James Mattis Freezes Transgender Policy; Allows Troops to Continue Serving, Pending Study
74 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Popularvote;52631922]Aren't they already calling him "Lap Dog Mattis"?[/QUOTE]
Lap Dog to who? :huh:
[QUOTE=Cliff2;52633335]Lap Dog to who? :huh:[/QUOTE]
You know.
Thise other guys that oppose Trump despite him having complete control of the government.
[QUOTE=GordonZombie;52633305]I hope the administration that succeeds Trump keeps Mattis on the cabinet as Secretary of Defence, he's probably the best thing that came out of this Presidency.[/QUOTE]
He probably will. Colin Powell spanned 2 presidencies so Mattis probably will too, unless he's just shamed for being associated with Trump.
[QUOTE=Cyke Lon bee;52633493]He probably will. Colin Powell spanned 2 presidencies so Mattis probably will too, unless he's just shamed for being associated with Trump.[/QUOTE]
I think things like this make it obvious that he is there to do the job of running the DoD, not to serve Trump.
[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;52633496]I think things like this make it obvious that he is there to do the job of running the DoD, not to serve Trump.[/QUOTE]
You're not wrong but politicians are the most petty group of adults on earth. I wouldn't be surprised if hes shunned because hes guilty by association.
[QUOTE=Cyke Lon bee;52633767]You're not wrong but politicians are the most petty group of adults on earth. I wouldn't be surprised if hes shunned because hes guilty by association.[/QUOTE]
He seems like the type of person who would call politicians out on that kind of bullshit. Which would earn him points anyway.
[QUOTE=Cyke Lon bee;52633226]You're overblowing the issue. Obama also used EOs to bypass congress when they refused to get anything done. And more people are resigning than getting fired. Its a sign that his presidency is fucking terrible, not potentially killing democracy.
The protest in Charlottesville took nearly a year to organize and they had maybe 100 neo Nazis show up on the first night. Immediately afterwards they were horribly outnumbered by thousands of counter-protesters who showed up overnight with very little prior notice. Nazis are an issue but they're not a direct result of Trump.
Trump is a piece of shit but his incompetence is no threat to our democracy.[/QUOTE]
With regards to the neo-Nazi movement, it isn't necessarily that I'm afraid of them gaining political power, it's what the reaction to them might be. In spite of the group being a local minority, groups like antifa have been built entirely off of fear of them. The existence of antifa probably won't fuel an actual Nazi movement, but there are more subtle ideas like white nationalism that could more easily gain power. Milo Yiannopoulos basically gained his following because the violence and fear associated with them escalated to the point of someone getting shot, the only thing that actually stopped him was the pedophilia scandal.
[QUOTE=halofreak472;52634425]With regards to the neo-Nazi movement, it isn't necessarily that I'm afraid of them gaining political power, it's what the reaction to them might be. In spite of the group being a local minority, groups like antifa have been built entirely off of fear of them. The existence of antifa probably won't fuel an actual Nazi movement, but there are more subtle ideas like white nationalism that could more easily gain power. Milo Yiannopoulos basically gained his following because the violence and fear associated with them escalated to the point of someone getting shot, the only thing that actually stopped him was the pedophilia scandal.[/QUOTE]
The fact that you call White Nationalism a subtle movement is hilarious.
And I like to think that the American people are smart enough to resist the urge to become White Supremacists based on the actions of antifa.
Then again you guys elected Trump so I guess anything is possible huh
[QUOTE=RainbowStalin;52635038]The fact that you call White Nationalism a subtle movement is hilarious.
And I like to think that the American people are smart enough to resist the urge to become White Supremacists based on the actions of antifa.
Then again you guys elected Trump so I guess anything is possible huh[/QUOTE]
Arrogance paired with ignorance is always a good pair to use when posting. The Nazi movement in the US is hilariously small. It took a year of planning to get a group of less than a hundred out to a Lee monument for a protest. If thats not subtle, I don't know what is.
[editline]1st September 2017[/editline]
[QUOTE=halofreak472;52634425]With regards to the neo-Nazi movement, it isn't necessarily that I'm afraid of them gaining political power, it's what the reaction to them might be. In spite of the group being a local minority, groups like antifa have been built entirely off of fear of them. The existence of antifa probably won't fuel an actual Nazi movement, but there are more subtle ideas like white nationalism that could more easily gain power. Milo Yiannopoulos basically gained his following because the violence and fear associated with them escalated to the point of someone getting shot, the only thing that actually stopped him was the pedophilia scandal.[/QUOTE]
The issue with the whole us vs them ideals againdt the Nazis is that the hatred fuels their membership. Neo Nazis are horrified at the idea of whites going extinct in America by going easy on minorities, and Antifa thinks that America will become a fascist dystopia if they dont eliminate people like the Nazis. Neither fear is really justified but those fears fuel them. Its a dangerous scenario.
[QUOTE=KingofBeast;52630646]There are a lot of arguments to be made about how the electoral college is bad, but it working as it was [I]intended[/I] is not one of them, I think.[/QUOTE]
The electoral college hasn't worked in the way it was intended to work in over a hundred years, when they stopped adjusting electoral vote count based on population. Now, with every passing year, the balance of the power shifts exponentially in favor of underpopulated rural states, and farther away from the will of the people at large, because population trends and density have changed dramatically. Despite the obvious misunderstandings parroted by the political right who benefit from this increasingly broken system, the current abomination was [i]never[/I] the intention behind the electoral college. Even when the dynamic adjustment froze, it wasn't intended to shift the balance of power, just to keep the number of electoral votes from ballooning into the thousands.
The electoral college was intended to create a [I]minimum handicap[/I] of three electoral votes, to ensure that every state in the union would have at least that much say within the state of affairs. Beyond that minimum handicap, however, it was intended to (and originally did) scale based on the population of each state, so that the number of electoral votes within the United States would dynamically adjust themselves based on census data, ensuring that the share of electoral votes-per-person would remain similar for all states whose population exceeded the number needed to gain more than three electoral votes.
Essentially, a popular vote win would almost always coincide with an electoral vote win because the number of electoral votes in almost all cases would be representative of the total population of each state. In freezing the dynamic adjustments of vote-per-state and/or vote-per-person, that system was fundamentally broken. Each passing year, population trends and densities change more and more, and the system becomes more and more broken. Rather than freezing the electoral college entirely, they should of frozen the acquisition of [I]new[/I] electoral votes, and instead switched to a system of allotting the existing number of votes based on census data once or twice each decade. That would have ensured a more balanced representative democracy where the votes of each state reflected the population of each state, without eliminating the base handicap electoral votes for low population states. As intended. Alternatively, do away with it altogether and just have the popular vote.
So, to wit: you are incorrect.
[QUOTE=Crazy Ivan;52629384]Seriously, what?[/QUOTE]
I know this is an extremely late reply, and I'm sorry for that because I was out of town. But if you're going to ask a "serious question" then I suppose I should give you one, even if you're going to preemptively mock me by implying I'm just a riled up kid reading "posts on Punchbook and Twumblr." That's incredibly disrespectful and I'm not going to stoop to that level in response.
So the core problem here is that your reply has nothing to do my opinion. When I say "democracy on the verge of total collapse," I'm talking about our system of government. I'm not talking about the economy, I'm not talking about flooding in Texas, and I'm not talking about white nationalists or neo-Nazis.
I'm talking about a government which has been in decline for many decades now. Our system of government is inundated with corruption, and it's common knowledge that the only reason America isn't near the top of world corruption statistics is that our laws have been twisted to make almost all of it legitimate in the eyes of the law. Our institutions only work when pumps are primed with money- either in total secret and protected by laws originally designed to protect speech, or out in broad daylight where news agencies track the omnipresent fundraising race between the parties and their candidates at every level of government.
A few years ago, the governor of Winsconsin used the pension plans of his state's teachers to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy, and unsurprisingly, his party in the legislature backed this move by making it illegal for teachers to strike. The state began a recall process, in which the incumbent out-fundraised his opposition 7:1, mainly on the strength of large anonymous donations from conservative PACs from [I]out-of-state.[/I]
Our election process is so cartoonishly distorted, and our institutions are so unresponsive to the will of the people that even a former president (Carter) has admitted that it doesn't resemble a democracy anymore. Part of that is because the power-elite are constantly engaged in a slow campaign against voter registration, campaign finance reform, and other measures which would foster democracy, while at the same time supporting (and profiting) from policies such as mass incarceration of nonviolent offenders, "anti-terrorism" laws which target peaceful protesters, and so on.
The other part of the problem is embedded in our culture. Studies have found that our nation's attention span is declining, and that the average length of "soundbites" have declined as a result. Americans can't seem to process rhetoric beyond what fits on a bumper sticker. We also don't seem to carry the same core values as previous generations dating back to the framers. "Liberalism" was once about independence, liberty, and freedom of expression, ideas which helped spur the American revolution.
Today, America is full of people seeking salvation from a powerful leader who will make our country nebulously great again so that the average person can do nothing and wait for someone else to fix the everything. Or they're so scared of minorities that they'll give any excuse to justify systematic discrimination and police brutality so that they can feel protected. Or they seek it from nanny-like school administrators who will ban racist, sexist, or otherwise uncomfortable speech so that the students don't have to challenge those ideas themselves, and content themselves on their self-righteousness.
Everywhere you look, you'll find Americans who are reliant on authority figures to cradle them, protect them, and make them feel like they're the most precious little cinnamon buns in the bakery. And they don't care if they have to give up their civil liberties, because if the system caters to [I]your[/I] insecurities, what's there to care about? Ask any American, and you'll find that they hate their government- the only time our legislature has had a positive approval rating for three or more consecutive months since Watergate, we were either impeaching Bill Clinton or experiencing the post-9/11 rally-around-the-flag effect. But the vast majority will be re-elected, because the values which gave our country its original identity, caused us to declare independence and fight for it until it was achieved, have burnt out. Today's Americans would have gladly accepted George III's government as it was.
Getting back to the original context, in this thread, I was replying to a serviceman's shock that another user would suggest a military coup so that a general could "fix" our country. It's the same attitude that's put dozens of strongmen into power throughout history. This is where we're at now- we're so apathetic toward the very concept of liberal democracy that we're looking at a junta and thinking, "man, if only!" So that's what I meant about American democracy "on the verge of collapse." The will to maintain it is evaporating before our eyes. This kind of rhetoric isn't normal, and shouldn't be regarded as normal. It reminds me of that old Vietnam-era quote, "we had to destroy the village in order to save it."
But I do agree with you that we have a rather strong economy.
just a side note, theres an interesting little bit of power play here, mattis said he will only proceed when the new DHS secretary signs off, but trump has made it clear he does not intend to find a new DHS secretary any time soon, which is itself a dangerous idea because the dhs is an absurdly critical and nebulous agency, but thems the time we live in.
what it does seem to suggest is that mattis might very well be forcing trump to make a choice, either get his ban, and mattis presumably gets another strongman in the WH as dhs secretary, or don't get the ban
[QUOTE=Sableye;52636727]just a side note, theres an interesting little bit of power play here, mattis said he will only proceed when the new DHS secretary signs off, but trump has made it clear he does not intend to find a new DHS secretary any time soon, which is itself a dangerous idea because the dhs is an absurdly critical and nebulous agency, but thems the time we live in.
what it does seem to suggest is that mattis might very well be forcing trump to make a choice, either get his ban, and mattis presumably gets another strongman in the WH as dhs secretary, or don't get the ban[/QUOTE]
So he's doing the right thing while also subtly telling Trump to do his god-damn job.
I like it.
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