The Republican Utopia

[BigRedBuster]

5 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

That's why I said "assuming".  You're discussions here made me think you did.

So, you realize there's so much crap that comes with him that you didn't vote for him.....but people who point that out are freaking psychopaths?

[ActualCornHusker]

5 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

That's why I said "assuming".  You're discussions here made me think you did.

 

Isn't it interesting that the mere assertion that orange man wasn't in fact the devil incarnate invokes a never-trump psychotic rage that people lose their ability to use logic and reason at all? I don't believe in "voting for the lesser of 2 evils." That's such a god-awful way of selecting a person to run the country.

2 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

So, you realize there's so much crap that comes with him that you didn't vote for him.....but people who point that out are freaking psychopaths?

 

Not what I said at all, but you do you.

[BigRedBuster]

3 minutes ago, ActualCornHusker said:

 

Isn't it interesting that the mere assertion that orange man wasn't in fact the devil incarnate invokes a never-trump psychotic rage that people lose their ability to use logic and reason at all? I don't believe in "voting for the lesser of 2 evils." That's such a god-awful way of selecting a person to run the country.

 

Not what I said at all, but you do you.

Maybe you should point out the "freaking psychopath" you're talking about.  Careful...personal attacks are against board rules.

 

Your comments are confusing.

[ActualCornHusker]

8 minutes ago, Enhance said:

As a person who also considers themselves detached from either party, I think the only real difference between Republicans and Democrats (as far as statism is concerned) is that Democrats just tend to be more honest about it. Republicans will lurk behind the notion of rugged individualism until being statist benefits their agenda.

 

Ultimately, though, I do agree with you. I think the two party systems need to disappear. Too many people let the parties define their politics rather than their politics define their party. Humans barely agree on anything and yet we're supposed to believe these two parties represent the two largest philosophical segmentations of our country? It's nonsense.

 

I think your 1st paragraph pretty much nails why both parties are complete and total a$$.

 

I also agree completely with your 2nd paragraph, but that begs the question: do you feel that the populace at-large, or the people who get elected, are both informed enough to form policy positions on major issues, or intelligent enough to understand the consequences of those decisions (both intended and unintended)?

[ActualCornHusker]

1 minute ago, BigRedBuster said:

Maybe you should point out the "freaking psychopath" you're talking about.  Careful...personal attacks are against board rules.

 

Your comments are confusing.

 

I don't believe I said the word psychopath nor called anyone that - I referred to the psychosis / psychotic rage that possesses never-trumpers - a psychosis that I don't see as a wide-spread problem within Trump loyalists, or at least nowhere near as pervasive.

[BigRedBuster]

2 hours ago, ActualCornHusker said:

 

If Orange man made you vote for Democrats, then yes. You left principle behind.

 

I'd personally prefer Trump to exit the public arena and never come back, but I at least have the ability to look objectively at him, give him credit for policy issues that I agree with him on, and criticize his policy and personal baggage without sounding like a freaking psychopath.

Pardon me....who is "sounding" like a freaking psychopath?

[ActualCornHusker]

2 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

Pardon me....who is "sounding" like a freaking psychopath?

 

Are you showing an example that I didn't call anyone a name? And even if I had, are you really going to just reply with crocodile tears about it? You're literally not arguing with anyone or making any points - you've devolved into an argument on semantics, and I'm not interested. 

[Enhance]

Just now, ActualCornHusker said:

I think your 1st paragraph pretty much nails why both parties are complete and total a$$.

 

I also agree completely with your 2nd paragraph, but that begs the question: do you feel that the populace at-large, or the people who get elected, are both informed enough to form policy positions on major issues, or intelligent enough to understand the consequences of those decisions (both intended and unintended)?

That's a great question, but I'm not sure if I have a definitive answer. So I'd be interested in your thoughts as well.

 

I think the average voter and elected officials have the tools to be informed about policies and their impact, but do they use those tools to their advantage? Ehh... that's tough to say. I think back to some of those infamous Congressional hearings regarding Facebook and Google a few years ago. We had elected officials fundamentally misunderstanding even the simplest web analytics concepts despite multiple explanations, and yet they were going to be the ones responsible for determining policy that might impact it? And web analytics is one of my areas of expertise... so it had me thinking... if these people can't even understand the basics of something like that, how in the hell are they going to understand any number of other issues? It was one of the first personal examples of a time where I felt our elected officials had no freaking clue what they were talking about and it was unnerving.

 

Ultimately, though, I tend to have faith in people as a whole. I think we have a lot of capable voters and elected officials. I just think we also have too many people that get caught up in binarism and partisanship... powerful people. And it makes it incredibly difficult to get the honest work done.

 

I have no idea if that was answer .

[BigRedBuster]

2 minutes ago, ActualCornHusker said:

 

Are you showing an example that I didn't call anyone a name? And even if I had, are you really going to just reply with crocodile tears about it? You're literally not arguing with anyone or making any points - you've devolved into an argument on semantics, and I'm not interested. 

People on this board have pointed out what a horrible person Trump is.  You come on here claiming that some people sound like psychopaths.  Now, you're back tracking on the comments because you don't want to discuss it any more.

I'm fine with getting back to discussing what a piece of crap Trump is.  Deal.  As long as he's the leader of a major party, is leading for the presidential nomination and is holding rallies all over the country, it's a valid point of discussion.

 

[Archy1221]

4 hours ago, ActualCornHusker said:

 

Case in point.

Yep

[Archy1221]

2 hours ago, Lorewarn said:

 

I guess everyone's barometer is different for how much fraud, cheating, lying, sexual assault allegations and boasts, racist behavior, fear-mongering, Christian larping make-believe, narcissism and incompetence they're willing to look past

But you all still support Joe

[BigRedBuster]

3 minutes ago, Archy1221 said:

But you all still support Joe

Let me know when Joe incites an insurrection against our government and spends the rest of his time since holding rallies around the country trying to convince everyone of a lie that is tearing apart our political system....then we can talk about that.

[ActualCornHusker]

1 minute ago, Enhance said:

That's a great question, but I'm not sure if I have a definitive answer. So I'd be interested in your thoughts as well.

 

I think the average voter and elected officials have the tools to be informed about policies and their impact, but do they use those tools to their advantage? Ehh... that's tough to say. I think back to some of those infamous Congressional hearings regarding Facebook and Google a few years ago. We had elected officials fundamentally misunderstanding even the simplest web analytics concepts despite multiple explanations, and yet they were going to be the ones responsible for determining policy that might impact it? And web analytics is one of my areas of expertise... so it had me thinking... if these people can't even understand the basics of something like that, how in the hell are they going to understand any number of other issues? It was one of the first personal examples of a time where I felt our elected officials had no freaking clue what they were talking about and it was unnerving.

 

Ultimately, though, I tend to have faith in people as a whole. I think we have a lot of capable voters and elected officials. I just think we also have too many people that get caught up in binarism and partisanship... powerful people. And it makes it incredibly difficult to get the honest work done.

 

I have no idea if that was answer .

 

Yeah I think that's a good example. I also think there are countless examples I could point to where the "unintended consequences" of policy (I use quotations because you could argue in many cases that the politicians are getting the EXACT outcome they wanted or hoped for) completely outweighed any problem that it was trying to solve.

 

*The best example is the prohibition of marjuana and many of the sentencing laws around other drugs. Do I wish that no one would ever do drugs? Yes. But when the consequence of that policy is that tons of innocent people (which consists heavily of black and brown populations) end up serving long jail sentences when they've not harmed anyone else, that's a horrendous failure in policy.

 

*TARP & Covid relief - We were told in each of these instances that the world economy was going to collapse if nothing was done, and so we HAD to print trillions of dollars to bail out the banks, airlines, performing arts centers, etc. Then what happened with the money? A HUGE portion of it was used to facilitate corruption and fraud.

 

Those are just a couple off the top of my head, but you could go back and find countless examples of government setting out to solve a problem but making it worse and wasting billions or trillions of dollars. And do the politicians or bureaucrats ever get hit with the impact of those failures? No, the average American citizen does, and still somehow tens of millions of people become convinced that we should give MORE money to the most corrupt, wasteful, abusive organization in the world because that's somehow virtuous.

 

So TLDR version is: Government is inherently evil, and the types of people who seek positions of power within the government are almost always the types people you'd LEAST want to have that power. So no, I don't think that politicians, voters, bureaucrats, or the people at the top levels of any agency within government have the mental ability to make major policy decisions that benefit the populace without HORRENDOUS consequences.

[ActualCornHusker]

7 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

Let me know when Joe incites an insurrection against our government and spends the rest of his time since holding rallies around the country trying to convince everyone of a lie that is tearing apart our political system....then we can talk about that.

 

Since you're so concerned about personal scandal in politicians, here's a fun one for you. Our depends-wearing president's daughter has excerpts in her diary saying that her father took showers with her that "were probably inappropriate" and that she admits to being sexually abused as a child. You should check that out.

[Enhance]

15 minutes ago, ActualCornHusker said:

So TLDR version is: Government is inherently evil, and the types of people who seek positions of power within the government are almost always the types people you'd LEAST want to have that power. So no, I don't think that politicians, voters, bureaucrats, or the people at the top levels of any agency within government have the mental ability to make major policy decisions that benefit the populace without HORRENDOUS consequences.

Good post overall - this part right here reminded me of a leadership concept I very much buy into.

 

Basically it's the idea that the best leaders often come from those who don't seek out leadership, but are more or less called to it. People that assume a leadership role not out of desire but necessity. Steve Jobs hits on it (perhaps a bit indirectly, but still along the same vein) in this video. Early on in Apple's development, he said they hired a bunch of professional "managers" to run Apple and it failed. They knew how to manage but they didn't know how to do anything. I feel like that's a bit relatable to our political landscape. We have a lot of people who know how to be politicians, but it also feels like they don't know how to do anything. Or, simply can't get it done because of binarism and partisanship.

 

The trouble is that I don't know how you inject this methodology it to our country's politics. I personally believe most of our elected officials are doing it out of desire and not necessity.