Originally Posted by Raver
Yes, orange man bad.
Yes, orange man bad.
“We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.” Randy Pausch
Ne-IEE
6w7 sp/sx
6w7-9w1-4w5
Trump = SEE
Elizabeth Warren = LII.
Conflictors.
Trump subreddit got quarantined. The coming shitshow ought to be entertaining.
Regarding censorship, you might wonder how Nazi Germany went from the nearly bankrupt country full of racist and exterminating Nazis to the economic powerhouse it is today. What happened to all of those Nazis and their ideas?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRmHOSnehTk
https://archive.org/details/youtube-J-P2iBJWOTk
It was done by censoring the worst elements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censor...lic_of_Germany
Last edited by Adam Strange; 06-27-2019 at 02:36 AM.
Also by pumping a shit-ton of American money into the country.
I would have thought so, too, but wikipedia said this:
After World War II, according to the Potsdam conference held between July 17 and August 2, 1945, Germany was to pay the Allies US$23 billion mainly in machinery and manufacturing plants. Reparations to the Soviet Union stopped in 1953. Large numbers of factories were dismantled or destroyed.[citation needed] Dismantling in the west stopped in 1950.
Beginning before the German surrender and continuing for the next two years, the United States pursued a vigorous program of harvesting all technological and scientific know-how as well as all patents and many leading scientists in Germany (known as Operation Paperclip). Historian John Gimbel, in his book Science Technology and Reparations: Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany, states that the "intellectual reparations" taken by the U.S. and the UK amounted to close to $10 billion.[8] German reparations were partly to be in the form of forced labor. By 1947, approximately 4,000,000 German POWs and civilians were used as forced labor (under various headings, such as "reparations labor" or "enforced labor") in the Soviet Union, France, the UK, Belgium and in Germany in U.S run "Military Labor Service Units".
But apparently, much of Germany's foreign debt was effectively cancelled in 1953.
https://jubileedebt.org.uk/report/eu...anys-debt-1953
That’s interesting. Some thoughts:
The Wikipedia article on the Marshall Plan said US grants and loans to Germany totalled around 1.4 billion, and that its debt was reduced to under 1 billion in 1953. Forced labor aside, it seems that Germany did receive a fair anount of money from this deal, considering the terms mentioned in the article you linked: In the 1953 conference, it was decided Germany would only repay its debts while it had a trade surplus, avoiding the need for austerity or to stop re-building the country in order to pay.
About the forced labor, where did the convicts operate? In Germany or outside it? If in Germany, they may have been forced into economically productive labor. I’ll try to read more about this. My Internet is not the best at the moment.
I mean yeah, actively cracking down and throwing people in prison within minimal restraint tends to hinder the people and ideas you are targeting. I'm not quite convinced banning things on social media is as effective, especially in America where we have the first amendment which a lot people religiously defend.
You don't understand people very well, do you?
Most aren't that ideologically motivated in the 1st place and will pragmatically conform (at least publicly) to whatever appears to be strong horse so they can get on with their lives. Well-established that the vast majority of Nazi party members (millions) were in it for career advancement—little different from how one might donate to Democrats or Republicans to advance within certain social circles.
Whereas those who are ideologically motivated also tend to be the most tractable:
^^A lot of people, maybe most, love a strongman, unfortunately. I don't think ideology holds that much importance for these people, so much as the thirst for a strongman autocrat to inspire them. So such shifts aren't too surprising. It's why some people so easily 180'ed from Bernie to Trump in 2016.
@The Perpetual Now, you are so right.
Most of the times when you see what seem to be ideological shifts in people from one political extreme to the other, what you are really seeing are the actions of a person who is an Authoritarian.
https://theauthoritarians.org/Downlo...oritarians.pdf
Personally, I feel that Authoritarians are a greater impediment to finding solutions to group survival than being either conservative or liberal, but that's just my opinion.
I agree.
The problem is that people who tend toward libertarianism (I'm using the term very broadly here, to encompass not just the narrow idea of American libertarianism, but also European libertarianism, Libertarian Socialism, etc.) will, by the very nature of their anti-authoritarian worldviews, always have a harder time fighting back against authoritarianism. If they rally behind their own strongman personality to combat the authoritarian strongman, then they've already lost and given in to exactly what they sought to defeat.
Yes, not becoming what you are fighting against is a problem. Especially if your opponent's tactics are effective. You basically need a lot of strength in depth.
American politics will increasingly resemble a LatAm country. A corrupt neoliberal kleptocracy punctuated by occasional center-right 'strongmen' promising (but failing) to deliver on reform.
I don't get the ban on transgender people in the military. The "it's ma'am" lady is someone who could be a valuable asset on the front lines. Imagine an enemy combatant yells "sir" at her, next thing you know this lady, in her blind rage, has charged in and cleared an entire village or cave of enemy combatants. Imagine entire platoons of "it's ma'am" soldiers. Our foreign wars will be won in no time.
Trump and his cabinet are such obnoxious morons for pressing Iranian sanctions that Europeans have created their own trade channels -- INSTEX bypasses the American controlled SWIFT and allows companies to make transactions with Iran.
I just hope for a future where this is expanded to cover other countries under American sanctions like Cuba.
https://www.dw.com/en/eu-mechanism-f...nal/a-49407662
Last edited by xerx; 06-30-2019 at 08:50 PM.
I'm ready to see the American machine react to this.
I know people love to hate on Trump these days, but stepping foot into North Korea for nuclear talks with Kim Jong Un is a good thing for a safer world:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-s...et-11561862697
“We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.” Randy Pausch
Ne-IEE
6w7 sp/sx
6w7-9w1-4w5
Nobody cares. They wanted him to deliver on real quality of life increases and a border wall.
Fair enough, he hasn't delivered yet on his campaign promises. Will he after another 4 years if he gets re-elected? Doubtful.
“We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.” Randy Pausch
Ne-IEE
6w7 sp/sx
6w7-9w1-4w5
He can't. Doesn't matter who the president is if the state-financial apparatus doesn't like their domestic agenda.
He has more latitude with forpol. At least until defense contractors puppet congresscritters to cry "reckless isolationism" whenever serious questions get raised about why exactly we're deployed in 150+ countries.
For the same reason he opposed the Iran deal; it's because Obama liked it -- Obama was however an establishment tool and I don't feel too badly that his legacy is being diminished. Overall, it's not entirely a bad thing that American foreign policy gets a setback as a result of Trump's petty vindictiveness.
Stuttering Pelosi is too late to stop the identity politic cesspool (aka democratic party).
Time to ramp up deportations.Speaker Pelosi says @AOC, @IlhanMN, @AyannaPressley and @RashidaTlaib “have their public whatever and their Twitter world. But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.”
Ultimately, not much has changed since Trump's been elected. Non-whites from countries all over the world are still flooding into the country at increasingly fast rates and we should be minority white in 25 years max. No matter how much Trump barks about "monitoring the situation" or gloats about the economy on Twitter the truth is that demographics are destiny. Texas will go the way of California soon and vote Democrat along with Florida and Arizona and the GOP will be killed within 5 years max because Trump has bowed down to the will of the corporate oligarchy and Israel and refuses to care about white Americans who made up the vast majority of his voting base. Expect whites to break anti-white conditioning over the next 10 years by shear force of experience.
The System will not allow itself to be diverted from its goals by its own members.
Last edited by Cheebs; 07-09-2019 at 09:11 AM.
human flesh tastes like pork
Whites (non-Hispanic, non-MENA) are already <50% of the country because illegals are systematically undercounted (there's at least 40 million).
I'll respect whoever drains the swamp. The swamp isn't DC. New political mosquitos aren't bred in DC, only poor people who blast go-go music out shop windows and generally don't bother anyone who doesn't live there are bred in Washington, DC. Political mosquitos are bred in Harvard and Yale and MIT and Berkeley and Columbia and Rochester and the University of Oklahoma and Texas Tech. If you want to drain the swamp, buy a college. Tell Elon Musk to buy a college and let us go to Mars and do idealistic things again. Tell Hollywood to buy a college so they can have English and arts people help them make things besides superhero movies that are dumb and everyone gets tired of. Capitalism is good. American education is socialism in practice and it's a disaster for everyone and everything. Of course they're cultural Marxists. They're actual Marxists too but they realized that's not working out for them already. #DrainTheSwamp
Perhaps instead of being part of a big communist conspiracy to infiltrate American education, maybe these university professors you talk about are socialist because they have actually study history and economics in detail and have naturally came to the conclusion that socialism is a necessary step forward from capitalism? Which one seems like a more likely and reasonable explanation to you?
It's not a communist conspiracy. It's just the case that people adapt to their environment, the same as what you see with plants and animals in nature. If the government runs everything, people, who usually aren't university professors but rather adjuncts, students, and bureaucrats, pick up bizarre philosophies that support the government running everything. I'm not talking having a social safety net or even traditional Marxism. Actual professors tend to have fewer bizarre philosophies because they're educated. Most university faculty aren't professors and most university employees aren't faculty so none of my complaints are directed at professors as a group. I haven't known any individual tenure-track professors to push any sort of philosophy or politics on their students that isn't part of the course actually.
While it's a fact that during the cold war, a certain number of university professors were part of a pro-Stalin fifth column, I'm pretty sure you would agree that we shouldn't conflate revolutionary socialists with American liberals. What you are describing (socialism being the final end of capitalism) is essentially Marxist doctrine and I don't think American university professors, who for the most part are American liberals, believe in the socialism you describe. They simply want redistribution of wealth. I think most intellectuals nowadays understand, as Marx did, that it is capitalists who create wealth. But they aeren't really calling for full socialism, just redistrubtion of wealth, though just how much wealth should be redistributed depends on who you talk to.
I think the real reason many intellectuals (many of whom teach at the university level) tend to have liberal views is because liberalism has an anti-establishment streak to it, it questions the status quo (or supposed status quo) of western society. (capitalism, traditional institutions etc) They prefer to challenge existing norms, or they wouldn't be very good intellectuals. The irony of this is that when everyone adopts the same ideology, in this case liberalism, it creates its own status quo and stasis which demands questioning.
Last edited by Ave; 07-22-2019 at 03:48 PM.
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Liberalism/capitalism had it's place in bringing us out of feudalism and was appropriate back then. Now we live in the of mega-corporations and an ever on-going propaganda war. Liberalism today is fading away to socialism and subsequent reactionary ideologies because it lacks to muscle to deal with class struggle and other urgent issues. Social mobility in America is practically gone none thanks to a half century of corporate influence in politics and we are basically living in a disguised form of feudalism. The only reason there has been peace at all in America for the last half century was because of the New Deal, which was not a policy spearheaded by liberals (and definitely not laissez-faire capitalist) but by communist, socialist, and union members. Since then elites have been getting their way time and time again thanks to their wealth and influence over politics.
We at the point now where even Social Democrats like most in those in the Democrat party are being demonized as being full-blown communist by the right. I don't think a compromise like the New Deal is going to be reached this time. You will either have to side with socialist camp that seek to overthrow and rework the system at the unfortunate expense of those on top, or with the exclusionary right-wing camp that want to maintain and strengthen their privileges on the simple basis of "Might Makes Right".
Trump sticks it in the ass of identity politics.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-...lam-president/
The democratic party is such a mess. Nancy Pelosi sounds like a stuttering retard when she talks.
Slob tlaib gets elected entirely through anti-trump demagoguery now cries identity politic foul after Trump, Pelosi, and Middle America ovens the fuck out of her!
Divide and conquer the identity politic cesspool (aka democratic party). Makes for a nice pre-nomination pivot into election time ads collaging them with nutty Antifa kooks...hehehe
@Kill4Me are you too retarded to understand that Trump's unapologetic, (essentially) White Nationalist ramblings is a flagrant embrace of white identity politics? lol Nice to confirm that your thick (allegedly) SLE neck is supported by an even thicker, dense skull.
At least 3/4 of those women were born in a shithole whose government is a complete and total catastrophe.
Libertarian Presidential Candidates Prefer Each Other Over Justin Amash
"We cannot elect or nominate a former Republican…for the fourth cycle in a row. I just think that would set the party back so far," Kokesh said. "And it's hard….Gary Johnson was better than [2008 nominee] Bob Barr, and Justin Amash might be that much better than Gary Johnson even. It's the worst temptation we've ever seen from this vector. But it's the most important time to resist it. I would really, enthusiastically, welcome Amash to the race, but I would be more thrilled to support and see anybody on this stage beating him."
I can't wait for this interview to come out.
EII-INFj / INFP / Strong E4 and 9 energy / Melancholic-Phlegmatic / Musical-Intrapersonal-Spatial / Kinky-Sensual
OK, it's August of 2019 and Trump delivered his $1T tax cut to the rich and the average citizen got handed a long list of government services that have to be cut back, so they will all be poorer and more exploitable in the future. So far, so good.
His verbal pandering to his popular base by promising to return the country to the thirties and a coal bucket in every basement is fairly harmless. Coal is going down because natural gas is just cheaper, and Chinese solar panels are cheaper yet, and we don't even have to produce them in this country. So his lies about bringing back coal are harmless.
But now Trump has let his racism and xenophobia start a tariff war with China. US consumers in almost every segment of the economy are the ones who pay for these tariffs, and they are going to have less money in their pockets to buy stuff and drive the economy.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...-idUSKCN1UR5XZ
Making consumers a lot poorer with his tariff-tax is going to hurt the profits of every company that sells them stuff. Like farmers, automakers, and the entire tech and software industries. This idiot has erased all the stock market gains this year.
Now Trump is pissing off the people who live off stock market returns. In other words, the people who matter.
I predict that the rich are going to abandon Trump in droves and will throw their weight behind someone who promises to normalize global trade relations. Without seriously promising the workers free education or cheap health care or any of those other things that hurt the profits of the Capitalist class.
And if no Democrat will do this, then there's always Pence.
*EDIT*
Trump is brilliant at keeping himself in front of his base, though. But he's running on fumes. Today he promised to cure cancer. And AIDs. "Very shortly". Lol. The guy is a master at saying he has a plan, the best plan, which he will reveal "very shortly", when he has no plan at all.
This might work for his base, who are desperate for a change, but it doesn't work for guys who are used to getting results.
Last edited by Adam Strange; 08-02-2019 at 12:08 PM.
The inconvenient truth about Trump is that he's done exactly what he said he would do. From jobs, GDP growth, tax reform, the elimination of ISIS, the wall, border security, withdrawal from the Iraq nuclear deal and the Paris climate accord, and renegotiating NAFTA and other disastrous trade agreements that hurt Americans... never in recent history has there been a president who has so consistently followed through on campaign promise after campaign promise.
In response to this unprecedented success (which has earned him the highest ever approval rating among republicans and also leaves him heavily favored to win 2020), the left and their media allies have responded hysterically with wild calls of racism -- that he's a 'dolt-in-chief' who is somehow unqualified or unfit for office. Never mind that he's a self-made billionaire with an ivy league education, and never mind that he owns hundreds of bushiness, founded a television program which earned millions of viewers every week for well over a decade, and brilliantly executed a rather innovative self-branding strategy that clinched him the highest possible political office as a substantial underdog.
Somehow in the view of the left, all these feats are merely indicative of an unqualified imbecile who was only able to earn the support of his base by means of 'verbal pandering'.
His trade wars? Racist.
Walls? Racist.
Immigration reform? Racist.
You can leave the country if you don't like it? Racist again.
Calling a rat infested city a rat infested city? Yep, that's racist too.
Just like there's going to be direct and indirect costs associated with tariffs, so too are there going to be direct and indirect costs associated unfair trade agreements. This isn't new or groundbreaking information; in fact as a concept it was even alluded to in the very article that you cited: "Trump has said bad trade deals with China and others have cost millions of American jobs".
While the article you cited merely mentions Trump's claim as a footnote, a wide number of other sources are willing to discuss it in great detail. For an example, according to the economic policy institute, trade deals like NAFTA hurt Americans and have resulted in tremendous job losses throughout the country.
Authors for PBS News also seem to agree: "The inconvenient truth is that we've been buying roughly half a trillion dollars worth of goods more from abroad than we are exporting and we have been doing so for decades. In 2014, our exports of goods and services amounted to $2.4 trillion, while our imports amounted to $2.9 trillion -- implying that our deficit was a whopping $500 billion.
Why is our trade deficit a problem? Because the deficit subtracts from the U.S. GDP and hurts the lower middle class. By outsourcing jobs, it has relegated millions of U.S. workers -- especially the low-skilled ones -- to the underemployment rolls."
Just like Trump was able to renegotiate trade agreements with Canada and Mexico, so too will he do so with China. For whatever reason this seems to trigger the left, so much so that they refer to tariffs or other American first policies as somehow being the result of 'racism', almost as if they'd rather see America do poorly rather than see it succeed with Trump.
Ah, yes... the good ol' 'the rich are so upset with their $1T tax cut that they're going to abandon Trump in droves' argument.Left-wing pundits have been predicting Trump's downfall since he announced his candidacy; since then he won the GOP nomination, clinched the presidency, and is now heavily favored to win 2020. It's been win after win for Trump, and meanwhile, based solely on the recent debates, all the DNC candidates want to do is talk about racism, reparations for slavery and remind people of their privilege... all while doubling down on the failed political strategy of calling half the country deplorable.
Your views are very interesting to me, @Deprecator. Thanks.
I should have clarified my assertion that the rich will now abandon Trump. It isn't because they are dissatisfied with the $1T tax cut, but rather because they don't think he can pull off another one.The inconvenient truth about Trump is that he's done exactly what he said he would do. From jobs, GDP growth, tax reform, the elimination of ISIS, the wall, border security, withdrawal from the Iraq nuclear deal and the Paris climate accord, and renegotiating NAFTA and other disastrous trade agreements that hurt Americans... never in recent history has there been a president who has so consistently followed through on campaign promise after campaign promise.
In response to this unprecedented success (which has earned him the highest ever approval rating among republicans and also leaves him heavily favored to win 2020), the left and their media allies have responded hysterically with wild calls of racism -- that he's a 'dolt-in-chief' who is somehow unqualified or unfit for office. Never mind that he's a self-made billionaire with an ivy league education, and never mind that he owns hundreds of bushiness, founded a television program which earned millions of viewers every week for well over a decade, and brilliantly executed a rather innovative self-branding strategy that clinched him the highest possible political office as a substantial underdog.
Somehow in the view of the left, all these feats are merely indicative of an unqualified imbecile who was only able to earn the support of his base by means of 'verbal pandering'.
His trade wars? Racist.
Walls? Racist.
Immigration reform? Racist.
You can leave the country if you don't like it? Racist again.
Calling a rat infested city a rat infested city? Yep, that's racist too.
Just like there's going to be direct and indirect costs associated with tariffs, so too are there going to be direct and indirect costs associated unfair trade agreements. This isn't new or groundbreaking information; in fact as a concept it was even alluded to in the very article that you cited: "Trump has said bad trade deals with China and others have cost millions of American jobs".
While the article you cited merely mentions Trump's claim as a footnote, a wide number of other sources are willing to discuss it in great detail. For an example, according to the economic policy institute, trade deals like NAFTA hurt Americans and have resulted in tremendous job losses throughout the country.
Authors for PBS News also seem to agree: "The inconvenient truth is that we've been buying roughly half a trillion dollars worth of goods more from abroad than we are exporting and we have been doing so for decades. In 2014, our exports of goods and services amounted to $2.4 trillion, while our imports amounted to $2.9 trillion -- implying that our deficit was a whopping $500 billion.
Why is our trade deficit a problem? Because the deficit subtracts from the U.S. GDP and hurts the lower middle class. By outsourcing jobs, it has relegated millions of U.S. workers -- especially the low-skilled ones -- to the underemployment rolls."
Just like Trump was able to renegotiate trade agreements with Canada and Mexico, so too will he do so with China. For whatever reason this seems to trigger the left, so much so that they refer to tariffs or other American first policies as somehow being the result of 'racism', almost as if they'd rather see America do poorly rather than see it succeed with Trump.
Ah, yes... the good ol' 'the rich are so upset with their $1T tax cut that they're going to abandon Trump in droves' argument.
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