Clinton v Trump: Dawn of Presidency

Buzz201 said:
The more people age, the more people have to protect, the more conservative they become. It's foolish to think either Sanders or Corbyn will maintain their current positions for any extreme length of time. To take a reliable centre rhetoric off the ballot is simply insane, and Labour will continue to be punished for it.
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That was probably true back in the days when people amassed wealth as they aged rather than debt, and when living costs and people's wages were relatively connected. And when our leaders actually cared about the well-being of their nation's citizens rather than their own bank balances. The young of today are not going to get richer because they have leeches attached to them in the shape of global financial, corporate and political elites.

Buzz201 said:
The "new world order" of which you speak, is more than likely a hard right one, regardless of what you'll try and convince yourself. And quite frankly, if the choice is between hard right and hard left, don't be surprised if hard right always wins.
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There isn't really much of a hard left any more. They all got soft and complacent and thought words were more important than deeds, now they've seen outraged tweets and hearts of glass don't win elections maybe they'll toughen up again.

Buzz201 said:
Sinking to their level does not help. If we disagree with their behaviour we should aspire to better than them, rather than pettier than them.
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Personally I've always been of the opinion you should aspire to win. Methods aren't particularly important if you achieve your desired result.
 
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ayase said:
Personally I've always been of the opinion you should aspire to win. Methods aren't particularly important if you achieve your desired result.
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By that logic, it's OK to rig an election if "the right side" wins.

I'm firmly in the agree to disagree camp here.
 
I'd be interested to see some polling of Clinton supporters now on whether they think it would have been okay to rig the election to stop Trump. I get the distinct feeling more than a few people would grudgingly admit that would have been acceptable for the greater good as they see it.

Democracy, much like the Geneva Conventions, doesn't seem so attractive any more when you find your side losing. Humanity makes these very noble rules for themselves but they are fundamentally anathema to human nature - Who'd honestly choose to lose fairly over winning unfairly if they believe something as important as the future of their society is at stake?
 
ayase said:
I'd be interested to see some polling of Clinton supporters now on whether they think it would have been okay to rig the election to stop Trump. I get the distinct feeling more than a few people would grudgingly admit that would have been acceptable for the greater good as they see it.

Democracy, much like the Geneva Conventions, doesn't seem so attractive any more when you find your side losing. Humanity makes these very noble rules for themselves but they are fundamentally anathema to human nature - Who'd honestly choose to lose fairly over winning unfairly if they believe something as important as the future of their society is at stake?
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The person smart enough to realise that if the Democrats did it this year, they'd have no right to get upset when the Republicans do it in 2020. If you allow rigging, it then becomes a battle of who can rig the election the most -- a race to the bottom, if ever there was.
 
Even in so-called democracies the political parties are constantly abusing "legal" ways to try and rig elections in their favour anyway. Gerrymandering, voter ID laws etc. and that's before we even get to the biased media on both sides (though usually very much pro-establishment) trying to manipulate voters with what are often downright lies, especially when it comes to smaller parties or candidates that they worry might eat into their preferred candidate's vote share. That's when they bother to cover them at all.

The bottom line as far as I'm concerned is this:
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Trying to play fair against people who smile and tell you they're playing by the rules and keep stressing how important it is to do so, while being utterly corrupt themselves (which is our entire establishment) is just a massive waste of time. Because you can't win. Democracy is nothing but a sham concocted by professional con-artists.
 
I mean it's cute that genuinely think anti-establishment candidates would work, and wouldn't simply become the establishment or some equivalent there of. Especially since you'd be reliant on the establishment and it's conventions actually accepting them.

But for the vast majority of people who don't really care about the illuminati or the Koch brothers (who coincidentally didn't run pro-Trump or anti-Hillary ads during the electoral season) or some elites we've concocted an idea of or whoever controlling the world. It's very much a case of better the devil you know.
 
Buzz201 said:
I mean it's cute that genuinely think anti-establishment candidates would work, and wouldn't simply become the establishment or some equivalent there of. Especially since you'd be reliant on the establishment and it's conventions actually accepting them.
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Not if you have enough support to dismantle it. Anti establishment movements and people are what interests me. Candidates for election, I'm not so concerned about. We saw how that went with Tsipras in Greece, the spineless coward. There are alternatives to "democracy" and the electoral process.

Buzz201 said:
But for the vast majority of people who don't really care about the illuminati or the Koch brothers (who coincidentally didn't run pro-Trump or anti-Hillary ads during the electoral season) or some elites we've concocted an idea of or whoever controlling the world. It's very much a case of better the devil you know.
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For the comfortable, well off people in society who can see their lives improving, sure. But there are less of those in the developed world with every passing day as the people at the top siphon off everybody else's wealth and the ordinary people see themselves becoming less well off, and that's what our current system has been tacitly condoning and encouraging for decades now.
 
Im not a well off person I'm working/middle class family and I dont want these 'send a message' type politics I voted remain i would have voted Clinton and I vote labour. I believe in main politics.
 
qaiz said:
231,556,622 eligible voters
46.9% didn't vote

Nice.
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So the election had a distinctly average turnout after all that, huh?

Trump won with the lowest vote tally since 2000 and the lowest vote share since 1992.
Clinton got the highest ever number of votes for the defeated candidate and the highest vote share for a defeated candidate since 2000.

This is the 5th time the result of a US presidential election has gone against the public vote, and the fourth time that the Republicans have been the beneficiaries (the first time it happened both first and second place were "Democratic-Republican" in description)
 
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ayase said:
Democracy, much like the Geneva Conventions, doesn't seem so attractive any more when you find your side losing. Humanity makes these very noble rules for themselves but they are fundamentally anathema to human nature - Who'd honestly choose to lose fairly over winning unfairly if they believe something as important as the future of their society is at stake?
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You do have to be careful that your methods don't undermine your goals though. You could use unfair methods to build a fair society, as long as you're not encouraging others to use similar methods (so probably don't get caught) and you stop using them if you're going to be a part of that society.

I suppose it mostly depends on what goals a person has, there may be specific things that are of crucial importance to them and other things that they're more flexible on. Different people might have different ideas about what exactly constitutes a "better society", for example. They may not even agree on exactly who should count as a part of that society and who should benefit from it.

I think people often use "human nature" as an excuse for choices or assumptions that they've made. People can choose to do all sorts of things, even things that go against their instincts or beliefs. People can certainly choose to do things that go against their own interests (or seem to), examples should be fairly easy to find when looking at politics.
 
Smeelia said:
I suppose it mostly depends on what goals a person has, there may be specific things that are of crucial importance to them and other things that they're more flexible on. Different people might have different ideas about what exactly constitutes a "better society", for example. They may not even agree on exactly who should count as a part of that society and who should benefit from it.
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Well of course, I mean that's why politics and even conflict exists in the first place - Because we can't all agree on what's best for everyone but nor can we exist as individuals completely separate from the rest of society.

Hopefully we won't have to wait too long until human nature itself is removed from the equation and the purely logic-based and incorruptible Governing Machines take over and do what's best for us whether we like it or not. Bring on the singularity.
 
Supposedly (according to have I got news for you at least) Farage is in the US and there are rumours he could be appointed by Trump... as some kind of ambassador... to the EU.
 
There's already attempts to get the Trump result rejected. Apparently the results recorded this week aren't fully accurate and so there are ways to officially contest it.

Will just say though, I'm put off by how Americans I know treated Brexit as a punchline but this is super serious. People live valid lives outside America, guys. Don't be hypocrites.
 
HellCat said:
Apparently the results recorded this week aren't fully accurate and so there are ways to officially contest it.
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Do you have a source for this? You'd need both Michigan and Florida to go from Trump to Clinton to actually change the results. Or Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin (just Michigan and Pennsylvania without New Hampshire going the other way would lead to a tie, which hands the decision to the Republican-controlled House).
So it would have to be something pretty big to actually challenge the outcome.
Michigan (Trump ahead) and New Hampshire (Clinton ahead) have yet to be officially called as they're deemed close enough for a recount to be possible, but it would be very surprising indeed if one of the other states changed to Clinton. It's a 120000 vote difference in Florida, for instance.
 
msgeek said:
Supposedly (according to have I got news for you at least) Farage is in the US and there are rumours he could be appointed by Trump... as some kind of ambassador... to the EU.
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Its very much doubtful, how ever funny Andrew Neil placed it.

HellCat said:
Admittedly I think a lot of these fall under the hopeless "Stop Brexit!" petitions we saw in June and July.
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ISN'T IT FUNNY?
 
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Everybody's probably seen this by now but it's worth a repost because... Yeah. That's pretty much everything that needs to be said.


It's come to something when you start hating the side you're on as much as the opposition. But clearly I'm not the only one.
 
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