General Politics Thread

Vashdaman said:
It really is scandalous isn't it, though hardly unexpected from tories. The worst thing of course is how tragically incompetent those companies have been.
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I'm at the point now where I almost expect a level of corruption from this "government" and their money grabbing "friends", Serco running the tracing is especially a very bad joke, since the CEO of SERCO is Nicholas Soames (former Tory MP, who was kicked out last year) Brother.
 
Well-here in the US in a less than a day the crap is gonna hit the fan and everybody I know says trump is gonna get his ass handed to him. I really hope that's the case because the US doesn't need 4 more years of that blathering idiot in the Whitehouse.
 
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Well done Joe, you're sucessfully picking up low single digit percentage points of those white male voters everyone thought was so important with your middle of the road appeal and failed miserably to inspire anyone else. Is it perhaps time to admit the political centre is just effing dead?

Edit: 7:30am, time for bed. If it’s 269 to 269 when I wake up, I will laugh heartily. Why even bother trying to keep such a divided country together, New California Republic when?
 
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Who knows? The us erection (oops-meant to say election.LOL) is the biggest mess that I've ever experienced in my lifetime.
 
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zrdb said:
Who knows? The us erection (oops-meant to election.LOL) is the biggest mess that I've ever experienced in my lifetime.
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"This erection is a huge cock-up" might have worked better. Still, erection implies something is working properly or proceeding as planned, what you've got here is a serious case of electile dysfunction.

Still, what a riot, and the actual riots haven't even started yet. A President who either doesn't know or is pretending not to know how his own country's various voting systems work (last I checked Republicans were usually in favour of states' rights to set their own rules). An absolute post-truth society moment where facts are simply an annoyance to be swatted away. Mitch McConnelI admitting frivolous litigation is "the American way". But my favourite so far is probably the ridiculous spectacle of certain "Christians" praying for the election of possibly the least Christ-like person ever to hold the office (and that's saying something considering some of the previous inhabitants of the White House). George Carlin was not wrong, America. And bless the internet for giving us all those coveted front row seats.
 
I'm just annoyed Hunter S. Thompson didn't stick it out a few more years and wasn't alive to see any of this. He was exactly the man we needed in these times. I recall reading this piece shortly after Trump was elected which I think understood the zeitgeist better than just about any other take. We've learned nothing in the four years since then, of course, and the polarization has only gotten worse. Shout louder. Give no ground. Don't fraternize with the enemy or try to understand them. I can't even concieve of what is coming next, but the 2020s are looking like they're going to be a very interesting decade.

Edit: And that’s a wrap. Write the tabloid headlines, I’ll be severely disappointed if no-one runs with:
BIDEN
HIS TIME
 
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ayase said:
I’ll be severely disappointed if no-one runs with:
BIDEN
HIS TIME
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Good job Metro, I’ll assume my cheque is in the post?
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The New York Post’s “IT’S JOE TIME” is also acceptable, as is The Ayrshire News’ “SOUTH AYRSHIRE GOLF CLUB OWNER LOSES 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION”.
 
It makes me feel dirty to admit it, but today Boris actually managed to help me out where Starmer and Sturgeon, given the chance, would have utterly screwed me over. I'm due to return to the UK from abroad in February and while the cost of the (evidently fairly inacurrate) PCR test is bad enough, if I'd have been forced to shell out £1000 to stay in a hotel for ten days it would have rendered me utterly broke and probably homeless, because that's money I need to live off. £1000 is three months' rent in my neck of the woods, not ten days' worth. Still, the media loves its "How dare these selfish evil b*stards excercise what until only a few short months ago were regarded as basic freedoms?" headlines and articles without bothering to stop and think that being forced to shell out a grand might break a person who had nowhere else to go, don't they?
 
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I think one thing that was on Biden's list of priorities was to get the Whitehouse back to some semblance of normality after 4 years of the trump show.
 
Jesus. I swear I didn’t come back here just to moan but I don’t even know where I can have any kind of reasonable debate about current events any more. Publicly airing differences of opinion has now become “spreading dangerous misinformation”. Any kind of questioning of authority is “putting lives at risk”. I can’t even hold a sensible discussion with some friends and family members any more, everything has become so emotive. This is all starting to become a little bit terrifying. Remember when we used to trust people to make up their own minds rather than piling on and silencing anyone who challenged the current orthodoxy? This has been building since “fake news” became a term and now we’re seeing the results of that mindset: Conform to the mainstream view or be destroyed.
 
The crap that passes for politics these days makes me want to puke. I'm right, you're wrong so screw you. Really? There's got to be a better way to do it!!
 
ayase said:
Conform to the mainstream view or be destroyed.
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Speaking of, RIP Gina Carano, career killed for resorting to Godwin’s law and being distrustful of those in authority on social media, both things I’m sure US liberals could NEVER EVER be accused of.

This new political paradigm where I’m more willing to side with a populist right who are actually attempting to smash an utterly corrupt system than I am with a moderate left who are doing nothing but perpetuate it is interesting to me. I can’t be like other lefties and make a liar of myself by claiming I thought people smashing up the US Capitol was awful, I didn’t. I thought it was great and has needed doing for at least the last half a Century. The more time passes, the less I particularly care who does it.
 
It's really nice not having to listen to what trump tweeted 5 minutes ago now that he's banned from twitter and facebook and the only news coming out of the Whitehouse is about normal operating procedure and not trump having another temper tantrum because things didn't go his way. You see-Biden is an adult while trump was a little kid in an adult's body.
 
Y-San said:
My point being, I guess, as I'm sure you're aware now, that you can't always pick your friends in politics but you can stand up for what you believe in, which is probably the most important part.
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That's probably the best way of looking at it. But I still get rather frustrated that the very act of defending someone's right to hold a dissenting/unpopular opinion is now associated primarily with the right, while the hypocrisy of saying (or doing) hateful, abusive things in the same breath as condemning people for uh, saying or doing hateful abusive things is now primarily associated with the left. It's all so tiresome.
 
One of the most privileged white men in the world on the life he and his self-made multimillionaire wife are currently living in their fourteen million dollar LA mansion: “It’s a good job I inherited plenty of money from my born into wealth aristocratic mother, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to afford to live a life 99% of the population can only dream of since my father’s side of my born into wealth aristocratic family have cut me off financially”


Why is this not being treated with the exact same disdain as “a small loan of a million dollars”? In a week when I’m having to fight the DWP in order to be able to pay my considerably below-average rent, the fabulously wealthy being given a worldwide platform to air their minuscule personal grievances from their sprawling mansion is a little galling. Where’s my media platform? Where’s the one for the actually homeless with no family who are worse off than I am? Where’s the one for each of the black kids living in poverty and subject to institutional racism that denies them votes and housing and gets them shot dead, things I very much doubt Archie will ever have to deal with.

I’m no Piers Morgan (who somehow made it into my newsfeed despite the filter I have on his name), I have no particular love for any of the royals and no desire to defend the Queen’s honour, but geez. I actually had some measure of respect for Harry choosing to do his own thing, but when people find themselves in a position of both incredible financial wealth and profiles that couldn’t get much higher where they ARE in the incredibly privileged position of being able to do whatever they want (would that it were still as easy for any other Briton to emigrate to Canada or America as it has been for Harry) and their choice is to moan, I can’t have much sympathy.
 
I agree with you ayase and I am sorry you are having so much difficulty with the DWP, I really wish there was something I could do to help :( I would also ask where it is for women trapped in abusive relationships or being forced to have kids they don't want or end pregnancies they did want because of jerks like Trump, mostly no-one really seems to care, I am disabled and would probably die if I got pregnant but still some people believe I should have no rights even then because they hate women and want to punish them for having sex. I don't really talk about this on this forum for the most part but right now I'm going insane with how little most people seem to care about things like ending FGM as well, partly because I care a lot about those being subjected to it and partly because my mental health issues include upsetting thoughts about myself related to that and feelings of worthlessness, I keep asking myself if I should have just been done away with when I was born because so many people think I'm unworthy of a decent life because I'm disabled and I'm sick of living in a world where I constantly feel like an outsider who's not quite human because I'm autistic and have ADHD and my brain just won't work the way I want and need it to and most are pretty unsympathetic about that. I'm exhausted and I can't stop eating things that might really harm my health (read: I'm eating sugary food while diabetic) because I don't really have any other source of comfort that is effective for me rn.
 
If there was a “sympathise” button I would definitely press that @RadFemHedonist but I’d feel a bit wrong “liking” it given that it doesn’t sound like you’re having the best time of it. Problems are to some degree relative, and so I understand that to some people what would be an incredibly minor inconvenience forgotten about the next day are to others a terrible affront that eats away at them, but people really shouldn’t forget what people worse off than them have to deal with. I felt like the richest man in the world at the time I had a job earning a wage a lot of people would scoff at. I felt so incredibly happy recently to finally secure my own accommodation, which is just mine, for the first time in nearly ten years. Even given the infuriating issues I’m currently facing, I still remind myself how lucky I am compared to others, yourself included. But some people are just so utterly divorced from the reality of life for billions of people worldwide that I really do despair, not just for them because I think they’re squandering their positions in society but for our celebrity obsessed culture and media that holds the opinions of these out of touch upper classes in higher regard than everyone else. It’s not even so much what they have said that upsets me as it is all the bandwagoning sycophants now blogging and writing newspaper articles about how brave and right they are.

On a personal note I do hope things improve for you as well, I’m perhaps not the greatest at giving people comfort, but as someone who’s been through the wringer a couple of times myself I will say it’s important to know there are always people who are willing to listen and help out. Those are the kind of people the world needs more of.
 
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