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Now that Donald Trump has won...

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  • Naoza said:

    Apreche said:

    Naoza said:

    Ya know the damn sherrif never really explained why I couldn't bring pepper into Nottingham. Crossbows I get, weapon of war. But delicious spices? Why?

    That shit's for the king, not for you peasants.
    But Sherrif, I'm definitely bringing this directly to the king, and absolutely have no intentions of selling it for profit. What if I put 3 shiny doubloons on this here bag?
    But Sheriff Dynamite. I sell pepper in the community!
  • edited December 2016
    Damn, I'm a little disappointed that I missed that whole kerfuffle over "democracy".

    I'm also a little bit surprised that chaosof99 copped most of the external flak in that discussion, and thus I feel the need to call Steve on some of his bullshit. That said, first there's an important point of chaosof99's I'd like to refute before going on to Steve:
    chaosof99 said:

    The issue I have is that this spectrum doesn't exist. Neither in the U.S. nor elsewhere because republics are a subset of democracies.

    This, I think, is misleading. The Roman Republic was clearly a republic, but although it had some democratic elements I think it's quite a stretch to call it a democracy.

    Steve, however, was using the terms "democracy" and "republic" in a rather misleading way; I can hardly blame chaosof99 for being confused by this.
    HMTKSteve said:

    Democracy is a state where rights and sovereignty is collective. Minorities only have the rights that the majority has chosen to allow them to have. A simple majority is all that is needed to change anything.

    Republic is a state where rights and sovereignty are individual. Minorities have the same rights as the majority and they can not lose those rights by a simple majority.

    Steve, as far as I can tell what you're doing here is attempting to pin concepts to the terms as they were used in 18th century republican rhetoric, but this is quite far from the modern understanding of those terms.

    In the modern context, those ideas are more aligned with the political philosophies of "majoritarianism" and "republicanism" than they are with any particular forms of government. While these concepts may be associated with those of a "democracy" and of a "republic", the modern understanding puts some distance between these pairs of concepts.

    In the late 18th century "democracy" was strongly associated with classical Athenian democracy, and thus carried some strong negative connotations due to the failures of that system. The distinction between a "democracy" and a "republic" was used as an important tool in republican rhetoric at the time (most notably in The Federalist) to achieve a twofold purpose:
    1) To distance the proposed government of the US Constitution from those associations, thus assuaging existing fears about the dangers of democracy and defending the Constitution against anti-democratic sentiment.
    2) To assert an undemocratic Constitution as being a necessity in order to avoid these dangers of democracy, thus defending the Constitution against democratic sentiment.

    No reasonable modern understanding of the term "democracy" precludes the existence of individual rights; indeed it is usually held that individual rights are necessary for democracy. On a similar note, while individual rights are also necessary for a functional republic, they are not inherent to the core concept of a republic.

    Nor can I see a reasonable basis for your assertion that
    HMTKSteve said:

    a Republic has citizens that are individually sovereign while a Democracy has citizens that are collectively sovereign.

    Can you give a reliable source for this? I can see that you're referencing the concept of popular sovereignty, which is indeed part of the core conception of a republic, but your collective/individual distinction seems to be coming out of thin air. I'm not even sure that this distinction makes ideological sense; in either case the power of government derives from the will of the people, and the will of the people is necessarily composed of the will of each individual person. What does it even mean for everyone to be "individually sovereign", Steve?

    I think you're going wrong here by attempting to ascribe an ideological difference to "democracy" vs "republic" with regards to sovereignty, when in fact the concept of "democracy" is not associated with any particular ideological standpoint on the issue.

    At a core level, the notion of a "republic" has to do with the ideological derivation of power (i.e. that government power derives from popular sovereignty), whereas a "democracy" has to do with the actual mechanism by which power is exercised (e.g. free and fair elections).

    Thus, under a modern understanding we see democracy as being a necessary component of a republic because democracy is the only mechanism we currently know of under which the concept of popular sovereignty can reasonably be said to be upheld.
    Post edited by lackofcheese on
  • Well.
    ...
    Source: my ass.

    This post was very enjoyable.
  • edited December 2016
    Post edited by Hitman Hart on
  • I'm amazed he has responded to China calling him "An ignorant child". I suppose open war with China is one way to get manufacturing jobs back in the US.
  • Raithnor said:

    I'm amazed he has responded to China calling him "An ignorant child". I suppose open war with China is one way to get manufacturing jobs back in the US.

    Are you really amazed that be responded? That's basically a trait of being Trump.
  • canine224 said:

    Raithnor said:

    I'm amazed he has responded to China calling him "An ignorant child". I suppose open war with China is one way to get manufacturing jobs back in the US.

    Are you really amazed that be responded? That's basically a trait of being Trump.
    HASN'T responded. Typo, mine. Right now he's going off on Vanity Fair and the review of his Trump Grill.
  • Raithnor said:

    canine224 said:

    Raithnor said:

    I'm amazed he has responded to China calling him "An ignorant child". I suppose open war with China is one way to get manufacturing jobs back in the US.

    Are you really amazed that be responded? That's basically a trait of being Trump.
    HASN'T responded. Typo, mine. Right now he's going off on Vanity Fair and the review of his Trump Grill.
    My word, if Hitchens was still around to write for them.

  • Raithnor said:

    HASN'T responded. Typo, mine. Right now he's going off on Vanity Fair and the review of his Trump Grill.

    Ah, makes more sense. Cyber war, trade war and possibly literal war, I wonder how many types of war Trump can start with China.
  • One small but funny note about the electoral college votes - Ron Paul has officially done better this year, in an election he didn't run in, than in any election he previously ran in, taking home precisely one electoral college vote, despite not, at any point, actually being in the race.

    His son, Rand, who was in the race, got none.
  • So this is actually a legal humor blog but it's the only place I've found a decent summary of who voted for what and just how much of a kerfuffle this EC election has been. What with electors resigning and being replaced both shortly before and literally during votes.
  • The faithless electors seem to have acted in a strange way. Trump had the majority going in so any vote for Clinton was worthless. If the Democrats had got together and said "lets all go for Mitt Romney because he'd be better than Trump" the Republican majority may have switched, happy either way it'd be one of their boys and enabled a coup.

    Or have I misunderstood it? Is there some side benefit to receiving a vote?
  • There is no benefit. All it actually does is show the disunity and lack of discipline in the Democratic party.
  • To quote the West Wing, "if Democrats are so damn smart, why do they lose so goddamn much? "
  • Pretty sure that's the Newsroom, not the West Wing.
  • edited December 2016
    Same writer, Aaron Sorkin. Actual quote is "If Democrats are so fuckin' smart then, how come they lose all the god damn always?"
    Post edited by Naoza on
  • Dems are smart. Half the population is dumber than shit and I'm surprised they survive on a day to day basis.

    Also, Newt Gingrich is back. In an NPR interview this morning, he's been named "Senior Strategist" for Trump, called Obama a liar, insinuated that Trump was honest and "needed to stay honest", also commented that it's perfectly constitutional for the POTUS to insist someone do something unethical/illegal and then pardon them for it, even suggesting that Trump could do this repeatedly if he wanted to.

    FUCK HIM. What a miserable, slimey, shitbag.

    http://www.npr.org/2016/12/21/506378085/gingrich-says-trump-must-address-business-conflicts-soon-urges-monitors
  • Every thing you need to know about Gingrich's character can be summed up with how his first marriage ended. His first wife was dying of Cancer and he divorced her while she was still in the hospital, so he could marry a new trophy wife.
  • Raithnor said:

    Every thing you need to know about Gingrich's character can be summed up with how his first marriage ended. His first wife was dying of Cancer and he divorced her while she was still in the hospital, so he could marry a new trophy wife.
    There's a devil's advocate argument to be made here. But for once I just don't feel like representing him pro bono. There are plenty of excellent reasons to hate on Gingrich.
  • Presumably they're trying to avoid the mountain of litigation coming their way.
  • It was interesting going up to see my grandfather this weekend. He was a pretty big name at the Washington Post in the 70s, and had conversations with Kissinger and Nixon on multiple occasions. He says they weren't very long, but it's more than the rest of us. He said Nixon was a perfectly amicable person if you were talking to him. For all his crimes against humanity, he gave the individuals he spoke to some basic respect. My dad's similar claim to fame is that about ten years ago he interviewed Donald Trump, who he found to be the most obnoxious and arrogant piece of shit he'd ever spoken to. I fear the fate of a nation run by a man who cannot find the basic decency that even our most heinous President had.
  • There is a silver lining in your comparison between Trump and Nixon. Nixon was able to do tons of shady shit while being cordial and likable to your face, Trump does not have that power. When Trump does something shady it will not be hidden behind a false smile.
  • Presumably they're trying to avoid the mountain of litigation coming their way.

    The NY attorney general is not letting him get away with that shit:

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/27/trump-foundation-charity-spending-investigation
  • Raithnor said:

    Presumably they're trying to avoid the mountain of litigation coming their way.

    The NY attorney general is not letting him get away with that shit:

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/27/trump-foundation-charity-spending-investigation
    The right was outraged over unsubstantiated rumors that funds from the Clintons' charity may have enriched the Clintons personally. The same people couldn't care less when actual evidence shows that Trump's charity was actually used to pay for luxury items and settlements from Trump's misdeeds and unethical, illegal business practices? How entrenched in the dogma of the right are they? The hypocrisy of it makes me ill.
  • Nobody fucks with Eric Schneiderman.

    Not that this will actually change the mind of Trumpettes, of course. That is a much more fundamental issue.

    Democrats have to stop trying to "reach across the aisle." It's been clear for a while now, and very abundantly clear now, that there is no "reaching" this voting bloc.
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