I bet all those poor people have some sort of ID. Thats a b.s argument.
Really, you think every single poor person has a valid ID?
So you`re poor. I bet you are getting government assistance. Gonna need an ID for that. You wanna go see a Dr.? Gonna need an ID for that. Drive a car? Wait for it... ID required. If you can not afford some sort of ID the state should pay for it.
And the Ids required for all of the above aren't the same one that the usually Republican state houses require you have. And as having the state administrations pay for is contary to there purpose of disenfranchising vast quantities of potential Democrat voters, they aren't that inclinded to make it easy to get an ID let alone actually pay for it if you can't afford the admin fee for it.
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Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag and start slitting throats.
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
Not everyone is getting assistance, not everyone needs to go to the doctor, and I know tons of people who just decided "Don't get caught" is better than getting a license. That isn't even accounting for the fact that poor people can't take the time off of work to go the the DMV and there have been instances of states actually cutting back on DMV hours after passing laws to require photo ID.
Well if they are employed they better have an ID to get the job plus those are all excuses. You are basically saying if you are poor you are to dumb, lazy,law breakers or dont have enough time to obtain an ID.
Being dumb, lazy, lawbreaking, or having having no time to go to the DMV does not preclude the right to vote for a US Citizen. Trying to marginalize people who fit into any of these groups is the real excuse here. It sounds like you were fortunate enough to be in a position where you had the documents, time, and money required to procure an ID if you didn't already have one before your situation became bad, and you've really got your blinders on to assume that everyone has similar access to these things. There are people who don't ask for government assistance for whatever reason, so you're wrong to assume this is an automatic thing that all poor people do. Not just that, but there are people who don't have access to proof of their SSN; obtaining an official birth certificate takes time and costs a lot of money (and I know multiple people who have had issues because their birth certificate was recorded incorrectly, like my younger brother who has my mother's first husband listed as the father causing his order to be delayed for weeks); homeless people may have no current proof of residency in the state they're in, etc. Also, it was pointed out that licenses expire, so you don't necessarily have to be resorting to illegal activity to be in a position where it is a burden for you to obtain ID.
Yeah, it's almost like I said that midway down last page.
Meanwhile: False equivalence is distorting the 2016 election
These pathologies have long been with us. But they have reached a crisis point in recent years, as conservatives have grown ever more brazen in exploiting them, successfully shifting the boundaries of political discourse well beyond what the rest of us recognize as readily observable reality. This is but one of the dividends the right enjoys from its long-term investment in “working the refs”—that is, creating and supporting countless institutions whose purpose is to harass members of the media to produce more sympathetic coverage of their pet issues. The smart ones don’t believe their own accusations, but they can’t help seeing how effectively they do their job. As Weekly Standard senior writer Matt Labash told the website JournalismJobs.com back in 2003, “The conservative media likes to rap the liberal media on the knuckles for not being objective…. It’s a great way to have your cake and eat it too.”
The GOP’s war on reality has helped elevate right-wing disinformation to the same status as scientific research.
The whole article is both well put together and too huge to really quote. [link]
So if you are poor you are automatically a democrat?
You can search the innerwebz and find multiple cases of the dead voting. Is voter fraud running rampant? I doubt it. Does it happen? I am sure it does on both sides of the isle. Requiring a person to prove who they are at the polls should not be the left/right issue that most people make it out to be.
So if you are poor you are automatically a democrat?
It doesn't need to be relevant.
You can search the innerwebz and find multiple cases of the dead voting. Is voter fraud running rampant? I doubt it. Does it happen? I am sure it does on both sides of the isle. Requiring a person to prove who they are at the polls should not be the left/right issue that most people make it out to be.
It's not really a left/right issue, it's something some conservatives have proposed and have since been accused, with good reason, of supporting it because it hurts democrats more than republicans.
People have been killed by vending machines in the US a good dozen times more than the number of voter impersonation cases. Voter impersonation is just not an issue. It's a problem for an ideal world, not this one.
There were apparently ten cases of voter fraud by impersonation over a 12 year period from 2000 to 2012. [link]
Meanwhile, around 4.5% of registered Texan voters (more than 600,000 people) lack valid ID of the type required for a photo-ID anti-fraud law. [link]
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“Tell me who you walk with, and I'll tell you who you are.” Esmeralda Santiago Art is life itself.
You can search the innerwebz and find multiple cases of the dead voting. Is voter fraud running rampant? I doubt it. Does it happen? I am sure it does on both sides of the isle. Requiring a person to prove who they are at the polls should not be the left/right issue that most people make it out to be.
You are correct it should not be an partisan issue. But the Republicans have made it one. They have seen that a majority of a certain demographic doesn't vote for them and worked out ways to stop them from voting.
John Oliver has covered it in the video below. But essentially there is not a significant problem with in person vote fraud, but Republicans are treating it like the apocalypse as an excuse to hide their real intentions.
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Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag and start slitting throats.
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
Well, the Democrats raised $13,000 to help the office rebuild.
Besides which, compare the candidates' responses:
Clinton - The attack on the Orange County HQ @NCGOP office is horrific and unacceptable. Very grateful that everyone is safe.
Trump - Animals representing Hillary Clinton and Dems in North Carolina just firebombed our office in Orange County because we are winning
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If Frozen Solid is not reprinted, you are aware that I'm quoting you in my sig for eternity?
i've avoided commenting on any Trump-related stuff so far - but as an "outsider looking in", it's got to the point now where i'm seeing a sort of cultural state of mind form in the USA, which, frankly, terrifies the rest of the world.
let's examine a few points very briefly to explain my observation as clearly as I can:
1) the candidate for presidency of a world power has been accused of multiple counts of sexual assault. normally, in any professional environment, a person so accused would be temporarily suspended and an investigation carried out until a resolution was found. Remember, this is a serious and criminal accusation.
so far, as far as i can tell, the ramifications for these serious accusations has been, what exactly? His response was that of a bully or a child - effectively say "no i didn't" and then proceeding to insult these women! whether he's innocent or guilty, this is no way for a potential world leader to behave. like, at all.
2) let's take this scenario further and examine his behaviour with regards to women in general (picking on this point because it's half the damn planet's population). there can be no denying that his general admitted behaviour (remember, much of what is being said of him is either on video or admitted by the man) is utterly deplorable. His response to literally everyone saying "holy crap man, that's weak. sort your ***** out" was to say "it's locker-room banter", that's just how men behave?!?!?
No. Just no. He is projecting his own behaviour on others, in a predictable and ignorant fashion, such as a poorly behaved child might. He falsely expects others to share his warped, hateful world view and so projects it onto half the population of the world. I am personally offended by his remarks, grouping all men into this misogynistic, ignorant way of seeing things. This is not who men are, and again, I have to add, this is not how a candidate to be a world leader should be behaving. AT. ALL... THE LEADER OF YOUR COUNTRY SHOULD BE A ROLE MODEL.
3) let's examine the wider context. it seems that due to Trump's presence in the race, both sides are being dragged into the muck, and the people voting in polls and arguing about the race have got so hopelessly lost in an ideological war of insults and dishing dirt, that they've forgotten what a leader should be like! there is no way, at all, that a man such as this can be considered a fit leader. regardless of whether you agree with his bizarre sociopathic and xenophobic views (and they are, taken in the wider context. whether you agree or not, they are), he's just not the type of person you want sitting on the top of the pile calling the shots. just look back through his life. look at what he's done to achieve, and how he behaves towards others as a result of his playboy devil-may-care lifestyle. look at how superficial and false his appeals are to voters. it only takes a moment to see that this isn't an unbiased, rational, calm leader who takes all sides of an argument into consideration before acting. Instead, we see (all too clearly) a man who, in an effort to appeal to voters, is condoning violence, hatred, racism, and is flagrantly lying to people and making random impossible stuff up (like that damn wall). his behaviour is all on video, recorded, there for people to see. I am saddened to see journalists and critics being brought down to his level, trying to deal with torrents of insults and strange comments made by him, instead of being able to ask the proper questions, as you'd expect from someone who could potentially run the country. where is the actual commentary on policy and structure? it's terrifying, honestly.
so here we are, thousands of miles away, watching all of this media storm unfold, and the USA just devour itself in childish, immature behaviour from what should be upstanding, intelligent candidates. the rhetoric coming from this debate, the allegations, the hatred, the xenophobia and everything, it's so utterly terrifying to watch from an outside perspective it puts knots in my stomach just to think about the potential outcome. I have become embarrassed to be a member of our species, if this is what we consider to be a fit role model and a suitable carrier of the torch, leading us into the future.
do you think this man understands or cares about the future of our species? do you think he's considered the extinction-level perils we face over the next 200 years? does he consider the importance of developing the space programme and trying desperately to secure our survival in the future (which we should be doing), or instead is he just concerned about his bottom line, and "keeping these people out" of his sad little speck of land.
i am disgusted by this man, in a way that I find it difficult to express. not because he holds these hateful views, but because somehow, inexplicably, he has been held up on a plinth, above all other reasonable and intelligent people, and the USA has said "yeah! that's him! the guy with deplorable views, who may or may not have raped several women, who is clearly a violent, ignorant man! that's the guy we want to be in charge! Woo!"
it's a sad world we live in. the history textbooks of the future will look on this time with embarrassment and solemn understanding of the mistakes we all made.
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Oh no i have somewhat of a grasp. Been low income at one point of my life. Guess what? I had an ID.
So if you had an ID, every poor person will also have an ID? That's not how that works.
I think you really dont grasp my point. If you are to poor to buy food you will attempt to get assistance from the government and that will require an ID. Unless you are some recluse that lives of the land in the middle of nowhere you are going to need some sort of ID 1 to 100 times in your life.
Or perhaps another member of your household has an ID, and they're the one who applies for assistance?
So if you are poor you are automatically a democrat?
You can search the innerwebz and find multiple cases of the dead voting. Is voter fraud running rampant? I doubt it. Does it happen? I am sure it does on both sides of the isle. Requiring a person to prove who they are at the polls should not be the left/right issue that most people make it out to be.
Republicans tend to favor cutting spending that could help people who are poor, and tax breaks only apply to upper class. A large portion of Republican voters who don't vote among religious lines tend to vote based on the economic policy (in other words, it you make more than 6 figures, you tend to lean Republican). Is it really that surprising that the opposite end of the spectrum would go Democrat? You can debate about whether the Republican party is the racist party, but it's pretty hard to deny it isn't the rich party.
i am disgusted by this man, in a way that I find it difficult to express. not because he holds these hateful views, but because somehow, inexplicably, he has been held up on a plinth, above all other reasonable and intelligent people, and the USA has said "yeah! that's him! the guy with deplorable views, who may or may not have raped several women, who is clearly a violent, ignorant man! that's the guy we want to be in charge! Woo!"
it's a sad world we live in. the history textbooks of the future will look on this time with embarrassment and solemn understanding of the mistakes we all made.
You know he's going to lose, right? In a decade he'll be just another embarrassing also-ran, like Huey Long and George Wallace.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
So if you are poor you are automatically a democrat?
Automatically? Of course not. But there is a strong correlation between being close to the poverty line and voting Democrat, assuming the discriminatory Voter ID laws don't prevent you from doing so.
That's why the laws, which are almost exclusively drafted by Republicans, exist: to prevent a demographic that overwhelmingly votes Democrat from being permitted to vote.
The Trump Foundation paid a conspiracy theorist (noted fraudster O'Keefe, of the Veritas Project) $10,000 to make videos attacking Trump's opponents. [link]
You know he's going to lose, right? In a decade he'll be just another embarrassing also-ran, like Huey Long and George Wallace.
His politics are still causing noticeable damage to quality of life of members of groups he's targeted. I posted a link earlier about how non-white kids are, as a group, showing signs of severe emotional stress due to racism.
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Automatically? Of course not. But there is a strong correlation between being close to the poverty line and voting Democrat, assuming the discriminatory Voter ID laws don't prevent you from doing so.
To be precise, it's more of a two-step correlation: racial minorities tend to vote Democrat, and racial minorities are disproportionately close to the poverty line. Adjusting for race, the correlation between income and party preference isn't strong.
That's why the laws, which are almost exclusively drafted by Republicans, exist: to prevent a demographic that overwhelmingly votes Democrat from being permitted to vote.
It's kind of a weird situation, though. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with the election authority verifying that voters are who they say they are. It's a pretty reasonable safeguard, and numerous other democracies around the world do it as a matter of course. It's the motivation for implementing the measure that is, to say the least, Not Okay.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
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His politics are still causing noticeable damage to quality of life of members of groups he's targeted. I posted a link earlier about how non-white kids are, as a group, showing signs of severe emotional stress due to racism.
And George Wallace physically blocked black students from entering white schools with his own flesh-and-blood body. I'm not saying these guys are okay. I'm saying they're not the President.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
That's why the laws, which are almost exclusively drafted by Republicans, exist: to prevent a demographic that overwhelmingly votes Democrat from being permitted to vote.
It's kind of a weird situation, though. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with the election authority verifying that voters are who they say they are. It's a pretty reasonable safeguard, and numerous other democracies around the world do it as a matter of course. It's the motivation for implementing the measure that is, to say the least, Not Okay.
Yeah. The Voter ID laws wouldn't be a problem if it was easy, convenient, and free to get the required ID.
I need to stop reading news about the Trump campaign. *****'s depressing. Also, 8chan is still a trashfire. [link]
A group of diehard Donald Trump supporters are seeking to intimidate members of the press they deem unfavorable toward the Republican presidential nominee with an orchestrated plan to troll and harass them at their private homes.
The names and purported home addresses of 50 “anti-Trump media personnel” appeared late Monday night on the website 8chan, an image-based message board rife with racism, misogyny, and members of the alt-right community. The list, which targets a dozen different media outlets, included the top editors at the New York Times and Washington Post, employees at BuzzFeed and Daily Kos, and more than two dozen staff members at the Huffington Post, which chose to cover the real estate mogul’s White House bid as “entertainment” instead of politics early in the election cycle. Conservatives who have openly criticized Trump, including Glenn Beck and the Daily Caller’s Ben Shapiro, also appear in the file.
“I don’t condone doing anything illegal with the information here,” wrote the anonymous user who posted the list of targeted journalists. “I also don’t condone sending wave after wave of fast food, holy books, gay porn catalogs, bricks, emergency plumbers, locksmiths, transgender escorts, or freeze-dried bear ***** to anyone’s home.”
Secondary link, written by one of the targets. [link]
The misery is compounded when longtime friends and allies dismiss my experiences and the experiences of my colleagues as nothing more than the normal cost of public advocacy. It’s not. I have contributed to National Review for more than ten years now, and have been deeply involved in many of America’s most emotional culture-war battles for more than 20. I’ve never experienced anything like this before. I have to laugh when people accuse me of opposing Trump because it somehow makes me rich, or because I’m currying favors with guests at the “elite” cocktail parties that I never actually attend. I oppose Trump not just because he’s an ignorant demagogue and a naked political opportunist, but also because bigotry and intimidation cling to his campaign. Every campaign attracts its share of fools, cranks, and crazies. But Trump’s candidacy has weaponized them. Every harassing tweet and every violent threat is like a voice whispering in my ear, telling me to do all that I can to oppose a movement that breeds and exploits such reckless hate.
I need to stop reading news about the Trump campaign. *****'s depressing.
Why worry about things that you ultimately have no control over?
It's one thing to strive to understand what's going on and build a reasoned opinion by following the news, but it's quite another to have said news actually cause you to feel depressed.
=(
Don't get depressed by the news. It really does you no good.
This election all but proves that democracy has failed because America is too stupid to stop this from happening.
I wouldn't go that far. Yes, America has proven to have a population of extremely, extremely stupid people, which has resulted in Donald Trump becoming the Republican nominee. But Donald Trump's campaign has tanked, he's right now set to become the least popular and least successful Republican candidate in a long time, and as that's pretty much the result we hoped for when he became the head of the party ticket.
Doesn't change the fact that he's still the nominee, and that is a problem, and it is worrying for what it says about our country, but that being said, think about how many times in history when the popular demagogue actually seized power. If anything, that makes me hopeful for America if it turns out in November that we are an example in history in which the popular demagogue lost horribly, that the people were smart enough to obstruct his way to victory.
Granted, we'd still have Hillary as president, and that's unfortunate, but most of us agree she's better than Trump, and frankly if Harding or Grant were running on the Democrat ticket against Trump, we'd still vote for them.
We live in a country that has produced two of the absolute worst excuses for human beings that this planet has to offer to be the new leader of the free world. This election all but proves that democracy has failed because America is too stupid to stop this from happening. Not only is depression warranted over this, every person in this country should feel just as bad.
Well, the founding fathers disliked democracy for the very possibility that it may produce Trump, or a Trump-like figure.
So I'd say that democracy is the exact reason why we have Trump running for the Presidency today.
Democracy. Working as intended. Giving voices to everyone who is legally allowed a voice.
Well, the founding fathers disliked democracy for the very possibility that it may produce Trump, or a Trump-like figure.
So I'd say that democracy is the exact reason why we have Trump running for the Presidency today.
Democracy. Working as intended. Giving voices to everyone who is legally allowed a voice.
Counterpoint (probably playing devil's advocate here): a good deal of Trump's primary wins were won with a plurality of votes and not an actual majority. Despite this shortcoming, he would still get ALL of the delegates in certain primaries that were winner-take-all systems.
If anything, it's an institutional failure of the first past the post system.
Well yeah. It was started by terrible people and will likely remain that way.
This election all but proves that democracy has failed because America is too stupid to stop this from happening.
Democracy is currently in action, which generally involves kicking Trump's ass out to the pavement.
Besides, I'd hardly say that democracy is responsible for this when so many people (who would very likely have voted against Trump) have been systematically denied voting rights by the same party that is nominating Trump.
Now would be a good time to point out that our country is not actually a true democracy, but a republic. This is for a reason, as during our Founding Fathers' time, democracy actually was a word with a negative connotation, evoking images of mob rule, and they deliberately based their government around the idea of a republic to prevent the people from gaining too much power.
Now, when the connotation of democracy shifted to positive, I don't actually know. But unfortunately, now we have people criticizing our government for not being democratic enough, when in fact that was the entire point.
So really what Magicman is saying is that this is a failure of a republican (small r) system of government. Or "representative democracy." The point is, the inherent weak point in any system in which people vote is that you open up your government to the possibility of the people voting REALLY stupidly. Trump is a key illustration of this, and it's why we have so many ways in which to distance the government from the people, such as having it be run by representatives: people don't always do smart things.
My argument against this is that while Trump is an illustration of what the Founding Fathers pretty definitely would not want to happen, Trump's very likely failure to seize power demonstrates that we're not too far gone, as at least we're intelligent enough to see through Trump.
Which is nice, as I would REALLY like it if the American experiment continued for a substantial length of time. If we collapsed before we even hit the 300-year mark it would just be embarrassing.
And the Ids required for all of the above aren't the same one that the usually Republican state houses require you have. And as having the state administrations pay for is contary to there purpose of disenfranchising vast quantities of potential Democrat voters, they aren't that inclinded to make it easy to get an ID let alone actually pay for it if you can't afford the admin fee for it.
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
The Crafters' Rules Guru
Being dumb, lazy, lawbreaking, or having having no time to go to the DMV does not preclude the right to vote for a US Citizen. Trying to marginalize people who fit into any of these groups is the real excuse here. It sounds like you were fortunate enough to be in a position where you had the documents, time, and money required to procure an ID if you didn't already have one before your situation became bad, and you've really got your blinders on to assume that everyone has similar access to these things. There are people who don't ask for government assistance for whatever reason, so you're wrong to assume this is an automatic thing that all poor people do. Not just that, but there are people who don't have access to proof of their SSN; obtaining an official birth certificate takes time and costs a lot of money (and I know multiple people who have had issues because their birth certificate was recorded incorrectly, like my younger brother who has my mother's first husband listed as the father causing his order to be delayed for weeks); homeless people may have no current proof of residency in the state they're in, etc. Also, it was pointed out that licenses expire, so you don't necessarily have to be resorting to illegal activity to be in a position where it is a burden for you to obtain ID.
Meanwhile: False equivalence is distorting the 2016 election
The whole article is both well put together and too huge to really quote. [link]
Art is life itself.
You can search the innerwebz and find multiple cases of the dead voting. Is voter fraud running rampant? I doubt it. Does it happen? I am sure it does on both sides of the isle. Requiring a person to prove who they are at the polls should not be the left/right issue that most people make it out to be.
It doesn't need to be relevant.
It's not really a left/right issue, it's something some conservatives have proposed and have since been accused, with good reason, of supporting it because it hurts democrats more than republicans.
People have been killed by vending machines in the US a good dozen times more than the number of voter impersonation cases. Voter impersonation is just not an issue. It's a problem for an ideal world, not this one.
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Meanwhile, around 4.5% of registered Texan voters (more than 600,000 people) lack valid ID of the type required for a photo-ID anti-fraud law. [link]
Art is life itself.
You are correct it should not be an partisan issue. But the Republicans have made it one. They have seen that a majority of a certain demographic doesn't vote for them and worked out ways to stop them from voting.
John Oliver has covered it in the video below. But essentially there is not a significant problem with in person vote fraud, but Republicans are treating it like the apocalypse as an excuse to hide their real intentions.
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
The Crafters' Rules Guru
Besides which, compare the candidates' responses:
Clinton - The attack on the Orange County HQ @NCGOP office is horrific and unacceptable. Very grateful that everyone is safe.
Trump - Animals representing Hillary Clinton and Dems in North Carolina just firebombed our office in Orange County because we are winning
let's examine a few points very briefly to explain my observation as clearly as I can:
1) the candidate for presidency of a world power has been accused of multiple counts of sexual assault. normally, in any professional environment, a person so accused would be temporarily suspended and an investigation carried out until a resolution was found. Remember, this is a serious and criminal accusation.
so far, as far as i can tell, the ramifications for these serious accusations has been, what exactly? His response was that of a bully or a child - effectively say "no i didn't" and then proceeding to insult these women! whether he's innocent or guilty, this is no way for a potential world leader to behave. like, at all.
2) let's take this scenario further and examine his behaviour with regards to women in general (picking on this point because it's half the damn planet's population). there can be no denying that his general admitted behaviour (remember, much of what is being said of him is either on video or admitted by the man) is utterly deplorable. His response to literally everyone saying "holy crap man, that's weak. sort your ***** out" was to say "it's locker-room banter", that's just how men behave?!?!?
No. Just no. He is projecting his own behaviour on others, in a predictable and ignorant fashion, such as a poorly behaved child might. He falsely expects others to share his warped, hateful world view and so projects it onto half the population of the world. I am personally offended by his remarks, grouping all men into this misogynistic, ignorant way of seeing things. This is not who men are, and again, I have to add, this is not how a candidate to be a world leader should be behaving. AT. ALL... THE LEADER OF YOUR COUNTRY SHOULD BE A ROLE MODEL.
3) let's examine the wider context. it seems that due to Trump's presence in the race, both sides are being dragged into the muck, and the people voting in polls and arguing about the race have got so hopelessly lost in an ideological war of insults and dishing dirt, that they've forgotten what a leader should be like! there is no way, at all, that a man such as this can be considered a fit leader. regardless of whether you agree with his bizarre sociopathic and xenophobic views (and they are, taken in the wider context. whether you agree or not, they are), he's just not the type of person you want sitting on the top of the pile calling the shots. just look back through his life. look at what he's done to achieve, and how he behaves towards others as a result of his playboy devil-may-care lifestyle. look at how superficial and false his appeals are to voters. it only takes a moment to see that this isn't an unbiased, rational, calm leader who takes all sides of an argument into consideration before acting. Instead, we see (all too clearly) a man who, in an effort to appeal to voters, is condoning violence, hatred, racism, and is flagrantly lying to people and making random impossible stuff up (like that damn wall). his behaviour is all on video, recorded, there for people to see. I am saddened to see journalists and critics being brought down to his level, trying to deal with torrents of insults and strange comments made by him, instead of being able to ask the proper questions, as you'd expect from someone who could potentially run the country. where is the actual commentary on policy and structure? it's terrifying, honestly.
so here we are, thousands of miles away, watching all of this media storm unfold, and the USA just devour itself in childish, immature behaviour from what should be upstanding, intelligent candidates. the rhetoric coming from this debate, the allegations, the hatred, the xenophobia and everything, it's so utterly terrifying to watch from an outside perspective it puts knots in my stomach just to think about the potential outcome. I have become embarrassed to be a member of our species, if this is what we consider to be a fit role model and a suitable carrier of the torch, leading us into the future.
do you think this man understands or cares about the future of our species? do you think he's considered the extinction-level perils we face over the next 200 years? does he consider the importance of developing the space programme and trying desperately to secure our survival in the future (which we should be doing), or instead is he just concerned about his bottom line, and "keeping these people out" of his sad little speck of land.
i am disgusted by this man, in a way that I find it difficult to express. not because he holds these hateful views, but because somehow, inexplicably, he has been held up on a plinth, above all other reasonable and intelligent people, and the USA has said "yeah! that's him! the guy with deplorable views, who may or may not have raped several women, who is clearly a violent, ignorant man! that's the guy we want to be in charge! Woo!"
it's a sad world we live in. the history textbooks of the future will look on this time with embarrassment and solemn understanding of the mistakes we all made.
So if you had an ID, every poor person will also have an ID? That's not how that works.
Or perhaps another member of your household has an ID, and they're the one who applies for assistance?
Republicans tend to favor cutting spending that could help people who are poor, and tax breaks only apply to upper class. A large portion of Republican voters who don't vote among religious lines tend to vote based on the economic policy (in other words, it you make more than 6 figures, you tend to lean Republican). Is it really that surprising that the opposite end of the spectrum would go Democrat? You can debate about whether the Republican party is the racist party, but it's pretty hard to deny it isn't the rich party.
The GJ way path to no lynching:
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
That's why the laws, which are almost exclusively drafted by Republicans, exist: to prevent a demographic that overwhelmingly votes Democrat from being permitted to vote.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)
His politics are still causing noticeable damage to quality of life of members of groups he's targeted. I posted a link earlier about how non-white kids are, as a group, showing signs of severe emotional stress due to racism.
Art is life itself.
It's kind of a weird situation, though. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with the election authority verifying that voters are who they say they are. It's a pretty reasonable safeguard, and numerous other democracies around the world do it as a matter of course. It's the motivation for implementing the measure that is, to say the least, Not Okay.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
(Image by totallynotabrony)
Secondary link, written by one of the targets. [link]
Art is life itself.
Why worry about things that you ultimately have no control over?
It's one thing to strive to understand what's going on and build a reasoned opinion by following the news, but it's quite another to have said news actually cause you to feel depressed.
=(
Don't get depressed by the news. It really does you no good.
I wouldn't go that far. Yes, America has proven to have a population of extremely, extremely stupid people, which has resulted in Donald Trump becoming the Republican nominee. But Donald Trump's campaign has tanked, he's right now set to become the least popular and least successful Republican candidate in a long time, and as that's pretty much the result we hoped for when he became the head of the party ticket.
Doesn't change the fact that he's still the nominee, and that is a problem, and it is worrying for what it says about our country, but that being said, think about how many times in history when the popular demagogue actually seized power. If anything, that makes me hopeful for America if it turns out in November that we are an example in history in which the popular demagogue lost horribly, that the people were smart enough to obstruct his way to victory.
Granted, we'd still have Hillary as president, and that's unfortunate, but most of us agree she's better than Trump, and frankly if Harding or Grant were running on the Democrat ticket against Trump, we'd still vote for them.
Well, the founding fathers disliked democracy for the very possibility that it may produce Trump, or a Trump-like figure.
So I'd say that democracy is the exact reason why we have Trump running for the Presidency today.
Democracy. Working as intended. Giving voices to everyone who is legally allowed a voice.
Counterpoint (probably playing devil's advocate here): a good deal of Trump's primary wins were won with a plurality of votes and not an actual majority. Despite this shortcoming, he would still get ALL of the delegates in certain primaries that were winner-take-all systems.
If anything, it's an institutional failure of the first past the post system.
Well yeah. It was started by terrible people and will likely remain that way.
Democracy is currently in action, which generally involves kicking Trump's ass out to the pavement.
Besides, I'd hardly say that democracy is responsible for this when so many people (who would very likely have voted against Trump) have been systematically denied voting rights by the same party that is nominating Trump.
URW Control
WBG Abzan
GRW Burn
EDH
GR Rosheen Meanderer
Now, when the connotation of democracy shifted to positive, I don't actually know. But unfortunately, now we have people criticizing our government for not being democratic enough, when in fact that was the entire point.
So really what Magicman is saying is that this is a failure of a republican (small r) system of government. Or "representative democracy." The point is, the inherent weak point in any system in which people vote is that you open up your government to the possibility of the people voting REALLY stupidly. Trump is a key illustration of this, and it's why we have so many ways in which to distance the government from the people, such as having it be run by representatives: people don't always do smart things.
My argument against this is that while Trump is an illustration of what the Founding Fathers pretty definitely would not want to happen, Trump's very likely failure to seize power demonstrates that we're not too far gone, as at least we're intelligent enough to see through Trump.
Which is nice, as I would REALLY like it if the American experiment continued for a substantial length of time. If we collapsed before we even hit the 300-year mark it would just be embarrassing.