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Silicon Valley 'Divided Society and Made Everyone Raging Mad', Argues Newsweek (newsweek.com)
"Anyone who is pissed off can now automatically find other people that are similarly pissed off," argues author Jamie Bartlett, in a new essay shared by Slashdot reader schwit1 which calls the internet "a bottomless well of available grievance." Here's an excerpt from Newsweek:
Silicon Valley's utopians genuinely but mistakenly believe that more information and connection makes us more analytical and informed. But when faced with quinzigabytes of data, the human tendency is to simplify things. Information overload forces us to rely on simple algorithms to make sense of the overwhelming noise. This is why, just like the advertising industry that increasingly drives it, the internet is fundamentally an emotional medium that plays to our base instinct to reduce problems and take sides, whether like or don't like, my guy/not my guy, or simply good versus evil. It is no longer enough to disagree with someone, they must also be evil or stupid...
Nothing holds a tribe together like a dangerous enemy. That is the essence of identity politics gone bad: a universe of unbridgeable opinion between opposing tribes, whose differences are always highlighted, exaggerated, retweeted and shared. In the end, this leads us to ever more distinct and fragmented identities, all of us armed with solid data, righteous anger, a gutful of anger and a digital network of likeminded people. This is not total connectivity; it is total division.
Nothing holds a tribe together like a dangerous enemy. That is the essence of identity politics gone bad: a universe of unbridgeable opinion between opposing tribes, whose differences are always highlighted, exaggerated, retweeted and shared. In the end, this leads us to ever more distinct and fragmented identities, all of us armed with solid data, righteous anger, a gutful of anger and a digital network of likeminded people. This is not total connectivity; it is total division.
> It is no longer enough to disagree with someone, they must also be evil or stupid...
You'd think at least *some* people would be smart enough not to jump to such conclusions. There's gotta be some middle ground somewhere. So, I disagree and this is stupid.
Oh, wait...
"Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation."
Well I'm glad that's all figured out. It's Obama's fault, right?
What wasn't wrong yesterday is totally bigot, racist and sexist today. We live in the most sexist society ever.
But if you look at the numbers, the real ones only thing that's happening is that over the past 30 years equality has become better.
The crazy shit going on is all due to a weak economy for the working class. The pro corporate folks have their knickers in a twist because they didn't expect Trump or Brexit and they're not sure how that's all going to play out. News flash, you can't have the cake and eat it too. Keep shitting on the working class and eventually they'll do something dumb. Probably another World War or they'll pick a minority for genocide.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
So are you calling me evil -- or stupid?
The future shock/shockwave rider effect writ large.
I love how this effect was predicted in the late 60's
(D)ARPA developed the Internet without the help of Silicon Valley, which didn't exist (was named, for the pedantic) then.
So, it's really a plot of the Military-Industrial Complex, who bought off universities to do the actual work!
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
not or.
How is the summary incorrect? Our divisions are growing wider and it is easier to find like minded people.
I seriously think that if impeachment starts Trump will go nuclear, possibly with nuclear weapons to distract or such, but more likely by ramping up the us vs them stuff to infinity and beyond until there is blood in the streets. He used the divisions and furthered them for his own end, but the divisions were there. Make America Great Again is just a polite way to blame everyone that isn't like them. It is at its heart exploiting deep seated racism and hate for political power.
I very much fear that this is going to all end badly. The expression fiddling while Rome burned is apt and seems to apply here. Winning at all costs is not winning at all.
Leaders must have a moral center, else our society suffers. They must have a sense of decency. I knew Donald Trump was the lowest form of life I've ever seen as a presidential candidate when he approved shoving Bill Clinton's mistresses in Hillary's face. Hillary is not Bill. That was beyond despicable.
The fact that so many people in America think that kind is okay if they just get their guy is well, truly sad.
What has happened to us? Wearing a flag pin does not make you patriotic. Preaching of your religion does not make you moral. The ends does not and never will make the means morally right.
You can't build a country on a stack of sinful decisions and expect good to flourish. I had thought we were better than this, but I'm less sure these days.
However it rewards them if they try.
Specifically social media, which is a massively distributed operant conditioning machine which rewards people to conformity. Conformity to what? Here's the novel wrinkle: anything. The owners of social media don't really care where the bandwagon you jump on is going, as long as a lot of people jump on; people whom they will be able to sell.
It's not access to information. It's the intrusion of information designed to trigger montetizable responses that's the problem.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
And the internet is no different: It accelerates and amplifies. People who couldn't find information in a library can't find information on the internet. People who believe biased newspaper articles believe biased blog entries. To people who use and value information, the internet is a great resource. Some of the stress that the internet causes is just seeing the stupid that would normally be filtered out by more restrictive media. But it also enables great talents that we'd never know without it: Organized media brought us Payola and heavy rotation.
Congratulations on demonstrating the article's main thesis. You are part of the problem.
I'll also be part of the problem now when I call you out for being a fucking moron.
Interesting operant conditioning basiclly describes perfectly shows like John Oliver.
It goes like this:
fact
fact
fact, with a sincere face
lie
joke
loud pun or shout something
serious face
EXAMPLE:
polar bears are cute
polar bears are important
here's a picture of a polar bear
republicans want to kill all polar bears
TIMOTHY STOP TRYING TO FUCK THE POLAR BEAR!
But seriously, here's a picture of a dead baby seal
This is how we consume 'news'. These shows have embraced the quick bites of youtube and twitter.
The internet is a bottomless well of available grievance.
SERENITY NOW!
#DeleteFacebook
Behold, the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.
#DeleteFacebook
Congratulations on demonstrating the article's main thesis. You are part of the problem.
I'll also be part of the problem now when I call you out for being a fucking moron.
This is just lovely. I suppose your theory is that people that don't support your side are the problem, which would make you correct in that you are part of the problem, but also misses the main point.
The divisions exist, of that there is no doubt, and unless we call out and condemn those who make them worse, there is also no hope of fixing them, though I will give you credit for doing your best to make them worse. Top form there.
A democratic and republican ex president both gave similar speeches last week, but it seems very few actually listened.
They were convinced that they had technological solutions to social problems - that the only reason why we weren't all singing kumbaya around a campfire was that we weren't "informed" or "connected" enough. Now we're all informed and connected and it turned out that the real problems were still 1) we're all tribalist assholes and 2) we all think everyone else's tribe is the problem. I'm no exception, even as I type I'm thinking "well if anonymous shitposters like ME were in charge, we wouldn't have these kinds of issues!" even though I know damn well it's coming from the stupid monkey part of my brain.
It's time we faced the truth. Civilization as we know it is a kludge over a framework adapted to much smaller communities. We can make it work but inevitably these behaviors arise again, even when there isn't really competition for limited resources. Sadly, unlike a network or a system, we can't simply redesign ourselves - it will not take any less time to adapt to living in communities of billions than it took us to adapt to living in tribes of a hundred or so. That means that we are going to be dealing with these problems for a long time, and we are going to have to come up with solutions that are better than "shame whitey until all the racists die out".
Fight, flight, or fornicate: 4chan, Travelocity & match.com.
We thought we were building a WWW, but we ended up with an FFF.
Please, how big is this ? I stopped at yottabytes...
Wow did you even read the article? It talks exactly about people like you. People just like you that are unable to see the bigger picture. Self reflection is clearly not your strong point.
So what is your solution? What is the bigger picture? Saying that identify politics exists is basically like saying that water is wet.
The good old days are gone. We aren't going to all identify with the same news show or such anymore. If you have a better solution for a more ethical and honest world, well I'd like to hear it. I can't see how it is going to be built if we refuse to call out those that are not honest and not ethical, but perhaps there is some secret I don't know about.
Twitter is the ultimate source for lazy reporters. Need an opinion? Find it on twitter. They can find anyone saying anything and use them as a source.
Twitter should be banned from reportage, period.
"Anyone who is pissed off can now automatically find other people that are similarly pissed off," argues author Jamie Bartlett, in a new essay...
This used to be the prerogative of essayists in newsmagazines. Now they feel marginalized by public access to rich sources of information and online pulpits far bullier than any fora they had available to them in the days when freedom of the press was only available to those who owned presses.
What a fucking ridiculous claim. The article never said the problem was that some people know and write the truth. The point is that people like you, when faced with it, will choose to run from it to the bullshit. Good job proving it BTW.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
This is just lovely. I suppose your theory is that people that don't support your side are the problem, which would make you correct in that you are part of the problem, but also misses the main point.
The "Trump will go nuclear!" thing is hyperbole; it means you've fallen for the demonization. 'Our side' always tells us the people on the 'other side' are absolutely the worst, that there's nothing that they wouldn't do if we let them. We convince ourselves about it -- I heard it about Clinton, Bush, Obama, and now Trump. It's always, always the most important election in our lifetime, always the time to vote for the leader of the primary opposition party, never for anyone else because, dammit, this is too important to waste a vote.
Sexual harassment is horrible and inexcusable. But it's not rape.
People who are pissed on . . .
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Springfield is America's Crud Bucket
This is how we consume 'news'. These shows have embraced the quick bites of youtube and twitter.
This is really only a problem if that type of show is our primary (or worse, only) source to your news. It's why I got pretty worried when people told me they really only watch the Daily Show or thought it was a great news show with jokes. It wasn't supposed to be, it publicly claimed that's not what it was, but people used it that way anyway. Any infotainment / opinion show has similar problems.
No, because that is how you destroy society and kill off all humans.
Smart idealistic types really do a poor job predicting what under average types will do when new technology is made available to them. It's never idealistic.
No, it inherently *is* bad. It's inhuman, as it distills individual human identities into one monolithic gestalt where individuals are told who they must be and what they must do; and if they're not, then they're ostracized as "evil" and/or "stupid," who don't know and can't believe in what they're saying. "Identity" politics erases all identity in the service of low politics.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
I'm not the OP, but I too think Trump would nuke NK as a distraction. I read his book the art if the deal and that is exactly the kind of thing you would expect from the person who authorized that ghost written biopic.
Yes, seriously. If they had chosen to report the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky story then Matt Drudge would never have gotten his big break. http://www.drudgereportarchive...
> At the last minute, at 6 p.m. on Saturday evening, NEWSWEEK magazine killed a
> story that was destined to shake official Washington to its foundation: A White
> House intern carried on a sexual affair with the President of the United States!
There are a lot of wacko conspiracy theories out there. Unfortunately, the Lewinsky/Clinton cover-up was one of them. It lends "plausable non-deniability" to other "unbelievable stories".
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Silicon Valley's sense of humor is not for everyone, but come on, Newsweek, this is taking it a little too far.
I mean, I'm not so sure either about the next season given that it will be the first one without T.J. Miller, but I'm willing to give it a shot.
Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
In particular, social media made it much more obvious, how stupid, uneducated, anti-fact, anti-rational, self-absorbed, vivious and generally failures at existing many people are by giving them a low-effort way to spread their perverted views. But leave it to a journalist to blame the messenger. Incidentally, blaming the messenger is one of the most stupid acts known.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Well, the problem is serious, look at all the unsuitable people in high political and economic positions that got there by basically the same process, even if often more refined in appearance. The ones in social media are just a side-show from those that are bitter because they did not make it. The effect is well known though, and it is a kind of mental defect. It is called "Negative Attention-Seeking Behavior". It is made worse because there is another mental defect (IMO) where people actually admire the ones that are good at getting negative attention and mistake them for independent thinkers or independent people that are strong the do not need to care about anybodies opinion. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. Just think of Kim without Donald or the other way round. Both would feel massively underappreciated.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Better communication leads to better understanding. The original tower of Babel story, is that mankind was punished by being divided by many languages.
True a dangerous enemy can unite a tribe, but it is much easier to paint an unknown group as dangerous than one that you can communicate with.
Witness the story of the first world war where the Allied and German rank and file started exchanging Christmas gifts and singing carols. This so scared the officers (on both sides?) that they deliberately broke the truce by starting a shelling campaign. It is harder to paint someone as evil and dangerous when the rank and file can check the propaganda for themselves.
I'm old enough to remember, very well, the politics of the impeachment of President Nixon. The man was more competent, politically, than President Trump. But he was _lethally_ dangerous to thousands in southeast Asia with illegal attacks against Cambodia, and corrupt in abuse of Vietnam protesters, both of those grounds for impeachment before the discover of illegal taping in the White House and abuse of political opponents exposed at the Watergate Hotel.
The point learned there is that impeachment of a dangerous leader is feasible. But it takes exposure of a criminal offense that Congress is willing to investigate. We've had other treats of impeachment in my lifetime: it would take President Trump doing something not only blatantly criminal, but something that offended Congress sufficiently.
The "Trump will go nuclear!" thing is hyperbole; it means you've fallen for the demonization
Trump does not even have the authority to initiate a nuclear attack. It would require careful consideration by a team of designated strategists. This was also the case all the way back to Truman.
that's bullshit pushed on you by the very rich so they can take everything in the cupboard for themselves. Occam's Razor, look for the simplest solution: Which is you're being lied to.
Let me ask you this: If America is supposed to be the greatest country in history why the hell can't we take care of our old? A: We don't want to. And by 'we' I mean our ruling elites, who have been pitting us against each other for thousands of years.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Would've modded you up if you'd given a citation. The President has the Football and AFAIK can use it at any time for any reason.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
There are plenty of people with money too stupid to figure out what Trump is and can't see that he literally is a sociopath
Here's something that will blow your mind - what if EVERY SINGLE TRUMP VOTER understood exactly that, and the intent was simply to send a sociopath into DC that all of the professional politicians would have to deal with.
Trump's victory has been a raging success from that standpoint, even including your post.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That is the essence of identity politics gone bad
That has always been the purpose of Identity Politics, to balkanize a society into tribal groups that can be pitted against each other and played off by the globalist 'elites'. That was the whole point of pushing it by the Post Modernists and Cultural Marxists. They think if they destroy 'The Evil Patriarchy' (which is, Enlightenment Civilization based on Individualism and the sovereign Nation State) then not only will thermonuclear war be avoided but also the Collectivist utopia can be instantiated - overseen by the 'elites', of course. The "Ends Justify the Means" and destruction of Individual Liberty is supposed to usher in utopia, of course it always ushers in a dystopian nightmare where Individuals are slaughtered by their own governments and liberty dies at the hands of dogmatisms of what we would now call 'Political Correctness'.
Whenever a group bigger than the Individual and Family becomes more important than the Individual then individuals suffer. Look at all the democides of the last century, nearly all were by big Collectives and Identity Groups who persecuted Individuals. The only known antidote to this is Classic Liberalism where the Individual is the protected unit of society, and economic transactions are voluntary, not an Identity Group who can harm Individuals with involuntary transactions coerced with State force.
Trump's strategy is to ALWAYS double down because he is ALWAYS playing with the house's money. "What have you got to lose?"
The problem is people are diving in to ideological bubbles and hear nothing but the echo chamber. The fact that you chose the words "honest" and "ethical" shows your bias. You're so buried in a world of group think you believe that anyone that thinks differently is automatically dishonest and lacks ethics. The entire point of this article is that we as a society need to intermingle. Hear differing points of view. Have honest debate (that means actually listening). People on the right are very much as guilty as well of searching for those they agree with.
We're stronger as a people when we have mutual respect and work together. All we're doing by being smug and thinking we're smarter, more ethical and have all the answers is tearing ourselves apart.
This article is an interesting read on perspective. I can't vouch for how authentic it is though. I didn't bother researching the author. http://nypost.com/2017/10/21/the-other-half-of-america-that-the-liberal-media-doesnt-cover/
Saying that identify politics exists is basically like saying that water is wet.
Back in the 70's, they used to run public ad campaigns with Saturday morning cartoons.Wagon Wheel, I'm only a Bill, conjunction junction, what's your function. One of the ads that I remember stressed that people were not labels. Brown, black, tall, short, handicapped, four eyes, etc. Today, everyone wants to be a label,
The essential premise of the book, which Postman extends to the rest of his argument(s), is that "form excludes the content," that is, a particular medium can only sustain a particular level of ideas.
People have demonstrated that it's easy to manipulate what is popular on sites like reddit?
Congratulations on proving the main thesis is flawed.
When your arguement is that anyone who disagrees with you proves you correct, you have a flawed arguement. I believe this is called "begging the question" but I'm not good with naming falacies.
There are so many assumptions that were made to "prove" this article the I doubt anyone with any sense could believe it. You could say that having access to information makes us violent, so we need to ban libraries, using this logic. If this is even remotely true, then it's not a problem with the Internet but human psychology. Which would be almost unethical to test. So good luck there. So this whole article should be ignored, as it contributes nothing to the pool of information. And at best is click bate.
I think "Follow the monkey" is currently more popular in the USA.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Well, the article does state that these tendencies have been there for a long time. The main point is that the possibilities of internet combined with the comfortable, intellectual laziness of people apparently exacerbates these issues.
For example when you look through online communities you see steaming rage about SJW, MRA, alt-right, communists, BLM, LGBTx, feminism, veganism, religious extremism as in Jihadists, Christians evangelists, militant atheists and what not. And all of these are portrayed to be very serious things, spelling destruction by threatening the way of life as you know it. But if you compare it to what happens in the actual world around you, in cities on the streets and so forth and judge people by their actions, you'll find a rather different picture. The conclusion that contemporary usage social media serves to distort our perception in a negative way does not seem to be off.
The illusion is that there is that side and this side.
It's always, always the most important election in our lifetime
Well of course it is. The basis of that is: Previous candidate was mediocre, didn't cause a nuclear winter, however we don't know what the next candidate will do. That's why this is the most important election.
Remember Clinton is a war monomerer, or so I was told prior to the election.
The President canâ(TM)t order nuclear war âoeat any time for any reasonâ.
I guess he can't declare war, but he can order a nuclear strike. I'd imagine that if he nuked somebody, the chances of that leading to war are pretty good.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Who agrees with me?
(and if you don't agree with me, you are evil and an idiot)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... The subsequent economic depression, coupled with the rootlessness enabled by access to online data and strong social pressure to be flexible (the results of corporations wanting highly mobile workforces without strong local ties), results in a fragmentation of society along religious, ethnic and a variety of class markers, what Toffler calls "subcults", including what would in 2010 be described as "gangs." The equitable distribution of data access and data privacy is a prominent theme in the book; characters who have access to information which is nominally secret enjoy demonstrable economic advantages over others lacking access to such data. In the novel, data privacy is reserved for corporate entities and individuals who may then conceal wrongdoing; by contrast, normal citizens do not enjoy significant privacy.
Traditional media has been taking a side more and more as well.
Partisan organizations shouldn't be able to masquerade as impartial news organizations.
Trump's Supporters are Willfully Blind.
Trump was a Birther, which was both racist and stupid. Trump's supporters enthusiastically joined in.
Trump got into that ugly feud with Rosie O'Donnell. Trump's supporters thought it was great that Trump denigrated Rosie's appearance.
Trump bragged about grabbing pussy. Now, how can it be that Billy Bush gets fired over that while Trump walks away untouched? Oh yeah, Trump supporters think "that doesn't matter".
Trump calls Mexicans rapists and killers, then throws in a half-hearted qualification. Trump supporters call that "fair and balanced".
There are literally decades of this kind of stuff on record. Sexist, racist, xenophobic, and most of all egotistical bombast. Trump supporters are oblivious to it all. You can't fix stupid!
"What has happened to us?"
Same thing that happened in Germany back in the 1920 and a million other times through human history.
Back in the stone age (when our psychological traits evolved) a bleak future outlook could always be solved by a reduction in the local population. The bleak outlook was almost always due to population growth that strained the environment to provide enough food. The evolutionary response was for xenophobic memes to be intensively circulated till the warriors were hyped up enough to go kill the neighbors.
Like much else in psychological (or physiological) responses, the perception of a bleak future is relative. It depends on what people are used to. It is also a matter of perception, people are psychologically affected by bleak predictions. This is basic evolutionary psychology. Unfortunately, while EP helps a lot to understand what is going on, it isn't much use to fix things. It's hard to imagine the Arab world dropping to replacement fertility or becoming much more productive. (It's not entirely an Islamic culture thing because Iran has reached the two children per woman point.)
There is lots more on this topic. One place to start is the Wikipedia articles on Azar Gat and Steven A. LeBlanc.
End MGM. Get prospective parents of boys to Google: Men do complain
Free money is over. SS trust fund is already sucking funds from the general fund.
If it were an insurance company, they'd slap the cuffs on congress.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I'm old enough to remember, very well, the politics of the impeachment of President Nixon.
I'm old enough to remember Nixon too. However your memory is faulty. Nixon was never impeached. He resigned, which put an end to the impeachment process. He was later pardoned by Ford, which allowed Nixon to also avoid any criminal prosecution as well.
Granted, after the House judiciary committee investigation, the impeachment process was formally initiated for three counts. But his resignation put an end to it. There was debate on charging him for the bombing of Cambodia, but that never passed the vote. So he was never in any danger of being impeached for actually killing people.
> Bush was a lousy choice, but infinitely better than Trump. Trump is something else Things change and without Bush there would be no Trump. One inevitably leads to another.
Do I understand your argument correctly? "This great division began during the last administration," because BLM? You really think that's what the great division is? What about: Roe v. Wade, the War on Drugs, the Red Scare, intelligent design, bra burning, flag burning, AIDS, assault weapons, lynchings, Prohibition, internment camps, slavery, etc. ad nauseam? America always has strife and divisions. These divisions are stoked by those seeking power.
Of course, they don't hide it or even pretend anymore. "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." Not "govern well" or "fix the tax code" or "end the war in Iraqistanya" or even "do what's best for our constituents for the next couple of years." The only way people stay in power or gain power is by demonizing something else.
Coming up with solutions and doing good governance will not bring millions of grumpy old white men to the polls. But whipping up a frenzy because "Your trans neighbor is gay married to a free-range emu and wants to take away your guns while doing ecstasy until you sacrifice an American flag to Satan!" will turn them out in droves.
Frankly the entire history of the US is all about information and the use of information created and used by others. When the Spanish, French, English, Native People and others came together in the US we tended to use the best stuff the other groups had or adopt features of their stuff to our stuff. The mixing and conglomeration of various peoples allowed us to have strength and knowledge beyond our nations enemies. It enabled our survival as well as our progress. Today the wrapping on the packages is looking different but inside the same wonders still reside. For example the sciences and engineering positions in our universities have serious numbers of people from Pakistan, India, and the Pacific rim nations making breakthroughs daily. We are being enriched tremendously by foreign scholars. In the mechanical sciences and arts we seem to love French, Italian and German designers for mechanical as well as styling considerations. We also are getting schooled on how to build cars by Japanese and S.Korean car industries. One way or another these advanced people are carrying data with them that they acquired back home, It is more and more data building every minute of every day. We need all that we can get.
Making a tough business deal, and outright nuking tens of thousands or millions of people are two very different things, and Trump knows that.
Citation needed. Every time Trump has gotten even vaguely near the nuke topic, it has been a disaster. He claimed he can learn everything there is to know about nuclear missiles in an hour. When asked about the topic, he goes on bizarre tangents about a smart uncle. After meeting with nuclear security experts, many of them expressed grave concerns about his temperament and ignorance on the topic. All of the existing evidence suggests that Trump is both ignorant about nuclear weapons and impulsive in the extreme - about the most dangerous combination you could ask for.
10 years ago you were calling Bush a racist white supremacist, Hitler, warmonger, Islamophobe, and the end of the world.
No I was not. I didn't like a lot of his policies. But I didn't say those things. Try again.
But then what you are saying is that the status quo is, in fact, honest and ethical, which the GP clearly dissagrees with. So do you have any evidence that society as it stands is honest and ethical or is it just that you identify with the status quo and believe that anyone who disagrees with it is dishonest and unethical?
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Newsweek is just jealous. They're supposed to be dividing us and making us raging mad, and Silicon Valley is beating them at their own game.
"I was supposed to fire James Comey!"
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
You've mentioned some of the reasons I did not call it a _successful_ impeachment. The case did involve the _politics_ of impeachment. Part of the point I was trying to make is that he killed thousands but was charged on relatively trivial grounds, grounds that offended the sensibilities of Congress and were exposed to the voting American public. I considered his illegal attacks on Cambodia to be far worse offenses because of the deaths of thousands. But as your point about Cambodia attacks outlines, there was no political will to charge him for those impeachable offenses.
But you got one important point wrong - the money collected WAS spent when collected. There's no giant piggy bank holding all those people's money collected as FICA over the years. Just IOUs from Uncle Sam.
This is utterly and completely false. It can not possibly be more wrong without invoking the Earth being flat or anti-vaxx theology.
The Social Security Trust fund is a giant piggy bank. Like all sensible savings plans, it invests the money. The money was invested in US government bonds. Those bonds are not "IOUs". They are savings instruments just like bonds issued by companies or states or cities or banks. They have a maturity date, at which time the government has to pay the money back, along with interest.
Most importantly, the maturity date has already passed for many of these bonds. As in, they are not IOUs laying around, they have been paid back with interest.
The money raised by these bond sales are not an automatic infusion of money into the general fund. They are money owed by the government, so they count as deficit spending. It was not "free money". At best, you can argue that these bonds are paying a lower interest rate than bonds that would have been sold on the open market. But bonds on the open market already were paying extremely low interest, so it's difficult to argue the difference is all that large.
The congress got used to having billions every year coming in that didn't count as "federal taxes",
The conservative movement started pretending the only federal taxes are income taxes 60 years ago. It's how they can claim 47% pay "no taxes" - by pretending income tax is the only one that counts.
FICA taxes are federal taxes. It doesn't matter that they are not income tax. They are still federal taxes.
Hear, hear!
I'm sick and tired of these hip, "ironic" sigs. This is an actual, honest-to-goodness no-nonsense sig!
The fact that you chose the words "honest" and "ethical" shows your bias.
It's interesting that you chose those words as demonstrating a bias. Surely we should be calling-out dishonest and unethical behaviour from those we agree with politically even more vigorously that from those that we do not? It does, after all, weaken our case.
We've had those divisions in the past, certainly, but in the *recent* decades they were not daily front page news like they are today. Everything now is muh victimhood and hate, even on small levels.
People don't even feel relevant today if they can't find something to be victimized by, or point someone else out doing purported victimizing. Those are the ones going into a frenzy with riots and protests in the streets, burning cars, attacking people, and damaging businesses, and I'm looking at other groups besides just BLM.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
How young are you? You could use a little historical perspective. Nothing you are talking about is new. We had race riots for at least as long as I've been paying attention (starting in the 1960s), front page news about relations with minority groups (defined by power, not by number), etc.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Oh that's funny. I was born in 1962, don't be presumptuous. I've been around, but you've totally missed my point. I never said this was "new"; I said, there have been no major, extended race riots and nationwide feelings of division "in recent decades", which I see as the past 10, 20, and 30 years. Even going back 35 years takes us back to 1982, not the '70s and '60s. Those decades were the last ones where you really saw civil and social unrest.
BTW, if you consider the 1960s a "recent" decade, you must be really, really, old, and you make me feel young, thanks.
Now, there was the Rodney King affair, and the OJ Simpson trial, but they utterly pale in comparison to the BLM movement and Antifa. It was not like this in the eighties or nineties, nor even the 00s, and I remember that very well.
Today, it's like the '60s all over again.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Printed money has a cost, stolen money is free.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
There are race riots on the order of the ones we had when I was young? I hadn't noticed any. Got any examples?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
BLM in Baltimore and Ferguson: torching and smashing in cars, windows, businesses. Marches and riots in other cities too, shutting down traffic on major highways. I don't need to search for you, you know those examples are there, you're being disingenuous.
Cops being being shot dead on sight for just being cops, 5 in Dallas in one night, July 2016.
Antifa clashing with NeoNazis in Charlettesville?
At least MLK preached peaceful protests.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
In other words, you don't have anything comparable to the race riots of the 60s.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
But you got one important point wrong - the money collected WAS spent when collected. There's no giant piggy bank holding all those people's money collected as FICA over the years. Just IOUs from Uncle Sam.
This is utterly and completely false. It can not possibly be more wrong without invoking the Earth being flat or anti-vaxx theology.
The Social Security Trust fund is a giant piggy bank. Like all sensible savings plans, it invests the money. The money was invested in US government bonds. Those bonds are not "IOUs". They are savings instruments just like bonds issued by companies or states or cities or banks. They have a maturity date, at which time the government has to pay the money back, along with interest
What is a US government bond and why does the US government issue them? Bonds are issued by the US government to borrow money. The money that was borrowed is being spent to fund current expenses, including the deficit and debt service. These bonds must be repaid with interest. To repay them the government will need to get money either from tax revenue or more borrowing. So it is 100% true that your social security payments have been spent as part of the current general revenue and replaced by an IOU in the form of a US bond that must be repaid in the future by future taxpayers.
It would be different if the money was instead invested in something other than US bonds.