The Virginia Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of High-Quality Posts

[Sumner 1868]

Hillary supporters essentially elected Trump by knowingly supporting an unelectable candidate whose policies caused millions to die.

In a way they are closet racists or atleast responsible for most of Trump's policies. At the very least they should apologize for enabling murder & racism.

[Badger]

Hillary supporters essentially elected Trump by knowingly supporting an unelectable candidate whose policies caused millions to die.

In a way they are closet racists or atleast responsible for most of Trump's policies. At the very least they should apologize for enabling murder & racism.

The garbage post thread is that way.

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

Could we have some temporal context here?

In the 1980s:

A. AIDS was completely untreatable and was a death sentence within two years, often quicker.

B. It was a disease with an INTENSE taboo attached, and people could lose their families, housing, support networks, churches, communities, etc. when diagnosed.

Marianne Williamson started up a charity which gave out millions of meals to AIDS patients and provided caring, compassionate care to people at a time when there was no effective medical solution available. She helped people, when faced with a guaranteed death sentence, ways to face their condition with compassion, dignity, and courage.

Marianne Williamson isn't going to tell non-exposed people to stop using PREP or to tell HIV patients to stop taking their antivirals to lower their viral load or whatever today. We are lucky enough that medication that can address this issue. People 30 years ago did NOT have that, and at a time of great moral panic and taboo about that disease, Marianne Williamson met people with compassion and open arms.

[YE]

They suffered for basically the entire 21st century under free trade and now a little bit of brash policy and they just forget all that?

Sorry sunshine.... you seem to forget that Progressive DEMs and Greens led the charge in places like like the "Battle of Seattle" against massive global outsourcing that causes massive loss of American jobs as part of the "race to the bottom".

Your hero Trump is yet another robber baron capitalist doing the same old, same old crap that we marched in the streets against from our Union Halls to our Campus Dorms....

Grassr00ts, as I have posted consistently and frequently, the selling out of the American Working Class goes back for decades, with political leaders of both parties....

Trump is simply a phony scheister, who pretends to support whatever position might be conveniently available at any given time, but he is solidly in the pockets of the bosses and MNCs that have been selling our country down the river for decades....

It's okay, smoke a joint, drink a beer, stare at the fading Trump posters on the ceiling of your room in your parent's house in Illinois.

I'm with you man.... I have seen the consequences of Free Trade run amok in my own communities in Oregon and the economic impacts involved.

I support Free and Fair Trade with Labor and Environmental Rights, but I also know the slippery snakes of "Free Trade" capitalists that simply are creating a race to the bottom while they shut down our Union Plants, ship our jobs overseas, and then claim that "Wall Street is Doing Well"....

That's why I support Bernie for President in 2020, and despite your Republican Midwest roots, he's not doing anything to deal with the issue other than create hatred and trade wars....

The only reason why 60+% of Americans now support "Free Trade" is because of your President that has gone completely in the wrong direction on trade policy, especially regarding Tariffs against China...

BTW: you say "they just forgot all that", like you are speaking in a different voice. I would prefer you say "We suffered under Free Trade Deals from 1990 > 2010"....

WE don't forget from the Union Movements of the late '80s / early '90s to the Present Day....

[GeorgiaModerate]

Anyone from Atlas Blue want to chime in?

My official response as a Jewish Atlas Republican:


President Trump's comments toward my Jewish brother and sisters on the centrist and progressive side of the political spectrum were completely unwarranted and reprehensible.

American Jews are loyal to the United States of America and owe no loyalties to any politician, political party or ideology.

President Trump's policies on Israel have been, for the most part, very much welcome and appreciated. However, supporting Israel is not enough.

To be an ally of the Jewish community you must be able to demonstrate a respect for our status as a minority group, a religious-ethnic group and as an independent voter's bloc with diverging attitudes on politics and policy issues.

President Trump, in the past few months, has failed to show respect in all of these categories. Mr. President, we are not a trophy to be put on some useless shelf of political prizes.

We are also not a political weapon against your opponents. It is appalling to me, a lifelong Jewish Republican and supporter of Israel, that you would use us, the US-Israel Relationship, and partisanship as wedge issues in the 2020 election campaign.

Last week, U.S. Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA) made incredibly insensitive remarks about the US Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman. He essentially accused him of dual loyalties - a purely antisemitic canard.

I passionately called on my progressive Jewish friends to denounce Lieu's comments. Many of them did. And eventually Congressman Lieu apologized.

Apologies are usually not enough, in my opinion, but I am glad to see public pressure forced him to delete his tweet.

Mr. President, you must apologize. You must distance yourself from your own comments. You must, for one damn time, put our country first.


Your comments have hurt the Jewish community and have leaned into a dark form of antisemitism for political points.


This comment, in addition to a host of comments you have over the past month, have made it clear that you are not fit for the office of President of the United States.

I cannot support you any longer. Not unless you change course and put our country first.

I will vote my conscience in 2020.

Not in spite of my Republican values, but because of my Republican Values.
Not in spite of my Jewish values, but because of my Jewish Values.
And not in spite of my support of the US-Israel Relationship, but because of my support for the US-Israel Relationship.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

This is an interesting topic and you gave a quite thorough response, so I'm going to talk with you point-by-point.  There's a lot of interesting history here and I think reasonable people can disagree, but I think it’s pretty apparent that historically Virginia was much more "Southern" than states like Arkansas, Tennessee or Kentucky.  I think that difference is key in explaining whey there was more racial amicus in Virginia during the civil rights era than in some other Southern states.
 

The fact that VA had a large black slave population is pretty much the only thing it ever had in common with the Deep South.  There have been significant differences ever since, from the antebellum period up to the modern day, which is why Southerners themselves rather hesitantly describe VA as a Southern state (and many will insist it is not Southern at all).

Having a large Black/slave population is the most distinguishing identifier of “[Deep] Southerness” there is in the textbook.  Having different racial groups in close contact is pretty much a prerequisite of a place developing identifiable racial animosity/conflict.  Virginia checks that box; its black population (22.1%) is higher than that of West Virginia (3.6%), Kentucky (8.3%), Missouri (11.6%), Arkansas (15.4%), or Tennessee (16.8%).  

Moreover, I've never met any credible individual who flat-out denies that Virginia is a Southern state.  The recent “de-Southernization” of Virginia is a trend driven almost exclusively by the growth of the D.C. suburbs, which is very recent and doesn’t give us any help in answering OP’s question.  I also would argue that the recent trend doesn’t erase the fundamentally Southern core of Virginia culture:  its governor wears that funny tie at inauguration, the state’s flagship universities are in Charlottesville and Blacksburg, sweet tea is readily available, etc., etc.  

Take, for example, the founding of VA.  VA was founded first as the Virginia Company, established with the purpose of finding gold in the New World (there was none in VA, as it turned out), and then later after the colony was established, it was primarily settled by English gentry (some of which actually had ties to English nobility- some of the only settlers in US history that were legitimate aristocrats) with the aim of setting up country estates modeled off of say, Yorkshire.  These estates came about around the James River and the Chesapeake Bay, and were originally worked by indentured servants- some of which were black, but many were actually white.  The formal establishment of slavery was not until much later in the late 1600s-early 1700s.  Contrast now to, for example, SC- which was settled much later by an entirely different group of people, i.e. English slavers coming over from Barbados with the explicit intent of starting plantations.  Or contrast to a state like LA, which was not originally an English colony at all.

American Slavery began in 1619 in Virginia.  The institution is intimately connected with the state and its elite families going back to its very founding.  We can get wishy-washy over where these families or their slaves were coming from, or exactly what crops they were growing and when, but that makes very little difference in:

• 1)  Realizing that the economic benefactors of slavery were invested in protecting the institution at all costs, thus leading to the Civil War, and;
• 2)  Affecting how the Lost Cause narrative was able to take ahold among Virginian Whites following Reconstruction (which is probably more key to understanding OP’s question of why Virginia was acting more like Mississippi or Alabama when it came to the Southern Manifesto).         

   

The western parts of VA were settled by Scots-Irish, and some Germans, many of which came down from central PA into the Shenandoah Valley along the Great Wagon Road.  So to say the state has "less" Appalachian influence than TN or NC.. while perhaps technically true, is quite misleading since a whole half of the state was mostly settled by those who would comprise of modern "Appalachian culture", and for practically the entirety of VA history, to the current day, there has always been a pretty stark difference (both culturally and otherwise) between the mountainous western half, and the piedmont/coastal plain in the east where most of the population is and where the wealthier English planters originally settled.

The parts of Virginia that were mostly settled by Scots-Irish, German and other Appalachian ethnic groups on the Great Mountain Road during the 1740s-1780s (a full 120 years after the Virginian slavers arrived in Jamestown, mind you) largely chose to secede from the state following the outbreak of the Civil War and form West Virginia.  Secessionist sentiment in Appalachian Virginia (i.e., Westsylvania) predates the American Revolution.  The experiences of Appalachian Virginians were informed by them locating within the state after political and cultural life was already squarely centered around Williamsburg (note: this is actually very similar to the experiences of Appalachian immigrants to Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia; hmmm).  Contrast that with Tennessee and Kentucky, where the Appalachian regions of those states were the first to be settled by British/American colonists.  That’s an immensely stark difference and, resultantly, Virginia is less culturally Appalachian than more interior Southern states.
  

Your description of VA being profound in terms of Southern Agrarian culture is, again, explaining the state in a superficial, sort of "junior high textbook" way.  VA's plantations were founded at a much earlier date than the Deep South, and in contrast to the Deep South, were primarily tobacco and some wheat.  Compare to the Deep South, which was primarily sugar, rice, and of course- cotton.  However, VA had few cotton plantations and by 1860, they were practically non existent.  The economic interests of state like VA were not necessarily going to be the same as a state like, say, AL, GA, or MS.

I have alluded to this above, but I’ll just reiterate that marginal differences in what types of crops plantations were growing during the Antebellum era is pretty trivial to understanding racial animus during the civil rights era.  Reconstruction/Jim Crow/Civil Rights political debates were much more influenced by the racist Lost Cause narrative, which was more potent in Virginia than say, Tennessee or Kentucky, due to the state’s larger Black population.  

Which, speaking of economic activity, when you say that VA was the "economic and political center of the CSA," you are again, being misleading.  The capital was indeed in Richmond, but was not originally there and moved for political reasons.  When you say that VA is the "first state to secede after Fort Sumter", you are obfuscating the history- I'm not sure if intentional or not, but clearly misleading.  VA's reasons for secession were not exactly the same as say, SC, and VA was the one of the last states to secede- it was 8th, on April 17, 1861, and did not do so until Lincoln called for states to provide volunteers to recapture the fort.  This was after the Montgomery Convention and when the first Confederate Constitution was signed, which was in March and VA was not a signatory at that time.  Your mention that VA had many Confederate veterans really says nothing and is a bit of a distraction- VA was by far the largest state in the CSA, so obviously it was going to have the most veterans; that should not be surprising.

Yes, the Confederate capital was relocated to Richmond to reflect the Virginia planters’ historical social and economic dominance over Southern society.  Virginia seceded before Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee (which are three former Confederate states with obviously better race relations during the civil rights era, hmmm….).  I don’t see how anything in the above quote establishes why Virginia would be “less Southern” than those states.  

Also, in terms of economics, it could be said that VA was the closest thing the CSA had to an industrialized state, which is not saying much- but it did have 3 of the largest cities in the top 10 of the confederacy (more than any other state), the confederacy's only real iron works, some of the only shipyards (the only naval yard, I believe), the largest flour mills, a more extensive rail network, and so on.  Even in those days, VA was resembling (and had actual links to) the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast much more than, say, MS or AL.

The only proper Confederate “city” would be New Orleans, which was the sixth-largest city in the United States at the time (population: 170,000).  The largest Virginian city at the time was Richmond, which had a population of 37,000.  Sure, Virginia benefitted from commercial and industrial links to the Northeast (and even Europe) but what made those links valuable was that Virginia was a natural thoroughfare for Deep South cotton and other commodities in transit to northern textile mills.  If Virginia had been more economically dependent on the Northeast than the Deep South, it wouldn’t had seceded in the first place.  
  

About the only thing I really agree with is when you state that social structures were insular and restrictive in VA, and that is probably a true statement... there is an argument to be made that VA has been the most elitist state throughout US history- something that perhaps gets closer to the real answer of the OP's question.

That difference exists because Virginia was a Southern, agrarian planters’ society that benefitted immensely from chattel slavery; doesn’t have the same historical influence of Appalachian culture as Tennessee, North Carolina or Kentucky; and because Virginia Whites were much more willing to buy-into Lost Cause narration and Jim Crow due to state’s large Black population.  Those factors make Virginia during the 20th century act more like a “Deep South” state than somewhere like Tennessee.  

Also, I’ll just make a general comment about the “junior high school”-ness of my responses:  Occam’s razor.  We don’t need complicated answers where simpler ones will suffice; critical history is taught using arcs and themes because these are generally consistent with observable historical events and trends.  

Context:

Because it was a practically a Deep South state with less Appalachian influence than Tennessee or North Carolina

It would appear your understanding of Virginia history is quite.. shall we say, unsophisticated.

[Dr. Arch]

What conservatism have forgotten is that when people are hurting, boiling in oil as I like to say it. They are going to demand action. When the system, the policies fail to alleviate that suffering they are going to seek out someone will deliver results. When you then block those attempts and then fail to deliver any meaningful improvements yourself, guess what happens to whatever "institution" you have hid behind.

They will rise up and burn it to the ground.

The biggest mistake is to think that people value our system for itself. Maybe this is cynical but they don't. They want safety and security and it is incumbent to the establishment, to the people that value this system to make sure that people feel heard, and that their problems are being addressed. If you make the system the reason why action isn't happening, guess what happens to he system? They will burn it to the ground.

I wish if there was one thing I could change about Conservatives in the modern age, would be for them to just put aside the dogma for two seconds and learn the most important lesson from the Russian Revolution. The only reason, why Russia (a country no one would have thought would be the first Communist Country) became the first Communist country in the world is because people were hurting so bad in a terrible war with no end in sight and the only ones who stood up and offered peace were a bunch of extremists.

If you want the filibuster to survive then you need a stable society in which people can address their issues. By that I mean if you want the filibuster to survive, you cannot use it to block everything and then do nothing yourself and then whine about the filibuster being nuked. You brought it on your effing self.

The right has created more socialists in the US in the past in 15 years then the Soviet Union could in 75. It is the right that opened the door to this through their own failure to recognize the reality that exists in this country, now everything they have cowardly hit behind is under threat. Conservative values, the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and yes the Second amendment and it is because they left people to boil in oil too long.

They need to take virtually everyone of these corporate funded, brain dead think tanks in DC and shut them down. They have ruined Conservatism in this country and basically ensured that the rise of the Progressive left, so whenever the left is going to the extreme, I blame Grover Norquist, I blame the Wayne La Pierre and I blame the Koch Brothers.

If we end up with an assault weapons ban, it will be because of the NRA's intransigence. If we end up with socialism, it will be because of blocking of anything that doesn't fit the lassiez-faire economic dogma, if we go bankrupt it will be because of deficit funded tax cuts, and if we lose the constitutional safeguards that protect our system, the Supreme Court etc, it will be cause of these frauds and shysters who have milked this movement dry for personal gain.

The whole reason Donald Trump won, was because he promised to burn this establishment edifice to the ground. Instead, he let himself get co-opted by it, just like the Tea Party was co-opted. Just like the Republican Revolution of 1994 was co-opted by it. They corrupt everything and everyone they touch, like an octopus grasping its tentacles around each politician. 

I am more conservative than all of them because unlike them, I know what the hell that actually means. You will never succeed as conservatives as long as you rely on pressure groups and special interests. The interest of the pressure group is not to win, it is to keep fighting. That is why the NRA won't make a deal, they have to keep the fight going because that is how they keep existing and make money. The perverse incentive thus makes the NRA dangerous to the very thing they want to protect, the second amendment. These groups create enemies where they need not exist precisely because this ensures their continued existence, and in so doing they threaten the very thing that they are nominally dedicated to preserving. For the NRA, the second amendment.

[Epaminondas]

Yankee on a roll this week.

Why doesn’t their “alternative” be coming here to employ in America?

In some cases, lack of natural resources or excessive government regulations can result in offshoring of jobs. It isn't always possible to actually bring the jobs to the US, but ideally that's exactly what they'll do. The US offshores far too many jobs to China that could be American jobs.

In most cases though, it is profit margins. Free trade encourages slave labor, because it enables production to flow to the lowest labor cost area and thus boost profit margins. Though it isn't emphasized when teaching about the Civil War period, but Republicans often made the connection between the two back then. Rome also harvested wealth via slave labor and sent it east to buy silks and other luxury goods, enriching China and Persia and leaving Europe in grinding poverty for centuries of the dark ages.  

Look I am for capitalism and a competitive market, but I am not in favor of completely unrestrained business or Laissez Faire. As a conservative, the way I see it is, unrestrained profit motive and creative destruction will destroy your community, depress religious affiliation, spread families across the county and disrupt family support networks. Removing industry leads to depressed wages, lower tax revenues for schools in those communites, rising crime, drug use, divorce and suicide rates. The dominant source of income becomes government jobs and government programs and the family is more broken. For years this has been happening and Conservative's would answer back that people should rely on their family/church for assistance instead of the government. The problem is those institutions have been decimated by outsourcing and creative destruction.

You cannot successfully merge Lassiez Faire with Conservatism because conservatism is about preservation of societal institutions (marriage, family, tradition, and yes in our case Freedom). Unrestrained profit motive wrecks those and leaves people dependent on government, the exact opposite of what conservatism would want. The reason why the GOP is always at war with itself is because you have vast amounts of money supporting lassiez faire economics, meanwhile that same force has wrecked the American heartland and ironically created more American Socialists out of despair than the Soviet Union could in 75 years of subversion and influence.

It doesn't require socialism, it requires moderating the excesses of creative destruction and at least some level of economic nationalism to redirect the benefit of capitalism towards that of the nation and its people. Sort of a combination of a civil and economic nationalism in that sense.

The end result of free trade is ultimately either New Dealer redistribution, taxing the profits of the trade to redistribute or invest. This can be pushed to the socialist extreme as well.

The other alternative is to restrict the trade through some kind of protectionism and try to rebuild economic stability so the family and communities can recover their cohesiveness.

Republicans are going to have to decide which one is more acceptable and compatible with Conservatism generally. Is the opposition to gov't dependence and pro-family/religion more important, or is unrestrained profit more important.

(from Trump orders U.S. companies to "start looking for alternatives" to China)

[Fuzzy Bear]

oh no, i guess they have to not get married now.

You have serious deficiencies when it comes to combining common sense and critical thinking with empathy.  I’d imagine it’s cuz the latter part is lacking and while not on purpose at first, you’ve spent a long time honing in on a world view that embraces said issue.

You see, they don’t care about the discrimination they bring, only what they think is the discrimination against them which is actually equality and fairness of treating everyone the same.

It's completely fair and equal to say that no one can be forced to provide a non-necessary service they don't agree with.   

The idea of criticizing me for a lack of empathy is a joke.  The point of threads like this is not to show empathy for anyone involved in this situation, who is never going to read this thread.  It's to say that the political "other" is bad and dangerous and so we should restrict traditional freedoms in order to punish them.

You're the kind of person who would say that black people in the 1950s should just continue driving from motel to motel all night long until they finally find one that allows blacks, and that that is a perfectly reasonable and sustainable way of doing things.

If you're in business, you provide your service to anyone who can pay, period. Conservatives love to talk about how businesses have no responsibility other than to generate profits for their owners - fine, then this woman should leave her feelings and beliefs at home and focus on generating profit, which she is not doing if she's turning away paying customers for being the wrong color.

Since I see that 14 posters "recommended" this uninformed strawmanning I suppose I should respond to it.

"You're the kind of person...." Gotta love these historically illiterate baseless personal attacks!  Do you know what a "public accommodation" means according to the Civil Rights Act? 
https://www.justice.gov/crt/title-ii-civil-rights-act-public-accommodations

Since the CRA listed specific places where discrimination should be illegal, don't you think that maybe many people at that time did not take an all-or-nothing approach?  Isn't it possible that discrimination is more of an injustice in some contexts than in others?   

An authentically conservative philosophy is inconsistent with such a fragmented instrumentalist worldview that would proclaim profit as the only thing that matters in the world of business. One should not neglect any true moral principle simply because one has entered a place of work.  Someone who runs a business has a duty to act with integrity in all their work to the best of their lights.  Racial discrimination is wrong because of the nature of the human person, not because it affects the bottom line or even because it might make things awkward on the job.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

We have a bit of strawman here, because there's a far cry from having an affair and being a murderous dictator.

come on man, obviously I wasn't saying they were the same.  It was just an extreme example of "relatively speaking".

Look guys, I understand that I'm in the minority in caring about our politician's integrity.  Clearly most people only care when it's the other side that's doing it and are much more willing to ignore it when it's done on their side.  Just like most other bad things.  The other side is "bought off" by special interests, my side is "invested in" by like minded NGOs.  My side left the state house so they wouldn't have to vote on a corrupt bill, the other side left the house because they lost an election and don't want to suffer the results of that.  When their guy marries a secretary it's a disgusting abuse of power, when my guy does it it's true love.  When we come up with motivations in our head, it's easy to think the worst of the other guy and the best for your own.  It's human nature.  Just like adultery, unkempt beards and hating people that don't look like you.  And we should try to be better.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Vittorio, you may want to incorporate more modern works of analysis in your evidence. Going back to the late 1800s is not entirely applicable to the situation we have today. Including modern pieces supporting your argument, like in your first post here, would be more helpful in getting people to see your point.

If one is arguing about what Marxism is, it only makes sense to go back to the source material. Nobody in the intervening years since 1883 has improved on Marx (indeed, attempts to 'update' Marxism typically end up in Keynesian underconsumptionist pablum) and capitalism itself does not change structurally whether its predominant social manifestation is that of small burghers playing their wares or a 20th century Fordist plant producing automobiles or Internet developers selling code today. The M-C-M' formula holds good wherever the law of value operates.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying to bring about modern “revisionist” theoreticians, I’m saying to apply the ideas of Marx into the modern era and experiences using scholarly work not of your own, like your opening post.

Also, while Marx laid the foundation for Marxism, there is still not yet an agreed upon endpoint on exactly how to organize society fully. You say that this is “positivism of the bourgeoisie”, but Marx was wrong in his original analysis I must say. What else to make of the two most successful revolutions based on the application happening in Feudal Russia and China, populated by peasants liberated from serfdom only a few generations ago. Or that the only “real” areas of revolutionary potential are in the now industrializing and/or neocolonial hotspots, a far cry from the revolutionary spark to begin in Industrial Europe or the US.

People will not overthrow the status quo unless they are desperate enough and are left with no other option. Western Democracies provide the avenue for peaceful recourse so if there is need for change they will just vote in someone like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. The main reason why Lenin was able to seize power and then keep it was that he was the only one with a consistent message and a consistent foreign policy, "end the damn war!" in a country that only ever had a history of political change coming through violent means.

That is why it was one of the most rural and religious countries on earth that became the first "Communist Country". In many other countries, they came to power because they were the only ones left on the field who was fighting fascism (one extreme provides a foil for the other).  

The problem with Marx and the problem that Vittorio thus shares, is a fundamental disconnect with where people are in reality. It is easy for a theorist to say market impulse and/or religion is fake and an empty construct. But millions of people like the ability to make rational choices for themselves and millions of people believe in various religious sects as a matter of faith. To deny that or ignore that, among the many other "operating factors" ignores substantial elements of the "human experience" and thus one cannot hope to predict a future outcome while discounting these "counter-forces".

This was the point I was trying to make when I talked about the emphasis on class to the exclusion of all other factors. Maybe he is using a different definition of class or maybe there is some impulse that bet encapsulates the impetus that would in a vacuum push towards a Communist outcome, but whether or not such is the case, it still fails to account for the very things Vittorio wrote off as not existing or irrelevant and it is those missing elements that stand in the way of the "natural transition".

Russia would have never become Communist were it not pushed the point where that was the only viable outcome. Agrarian socialist perhaps, more than likely some other kind of Revolution, but it was the war, starvation and despair that made Communism viable in a place Marx thought would be the least hospitable.

Desperation drives people to embrace extremes, and that is why as a Conservative I prefer to alleviate such desperation to prevent such extremes from rising to power and threatening the system. If only other conservatives approached things the same way, and weren't likewise blinded by their own agenda and alternative facts.

[YE]

If the party fails to support actual interests of the working class the party can f*** off.

Policy matters more than party because policy affects people. People complaining about Sanders not pledging to support Democrats (which is false--he did) are nothing more than privileged a-holes who feel like the clique they're in is more important than the values they should at least be pretending to stand for. It's a commodified identity--being a member of a group as a replacement for having a personality or goals in life as more important than actually improving the quality of life of people. It's a mental block on either doing what I did--changing my ideology when I realized it didn't reflect reality--or what most people here need to do: realize the Democratic Party has been in the pocket of Wall St. for a while and must be reformed or replaced if real problems like wealth inequality and climate change are to be reflected.

They are also the candidates of cishet white males who are very progressive until they get confronted on personal problems pertaining to their privilege, unconscious support of Rape Culture, microaggressions, etc that they are too proud or insecure to address.

Based on your sig supporting a fascist transphobe and this post (which repeats the VERY dangerous idea that a class-based analysis of economics means you can't have a progressive analysis of social issues--when in reality the concepts REINFORCE each other) you might have the worst political views ever. Congratulations?

[Xing]

Okay, so then. As someone who has both a STEM degree and that is presently out of work, I find a fair bit of what you said in your post kind of hilarious in how 'kids these days!' it is. But let me share with you a bit of information that may surprise you. Okay, two things if you count that a number of good STEM programs have tended for some time now to make sure their students are well taken care of if they go to graduate school. Take the loans for undergrad, start paying it off with your stipend during grad school. That sort of thing.

The other thing is: not everybody's a good fit for STEM. And I'd rather have someone designing the building I'm working in, the road I'm driving on, the car I'm driving in, the medicines I'm taking, and the chemicals I encounter out in the world who had a minimal want of their own to study the material so they had a personal motivation to study it and learn it well. I'd rather not have people handling all these things and more who only got their degree to get The Job, but who only go through the motions while their passions are elsewhere. To claim that they are to blame for going for what they believe in, what they find they can best do, is absurdly cruel and unhelpful for society in the long run. And what more... the more we try to force people who have no interest in STEM to do STEM, the more colleges and universities will find themselves trying to dumb down their programs so they can maintain their success rate or what ever. One of my good friends is presently a professor and fled a job at another college that was going that route. Reduction of educational standards because we are making STEM 'the right way' will in the long run hurt the standards for such jobs in society.

And what more... we as a society should be restructuring things so that yes, people can follow their passions and get super good at the things they want to actually be super good at, and then not punished for getting super good at the things they want to be super good at. We are reaching a point where we have the means to do this, and thus should be prepared to push ourselves in that direction. And not just shake our cane and shout at the people who were promised the world if they worked hard, and then didn't get despite their effort.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

https://twitter.com/JaxAlemany/status/1179922556985516032

I like that she is prodding Ernst on this, but the answer (cynical as it may be) has been available for years now: They care more about their jobs as members of Congress than they care about enforcing the rule of law, making specific policy (to a degree) or maintaining relationships with our allies. It's long been an insult that politicians only care about power and the perks of the job, but a proper one, and there have always been examples of this being true, it's just the Trump era has made it painfully obvious because Trump has constantly presented his own party with situations where they have to either try to reign him in or just excuse his behavior while sacrificing any morals, ethics or dignity they purport to have. The response has almost always been to do nothing or flat out distort reality to defend Trump, and even for the politicians who initially came out against Trump, all they did was run their mouths on the talk show circuits while refusing to actually use their leverage in Congress to try and force Trump to change.

I mean, not that it's even necessary imo, but just to indulge, Senators Risch and Johnson themselves previously said colluding with a foreign government to win an election is improper and illegal, but when this issue blew up, suddenly they all look at the transcript and say no, it's fine. The reason it's "fine" now but not before is because they suddenly woke up one morning and found out that they either had to put up or shut up, and the very idea of actually putting up was never truly on the table - never. And don't even get me started on Graham. He did the same thing. He is one of the biggest and most high profile examples of a politician completely changing their tune to keep their job, going from critical of Trump to total sycophant. Imagine what kind of person you have to be to have such a visceral reaction to this guy, and then just morph into an enthusiastic bootlicker and spend years debasing yourself, contradicting yourself, and feigning outrage in front of cameras, all so you can keep a job writing and talking about legislation that never gets passed anyway. I mean, how does he even live like that? Are these people really fine having virtually no dignity or self-respect?

To these people, it's all just acting. They don't care so long as they keep their jobs, money and power. Or, rather, perhaps they do care on some level, but not remotely enough to make them react on principle instead of their usual self-interest.

The fact is, most of these people belong nowhere near the halls of power, but because the people themselves only believe what they want to believe and reject anything that makes them feel uncomfortable or suggests even a little bit that they might have voted for the wrong person, these are the kinds of people they get to represent them. Corrupt, self-interested spineless partisan hacks whose only true goals are clinging to power.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1181945686906081281
Oh, look, a Republican offering the victims of imminent genocide "thoughts and prayers".

Oh look, an opportunity to denigrate religion for no reason.   

Not praying for the Kurds doesn't make you a better person.

Praying (virtue signalling to God) for the Kurds doesn't make you a better person either. You either care or don't care, but a religious gesture to SHOW God physixally that you care has no effect when he can see into your heart and mind anyways.

For people who pray, truly caring about someone means you pray for them.   If you don't believe in prayer, fine; maybe save that argument for another time when people aren't expressing their concern about a crisis in another land in the best way they know how.

[Fuzzy Bear]

Yes, we would. That's the difference between us and the so-called party of personal responsibility.

I'll hold you to that once the U.S. Attorney for Connecticut's investigation into the origins of the Russia probe are complete, too.

And I'm sure that you wouldn't want to get bogged down in a debate about impeachment as you call it. That would just prove that you are Republican first and American second. And you're crying and whining and moaning and simpering about but the Democrats would do it to just makes you seem pathetic. Pathetic.

This whole idea that if you oppose impeachment you're not an American is pure, unadulterated BS. Sorry. This isn't a dictatorship where anything but the Badger way (a.k.a. the Democratic party way) is "un-American." Funny how dissent from the Democratic party line is never "patriotic" - but "un-American" or racist or some other ist, and Republicans can't be Americans, too.

[Hindsight was 2020]

As someone who has enjoyed Taibbi's writing over the years, I have to say that  he (and other anti-establishment journalists generally perceived as "left", such as Glen Greenwald) have been discrediting themselves throughout Mr. Trump's time on the national political spotlight. Most recently it's been the utter hypocrisy of people who approved and (in Greenwald's case) played an essential role in Edward Snowden's whistleblowing (which I approved, because good faith whistleblowing is a good thing) and who are now outraged and critical of recent whistleblowing (which I also approve, because good faith whistleblowing is a good thing) that exposes the Trump administrations crimes and incompetence.

And its not just these guys, it's a whole spectrum of "far left" reporting that is just utterly unwilling to even consider the idea that our established political institutions and power structures (even though they are very problematic) could possibly be preferable to a raving madman conducting an open assault on representative government and America's more positive ideals. I'm talking the type of reporting that has spent the last four years eager to repeated any attack on the Democratic establishment, no matter how poorly sourced, but is clearly extremely reluctant to report on even Mr. Trump's most heinous violations of the law.

Source https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=338687.0

[Badger]

Yes, we would. That's the difference between us and the so-called party of personal responsibility.

I'll hold you to that once the U.S. Attorney for Connecticut's investigation into the origins of the Russia probe are complete, too.

And I'm sure that you wouldn't want to get bogged down in a debate about impeachment as you call it. That would just prove that you are Republican first and American second. And you're crying and whining and moaning and simpering about but the Democrats would do it to just makes you seem pathetic. Pathetic.

This whole idea that if you oppose impeachment you're not an American is pure, unadulterated BS. Sorry. This isn't a dictatorship where anything but the Badger way (a.k.a. the Democratic party way) is "un-American." Funny how dissent from the Democratic party line is never "patriotic" - but "un-American" or racist or some other ist, and Republicans can't be Americans, too.

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!

[GeorgiaModerate]

This is a topic I've done a quite a bit of research on in my life.

Always best practice to ask undecideds who they are leaning towards, but still allow them to say they are unsure. Almost all will wind up voting for who they say they are leaning towards. Leaners are typically either softer partisans who are slightly but not very persuadable, or extreme partisans disaffected by a bitter primary who will eventually fall in line. Genuine, persuadable undecideds will silo through the second unsure option (~50% won't wind up voting).

Many pollsters attempt complex statistical regressions to predict undecideds (or allocate them based on arbitrary assumptions made by demographic) but these usually overestimate weak incumbents and underestimate strong challengers, and in some instances can be derailed by fluctuating turnout patterns and changing demographic trends.

Forcing undecideds to choose is just an absolutely atrocious choice. Many respondents - both genuine undecideds and leaners - will simply drop out of the poll, understandably. This warps the sample and produces a topline result that overstates every candidate's support and is not representative of the full voting population. Subsequently, this messes up the results of every other question, all of the crosstabs, and can have outsized impact on averages.

Not pushing undecideds has its benefits, mostly in that it shows each candidate's core base of support. However, it doesn't produce an accurate read of how each candidate would do if the election were held that day. Having a "someone else" or "neither" option achieves a similar effect, though it tends to dilute the candidate's vote share even more, especially incumbents, since it is essentially a non-binding protest vote that few voters would actually cast in the booth.

Polling is hard!

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Yes but almost all new wealth is going to the millionaire and billionaire class while the GOP continues to propose cuts to welfare programs. Almost all job creation since the Great Recession are low paying jobs. Wages have been stagnant since the 1980s and income and wealth inequality are at an all time high.

GDP, economic growth, and the stock market are indicators that people with views similar to David Koch and their billionaire friends love to point out as signs of a great economy but in reality that often means didly squat in terms of how the average person is doing.

The thing is blue avatars to some extent recognized this prior to 2016 when it was convenient so it’s a sign they’re just working backwards from there conclusions.

[Fuzzy Bear]

It's hilarious how much Atlas doesn't know about the KoC to be labelling Kamala as anti-catholic for being concerned about the group. It's old, it's white, it's conservative, and super religious (duh) I would be concerned about it as well because it may affect their votes on abortion and other social issues. Oh btw, I'm catholic.

To answer this stupid and pointless question: none of them.

#AtlasGreatestHits

I know plenty about the KoC, thanks. Like the Church it is aligned with, the national KoC organization holds conservative views on abortion and some other issues.

However, individual chapters and members of those chapters serve primarily as charitable and community betterment organizations for older men of the parishes. Going after someone for being a member is ignorant, petty, and anti-Catholic.

I hope we would hold up the same standard if, say, a Republican judge were to go after a Muslim judge on this basis.

I'm a Knight. I have plenty of problems with the people running the national efforts in New Haven, and that is a pretty common sentiment. The one major event I look back on and regret is that the Knights spent a lot of money campaigning for Prop 8.

However, nobody, not a single person, joins the Knights of Columbus because they want to be told how to live their lives by Supreme Council. The Knights of Columbus were founded to take care of the needs of parish widows and orphans. Today that has evolved into supporting the needs of the parish and community; that if any project or drive needs manpower, its the Knights who step in. They run the fish frys. They hold the intellectual disabilities drive. They raise money for and volunteer at the Special Olympics. That is what happens at the local level.

Not every practicing Catholic male chooses to be a Knight. But if you are an actively practicing Catholic, and you want to volunteer and help out around your parish, joining the Knights is something that just happens and don't think twice about.

So when two prominent Democratic senators argue that this nominee should be disqualified for his position based on his membership, not even what he has said or done in the context of being a Knight, that looks really bad to practicing Catholics who know and see what being a Knight means in their parish and community. I see no difference to that and saying JFK shouldn't be president because he would be a pawn to the Pope. Thinking that the judge would be bound to the Knights' influence when ruling in his courtroom would be laughable if it weren't so sad.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

As more jobs become eligible for telework (technologically, legally, and socially), this will become irrelevant. The rural decline in this country also is the product of people voting with their feet -- preference and not just necessity. More educated people (the right people for these jobs) seem to prefer living in cities where there simply is more to do. I don't see why this is a bad thing. It's just a fact.

Also why do people from rural areas love to hate the nation's capital? Hawley couldn't wait to get out of Missouri by competing for a job in the wicked capital city.

People don't move to cities on a mass scale because of leisure qualities. Urbanization is a product of industrialization and capitalism. Urban areas are also built upon countless pointless jobs that exist merely to keep the existing system of capitalism afloat, not because they are actually needed.

The decline in rural employment is due to automation and outsourcing. The countryside is the life blood of the American economy; coal, natural gas, petroleum, wheat, soy, corn, dairy, meat, etc... that's what keeps the American economy going. It is pumped from the countryside to the cities where it is managed, traded, sold, and bought. In years past, when automation and outsourcing were not as destructive to the rural populace, their labor was essential and taken for granted at significant costs because most realized their dependency on these Americans and their labor.

Today, they're deliberately overlooked or treated with disdain while their land and resources, along with the labor of a shrinking few, is intensely exploited while all the wealth produced therefrom is extracted and transferred to the urban parts of America. The American countryside is, like the developing world, part of the periphery of exploitative and extractive capitalism, whereas the core are places like New York and LA, which take for granted their existence and wealth, which is entirely dependent on the exploitation of the "hicks" and their resources.

[YE]

The fact that the blue avatars celebrate because a smear campaign by an abusive husband against his ex-wife has succeeded makes me sick.

She posted them herself, and she committed rape too.

More Dems should be like Ralph Northam, grow a freaking backbone.

Northam had scandal after scandal down the line of succession though.

It's utterly embarrassing that Justin Fairfax is still the Lieutenant Governor of Virginia. He was accused by not one, but two women, of rape and/or sexual assault, and he is defiant as always, refusing to resign his position. Of course, we have Trump. I would ask this of Atlas Democrats, however: If you wish to hold Republican politicians to a high standard (and I'm not attacking you for that), why don't you hold your own politicians to the same? I would be all for Trump being turned out of office, if Justin Fairfax and others like him were.

IIRC, most Atlas (and national) Democrats were pretty quick to call for Fairfax’s resignation and were pretty pissed that he wasn’t impeached.  And Al Franken, John Conyers, Reuben Kihuen, Nate Boulton, Steve Loebsack, etc were all driven from office (and rightly so).  The only Democrat of note I can think of who has hung on after a #metoo scandal since the movement began is Fairfax.  The Republicans have defended and tried to rationalize supporting folks like Trump, Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Roy Moore, Jim Jordan, Steve Watkins, James Comer, etc.  Even Katie Hill just resigned while Scott DeJarlais remains in Congress without much comment from Republicans despite having repeatedly slept with patients, some of whom he pressures to get abortions.

I’m sorry, but there is simply nothing even remotely resembling equivalency about how the two parties have treated #metoo scandals.  The Democrats - while not perfect by any means - have generally wasted no time siding with the victims rather than the predators (Fairfax being a glaring and particularly egregious exception, but an exception all the same) who have sexually assaulted or harassed them whereas the Republicans have generally shown themselves to be perfectly willing to turn their backs on the victims if they think defending a sex predator will help their party cling to power.  This isn’t just my opinion, it’s a fact that has been demonstrated time and time again.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

All moderators resign.  Modadmins resign as well.  This place should be run by Dave and Dave alone until things are sorted out and certain wealthy hateful disgusting evil people explain themselves.

Running the forum is not high on Dave's priority list, as opposed to the site in general. He'd simply appoint new mods, who would have to work under the same system. A mass resignation wouldn't change anything.

It's very easy to say "I'm resigning, look how brave and principled I am", as opposed to trying to do something constructive from the inside. And let's dispel with the prevalent but fundamentally incorrect notion that an individual mod has any power others than solving reports for their respective boards. There is no such thing as "mod team", working together, making decisions by consensus. We don't even have proper discussion, as most mods rarely even speak in the cave. In fact, we're pretty short of active mods, especially now that Virginia (a modadmin) and Lumine are stepping down for personal reasons.

The forum is indeed at its low point, but it's unfair to attribute everything to "muh bad mods". There's some very valid criticism which I would love to see fully taken into account, but without having Dave stepping in to set some rules (preferably making it sure that certain behavior, like bigotry, hate speech, homophobia, bullying and so on would be dealt with more harshly), it's trying to do your best.

[Epaminondas]

Guns did not become a cultural talisman for white grievances until the early 1990s.

The National Rifle Association was once, as its name suggested, a very boring, obscure organization for hunting and sport shooters. Its primary purpose was teaching gun safety and marksmanship. It never opposed gun control, particularly of handguns which were regarded as outside its purview and associated with urban crime.

Wayne LaPierre is the one who really transformed the group into a Republican mouthpiece and haven for black helicopter conspiracy theorists.