2017 Democratic Thread

[GoSox05]

Krang's got a piece up on his side of the story

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/evbpkn/t...te-supremacists

 

This is the first time that the alt-right and sovcit movement has been trolled by "antifa" posters into going to non-existent antifa rallies. These guys don't seem to get that antifa shows up as a reaction force to fascist gatherings, not the other way around.

 

I like when people are like "I'm the leader of Anitfa" and people are just like, see the leader of Antifa said it's going to happen.

Edited November 1, 2017 by GoSox05

[GoSox05]

@SenSchumer

 

President Trump, where is your leadership? The contrast btwn Pres Bush’s actions after 9-11 & Pres Trump’s this am couldn't be starker.

 

 

Why won't Donald Trump start an endless war like George Bush did?

 

 

[Balta1701]

Why won't Donald Trump start an endless war like George Bush did?

One of the only good things I can say about George Bush as a human being is that after 9/11 he did not blame all muslims and try to inflame people to hate muslims for his own political benefit when he could have. He personally slowed his party's descent into being a party driven first and foremost by racial and religious hatred by years.

[GoSox05]

He did though and then started a war that killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims. This idea that George Bush was super nice to the Muslim community because he didn't yell at them on social media has to stop.

 

 

Is it too much to ask from the Democratic Party, to not praise George Bush when knocking Trump? You can call out both for being horrible.

[Soxbadger]

I think it is completely unreasonable, and if you think the US is the cause of the problem, then we should absolutely be doing everything we can to help more people escape from that area. So if anything we should accept responsibility and increase the amount of immigrants we accept.

 

At some point people need to accept responsibility for what they do.

[Balta1701]

Talk about recency bias. Bush's admin created a lie to start a war that murdered hundreds of thousand muslism civilians and created the Muslim extremist capital of the world and a complete power vacuum. Trump's cringey rhetoric is in no way worse than Bush's admin's near decade long of international war crimes and illegal war that ushered in an era of perpetual war and unrest in the middle east.

 

I don't agree with how Trump packages his message but there is without a doubt a problem in the middle east and in Russia with Muslim extremism. As of now, we don't have a muslim extremism problem in America. That being said, there is an immigration crisis across the world, largely due to the American military complex, and it's not unreasonable to modify immigration policy to combat this issue.

I deliberately said that "one of the only good things I could say about that president" was his response to muslims after 9/11 because, as you note, there are a great many bad things you can say about him. We're talking about sodomizing people with broomsticks because of him.

 

[Balta1701]

I know others around here feel differently, but I am a firm believer in actions over words. Bush being nationalist after 9/11 is really moot. I think any president could come off looking good after 9/11 as the whole country was actually willing to unite.

All I have to do is imagine Donald Trump in those shoes and I can see a lot more angry violent mobs beating muslims in the streets basically everywhere with the police turning blind eyes.

[bmags]

By this time in Bush's presidency, he was 2 months removed from the worst terror attack in US history, and it would be about 17 months before we would invade Iraq.

 

Trump has shown no sign he is actually a dove at this point. If an attack the size of 9/11 happened on his watch, his words have offered plenty on how he would handle.

[Quin]

Remember, this is the Dem thread.

[Quin]

By this time in Bush's presidency, he was 2 months removed from the worst terror attack in US history, and it would be about 17 months before we would invade Iraq.

 

Trump has shown no sign he is actually a dove at this point. If an attack the size of 9/11 happened on his watch, his words have offered plenty on how he would handle.

 

That and making up stories about Muslims cheering.

 

[bmags]

That's probably because your hate for him clouds your logic. Muslims were beat and targeted after 9/11 in NY under GWB anyways.

 

Ok, what happens if the president defends and does not discourage that violence, says the attackers were very fine people defending themselves? Would less attacks happen?

[StrangeSox]

What happens when he says that the family of the attacker could be a threat, as Trump just did?

[Soxbadger]

How is the US not the problem? They topple stable regimes to create unrest. They are responsible for ISIS. They drone whoever they want. It's a racket.

 

Im not saying that the US is or is not the problem, just if you believe that the US is, then the US should be accepting more immigrants from that area.

[NorthSideSox72]

I don't think we should be in the middle east at all. I understand your argument but if I am an official right now in charge of dealing with this issue, I don't opt to put Americans security in jeopardy because of the past two administrations disruptive foreign policy ripping apart stability in the middle east.

Replace the bolded with "past 70 years of American foreign policy", and you are correct. In addition of course to yet other things not even influenced by the West.

 

 

[StrangeSox]

Antifa isn't a terrorist group and it's actually extremely easy to pick sides in Nazis vs. anti Nazis especially when the Nazis murdered an innocent person.

 

But Trump did take sides, he said the Nazi rally with Nazi flags and Nazi slogans was full of very fine people.

[Soxbadger]

I don't think we should be in the middle east at all. I understand your argument but if I am an official right now in charge of dealing with this issue, I don't opt to put Americans security in jeopardy because of the past two administrations disruptive foreign policy ripping apart stability in the middle east.

 

As Im not a fortune teller I cant predict whether more immigrants or less immigrants will put Americans' security in jeopardy. For all I know more immigrants will make the US more sympathetic in the region and thus Americans will be safer.

 

I dont believe that people from the middle east are anymore dangerous than anyone else. And factually speaking I am much more likely to die at the hands of an American than an immigrant.

 

So if my security is such a concern, and we shouldnt be bound by past mistakes, should we perhaps ban guns? More Americans die due to gun violence per year than if you added up all terrorist attacks against the US.

Edited November 1, 2017 by Soxbadger

[StrangeSox]

Lol no, it wasn't a "free speech" rally it was a white supremacists gathering full of people chanting Nazi slogans. If you come to a white supremacist gathering and stick around while they're chanting blood and soil while carrying torches, youre not a fine person.

 

And why would you link everyone who showed up to oppose the Nazis as 'terrorist' antifa?

 

This is the Dem thread, not the appropriate place to be making excuses for Nazis.

Edited November 1, 2017 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

Here is a hint: Nazis and white supremacists don't actually care about "free speech" beyond exploiting liberal democratic institutions and norms to gain power. There is no reason to buy into the thin rhetorical veneer of "free speech" rallies that are 100% about white supremacy.

 

Which the Charlottesville rally didn't even do. It was billed as "unite the right" and was ostensibly about protecting monuments to treasonous slavers. It was organized and promoted by explicitly White supremacist groups.

Edited November 1, 2017 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

McCain is also now avocating that the attacker be thrown into gitmo and that he doesn't have Miranda rights.

[Jenksismyhero]

This is fair. Really anything past JFK at the least. That being said, Clinton's admin was pretty good on war past a few hiccups.

 

Um, keep going back. This has been happening for most of the country's history. It's been a more prominent feature of our foreign policy "recently," but "recently" probably means Teddy Roosevelt and after.

 

JFK did the same thing, by the way, sending troops into Vietnam and overthrowing the existing regime there.

[bmags]

I thought we'd actually turned a corner on trying terrorists in US civilian courts but apparently very much not.

[Balta1701]

I did not make excuses for Nazi's but I am sure the Nazi's are glad they have you to speak for them.

 

Nobody has given a s*** about Nazi's or white nationalists for a long time. The KKK and other similar groups have all had their membership waned, their influence eviscerated and their relevance vanished. What changed is when Trump got elected people like you have latched onto the idea that we have a white nationalist problem. The only places they are relevant in American is in the prisons. I have never even seen a white nationalist.

 

The best thing to happen for American white nationalists is the media and people like you constantly blabbing on about Richard Spencer and David Duke giving them more spotlight and attention than their internal efforts could ever garner on their own. The progression of society has phased this antiquated and bigoted thinking out of the mainstream and only through cheap partisan tactics has their notoriety made its way back to our TVs and computer screens.

The bolded is untrue in the age of the internet. The KKK itself has even recovered from where it was in 1990, and there are a number of groups proliferating alongside it. There was a surge of those groups in response to the 2008 election, they started to drop off after 2012, and then another surge associated with the 2016 election.

 

It is worth wondering how the dismantling of sites like the Daily Stormer after Charlottesville will influence these numbers in the future as they've lost their easily accessed safe space.

[Soxbadger]

My initial point was that we don't have a muslim extremism problem in America so not sure how your point fits in. We have seen Muslim extremism in the USA like yesterday, but right now the the issues of extremism are in the Middle East, Russia and more recently Europe where the extremists are immigrating.

 

The countries with the most terrorist incidents are the following: Iraq (99%), Afghanistan (99.8%), India (14.2%), Pakistan (96.4%), the Phillipines (6%), Somalia (98.9%) and Turkey (98.6%). The percentages are the % of muslims in those countries. If you think you are just as safe there as you are at home so be it, but the numbers say you are wrong. The numbers tell us the vast majority of terrorism in the world comes from the middle east. US foreign policy plays a pretty significant role in that.

 

Not sure what the relevance of other countries terrorist statistics are. We are talking about terrorism in the US, not in any of the other countries listed. It would be like arguing that other countries shouldnt allow Christians to immigrate because the US has a lot of gun deaths and the majority of American's are Christian.

 

I dont think Ive ever said its "safer" in any other country, so no idea how that relates to this at all.

[NorthSideSox72]

Um, keep going back. This has been happening for most of the country's history. It's been a more prominent feature of our foreign policy "recently," but "recently" probably means Teddy Roosevelt and after.

 

JFK did the same thing, by the way, sending troops into Vietnam and overthrowing the existing regime there.

When I said about 70 years in my post, I was focused on the Middle East. To me, the even that really swung western chess play into full gear in the Middle East was the creation of the Israeli state in the late 1940's. That's when the US went from small regional players to a substantially controlling stake, which rode through the Cold War and continues today.

 

[Soxbadger]

When I said about 70 years in my post, I was focused on the Middle East. To me, the even that really swung western chess play into full gear in the Middle East was the creation of the Israeli state in the late 1940's. That's when the US went from small regional players to a substantially controlling stake, which rode through the Cold War and continues today.

 

Israel was just a piece. Prior to WWII, US did not really have the military clout nor respect of European nations. US was completely left out when Africa was split etc. Most of the US foreign holdings were a result of the Spanish American war. Countries like Germany, France, GB, etc really did not respect the US as a world military power.

 

WWII spun everything on its head. 2 countries that were on the outside looking in previously (Russia/US) then became the only players.

 

(edit)

 

Rabbit,

 

Interesting way to spin my words. But if you want to talk about facts, the US has more murders than any of the countries you have listed besides for India (which isnt in the Middle East). And if you want to go by percentage of population, South America is far more dangerous than any Middle East country.

 

That being said, if you want to believe people from the Middle East are inherently more dangerous, feel free, it is just not supported by facts.

 

 

https://www.unodc.org/documents/gsh/pdfs/20...DE_BOOK_web.pdf

 

Not sure how "less civil rights" has to do with dangerous, that would seem to be the govt. Same with "more war", how is that an implication on regular civilians?

 

(Second edit)

 

And guns are not at all a "tangent". We are talking about security and safety of American citizens, and what the govt can do to ensure American citizen safety. Im going to go out on a limb here, but since this is the "Democratic Thread" I think that many "Democrats" would find that discussing gun safety is germane to this thread.

 

So no, I dont think I need to start a new thread when Im in the Democratic catch all thread. But I find it ironic that one of the most vocal anti-Democrats would want to silence (pun intended) the discussion.

Edited November 1, 2017 by Soxbadger