Off Topic Politics Thread

Yeah. Now, if you like something, and hit the button, you can dislike to remove the like. I can see the logic, but you can't simply disapprove. Perhaps we shouldn't have a Like button at all?

 

oh dear, Donny is defending the woman who killed the biker. We've all done it he says. Not the point 45. The point is she ran away.

 

I'm not even referring to the business side of things.

I'm talking about the fact that if anyone says something negative towards China (ie: the NBA guy recently), China throws its toys around and the offending person/s have to backtrack and apologise.

China said that no airline could use their airports if they described Taiwan as being a seperate country. Almost immediately every airline fell in line.

These are just two of countless examples.

And don't even get me started on what is happening in the South China Sea.

Also, you know right now how hard the propaganda machine is working in China regarding Hong Kong? The majority of mainlanders right now despise the Hong Kongers. I teach young Chinese kids, and some of them (as young as 8 years old), tell me exactly that. One of them told me he wants to go to war with HK.

A country with too much power is one thing. A country with too much power, and total control over its people, is frankly terrifying.

And the only country that will be able to stop China in the end, is China itself.

 

Yep, I know. But it was a minor one. He had stents fitted and is recovering well. I wouldn't want him to kill himself to become POTUS. Warren would do as a substitute. Any of the Progressive Democrats owe Bernie Sanders the most enormous debt. Because if one of them becomes POTUS it's because he has unceasingly been working for a fairer society for 40 odd years.

 

Yeah, but I mean, you all don’t exactly have the moral high ground when it comes to Hong Kong.

Those poor Hong Kong protestors are appealing to Donald Trump to save them. As if. And when Facebook shut down all the fake news right wing Trump sites, they discovered some of the most prominent ones were run by Falun Gong. So like, they’re not exactly helping the cause for global Democracy and tolerance.

The US— particularly Conservatives— love trying to destabilize that area. When we want to show up China, we sell Taiwan some really ****ty 30 year old broken fighter planes and tell them we love them. Then when China gets mad, we disappear. We’re not about to lift a finger to help Taiwan.

Of course what China is doing is awful. But it’s more complex than just “China bad.” Trump isn’t putting tariffs on China to stop human rights violations. Not even to win a trade war. Trump only cares about Donald Trump. The NBA only cares about $$.

China complains about an NBA GM who backs Hong Kong. You all occupied Hong Kong for like, 150 years. Trump wants the NFL to ban any player who kneels for the pre-game National anthem. Who is better?

I support any true NGO that fights for human rights in Hong Kong and anywhere in the world. And I agree it’s only proper to stand by the protestors. At the same time,I think we also need to be sensitive to the fact that our governments and some of our corporations don’t actually give a **** and our only trying to make China look bad for their own interests. At least the UK isn’t palling around with Duterte and Putin like we are. Like suddenly Russia are the good guys? Oh and we just totally ****ed over the Kurds. What we just did was an utter disgrace. I have more rights than the people in Hong Kong (for now), so I can't complain about the domestic situation. But when it comes to fighting for Democracy and what’s right around the globe, the US are by far the biggest ****s in the world right now. I trust Morey’s heart was in the right place but the best thing he can do for HK and the world is butt out for now and concentrate his efforts on stopping the asshole running his own country.

It’s just a supremely messed up situation in the world right now. Hard to know how to give voice to the people who need them without also playing into the hands of the racists and bigots using their plight for their own purposes.

 

Why do you think Trump would be done if Clinton runs again? At the last election I was quite taken back by the dislike and distrust of Clinton by the majority of my American colleagues of the time.

They said, “Yeah, Trump is an idiot but he means what he says. Clinton is just a liar.”

 

Clinton was an awful candidate; a remote establishment figure with absolutely nothing to offer abandoned rust belt communities or the urban poor. Joe Biden is worse. The only reason Trump might get re-elected is because the Democrats seem unlikely to select a candidate capable of inspiring people.

 

On inspiration, I guess my question would be: if you look at the major democracies at the moment, how many are led by inspirational figures? How many major parties are led by inspirational figures? Not many; the likes of Barack Obama, who are capable of being seen as inspiring by a broad swath of the population, are really, really rare. You'll certainly find more factional examples (and frankly, Trump has to qualify as such a figure, he wouldn't have been elected had he not turned out a lot of white working class people who seldom vote), but I think that people often mistake what inspires them for what will inspire the population as a whole.

Sanders is an example there; his poll numbers are proof positive that, while a certain segment of the Democratic electorate finds him inspiring, that group pales in comparison to those that do not. I find Warren inspirational, but that shouldn't be surprising...I'm a white liberal with a college degree, and her success thus far in the primary has been predicated upon winning over people like me. But she has a serious weakness right now with black voters (every candidate but Biden does, basically), and if she fails to win, I understand that it's not that those voters decided they wanted a more prosaic candidate, but because they didn't find her as exciting a figure as I do.

That's part of what leads to less inspirational candidates winning...if you have someone that gets 25% of your voting base (or the general public) really excited, but rings hollow with the majority, they'll lose to the person who the other 75% thought was broadly acceptable. If you can find a candidate that inspires the masses, absolutely: pick them, though you probably just need to sit back and wait for them to win on their own accord. But there is a difference between "why don't they pick an inspiring candidate?" versus "why don't they pick a candidate who inspires me?"

 

Doesn't history suggest that Democrats only win when they put up an inspirational candidate? Kennedy, Carter, Clinton, Obama could all be described as inspirational. Dukakis, Gore, John Kerry, and Clinton H, very much less so.

I remember the despair and disgust emanating from Bruce Springsteen when he allowed himself to be arm twisted into playing for Hilary at some Electoral event or other. When your options are to vote for the establishment candidate you least despise, or not to vote at all, it must be pretty tempting to just stay in bed on polling day. Makes me feel grateful for Jeremy Corbyn.

 

Seeing Boris and Corbyn as the candidates on the ballot must make crawling back into bed quite tempting for many.

 

You're looking at it backwards. The times that Dukakis, Gore, Kerry and Clinton won? There weren't candidates that inspired enough people on the menu. It's not like any of them won out over five-star political geniuses, and when Clinton was matched against such a candidate, she lost.

And Corbyn's a good example of what I'm talking about. He's inspirational...for some. Not that many, it seems. If he appealed to a broader audience, Labour wouldn't be mired around 25%, and he wouldn't have a staggeringly bad net approval rating. He's precisely what happens when you run a candidate who inspires a narrow faction while turning off the vast majority.

 

Same as poor old Michael Foot. A lovely chap who hadn't an ounce of political nous. Corbyn is going to lose a lot of seats this time, my guess is that he will struggle to get 200. Our only hope is that the LD's win enough Tory ones to deny Pfeffel a majority with the SNP. I'm resonably confident that will happen. Personally I am in a quandary as the LD's came third in my area but not a distant third. On balance I'm going to take a gamble and vote LD.

 

Governments are bad. That's pretty much universal. Every single country has done sh*t in the past of course. It isn't about claiming the moral high ground.

The point is, in the US/UK, the public can try to fight their own government's decisions through protest etc. Look how much the British and American people are trying to keep their leaders in check right now. Whether we will be successful or not who knows. Historically, look at the American public protesting during Vietnam.

The situation in China is completely different. The people and the government are basically one and the same, through design. There is nothing the public can do to stop their government. In fact, the propaganda over there is bonding the government and the people together more and more as we speak.

 

This, IMO, just shows how powerful the right wing media is, in this country.
The 75% he doesn’t appeal to, are quite likely having their opinion shaped by the negative, and often untrue, comments written/spoken by supporters of the Conservatives, in the media.
They also don’t get to see what his intentions are, unless they are again represented in a negative manner, with no right to reply.
I have asked people why they don’t like Corbyn, and they haven’t once put forward a coherent response and often just mention what they have read in their daily, right wing, papers.

 

I highly doubt that. The right-wing media is a problem, but Corbyn's approval ratings are so far below those of previous Labour leaders (they are, in truth, the worst approval ratings I've ever seen for a major party leader in any country) that it suggests that Corbyn is much of the problem. Hell, my politics largely align with him, and I'm mercifully free of the influence of the tabloids, and I find Corbyn to leave an awful lot to desire.

Compare Corbyn with Obama. Obama had a massive, weaponized media complex against him from day one. He also had the harsher spotlight that generally accompanies being the leader of a country and not a party, in the absolutely toxic partisan environment of the modern United States. His net approval rating was sometimes as bad as -10% (ie., disapproval running 10 points above approval), but he left with a positive differential. Taking an average of Corbyn's five most recent polling results, he's at -48%. There are venereal diseases with broader support. I have no doubt that the media has hurt him, but I also cannot fathom that it alone can be the difference between Corbyn being as popular as foot fungus and his destiny as a broadly beloved inspirational figure.

 

Yes and no. Corbyn and his immediate circle must take some responsibility for the failure to get their message across. But no other British political leader in the modern era has been the target of such a sustained, orchestrated campaign of vilification as Corbyn. And that’s from the supposedly liberal media as well as the vociferous right.

 

I can't let you get away with that without comment. I have been a Labour activist since 1970 serving fourteen years as a district councillor. I'm not fooled by media bias. Corbyn just isn't up to the job, can't think on his feet and his performances at PMQ's have been woeful, he misses open goal after open goal and he dodges radio interviews even when it's the BBC who are neutral. It's too late to save Labour from the electoral disaster about to overtake them, let's just hope Pfeffel doesn't end up with a big majority. If he does there is only one person to blame.

 

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I'm already crawling back to me bed.....................