"The August 2020 US Politics Thread is highly thought of, but nobody likes me. It can only be my personality. That's all."

xposts
thanks treesh. Personally, I'm entirely sympathetic to table's moral fury at the US and its history. But since I'm naturally inclined to cynicism and pessimism I never quite know what to do with that feeling, and I'm mildly envious of people who can still find some hope or at least utility in the Democratic party.

For example, I watched John Oliver's bit about juries and race last night and was infuriated by the absolutely transparently deliberate, baked-in, hard-coded racism in the process of jury selection. The prospect of reforming that system seems futile to me, but then doing nothing would also be immoral so...

I don’t think you can view Obama’s presidency outside the lens of having been the first black president.

Why is that in particular futile to reform?

El Tomboto, just fwiw, I didn't take your line of questioning as pass-agg or whataboutism. I know that I'm much more left than a lot of people on this board, and that's fine...

As far as my posts to Dan, yes, they were aggressive, but they're also honest questions, despite their rhetorical bent. If one is moved by Obama's rhetoric and the neoliberal pablum of the current DNC platform yet is completely unaffected by images of orphans, people bombed to unrecognizeability, deported families raped and slaughtered in the countries from which they were fleeing....then one is willfully turning a blind eye, or saying that the displacement of violence to an "other" is fine and dandy. But as we've seen, and as I've mentioned, that violence ALWAYS is inverted eventually.

Rob, my answer to my pessimism and negativity is to work with my community and neighbors on the ground in the ways that I can. It is local mutual aid and service that is the redeeming quality of many people in the US, and among the only things that gives me hope.

as all presidents do

this is the Get Out of Jail Free card of US politics

he also expanded domestic surveillance in a way no president had (because he could)

Why is that in particular futile to reform?

― treeship., Thursday, August 20, 2020 10:11 AM (fifty-eight seconds ago)

Mostly because of the complexity of the criminal justice system--you'd need to reform local, state, and federal systems; you'd also need individual actors, from the cops to judges, with a great deal of agency to reform their work practices--and the power asymmetries at work: the prosecutorial side has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. See also police and carceral reform; the despair comes from yet again confronting how the crim justice system was and is designed to oppress people along racial lines.

"Smaller" Military Industrial Complex 2024

Eh, I think Obama’s main goal was to change the views of Americans who see black politicians as radicals that want to destroy America.

Rob, my answer to my pessimism and negativity is to work with my community and neighbors on the ground in the ways that I can. It is local mutual aid and service that is the redeeming quality of many people in the US, and among the only things that gives me hope.

― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table), Thursday, August 20, 2020 10:14 AM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I do need to spend some time thinking about how I could contribute in realizable ways, unfortunately this hell summer is coinciding with my comprehensive exams for my phd so I am literally required to be inside reading all day until later Sept...which I should probably be doing right now lol

busy morning!

https://www.axios.com/judge-trump-manhattan-subpoena-7e1face7-d5b3-4102-bd37-917ac19f08cf.html

legit lol @ harbl, thanks

given how many pics of trump I've now seen in my life, it's surprising how haunting they can still be

I guess I am less interested in debating the fundamental moral character of the U.S. There are both good and bad strains in the country's history. I mean, what's the point of saying the U.S. is "depraved and immoral"? Who does it serve? I think modern nation-states are too complex to be reduced to such dismissive labels.

That doesn't mean ignoring the actual bad stuff, like the way that the country's nonwhite population has been mistreated and structurally disadvantaged for centuries. But if all presidents and other political leaders are seen as fundamentally immoral because they work within an unjust system, I don't know how we do the work of fixing it.

isn't that the *only* way to fix it? To beging holding the individuals inside these systems personally responsible for their complicity?

Those who have engaged in egregious behavior, yes.

Ok but what is egregious in a system where immorality has been normalized? It seems to me that this view only excuses "standard" bad behavior.

w/r/t Obama, the drone murder of children is not broadly considered sufficiently egregious to warrant condemnation.

I understand that the Obama administration did some shitty things, as all presidents do. I also have a lot of respect for Obama as a person and the values he expresses and his capacity to inspire. This is not a contradiction.

― jaymc, Thursday, August 20, 2020 9:53 AM (thirty-three minutes ago)

On that note, it's interesting (I mean that genuinely!) that here you assign shittiness to the administration and not directly to Obama, but then it is Obama the individual you respect. How do you determine when individual politicians have done something egregious? Assuming you don't think Obama did, why not?

I consider perpetuating TWOT while claiming you're against "stupid wars" to be egregious. Ditto with safeguarding the interests of The 1% at the expense of all others.

pic.twitter.com/dZPGriK7RV

— Will Sommer (@willsommer) August 20, 2020

Ok but what is egregious in a system where immorality has been normalized? It seems to me that this view only excuses "standard" bad behavior.

― syphilitic wolf prose errata (Hadrian VIII), Thursday, August 20, 2020 9:29 AM (nine seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

Well, I guess a good example would be campaign finance. I don't think that politicians who accept contributions from corporate donors are "immoral": They're working within the system and tell themselves that the money is helping them get elected so that they can do good work. The problem is that it warps their priorities and reinforces a system that favors wealthy, well-connected candidates. So I would strongly prefer electing candidates who do not accept corporate contributions, and I would favor laws that limit the influence of corporate money. But I don't think the ones who do are depraved figures who should be universally disdained.

Thought exercise: What if MOZART had bailed out the banks?

Mozart was from Austria. You know who else was from Austria?

That's right, Falco.

Er war Superstar

xxp I can understand this if those same politicians are acting earnestly and volubly to reform campaign finance laws. If they are not banging the drum about it while making this comopromise they seem to me fundamentally immoral.

war mar superstar?

Unless they think its ok. Like obama had made his peace with most aspects of our system and wanted to be an effective administrator as well as a kind of moral leader, preaching this optimistic, inclusive vision of america that is still honestly pretty moving to me. (Remember—when he was elected, it was a sign of hope that the country was starting to shake off its prejudices, and greater equality would not be far behind. That didn’t really happen.)

But anyway, seriously challenging something like the way we do elections—not just incremental improvements—wasn’t really his thing. He didn’t think we needed to redistribute power. In a true sense, not the more narrow american sense, he was a conservative.

And in that I don’t think he was immoral—just wrong.

I actually don’t agree that he took special care to not seem radical because he was black. I mean, maybe, but he also just wasn’t a radical.

On that note, it's interesting (I mean that genuinely!) that here you assign shittiness to the administration and not directly to Obama, but then it is Obama the individual you respect. How do you determine when individual politicians have done something egregious? Assuming you don't think Obama did, why not?

― rob, Thursday, August 20, 2020 9:31 AM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I refer to the administration because none of Obama's decisions as president were made in a vacuum. They involved teams of people and all sorts of practical considerations that inevitably led to negotiations and compromise. Obviously, as president, he bears more responsibility than anyone else. But because I respect him as a person, I trust that he always wanted to do the right thing, even if it led to bad consequences. To be honest, I trust most of the people in his administration, too. But sometimes people's options are constrained, and they make bad decisions.

The Trump administration, on the other hand, has clearly shown flagrant disregard for the law and for the good of the American people. It's not difficult to say that their behavior is egregious and often immoral.

Like obama had made his peace with most aspects of our system and wanted to be an effective administrator as well as a kind of moral leader, preaching this optimistic, inclusive vision of america that is still honestly pretty moving to me. (Remember—when he was elected, it was a sign of hope that the country was starting to shake off its prejudices, and greater equality would not be far behind. That didn’t really happen.)

But anyway, seriously challenging something like the way we do elections—not just incremental improvements—wasn’t really his thing. He didn’t think we needed to redistribute power. In a true sense, not the more narrow american sense, he was a conservative.

And in that I don’t think he was immoral—just wrong.

― treeship., Thursday, August 20, 2020 9:55 AM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

OTM

Jaymc, I also am tired of this debate, because it is glaringly apparent to me that people such as yourself will continue to dismiss people who want change as not understanding the complexities of a system of governance that was never meant to serve them, and in fact, actively seems to hurt them!

Being told that one is naive and that one's moral outrage at obvious injustice is not productive is a method of stifling attempts at change and upholds the status quo, afaic, and I think it's a shit outlook

Tbf to jay, wholesale revolution is a hard sell and often goes sideways. (Even micro experiments, like CHOP). It’s up to leftists to make the case that changing the unequal distribution of wealth and power in our country won’t disrupt its stability—and in fact would strengthen it.

I thought bernie was really good at this and his program would have been a great start at building a more democratic culture. It still bums me out he didn’t get through.

THE POSTAL SERVICE CAPTURED BANNON AT SEA https://t.co/QSrTlNJfhi

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) August 20, 2020

Why the postal service? I didn’t know they could arrest you

Mail fraud, maybe?

In a bizarre twist, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service, played a key role in helping New York prosecutors investigate Trump’s former top adviser.

Strauss even gave the division, also known as the Postal Inspectors or USPIS, a special shoutout in her statement. “We thank the USPIS for their partnership in investigating this case,” she said.

The involvement of the postal service in bringing charges against a former close Trump adviser comes with jaw-dropping irony: Critics have recently accused the Trump administration of attempting to undermine the mail carrier in an attempt to fracture the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.

Inspector-in-Charge of the Postal Inspectors, Philip Bartlett, said in a statement that the indictments should warn “other fraudsters” that no one is above the law — including a “millionaire political strategist” like Bannon.

Steve Bannon was taken into custody by the U.S. Postal Service. The writers this season have done an exceptional job.

— Taegan Goddard (@politicalwire) August 20, 2020

beg to differ

Super weird. This is the first i’ve heard of someone being arrested by the post office.

lol

I guess Trump should have had the Postmaster General dismantle the USPIS instead of mail processing machines

Jaymc, I also am tired of this debate, because it is glaringly apparent to me that people such as yourself will continue to dismiss people who want change as not understanding the complexities of a system of governance that was never meant to serve them, and in fact, actively seems to hurt them!

― healthy cocaine off perfect butts (the table is the table), Thursday, August 20, 2020 10:02 AM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

And you'll continue to dismiss people who are inspired by others trying to make the country a better place as being willfully blind to the country's fundamental immorality! At the end of the day, we both want change. I want to reform the system by electing people to enact structural changes (and to serve the public as best they can within the system's limitations). What do you want, and how do you propose attaining it?

For better or worse, you foment legit change by persuading a sufficient number of people that your notion of change is worth shrugging off the status quo. The less able you are to persuade people who already mostly agree with you that yours is the best path to travel, the less likely you are to succeed.

Super weird. This is the first i’ve heard of someone being arrested by the post office.

many federal agencies have their own law enforcement divisions, some big, some small. EPA, for example, has civil enforcement officers (think fines and penalties for not following environmental laws, administratively) and criminal enforcement offers (think of an evil guy in all-leather dumping toxic chemicals onto a playground while cracking up like the joker) - the latter carry guns and are sometimes involved with arrests.

looking forward to trump complaining about extralegal police forces and their legitimacy

heh, yeah. speaking of - i know this is dumb, but has he recently even tried to give an innocent-sounding reason for his refusal to hand over his tax returns? during the campaign, his excuse was something like that he was being audited and wouldn't release the records until after then, because they were too confusing, or something. is that still what he's going with? maybe no one even bothers asking him why he's trying to conceal them these days

think of an evil guy in all-leather dumping toxic chemicals onto a playground while cracking up like the joker

Andrew Wheeler?

if you read doj press releases you will find a ton of postal inspector cases as many things can be wrapped into "mail fraud"