Political Discussion

debianlinux said:
You've made quite a huge and erroneous leap if you think Trump is somehow "my party". I am completely disenfranchised and have no "party" to speak of. I could be compelled towards something more centrist than the leftiest of the left or the rightiest of the right which is all I've been offered for some time.
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Sorry if I was unclear, but the line about mental health and below was not directed at you. For the record I too feel like I do not have a party by the definition of the two majors that currently exist.
 
Wanna pile onto the sickness of these mass shootings? Stocks for gun & ammo manufacturers tend to rise a few percentage points following mass shootings because investors wager on more sales from gun owners who fear tightening regulation.

For example, Smith & Wesson. Their stock value has lost roughly 30% over the last couple of years. But not today. Today they are up about 2% due to a buying frenzy.

I guess if we're gonna bet on the horses, eventually someone will bet on which ones will die.
 
debianlinux said:
You've made quite a huge and erroneous leap if you think Trump is somehow "my party". I am completely disenfranchised and have no "party" to speak of. I could be compelled towards something more centrist than the leftiest of the left or the rightiest of the right which is all I've been offered for some time.
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Hahahahaha! You think you have a left wing major party in America? I’d hesitate to call the Democrats centerists, never mind lefties, they’re centre right and the republicans are farther that way!
 
Joe Mac said:
Hahahahaha! You think you have a left wing major party in America? I’d hesitate to call the Democrats centerists, never mind lefties, they’re centre right and the republicans are farther that way!
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That was my first thought, too. Bernie and Warren are being called radical for advocating for single-payer health care, something literally every other western developed country has. That's not "the leftiest of the left."
 
BjorgenFjorgen said:
That was my first thought, too. Bernie and Warren are being called radical for advocating for single-payer health care, something literally every other western developed country has. That's not "the leftiest of the left."
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No not even remotely. Neither of those parties even tips its cap at an agenda of protecting the rights of workers by ensuring proper renumeration, benefits and rights in exchange for the exploitation of their labour. Neither pushes an actual progressive tax regime. Neither believes in state control of, and investment in, key national infrastructure such as telecommunications and public transport. None of these are far left “communist” ideas, they’re centre left ideas...
 
The single payer health care thing is not a leftist thing I am concerned about. I would fully support that or just flat out subsidized national healthcare. The 2 most important things to emphasize and subsidize socially are healthcare end education. On a more global picture it would be climate change. But, everyone is too busy acting like abortion and guns are the big deals, oh and virtue signaling they are more right than some other false side in that equation. For good measure let’s make sure we have some foreign threats to keep everyone occupied while we all dumb and sick out of relevance.
 
debianlinux said:
The single payer health care thing is not a leftist thing I am concerned about. I would fully support that or just flat out subsidized national healthcare. The 2 most important things to emphasize and subsidize socially are healthcare end education. On a more global picture it would be climate change. But, everyone is too busy acting like abortion and guns are the big deals, oh and virtue signaling they are more right than some other false side in that equation. For good measure let’s make sure we have some foreign threats to keep everyone occupied while we all dumb and sick out of relevance.
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Ahem....how are abortion and guns not big deals?
 
debianlinux said:
The single payer health care thing is not a leftist thing I am concerned about. I would fully support that or just flat out subsidized national healthcare. The 2 most important things to emphasize and subsidize socially are healthcare end education. On a more global picture it would be climate change. But, everyone is too busy acting like abortion and guns are the big deals, oh and virtue signaling they are more right than some other false side in that equation. For good measure let’s make sure we have some foreign threats to keep everyone occupied while we all dumb and sick out of relevance.
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They’re rights based arguments. The left generally rejects dichotomies of rights. Human rights derive from liberalism which is very much a centrist line of thought.
 
Dtknuckles said:
I’ve never understood this phrase. To me it seems like a lazy way to criticize someone who is taking a a stand for what they believe in.
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For me, there's more a little more nuance to it than that. A 'friend' (more industry acquaintance) now drives a Tesla and never (and I mean, never) misses a chance to discuss the tyranny of internal combustion and how those of that use 'death engines' are busy killing children. The fact he flies over 50,000 miles a year is apparently irrelevant. Virtue signalling for me is the public expression of support for something that has precisely no cost or buy in for you doing so and is often contrary to what you're doing in reality.
 
I've read arguments where people invoke that term, not to say we should go further and put more work in to achieve those virtues and get rid of the hypocrisy but to say the virtue itself is dumb and to dismiss the entire discussion and poster they're 'arguing' against. If I wanted to make the case that a person or company is pretending to care when they really don't, I'd probably choose a different term to describe it and I'd be extra careful to avoid painting everyone who cares about an issue with the same wide brush I'm using to dismiss Coca Cola's woke ad campaign.
 
swamp jazz box set said:
I've read arguments where people invoke that term, not to say we should go further and put more work in to achieve those virtues and get rid of the hypocrisy but to say the virtue itself is dumb and to dismiss the entire discussion and poster they're 'arguing' against. If I wanted to make the case that a person or company is pretending to care when they really don't, I'd probably choose a different term to describe it and I'd be extra careful to avoid painting everyone who cares about an issue with the same wide brush I'm using to dismiss Coca Cola's woke ad campaign.
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I don't use the phrase 'virtue signalling' to be fair. I just call him a twat.
 
Ed Selley said:
For me, there's more a little more nuance to it than that. A 'friend' (more industry acquaintance) now drives a Tesla and never (and I mean, never) misses a chance to discuss the tyranny of internal combustion and how those of that use 'death engines' are busy killing children. The fact he flies over 50,000 miles a year is apparently irrelevant. Virtue signalling for me is the public expression of support for something that has precisely no cost or buy in for you doing so and is often contrary to what you're doing in reality.
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While this guy sounds like a jerk and I would avoid all interactions if I could, I wouldn't qualify what he is doing as virtue signaling. He just sounds inconsistent and annoying. But I don't really mind inconsistency if they present it correctly. I mean the people do what they can do to live up to live up to their ideals. Will they fall short? Of course. Can anybody radically change their whole life to be so pure as to never seem hypocritical, highly doubtful.
 
Ed Selley said:
For me, there's more a little more nuance to it than that. A 'friend' (more industry acquaintance) now drives a Tesla and never (and I mean, never) misses a chance to discuss the tyranny of internal combustion and how those of that use 'death engines' are busy killing children. The fact he flies over 50,000 miles a year is apparently irrelevant. Virtue signalling for me is the public expression of support for something that has precisely no cost or buy in for you doing so and is often contrary to what you're doing in reality.
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Even this doesn’t really sound like something that would fall under the virtue signaling umbrella, it’s just being either a hypocrite or an idiot. Virtue signaling as a term has less to do with the validity of a person’s argument, and more to do with saying “you don’t actually believe what you’re fighting for, you’re just pretending to believe it to seem cool/fit in/be accepted/etc”. Which is precisely what makes it such a ridiculous and largely useless term.

Btw, the best course of action when accused of virtue signaling is to ignore it entirely and keep the focus on your initial point. The thing about being called a “virtue signaler” is that it indicates that the person using the phrase doesn’t have any more legitimate arguments against your point, so they pivot the entire conversation from the initial topic of the debate to whether or not YOU believe what you’re saying. And once somebody decides that they know how you feel and what you think better than you do, they’re not debating in good faith, and you’re not going to change their mind. So rather than letting them own the conversation, you gotta do what you can to keep the initial focus in play
 
Not a huge Rogan guy but this interview has racked up 3.7 million views on YouTube in roughly 30 hours and has been trending #1 on YouTube for 12+ hours and is worth watching.

 
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Sonicpharmacist said:
Ahem....how are abortion and guns not big deals?
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They are issues of *some* importance that are used (along with immigration) to intentionally divide us and prevent the working and middle classes from uniting on economic issues.

Which is why they are the issues both parties avoid the center on despite being the issues on which Americans are most likely to be moderate on.
 
DownIsTheNewUp said:
They are issues of *some* importance that are used (along with immigration) to intentionally divide us and prevent the working and middle classes from uniting on economic issues.

Which is why they are the issues both parties avoid the center on despite being the issues on which Americans are most likely to be moderate on.
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I fail to see how women possibly losing autonomy on their reproductive rights and gun violence can be brushed aside as issues of “some” importance.
 
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