General Political Discussion Thread

[queue 917 / 10,419]

Seems appropriate for the amount of political discussion that goes on these days. Feel free to civilly talk or debate amongst each other about any political topics.

 

If you want, you can also state your stances. For example: https://secure.isidewith.com/elections/2016-presidential/2828510642#. You do not need to have it in the form of a link like I do, but it is much more compact. This gives pretty much all of the general information you would want to know. Anything in specific can be mentioned and talked about.

 

Rules:

1. Do not attack people directly (i.e. calling someone a Nazi simply because you do not like their opinions); Opt for an actual argument

2. This is not a "safe space". Do not read topics here if you get offended easily. 

3. If someone is giving false information, you are allowed to "fact check" that person so long as you have a reliable source linked to that correction (preferably an independent source).

 

 

I guess I will start off the discussion: What does everyone think of Trump's actions so far?

[Shuruia 3,145 / 28,023]

29 minutes ago, qDogg said:

I guess I will start off the discussion: What does everyone think of Trump's actions so far?

Not surprised. The swaths of the regressive left and regretful Trump voters need to stop crying. Destruction of healthcare plans, agency gag orders, and national/religious vetting were all things that Trump said he'd do. No use crying over them now since this is what Americans apparently want.

[Rcool64 1,007 / 16,299]

Trump wants to build a wall to block off Mexico from the U.S. because he doesn't like Mexicans "stealing" our jobs.

Here's an ironic question: who's going to physically build it?

[Finnick 2,355 / 32,330]

2 minutes ago, Rcool64 said:

Trump wants to build a wall to block off Mexico from the U.S. because he doesn't like Mexicans "stealing" our jobs.

Here's an ironic question: who's going to build it?

mexicans

[Rcool64 1,007 / 16,299]

1 minute ago, Finnick said:

mexicans

 

[Ben 2,378 / 31,861]

10 minutes ago, Rcool64 said:

Trump wants to build a wall to block off Mexico from the U.S. because he doesn't like Mexicans "stealing" our jobs.

Here's an ironic question: who's going to build it?

Apparently, from what I've read, it's going to be us. Just from taxes. Other than that, Mexicans 

 

to answer that question by qdogg: I'm not surprised. There's going to be more actions done by trump. Recently, federal judge have blocked that travel ban that was ordered. I guess that block is going to be temporary. And the there's the website about climate change which disappeared on White House website. There's lots more, which have changed. 

[Alucard33rd 1,175 / 15,145]

All I really have to say is I like to be logical and do my research first before stating my political opinion.

 

Trump is our president, I didn't vote for him but I respect what he is doing.

[EJ. 638 / 12,695]

I am too young to vote, but I am glad that Donald Trump is the president.

 

He does seem to have a nice plan on how he's going to run things for now, the only thing I am mad about is the LGBT+ things he has done so far (that is, if anything have been passed).

 

I do hope he does well, and I am kinda mad that people are still mad about him winning, and the #NotMyPresident thing is getting really old. If you don't want him to be your president, leave America. There are 194 other countries you can go live in.

[Firestorm 104 / 4,804]

I believe that Donald Trump is actually doing something right but not right to the Mexicans.

 

What we did to "Mexicans"?? or what "Mexicans" did to us?? We both did nothing, other than trading and now we building an wall? I think the "Mexicans" will get mad which they are already and maybe start like an "Cold War", expect that we are much more closer to them than before. 

 

But I do see an reason of banning the muslim which seems to be good idea but also bad idea.

 

If Donald Trump had common sense.... We would be in better place...

[queue 917 / 10,419]

9 minutes ago, Firestorm said:

I believe that Donald Trump is actually doing something right but not right to the Mexicans.

 

What we did to "Mexicans"?? or what "Mexicans" did to us?? We both did nothing, other than trading and now we building an wall? I think the "Mexicans" will get mad which they are already and maybe start like an "Cold War", expect that we are much more closer to them than before. 

 

But I do see an reason of banning the muslim which seems to be good idea but also bad idea.

 

If Donald Trump had common sense.... We would be in better place...

Neither the US or Mexico has done anything to hurt the other directly. Due to NAFTA and the fact that it is cheaper to have basic labor done in second world countries compared to first world countries, corporations have moved to Mexico hence why they are "stealing our jobs." Illegal immigrants cross the border (criminal and "lawful") and take refuge in sanctuary cities where they are able to get jobs and such. Depending on the circumstances, they can even vote in elections (primarily democrat voters which is why democrats oppose actually enforcing immigration laws. Hopefully, this will also be proven in the investigation he plans on conducting on this previous election, but I digress. Trump is simply protecting our country and its people. Mexico does nothing to help the situation so they will reap what they have sown. The wall should most likely be a metaphoric wall (stronger border control, extra surveillance, etc.) but a physical wall will suffice. On a last note, a cold war will never happen with Mexico and the US. The US is and will alway be ahead of Mexico in practically all ways you can imagine, meaning that Mexico would not be able to do anything. We can bully them all we want with no fear of direct repercussions. 

 

I will begin by saying the "Muslim ban" is not a "Muslim ban." It is ban of Islamic states on a list created by the Obama administration specifying terrorist threats. The ban does not even include the top five countries having the highest number of Muslim citizens. Obama himself did the same thing several times (sometimes worse conditions) with no major backlash. Trump does it and the world throws a temper tantrum. As @Benroyjam said, it has been temporarily ended by a judge. The ban is entirely justified since Obama has done it in the past and since it is only temporary to get a proper vetting system in place for people who are actually in need of coming to the US otherwise known as poor, non-ISIS sympathizers. On a personal level, I have no issue with Muslims. I only have an issue with Islam since it is the worst mainstream religion the world has to offer in terms of its roots and ideologies. Therefore, I support the ban to prevent those who utilize the worst of Islam from coming to the US. 

 

Trump is smarter than most people make him out to be. Give it some time and hopefully you will understand what I mean. 

[Coolest Cat 1,266 / 14,449]

Time to spam this thread because fuck it.

 

5 hours ago, Shuruia said:

Not surprised. The swaths of the regressive left and regretful Trump voters need to stop crying. Destruction of healthcare plans, agency gag orders, and national/religious vetting were all things that Trump said he'd do. No use crying over them now since this is what Americans apparently want.

 

I mean, technically the majority of voting Americans didn't want Trump.

 

Also, there are people who are just "crying" about the idiocy that is some of Trump's executive orders while there are some who are rightfully protesting/marching to show that they disapprove of the president's actions. So I don't know what you count as "crying". But hopefully you're not suggesting that we just simply take his stupid and dangerous decisions.

 

4 hours ago, CrusTi said:

All I really have to say is I like to be logical and do my research first before stating my political opinion.

 

Trump is our president, I didn't vote for him but I respect what he is doing.

 

I don't respect what he's doing at all.

He gains some respect for actually doing what he promised. But I lose a lot more respect for him on the fact that he's actually doing the stupid shit he promised.

 

4 hours ago, Ejfeds said:

I am too young to vote, but I am glad that Donald Trump is the president.

 

He does seem to have a nice plan on how he's going to run things for now, the only thing I am mad about is the LGBT+ things he has done so far (that is, if anything have been passed).

 

I do hope he does well, and I am kinda mad that people are still mad about him winning, and the #NotMyPresident thing is getting really old. If you don't want him to be your president, leave America. There are 194 other countries you can go live in.

Do you agree with his stance on climate change?

 

Climate change will lead to massive droughts in the future which means an increase in instability in certain areas around the world. The recent refugee crisis can be partially attributed to a drought that hit Syria. It's incredibly likely that in the future we will see a massive increase in refugees escaping countries affected by droughts. Not to mention that climate change is murdering the coral reefs which are the host to a lot of fish that people depend on for food. Not to mention that climate change will just generally kill a lot of animals.

 

Do you actually think that building the wall will in any way help the country? 

Because I can already tell you that it won't.

 

The thing will cost tax payers billions of dollars up front and billions to maintain for years to come. Trump's already butchered relations with Mexico by trying to get them to pay for the wall. His solution is to just put tariffs on goods from Mexico to make them "pay" for it. So they're more figuratively paying for it than literally paying for it since it'll cause a decrease in Mexican goods bought. It's not necessarily guaranteed that those jobs lost in Mexico will come back to the U.S. And either way we're going to see an increase in prices for all goods that were dependent on cheaper Mexican labor. 

 

And as a Californian, I must point out that we have all the right to be pissed off that he won. The state overwhelmingly voted against him but he won anyways. And of course that pisses us off since our votes are always wasted. But yeah, people who disagree with Trump have every right to be pissed off that he won since he won the electoral college but lost the popular vote by almost 3,000,000 votes. Plus the current president spent years saying that our last president (who won the popular AND electoral votes) wasn't even American. It's laughable to think that no one's going to criticize Trump's presidency. 

 

The idea of "If you don't like it then just leave" is idiotic at its core. More than half of the country didn't want what the other half wanted. And yet the minority got their way because apparently you can't have majority rule when you could be having minority rule. /s

 

Either way, as a person who thinks Trump is a complete idiot (and mind you that I am not saying that as a Democrat. I'm saying that as a left leaning independent), I am very upset that Trump is our current president. I want him to stop acting like a child and starting feuds with anyone and everyone. I want him to say "Climate change isn't a hoax and coal jobs are going the way of the dinosaurs no matter what you want". I want him to not build the stupid wall and waste billions of tax payer dollars. I want him to actually drain the swamp and not do stupid shit like trying to make Betsy Devos our Secretary of Education. I also want him to stop trying to put incompetent people into positions to try and cripple the agency they're put into. 

 

So while I want him to succeed (despite how much I hate the amount of joy the alt-right will get if he does) as president and I want him to do well because the fate of the U.S. will affect everyone in the world, I do not have much hope. Hopefully everyone else is right and he's actually a genius. But the way it looks, he's your average politician looking out for himself only. Just with a little (a lot) of Dubya mixed to make him a bit more puppet-y.

 

2 hours ago, Firestorm said:

I believe that Donald Trump is actually doing something right but not right to the Mexicans.

 

What we did to "Mexicans"?? or what "Mexicans" did to us?? We both did nothing, other than trading and now we building an wall? I think the "Mexicans" will get mad which they are already and maybe start like an "Cold War", expect that we are much more closer to them than before. 

 

But I do see an reason of banning the muslim which seems to be good idea but also bad idea.

 

If Donald Trump had common sense.... We would be in better place...

 

Although I agree that stopping immigration from areas known to have active terrorist groups is probably a good idea, I don't think that that's what the ban is even for.

 

I'm pretty sure that Trump just wanted to literally ban some Muslims and it had absolutely nothing to do with national security.

Rudy Giuliani says it right here:

 

So its intent is to literally ban muslims. The whole "national security" part is a complete lie to justify banning muslims.

 

 

Edited February 5, 2017 by Major_Push

[Coolest Cat 1,266 / 14,449]

51 minutes ago, qDogg said:

Neither the US or Mexico has done anything to hurt the other directly. Due to NAFTA and the fact that it is cheaper to have basic labor done in second world countries compared to first world countries, corporations have moved to Mexico hence why they are "stealing our jobs." Illegal immigrants cross the border (criminal and "lawful") and take refuge in sanctuary cities where they are able to get jobs and such. Depending on the circumstances, they can even vote in elections (primarily democrat voters which is why democrats oppose actually enforcing immigration laws. Hopefully, this will also be proven in the investigation he plans on conducting on this previous election, but I digress. Trump is simply protecting our country and its people. Mexico does nothing to help the situation so they will reap what they have sown. The wall should most likely be a metaphoric wall (stronger border control, extra surveillance, etc.) but a physical wall will suffice. On a last note, a cold war will never happen with Mexico and the US. The US is and will alway be ahead of Mexico in practically all ways you can imagine, meaning that Mexico would not be able to do anything. We can bully them all we want with no fear of direct repercussions. 

 

I will begin by saying the "Muslim ban" is not a "Muslim ban." It is ban of Islamic states on a list created by the Obama administration specifying terrorist threats. The ban does not even include the top five countries having the highest number of Muslim citizens. Obama himself did the same thing several times (sometimes worse conditions) with no major backlash. Trump does it and the world throws a temper tantrum. As @Benroyjam said, it has been temporarily ended by a judge. The ban is entirely justified since Obama has done it in the past and since it is only temporary to get a proper vetting system in place for people who are actually in need of coming to the US otherwise known as poor, non-ISIS sympathizers. On a personal level, I have no issue with Muslims. I only have an issue with Islam since it is the worst mainstream religion the world has to offer in terms of its roots and ideologies. Therefore, I support the ban to prevent those who utilize the worst of Islam from coming to the US. 

 

Trump is smarter than most people make him out to be. Give it some time and hopefully you will understand what I mean. 

 

Please tell me that you don't actually think that 3 million illegal immigrants committed voting fraud.

 

 

By spending billions of dollars on a border wall that'll probably do absolutely nothing? We could probably save a lot more lives by investing in infrastructure like roads that'll actually be used. The border wall might be able to stop your average Joe from Mexico. But your average Joe from Mexico isn't the one who's doing any serious damage to the country. Plus it does absolutely nothing to deal with the fact that a lot of illegal immigrants fly in and just don't leave when their time is up.

 

The wall is complete fucking overkill. There's no need to make the great wall of America. Just hire some folks to patrol the border a bit and not waste billions of dollars building something that'll probably not even be maintained once he leaves office.

 

I wouldn't say always since forever is a long time. If we Americans are so spiteful that we're willing to straight up try and cripple our neighbor and ally then don't be surprised when a populist rises up in Mexico who is willing to hurt both countries to just hurt the U.S. Clearly the U.S. won't be as hurt as Mexico, but it's still a completely unnecessary amount of damage to build a wall that supposed to help the country from a non-existent threat. It's even more absurd when you consider that Mexico is our neighbor and our ally. Also, you forgot to add a "but we really shouldn't bully them because bullying your friends is a stupid fucking idea that'll bite you in the ass eventually." But yeah, the wall is a stupid reason to start a diplomatic feud between two otherwise friendly countries. Not to mention that if we somehow do make Mexico pay for the wall by hurting their economy, then that's going to bite us in the ass since that just means people will be trying harder to get into the U.S. And one thing to keep in mind is that you can go over, under, and with some explosives, even through a wall. Overall, the wall's not worth losing the amount of political capital that we are.

 

 

It's not a muslim ban?

 

 

It's literally supposed to be a religious ban. It's just the only legal religious ban they could get.

 

I suppose to idiots a slightly smarter idiot might seem like a genius.

Trump's not that smart. And it's not even him that anyone should be worried about. The people that anyone should be worried about are those controlling Trump like Steve Bannon. Trump doesn't care about facts or science or else he wouldn't call climate change a "Chinese hoax". And like I said in my previous post, Climate Change is a serious threat to global stability. Not to mention pissing off your allies is a stupid idea as well.

 

Overall, I think Trump's proving himself to be a shitty president. But you gotta hand it to their administration that their tactic of stirring so many controversies that you can't focus on all of them is a good way to get shitty things passed without any criticism.

[-_Fx_- 666 / 11,186]

@Major_Push I couldn't have said it any better.

Fuck Donald Trump and everything he stands for.

[Aurelien 344 / 6,758]

I rather have an orange cheeto president who cares about real problems, instead of an irresponsible, warmongering, and corrupt lady.

[-_Fx_- 666 / 11,186]

10 minutes ago, Aurelien said:

I rather have an orange cheeto president who cares about real problems, instead of an irresponsible, warmongering, and corrupt lady.

Climate change is a real problem what is he doing about that?

[Ben 2,378 / 31,861]

2 hours ago, Aurelien said:

I rather have an orange cheeto president who cares about real problems, instead of an irresponsible, warmongering, and corrupt lady.

If democrats didn't have Hillary as their presidential candidate, would you vote for Bernie Sanders, if he had win?

[Shuruia 3,145 / 28,023]

5 hours ago, qDogg said:

Trump is smarter than most people make him out to be.

Why do Trump supporters overlook his cognitive dissonance? Given that he is prone to giving two contradictory opinions in the span of ten seconds, I find it hard to believe that he is intelligent.

4 hours ago, Major_Push said:

So I don't know what you count as "crying". But hopefully you're not suggesting that we just simply take his stupid and dangerous decisions

"#NotMyPresident" and the recent delicious irony in swaths of Trump supporters regretting voting for him. It's one thing to oppose him (which I do), but it's another thing entirely to bawl like a baby because of it.

[queue 917 / 10,419]

 

9 hours ago, Major_Push said:

 

Please tell me that you don't actually think that 3 million illegal immigrants committed voting fraud.

 

 

By spending billions of dollars on a border wall that'll probably do absolutely nothing? We could probably save a lot more lives by investing in infrastructure like roads that'll actually be used. The border wall might be able to stop your average Joe from Mexico. But your average Joe from Mexico isn't the one who's doing any serious damage to the country. Plus it does absolutely nothing to deal with the fact that a lot of illegal immigrants fly in and just don't leave when their time is up.

 

The wall is complete fucking overkill. There's no need to make the great wall of America. Just hire some folks to patrol the border a bit and not waste billions of dollars building something that'll probably not even be maintained once he leaves office.

 

I wouldn't say always since forever is a long time. If we Americans are so spiteful that we're willing to straight up try and cripple our neighbor and ally then don't be surprised when a populist rises up in Mexico who is willing to hurt both countries to just hurt the U.S. Clearly the U.S. won't be as hurt as Mexico, but it's still a completely unnecessary amount of damage to build a wall that supposed to help the country from a non-existent threat. It's even more absurd when you consider that Mexico is our neighbor and our ally. Also, you forgot to add a "but we really shouldn't bully them because bullying your friends is a stupid fucking idea that'll bite you in the ass eventually." But yeah, the wall is a stupid reason to start a diplomatic feud between two otherwise friendly countries. Not to mention that if we somehow do make Mexico pay for the wall by hurting their economy, then that's going to bite us in the ass since that just means people will be trying harder to get into the U.S. And one thing to keep in mind is that you can go over, under, and with some explosives, even through a wall. Overall, the wall's not worth losing the amount of political capital that we are.

 

 

It's not a muslim ban?

 

 

It's literally supposed to be a religious ban. It's just the only legal religious ban they could get.

 

I suppose to idiots a slightly smarter idiot might seem like a genius.

Trump's not that smart. And it's not even him that anyone should be worried about. The people that anyone should be worried about are those controlling Trump like Steve Bannon. Trump doesn't care about facts or science or else he wouldn't call climate change a "Chinese hoax". And like I said in my previous post, Climate Change is a serious threat to global stability. Not to mention pissing off your allies is a stupid idea as well.

 

Overall, I think Trump's proving himself to be a shitty president. But you gotta hand it to their administration that their tactic of stirring so many controversies that you can't focus on all of them is a good way to get shitty things passed without any criticism.

 

- I never claimed that three million Hillary voters were necessarily illegal immigrants. I just said it is possible. There are roughly eleven million illegal immigrants estimated to be living in the US. I do not know how that eleven million would be broken up in terms of age or other factors, but I believe that there was at least some number of that eleven million that managed to vote, regardless of its overall effect on the election. It is not entirely solid evidence, but you can look at known sanctuary cities for illegal immigrants on a map broken down into individual counties and labeled blue/red based upon who they voted for and see that many of which were blue surrounded by red. They themselves are not the only people capable of voter fraud seen here in Michigan. It is just as likely that a number of people voted twice or more for Hillary to increase her odds of winning. While it is entirely possible for Trump supporters to do the same you may argue, I find it highly unlikely. As I said, we will find out the specifics if Trump follows through with his investigation.

 

- - I already gave my stance on the wall and how I do not necessarily believe that a physical wall is the most economical decision. Regardless, it will still protect us from illegal immigration to some extent. Wall or not, they will find ways in, but it will be able to keep out a number of them.

 

- The illegal immigration situation is a legitimate threat, regardless of how small or large it is. Denying that it is a problem is arrogant. While the solution proposed to that problem may not be the best, it is better than people like Obama endorsing illegal immigration and allowing unknown figures just walk into our country. While it hurts relations between the countries, being ignorant of a threat of security is worse off for both countries. If I am not mistaken, Mexico knows this first hand as well because I believe they are witnessing a similar problem with people from Central America. Until they can hold up their own protection of the border, we will step in and deal with it. Whether Mexico is a neighbor and ally or not, it does not mean they can harm us without consequences. Lastly, I did not endorse bullying Mexico. I just said we could do it without direct repercussion. All of the actions I do endorse are simply business and nothing more.

 

- Like I said, if it were a Muslim ban, regions like Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey, and Egypt would be on the ban list as well since they all have +80% Muslim population and +70 million Muslims each. You would think that if they truly wanted the Muslim population of the world kept out of the US, they would not want people from those countries to be able to come in. The countries Obama himself put on the list are known countries that endorse terrorist acts and are a security threat. Regardless of what "it was supposed to be", that is what it turned out to be. The temporary ban is for the better to keep Muslim ISIS sympathizers out. They have already killed more people in this country than anyone would like. 

 

- I never claimed he was a genius. I do not follow Trump blindly. I understand he has flaws just as every other person on the planet has. For example, he uses the wrong economic school of thought in my opinion (Keynesian rather than Austrian). I simply said that people think he has the intelligence of a buffoon but in reality that is not the case, regardless of the weird conspiracies he may or may not believe in. Since climate change has been a reoccurring topic mentioned, I guess I can give my thoughts about it. I will not deny that climate change is real. I simply believe that we do not have the technology to combat it entirely at the moment. For example, I believe you or someone else mentioned something about our dependence on fossil fuels and all of that. Fossil fuels are cheap and effective regardless of what you may believe. The energy produced by fossil fuels exceed any energy produced by renewable resources (solar, wind, etc.). The technology just is not there at the moment. There is no way we can produce enough energy from other means to keep up with the US's demand. In the next four to eight years, I truly doubt that it will be there either meaning Trump can burn all the fossil fuels he wants in the meantime for all I care. However, I would like Trump to invest money into renewable technology research so we are not relying on fossil fuels for the next thirty years (not replace current plants with solar/wind). Nuclear is a viable option if done correctly and people were not so afraid of it. Overall, complaining about Trump's lack of care about the climate is pointless in my opinion. There are plenty of other actions to complain about that are more "harmful." 

 

I will add this in too since I like Sargon:

 

[Rcool64 1,007 / 16,299]

5 hours ago, Benroyjam said:

If democrats didn't have Hillary as their presidential candidate, would you vote for Bernie Sanders, if he had win?

Hell yea I would. Bernie actually cared about the 99% unlike Hillary and Trump, who seem to focus on the 1%. But no, "I WANT HILARY TO BE OUR FIRST FEMALE PREDISENT ASWEFAWEFAWEFAWEFA" is what got her up on the presidency.

 

As you can tell, I REALLY didn't like any of this years candidates...

[Finnick 2,355 / 32,330]

9 minutes ago, Rcool64 said:

As you can tell, I REALLY didn't like any of this years candidates...

not even bernie? ;~: