He's basically just a crazy old man tilting at donkey shaped windmills.
Probably still believes America is democratic as well.
He's basically just a crazy old man tilting at donkey shaped windmills.
Probably still believes America is democratic as well.
Originally Posted by Paul Mason
Alistair is not dumb, he just has a fundamentally different world-view. Within that different world view his logic is sound.
Example:
The majority of us hold to the view that prison is primarily for protection of the public. With that goal we prioritise rehabilitation as a top goal because that reduces rates of re-offence, protecting the public over the long term.
Alistair holds to the view that prison is primarily for punishment. With that goal he prioritises making prisoners as miserable as possible within the boundaries of the law, punishing more effectively.
We and he can both build logically sound arguments upon these different fundamental premises and when we inevitably disagree each side thinks the other is creating straw-men, because we don't understand the basic view-point of the other.
You should collectively value having Alistair here. He functions as a constant test of your arguments, ideology and beliefs and gives you a window into a different world view. Without him and others like him to argue with, you would end up in a protected little bubble of information as insular and divorced from reality as any Trump supporters.
I think some folks mistake thinking that Hillary was a bad candidate with approval of Trump.
Bernie would have won.
The most concise counter-argument i can make to that is "haha no, fuck off".
You may be viewing the issue through euro-centric glasses, where social-democratic gov's are quite common and the hard left captures a good portion of the protest vote. That doesnt happen in the states, for a variety of reasons that are deeply rooted in its cultural history, outside a select few (California et al) that were always going to go to the dem. side in the electoral college.
The other argument is that we never saw the full might of the right-wing media turn on him, so would have could have scenarios are disingenuous.
Bernie wins battles he doesnt need to fight, and loses the ones he needs to win but never was going to.
Bernie would have been barbecued under the same *fake news* smear campaign republicans have successfully run since john kerry was a candidate.
He was a terrible candidate in to 2016 and in reality, he wasn't running to win the last election, but to become relevant in the next.
Depens on how you define "dodgy", I guess. As a president you'd like to do as independent as possible - that's one of the tickets with which Trump rode towards his presidency ("Drain the swamp"), stating that he's rich enough to not have to rely on 3rd party donators, who may or may not ask for "favors" afterwards.
I even agree with him on that topic.
But than again he hasn't actually turned his business over to some indepentendly run/overseen trust, as presidents did before him. Yeah, not a legal requirement, but still a very good idea to do.
Instead, he's still doing business and let his family run it. An Russian investors have heavily invested in Trump's properties. This is also nothing illegal.
So, yes, not "dodgy" directly. But it seems worrisome that he might be financially ... erhm ... challengeable (is that a word)?
You can only become president in America if you pander relentlessly to capital interests. Their entire 'democratic' system is designed that way.
http://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/d...litics.doc.pdf
Originally Posted by Paul Mason
No, not at all. It's not the world view I have issues with, as much as I disagree with it.
It's that he consistently misinterprets people's posts and willfully ignores the point to make his own, to an obnoxious level, more and more consistently than almost anyone else, then complains how people hate him. This is the real issue.
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