The great 2020 election thread....

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Cue the folks that will accuse you of wanting to turn the USA into the USSR lol

Roads aren't gonna build themselves.

boo ya

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Good old car mechanic Biden. Wants to fix your car so it's exactly like it was five minutes before everything fell apart.

I wonder if he's realized that we've been reforming the police for 70 years now. Given his stances during the civil rights movement? Probably not.

Fortunately policing is in the hands of cities and states, not the President, and he ultimately has very little he can do to change it, for good or for ill. Yes, other social programs would be nice - a huge part of the problem is that we've slowly dismantled everything until the police are our mental health treatment, or community outreach, the stopgap for our failing schools, and the barricade to insulate middle class America from the effects of our crumbling infrastructure and constant funneling of wealth into the hands of the few. And getting some of those back might be something that car mechanic Biden might fight for, in his spineless, middle-of-the-road way. Although it won't do anything like it was in the 60s. But maybe we could get marginal tax rates on the rich to at least 40%, if not the full 91%, and use that money for some damn good.

All that being said, I'm curious as to the precise impact of Obama era reforms that states elected for. He mentioned them in his address the other week and spoke positively of their results.

[Captain Crimson]

So, I would like to say this.

I think Mr. Dubya's recent endorsement of Mr. 45 was honestly a bad idea. It's that old psychological phenomenon, forbidding something encourages the likelihood people will want to check it out. In this case, most Americans directly hold him responsible for tanking nineties culture and leading us into all the problems we've faced in the 21st century. And it certainly won't trend well among younger leftist leaning progressives, at all. It is likely to encourage Mr. 45's strong grassroots support among the GOP partisans.

Case in point, Fuzzy Necromancer and GreyICE. While you two dislike Mr. 45 to the H and are voting for ho-hum Mr. Biden to oust him, which I do respect, at the same time, I'm right here, aren't I? Mr. Dubya's endorsement for Mr. Biden is not sure to win him any favors from younger voters since we all hold them, every one of them, responsible for the cracks in the system which have led us to this point. Ms. Clinton, Mr. Sanders, Mr. Biden, all of them. Or am I talking out my rear end here?

Honestly, I've been thinking about moving to Canada. At this point, I can't help but wonder if the US is like a patient that's been too damaged to save. At best, in November, you can stop the bleeding, but in some ways, the patient is too far gone to save.

[GreyICE]

Case in point, Fuzzy Necromancer and GreyICE. While you two dislike Mr. 45 to the H and are voting for ho-hum Mr. Biden to oust him, which I do respect, at the same time, I'm right here, aren't I? Mr. Dubya's endorsement for Mr. Biden is not sure to win him any favors from younger voters since we all hold them, every one of them, responsible for the cracks in the system which have led us to this point. Ms. Clinton, Mr. Sanders, Mr. Biden, all of them. Or am I talking out my rear end here?

Younger voters? Younger voters are what, 18-25? If you're 25, you were age 5-13 while bush was in office. 9/11, if you remember it, is probably very fuzzy.

If you don't clearly remember pre-9/11 and post-9/11 then you don't have a clear grasp of what happened to America during the Bush years. Anyone that age doesn't remember what Bush did, they just remember "that's how things are". They don't realize that America, all of America, has been in a vise grip for 20 years, slowly squeezing. That inner city black people might have broken first, but that we all feel the squeeze - the protesters, the cops, everyone has been pressed flat. They just think "that's how society is." They really don't remember a time when someone voting Clinton and someone voting Dole might sit down together and laugh about how stupid politics is and how dumb Washington is. And those people don't remember a time when Nixon and Kennedy were both telling people how the government would help America. Watching Presidential debates from the 60s is like visiting another planet.

The young voters don't remember when people got on national TV and started calling the other party "traitors that want to destroy America", and they don't remember when that rhetoric got thrown so hard it started to get thrown right back. They don't associate Bush with what we do. And in a way, Bush is unfairly associated with that. Even at the time he was often lambasted as just a puppet for his advisors, the will of the Republican party manifest in an "aw shucks" good ol' boy from a political family.

The act of terrorism is a Pyrrhic one. You can never inflict enough damage by blowing up random things or shooting people to actually harm a society, and if they focus their full attention on you, you will die (it is asymmetrical warfare because it is quite unbalanced). Nevertheless, terrorism has been at times effective, because the balance governments have to take in handling it is sensitive. The Battle for the Algiers is an interesting movie. I think in retrospect, if there are historians in 80 years, they're going to say Osama Bin Laden was a monster, but his act was ultimately effective - his actions broke America's international power and influence a decade or two before it would have naturally waned. That he might have died, but in the end, we gave him everything he wanted. Imagine in the year 2000 thinking that international conferences would exclude America - not as an act of political grandstanding or "solidarity against America" but because they had more important things to do than deal with us and our circus.

And for the future of humanity, this fucking scares me.

[Robovski]

Yeah, kids don't know what it was like to be in an America that wasn't at war and people weren't so polarized and politics just wasn't the same. I feel bad for them that they don't know those better times, and as you basically say, the terrorists ultimately won. But I'm on the other side of the generation gap, which is gaping wider every day - my childhood in the 70's/80's was radically different than the childhood of the 2000's and later in so many ways it is shocking when I consider it. I guess in a way that's like the disconnect the Great Generation had with the Boomers. I still feel it doesn't excuse what Boomers have really done to this country, but I hope I won't be as bad to the Millenials about "got mine" and pulling ladders up behind me.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Yeah, kids be like, yo momma so ugly...

It's rough world.

[Captain Crimson]

Yeah, kids don't know what it was like to be in an America that wasn't at war and people weren't so polarized and politics just wasn't the same. I feel bad for them that they don't know those better times, and as you basically say, the terrorists ultimately won. But I'm on the other side of the generation gap, which is gaping wider every day - my childhood in the 70's/80's was radically different than the childhood of the 2000's and later in so many ways it is shocking when I consider it. I guess in a way that's like the disconnect the Great Generation had with the Boomers. I still feel it doesn't excuse what Boomers have really done to this country, but I hope I won't be as bad to the Millenials about "got mine" and pulling ladders up behind me.

Well, I remember a time we weren't at war. Yeah, these generational wars kinda irk me too. Millennials blaming boomers for why the world sucks, boomers blaming millennials, and Gen Z just rolls their eyes at both, and are set up to continue those mistakes all over again.

[Robovski]

Yeah, kids be like, yo momma so ugly...

It's rough world.

OK, so let's contrast some points of the childhood I had (and I am about Chuck's age for reference, but I'm from Illinois, not Wisconsin) and the ones typical of today. I was born of two married parents who had a house and my mother was a homemaker raising me and my sisters when my father died. I benefited greatly from her attention and care to my early years.
I was able to go out and play unsupervised from a very young age as I was considered safe in my community and developed some autonomy in my actions from an early age. I could go and meet friend and be around the town and be home for lunch or sundown or whenever was agreed or to call to check in from a payphone or friend's house.
Grade school would hold you back if you couldn't read or do your math, it also had things like gym, art programs and school nurses. High School wasn't just some outgrowth of grade school to move you along to college but instead was an actual higher education with expectations on my output for progression as well.
There was an expectation of independence and adulthood as I turned 18, and I was able to move out and get a place while employed, initially with roommates but I had my own apartment on a full time job in Chicago when I was 20 (mid-nineties).
No one was recording my every word or action and my youthful transgressions are not there for people to find later or my employer to check over.

[Captain Crimson]

Now, let's be clear, what are youthful transgressions to some is big potatoes to others. But I get your inference, and I agree on the sentiment. Doesn't apply in a linear fashion to all cases, though.

I want to add this. I don't think Mr. Biden's vote against the Iraq War should be held against him. I didn't feel that for Ms. Clinton, I don't think it now. I also don't think his support of the 1994 crime bill should be held against him. Many black communities supported that, at the time, did they not? That appears to be a narrative largely absent from history. Same way Mr. Sanders voted for it and even Ms. Clinton, while not holding voting power, still supported it.

Sadly, the optics might matter more than the substance. As I'd said, I feel the bleeding will stop under Mr. Biden, but again, patient is too far gone to save. And in this instance, Mr. 45 can correctly declare that he never voted for the war in Iraq, and that he never voted for the crime bill, because he didn't. Ironically. back then, even if it was all an act, he talked more sensible, common-sense things like how you can't throw out entire populations of people against their will, or something like that.

It's like lawyering. It's not so much the facts and details matter, as the sales pitch you give. And Mr. 45 is an infinitely better performer than Mr. Biden is, sadly.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Anyone who plans on moving to Canada had better get an early start on it. Refugee and asylum applications can take a long time. Hopefully they won't shove you in a concentration camp like we do to ours.