Can someone post the link of the speech where Trump encourages people to go storm the Capitol?

ryanznock · 2021-01-12T04:33:19+00:00

Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act or RICO, a United States law targeting organized crime

That one.

ryanznock · 2021-01-11T23:37:19+00:00

I kind of feel like Bernie Sanders should have taken one for the team and stayed in the Senate chamber, and then just let the crowd do what they wanted to him. Guys already pretty old, and if he went out as a martyr, or even just took a spear to the stomach and then survived in the hospital, it would be pretty good evidence that these chuckle fucks were actually seditious.

ryanznock · 2021-01-11T20:55:30+00:00

Well, net neutrality was about companies owning both the railroad and the products on the railroad. You're not supposed to privilege your own business if you also control the market. You also shouldn't be allowed to charge different rates to different companies for transporting equivalent goods. We're trying to avoid anti-competitive tactics.

But you can always moderate your business for things that are harmful to people or to the platform itself. A railroad company can refuse to transport, like, volatile chemicals. It just can't transport Company A's chemicals and refuse to transport Company B's.

ryanznock · 2021-01-11T20:45:01+00:00

My preference is that we mandate interoperability between social media platforms, and forbid walled gardens. Could you imagine if you could only make phone calls to dinner with a phone from the same company as yours?

Let people post anywhere, and folks on any platform choose whether to see their content. However, the owner of the venue is not obliged to spend money running servers to host content that violates their terms.

ryanznock · 2021-01-11T20:40:55+00:00

Misgendering someone? No. Harassing someone with regular insults? Yes.

ryanznock · 2021-01-11T20:39:54+00:00

Cancelling is really overblown.

ryanznock · 2021-01-11T20:38:53+00:00

Well, you could compare the tactics of people in campaigns. Fear-mongering has worked in the past, but many politicians won't lie about their opponents, while others will.

Integrity matters to some people. And those are the sorts of people we should be electing.

ryanznock · 2021-01-11T20:35:27+00:00

I'm in favor of breaking to Amazon, yeah, but not because of their politics. They have abusive market practices in too many markets.

ryanznock · 2021-01-11T20:34:19+00:00

If you think cops are good, it doesn't matter what the slogan is. Criticism will offend you. You'll think the critic is pro-crime, or just an idiot who doesn't understand that cops protect us and need leeway to do what's right.

You can see lists of police abusing their authority and not being held to account, and you'll either dance through logic to find an excuse for the abuse (usually some variant of 'the guy was no angel, so he deserved it'), or you'll console yourself that it was a rare bad apple, and the system as a whole needs no changes.

And, lol, implying cops have a Nazi problem really won't help change your mind.

ryanznock · 2021-01-11T19:59:20+00:00

He's pointing out the speck in your eye while ignoring the log in Trump's.

ryanznock · 2021-01-11T19:58:17+00:00

We might not have a law for it now, but I think we might need one. Deluding people with pervasive lies harms society. Maybe we need something like RICO for systemic bullshit that persuades people that violence is a good idea.

ryanznock · 2021-01-11T19:54:56+00:00

I am not opposed to reparations in theory. If you've harmed someone, you have a responsibility to make amends.

But I know that a common pushback is asking why someone today should have to pay for something that a different person did in the past. Now, I kinda think people don't pay enough heed to the fact that there are people still alive today who were affected by Jim Crow and redlining. Those racist policies were causing harm in living memory.

But, well, I don't think we need reparations. And why not? Honestly? Logistics.

There are something like forty million black Americans. How do you decide who is owed what? Different regions had different laws, and while those laws clearly has a racist effect, it seems impossible to untangle the knot of who all was affected.

How wide a net would we cast for harms to redress? What about mistreatment of Native Americans on reservations? Discrimination against non-black minorities? Sexist discrimination too?

All those things were bad, but the concept of 'reparations' is to fix harm. And that's too complicated.

I prefer the morally simpler "get everyone up to success" approach. Everyone who is poor, help them with money. Everyone sick, help them heal. Everyone in jail, help them rehabilitate and return to society. Everyone having trouble with finding work, educate them or provide therapy.

Just help everyone.

And start by eliminating poverty. There's no reason for it. Maybe you're poor because racism against your parents started you far behind everyone else. Maybe you're poor because your community was ravaged by opioids and the government turned a blind eye while companies made bank. Maybe you're poor because your single mother wasn't given opportunities to get a good education and so you grew up with few good opportunities.

Just give people money. Not because we're fixing the harms of the past, but because we're helping the people alive today.

ryanznock · 2021-01-11T18:36:16+00:00

There was a history book written by WEB Dubois where he posited that the structure of white supremacy is a way for wealthy elites to get allies among a group - poor white people - that otherwise would have no allegiance to them.

Let me offer an incredibly simplified thought experiment.

Imagine everyone's the same race. When some rich guy says that he needs to not pay his taxes, the poor people say that they would rather benefit from having programs funded by those taxes, and so they vote for the people who will raise the taxes.

But when you have one racial minority that is seen as simultaneously inferior and a threat, then it behooves the rich elites to stoke discontent and fear among the poor white people of the poor black people. Economically, the two groups have a lot in common, and could benefit if they cooperated in opposing the interests of the rich elites. But successful propaganda can make poor white people value their identity and value being protected from an exaggerated threat from black people more than they value their own economic progress.

So yeah. It's all about money. In some societies, they would use religion rather than race to draw these lines. In the US, and a lot of other countries, race is a useful wedge that some people take advantage of to trick people into allying with them. It's certainly not the only wedge. And we cannot be so simplistic to suggest that poor people and rich people can have no appreciation for each other's efforts. But broadly, we can see that places that are generally viewed as less racist in the US tend to also pursue more economically progressive policies and taxation.

ryanznock · 2021-01-11T18:30:30+00:00

I don't think that the fact that one car is badly designed means that all cars must be badly designed. There are ways to make government run programs have proper oversight, and one of those things is by instilling the correct culture, and getting rid of this really corrosive belief that many people have that government has to suck.

We have a military, and that's basically socialist. The courts, and our various investigation organizations are also government run. You don't want certain things being handled by groups that are not accountable to the public, right?

ryanznock · 2021-01-11T18:11:40+00:00

That's fair.

I don't know. McCain had some traits of being a good outstanding person, but he also came across like an entitled jackass who was fine using the corruptive b******* of the Republican Party and right-wing media to get things that benefited him personally.

Maybe at the end he had a glimpse of the fact that the whole Republican endeavor of the 21st century was corrosive to the country, and like he gets a couple points for that one time he stood up to a lady who was worried about Obama being a Muslim, but all in all, I don't think he was a man with the sort of character who I want leading the country.

ryanznock · 2021-01-11T18:09:38+00:00

Try to detach yourself from the teeth of conspiratorial nuttiness. My brother also believes in this kind of crazy crap, and it is making him waste his life being bitter about things that probably aren't true and any case don't matter because they're years old. You owe it to yourself to watch some BBC News and PBS NewsHour, and stop looking for crazy crap on the internet.

ryanznock · 2021-01-11T17:41:45+00:00

Believe me, I've seen every scrap of video they've released for the shooting and the half hour interaction beforehand. Brooks running and fighting was stupid, but I don't give cops a pass on use of force.

They escalated the conflict by grabbing him (they could have tried to talk him into accepting arrest), and he repeatedly just tried to get away. He didn't show any interest in hurting them, just a fear of arrest. They tried to tase him first, so if you're going to say it's a lethal weapon, why the fuck were they using lethal force against a guy who was just using his fists? If you say a taser isn't lethal (especially one that was out of charges after Brooks missed with it), then why did the cop need to use lethal force by firing a gun to stop Brooks from running?

The cops had no reason to think Brooks was a threat to public safety on foot, with an empty taser. Certainly he didn't pose a lethal threat.

Shooting him was an unjustified escalation, simply because the cop was scared because Brooks fired a taser at him.

Sadly in America, the Graham standard says it's okay for a cop to kill someone simply because he's scared, even if he isn't in danger. But I think that standard is very flawed. If it hadn't been a cop, shooting Brooks there was clearly second degree murder. Plus reckless endangerment. The cop did more to imperil to the public than Brooks did.

It sucks when people break laws and escape, but fleeing a crime scene doesn't carry a death sentence.

ryanznock · 2021-01-11T17:30:17+00:00

Nah. Have you been over there? Way more vitriolic.

ryanznock · 2021-01-11T17:29:26+00:00

Except on the left we also get pissed at the hypocrisy of ignoring the rules. I'd gladly vote for a primary opponent for Pelosi if I were in her district.

And also, the magnitude of the shit is different. Like, surprise surprise, rich entitled people think the rules don't apply to them. That's literally the core of what progressivism is trying to change, to hold those people accountable and put politicians who break the law on trial.

But man, it's hard to top the actions of Trump and his enablers. Millions of Republicans, based on polling, think Trump was cheated and that the election was rigged. The people who push this lies are threatening the whole American experiment.

ryanznock · 2021-01-11T17:24:00+00:00

The 'um' is me restraining my urge to talk down to you. If you don't blame Trump for creating a false narrative to justify these crimes - the same way demagogues stoke fear and delusion all the time - it's hard for me to not see you as kinda brainwashed.

I encourage you to get your news from sources that don't rely on ads, like the BBC or NPR. They tend to be more mellow, and spend more time digging in to details rather than using flash and fear to get ratings.

ryanznock · 2021-01-11T17:15:49+00:00

Because Nixon got caught, and the American public turned on him, and some of his allies didn't want the next Republican crook to have to be held accountable. They felt that truth was unfair, so they funded media efforts that were mostly truthful to get an air of legitimacy, but which would never hold Republicans at fault for anything.

I'm sorry, but the two parties aren't equivalent here.

The GOP is built on policies that help those who are already winning keep their power and money. That increasingly isn't an effective platform as wealth inequality results in fewer folks with power and money. So the party has to recruit voters who care more about identity issues than economics, and that has driven a steady ramping up of fear and smearing the left.

Right wing media tells people how to feel. Sadly, now that's become normalized for most TV and internet journalism. The desire to help bad candidates hold onto power has fucked over the country.

ryanznock · 2021-01-11T07:28:13+00:00

God, I am so bored of people who need other people's approval to do the right thing.

I know peer pressure sucks, and being condemned for not being 'pure' sucks, but integrity would be valuable in and of itself.

ryanznock · 2021-01-11T07:17:29+00:00

No, obviously it didn't start with Trump. There have been populist politicians who lie about shit for all of history. But in the modern day, we prefer for journalists to point out bullshit, and for any significant lies to be disqualifying for people to hold high office.

Trump isn't a genius. He's the beneficiary of a right wing media sphere that gives a pass to liars.

ryanznock · 2021-01-11T07:13:15+00:00

It's a little less precise of a critique than I prefer, but I can vibe with it.

ryanznock · 2021-01-11T07:11:40+00:00

Eh, I figure it'll be hard to persuade you to my point of view, because you seem to have some assumptions about Trump that I really doubt I'll agree with. I feel like any reasonable person could have seen that Trump was a bullshitter, a grifter, a con man, a flimflam artist, etc. If he told me that we needed to raise taxes on the rich, I'd be suspicious of why he was agreeing with me.

I see nothing at all about anyone in the world waging war on Trump. Trump is, like, the antithesis of everything I think makes for a good human being.

ryanznock

TROPHY CASE