US Politics Thread

[Moxie]

Name a smart Republican! Lucky I've ceased caring as the abortion issue has set women back 50 years! They did it to themselves so I'm gonna laugh in their faces when they wonder "what happened?" I'd tell 'em; "you dumb b!tch! You voted for Trump over one of your own!"

You've said this a few times about giving up on women and on feminism since "they" voted for Trump. Only 41% of all women did, which is actually low, in general, for the Republican take. 54% voted for Hillary, so you could still stand with us. Turn against all those 54% of guys that voted for Trump. (As a comparison, 44% of all women voted for George HW Bush, and 56% voted for Reagan. Those guys didn't do women any favors, either.) Come back to the fold.

 

[Moxie]

These are all good issues for Americans to be concerned about, but this “one issue” is a thing that largely the American left have exported to the rest of us in the west, and outside your country we now feel the ‘collective insanity’ the modern American left have given us, with regards to gender - and also race…

Well, (ahem,) this IS the US Politics thread.

 

[Moxie]

It’s only ‘a manufactured issue’ in the sense that the left have manufactured new far fetched ideas around gender, and forced them into schools, governments, health systems, and the media everywhere, to such an extent that there after people who believe them to be true.

In that sense I agree, it’s a manufactured issue. But so long as they’re abusing children and women, then we should hesitate to ignore it. And I know that because it came to us from the left, people on the left are willing to ignore this abuse…

Kieran, you know I love you like a brother, but this is an issue where I have said we'll have to agree to disagree.

 

[Kieran]

Well, (ahem,) this IS the US Politics thread.

Sometimes even topics find the cross the aisle.

Speaking of, I don’t know if this is the right forum but I have some sympathy for Don Lemon in the matter of him being fired. He made some stupid sexist comment about women being in their prime in their 20’s, 30’s and 40’s, which is not a defendable comment, and it’s one he tried to wheel back even as he made it. Was it a sackable offense? For me, it certainly wouldn’t be. Aren’t we allowed to make a mistake now and then?

 

[Kieran]

Kieran, you know I love you like a brother, but this is an issue where I have said we'll have to agree to disagree.

Always we can agree to disagree but you were replying to a comment that was a reply to mine and so a reply of mine to yours was in order…

 

[Moxie]

These are all good issues for Americans to be concerned about, but this “one issue” is a thing that largely the American left have exported to the rest of us in the west, and outside your country we now feel the ‘collective insanity’ the modern American left have given us, with regards to gender - and also race…

That us reply was quick and just to be funny. But I don't mean to say you can't bring what the US exports in it's politics to the wider world here, and it's also interesting. While I don't agree that you can blame the US, and specifically the American Left (such as it is) for how things work in other countries, it's certainly worth discussion.

 

[Moxie]

Sometimes even topics find the cross the aisle.

Speaking of, I don’t know if this is the right forum but I have some sympathy for Don Lemon in the matter of him being fired. He made some stupid sexist comment about women being in their prime in their 20’s, 30’s and 40’s, which is not a defendable comment, and it’s one he tried to wheel back even as he made it. Was it a sackable offense? For me, it certainly wouldn’t be. Aren’t we allowed to make a mistake now and then?

Oh, see, I already addressed your first comment. I was just funning.

I do rather agree with you about Don Lemon, and not because he's a Black guy on a more liberal (I would say pretty centrist) media outlet. I think a lot of people thought he'd be able to work past that. I don't watch a lot of CNN, so I don't know much about him, but he made some comments that required rethinking. (Rather "sexist" and "ageist", is my understanding.) As you say, mistakes. He didn't stick his hand up anyone's dress, I don't think. And he didn't present one face to the World of Fox, while laughing and admitting to lying behind the scenes, as Tucker Carlson did. He (helped) cost his network $787M...and, on top of it, I suspect, they likely think his brand will be tarnished by the revelations.

 

[tented]

Sometimes even topics find the cross the aisle.

Speaking of, I don’t know if this is the right forum but I have some sympathy for Don Lemon in the matter of him being fired. He made some stupid sexist comment about women being in their prime in their 20’s, 30’s and 40’s, which is not a defendable comment, and it’s one he tried to wheel back even as he made it. Was it a sackable offense? For me, it certainly wouldn’t be. Aren’t we allowed to make a mistake now and then?

I haven’t paid attention to the firings today, but if Lemon was fired for those comments, which he admitted were wrong, then I think it was wrong to fire him. Yes, we should be allowed to make mistakes. (Now, Russia invading Ukraine was not a mistake; they should not be forgiven. Mistake isn’t a catch all for everything, of course.)

 

[tented]

Oh, see, I already addressed your first comment. I was just funning.

I do rather agree with you about Don Lemon, and not because he's a Black guy on a more liberal (I would say pretty centrist) media outlet. I think a lot of people thought he'd be able to work past that. I don't watch a lot of CNN, so I don't know much about him, but he made some comments that required rethinking. (Rather "sexist" and "ageist", is my understanding.) As you say, mistakes. He didn't stick his hand up anyone's dress, I don't think. And he didn't present one face to the World of Fox, while laughing and admitting to lying behind the scenes, as Tucker Carlson did. He (helped) cost his network $787M...and, on top of it, I suspect, they likely think his brand will be tarnished by the revelations.

As I mentioned, I haven’t followed the firings yet today, so do you know why Carlson was fired?

 

[Kieran]

That us reply was quick and just to be funny. But I don't mean to say you can't bring what the US exports in it's politics to the wider world here, and it's also interesting. While I don't agree that you can blame the US, and specifically the American Left (such as it is) for how things work in other countries, it's certainly worth discussion.

I agree with you there, that Americans aren’t to blame for how others react to their best or worst ideas. We’ve taken your denim, your Elvis, your Marilyn Monroe, but what comes out of America isn’t always good - just the same for every country.

But the influence of America is huge, its reach is huge, and often is unfortunately imitated in other countries, and often in the exact same divisive terms that Americans have for describing their political opposites. This is a discussion I regularly have over here with family and friends, that we’re have to remember that our history and Americas is different. Our circumstances are different. But such is the seduction of American politics, perhaps because it’s more rowdy and presented in glamorous ways on TV, there are people here who get fired up about it.

I only get fired up when your bad ideas have a bad effect on our society. The rest of your politics is your own business…

 

[Moxie]

Always we can agree to disagree but you were replying to a comment that was a reply to mine and so a reply of mine to yours was in order…

I understand, but if I address those points with you, it will go around like on the PC Thread, which I have abdicated from, and I don't want to turn this thread into another round-and-round on trans issues, if I can help it. You were within your rights to respond. I was going to ignore it, but I think too much of you.

 

[Moxie]

As I mentioned, I haven’t followed the firings yet today, so do you know why Carlson was fired?

It's all rumors right now. Fox said, "mutual parting of the ways," which seems to be not true. Carlson signed off on Friday, saying, basically, "See you on Monday." According to sources, he found out this morning. His producer got fired, too. Every one is guessing, and you have mine, above.

 

[Fiero425]

Sometimes even topics find the cross the aisle.

Speaking of, I don’t know if this is the right forum but I have some sympathy for Don Lemon in the matter of him being fired. He made some stupid sexist comment about women being in their prime in their 20’s, 30’s and 40’s, which is not a defendable comment, and it’s one he tried to wheel back even as he made it. Was it a sackable offense? For me, it certainly wouldn’t be. Aren’t we allowed to make a mistake now and then?

Don't be sorry for Lemon! His head got too big! He's been a problem for the last couple years; truly feeling himself that he can get away w/ murder! He's finding out that he can't! They already took him off the evening, prime time CNN telecast giving him a break by allowing him to perform in the morning! He wasn't appreciative, so he was finally fired! It was inevitable if you've heard half the stuff he's perpetrated on men and women alike; on the show and people just in his orbit!

 

[Moxie]

I agree with you there, that Americans aren’t to blame for how others react to their best or worst ideas. We’ve taken your denim, your Elvis, your Marilyn Monroe, but what comes out of America isn’t always good - just the same for every country.

But the influence of America is huge, its reach is huge, and often is unfortunately imitated in other countries, and often in the exact same divisive terms that Americans have for describing their political opposites. This is a discussion I regularly have over here with family and friends, that we’re have to remember that our history and Americas is different. Our circumstances are different. But such is the seduction of American politics, perhaps because it’s more rowdy and presented in glamorous ways on TV, there are people here who get fired up about it.

I only get fired up when your bad ideas have a bad effect on our society. The rest of your politics is your own business…

I know we're big and fat, we take up too much room in many ways, and we can be like your bad-influence older cousin who teaches you to smoke and drink.

The US has been much more racially mixed than most of Europe for a long time. We've had a lot of problems, just to understate it. We've also had some experience with how to deal with them, and we have definitely grown. Most of Europe has come to integration later, and some of Europe learned a little bit about not using racially-charged language from us. (When I first moved to Europe, I was frankly shocked by some of the racist phrases tossed around. Not just in Spanish, but in England, too. Even what I know of French. I'm mean, how long did the English still say "coloured?") So Europe had to start to deal with something we'd been dealing with for a much longer time, and they looked to us. I think a lot of good things came out of that.

I guess my point is, you've taken some lessons over there, from our experience on being much more multicultural. What you do with them, and how you deal with them is your business. They do get filtered through your own cultural experience, and you can vote on them or debate them as you will. If you don't like the current version that's being exported, you can only blame us so much. You're still sovereign societies.

 

[Jelenafan]

I don’t know in the long term if any issue will affect women more than their complete and total erasure as a gender…

OK, transgender violence/rape against women should never be condoned or tolerated and safeguards should be put in place. Separate prisons/shelters sounds reasonable to me.

However the fact remains that donestic violence/sexual assault/rape committed against women is perpetrated by non transgender men, what percentage? 90? 95 ? I would venture to say probably closer to 99% of these violent crimes are by biological men. If you even implied to the majority of these men that they were gay, effeminate, or back in the dAy, transexual, watchout you would get decked.

I used to serve on the Board of a nonprofit that was involved in helping battered & abused women. The perpetrators cut across all spectrums, upper middle class, blue collar, middle class, etc. In my anecdotal experience the men professed to “real men”.

So a pertinent question: what are governments regardless of where they stand on the political scale doing to protect women from this violence. Many times the men can conmit acts of violence almost with impunity and there are nearly not enough safeguards for these crimes, again, committed by 99% of the male populace. Otherwise all this handwringing about protecting women from erasure is just lip service.

 

[Kieran]

OK, transgender violence/rape against women should never be condoned or tolerated and safeguards should be put in place. Separate prisons/shelters sounds reasonable to me.

However the fact remains that donestic violence/sexual assault/rape committed against women is perpetrated by non transgender men, what percentage? 90? 95 ? I would venture to say probably closer to 99% of these violent crimes are by biological men. If you even implied to the majority of these men that they were gay, effeminate, or back in the dAy, transexual, watchout you would get decked.

I used to serve on the Board of a nonprofit that was involved in helping battered & abused women. The perpetrators cut across all spectrums, upper middle class, blue collar, middle class, etc. In my anecdotal experience the men professed to “real men”.

So a pertinent question: what are governments regardless of where they stand on the political scale doing to protect women from this violence. Many times the men can conmit acts of violence almost with impunity and there are nearly not enough safeguards for these crimes, again, committed by 99% of the male populace. Otherwise all this handwringing about protecting women from erasure is just lip service.

Violence against women is bad. And yes, it’s largely by men. I don’t know the answer to your question. Men are more violent than women. And I agree, men should not be in women’s prisons, just as they should not be in women’s sports.

None of this is what I mean by the erasure of women. It’s very bad that men beat up women at a feminist march and the left shrugged because these men say they’re women - and this is closer to what I mean by the erasure of women, though it’s only part of it. I’m talking about the way the word ‘woman’ has essentially become a meaningless shorthand description but essentially has no meaning anymore that can be agreed upon to distinguish it from opinions about it means. You ask your local senator what a woman is and it’s guaranteed that if your local senator is Democrat, they’ll be as likely to tell you that a man is also a woman if he wants to be. They will lie to you, and you will be encouraged to believe the lie. Go far enough and you’ll be harassed into repeating lies.

People might use terms to avoid saying what a woman is. To distinguish them from men they’ll use terms like ‘bleeders’, or ‘birthing parent,’ or ‘people with cervixes.’ There’s almost enough of these terms to fill a dictionary in order for us to avoid saying what we always knew, which is that a woman is an adult human biological female.

You probably didn’t follow the discussion of this in the serious pc thread - and I agree that that’s its natural home for discussion, but it spills over because it’s also political. This came up here in answer to fiero saying about women voting Republican. The trans thing is a political hot potato and it’s brought to you by the party that likes to portray itself as the compassionate one…

 

[Federberg]

I feel like all us guys are mansplaining... ; )

in the US polling shows consistently that 60-61% of the American public prefers abortion access legal on some level and that number goes up overall with women, like 63-64 % That's pretty much been the numbers for the last few decades...

So I dunno, guessing that for women something that impacts their lives is the abortion issue, much more than stuff like transgender issues. But again, it's us men discussing what's important to women...

lol! How did that move to the abortion debate? Did I miss a part of the thread? So wait... men aren't allowed to discuss abortion? Seems to me it takes two to tango. While the idea of banning abortions seems wrong to me, and against personal freedom, I think that too often we allow the debate to be framed as just that... a freedom issue. Let me be clear, if I had to describe my view, I would say that I don't want to oppose the pro-choice side. But at the same time, consider these two facts:

• most abortions, are done by women who have multiple abortions. Someone recently was telling me about one under 30yr old, who has had 7. 7! That can't be right. Don't tell me it's just a freedom issue
• the population of African Americans in the US is in the 40 - 45m range. Since 1970, black women have aborted 30m foetuses. That can't be right. Don't tell me it's just a freedom issue

Any liberal who tries to ignore or avoid confronting things like that by saying that it's just up to the individual is sticking their head in the sand. I won't claim to have a solution, but it has to be confronted.... as a society. Oh and by the way.. it's funny how individual rights are given primacy in this situation but liberals will oppose such in other places...

 

[Federberg]

Violence against women is bad. And yes, it’s largely by men. I don’t know the answer to your question. Men are more violent than women. And I agree, men should not be in women’s prisons, just as they should not be in women’s sports.

None of this is what I mean by the erasure of women. It’s very bad that men beat up women at a feminist march and the left shrugged because these men say they’re women - and this is closer to what I mean by the erasure of women, though it’s only part of it. I’m talking about the way the word ‘woman’ has essentially become a meaningless shorthand description but essentially has no meaning anymore that can be agreed upon to distinguish it from opinions about it means. You ask your local senator what a woman is and it’s guaranteed that if your local senator is Democrat, they’ll be as likely to tell you that a man is also a woman if he wants to be. They will lie to you, and you will be encouraged to believe the lie. Go far enough and you’ll be harassed into repeating lies.

People might use terms to avoid saying what a woman is. To distinguish them from men they’ll use terms like ‘bleeders’, or ‘birthing parent,’ or ‘people with cervixes.’ There’s almost enough of these terms to fill a dictionary in order for us to avoid saying what we always knew, which is that a woman is an adult human biological female.

You probably didn’t follow the discussion of this in the serious pc thread - and I agree that that’s its natural home for discussion, but it spills over because it’s also political. This came up here in answer to fiero saying about women voting Republican. The trans thing is a political hot potato and it’s brought to you by the party that likes to portray itself as the compassionate one…

I watched a documentary about the woman who set up the first sanctuary for women who suffer spousal violence. I was amazed to find that the data on spousal violence is much more nuanced than the MSM would have us believe. Did you know that

• women are almost as likely (I believe the differential is less than 5%) to be violent to their partners as men?
• that spousal violence in lesbian relationships is as common as in heterosexual relationships? And it's the fastest growing component of intimate partner violence?
• that more than half of the women who claim to have suffered violence from their partners, not only dished out the violence themselves, but initiated it?

Ask yourself why this information is not commonly known... Hang tough brother and don't concede to quickly on these things. Women like @Moxie and lady-men like @Jelenafan will have their dialectical way with you otherwise...

 

[Kieran]

I watched a documentary about the woman who set up the first sanctuary for women who suffer spousal violence. I was amazed to find that the data on spousal violence is much more nuanced than the MSM would have us believe. Did you know that

• women are almost as likely (I believe the differential is less than 5%) to be violent to their partners as men?
• that spousal violence in lesbian relationships is as common as in heterosexual relationships? And it's the fastest growing component of intimate partner violence?
• that more than half of the women who claim to have suffered violence from their partners, not only dished out the violence themselves, but initiated it?

Ask yourself why this information is not commonly known... Hang tough brother and don't concede to quickly on these things. Women like @Moxie and lady-men like @Jelenafan will have their dialectical way with you otherwise...

That’s shocking, but not really surprising that women can be violent creatures too. I didn’t examine too closely the stats Jelenafan cited - and I wouldn’t hold him to them because they’re most likely what we all do, which is give an inexact ballpark figure that tells the bigger truth - but if roughly 1% of violence against women is by trans men, then this is a massive figure, given that trans men would make up far far less than 1% of men…

 

[Jelenafan]

lol! How did that move to the abortion debate? Did I miss a part of the thread? So wait... men aren't allowed to discuss abortion? Seems to me it takes two to tango. While the idea of banning abortions seems wrong to me, and against personal freedom, I think that too often we allow the debate to be framed as just that... a freedom issue. Let me be clear, if I had to describe my view, I would say that I don't want to oppose the pro-choice side. But at the same time, consider these two facts:

• most abortions, are done by women who have multiple abortions. Someone recently was telling me about one under 30yr old, who has had 7. 7! That can't be right. Don't tell me it's just a freedom issue
• the population of African Americans in the US is in the 40 - 45m range. Since 1970, black women have aborted 30m foetuses. That can't be right. Don't tell me it's just a freedom issue

Any liberal who tries to ignore or avoid confronting things like that by saying that it's just up to the individual is sticking their head in the sand. I won't claim to have a solution, but it has to be confronted.... as a society. Oh and by the way.. it's funny how individual rights are given primacy in this situation but liberals will oppose such in other places...qQ

I just said this is an issue that has resonance with alot of women. Why are you always framing things as “liberal” or “conservative” ? If there is an issue to which there is alot of ambivalence it’s that one, on both sides. My point was that the transgender issue is not the only hot potato issue impacting women.