to protect their own civil rights and taking action agsinst what they consider to be the purest of evils.
You can refer to them as lunatics, but when we witness some of the most shocking stories emerge such as Epstein, then things once considered unbelievable now become the believable. They don't consider themselves lunatics at all, they believe the rest of the world are sleepwalking into the abyss.

The likes of BLM gaining traction has also played a part in conditioning the way people think IMO. Many people consider BLM to be a divisive and race-baiting political movement. Whether you support this organisation or not it is definitely divisive and yet despite all this along with the violence, it continues to maintain a solid platform on social media. This gives rise to the belief that everything truly is one-sided (as the conspiracy theories suggest) and therfore helps bolster that view.
Coronavirus is the same, another divisive topic rife with conspiracy theories that slots straight into same narrative that appears to have gone equally unchallenged.

So, I do believe there is A LOT more that could have been done to help defuse what has happened recently.

The difference is that Black Lives Matter is a decentralised social movement, that consists of a wide range of different organisations there is no exact hierarchy, kind of like how you might have Labour & The Liberal Democrats within the left wing movement. So where an individual who associates themselves with BLM may say something that you strongly disagree with that does not reflect BLM on a whole. Just as what the Labour Leader says or does, does not reflect the overall left wing movement as there are divisions within the Party as well as The Liberal Democrats, SNP, Green Party etc all under the banner of "The Left"

The Trump Administration or The Trump Campaign however is not a decentralised movement it is a specific organisation with a hierarchal structure, with Trump at the top. So when the leader says or does something that is corrosive & dangerous & his followers react it is emblematic of the organisation.

If the leader of the California Chapter of BLM (I don't even know if there is such a thing, I am using this as a hypothetical example) says: "smash windows, kick in doors, burn cars, throw missiles at police" I would strongly condemn such a thing but I would not see that as being representative of the entire BLM movement. Just as when Trump says something I don't see that as being representative of Conservatism as a whole, I don't tar them all with the same brush as Mitt Romney & Dominic Grieve are very different from Ted Cruz & Jacob Rees Mogg.

Finally yes you do get violence & destruction of property in BLM protests but it is not incited by people with power. There is no overall leader of BLM, like King was President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, saying does this, do that & Joe Biden who is now the most powerful supporter of BLM has always condoned the violence at these rallies, where as Donald Trump is responsible because he incites the violence in his followers. It is this top down incitement within a specific organisation that has led to his ban on social media platforms versus the broad social movement of BLM still being prevalent

(10-01-2021 11:26 )Bandwagon Wrote:  You can refer to them as lunatics, but when we witness some of the most shocking stories emerge such as Epstein, then things once considered unbelievable now become the believable. They don't consider themselves lunatics at all, they believe the rest of the world are sleepwalking into the abyss.

I get all this, which is why I mentioned earlier that I’d sooner blame Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerburg than I would the protestors. I really do think that many of the instigators — including those who paid with their lives — felt that they were doing their patriotic duty by storming the Capitol.

But I also believe we are in serious trouble when political leadership abandons its commitment to truth. Being caught in an obvious lie used to be grounds for dismissal by a politician’s own party. But not anymore. Now we accept ‘alternative facts’, we equivocate and deny the obvious, we even shrug off and laugh at the ‘little lies’ that ‘all politicians tell’. And bit by bit — aided by technology and hyper-partisan media on both sides — we’ve conjured a situation in which people can live side-by-side in completely different realities.

Things like coronavirus, climate change, health care, etc. should not be bitterly divisive existential issues. We might disagree on the how, how much and how quickly, but we should be able to agree that a virus is killing people, the climate is changing, and people need affordable access to doctors and drugs.

But we’ve turned politics into existential bloodsport. If you say ‘black’, I have to say ‘white’ ... not because I believe it, but because I can’t let my tribe see that I’m agreeing with yours. Compromise is weakness.

The QAnon theories are absurd paranoid fantasies. The idea that the ‘election was stolen’ was a bald-faced lie and even the people objecting on the Senate floor knew it. It should not be difficult for politicians of all stripes to say that’s simply not true and my re-election be damned. And, yes, I’m sure the conspiracy theories will persist and there will always be people who promote them. But it’s one thing for them to fester in the dark corners of the Internet — it’s another thing to hear them on prime time news or from the White House podium.

A few thoughts and observations on the BLM issue, since it has been raised:
 
I am afraid that I find much of the Critical Race Theory material that underpins the activist-level BLM is desperately alienating and deeply dispiriting.  In my judgement, here’s been a lot of division sown by the identity politics of recent years that became turbocharged over last summer. The hijacking of George Floyd’s awful death by BLM (the formal organisation, not the sentiment) and Critical Race Theorists, and their sleight of hand in templating  undeniable problems in America onto British society are frankly unjustified. And, counter-productively, the emergence of this divisive aggressive brand of identity politics has given a shot in the arm to the once moribund and dwindling rump of racists here who can exploit it in a reactionary way. We are by no means perfect yet we  live in the most egalitarian and diverse and peaceful civilisation ever to have existed on the face of the planet. We had come on immeasurably in the arena of race relations since the 1980s, but I fear we have regressed decades in a few short months.
 
Issues and inequalities that we would have until quite recently considered to be a predominantly class-based are now being racialised. But there’s no discernible "white privilege" on the council estates of Gateshead Sunderland Middlesbrough Glasgow etc etc. White kids now have the lowest rates of entry into higher education: https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.serv...-ethnicity
 
We are travelling away from the naive, innocent, wide-eyed and beautiful melting-pot idealism of Dr Martin Luther King, in which I and my black wife flourished and built families, towards dangerous territory:  a nasty separatism, underlined by absurd New Apartheid Critical Race Theory ideas as “cultural appropriation”, and the endless surveillance and grievance-mining for so called transgressions like "microaggressions". Absolutely every single human interaction viewed through the narrow, distorting prism of race, and seen to be inherently and irredeemably racist.
 
Ordinary, well-meaning people are beginning to feel like they are being hectored and harangued and scrutinised,  as opposed to carried along, shaped and educated. As a result people are perpetually walking on eggshells, fearful of their reputations and livelihoods. The result I fear will be that they simply withdraw into their safe, homogenous, groups. Communication outside of one’s own group being conducted in only the most sterile and defensive technical prose.  Real diversity damaged for a generation. Division and fear of the other embedded structurally. Fertile ground for genuine racists to prosper.

^^
I love a beautifully typed post

Rake you have just set the bar high for Post of The Year 2021.

This will probably surprise many people on here but I largely agree with everything Rake said. Identity politics is a divisive issue & I think it creates an us versus them narrative. White privilege is absolutely a thing, by just about every measurable statistic you are better off being white than most other races, that hasn't happened because white people are superior. Even if you are low income there are still advantages, prisons are occupied disproportionately by low income individuals & still have disproportionate black numbers. Never the less I think white privilege & identity is bad politics, as our leaders should seek to unify.

Barack Obama knew this, there was obviously a lot of talk about him possibly being the first black President of the United States but that never came from him or his campaign. He was always about everyone in the country, out of many we rise as one, no red states no blue states only United States & Yes We Can. And it was a mistake Clinton made, her campaign focused too much on her being the first woman President, the slogan I'm with her kind of made it seem that it wasn't about the American people. That coupled with the fact that she was First Lady & everyone thought that she was going to be President then, a Senator and Secretary of State gave off this air that being President was her divine right. Still a billion times better than Trump.

Going back, though you are still better off being white than black, as Rake said there are many white Brits that are not feeling the benefits of living in one of the most prosperous countries in the world. This is true of the US as well where the life expectancy of white Americans is dropping because of factors like the opioid epidemic & the rise in suicides. The class system is still a massive factor in our society, whilst I think it is right that we have pivoted towards talking more about race, gender, sexual orientation etc in doing so we have pivoted away from class which is wrong because it affects all of these identities. Not only is it the case that your are more likely to find yourself in a position of power & influence if you are white & privately educated/went to Oxbridge but for the disproportionately fewer woman & BAME etc who do make it into these positions they also are more likely to be privately educated or go to Oxbridge

A movement that seeks to combine & advance the issues of race, gender, LGBT+ etc with class in the name of solidarity i think would be a truly progressive movement

John lennon had the right idea

"Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world..

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one"