I believe social media, mainstream media, television and the internet do a very good job of silencing opinions they don't like. This leads people to believe that everyone (the overwhelming majority) thinks the same - that everyone is on the same page. On the night of the election, you could see just how shocked every news anchor (and comedians like Trevor Noah) were. I think the same of this forum - if you drive out everyone potentially guilty of wrongthink, you've only tricked yourself. I also believe (per another thread) that hitting people with the racist or bigot stick on every topic or repeatedly demonizing white people simply shuts down the conversation. In this very thread alone there's many negative comments demonizing white people - that's acceptable racism.
So the "revelation" was that polling in a few states was off by a percentage point or two? Wow, what a revelation! World-shattering!
A perfectly fair point, but I have no confidence that the people who are apathetic enough to not vote are actually significantly less informed than those who do. Whether someone votes tells us whether they are motivated and have an opinion, it doesn't tell use whether they are informed or reasonable.
And people will always be able to not properly vote or incur fees rather than vote, even if making a vote is mandatory. People already do even when voting is entirely voluntary.
So I'm not sure whether voluntary voting improves the quality of the vote.
Non-voters are generally less knowledgeable than voters. See for example:
(scroll down to "Knowledge Differences between Voters and Non-Voters")
Although if we're comparing to mandatory voting, it may be the case that some portion of those people would feel compelled to inform themselves if they knew they had to vote.
But the northern and midwestern votes made more of the difference in this election. Of course the democrats are not going to win back the southern vote, but the midwest has more potential to go either way.
The post you replied to said:
The one they won before that, Carter in 1976, was won by sweeping the deep south. Somehow I doubt Democrats are going to regain those voters.
Why did you even bother to quote that if you're not talking about those voters?
So, in the three elections prior to 1992, democrats got completely trounced. The one they won before that, Carter in 1976, was won by sweeping the deep south. Somehow I doubt Democrats are going to regain those voters.
One could argue that the barring-a-fascist-takeover worse that Trump is, the better an option the left will look in the next election. Though that didn't work with Dubya, so...
Donald Trump offers exactly what Southern white voters want. Why would they think the left is a better option all of a sudden?
Every election cycle that has passed since 1992, Democrats have been winning fewer and fewer counties. They have concentrated their vote almost exclusively in major urban areas that they heavily rely on to carry elections at both the state and federal level.
Not only that, but more importantly the Democratic party appears to have transformed into a party that caters mostly to wealthy professionals that are a part of the "elite". Usually Republicans have a solid advantage over Democrats when it comes to winning high-income households in elections. But in this election, Trump just *barely* edged Clinton in households with six-figure incomes. Compare this to 2012, when Romney solidly beat Obama in the same demographics. There seems to be a clear trend that Democrats have abandoned many in the middle to lower income brackets and have catered to much more affluent individuals.
To further make things worse, Democrats decided to double down on the same cosmopolitanism that cost them the election by re-electing Nancy Pelosi as US House Democratic leader. Pelosi is literally a caricature of out of touch coastal cosmopolitanism. While Hillary was a flawed candidate in many other ways, certainly one of her flaws was the fact that she was seen as an out of touch, cosmopolitan political elite who could not connect with ordinary Americans. The fact that a billionaire from New York City connected more with people from Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida and Michigan than a Democrat should shock the party to its very core. The Democrats in the house have effectively elected a symbol of the very corruption, hypocrisy and elitism that voters expressly voted against.
What can Democrats do to regain the voters they used to represent? Or has that bridge been burned?
So, in the three elections prior to 1992, democrats got completely trounced. The one they won before that, Carter in 1976, was won by sweeping the deep south. Somehow I doubt Democrats are going to regain those voters.
Well, the left is a larger percentage of the population of America generally, so the radical left being a smaller percentage of the left would have to be the case for an essentially equal numerical group to the the radical right.
Americans' political ideology remained essentially stable in the past year, with conservatives retaining the barest of advantages over moderates in Americans' self-identified political views, 37% vs. 35%. Liberals held firm at 24%.
I think most supposed moderates can be grouped into either category, and from what I've heard, when you do that liberals have the advantage.
Well, the left is a larger percentage of the population of America generally, so the radical left being a smaller percentage of the left would have to be the case for an essentially equal numerical group to the the radical right.
Americans' political ideology remained essentially stable in the past year, with conservatives retaining the barest of advantages over moderates in Americans' self-identified political views, 37% vs. 35%. Liberals held firm at 24%.
Helpful links updated:
-New Youtube video under 'What About the Poor?'.
-Wikipedia page replaced MisesWiki link under 'What is Libertarianism?'.
-New book, 'The Problem of Political Authority', added under recommended books section.
-'What is Wrong With Our Government?' section added.
-'AnarchoCapitalism' section added.
Clicked on one link, saw this gem:
And without a central government “representing” an entire geographical area, there would be no reason for a foreign country to invade a large region if they did have such a dispute.
Edit:I forgot to address your argument against my proposed gambling system of funding the minarchic government: if someone wants to ruin their life by gambling, more power to them, it is not my job to tell people what they can or can not do, and I shouldn't be guilty for allowing them to excersise their free will. Also all the government has to do to outcompete the private onlinegambling/lottery companies is to match their price/odds/winnings proportion, not that hard to do.
Isn't the Nash equilibrium of that game for the lottery to collect a vanishingly small rake? If the government is running a lottery with enough profit to fund a military, there's plenty of room for private lotteries to undercut them. If the government is running a lottery which cannot be profitably undercut, it can't possibly fund a military with its measly earnings.
Would you rather buy a lottery ticket that supports your national defense or a lottery ticket from a private business who uses the profit in a way that he/she wants?
Look, if some one ruins their life with lottery or gambling, then it's not my problem and it shouldn't be anyone's problem except that individual's. That isn't my point, my point is that we can probably fund a small government whose only role is national defense and courts with gambling as the government can outcompete the private gambling businesses for obvious reasons and monopolize the industry. And look, America spends way too much on its military it spends more than the rest of the world combined. We could cut the annual military budget by 75% and still spend more on the military per year than the second highest spender(China). The US could go without spending money on its military for many years and still be the strongest military power in the world.
Edit: Also this minarchy I am proposing would be very neutral and isolationist when it comes to foreign policy, and would try to pursue a policy of universal free trade. When you aren't upsetting anyone, there is no point in spending ridiculous amounts on the military.
Why is it obvious that this hypothetical government could outcompete private gambling?
701.35b Only two cards belonging to the same meld pair can be melded. Tokens, cards that aren’t meld cards, or meld cards that don’t form a meld pair can’t be melded.
Even though the copied card text instructs me to meld them into Chittering Host, the rules don't seem to care whether I actually end up with Chittering Host, they only care that the two cards form a meld pair, which Gisela and Bruna do. As far as I can tell, the words "into Chittering Host" on Graf Rats have no actual rules meaning.
Does this work? Would you end up with a melded Brisela?
I was making a general claim about how friendships work. You were making a specific claim about how these particular friends interacted.
No, you were making a specific claim about how these particular friends interacted:
So Roof for some reason decided to turn away from his offline non-racist friends and associates,
But he decided to take the opinion of some faceless weirdos on the internet over them.
I don't know. How often are these pundits telling you that you should commit murder?
Exactly as often as Roof's CCC website: never.
If anything, it's the other way around. Some people really do just get lung cancer out of the blue. But I have yet to find a violent white nationalist who didn't consume white nationalist literature.
That's because you haven't examined the reading habits of more than at most a handful of violent white nationalists.
If he were already convinced, we'd just be asking the tautological question of why violent people are violent again. But he was certainly receptive to it in a way that you or I obviously aren't. White nationalist propaganda isn't freaking Hypnotoad.
Being convinced that white people are under attack is not the same as being violent. That's not tautological in the least. Why is his apparent receptiveness proof of your hypothesis that he felt "under siege" and not indicative of, say, a lack of critical thinking skills and general gullibility?
I don't think we can make a claim like that without having video footage of his life and reviewing the interactions he had with his friends. What we can say is that friends generally have a profound influence on one's own worldview. I mean, I'd like to think that I'm anti-racist because the pure light of moral truth shines through that position to be apprehended by my superior rational mind, but the truth is more likely that I'm anti-racist because my friends and family are anti-racist (and that hopefully this network of people is spread wide enough to maybe catch the occasional glimpse of the pure light of moral truth). So when somebody takes a sharp right turn from their peer group, that's significant.
You were willing to make the claim that Roof had turned away from his friends, but the opposite claim requires video evidence? Perhaps instead of video evidence, you'd accept the account of those friends?
For several weeks, Dylann Roof slept on the floor here. He played video games. According to the Meeks, he showed off his new Glock .45-caliber handgun, drank heavily and retreated to his car to listen to opera. And sometimes he confided in his childhood friend Joey, who wasn’t the type to ask questions.
When Roof showed up asking Joey for a place to stay, Joey says, he invited him in without hesitation. When Roof told him that he believed in segregation, Joey didn’t ask why. When Roof mentioned driving two hours to Charleston and visiting a church called Emanuel AME, he didn’t ask anything about it. When Roof said that he was going to “do something crazy,” as Joey remembers it, he and Lindsey hid Roof’s gun but then gave it back, blowing it all off as a drunken episode.
“I didn’t take him seriously,” is what Joey says again and again to the people who keep asking the same questions again and again, including investigators who arrived at the trailer after one of the most notorious mass killings in recent American history.
Lots of people smoke cigarettes without getting lung cancer, but if you want to know why somebody got lung cancer you should still start with the fact that their hobby is inhaling burning tar.
Somehow the lung cancer-smoking link seems a smidge stronger to me than the tumblr-murder link, don't you think?
Um... he pretty obviously did believe it.
That's not what he means by disbelief, and you know it. He means he was shocked at what he found - he didn't go in expecting to find it. He wasn't already convinced when he Googled.
So the "revelation" was that polling in a few states was off by a percentage point or two? Wow, what a revelation! World-shattering!
Non-voters are generally less knowledgeable than voters. See for example:
http://www.people-press.org/2012/08/10/what-voters-know-about-campaign-2012/
(scroll down to "Knowledge Differences between Voters and Non-Voters")
Although if we're comparing to mandatory voting, it may be the case that some portion of those people would feel compelled to inform themselves if they knew they had to vote.
And what revelation is that?
The post you replied to said:
Why did you even bother to quote that if you're not talking about those voters?
Donald Trump offers exactly what Southern white voters want. Why would they think the left is a better option all of a sudden?
So, in the three elections prior to 1992, democrats got completely trounced. The one they won before that, Carter in 1976, was won by sweeping the deep south. Somehow I doubt Democrats are going to regain those voters.
I'd like to see some numbers on that.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/188129/conservatives-hang-ideology-lead-thread.aspx
Clicked on one link, saw this gem:
Does that sound correct to you?
Isn't the Nash equilibrium of that game for the lottery to collect a vanishingly small rake? If the government is running a lottery with enough profit to fund a military, there's plenty of room for private lotteries to undercut them. If the government is running a lottery which cannot be profitably undercut, it can't possibly fund a military with its measly earnings.
I'd rather buy the one that gives me better odds.
Why is it obvious that this hypothetical government could outcompete private gambling?
I control Graf Rats, Midnight Scavengers, Bruna, the Fading Light and Gisela, the Broken Blade. I cast Cytoshape to have Gisela become a copy of the rats, and a second cytoshape to have Bruna become a copy of the scavengers. I then move to combat, and attempt to meld the Bruna with the Gisela. The rules for meld say:
Even though the copied card text instructs me to meld them into Chittering Host, the rules don't seem to care whether I actually end up with Chittering Host, they only care that the two cards form a meld pair, which Gisela and Bruna do. As far as I can tell, the words "into Chittering Host" on Graf Rats have no actual rules meaning.
Does this work? Would you end up with a melded Brisela?
No, you were making a specific claim about how these particular friends interacted:
Exactly as often as Roof's CCC website: never.
That's because you haven't examined the reading habits of more than at most a handful of violent white nationalists.
Being convinced that white people are under attack is not the same as being violent. That's not tautological in the least. Why is his apparent receptiveness proof of your hypothesis that he felt "under siege" and not indicative of, say, a lack of critical thinking skills and general gullibility?
You were willing to make the claim that Roof had turned away from his friends, but the opposite claim requires video evidence? Perhaps instead of video evidence, you'd accept the account of those friends?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/09/12/an-american-void/
At what point should I expect this alienation to drive me to murder?
Somehow the lung cancer-smoking link seems a smidge stronger to me than the tumblr-murder link, don't you think?
That's not what he means by disbelief, and you know it. He means he was shocked at what he found - he didn't go in expecting to find it. He wasn't already convinced when he Googled.