Vilageidiotx

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

@Vilageidiotx
Come for the communism stay for the Kaynesian economic policy

@Penny

Thomas Piketty is my spirit animal.

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

i came back for the economics but everyone already moved on to fucking free will.

Oh, and since my current debate is going nowhere. How about something possibly more interesting and hopefully less personal, political/personal opinion. (try to stick to non-personal conjecture.)

2020. (assuming we don't crash into the sun.) What happens in the next election? Who do you WANT to run, and who do you think will actually try to run? Would you actually vote for the same person you voted for again, if you did? Will you not vote again and complain that elections are rigged and start a petition to succeed if you're side doesn't win? Do you think if Trump does well (to the people that voted for him.) He'll get re-elected again? Would you want the third two term president in a row even if he was? How about if he is passable/does poorly? Is there an actual difference? Will third parties ever have a damned chance? Give me your thoughts. Maybe it will lead to better discussion. *fingers halfheartedly crossed* :3

@SleepingSilence

If everything goes exactly steady from here on out, Trump probably gets reelected. The biggest problem for him as that he has shown himself to be an amateur, so whereas he can obviously handle a situation where nothing happens and his party just kinda gives him bills to sign, if some major event takes place that requires executive leadership, it'll happen to him and he will have little control of the effects. This could turn out well if he gets unity votes, so the best thing that can happen for him is a 9/11 type event (perish the thought though). The worst thing that could happen to him is a recession (those are always bad because they touch most people where they live). Any situation that requires difficult leadership would be dubious for him. Like, for instance, close your eyes and imagine Trump dealing with the Cuban Missile Crisis. So yeh, Trump needs an easy time.

The Dems need to find themselves. Which they will, of course. In 2008 everybody was out there like "Damn, Republicans can never recover from this shit, nobody will ever forget the Bush years" and then they recovered, though the Bush Years were a burning disaster, whereas the Obama years were just underwhelming. Right now anything that happens is going to look like the Republicans fault, so they will have to make excuses for the reality whereas the Dems will get to snipe from the comfort of opposition-partydom, and they'll grow some skills out of that.

The best person the Dems have in their arsenal is probably Tulsi Gabbard, who if it weren't for her religion would probably be the most weirdly electable candidate in the country. She'll probably be a bit young for 2020 though... still, that's who I'm watching. Then again, Trump won and people unironically think he is a good choice, so who the fuck knows, Kanye 2020 maybe.

In the end, there is too much going on to make a real prediction, but I'll pull out what I think would be the funniest future.

-Trump wins by a hair in 2020 but loses Congress and/or the Senate.
-Trump doesn't have the temperament to be a lame duck President and bitches all the time. We get all kinds of funny material here.
-Being Donald Trump, and being a lame duck, we get to call him Donald Duck.
-2020 to 2024 is just Donald Duck going on tv throwing impotent shit-fits.

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

No one should be penalized for making money and becoming successful. It's a ludicrous idea.

@SleepingSilence

Echh, this sounds a bit like the law of the jungle tbh. If it is determined that your success is a detriment to your society, then it is reasonable to curb that success. The purpose of a government by the people is that we as a group determine what produces the greatest benefit to the group with the least harm to individual interests. This balancing act is true for pretty much everyone but the most nutty an-cap. The illegality of a ponzi scheme, for instance, is public regulation that curbs the success of an individual for the benefit of the masses.

My point is the American Dream is totally achievable.

@mdk

Upward mobility in itself isn't new, it has existed since the days of Imhotep. That the US and democratic values in general has improved upward mobility from where it was before is absolutely true, but this doesn't mean we have reached the peak. We should do everything we can as a society to ensure that none of our talent gets wasted trying to clear basic hurdles in poverty. That means keeping social stratification from ossifying and creating some sort of neo-feudal situation like what happened to, say, the Romans.

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

<Snipped quote by Vilageidiotx>

I agree, but I also feel like creation would actually be that casual of an act for literally YHVH the Almighty.

@Darcs

It would be easy for a omnipotent and all powerful god, but that's not the same as casual. Taking the Christian cannon at face value suggests that god takes the universe seriously.

Now, the argument that an omnipotent being could never truly take creation seriously is compelling...

When will I do the thing?

use a stic

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

<Snipped quote by Vilageidiotx>

Technically they're not wrong. First Bibles were in Greek Latin and Hebrew, and one of the first languages it was translated to was Old Slavonic (long before Martin Luther translated it to German and then the next guy to English) which is extremely accurate because of Greek alphabet and lots of Greek loanwords. Let me tell you, after reading it these guys are pretty much doing God's work. The only thing they have going wrong is the free market thing. Christ our Lord was quite against the dangers coming from the powers of greed and late stage capitalism that a "free" market defined which is understandable and also puts me off from American conservatism.

@Andreyich

You're obfuscating what is silly about this. The mainstream english translations are the KJV and its children. The idea that KJV or the language updates that have followed it are liberal conspiracies is crazy as fuck. I've never in my life met a Conservative who would argue that all the English translations bibles are examples of liberal media.

The thing is, you say the Slavic language translation is accurate because of the greek loanwords, and that is fine. But English isn't the same thing. It is unlikely that they will outdo previous interpretations, especially since they are dedicated to tweaking the translation to fit a modern political narrative.

Just peaking in, I figured I would look at how they handled one of the most iconic translations...

King James Version

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

New International Version

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Conservapedia Version

For starters, God created the heavens and the earth.

Now, the argument they make for this literary misfortune is interesting grammatically...

There is no definite article in the Hebrew text, and thus "for starters" is a better translation than "in the beginning." Creation was not God's beginning, but the universe's.

But to me, there are some serious problems with this choice. For one, they are splitting hairs, because nobody reads the english translation as suggesting God began at that moment. For two, the expression they chose is idiomatic, one that an english speaker would typically associate with informal writing or speech. "In the beginning" carries a literary weight that equals the task of creating the universe, whereas "For starters" makes creation sound as casual as ordering mozzarella sticks.

Now, in my opinion this whole thing seems like a joke. That they are crowdsourcing a biblical translation implies to me that much of this would be a joke, and replacing one of the most iconic lines in English literature with "For starters" suggests to me that some internet atheist types are having a laugh. And that would fit Conservapedia's history. The guy who started it was fucked with by people making fun of him and conservatism for years so that the website is half troll articles. The practical response to that website is to say "It's a joke" and move on.

a vaguely not-so-modest proposal

<Snipped quote by BrobyDDark>

That's actually interesting. Speaking of which, where does Yeezus fare on the political spectrum?

@ChickenTeriyaki

nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/08…

Objective fact and sympathy/empathy--let us discuss difficult subjects with both!

@mdk

I feel similar to what @Odin thinks.

The benefits of Democracy is limited by the knowledge of the voters. Socrates compares society to a ship in an example...

<Snipped quote by Socrates>

In order for Democracy to be beneficial, the voters must be informed of the issues and the best way to deal with them. Without knowledge, many things can arise from Democracy. Hitler, for example, was able to exploit the fears of the German people to the point where his party had total control.

@Lurking Shadow

The problem with the Socrates quote is... well, lets pull it out of its context. Socrates in this particular situation isn't necessarily the philosopher himself, but a character in Plato's Republic, where Plato's concept of an ideal society is developed. It's based on the idea that you can create a meritocratic natural order, where an upper level of "Philosopher Kings" can be nurtured to rule.

The problem is that you cannot make a meritocratic natural order. Plato's Republic amounted to saying "It would be great if we always made worthy people into Kings, so we should do that", which is nice sounding, but it's quite Utopian in reality to expect an aristocracy to work that way. Whatever problems democracy has regarding education, dictatorship also has. If the history of Kings and Dictators was a history of meritocracy, sure, we could stick with it. But in reality that history is a history of Carlos IIs and Neros.

In a democracy, the failures can at least be rectified by the reaction of the populous. With Monarchy you have to hope that the next role of the dice is a good one, whereas in a democracy the population itself can intervene through... democracy. And it has worked out that way. Buchanan, the 15th President of the US, is considered the most incompetent in American history. He is directly followed by Abraham Lincoln, who is often rated our best President. Democracy is a good system because it is reactive like that.

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

Do people do [thing I don't like] unironically?

@Andreyich

There's don't like, and there is just being a goofy stereotype. Like...



...really?

2020, a reminder

DARTH VADER: "Luke, you have a very nice figure. I've said that if you weren't my son, perhaps I would be dating you."

LUKE: "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"