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There Will Be Hell Toupée! (The Donald Trump Thread)


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3 minutes ago, Shitty Rambo said:

Semantics. If you're advocating for peace you'll oppose it, period.

Incorrect. 

 

Granted "college kids are mad about a speaker at their college" doesn't qualify, but sometimes violent protest is a necessity for change.  Even Martin Luther King Jr believed that. Like yo, we used to overthrow tyrannical kings by cutting their heads off and shit. I think Starbucks can afford some new windows. Not like its actually coming out of a person's pocket.

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At least, the UC Berkeley incident has finally given us an appropriate opportunity to talk about peace. The last few weeks have been so boring and barren of any incidents or world events that could serve as immediate examples of why peace, understanding, and tolerance are important. If we believe in true peace, we should focus all our energy and attention on this specific incident and resist temptation to look away at other events occurring in the world.

Edited by just a normal guy kevin
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1 hour ago, Bladewillisisdead said:

I think Starbucks can afford some new windows. Not like its actually coming out of a person's pocket.

Yeah, big deal if the employees who work at these places have to take an unpaid week or more off work. I'm sure their landlords and bill collectors will understand. 

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18 minutes ago, Shitty Rambo said:

Peace and equality go hand in hand. You cannot have one without the other.

Straight up, this is a dumb statement. Negative peace (absence of violence) is totally possible without equality, and I wouldn't say it's preferable to unrest. True peace is the presence of justice. 

 

Also, one more time:

3 hours ago, AlexH. said:

 

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Also if we're going to play "THEIR side did THIS", a dude who asked Milo to sign his MAGA hat shot up a fucking mosque 2 days ago, resulting in actual human lives lost, and the very next day the president moved to drop white supremacists from US counterterrorism operations: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-cut-white-supremacism-countering-violent-extremism-programme-neo-nazi-counter-extremism-a7558796.html

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43 minutes ago, Shitty Rambo said:

Yeah, big deal if the employees who work at these places have to take an unpaid week or more off work. I'm sure their landlords and bill collectors will understand. 

If only we could have labor regulations and social programs to help people working these kinds of jobs but "waaaaah my taxes"

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1 minute ago, Bladewillisisdead said:

If only we could have labor regulations and social programs to help people working these kinds of jobs but "waaaaah my taxes"

I know you're a statist, but now you want to subsize riots? 

 

The extreme poverty and struggle  in yuppie upstate New York must be more savage  than I thought.

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39 minutes ago, AlexH. said:

Also if we're going to play "THEIR side did THIS", a dude who asked Milo to sign his MAGA hat shot up a fucking mosque 2 days ago, resulting in actual human lives lost, and the very next day the president moved to drop white supremacists from US counterterrorism operations: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-cut-white-supremacism-countering-violent-extremism-programme-neo-nazi-counter-extremism-a7558796.html

Why does it have to be "this side, that side?" Isn't it more...some asshole white supremacist shot up a mosque. Some asshole kids vandalized property. Both illegal, both shitty, both should be prosecuted. Neither of these people/groups represent the whole of "their side."

 

Of course killing people is worse than vandalizing property, but it doesn't mean that people who essentially riot and destroy things should be just let off the hook.

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42 minutes ago, Shitty Rambo said:

Why are you such a dick all the time? 

I'm really fighting back the urge to pull a "do you need a safe space" here. So know that I do exercise some restraint.

 

I dunno man. It's easier to be an asshole online. I don't think you're a bad/dumb person.

 

20 minutes ago, The Ghost of Randy Savage said:

Why does it have to be "this side, that side?" Isn't it more...some asshole white supremacist shot up a mosque. Some asshole kids vandalized property. Both illegal, both shitty, both should be prosecuted. Neither of these people/groups represent the whole of "their side."

 

Of course killing people is worse than vandalizing property, but it doesn't mean that people who essentially riot and destroy things should be just let off the hook.

How about the fact that the violence did not come from the students assembled in protest? What frustrates me is that the media and the Right are so willing to  lump black bloc anarchists, who smash up Starbucks and torch limos, in with the general Left, which I see as a clear attempt to delegitimize their views. Meanwhile, actual Nazis, as well as garden variety racists & fascists, are some of Trump's biggest cheerleaders online, and he's made no effort to denounce them. Now it's spilled into real life and people are like "ah, he's a lone wolf". Bullshit, man.

Edited by AlexH.
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4 minutes ago, The Ghost of Randy Savage said:

Why does it have to be "this side, that side?" Isn't it more...some asshole white supremacist shot up a mosque. Some asshole kids vandalized property. Both illegal, both shitty, both should be prosecuted. Neither of these people/groups represent the whole of "their side."

 

Of course killing people is worse than vandalizing property, but it doesn't mean that people who essentially riot and destroy things should be just let off the hook.

Take a look at why we focus on one instead of the other and whether we use these sorts of incidents to illuminate the larger situation or distract/deflect from the larger situation.

One take is to highlight the UC Berkeley violence as a means to ADDING it to the growing list of troubling and extreme actions occurring from multiple 'sides' and filling out the conversation further. How does violence present itself in troubling political climates? Is the value of violence ruled by a simplified ideology such as "All violence is bad always" and, if so, is that ideology invoked every time a violent act is committed? If not, is there a pattern or common link between the cases where violence is denounced or the cases when it is overlooked? Could there be a biased advantage to minimizing some acts of violence while highlighting others? Is that bias justified if it contributes to less overall violence or is a response to more sinister forms of violence? Or is all bias wrong, again raising the question of whether we want to place blanket simplified rules on things?

The point of all those questions is that simply denouncing violence can be important but its also very basic and offers little value without asking or answering those follow up questions. Similarly, it can also be counter-productive. Stripping out context and foregoing follow-up reflection can feel ideologically pure and re-affirming, since you're taking a wild and insanely unpredictable thing and making it solvable with 1 sentence, but it's impractical. For example, there exists a scenario where an individual can use calls for peace, something that without context or further reflection is universally good, as a way to deflect and distract from the larger problem of violence, which is harmful and not productive in practice/reality. This was done with the "All Lives Matter" reaction. It is done in this thread where people who have sat in silence on many instances of violence and troubling international threats suddenly appear when the situation involves liberal college students and begin calling for peace or singling out specific users and calling for them to behave. The calls for peace are not asking us to look at the larger world and how violence has infiltrated that political climate...they are asking us to hyper-focus on this one incident and, effectively, narrow our sights and focus.

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25 minutes ago, Shitty Rambo said:

I know you're a statist, but now you want to subsize riots? 

 

The extreme poverty and struggle  in yuppie upstate New York must be more savage  than I thought.

Well, there are tons of reasons someone could be out of work without pay for a week or more. But yeah, that's totally what I mean. I want to pay the riot tax.

 

 

Also, dude there's an astounding amount of poverty in Upstate NY...what the fuck? I grew up poor as fuck in a tiny house in the middle of the fucking woods. There was a trailer "park" not that far away that was just people who brought in their busted up trailers down a makeshift path and just hoped no one who owned the land would find them. Yeah, there are clusters of yuppies all over but NY is big and there's a lot of fucking poverty.

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Honestly, the three of you are all making points that don't disagree.

 

The idea what we should be divided or are divided is exactly how the Democrats lost the election.

 

 

While simplistic, Shitty Rambo's point that "Peace and equality go hand in hand." is true.  Regardless of who did it, riots and destruction need to be prosecuted is fair.  On the other hand, you need to ask WHY people are protesting and address those issues.

 

Alex's point that the statement is too simplistic is not wrong either.  While I don't condone violent reactions I understand them.  I've always had the stance that I'd never throw the first punch, but I won't hesitate to throw the second.  People who take violent recourse need to be dealt with.  The things that influenced them need to be followed up on.  It's a fair argument to say someone like Trump is not RESPONSIBLE for the action, but he is accountable.  He need to use his words and actions to renounce.  If he doesn't, then he is perpetuating the problem through silence and/or inaction.

 

And Ghost's point that division is pointless and counter-productive is definitely true.

Edited by daegor
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22 minutes ago, AlexH. said:

I'm really fighting back the urge to pull a "do you need a safe space" here. So know that I do exercise some restraint.

 

I dunno man. It's easier to be an asshole online. I don't think you're a bad/dumb person.

 

How about the fact that the violence did not come from the students assembled in protest? What frustrates me is that the media and the Right are so willing to  lump black bloc anarchists, who smash up Starbucks and torch limos, in with the general Left, which I see as a clear attempt to delegitimize their views. Meanwhile, actual Nazis, as well as garden variety racists & fascists, are some of Trump's biggest cheerleaders online, and he's made no effort to denounce them. Now it's spilled into real life and people are like "ah, he's a lone wolf". Bullshit, man.

I agree that a lot of the he/she they/them comes from the media. I think an emphasis should be put on reporting the facts and no trying to bias them one way or another.

Agree as well that there needs to be a line drawn in the sand where Trump as POTUS says, "white supremacy and racism is not ok. Stop it." But again, as I said, in any instance where there are radicals, and yes, folks who go out and shoot up places are radicals, they genuinely don't represent entire groups of people. Making generalizations like that is part of what got us to where we are in the first place!

Edited by The Ghost of Randy Savage
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10 minutes ago, daegor said:

It's a fair argument to say someone like Trump is not RESPONSIBLE for the action, but he is accountable.  He need to use his words and actions to renounce.  If he doesn't, then he is perpetuating the problem through silence and/or inaction.

I felt the same way about Obama when BLM and The Police were beefing it out over the summer, but that never happened

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20 minutes ago, AlexH. said:

I'm really fighting back the urge to pull a "do you need a safe space" here. So know that I do exercise some restraint.

 

I dunno man. It's easier to be an asshole online. I don't think you're a bad/dumb person.

Fair enough. Clearly you spend time gathering links, configuring responses, and doing research in general. It might help your argument if you weren't insulting on top of an otherwise intellectual counterpoint.

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15 minutes ago, Tommy said:

I felt the same way about Obama when BLM and The Police were beefing it out over the summer, but that never happened

 

12 minutes ago, Bladewillisisdead said:

Uuhhhh, because BLM has every right to be mad and the police were the instigators.

Here's a great example of the point I was trying to make earlier.

 

I'm 100% behind BLM, and I 100% agree with Tommy.

 

It would have been great if Obama had renounced the violence and addressed the problem (police instigation) at the same time.  HOWEVER, in that particular instance I understand why he didn't, there is a separation of authority between police and state for a reason.  I wouldn't actually expect the government to interfere with police operations (unless it was proven that they were unable to deal with it themselves, which is potentially the case, but that's a different argument).  And it's a difficult situation in the sense that if you're going to address the issue of the violence and NOT address the cause (police), you'll probably make the violent reactions WORSE.

Edited by daegor
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And to go a little further with @daegor's response, I want to make it clear that I'm not pushing pacifism. Violence and force in the name of self defense is justified, initiating violence and force is not.

 

It's unacceptable for the state to use force against non-violent people (I.E. Eric Garner), and I apply the same basic principle to individuals.

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