OT: Hurricanes Lounge XLI: It's August

[cptjeff]

Musk is pretty far to the right these days and that's not even a question. If you think he's moderate, you have a massively, massively warped view of political alignments.

 

[Negan4Coach]

Yeah the horrors when being "reasonable and tolerant" is just 'dont say racist shit anymore'

I get it's useful propaganda to be pedantically reductive to straw men arguments, but please. It hasn't been alright to say racist shit for a long time.

we're talking about "Don't make a fuss when we teach your kids about tossing salads and fisting or you're a bigot", or "You will accept my fantasies as realities or suffer reprisal" , among myriad other fundamental reorderings of basic society.

And so...we are at where we are at.

The last one is maybe don't dump toxic shit in our water and slash and burn things, and over fish.

Look I work in the energy industry. Let the free market decide on EV's. Without policy that drives furl prices to what they are in Europe (Obama). Planes can't fly on batteries, yet - and we need to plan for that.

Frankly ALL of my positions are "f*** off trying to control people". It's not your decision if I own an AR or machine gun. I own both, and they're of no threat to anyone, as long as I am left alone in peace.

Again, quasi libretarianism.

However we are going to continue down this "two sides" thing and we're going to have to choose one or the other. One side is tolerable to me, the other I consider a threat to personal liberty, which is the foundation of our republic.

You want to know why trump is 30 percent ahead of most other republicans right now? Spite. hate. rage. And the smug smirking prosecution of the guy will lead to the R's doing EXACTLY the same thing to Biden or Hunter next, or whoever the next crooked politician is. Its going to be a tit for tat that increases until someone drops a WMD. That'll be the nuclear option in the senate. Abolition of the 60 vote margin in the senate, and when that happens, the unconstitutional laws will start flying, the hate will grow and this republic will fail from inside.

These are the best we have? Biden? Trump? Congressmen who think Guam will capsize or that birds aren't real, and who screw chinese spies and ruin entire industries for insider trades.

This is a governemnt that killed an entire family over a sawed off shotgun barrel, but wants to let the president's kid off for felony straw purchase and possession by a felon and user of illegal substance.
The DOJ is weaponized against the people, as is the IRS, and the administrative state is the new local union boss that runs the town.

Rot from the inside. And the masses keep voting for it.

I'm not right wing because the right is as bad as the left at using power to impose their beliefs on others. But I'll tell you this right now, if it comes down to it? You're damn right I'd pick authoritarianism that supports the majority of my beliefs and protects my interests. Because the other side can't wait to do it to me. They've told me to my face. I'd be a fool to not believe them.

If the rule that you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?

I think this tweet did the best job at summing up Trump's continued popularity while the elites furrow their brows in a vain attempt to comprehend

 

[Derailed75]

That's a libertarian. All the tech bros are libertarians.

Its a shame they keep putting out usless candidates, though. Just imagine if the Democrat and Republicans trotted out complete morons. You know people that would thank another politician despite the fact that said politician died a few weeks earlier, or get into Twitter arguments with un-hinged father of a college basketball player.

Oh wait. I guess Captain Opossum really wasn't that outside the norm was he?

 

[Borsig]

I will concede libertarian candidates are usually borderline Pejorative Slured.

Unfortunately I have yet to find one on a national stage to vote for and the last one who ran statewide in VA was actually a Democrat, married to a Mcaullife staffer, who was paid to run as a L to siphon off R votes. Which he did.

 

[Negan4Coach]

Its a shame they keep putting out usless candidates, though. Just imagine if the Democrat and Republicans trotted out complete morons. You know people that would thank another politician despite the fact that said politician died a few weeks earlier, or get into Twitter arguments with un-hinged father of a college basketball player.

Oh wait. I guess Captain Opossum really wasn't that outside the norm was he?

Agree. I used to actually be registered as a Libertarian when that was possible in NC for a while in the mid-aughts.

Used to be the "cool" political thing to do in certain circles. "Hey look at me- I'm for freedom and low taxes- but I don't want to harsh anyone's mellow, live and let live brah"

But the candidates were always lame or crazed. And the platform, while a nice idea in certain ways, is just not workable or realistic.

It'd be great if "Pragmatist" was a political party.

 

[Navin R Slavin]

It'd be great if "Pragmatist" was a political party.

It'd be great if anything besides D and R were a political party. RCV or die. (Or better yet, proportional representation, but that's just fantasy land.)

 

[the halleJOKEL]

i vote straight whig ticket

 

[Anton Dubinchuk]

Just imagine if the Democrat and Republicans trotted out complete morons.

OMG could you even imagine?

 

[WreckingCrew]

i vote straight whig ticket

Homophobe! Transphobe!! GET HIM EVERYONE!

 

[Boom Boom Apathy]

Edit: NVM...I'm staying out of it.

 

[MinJaBen]

we're talking about "Don't make a fuss when we teach your kids about tossing salads and fisting or you're a bigot", or "You will accept my fantasies as realities or suffer reprisal" , among myriad other fundamental reorderings of basic society.

That is literally Christianity (and all the others) for the last 3000 years.

 

[Finlandia WOAT]

You're damn right I'd pick authoritarianism that supports the majority of my beliefs and protects my interests.

I mean, I already knew this, but it is nice you came out and admitted it.

we're talking about "Don't make a fuss when we teach your kids about tossing salads and fisting or you're a bigot", or "You will accept my fantasies as realities or suffer reprisal" , among myriad other fundamental reorderings of basic society.

Boilerplate social conservatism, with mild hyperbole and vagary, respectively, to avoid being fact checked (assuming the second is kvetching about trans people).

 

[Derailed75]

Agree. I used to actually be registered as a Libertarian when that was possible in NC for a while in the mid-aughts.

Used to be the "cool" political thing to do in certain circles. "Hey look at me- I'm for freedom and low taxes- but I don't want to harsh anyone's mellow, live and let live brah"

But the candidates were always lame or crazed. And the platform, while a nice idea in certain ways, is just not workable or realistic.

It'd be great if "Pragmatist" was a political party.

Listen i agree with you, however in case I forgot to use the sarcasm font. My point t was the last 2 Dem/Rep candidates were just as f***ing insane as King Racoon or whatever his name was that ran as a Libertarian.

I mean sure they pretend to be normal people but they are complete nut jobs

 

[tarheelhockey]

No man.. no. Being reasonable and tolerant is not telling people exactly what you think of them.

I find most black people to be amicable cool folks. I don't get some of the culture and I wish they'd stop voting themselves into the system but...

By no means am I accusing you of personal-level racism (I have no reason or basis to think that is true) but this line in a prior post really jumped out at me:

Birthright citizenship was a poor way to deal with slavery, and there are far too many stupid, worthless, lazy people who reap the benefits of the system, wreck it by voting to keep their easy life, without having to ever contribute to it.

I grew up in NC during the Jesse Helms era, and was exposed at a young age to a fairly large amount of blatant neo-Confederate propaganda which was still largely socially acceptable outside of the city limits.

The sentence above is striking in that it resonates with a running theme in the Confederate ethos which I remember very clearly: the idea that Reconstruction was severely screwed up by the ruling power of the time (Yankees) and that black people suffer for that failure to this day.

It took me a long time to realize why this theme is so common in the rural South, and why it was especially popular in that Reagan/Helms era of dawning quasi-libertarian conservatism: it’s a clever twist on the legitimate value of “personal responsibility” which seamlessly pivots into a conclusion that some people should not be allowed the protections of citizenship.

Really back up and think about the scope of that argument. It is essentially saying that not everyone should be given equal rights under the law; and that if you find yourself outside the basic protections afforded by the rule of law, well, that’s your own fault and not the fault of the people who took your rights away.

Inevitably the line is drawn to current liberal politicians doing things “just as bad as slavery” with a long lingering pause over the evils of FDR — who in that same post you said should have been executed for treason. Again, a quick and clever pivot toward violence as the solution to political enemies. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the suggestion that Lincoln should have been hanged, or FDR, or Obama. This pillar of the rhetoric is crucial because it connects past outrage to present action. Of course, not many people have very strong feelings about FDR anymore… but in the 1970s/80s he was a formative memory for older Republicans. I don’t mean to presume, but I’m guessing you’ve hated FDR since around that time.

Why was this line of rhetoric so useful to the Reagan/Helms era Republicans? Because it allows them to maintain the moral high ground on liberty AND campaign for the withdrawal of fundamental rights from certain parts of the population, at the same time. And with a little wink to a revenge fantasy that lies not-really-that-far below the surface of Southern conservatism. What’s not being said is the simplified version of the quote above: all our problems trace back to Yankees making things too easy on the Blacks. If we fix that, we’ll fix our society.

Inevitably the ethos points to a violent re-set as the “inevitable” conclusion, as a sort of cleansing event. This is strongly parallel to hardline evangelical rhetoric, which in the rural South goes hand-in-hand with political conservatism. It’s absolutely nothing to hear a rural Southern evangelical say they expect a civil war, most probably a race war, within their lifetime. It’s a built-in assumption that this needs to be prepared for.

The synchronized rhetorical messaging is intended to touch all those bases and give the recipient a warm fuzzy “these people are speaking my truth” feeling, while keeping the unsavory foundations (racism, political violence) below the surface where they can be dismissed as “exaggerations” or “maybe what some people believe, but that’s just the fringe”. That’s the whole trick of the thing — you get the fruit of the argument without having any visibility on where the roots are coming from.

I say all this because, again, I grew up hearing and largely believing this stuff, and it absolutely did lead me the direction of becoming a Libertarian in my early political years. So having had these thoughts in my head for a time, I recognize the flavor of your comments.

For me, the path out of that line of thinking was connected to two key realizations:

- Organized Libertarianism exists for the simple and disappointing purpose of pressuring the GOP to give tax cuts to corporations. The proof is in the actual work they do, especially when they go hard. It always connects back to corporate tax cuts in the end.

- “Personal liberty extremism” cannot include advocating for the withdrawal of citizenship from a portion of the populace just because they fall out of favor with the government. If anything, that’s a radically authoritarian philosophy wearing a flimsy libertarian mask (which again, Reagan era conservatism).

 

[Derailed75]

Inevitably the ethos points to a violent re-set as the “inevitable” conclusion, as a sort of cleansing event. This is strongly parallel to hardline evangelical rhetoric, which in the rural South goes hand-in-hand with political conservatism. It’s absolutely nothing to hear a rural Southern evangelical say they expect a civil war, most probably a race war, within their lifetime. It’s a built-in assumption that this needs to be prepared for.

The synchronized rhetorical messaging is intended to touch all those bases and give the recipient a warm fuzzy “these people are speaking my truth” feeling, while keeping the unsavory foundations (racism, political violence) below the surface where they can be dismissed as “exaggerations” or “maybe what some people believe, but that’s just the fringe”. That’s the whole trick of the thing — you get the fruit of the argument without having any visibility on where the roots are coming from.
losophy wearing a flimsy libertarian mask (which again, Reagan era conservatism).

The only problem with that thought is that the liberal left media force feeds the race card to the public. If you step back and look you can see them feeding the fire of the conservative religious right with their constant rhetoric.

Who could forget "White Hispanic" when they found out Zimmerman wasn't white but needed that whole thing to be about race.

 

[Blueline Bomber]

I get it's useful propaganda to be pedantically reductive to straw men arguments, but please. It hasn't been alright to say racist shit for a long time.

we're talking about "Don't make a fuss when we teach your kids about tossing salads and fisting or you're a bigot", or "You will accept my fantasies as realities or suffer reprisal" , among myriad other fundamental reorderings of basic society.

Is it you or Borsig (or both?) who believe there's a civil war coming and you've threatened to shoot anyone who you believe is coming to take your guns?

Or is that not a fantasy because you believe it to be true?

Or, if we really wanted to cross that line, we can always talk about reprisal when it comes to humanity's ultimate fantasy: religion.

 

[Derailed75]

Is it you or Borsig (or both?) who believe there's a civil war coming and you've threatened to shoot anyone who you believe is coming to take your guns?

Or is that not a fantasy because you believe it to be true?

Or, if we really wanted to cross that line, we can always talk about reprisal when it comes to humanity's ultimate fantasy: religion.

I'm not a gun nut. I do have a pistol. I dont have a CC, it stays at home in a locked case unless I'm practicing.

With all that being said. If someone decides to illegally go against the Constitution of the US and deny my rights and try and forcefully take away my gun. They are doing it for one of two reasons. They either want to use it against me (AKA threaten me with death) or disarm me so they can continue to whittle away my rights without fear (AKA threatened me with death)

So yes I would use deadly force to prevent that.

 

[MinJaBen]

Who could forget "White Hispanic" when they found out Zimmerman wasn't white but needed that whole thing to be about race.

I guess...me? I never heard that, or if I did, forgot about such a term.

 

[WreckingCrew]

The only problem with that thought is that the liberal left media force feeds the race card to the public. If you step back and look you can see them feeding the fire of the conservative religious right with their constant rhetoric.

Who could forget "White Hispanic" when they found out Zimmerman wasn't white but needed that whole thing to be about race.

I keep telling people that for all their hatred of Trump it's their own rhetoric and trying to make things black-and-white that have nuance that created Trump in the first place. People got tired of the hyperbole and creating boogeymen that weren't there (or at least not to the extreme being presented) and Trump fed on that. Sometimes you accidently create the tool of your own demise. And conservatives doing the exact same thing is how his opponent became Biden (despite probably being the least-deserving of about 5 candidates). Hence our political candidates every year get worse and worse. If we could stop feeding the flames of the extreme ends we might actually be able to come up with reasonable solutions that don't just instantly alienate 50% of the population and make them want to stick it back even harder. It's like a prank war, you always have to one-up the other guy until eventually someone gets really hurt.

 

[Blueline Bomber]

I'm not a gun nut. I do have a pistol. I dont have a CC, it stays at home in a locked case unless I'm practicing.

With all that being said. If someone decides to illegally go against the Constitution of the US and deny my rights and try and forcefully take away my gun. They are doing it for one of two reasons. They either want to use it against me (AKA threaten me with death) or disarm me so they can continue to whittle away my rights without fear (AKA threatened me with death)

So yes I would use deadly force to prevent that.

Pistols are not usually the supposed target of the "they're coming to take my guns" rhetoric. It's usually a gun that serves little purpose outside of war, and one that has recently been used in a mass shooting.

 

[cptjeff]

I'm not a gun nut. I do have a pistol. I dont have a CC, it stays at home in a locked case unless I'm practicing.

With all that being said. If someone decides to illegally go against the Constitution of the US and deny my rights and try and forcefully take away my gun. They are doing it for one of two reasons. They either want to use it against me (AKA threaten me with death) or disarm me so they can continue to whittle away my rights without fear (AKA threatened me with death)

So yes I would use deadly force to prevent that.

What about when somebody tries to go against the Constitution to overturn an election? What about when somebody tries to go against the Constitution to deny equal rights based on race?

Do you actually care about any part of the Constitution other than the 2nd Amendment, which is the only part of the bill of rights that is *explicitly* conditional?

 

[Blueline Bomber]

Reminder that the Constitution was written when the concept of an AR-15 would have been pure fantasy and when the treatment for mental health was locking them up, ignoring them or subjecting them to horrific treatments (well, not much has changed there)

So maybe we shouldn't be treating it as the "end all, be all" in a society where the mentally unwell could have easy access to AR-15s?

 

[raynman]

Maybe I’m naive but I just don’t understand why people think the gov’t would actually go door to door and confiscate guns. It just doesn’t seem feasible on many levels. Something like 70 million+ people in this country own guns and certainly a large percentage of military and LEO are a part of that. Just the logistics of it all don’t make sense not taking into account the amount of people that would protect themselves in that situation

 

[Anton Dubinchuk]

You guys hear about the new Pimento Cheese Chicken Sandwich at Chick-fil-A?

I'm very excited.

 

[cptjeff]

Reminder that the Constitution was written when the concept of an AR-15 would have been pure fantasy and when the treatment for mental health was locking them up, ignoring them or subjecting them to horrific treatments (well, not much has changed there)

So maybe we shouldn't be treating it as the "end all, be all" in a society where the mentally unwell could have easy access to AR-15s?

Also, you want to go against the feds? A guy in Utah tried that a couple weeks ago. Big arsenal. He's dead now, because even with small arms the feds were much better trained. And the feds have tanks if they need them. And plenty of stuff that's much, much bigger and more powerful than those.

The idea that you resist tyranny with a rifle in the garage is lunacy. You resist tyranny by electing people who are dedicated to preserving democracy above and beyond any policy disagreements they have.