Board 8 > leftist politics topic

(+) Yeah! (+)

how can you say the 2000/2004 era or the 90s was more informed or reasonable or optimistic? people have, if anything, more access to true information now than they did back then. you are using some serious nostalgia goggles if you think people were more reasonable. the complexity of the world has not really changed, the perception of certain people has only changed because the internet has allowed everyone to interact with each other and see the way other people interact with each other, too. if you think the world is more complex, it is because you weren't seeing as much of it before, not because the world itself changed.

in other news...

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/juliareinstein/proud-boys-gavin-mcinnes-protest

please be safe, everyone. do not trust cops, they are on the side of the fascists.

https://www.inquisitr.com/5115963/hillary-bill-clinton-trump-sexism-lewinsky/

you can be with #metoo or her, but not both. dems need to rid themselves of their Clinton problem and ditch both of those two for good.

Nrrr posted...

you are using some serious nostalgia goggles if you think people were more reasonable.

yeah, this is basically what i was getting at. they weren't more reasonable and they weren't more informed.

for the record, i participated in those casual political debates in '04 too. i LIKED them (provided the other side was being respectful and wasn't trolling me). it can be fun, and occasionally even enlightening, to debate something you're not a huge expert on. let's just not pretend those debates were something they weren't.
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Nrrr posted...

how can you say the 2000/2004 era or the 90s was more informed or reasonable or optimistic? people have, if anything, more access to true information now than they did back then. you are using some serious nostalgia goggles if you think people were more reasonable. the complexity of the world has not really changed, the perception of certain people has only changed because the internet has allowed everyone to interact with each other and see the way other people interact with each other, too. if you think the world is more complex, it is because you weren't seeing as much of it before, not because the world itself changed.

90s were definitely more optimistic. At least late 90s were. Early 90s had some level of recession as well.

2000 era was more informed because most of the issues were much less complex. You were younger, but anyone who didnt come of age over the past 15 years (aka somebody already in their 30s in 2004), were much better off. Also the total amount of absolute garbage opinions were smaller due to social media (or lack thereof). The ratio was more tolerable. People just went outside, maybe said something wrong, but only 4 people heard it.

A perfect illustration of whats going on these days is kinda like the scene in The Big Short with Selena Gomez and Richard Thaler. Only instead of synthetic CDOs, were now having this with just...dumb opinions. Ben Shapiro says something (most likely dumb, occasionally he says something i don't think is terribly dumb i guess), somebody makes a youtube video in support or against Ben Shapiros dumb comment, and then people make comments about the person who commented on Ben Shapiro. What happens when this entire thing implodes? This has gotten exponentially more stupid (and dangerous) since 2007, with perhaps another era starting around 2015 or so.

Things weren't anything great in 2000 or 2004 (late 90s were great although people overextended a bit in the tech sector). Also keep in mind the 2000 election didnt get crazy until after election day...the debates were actually pretty tame with Gore frequently agreeing with Bush a lot...I think Gore came across as the follower and Bush the "leader" in debates sadly, but they weren't beyond absurd. Things got this way in 2007. Even in 04 you didn't have nearly as many of layers upon layers of opinions (which also allows more out of context taking). Opinions about people's opinion on someone else's uninformed opinion etc. Who knows how wrong people can skew things after it goes down the chain.

Could you even imagine if the 2016 election had an ending like 2000s? Florida's 500 votes or whatever. The amount of social media absurdity? I mean it was already awful as hell. The campaign season was already awful, that ending would of been about the only thing that could of upped it even more.
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I mean, 2000 election was pretty dirty in the primary, with that whole caller asking how people would respond if they found out that McCain has an illegitimate black child. (He has an adopted black child).

Bush vs Gore was relatively tame on the democrat's side. I do remember a news report saying "Democrats just think Bush is stupid, but Republicans think Gore is evil incarnate because he's linked to the super sinful Bill Clinton, and that's why Bush is going to win." I don't know how accurate that assessment is, but Bush did become president, so there may be some truth to the animosity from the Republican side.
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virtually every election of my lifetime has been like that though. liberals think republicans are stupid and leftists are stupid, republicans think democrats are satan and leftists are democrats. leftists think liberals are the good cop, republicans are the bad cop, and every cop is a bad cop. nobody thinks much about libertarians because they are just conservatives who like weed and dislike age of consent laws.

Watch the debates between Bush and gore, they were extremely tame and gore was constantly agreeing with bush.

2000 primary barely mattered since Bush was a household name whose father was the director of the CIA and a former president. Gore was the incumbent VP. But there was some dirty stuff with McCain yes.
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Nrrr posted...

people have, if anything, more access to true information now than they did back then

Also this specifically is HIGHLY debateable.
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Metal_DK posted...

Watch the debates between Bush and gore, they were extremely tame

so were the obama/romney debates and they took place well after the "casual revolution." i literally can't think of anything memorable happening during those debates.

sure, the hillary/trump debates were pretty heated but that's mostly because of trump. looking back i'd actually say hillary was surprisingly tame (unless you count "basket of deplorables," though that didn't take place in a debate). i feel like she was more harsh towards obama in the campaign of the '08 election. but yeah, we'll see in the post-trump era if this tone in campaign debates is actually a trend or if it was a one-off thing.
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Obama Romney weren't tame....

Ok they weren't Clinton trump..but still they were not tame..

The first obama Romney debate was known for Obama looking disinterested and passive aggressive at Romney the entire debate...
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fair enough. pretty sure obama wasn't anywhere near trump's level of aggressiveness, though.
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I mean, there definitely have been some ill effects associated specifically with Facebook. There was a study a while back showing that racist violence in Germany correlated pretty strongly with regions that had more facebook use:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/21/world/europe/facebook-refugee-attacks-germany.html

I'm not sure if correlations have been shown for other forms of social media. It might be specifically Facebook that has these side effects.

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That said, the signs were definitely around for America to slide into some level of fascism back in the Bush era, cause the same guy who predicted the fall of the soviet union predicted a decline in US global power and brief flare up of Fascism in the US by 2020:

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/d7ykxx/us-power-will-decline-under-trump-says-futurist-who-predicted-soviet-collapse

When asked how he predicted a flare up of Fascim back in the Bush era, he basically said that he observed this kind of behaviour back in the Bush era:

The book sets out a whopping 15 "synchronizing and mutually reinforcing contradictions" afflicting the US, which he says will lead to US global power ending by 2020within just four years. Galtung warned that during this phase of decline, the US was likely to go through a phase of reactionary "fascism".

He argued that American fascism would come from a capacity for tremendous global violence; a vision of American exceptionalism as the "fittest nation"; a belief in a coming final war between good and evil; a cult of the strong state leading the fight of good against evil; and a cult of the "strong leader".

All of which, Galtung said, surfaced during the Bush era, and which now appear to have come to fruition through Trump. Such fascism, he told Motherboard, is a symptom of the declinelashing out in disbelief at the loss of power.

I dunno if his predictions will still line up. We haven't exactly seen "tremendous global violence" under Trump, and it's 2018, so there's only a couple years left on his 2020 timetable. Although with his Soviet Union collapse prediction he predicted they would collapse by 1990, and they collapsed in 1989, so Galtung squeezed in under that timetable. If this prediction still holds, Trump will be getting into some wars in the next year or two. But so far Trump has been pretty good about avoiding wars, and the one time I remember Trump supporters being angry with him was when he bombed Syria so.... Jury's out on the "tremendous global violence" part. The flare up of fascim and cult of a "strong leader" do seem to apply, though.
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Metal_DK posted...

The first obama Romney debate was known for Obama looking disinterested and passive aggressive at Romney the entire debate...

The first Obama Romney debate happened on Obama's wedding anniversary, and he was visibly distracted the whole time and kind of performed like shit.

So...there's reasons for that behaviour that are not related to social media.
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Its social media in general.

1) everyone is jealous of each other now, rather than supportive. I know 40 somethings at my office who brag about having more Instagram followers than others and getting more likes and what not

2) people have way more opinions on things but are either pathetically informed or just saying stuff to feel part of the group

3) it causes people to not move on in life and close chapters. I know people who still stalk exes from 2010 on fb. That's almost a decade ago. Could you imagine in say 1997 being like "oh I'm just keeping tabs on an ex from 1990". People would tell you to get help. Now it's the standard it seems
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metroid composite posted...

The first Obama Romney debate happened on Obama's wedding anniversary, and he was visibly distracted the whole time and kind of performed like shit.

That wasnt the reason get real. He didnt want to debate Romney because he legitimately didnt like what he stood for, which I side way more with obama on mind you.

He was distracted from his anniversary? Wtf are you serious? This is a man who had been president for 4 years...hes had distractions every day during Malias birthday or something else.
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Metal_DK posted...

He didnt want to debate Romney because he legitimately didnt like what he stood for, which I side way more with obama on mind you.

ok, but what does this have to do with social media?
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When did I say it did? You said the debates were tame. Compared to trump Clinton sure. I'm saying social media caused increased hostility in politics and it plays out in presidential debates.

Until we see a significant decline in social media use, presidential debates will be more hostile. Not necessarily increasingly hostile from election to election (ebbs and flows do happen), things like personality of candidates do matter, but 2008 was the first election of the current era. Social media is why, even moreso than the financial collapse
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And post 165 was what I was more interested in discussing
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Metal_DK posted...

That wasnt the reason get real. He didnt want to debate Romney because he legitimately didnt like what he stood for, which I side way more with obama on mind you.

He was distracted from his anniversary? Wtf are you serious? This is a man who had been president for 4 years...hes had distractions every day during Malias birthday or something else.

Um yes? Unless you think that Obama's performance in the second and third debate was identical to the first, which would be what you would expect if he simply did not want to debate Romney due to ideological differences. Although I can't see why that would be the case when Romney and McCain's positions are similar enough, and Obama had no issue debating McCain.

There's news reports saying as much--here is a history of all sorts of weird scandals that happened in debates, including the Obama/Romney one:

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/history-of-weirdness-at-presidential-debates-774574147524?v=railb&;

The Obama/Romney one is about 9:00 into the video, but other stuff includes stealing from other campaigns (in 2000 and 1980), including people who underwent FBI investigations and went to jail.
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I'm sorry if you think Obama's anniversary was too distracting for him and that's why he didnt perform well in the first debate then maybe Romney should of won. When campaigning for the most important position in our government you tend to put things like anniversaries on hold.

Hell people with ordinary jobs put birthdays on hold all the time when they work on their birthday. Something like a presidential debate from the sitting president? Dude get real.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_debates,_2012

Search "anniversary". Ya nothing. Something as important and noteworthy as it should be here right?
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And obama won the 2nd and 3rd because he took his opponent seriously. In the first debate he clearly had the body language of "I cant believe we are still taking these recycled ideas from Republicans seriously" in the 2nd and 3rd debates he was more "ok I guess we have to still do this"
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Metal_DK posted...

search "anniversary". Ya nothing. Something as important and noteworthy as it should be here right?

Are you really claiming that it wasn't Obama's anniversary?

https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/10/04/romney-gives-obama-debate-trouncing-as-anniversary-gift/

Also, literally Obama's opening statements:

OBAMA: Well, thank you very much, Jim, for this opportunity. I want to thank Governor Romney and the University of Denver for your hospitality.

There are a lot of points I want to make tonight, but the most important one is that 20 years ago I became the luckiest man on Earth because Michelle Obama agreed to marry me.

And so I just want to wish, Sweetie, you happy anniversary and let you know that a year from now we will not be celebrating it in front of 40 million people.

Like...to be clear I literally agree with you that social media is contributing to societal decline, I linked the article of the scientific study showing that increased use of Facebook is strongly correlated with increased racial violence.

But as the saying goes "when you have a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail". All I'm saying is that the first Obama/Romney debate is not the nail you're looking for.

Hell people with ordinary jobs put birthdays on hold all the time when they work on their birthday. Something like a presidential debate from the sitting president?

Yes, actually, there is a big difference between self sacrifice and making your spouse angry. If I have to lose some sleep or work on my birthday, yeah, let's do it, it's just me, I can push through it. If I'm at work and my SO texts me to talk right now, I drop what I'm doing, step away from my desk, and talk. This is part of being in a relationship, and making the person you're in a relationship with feel loved.
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metroid composite posted...

But as the saying goes "when you have a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail". All I'm saying is that the first Obama/Romney debate is not the nail you're looking for.

Ok you are taking me very out of context now. I never said social media was the reason for obama Romney debates happening the way they did. I said they caused increased hostility. Because social media has. Lasa said they were tame. They werent
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Right cause Michelle is such a self centered bitch that she cant celebrate it a day later? This is the sitting president ffs shed been through stuff like that for years
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Oh u accused me of not thinking it was their anniversary. No. I'm saying that wasnt the reason why he fucked up the first debate.
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what do you guys think about Trump?
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Metal_DK posted...

Its social media in general.

1) everyone is jealous of each other now, rather than supportive. I know 40 somethings at my office who brag about having more Instagram followers than others and getting more likes and what not

2) people have way more opinions on things but are either pathetically informed or just saying stuff to feel part of the group

3) it causes people to not move on in life and close chapters. I know people who still stalk exes from 2010 on fb. That's almost a decade ago. Could you imagine in say 1997 being like "oh I'm just keeping tabs on an ex from 1990". People would tell you to get help. Now it's the standard it seems

I agree with most of this. EVERYONE is their own media now, everyone can act like they are an "influencer"
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SuperNiceDog posted...

what do you guys think about Trump?

he is a fascist, narcissist game show host, the embodiment of everything ugly about americans, and the desperate cry of an empire turning to fascism in light of its decline. he is extremely poorly equipped to handle the crisis we will face, and if our species manages to survive more than another few decades it will be entirely in spite of his efforts.

SuperNiceDog posted...

what do you guys think about Trump?

He has disgraced the good name of Toad and shall pay dearly for this transgression.
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as i've stated before in the politics containment topic, i like how trump isn't one of those ultra-religious republicans (unlike, say, GWB).

...as far as positive stuff i can say about trump goes, that's pretty much it.
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The Richard Ojeda ads are pretty great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlqrxf0PYws" data-time="

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ofh_QHho_qA" data-time="

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jes9of0S4uM" data-time="

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lLvh0Y0TTY" data-time="
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Ojeda seems pretty legit. Doesn't take money from anyone but labor unions and small donations. I do worry about the fact he voted for Trump, but at least he admits he was wrong, and maybe a guy like him is perfect to get Trump country back into the labor movement and voting for Dems.

He seems like he cares at least, but who knows if hell know how to do anything
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This article kind of hits home for me, cause one of my best friends grew up in Oklahoma, I met her back when she was still very Republican, and now she lives in Canada and swings relatively left by Canadian standards.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/red-state-teacher-strike-ballot-blue.html

Then with the Oklahoma teachers strike last April, my politics just shifted completely. I walked out because the future of Oklahoma is in trouble. I teach science, and we do not have the budget to do experiments in the classroom. Kids from other states come in and theyre so far ahead; they say, Man, we were doing this in middle school. But its not just science, its all across the board. Some classes have 40 or more students because a teacher quit and with our low wages, they couldnt find a replacement. Its not uncommon to meet a ninth- or tenth-grade student who has never seen a new textbook during all their years in school. Students in high school wont bat an eye when theyre told there is literally no book available for the course. Others have had a newly hired teacher every single year from first grade through ninth grade, never getting the benefit of a seasoned educator. None of this bodes well for our workforce, or the kinds of leaders were going to have in education.

As public school teachers, we spend around 60 hours a week teaching and grading papers, but we felt like we had to go up to the capitol and lobby for public education too. We started visiting with lawmakers and bartering over budget plans. I was struck by how they talked to us. They dismissed us. They talked down to us. It was true of all of them, but especially the Republican leaders. The next week we were still there talking about budget items, like a tiny income-tax increase which isnt really raising taxes, its restoring taxes, because our lawmakers had cut them so low. They seemed shocked and stunned that we knew our stuff and could use all the political lingo. They didnt know how to respond; it was amazing to see how little they expected of us. It was sad.

Previously, whenever I heard people say Republicans are out for the rich and dont care about the poor, Id think, No, Im not rich. I care about the poor and I know so many Republicans who do too. But I learned a lot of politics is about how you appropriate money, and how you set up various social services. After we talked to our representatives, the teachers would huddle over dinner, break out our computers, and pore over the budget. We were students, breaking down the information in ways we could understand. We learned that money was flowing to private prisons and oil companies; they get money, and social services just dont. It changed the way that I saw the entire Republican Party. You value what you put your money in.

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That person is really confusing for me. What exactly do they value about the Republican platform? Why are they voting for them in the first place? If she was seeing the light about how she should never vote for them again I could understand it, but just mostly voting against Republicans...if she is bothered that they support business but not social programs, how can she support any of them?

I mean, it sounds like she's getting to that point, but people's political views don't do a full 180 overnight.

It's also possible she wants higher school spending, but doesn't like everything in the democratic platform (my friend from Oklahoma took a long time to change her position on abortion, for example).

Anyway, here's the final story written by Jamal Khashoggi

https://wapo.st/2P7ER8x
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So...policy question time.

Facebook had some bad data where it inflated video views by up to 900%, and basically told print media that millennials only watch video. (As a milenial on GameFAQs, a pure text forum, I find this funny, but ok).

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-45901287

The story itself isn't that interesting, but the fallout is concerning. Basically lots of writing and editing teams lost their job because of this pronouncement. Basically every big news media company fired writers and editors en masse.

My instinct feels like there should be some level of regulation in place that stops so many people from losing their job because one idiot at Facebook fucked up their maith, but I'm really struggling to think of what would be appropriate in this case. One suggestion I've seen is that anti-trust laws should be applied to Facebook and it should be broken into smaller companies, but I'm not actually sure how that would work. Would you split Facebook into multiple competing social media platforms? Cause people would just pick one--It's not like Myspace didn't exist before Facebook, just everyone wants to be on the same platform as all their friends.

Obviously they're getting sued over this, but one programmer at Facebook having bad math or bad code is something that's just plain going to happen. There's no regulation you can make of "Facebook isn't allowed to make mistakes"--like...they will make mistakes; need to deal with it.

I could maybe see making Facebook a public utility so that they're not driven by profit, but that is a pretty drastic step. (And would likely cause somewhat of an exodus of users. I'm sure there's lots of people who have no qualms giving all their personal data to Facebook, but would not trust the federal government with the same information. Also, would FOIA requests now be applicable to Facebook user data?)

Seems like a mess; I don't have an easy answer.
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Semi-related, but I HATE the shift from print media to videos/podcasts. Not that I don't watch videos or listen to podcasts, but I hate how everyone feels it necessary to format whatever they have to say as an audio medium. I can read an article in five minutes and glean more information from it, because I can see specific words, search for what I'm looking for, and whatever. But podcasts go for several hours, and even videos take too damn long to get to whatever point they're trying to make. Plus, there are times when I can't listen to an audio file, because I either don't have access, or I'm in a location where listening to sound isn't appropriate. And to make matters worse, I feel like podcasts/videos dumb things down a lot more and prevent people from doing the critical analysis they might do otherwise, in a text-based format.
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metroid composite posted...

The story itself isn't that interesting, but the fallout is concerning. Basically lots of writing and editing teams lost their job because of this pronouncement. Basically every big news media company fired writers and editors en masse.

I feel like they should be the ones getting sued, not Facebook? (Okay, maybe Facebook too.) It's a shitty situation, but it's one that can be solved by not firing people based on random figures someone else's website gives you.
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Podcasts suck, cause they are mostly unscripted rambling with minimal editing from people who don't know very much. (Mostly).

I think there is quite a bit of value in video if it's well edited though.

Like...take this for example: a video I clicked on just because I've liked EC in the past, and because I watched the video, learned a bunch of history I had literally never heard of before:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLpzHHbFrHY" data-time="

But uhh...yeah, in no way should this replace print media. If I wanted to go more in depth on this subject instead of just getting my first exposure to the subject from a Youtube video, I'd immediately go start looking at written sources.
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