Unless we have friends, allies to whom we have committed helping.
As I said, I think treaties are a really bad idea. My idea of us being specifically committed to helping another country is a nice shipment of fungibles. Obviously, this is not how it actually works. My position is this is how it should work.
In other cases, where we may not have any clear obligation to help, is it morally acceptable to ignore someone in need if they ask for help? Is your isolationism absolute?
I think it is extremely unwise to step out and act like we have any right to exert violence and coercion on someone who has not attacked us. Just because we can is not a sufficient reason in my view. And I do think that it is a country's obligation to secure its own borders, and not annoy other countries as a matter of not putting its own citizens at risk. If they choose to do that... they reap the consequences.
The problem with "morally acceptable" as you present it is that it assumes a broad umbrella of morals everyone is taking the same shelter under. But that's not the case. Every country's umbrella ends at their borders, because that's how national law works, and if WE want to be a nation, we had best pay serious attention to that. You don't want England mandating to us how we must run our medical system, do you? Or the Saudis telling us how we must treat our women? Or the Vatican telling us how to run our congress?
There was a time, when I was a kid, when the argument for our aggression was put forth as essentially "because we don't torture" (WRT Vietnam) and I could sort of see it. But today, we do torture. We have gulags. We abuse the living hell out of our own citizens. We treat our constitution as an amusing historical document and operate as a de facto 100% unauthorized oligarchy. If we ever had any kind of universal moral authority, our government has eroded it completely away. We're bad actors, and that's another very good reason to not act out. Look at the horror show we made out of Iraq. We don't do good. We make horrific messes. And while I'm all for messing someone up if they attack us, good grief, if Iraq doesn't stand as the poster child for why we should keep our damned paws to ourselves 99.00% of the time, I don't know how to convince you. Afghanistan too. All that war, and we didn't accomplish shit. We sure got a lot of people killed and maimed though. Ain't we grand?
Should we not, through treaties or alliances, like NATO, rightly establish, support and defend external things that may be beneficial to ourselves? Doing so may create obligations to support and defend others. Is that still not in our interest?
No. We should not. Certainly not until we put our own house in order, and also not until we all agree to live under the same social umbrella. Until both of those come about, the rules aren't so much fluid as non-existent, and our record is horrible. "Help" means "You're gonna need to rebuild."
On the other hand, I agree that we should avoid getting involved when not asked or our help is unwanted. Often, though, that can be difficult to decipher in places, say, where the administration is oppressing its people and doesn't want our help, but the people being oppressed do.
The people are always more numerous and better positioned than the government. There are zero examples where the government could actually overpower the people as a whole. It is the job of the citizens of any country to see to it that they are governed the way they desire. Just as it is ours to fix our own out-of-control government. I hate the malfuckery that's going on in Washington and our state capitals (and to some extent, in our local town councils), but good grief, it is the world's very worst idea to have someone else come in here to "fix things" -- if we want a fix to stick, we have to work out how to do it
But if some world power starts going on a wild tear as in the '40s
Japan attacked us when we weren't ready. Recall how that worked out for them? I understand the shadows of the citizens are still etched into the concrete in Hiroshima.
Germany was a member of the Axis powers; Japan, also a member, opened that door. We closed it on the German's dick so hard they had no dick left. They were so traumatized they can't even allow anyone to talk about Nazism. The reports of the firestorms in Dresden and Hamburg didn't seem like they'd been any fun, either. And we were late in, and arguably mostly unprepared.
These are excellent object lessons for any country today. Excellent. Only today, we're actually ready. Really, really, ready.
waiting until we're the only ones left seems a bit too late to mount an effective defense.
Even in wwii, when we weren't ready, that wasn't true.
Today, it really isn't true. We have nuclear weapons, cruise missiles, and various other highly creative and strikingly effective ways to ruin anyone's day in very short order, and a military larger than the next several countries combined to back the immediate "we will wreck you in 30 minutes" tools up. We're not so much "ready" as we are one very short step from crushing anyone who strikes us wrong like they were bugs. Little bugs. That's good enough. We shouldn't do it unless the bugs bite. There will be no repeats of Pearl Harbor. And you can't bomb ideologies out of existence -- that's why attacking Iraq and Afghanistan was so utterly stupid. We just made more terrorists. And shot ourselves in the foot with the (un)PATRIOT(ic) act/footgun and more security theater/angstfesting than you can shake an IED at.
Same deal for waiting until we and Canada are the only ones left, etc. I'm not suggesting that something like annexing Crimea is on the actionable side of that line, but I am suggesting that there are cases where preemptive action is appropriate to keep a small problem from potentially turning into a really big problem.
I would say that with the advent of nuclear weapons, there is no line. The entire world, united into one anti-US, pro-violence coalition, isn't sufficient to attack us without ending everything, and therefore there is no point to such an attack, no matter what the opposing interests have in mind. Furthermore, we are so resource-rich, we don't actually need anyone else given a little retrenching. Going back to wwi, we know full well how fast we can put our economy on a highly productive footing when we want to. Fast. Japan stops selling us TV sets or China won't send iPhones, you think we'll do without? I can't see it, truly.
"First they came for the gays, and I did not speak out - Because I was not a gay.
Then they came for the drug users, and I did not speak out - Because I was not a drug user.
Then they came for the polygamists, and I did not speak out- Because I was not a polygamist.
Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me."
You know why that's relevant, and your use isn't?
Because in my version, we all live within the same society (also true of Germany at the time Niemöller wrote that.) The concern is that the authorities we allow to run our show are getting out of hand, and, we are responsible for them -- they are us, in the very most basic sense. In your version, your basic assumption is that everyone in the world lives under the same set of social rules, a common social contract, and a binding one at that. But we don't. Saudi Arabia is not the US (thank goodness) and the US is not Saudi Arabia. They want to behead criminals and treat women like possessions, it's not our responsibility to interfere. That's something in their own social matrix. Likewise, we want to maintain the world's largest gulag composed of drug users, it's not Saudi Arabia's job to interfere.
Nations exist for a reason. If you advocate that ignoring a nation's borders and exerting force on them is valid "because reasons", then you'd best be prepared when some other nation decides we've been fucking up our situation just a little too much, and steps in here to fix our unconstitutional, out-of-hand government. All I expect to hear from you then is "Thank you sir, yes sir, right away sir, here are my papers, please may I have a ration card?"
That's not how civilized people behave. If that's how you behave, you're part of the problem.
It's not a question of how I behave; I do not advocate us invading anyone. I think we were absolutely wrong in almost every war we ever got involved in during this century (Japan's attack on us excepted), and I think other countries are wrong when they invade others as well. But I am not their mommy. It is not my responsibility, nor our country's, to shore up a shitty house someone else has built. Every country has a responsibility to erect a sustainable construct for the benefit of its own people and to behave in a way that won't aggravate the shit out of others. If they can't, they literally have no business at all complaining if and when it falls down around their heads. Just as a person who builds a fireplace out of twigs has no business complaining when the thing burns down as soon as he lights a match in it.
Countries exist for a reason -- and it isn't an imaginary one. It's to create sovereignty, and that in turn is there to secure and protect social and fungible treasure as seen by the citizens. There's no other reason to do it. You would be stupid to jump on an island here in the US, claim it was a sovereign country, and expect to be left alone (and you would not be.) This is 100% because you attempted to set up shop without the means to actually set up shop. Now, you have a fleet of nuclear armed submarines no one knows where is and you do this, and viola, you have a country. See? If you can defend it, it's serious. If you can't, it's bullshit.
If some other country attacks us, I advocate wiping them off the face of the earth. Otherwise, they can do whatever they want. This has three immediate consequences: One, we're not aggravating anyone else, so their urge to mess with us based on resentment is minimized. Two, deciding to mess with us is a very, very serious decision, one that will almost certainly result in their being wiped out of existence. Three, other countries would no longer worry about is screwing with them, because they'd know that if they don't screw with us first, it isn't going to happen.
What I'm talking about is what our duty is when some entity on the other side of the planet misbehaves. Our laws and our society end right at our national border. If you claim otherwise, you're very, very confused. The only thing that we can exert beyond our borders is coercion and force. Because, and this is the money right here, no one else is subject to our laws.
Until nations are no longer a thing (and yes, I think that's a good idea), either nations are fully capable of protecting their own, either directly or by employing hired force, or not. If not, that's not our fault or responsibility. I am, by the way, perfectly willing that our force be hired out, as long as all its members are volunteers and we earn treasure instead of losing it.
Treaties are generally a really, really bad idea. Just to get that out of the way. I wish we didn't have any.
You know.... here we are, with congress, the executive, and the judiciary roundly ignoring the constitution. Make no law, they make laws. Shall not infringe, they infringe like there's no tomorrow. Intrastate commerce regulated by abusing power authorized only for interstate commerce. Ex post facto laws abound. Search and seizure without warrant or probable cause or oath or affirmation or really anything is regular entertainment for the cops, as is shooting black people for the crime of "living while black." The government has tortured, it holds people without judicial process, it snoops on people's lives in an incredibly invasive and anti-liberty manner, and 1984's the people into thinking this must be a good idea when it definitely is not. The electoral college routinely disenfranchises citizens of their votes. Our politicians lie like rugs both in pursuit of office, and while in it. The USA acts, internally, like a bunch of assholes and is
No, the OP specified "population", not "legal voters" or "voting age" (hell, I can't tell how old a lot of near-18 y/o's are anyway with any degree of accuracy.) And that's not the issue anyway, because only the people who actually voted may have voted for Trump, Trump voters being the basic premise that the OP was using to make its key assertion. It was 47% of them -- not of the population, and not of legal age voters.
If you want to recast the question, then yes, you can recast the answer. I wasn't inclined to do so.
Annexing neighbors and posturing militarily has to have some sort of a reaction other than "let's talk it out".
No, it really doesn't. It's none of our business. We have no right to interfere with the actions of other countries. And that's what it is: interference. You want to have a sovereign country? Fine. Make sure you can defend it or otherwise exert effective leverage sufficient to maintain your sovereignty. Otherwise, someone is going to take it from you or otherwise ruin your day -- and we -- the US -- definitely shouldn't have to be the one to guarantee your borders. That's your job.
This whole "US is the world's policeman" business is insane. And the claim that we actually have significant national interests in 99% of these venues isn't much better.
Our job is making sure no one annexes us. Other countries can posture all they want. We can squash them like bugs if they try anything. And we should. Other than that, there's an awful lot of stuff we need to be paying attention to within our borders that we are not.
Dude, you are udderly ridiculous. Seriously. Don't you feel like you have a steak in this coversation? It be hooves you to take a more serious approach to the forum, no matter what you've herd elsewhere. It's time to stop milking this for all it's worth and get with the program, before the mods decide to put you out to pasture, see?
The truth that nearly half (currently 47%) of the population of the United States are deep down a mix, of racist, sexist, hate-filled scumbags and uneducated morons too ignorant to see Trump for what he is.
47% if the voters. not 47% of the population.
127 million people voted. The US population is estimated at 324,227,000 in 2016
47% of the voters is 59.6 million people. 47% of the population of the US is 152.3 million people. That's more people than voted in total!
So really, the election told us that 18% of the people next to us in the checkout line are likely to be Trump voters. Some of them aren't even of voting age, so you know they didn't participate in the dumbing down of the presidency (even past the Bush years... it's astonishing, really. The tyranny of the Gaussian come home to roost. Democracy at work: any two idiots outvote a genius. In an environment where geniuses are rare.)
I'm in Montana. Here's what the electoral college did WRT Montana and California this election:
California has 55 electors. Montana has 3. That's an 18.3:1 weight.
If the majority in a state votes for X, but a person votes for Y, that vote does not count - at all. That person becomes a member of a completely disenfranchised minority.
Montana went 273,696 for Trump, while Clinton got 174,249. California went 5,488,261 for Clinton, while Trump got 2,969,532
Majority voters in California actually outvoted majority voters in Montana by 20:1 in favor of Clinton. But because of the 18.3:1 weighting of the EC, the majority voters of California had about 9% of their vote weight taken from them. While the minority voters in both states were not counted at all.
That is what the electoral college did in this election. It's a nightmare of massive unfairness, and that's the nicest thing I can say about it.
In a national election, every voter should have equal weight as to who should represent everyone. No one should be disenfranchised; no one should be able to outvote anyone else.
Inside a state, on state matters, when you vote for X, your vote counts just as much if you're a farmer or a city dweller. There's no weighting of farmers over city dwellers; there's no disenfranchisement. You should all be asking yourselves, why is there such a difference here, and what possible purpose could it serve that justifies either my vote outweighing your vote / vice versa, or my vote / your vote not counting at all?
Our political system is a sewer. Representation is only fair if you have input on it. I voted, but my input was completely discarded. Same for a lot of other people. While my majority-voting neighbor exercised more influence than majority California voters were able to. That's complete and utter bullshit.
Politicians and their sycophants have completely pulled the wool over the eyes of the voters. The EC is disgusting. Apologists for the EC are disgusting.
Certainly it serves a purpose. The purpose is to interfere with the political will of the active voters of the United States of America. And that's exactly what it does. Congratulations.
The fact that he does not have the stock answers does not make him an idiot.
Oh, agreed. What makes him an idiot is that he is stupid, xenophobic, misogynist, racist, crass, sexist, of both limited vocabulary and limited verbal complexity. It's truly difficult to consistently reach such depths of character and function when you are intelligent. I'm sure it can be done, but generally speaking, the intelligent don't go around "grabbing pussy", asking questions about why we have nuclear weapons (if you don't know, you're too ignorant to lead, frankly), they don't impugn a judge's integrity because they're "Mexican", etc., etc., etc. Because, you know, they're intelligent.
The only statesmanlike answer to these questions is of the form:
"These weapons are a deterrent. They are weapons of mass destruction. We reserve the right to use them in any case where weapons of mass destruction are used by another party."
Everything Trump said on the matter was not helpful, the result of clueless fumbling when faced with (one of many) topics in which he has zero competence..
No surprise. The man is an idiot, after all. The very best idiot. There's no problem with the size of his idiocy, I assure you, it is tremendous. He's an idiot in the most bigly way -- you can't even imagine how bigly he is an idiot. By the way, he desires to grab your pussy, should you have one. And that's perfectly okay. Because he's just a boy, and boys are like that, see?
Hillary is a criminal. Why do you think electing a criminal is better than an idiot?
Mrs. Clinton stands accused, by the right, of crimes. The justice system has not made that determination. Just so we're perfectly clear about that.
So to answer to the actual circumstance, neither candidate is a criminal. So it comes down to what they claimed they would do, or not do, and the degree of sophistication and alignment with my worldview that those statements represent, as well as how well they stuck to the facts - catching a candidate in a lie is significant, and Trump's lies far exceeded Clintons.
Quite aside from that, there's no evidence at all that Clinton is misogynist or misandrist; none that she is xenophobic; none that she is racist; none that she is a sexist pig; and none that she is stupid.
Trump, OTOH, has provided ample statements demonstrating that he in fact is misogynist, xenophobic, racist, a sexist pig, and stupid.
So that's why I think electing Clinton is a considerably better choice than electing Trump.
Christ, I would be very happy to have these idiots out of my country.
At one point, this was said:
Trump: "For me, nuclear, the power, the devastation, is very important to me"
With that in mind, consider this exchange:
Moderator: "OK. The trouble is, when you said that, the whole world heard it. David Cameron in Britain heard it. The Japanese, where we bombed them in 45, heard it. They`re hearing a guy running for president of the United States talking of maybe using nuclear weapons. Nobody wants to hear that about an American president."
Trump: "Then why are we are making them? Why do we make them?"
And then there was this:
Moderator: "Can you tell the Middle East we’re not using nuclear weapons?"
Trump: "I would never say that."
------------
...now, you may find all of that reassuring somehow. I do not. IMHO, telling the middle east that he is willing to nuke them is extremely inflammatory to the argument that they should nuke us first.
IOW, if I seriously inform you that I will consider actually shooting you, the downside of you shooting me first has reduced considerably. That's what Trump has done. If it was statesmanship, it would be of the very poorest sort. Of course, it wasn't. It was the absurd remarks of an incompetent reality TV show star. They remain that until / if he is inaugurated as president of the country. At that point... they become much, much worse.
The problem with that argument is that in this case Hillary is projected to win the popular vote. If you are arguing that Trump is what we need protection from, the masses would be right and the EC is the problem by distorting the influence of certain elements of the population.
The EC could be the problem. They are projected to be the problem, and this is because of the mismatch between various subgroups of the masses represented by the EC members, said subgroups having an uneven balance of power with other subgroups. The presumed outcome is of exactly the same nature as if the popular vote elected an unfit candidate. The EC has the option available to them to not to be the problem, because they can choose that, it's in their very nature.
That's what I'm talking about. I agree that they could indeed be the problem. Right now, everyone is assuming they are. However, they may not be.
If you[sic] "social progress' is 9 un-elected individuals making majority unpopular decision from the bench above any law or legal framework, than I am support[sic] glad you lost.
I consider social progress, among other things, as anything that moves the nation away from any imposition of coercive force contrary to the personal and consensual choices of the citizens.
Woman's bodies are theirs. Not yours. Not the government's. No matter how you feel about the issue, nothing in those feelings gives you, or the government, any right to tell them what to do with their bodies and any life that is physically growing within their bodies -- whether that life is growing as the result of an accident, intentionally, or consequent to criminal violation of their bodies by others. None. For the very same reasons that no one, regardless of their opinion of the matter, has the right to tell you if you may, or may not, choose to eat a cheeseburger.
Once a viable baby is no longer part of the woman's body and you want to care for it, and the parents are willing, that is the time that you might legitimately gain some semblance of direct control over the life and future of that baby.
Barring such a circumstance, any attempt you make to coerce that woman into doing something she does not want to do with her body is an act of tyranny.
This is exactly the kind of thing the institution was created to protect us from -- ill-considered actions by the voters; one of the critical flaws of democratic action by the masses. The wolves deciding what's for dinner.
The system allows for the EC to act on this by not voting him into the presidency. There are numerous strong reasons to do so.
There are 29 states (plus the District of Columbia) that require lockstep following of the voting public issue; they issue a small variety of rarely enforced punishments for electors that do not do so, including fines and misdemeanors. EC members have individually done this 157 times to date, so there's plenty of precedent on a per-elector basis.
Also... if they don't do this... then I submit that the EC has proved that the institution has no actual worth.
Another thing: this circumstance was brought about by a dissatisfied public. Imagine the levels of dissatisfaction as automation adds its impetus to the job losses we've already seen due to recent labor policies. Now consider the chaos Trump could add to the mix if he actually follows through on some of the things he said on the campaign trail.
Some of those include an increased willingness to use nuclear weapons; disruption of current trade patterns; economic problems (we're already seeing some of that, check the news on world financial market reaction this morning); Walking back major aspects of social progress - Roe v. Wade, LBGT rights, etc.; government using religion to select people for abusive treatment... It's quite a list. I find it a formidable counter-indication in terms of expecting the next four years to go well, and the follow-on effects may last for considerably longer than that.
Remember how long it took under the Obama administration to recover from Bush's bumbling economic moves? Then there's the whole question of who ends up in whatever supreme court seats go vacant. That alone could change the nation's path in many negative ways, as we have previously seen several times.
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As I said, I think treaties are a really bad idea. My idea of us being specifically committed to helping another country is a nice shipment of fungibles. Obviously, this is not how it actually works. My position is this is how it should work.
I think it is extremely unwise to step out and act like we have any right to exert violence and coercion on someone who has not attacked us. Just because we can is not a sufficient reason in my view. And I do think that it is a country's obligation to secure its own borders, and not annoy other countries as a matter of not putting its own citizens at risk. If they choose to do that... they reap the consequences.
The problem with "morally acceptable" as you present it is that it assumes a broad umbrella of morals everyone is taking the same shelter under. But that's not the case. Every country's umbrella ends at their borders, because that's how national law works, and if WE want to be a nation, we had best pay serious attention to that. You don't want England mandating to us how we must run our medical system, do you? Or the Saudis telling us how we must treat our women? Or the Vatican telling us how to run our congress?
There was a time, when I was a kid, when the argument for our aggression was put forth as essentially "because we don't torture" (WRT Vietnam) and I could sort of see it. But today, we do torture. We have gulags. We abuse the living hell out of our own citizens. We treat our constitution as an amusing historical document and operate as a de facto 100% unauthorized oligarchy. If we ever had any kind of universal moral authority, our government has eroded it completely away. We're bad actors, and that's another very good reason to not act out. Look at the horror show we made out of Iraq. We don't do good. We make horrific messes. And while I'm all for messing someone up if they attack us, good grief, if Iraq doesn't stand as the poster child for why we should keep our damned paws to ourselves 99.00% of the time, I don't know how to convince you. Afghanistan too. All that war, and we didn't accomplish shit. We sure got a lot of people killed and maimed though. Ain't we grand?
No. We should not. Certainly not until we put our own house in order, and also not until we all agree to live under the same social umbrella. Until both of those come about, the rules aren't so much fluid as non-existent, and our record is horrible. "Help" means "You're gonna need to rebuild."
The people are always more numerous and better positioned than the government. There are zero examples where the government could actually overpower the people as a whole. It is the job of the citizens of any country to see to it that they are governed the way they desire. Just as it is ours to fix our own out-of-control government. I hate the malfuckery that's going on in Washington and our state capitals (and to some extent, in our local town councils), but good grief, it is the world's very worst idea to have someone else come in here to "fix things" -- if we want a fix to stick, we have to work out how to do it
Japan attacked us when we weren't ready. Recall how that worked out for them? I understand the shadows of the citizens are still etched into the concrete in Hiroshima.
Germany was a member of the Axis powers; Japan, also a member, opened that door. We closed it on the German's dick so hard they had no dick left. They were so traumatized they can't even allow anyone to talk about Nazism. The reports of the firestorms in Dresden and Hamburg didn't seem like they'd been any fun, either. And we were late in, and arguably mostly unprepared.
These are excellent object lessons for any country today. Excellent. Only today, we're actually ready. Really, really, ready.
Even in wwii, when we weren't ready, that wasn't true.
Today, it really isn't true. We have nuclear weapons, cruise missiles, and various other highly creative and strikingly effective ways to ruin anyone's day in very short order, and a military larger than the next several countries combined to back the immediate "we will wreck you in 30 minutes" tools up. We're not so much "ready" as we are one very short step from crushing anyone who strikes us wrong like they were bugs. Little bugs. That's good enough. We shouldn't do it unless the bugs bite. There will be no repeats of Pearl Harbor. And you can't bomb ideologies out of existence -- that's why attacking Iraq and Afghanistan was so utterly stupid. We just made more terrorists. And shot ourselves in the foot with the (un)PATRIOT(ic) act/footgun and more security theater/angstfesting than you can shake an IED at.
I would say that with the advent of nuclear weapons, there is no line. The entire world, united into one anti-US, pro-violence coalition, isn't sufficient to attack us without ending everything, and therefore there is no point to such an attack, no matter what the opposing interests have in mind. Furthermore, we are so resource-rich, we don't actually need anyone else given a little retrenching. Going back to wwi, we know full well how fast we can put our economy on a highly productive footing when we want to. Fast. Japan stops selling us TV sets or China won't send iPhones, you think we'll do without? I can't see it, truly.
Doesn't apply. Here's what you mean to be saying:
"First they came for the gays, and I did not speak out -
Because I was not a gay.
Then they came for the drug users, and I did not speak out -
Because I was not a drug user.
Then they came for the polygamists, and I did not speak out-
Because I was not a polygamist.
Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me."
You know why that's relevant, and your use isn't?
Because in my version, we all live within the same society (also true of Germany at the time Niemöller wrote that.) The concern is that the authorities we allow to run our show are getting out of hand, and, we are responsible for them -- they are us, in the very most basic sense. In your version, your basic assumption is that everyone in the world lives under the same set of social rules, a common social contract, and a binding one at that. But we don't. Saudi Arabia is not the US (thank goodness) and the US is not Saudi Arabia. They want to behead criminals and treat women like possessions, it's not our responsibility to interfere. That's something in their own social matrix. Likewise, we want to maintain the world's largest gulag composed of drug users, it's not Saudi Arabia's job to interfere.
Nations exist for a reason. If you advocate that ignoring a nation's borders and exerting force on them is valid "because reasons", then you'd best be prepared when some other nation decides we've been fucking up our situation just a little too much, and steps in here to fix our unconstitutional, out-of-hand government. All I expect to hear from you then is "Thank you sir, yes sir, right away sir, here are my papers, please may I have a ration card?"
It's not a question of how I behave; I do not advocate us invading anyone. I think we were absolutely wrong in almost every war we ever got involved in during this century (Japan's attack on us excepted), and I think other countries are wrong when they invade others as well. But I am not their mommy. It is not my responsibility, nor our country's, to shore up a shitty house someone else has built. Every country has a responsibility to erect a sustainable construct for the benefit of its own people and to behave in a way that won't aggravate the shit out of others. If they can't, they literally have no business at all complaining if and when it falls down around their heads. Just as a person who builds a fireplace out of twigs has no business complaining when the thing burns down as soon as he lights a match in it.
Countries exist for a reason -- and it isn't an imaginary one. It's to create sovereignty, and that in turn is there to secure and protect social and fungible treasure as seen by the citizens. There's no other reason to do it. You would be stupid to jump on an island here in the US, claim it was a sovereign country, and expect to be left alone (and you would not be.) This is 100% because you attempted to set up shop without the means to actually set up shop. Now, you have a fleet of nuclear armed submarines no one knows where is and you do this, and viola, you have a country. See? If you can defend it, it's serious. If you can't, it's bullshit.
If some other country attacks us, I advocate wiping them off the face of the earth. Otherwise, they can do whatever they want. This has three immediate consequences: One, we're not aggravating anyone else, so their urge to mess with us based on resentment is minimized. Two, deciding to mess with us is a very, very serious decision, one that will almost certainly result in their being wiped out of existence. Three, other countries would no longer worry about is screwing with them, because they'd know that if they don't screw with us first, it isn't going to happen.
What I'm talking about is what our duty is when some entity on the other side of the planet misbehaves. Our laws and our society end right at our national border. If you claim otherwise, you're very, very confused. The only thing that we can exert beyond our borders is coercion and force. Because, and this is the money right here, no one else is subject to our laws.
Until nations are no longer a thing (and yes, I think that's a good idea), either nations are fully capable of protecting their own, either directly or by employing hired force, or not. If not, that's not our fault or responsibility. I am, by the way, perfectly willing that our force be hired out, as long as all its members are volunteers and we earn treasure instead of losing it.
Treaties are generally a really, really bad idea. Just to get that out of the way. I wish we didn't have any.
You know.... here we are, with congress, the executive, and the judiciary roundly ignoring the constitution. Make no law, they make laws. Shall not infringe, they infringe like there's no tomorrow. Intrastate commerce regulated by abusing power authorized only for interstate commerce. Ex post facto laws abound. Search and seizure without warrant or probable cause or oath or affirmation or really anything is regular entertainment for the cops, as is shooting black people for the crime of "living while black." The government has tortured, it holds people without judicial process, it snoops on people's lives in an incredibly invasive and anti-liberty manner, and 1984's the people into thinking this must be a good idea when it definitely is not. The electoral college routinely disenfranchises citizens of their votes. Our politicians lie like rugs both in pursuit of office, and while in it. The USA acts, internally, like a bunch of assholes and is
No, the OP specified "population", not "legal voters" or "voting age" (hell, I can't tell how old a lot of near-18 y/o's are anyway with any degree of accuracy.) And that's not the issue anyway, because only the people who actually voted may have voted for Trump, Trump voters being the basic premise that the OP was using to make its key assertion. It was 47% of them -- not of the population, and not of legal age voters.
If you want to recast the question, then yes, you can recast the answer. I wasn't inclined to do so.
Carry on.
No, it really doesn't. It's none of our business. We have no right to interfere with the actions of other countries. And that's what it is: interference. You want to have a sovereign country? Fine. Make sure you can defend it or otherwise exert effective leverage sufficient to maintain your sovereignty. Otherwise, someone is going to take it from you or otherwise ruin your day -- and we -- the US -- definitely shouldn't have to be the one to guarantee your borders. That's your job.
This whole "US is the world's policeman" business is insane. And the claim that we actually have significant national interests in 99% of these venues isn't much better.
Our job is making sure no one annexes us. Other countries can posture all they want. We can squash them like bugs if they try anything. And we should. Other than that, there's an awful lot of stuff we need to be paying attention to within our borders that we are not.
Dude, you are udderly ridiculous. Seriously. Don't you feel like you have a steak in this coversation? It be hooves you to take a more serious approach to the forum, no matter what you've herd elsewhere. It's time to stop milking this for all it's worth and get with the program, before the mods decide to put you out to pasture, see?
No, he should be okay. He isn't a judge of Mexican ancestry, so I'm sure we can trust him.
47% if the voters. not 47% of the population.
127 million people voted.
The US population is estimated at 324,227,000 in 2016
47% of the voters is 59.6 million people.
47% of the population of the US is 152.3 million people. That's more people than voted in total!
So really, the election told us that 18% of the people next to us in the checkout line are likely to be Trump voters. Some of them aren't even of voting age, so you know they didn't participate in the dumbing down of the presidency (even past the Bush years... it's astonishing, really. The tyranny of the Gaussian come home to roost. Democracy at work: any two idiots outvote a genius. In an environment where geniuses are rare.)
Just saying. :)
I'm in Montana. Here's what the electoral college did WRT Montana and California this election:
California has 55 electors. Montana has 3. That's an 18.3:1 weight.
If the majority in a state votes for X, but a person votes for Y, that vote does not count - at all. That person becomes a member of a completely disenfranchised minority.
Montana went 273,696 for Trump, while Clinton got 174,249.
California went 5,488,261 for Clinton, while Trump got 2,969,532
Majority voters in California actually outvoted majority voters in Montana by 20:1 in favor of Clinton.
But because of the 18.3:1 weighting of the EC, the majority voters of California had about 9% of their vote weight taken from them. While the minority voters in both states were not counted at all.
That is what the electoral college did in this election. It's a nightmare of massive unfairness, and that's the nicest thing I can say about it.
In a national election, every voter should have equal weight as to who should represent everyone. No one should be disenfranchised; no one should be able to outvote anyone else.
Inside a state, on state matters, when you vote for X, your vote counts just as much if you're a farmer or a city dweller. There's no weighting of farmers over city dwellers; there's no disenfranchisement. You should all be asking yourselves, why is there such a difference here, and what possible purpose could it serve that justifies either my vote outweighing your vote / vice versa, or my vote / your vote not counting at all?
Our political system is a sewer. Representation is only fair if you have input on it. I voted, but my input was completely discarded. Same for a lot of other people. While my majority-voting neighbor exercised more influence than majority California voters were able to. That's complete and utter bullshit.
Politicians and their sycophants have completely pulled the wool over the eyes of the voters. The EC is disgusting. Apologists for the EC are disgusting.
Certainly it serves a purpose. The purpose is to interfere with the political will of the active voters of the United States of America. And that's exactly what it does. Congratulations.
Oh, agreed. What makes him an idiot is that he is stupid, xenophobic, misogynist, racist, crass, sexist, of both limited vocabulary and limited verbal complexity. It's truly difficult to consistently reach such depths of character and function when you are intelligent. I'm sure it can be done, but generally speaking, the intelligent don't go around "grabbing pussy", asking questions about why we have nuclear weapons (if you don't know, you're too ignorant to lead, frankly), they don't impugn a judge's integrity because they're "Mexican", etc., etc., etc. Because, you know, they're intelligent.
Wait, what?
[looks around suspiciously, worried about MITM attack] ... this... this is Slashdot, right?
You are truly an idiot.
The only statesmanlike answer to these questions is of the form:
"These weapons are a deterrent. They are weapons of mass destruction. We reserve the right to use them in any case where weapons of mass destruction are used by another party."
Everything Trump said on the matter was not helpful, the result of clueless fumbling when faced with (one of many) topics in which he has zero competence..
No surprise. The man is an idiot, after all. The very best idiot. There's no problem with the size of his idiocy, I assure you, it is tremendous. He's an idiot in the most bigly way -- you can't even imagine how bigly he is an idiot. By the way, he desires to grab your pussy, should you have one. And that's perfectly okay. Because he's just a boy, and boys are like that, see?
Perhaps you might enjoy this.
Sure do.
Mrs. Clinton stands accused, by the right, of crimes. The justice system has not made that determination. Just so we're perfectly clear about that.
So to answer to the actual circumstance, neither candidate is a criminal. So it comes down to what they claimed they would do, or not do, and the degree of sophistication and alignment with my worldview that those statements represent, as well as how well they stuck to the facts - catching a candidate in a lie is significant, and Trump's lies far exceeded Clintons.
Quite aside from that, there's no evidence at all that Clinton is misogynist or misandrist; none that she is xenophobic; none that she is racist; none that she is a sexist pig; and none that she is stupid.
Trump, OTOH, has provided ample statements demonstrating that he in fact is misogynist, xenophobic, racist, a sexist pig, and stupid.
So that's why I think electing Clinton is a considerably better choice than electing Trump.
Very well said. great post.
Thanks, saved me the work. Plus you were more succinct than I tend to be. :)
At one point, this was said:
Trump: " For me, nuclear, the power, the devastation, is very important to me "
With that in mind, consider this exchange:
Moderator: " OK. The trouble is, when you said that, the whole world heard it. David Cameron in Britain heard it. The Japanese, where we bombed them in 45, heard it. They`re hearing a guy running for president of the United States talking of maybe using nuclear weapons. Nobody wants to hear that about an American president. "
Trump: " Then why are we are making them? Why do we make them? "
And then there was this:
Moderator: " Can you tell the Middle East we’re not using nuclear weapons? "
Trump: " I would never say that. "
------------
IOW, if I seriously inform you that I will consider actually shooting you, the downside of you shooting me first has reduced considerably. That's what Trump has done. If it was statesmanship, it would be of the very poorest sort. Of course, it wasn't. It was the absurd remarks of an incompetent reality TV show star. They remain that until / if he is inaugurated as president of the country. At that point... they become much, much worse.
"Whoosh"
The EC could be the problem. They are projected to be the problem, and this is because of the mismatch between various subgroups of the masses represented by the EC members, said subgroups having an uneven balance of power with other subgroups. The presumed outcome is of exactly the same nature as if the popular vote elected an unfit candidate. The EC has the option available to them to not to be the problem, because they can choose that, it's in their very nature.
That's what I'm talking about. I agree that they could indeed be the problem. Right now, everyone is assuming they are. However, they may not be.
I consider social progress, among other things, as anything that moves the nation away from any imposition of coercive force contrary to the personal and consensual choices of the citizens.
Woman's bodies are theirs. Not yours. Not the government's. No matter how you feel about the issue, nothing in those feelings gives you, or the government, any right to tell them what to do with their bodies and any life that is physically growing within their bodies -- whether that life is growing as the result of an accident, intentionally, or consequent to criminal violation of their bodies by others. None. For the very same reasons that no one, regardless of their opinion of the matter, has the right to tell you if you may, or may not, choose to eat a cheeseburger.
Once a viable baby is no longer part of the woman's body and you want to care for it, and the parents are willing, that is the time that you might legitimately gain some semblance of direct control over the life and future of that baby.
Barring such a circumstance, any attempt you make to coerce that woman into doing something she does not want to do with her body is an act of tyranny.
The electoral college has yet to vote.
This is exactly the kind of thing the institution was created to protect us from -- ill-considered actions by the voters; one of the critical flaws of democratic action by the masses. The wolves deciding what's for dinner.
The system allows for the EC to act on this by not voting him into the presidency. There are numerous strong reasons to do so.
There are 29 states (plus the District of Columbia) that require lockstep following of the voting public issue; they issue a small variety of rarely enforced punishments for electors that do not do so, including fines and misdemeanors. EC members have individually done this 157 times to date, so there's plenty of precedent on a per-elector basis.
Also... if they don't do this... then I submit that the EC has proved that the institution has no actual worth.
Another thing: this circumstance was brought about by a dissatisfied public. Imagine the levels of dissatisfaction as automation adds its impetus to the job losses we've already seen due to recent labor policies. Now consider the chaos Trump could add to the mix if he actually follows through on some of the things he said on the campaign trail.
Some of those include an increased willingness to use nuclear weapons; disruption of current trade patterns; economic problems (we're already seeing some of that, check the news on world financial market reaction this morning); Walking back major aspects of social progress - Roe v. Wade, LBGT rights, etc.; government using religion to select people for abusive treatment... It's quite a list. I find it a formidable counter-indication in terms of expecting the next four years to go well, and the follow-on effects may last for considerably longer than that.
Remember how long it took under the Obama administration to recover from Bush's bumbling economic moves? Then there's the whole question of who ends up in whatever supreme court seats go vacant. That alone could change the nation's path in many negative ways, as we have previously seen several times.
Think I'll go for a walk.