The two are not mutually exclusive. Belief systems influence actions. Obviously it makes sense to call out the Neo Nazis within the Trump movement, so why wouldnt it make sense to criticize ideas which are effectively fascist held by a much larger number of Muslims, even those who have immigrated to western democracies.
Because they're Neo Nazis. Not Neo Christians. I criticize the fascist beliefs of many of my countrymen but it has nothing to do with their religion.
Please, hang out with some Muslims. They're just regular folks like anyone else. If more people in the US understood this it would help a lot. It might also show the problems with targeting "Radical Islamic Terrorism" when it could also be "Radical Crime Committed by People With Various Motivations and Worldviews Many of Whom Hail From a Region With a Troubled Past, the Causes of Which are Myriad and Require Some Study of Post WWI Imperial Policy Among Other Things"
You absolutely have to distinguish between Islam and Islamism, just like people need to distinguish between Zionism and simply being Jewish. Or for that matter between the various forms of Christianity and their levels of political involvement.
People have a right to religious beliefs. They do not - must not - have the right to turn that into a legal enforcement of those beliefs on people who do not share them.
It's a totalitarian ideology which is fundamentally opposed to liberal democracy. It shouldn't be tolerated for the same reasons Nazism shouldn't be tolerated.
The quality of the current line of surfaces is pretty good. A few friends who have needed a replacement computer/laptop but need to use Windows for work have opted for the Surface. Gives them nice portability and they don't really need an iPad (or can't afford a laptop and iPad).
There's more than one way to rig the system. A substantial increase in immigration and an amnesty program would have provided an even bigger opportunity for Democrats than gerrymandering has for the Republicans.
Calling out Republicans specifically over identity politics seems kind of silly, given how much of the Democratic Party's politics is based on race and gender.
There's a difference between saying "Group X is pretty neat" and "Group Y are the only real Americans and should have an exclusive grip on political power."
So for instance, the Democrats run on, "We need equal pay for women." The actual size of the wage gap can be debated as a factual matter (once you factor out different professions and hours-worked, it's usually about 5-10%). Then the Republicans run on, "Real Americans need to take our country back!", despite their "real Americans" (as a conjunction of features) composing a minority group that's only 20% of the country[1].
One of them plays the identity politics of inclusion, often duplicitously. The other plays the identity politics of exclusion and minority rule, often honestly.
There's a vast difference between obnoxious campaign rhetoric along the lines of Clinton and an organized decades-long campaign to disenfranchise people who don't vote the way you want or don't share your conjunction of identity features.
Stubbornly insisting that your party of choice holds the moral high ground and the other side is morally reprehensible is only going to get you President Trump. You'd do much better to assume that your political opponents voted the way they did in spite of those issues you consider immoral rather than because of them and then see where you can find common ground to work with them.
You should notice how I didn't refer to either party as mine, and specifically called them both "capitalist parties", which for me is a term of insult.
My objection is that if I work outside the two-party electoral system I am labelled a lunatic and potentially even criminal, while if I work inside it, my voice is diluted for partisan advantage.
> One of them plays the identity politics of inclusion, often duplicitously. The other plays the identity politics of exclusion and minority rule, often honestly.
I don't think that's really fair: the difference is regarding whom they exclude & whom the include. Democrats, for example, appear to be quite glad to exclude Christians.
In what sense have Democrats acted to legally disenfranchise Christian voters, ie: to keep them from the polls, override their voices, or reduce their voter efficiency? I don't even like the Dems, but the simple fact is that they're on the defensive with regards to voter efficiency right now, so they haven't had the opportunity and power to disenfranchise people in the same way as the Republicans have.
Well they failed to do it but given the opportunity they would have used immigration and amnesty to shift demographics in order to dilute these people's votes (and make money for their donors by holding labor costs down)
Which is largely a reaction to the discriminatory policies of the Republican Party that either endorses discrimination (ex: sexual orientation) or pretends it doesn't exist (ex: racism in the criminal justice system).
It's all pretty gross and cyclical. Identity politics in general is often a shiny thing waved around to distract people from difficult or politically costly work, usually regarding how much rich people and corporations have to pay for things.
I think it's also worth noting that this was not a particularly sophisticated attack. Podesta fell for a simple phishing attack. A lot of media attention around this has made it sound like something out of an action movie, but the attack itself was actually quite simple. People who have access to so much important information need more training about this sort of thing so they don't just give their password away. It might've been the Russians this time, but it could've been just about anyone, and unless the underlying problem is resolved, it'll continue to happen.
Exactly, it could have been a Russian national, or it could have been someone from the USA, Nigeria or Spain, with enough VPN tunnels and botnets at an attacker's disposal it might take years, if ever, that they could attribute the event back to the true source.
So why not try and fix the mismatch between the paycheck and the value produced by the worker rather than just abandoning the idea of producing any value at all? Even if someone is paid 10% of what they produce, I'd rather have them doing that for 40 hours a week than doing nothing and collecting a welfare check.
Because the people with a lot of power are actively opposed to any fix?
A huge number of people want this mismatch to be fixed, but are wise enough to know they have zero ability to do anything about it.
We're in the midst of discovering just how useless "consciousness raising" slacktivist campaigns are, and that was basically the last hope for being able to contribute to a solution for a lot of people.
study: "I" would rather have "them" ... in discussions like this we must exchange perspectives with all citizens. From the highest to the lowest. Even to the lowliest we must see that their fundamental needs are the same.
It's not just a small percentage of activists. I'm 21, and I live in Ohio, which Trump won by 9 points, and it seems like a huge portion of people about my age are proponents of these ideas, on or off of college campuses. People call things "white" as in insult, they constantly say things like "white people have no culture", and really do seem to believe that all evil in the world is the result of things white men do. Anyone who tries to disagree with them gets shouted at and accused of being a long list of terrible buzzwords. As someone from a very poor family who didn't have great opportunities, this shit is infuriating. It basically seems like some sort of cancer is rapidly metasticizing and there's not much of anything that can be done about it. There's 0 willingness to have a discussion about anything.
>People call things "white" as in insult, they constantly say things like "white people have no culture"
I'm black and I wish folks realized that stuff like that needs to kept behind closed doors. I'm not one of those black folks that tries to twist the definition of racism such that it can never be applied to us. It's ironic that lots of the same folks who talk about "micro-aggressions" are purveyors of them.
I'm white and I call things white as an insult when they offend me for cultural reasons. There are some behaviors I associate with white people that are unpalatable to me, and I call them out, when I might avoid the cultural call-out to other cultures because a) they are relatively more oppressed than my (white) culture and b) I do not see the interior of that culture all day every day, as an outsider to it; I decline to arrogate myself that way.
Huh, out on the West Coast I've only encountered a minor amount of this coddling "it's all white racists fault" BS on college campuses. I've expected more, but the worst I've seen is pronoun related (aka "What's your pronoun?"), which I respond to with schlee, cause fuck tracking someone else's pronoun, that is not my job. Use what you want, don't try to force me to remember your shit (name, pronoun, etc)!
In my personal experience there seems to be a pretty big difference based on the age. People who are like 26 are much less aggressive about it than people who are 18-22.
Sounds like the trope "anyone who was not a liberal at 20 years of age had no heart, while anyone who was still a liberal at 40 had no head" still holds true.
Considering how dumb/immature the average product of an American high school is at 18, I'm not surprised they think like that (and are aggressive about their beliefs) Also, considering how some choose to treat college like an extended party, they carry over the same traits to 22.
But hopefully, the job market hitting them in the face after graduation beats some liberal bullshit out of them.
Also, class warfare and money will always trump identity politics and all that social justice BS. If there's anything the US can get behind it's their hatred of the poor (yes, well-off left are just as guilty of this, just more implicitly)
>It's not just a small percentage of activists. I'm 21, and I live in Ohio, which Trump won by 9 points, and it seems like a huge portion of people about my age are proponents of these ideas, on or off of college campuses.
This is just a personal anecdote. I'm 23, also live in Ohio, and went to a very liberal private school. I have never met a single person who has un-ironically said these things.
Yeah, I would imagine things are milder than they have been in my experience. But I've heard people say the phrase "white people have no culture" upwards of 10 times by several different people, the majority of whom were white themselves, which is a little mind boggling.
Sounds like "if the only tool you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail" view of the world. People throwing "white" as a slur, then react like a victim when someone opposes. Hypocrisy over 11, but sadly fixing it would take psychotherapy, because they're prone to this behaviour not having any prospects/purpose in life.
That is really not true given the full history of things. Most Republicans were very willing to compromise after Obama first took office, but he elected to completely ignore them instead since he had a super majority. At that point the only thing they had left to do was to be obstructionist, and I'm sure he was very aware of the potential political consequences of jamming legislation through in the beginning of his administration. In my opinion, the attempts at being bipartisan later were just political showmanship. Similar to how the Republicans voted to repeal Obamacare repeatedly even though they knew it would be vetoed. There was a lot of legislation that was voted on only because the knew it would get vetoed
I think we must have lived in two different countries following Obama's election.
The financial world was crumbling, and both parties recognized that drastic economic action was required.
Later, when Obama undertook healthcare reform - a project he had won both EC and popular support for - Republicans initially supported him. The Tea Party and the coming midterm elections pulled them to the right, and their success in 2010 left us with the obstructionism that we continue to see.
Related to the 'political showmanship' - if you recall the Boehner-Obama negotiations, I could hardly characterize that as showmanship. Representative Boehner risked his position as leader to try to demonstrate Republican cooperation but was ultimately drawn back by his party.
Overall, I read your comment as one that is supporting the 'Republican party line' without the context of following the events occurring during the Obama presidency. I would be keen to read any evidence you have in contradiction to the points I have raised.
[1] Here's an article describing the orchestrated obstructionism from the lens of 2012:
[2] First, I should say that the individual mandate in Obamacare is fundamentally a 'Republican' (vs conservative) idea, having been implemented in Massachusetts and appeared in 'Republican'-leaning journals.
Second, there was Republican support for the ACA. You'll say 'no one' voted for the bill but the bill's signing was delayed as additions were continually made to appease Republicans who were on, the fence but eventually decided not to vote for the ACA. One Republican Representative did support the bill after it was clear it would pass. Indeed, there had been bipartisan efforts to create an ACA-like bill before the Tea Party pulled the Republicans to the right; see the third link.
Weren't those negotiations with Boehner mainly just intended to avoid sequester? That's a fairly unusual situation. Outside of that I don't recall anything, but I may have just not paid enough attention.
As for the party moving right, that's basically what I was referring to. Having been excluded from negotiations on legislation early on, with the stimulus bill and such, the Republicans became a unified opposition when many were initially willing and politically able to compromise. This is what made room for the tea party in 2010, which has been a big obstacle for them afterwards in my opinion. It's all sort of a lose-lose situation.
I don't have much time to look up references at the moment, but the TARP and other stimulus-related bills enjoyed bipartisan support.
I still disagree with your second assertion. The Tea Party forcing the Republicans to the right happened outside Washington and didn't seem directly related to anything Obama or the Democrats had done.
About the Boehner-Obama moment: while (if I recall correctly) it ultimately led to another budget, in the thick of their negotiations, they would have changed tax law as well. [1] I agree that there are fewer easily memorable moments of bipartisanship after 2010 but I do not agree that the Democratic supermajority (which really only lasted a year, due to Scott Brown's election in Massachusetts) played an important role in promoting obstructionism.
Rather, the Tea Party and the ACA fight provided cover for the Republican leadership to do what they had already been planning (see the Washington Post link from above for an unattributed source who claims the same).
I was incorrect about the reason the Boehner-Obama negotiations began - it was the federal borrowing limit [2]. Reports at the time, and since, suggested that this fight was totally unnecessary, as the all expenditures accounted for by the borrowing limit would already have been approved by Congress.
It sort of does. Having been pushed out of negotiations around things like the stimulus bill they ended up as a unified opposition, which resulted in the "tea party" and the party moving drastically to the right
I don't really think it has much to do with going to school. I think theory gets ignored because some portion of an engineering team has no interest in learning it, so we cater to the lowest common denominator because its the less expensive option, at least in the short term. It's actually the passionate people who managed to get into this without a degree that have been the most interested in new ideas in my experience.
