EquALLity wrote:
The guy in that video was talking about oppression, which I don't consider to necessarily be related to poverty.
You don't, because you aren't crazy, but they do. They think poverty is caused by oppression (it's not), and even that incidental low income is not "true poverty" unless it is accompanied by oppression. Good old no true Scotsman.
Is Sanders crazy like that? Well, if we took what he said at face value, it sounds like. The point is that this is an equally plausible explanation to him misspeaking. Maybe intersectionality is one of his blind spots.
EquALLity wrote:No, he's not clearly crazy at all. And everyone has blind-spots.
OK, then be equally charitable to Trump.
EquALLity wrote:he supports GMO labeling policy, but is not necessarily anti-GMO. In one statement, he wrote that he doesn't support labeling for health reasons, but for consumer rights. He contradicted himself on this, probably because he doesn't really care much about the issue and is slightly pandering.
You're giving him the benefit of the doubt here.
Whereas it's equally plausible to think he's lying about the consumer rights thing, and he just hates GMOs and thinks they're dangerous. He's trying to ban them, and his first step is labeling (just like Trump wants to require labeling for Muslims).
You have to understand human bias here, and understand that it's very easy to interpret something or somebody's words favorably, giving them the benefit of the doubt, or unfavorably, taking the least charitable possible interpretation as fact.
If you were to treat Trump and Sanders the same, being charitable or uncharitable to them both, then the differences wouldn't seem so striking.
EquALLity wrote:He's only lied once,
No, we've only caught him lying once. And that's in the very limited things I've read from him.
Dishonesty is like a cockroach: spot one lie, and there are probably thousands in the walls, obscured from sight.
Sanders is just much better at lying than Trump is. That makes me trust him less, not more.
EquALLity wrote:principled his entire political life.
Which makes him worse now. Gay rights are won, if this were a decade ago and he were running on that I might have supported him. He can't fix what's no longer broken. And now the principles he's advancing are damaging. And because he's so 'principled' that means he will never compromise or change his mind to come around and be sensible on these issues.
Did you watch Pandora's Promise? It's on Netflix now.
EquALLity wrote:Like I said with the gay rights issue about standing up for gay people in the military.
That's great, but that's over and done with. He doesn't get to keep points from his right positions in the past to apply to his wrong positions today.
The orphanage you built yesterday doesn't excuse your wanting to burn one down tomorrow -- or mean I'm going to support you in doing it based on track record.
Sanders is an ideologue, and he's on the wrong side of the most important issues today. The most terrifying villains are those who are following dogmatic principles to do what they think is right, but are acting on ignorance and delusion. That goes for Isis and Sanders alike.
Trump probably has few if any strong principles, which makes me trust him a lot more, because he'll probably go with what's practical.
Hillary is even better, and has a long track record of compromising, working with the other party, and
changing her mind.
EquALLity wrote:Things beyond policy are important also... Do you disagree with that?
Not really, no. I don't really care if Clinton had sexual relations with that woman. What matters is what he did as president.
What they do in their personal lives is of virtually no consequence. The only way it is, is where it will meaningfully affect policy (and that's usually only a serious risk if they're self-righteous ideologues).
EquALLity wrote:The thing about the situation with Bernie is that, even if he did believe these things (which I don't think he does), it wouldn't impact anything. Violence doesn't impact policy, but it's still bad. Bernie's beliefs about the struggles of white people are pretty much totally irrelevant.
Which, like I said, is why I don't worry much about the social justice aspects of Hillary's campaign either.
What I worry about is Sanders' opposition to nuclear power and GMO, which is something he can do something about and will affect policy.
I also worry about his (and Trump's) protectionism.
"If you do not listen to her, your event will be shut down right now"
That's a threat of violence. What I saw was a spineless coward cave to the will of terrorists and give them a platform instead of standing up against their bullying and threats by doing the right thing and calling the police and having them prosecuted to the full extent of the law. They would also have been within their right to respond with force against the numerous acts of assault from the BLM people clearly documented on camera there (they were pushing and laying hands on others).
Sanders didn't do that for political reasons, either because he actually supports them, their tactics, and what they're saying, or because he's a liar and is pandering to the SJW left.
EquALLity wrote:I actually thought his reaction was pretty classy. He offered to shake the hand of one of the protesters, and let them speak despite how rude they were and gave them a moment of silence that they wanted.
There was no reason to believe they would incite violence.
They already did incite violence, and threatened it to bully their ways onto the mic.
His reaction was cowardly. First, they should have called the authorities to remove these people, or done it themselves (as is within their rights) and called the authorities to collect them so they could press charges. But aside from that, assuming they wanted to avoid a confrontation, they should have followed through with what they said they would do and just shut down the event. Instead, they caved again and again to the demands.
EquALLity wrote:Woah, what? Where did that come from?
It's an unknown, these clashes have two sides to them.
EquALLity wrote:Do you have evidence? Because we do have evidence of Trump supporters attacking supporters who were already being removed from the rallies.
You'll have to show me some videos of the whole thing. Has anybody been charged? Why did they allegedly attack these people, and how? And what did these people do?
You're probably only seeing one side of this issue.
EquALLity wrote:This is not credible at all. It's totally meaningless.
Nobody is credible on these issues. It's very easy, if you try, to only see one side of this. We have no statistical evidence for the ratio of bad behavior between the camps. There's no reason to believe the Trump camp is more violent, or if they are, why they are.
EquALLity wrote:And getting thrown a water bottle at you isn't the same as being punched in the face when you're already in police custody.
These are both acts of assault.
Getting hit by a water bottle can hurt a lot more than a punch, depending on the force and how it hits you.
EquALLity wrote:That's from another crazy source (Jim Hoft). Though there may be some truth to it, but again, that doesn't really say much in and of itself because there is no connection between Bernie's message and those actions.
There's crazy and violence on both sides. This is likely to be the most divisive year in history, and the violence will get worse no matter what the candidates say.
You'd have to demonstrate causality between what Trump has said and an increase in violence of his supporters, and it's just not something you can do: there are a lot of assumptions here.
EquALLity wrote:It's like what Sam Harris says about how Islam is more dangerous than Buddhism because of the violence in the religious texts. Buddhists can be violent in the name of Buddhism, but Buddhism is all about peace and doing good, while Islam commands its followers to kill 'infidels'. And we'd never expect to find violent people if we left them with Buddhist texts in isolation on an island after a few years, while we very well might with Islam.
And what if the Islamic texts clarified that they don't condone violence after a difficult to interpret line? Whose fault is it then?
This is something the Qur'an does not do half as well as Trump has.
EquALLity wrote:Also, those weren't necessarily even Bernie people; they were anti-Trump people.
Are the anti-Sanders people that violent at the Sanders rallies? Maybe the Trump supporters are just responding to what they're getting.
EquALLity wrote:These articles and accounts can be analyzed. There is a difference between the opinion of Alex Jones and a video on CNN.
Everybody is subject to different biases. Don't reject the argument entirely on account of the source.
EquALLity wrote:That wasn't at all clear if he was, and I'm not even sure that's what he was saying. He wasn't just talking about stopping assault; he was saying we should beat people up so much that they get "carried out on a stretcher". That's not limited violence to stop assault; that's a disgusting and insane violent mob.
He was joking about the stretcher.
He clarified later at multiple points.
EquALLity wrote:In addition, Trump knew his supporters were prone to violence when he was making these comments, but he made them anyway, knowing they could easily be misunderstood.
Evidence? Are they any more prone to violence than those doing violence against them? You give Trump far too much credit for insight he probably doesn't have.
EquALLity wrote:And Trump didn't clarify. He denied he ever said anything supportive of violence when he clearly did. He never took back anything he said or apologized.
He made a joke, which was pretty obvious, then he later said he doesn't condone violence.
EquALLity wrote:Does it matter? There has been violence as incited by Trump.
There's not clear evidence of this, as mentioned earlier.
EquALLity wrote:
Policies aren't all that're relevant. If you incite people to beat each other up, but expand Medicare, you're still a bad guy.
On a personal level, maybe. But I don't care about that. Trump could be a serial killer in his spare time, and I'd elect him if he'd expand nuclear power.
One person maybe got punched and was fine. BLM has done a lot worse.
EquALLity wrote:That's meaningless.
It's not meaningless. Do you think nuclear power doesn't work if the person signing the OK to build the plant doesn't accept global warming?
It is what it is, it doesn't matter why he wants it.
You need to separate a person's personal character from the political policies that person will likely be able to implement.
EquALLity wrote:I completely disagree. Nuclear energy is important, but not more so than all of what Bernie advocates for combined.
On what evidence do you disagree?
Nuclear power is the only thing we're discussing where the good it will do is based on sound science and evidence. The rest is speculative, possibly even harmful.
EquALLity wrote:Again, there was no reason to assume they'd say anything violent.
There was every reason to assume that, since they charged the stage like lunatics, committing assault and threatening the shut down the event.
He let them speak because he supported them, as the speaker said.
Any violence done by BLM at Trump rallies is Sanders' doing for giving them a platform and support.
EquALLity wrote:
What? Of course. It's not alleged; there are videos of Trump supporters attacking peaceful protesters. I'm surprised you seem to think there might not be violence at these rallies.
Just one of many examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZISxk0x6kL0
That was perfectly fine.
Trump said: "You can get 'em out, but don't hurt 'em."
Please don't link to TYT for that, this gives a much simpler video:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/don ... 0a3894ba2d
Somebody who was disrupting an event was removed from that event. He was not punched, he was just forcefully removed (and quite gently, considering). He tripped when he was being pulled, then got right back up. The guy may have also pushed him a little with his foot (it's not clear). I didn't see him being kicked.
I have no problem with this.
If the man who removed that guy is charged with assault and convicted, then you would have an argument. If not, then this was perfectly fine.
IMO this guy should have been at the Sanders Rally to remove those BLM protesters.
People should not be able to bully and interrupt private events, preventing others from speaking.
EquALLity wrote:
Of course it matters. It's violence.
Not all physical force is equal, and not all physical force is unjustified and illegal.
I have seen no evidence of anything uncalled for at a Trump rally. Trump has been clear about not hurting the protesters.
EquALLity wrote:
I don't think so. At best, he was being very reckless.
So is Sanders, by supporting BLM. I'm not asking you to like Trump (I don't), but don't hold a double standard with Sanders and Trump. Neither of them are good news, but it's because of their policies.
Just stay behind Hillary, it looks like she's going to win, Cruz didn't, and she needs all the help she can get.
And a little bit on method: If you want to convince people to stop supporting Trump, you HAVE TO stop treating Trump unfairly. As long as your bias against him is so obvious, nobody who supports Trump will listen to you. Any attempt will just shut down the conversation and make them ignore anything you say.
In terms of politics, be more like an Unnatural Vegan, and less like a Freelee. Look at the other side too, and give people the benefit of the doubt.
If you give Trump the benefit of the doubt, admit where he's right, and cover the issues themselves, then you can bring Trump supporters around to Hillary by being reasonable. Otherwise, you're just handing this election to Trump by shutting down the discussion of policies which probably actually favors Clinton.
