@The Harbinger of FerocityThe argument of police checkpoints appearing every few weeks at random, or in specific static locations, is a "police state" is hollow in comparison and contrast to other, historically well known police states.
If it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck.
I specifically prefaced my statement by saying "I would say." because I do, just as I disagree that "America is what we make it."; I contrarily believe that America has some fundamentals that cannot be compromised, especially not in the name of socialism and its foundations in social justice.
I still disagree. Justice is more important than arbitrary concepts like "Americaness".
You can however, entirely rationally argue that my advocating for elevated security across the board might lead down a slippery slope to a police state.
It probably would in the sense that it would involve desensitizing people to the presence of the state in their personal lives so that it becomes easier to argue for an even more invasive state. But besides that, I still maintain that the stuff you are recommending is a cure for a disease we don't have, and therefore both invasive and pointless.
or at minimum being carded if you are buying with cash
wat? why? What problem are we trying to solve here? Are you implying society needs to enforce some sort of "License to purchase"?
Despite this note, I will never concede communism as anything less than an actual, not hypothetical, enemy of the free world, namely the United States.
What specifically are you talking about here? Stalinism? Bernie Sanders? FDR? I'm not sure what part this had to play in the conversation before.
To the next topic, I do not believe there is any issue in semantics. A natural bell curve exists in that the further you get from what is considered "centrist" the more you become an extreme by that virtue. If the center right is "Republican" and the center left is "Democrat" that reasonably moves the Right Wing, "Alt-Right" and Alt-Right to the fringes in that order, just as it does in mirror with the left. Political motives become deeper and stronger the further you go to either side and the reasonability of violence to achieve those wants becomes more likely. The extremes of the left are made up of everything from communists to anarchists who have and do advocate violence; they are the more recent propagators. The real Alt-Right is notorious for this too because they so strongly cling to the ability to maintain arms - it is a cliché of their faction that they are all supposedly skin headed and surrounded by "assault rifles".
Imma start with the last first and say that gun ownership isn't a far right phenomena. The center right is just as into it. Not only that, I've seen surveys that suggest the Gun issue is the most common issue where Democrats disagree with their party. Aggressive racism is what divides them from the regular right.
Also, I think you are overgeneralizing still. Because violent groups tend to exist on the extremes doesn't mean all politics out of the center are violent.
I do not believe in the notion of privilege
Well that's just silly. To say this is to say that both myself and Donald Trump have the same access to power, which would be a ridiculous statement. You can disagree about how certain groups determine privelage, but to say we live in an exactly equitable society is frankly fantastic.
The cost in this circumstance is the comfort of the remaining 99.7% of the regular populace, a noteworthy portion being roughly half of which disagrees with the concept, or that a law needs to enforce it. It is not the duty of the populace to bow to or cater to a minority, especially an extremely small minority. It is the duty of that minority to integrate and become part of the rest of the population and explain to those who are misinformed on it. Here there is no misinformation, as this is a largely out of proportion issue, just as the "Women's Rights" argument that somehow women in America are not equal to their male counterparts; they're both Americans.
Before I go on, I gotta point out that you are going waaay out there with this subject, further than most of the Libertarians in this thread would go. Which is to say that you are...
AN EXTREMIST!
But not a violent one. I sympathize with you.
I don't see how requiring, say, ramps for disabled people would be "Forcing the population to bow to the needs of the disabled". The purpose of this sort of thing is social utility, to make the most out of every member of society by giving them access to their own needs. I admit you are an interesting sort of statist who believes in more police but less social utility.
To the other topic, there are those who are flying Nazi flags, but then there are those across the line - who you actually consistently see - flying the Hammer and Sickle unironically; both massacred and murdered their populace and those that they held dominion over and both are the symbols of the worst of humanity. No less, the former is extremely uncommon to the point that from everything I have seen in these riots, there has not been one flown.
I've seen more Nazi stuff being trotted out than Soviet stuff tbh.
I disagree that Bike-Lock Guy is somehow not a representative of the Black Bloc
Sure, the Black Bloc. But not the left in general.
dded this in post, but that question alone begs from me these thoughts, "Who determines what is or is not 'systematically disadvantaged'?", "Who decides what benefits they need in particular?", "When does someone cease being 'systematically disadvantaged'?", "Does someone who falls under multiple spectrums of 'systematic disadvantage' gain more benefits than those with fewer? Doesn't that put those people at their own disadvantage?", "What about those who are not 'systematically disadvantaged', what is their role? Do they need to take on the burden of other people? Is it by option or force?"
Us. Democracy exists so we can have these discussions, and make these decisions. We haven't put a Junta of disabled people in charge (well, I mean... not
that kind of disabled) who are dictating terms to us. We are deciding them as a society. You make it sound like people without disabilities have no say in the matter, but in reality we do.
Yeah that's my point. They're trying to frighten you so they can use you, and 'they' aren't the GOP. Spoiler alert: they've been doing it since Jim Crow. They're not your friends.
Eck, both parties do this scare tactic shit. You should have read the crazy e-mail my grandma sent us all the day before the election. The Republicans are no glorious white knight, nor the Democrats the Great Satan. They are just good ol' cynical political parties.
I would rather have a potentially smaller voter turn out with less fraud than I would with a larger voter turn out with potentially more fraud,
Personally I prefer it the other way. I'd rather see democracy active but imperfect over seeing it snuffed out through bureaucracy. And, as a professional Bureaucrat, I gotta say that you probably shouldn't be trusting is with something like access to the ballot.
State-level care is a whole other beast (think RomneyCare) -- it's reasonable to think a system could be devised that works for Rhode Island, but unthinkable that this exact same system will work in rural Wyoming.
Here's where I really diverge here. The United States doesn't really work like that anymore, where each state is its own completely separate and individual unit. The Midwestern states are largely poor, we already drink more tax dollars than we pay in, so there is no way in shit that we could create a system like this. If things go this way, where blue states develop themselves and red states are left in the dust, the trouble currently experience by Middle America will worsen as everyone flees. Me included. States-Rights-Land is a land where I have to find a way out of Middle America quickly, Grapes of Wrath style if need be.
What I know about Wyoming, their only recourse for a health insurance system would be some sort of dating site to hook people up with rich ranchers.
Which is all to say that, since large parts of the midwest are the agrarian supportive structures of the urbanized coasts, the entire country is a single financial system rather than fifty separate ones and has to be treated as such. Pretending Kansas can do all the same things that Texas or California can do is utopian at this point.
Timemaster
