The great 2020 election thread....

[Antiboyscout]

Joe Biden can't draw a crowd much bigger than 20 or so people, but you're gunna claim that the stadium was empty?

Damn the frame and the spin on this one is crazy

[clearspira]

But much of the country was in turmoil. The inner cities were devolving into gangland wastelands, Reaganomics was slowly dismantling every social program or utilities they could while brainwashing everyone into thinking anything that benefited the people was a commie power grab, and the AIDS crisis was tearing through the non-cishet communities while those at the top simply let the fires burn! Also, Iran-Contra, The Satanic Panic, Cable Oligopolies, all of this having negative ripples still being felt today.

Oh, the REST OF THE WORLD had to be leveled to give us an opening and we STILL couldn't do right. Says a lot, eh?

Oh I'm not saying we weren't setting up the structural issues of all the problems we're facing nowadays. Crumbling infrastructure, declining social spending leading to long-term mental health and social timebombs a generation in the making, a devotion to magical thinking that was truly insane. Science denial, media manipulation, shooting the messenger for environmental issues. We killed 10,000-26,000 people in Bhopal with our racism and arrogance, and we didn't even say sorry, because we didn't feel we had to. We supported dictators, toppled others, and brazenly looted the country for the rich because there'd always be more where that came from (only there wasn't, and now there isn't, and we're paying for it). We destroyed the idea of America as a federation of states, and we expanded the debt into the stratosphere with Reagan's Star Wars nonsense and tax cuts. Fiscally irresponsible, politically irresponsible, socially irresponsible, racist, chauvinistic, killers with a smile and a wave. We were the police of the world, and you can see how we policed the world in what we turned our police into.

But if you were one of the ones on top of the heap? If you liked imagining that everyone else in the world shit a brick when the words "America" were spoken? If you bought into the great American mystique, the one unique true state in all the world that many would imitate but none surpass? Damn, it was a time. In all of human history, perhaps it was the only time you could look at the globe and say that there was one superpower in all the world. 20 years, 30 years, a generation. A generation of America, across the entire world.

We declined, all empires do. But man, if you asked 25 years ago "how long will America last?" most people would have said America was forever. That the rules of the empires no longer applied to us, that we could no more decline and fall than the planet could leave its orbit. Now? We feel depressingly finite.

Certain points of view...

Oh, and we royally scrambled South America for various (usually monetary) reasons. Besides New Wave and the Tech Boom, the Eighties were Hell.

I wonder what black people would make of the claim that America was great in the 1980s. The LA riots of 1992 didn't come out of nowhere, y'know.

''Make America Great Again'' does often seem to translate to ''Make America White Again''. Just saying.

[Antiboyscout]

I wonder what black people would make of the claim that America was great in the 1980s. The LA riots of 1992 didn't come out of nowhere, y'know.

''Make America Great Again'' does often seem to translate to ''Make America White Again''. Just saying.

"Diversity" does often seem to translate to "less whites"

[Antiboyscout]

Certain points of view...

Oh, and we royally scrambled South America for various (usually monetary) reasons. Besides New Wave and the Tech Boom, the Eighties were Hell.

You cannot look at Venezuela today and not think the US was somewhat justified in its interventions.

[Captain Crimson]

I wonder what black people would make of the claim that America was great in the 1980s. The LA riots of 1992 didn't come out of nowhere, y'know.

''Make America Great Again'' does often seem to translate to ''Make America White Again''. Just saying.

"Diversity" does often seem to translate to "less whites"

Besides, if we're talking numbers, then there's already diversity. We got forty million black people and an even higher number of Hispanics depending on how you wanna interpret the figure. Forty million is nothing to scoff at.

I've heard a few hard righties I know talk of black fragility, which I think shows how insulated and out-of-touch they are. You gotta remember these are families who've been passing down tales of racism for centuries, how horrible it got. So I don't think it's fragility so much as the wariness and the feeling when things go south, they're gonna be first up. And while I can sympathize to the view that treating them as a special case won't bring true equality, will we ever really have it? Human nature is at best innocently offensive. And it ignores the very real disadvantages facing black communities.

On the other hand, this stuff could get blown all out of proportion. While I haven't been religiously following the murder of George Floyd (so please don't rail on me if I have gotten this wrong), what is fundamentally the difference between racism or just good old-fashioned human cruelty, regardless of race, an alpha male asserting dominance? Perhaps it is specific elements of the human tribe, females and the minorities in that instance, are perceived as weaker and more vulnerable, and that is enough in and of itself to justify that to the right sinful mind.

It's not a world of peace or equality we want. We should strive for a more tolerant world, and tolerance is one of the hardest traits to ever master for the human tribe.

[ProfessorDetective]

I wonder what black people would make of the claim that America was great in the 1980s. The LA riots of 1992 didn't come out of nowhere, y'know.

''Make America Great Again'' does often seem to translate to ''Make America White Again''. Just saying.

"Diversity" does often seem to translate to "less whites"

It's supposed to translate to 'more non-whites and women'. But I try to be a 'glass half full' type.

[clearspira]

Certain points of view...

Oh, and we royally scrambled South America for various (usually monetary) reasons. Besides New Wave and the Tech Boom, the Eighties were Hell.

You cannot look at Venezuela today and not think the US was somewhat justified in its interventions.

Except for the fact that it is often those interventions that cause the problems they are experiencing today. I know little about Venezuela, but I can tell you the after-effects of Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

[clearspira]

I wonder what black people would make of the claim that America was great in the 1980s. The LA riots of 1992 didn't come out of nowhere, y'know.

''Make America Great Again'' does often seem to translate to ''Make America White Again''. Just saying.

"Diversity" does often seem to translate to "less whites"

It's supposed to translate to 'more non-whites and women'. But I try to be a 'glass half full' type.

Those that have privilege do not realise the privilege they have until others start to attain it.

And yeah, I sound like a fortune cookie but f-k it; its true.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Anybody here ever consider that 9/11 is a reference to the day of a CIA operation in Chile to overthrow a democratically elected communist?

[Antiboyscout]

I wonder what black people would make of the claim that America was great in the 1980s. The LA riots of 1992 didn't come out of nowhere, y'know.

''Make America Great Again'' does often seem to translate to ''Make America White Again''. Just saying.

"Diversity" does often seem to translate to "less whites"

It's supposed to translate to 'more non-whites and women'. But I try to be a 'glass half full' type.

Remember when Black Panther's cast was 90% black? That was "diverse"