UNLIMITED 2020 THREAD

[LMNO]

I feel you're putting too much faith in our legal system when it comes to rape trials. 

[The Wizard Joseph]

I feel you're putting too much faith in our legal system when it comes to rape trials.

I'm forced to accept the flawed system in lieu of full on vigilante "justice". I have seen VERY vile persons get away with literal murder because of the burden of proof being on the prosecutor and have myself gotten out of well constructed, false accusations only on a procedural technicality. I don't LIKE having to give the benefit of the doubt, but I do... for as long as the system holds anyway. I truly believe it better to incidentally let a killer walk than to hang an innocent person who happened to be in a bad circumstance or under false accusation. Our system is very bad about both, but I accept it as better than the rule of the mob.

Applied to politics this can get rather explosive very quickly indeed.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

People need to quit giving the presidential election the Popularity Contest treatment. A vote for president, no matter how it is cast (or not cast) isn't about the individual politician who occupies the space on the ballot you choose. I would have been happy to vote for Warren or Sanders and I'm going to vote for Biden just because I don't want to hear the asinine lectures about it after this election. But it isn't about Biden, or Sanders, or even Trump, it's about the philosophies and realities these candidates represent. Biden, whether anyone really wants to talk about it or not, represents the philosophy that says "sorry, sexual assault survivors, my political strategy is more important than your safety or your access to justice." Is that an ethical trade-off? Maybe, maybe not. But it is a trade off, and it's disingenuous to pretend that calculus isn't going into the decision.

So voting for, and even electing, Biden isn't just a simple matter of harm reduction. It's an endorsement of this "status quo" that everyone both hates and mysteriously feels the need to protect until some mythological point in the future where we can risk changing it (maybe, gods willing, as long as nobody gets hurt in the process, and even then only if the stars align just right).

[The Wizard Joseph]

People need to quit giving the presidential election the Popularity Contest treatment. A vote for president, no matter how it is cast (or not cast) isn't about the individual politician who occupies the space on the ballot you choose. I would have been happy to vote for Warren or Sanders and I'm going to vote for Biden just because I don't want to hear the asinine lectures about it after this election. But it isn't about Biden, or Sanders, or even Trump, it's about the philosophies and realities these candidates represent. Biden, whether anyone really wants to talk about it or not, represents the philosophy that says "sorry, sexual assault survivors, my political strategy is more important than your safety or your access to justice." Is that an ethical trade-off? Maybe, maybe not. But it is a trade off, and it's disingenuous to pretend that calculus isn't going into the decision.

So voting for, and even electing, Biden isn't just a simple matter of harm reduction. It's an endorsement of this "status quo" that everyone both hates and mysteriously feels the need to protect until some mythological point in the future where we can risk changing it (maybe, gods willing, as long as nobody gets hurt in the process, and even then only if the stars align just right).

Thus I vote Vermin.

[Doktor Howl]

I feel you're putting too much faith in our legal system when it comes to rape trials.

Okay, then, let's all not vote for Biden based on an exquisitely timed accusation.

This will work out well for everyone.  I mean, this is fucking awesome.  The left is permanently beaten, because whenever there is a candidate, they need only be accused of a crime in the distant past, and they are sunk at that very moment.

The right isn't stupid.  They know this.  We should just quit.  Hand the entire fucking place over to the pussy grabber and save ourselves some screaming and running around.

Fucking humans. 

[tyrannosaurus vex]

I feel you're putting too much faith in our legal system when it comes to rape trials.

Okay, then, let's all not vote for Biden based on an exquisitely timed accusation.

This will work out well for everyone.  I mean, this is fucking awesome.  The left is permanently beaten, because whenever there is a candidate, they need only be accused of a crime in the distant past, and they are sunk at that very moment.

The right isn't stupid.  They know this.  We should just quit.  Hand the entire fucking place over to the pussy grabber and save ourselves some screaming and running around.

Fucking humans. 

Alternatively we could stop scrambling for a "safe" position that's only "safe" compared to a catastrophic alternative but would itself be described as the catastrophic alternative 40 years ago, over and over again, forever chasing our tails and pretending we are accomplishing something but actually just delaying the inevitable. Harm reduction is fine and all but when that's your only plan, and the only plan you'll even entertain, it's sort of useless.

I wasn't this kind of accelerationist asshole a few months ago, but this "believe the accuser unless it's my guy in the crosshairs" and "only incels and MRAs complain about false accusations, except in this case because it's my guy" business just isn't for me. Is this particular accuser a Russian asset or something? Who knows? But the fact that Biden can't just brush this off because everyone knows he is at least some level of sex-creepy is also the point. At what point do we just decide flat out that there are some lines we will not cross, regardless of the disaster we're threatened with? Trump gets elected despite his predatory ways, and it's outrageous. But I guess we have to stop complaining about him, too, if it's okay for our guy because Big Important Reasons Are Bigger and More Important.

[Doktor Howl]

I am slumming on a political forum while I wait for my ban to be over, and I have to say that listening to a crowd of 50% MAGA freaks is not as bad as a quick glance at my FB feed, which is almost entirely composed of people that I agree with on actual plank items.

I am sort of looking at the final triumph of EVERYTHING.

Of the right:  "Those durn libruls made this virus in lab."

of the dems:  "Someone accused our candidate of a crime.  We must tar and feather him NOW.

of the left:  BUNRIE CAN STILL WIN HEREZ HOW URK SLOB HORK WHEEZE

Goddammit, I fucking hate people.  This country DESERVES Trump, because they have arranged things so that HE is the SMARTEST MOTHERFUCKER ON THE BLOCK.  Roll that one around in your head a minute.  You're literally DUMBER THAN TRUMP. 

Son of a bitch.

[Doktor Howl]

Alternatively we could stop scrambling for a "safe" position that's only "safe" compared to a catastrophic alternative but would itself be described as the catastrophic alternative 40 years ago, over and over again, forever chasing our tails and pretending we are accomplishing something but actually just delaying the inevitable. Harm reduction is fine and all but when that's your only plan, and the only plan you'll even entertain, it's sort of useless.

That doesn't matter anymore. 

We don't have harm reduction.  We have "listening to the goobers crow about 4 more years in office" and "watching granny starve to death because Trump and McConnell killed SNAP."

But we can all feel very superior about it.

All humans must die.

[Doktor Howl]

Well, this decides my argument with myself over which job to stick with.

Horrible death bots it is.

[Doktor Howl]

DOO BEE DOO BEE DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-attempt-remove-hundreds-thousands-off-food-stamps-974363/

[The Wizard Joseph]

Well, this decides my argument with myself over which job to stick with.

Horrible death bots it is.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

People act like the federal government is the only one with any moral obligation to help people. Why is the direct result of Trump kicking people off SNAP "so granny starved" and not "so I broke into a grocery store and stole Granny some food" or at least "so I voted in a state administration that managed that problem on their own"? We don't actually need this omnipotent proxy in Washington DC in order to look out for each other.

I get it, I too would rather have a consistent, national system of strong safety nets that look out for people who slip through the cracks. But even under 8 years of Obama, we didn't get that. We got marginally closer to it, but even St. Barry didn't actually fix much of the shit Dubya broke, just like Clinton didn't actually fix what Reagan broke, and Biden won't even come close to fixing what Trump has broken. These Democratic administrations are little retaining walls trying to stop an avalanche of bad faith and poor choices and general human idiocy.

Trump will definitely cement the Supreme Court into 40 years of backward thinking and economic predation. But if our last best hope for sanity is a few judges who might not toss out the weasely half-baked laws that only sort of cover the things we demand anyway, our hope is lost anyway. The Supreme Court wouldn't have any way to overturn a proper constitutional amendment that says "No Fuck You Abortion Is A Right", for example, but nobody wants to think about that because that's hard. We want the easy way, the quick fix, a kinda-sorta benevolent but very precarious balance between absolute terrifying fascist evil and "not quite absolute terrifying fascist evil". And we want someone else to be responsible for mitigating the misery we see around us.

[Doktor Howl]

People act like the federal government is the only one with any moral obligation to help people. Why is the direct result of Trump kicking people off SNAP "so granny starved" and not "so I broke into a grocery store and stole Granny some food" or at least "so I voted in a state administration that managed that problem on their own"? We don't actually need this omnipotent proxy in Washington DC in order to look out for each other.

I get it, I too would rather have a consistent, national system of strong safety nets that look out for people who slip through the cracks. But even under 8 years of Obama, we didn't get that. We got marginally closer to it, but even St. Barry didn't actually fix much of the shit Dubya broke, just like Clinton didn't actually fix what Reagan broke, and Biden won't even come close to fixing what Trump has broken. These Democratic administrations are little retaining walls trying to stop an avalanche of bad faith and poor choices and general human idiocy.

Trump will definitely cement the Supreme Court into 40 years of backward thinking and economic predation. But if our last best hope for sanity is a few judges who might not toss out the weasely half-baked laws that only sort of cover the things we demand anyway, our hope is lost anyway. The Supreme Court wouldn't have any way to overturn a proper constitutional amendment that says "No Fuck You Abortion Is A Right", for example, but nobody wants to think about that because that's hard. We want the easy way, the quick fix, a kinda-sorta benevolent but very precarious balance between absolute terrifying fascist evil and "not quite absolute terrifying fascist evil". And we want someone else to be responsible for mitigating the misery we see around us.

Again, it doesn't matter.  The "fix is in."  We now have the worst possible outcome, so everyone can feel good about themselves.

[Doktor Howl]

Alternatively we could stop scrambling for a "safe" position that's only "safe" compared to a catastrophic alternative but would itself be described as the catastrophic alternative 40 years ago, over and over again, forever chasing our tails and pretending we are accomplishing something but actually just delaying the inevitable. Harm reduction is fine and all but when that's your only plan, and the only plan you'll even entertain, it's sort of useless.

OH, AND ANOTHER THING:

Even if we DID vote for Social Program Jesus or whomever next time, it WON'T MATTER.  Because in the spring of 2024, someone will make an unsubstantiated claim about how Social Program Jesus raped someone in 1978 and we will dump them like hot rocks on the accusation alone, leaving Don Jr to be the next president.

Because we are fucking morons and we should just launch our entire nuclear inventory right now.  Like right fucking now.

[The Wizard Joseph]

Alternatively we could stop scrambling for a "safe" position that's only "safe" compared to a catastrophic alternative but would itself be described as the catastrophic alternative 40 years ago, over and over again, forever chasing our tails and pretending we are accomplishing something but actually just delaying the inevitable. Harm reduction is fine and all but when that's your only plan, and the only plan you'll even entertain, it's sort of useless.

OH, AND ANOTHER THING:

Even if we DID vote for Social Program Jesus or whomever next time, it WON'T MATTER.  Because in the spring of 2024, someone will make an unsubstantiated claim about how Social Program Jesus raped someone in 1978 and we will dump them like hot rocks on the accusation alone, leaving Don Jr to be the next president.

Because we are fucking morons and we should just launch our entire nuclear inventory right now.  Like right fucking now.

... you know if we set ALL of them off simultaneously we MIGHT just achieve first, and last, contact. That shit would probably be radio-visible right through the galactic core and beyond... EPIC!!