A long four years

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sleepysilverdoor
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Re: A long four years

Post by sleepysilverdoor »

I don't know why you're quoting me...I'm not the one who made the analogy. Are you intending to address Pigfarmer?
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Re: A long four years

Post by jb »

I replied to Pigfarmer in the first line, and then you after that.

In my response to you I was trying to explain that it wasn’t the line of reasoning but rather the examples that were at issue. Sorry if I’m not doing a great job being clear about that.

There is incendiary forum behavior that we largely avoid here, and that aspect of our community is valuable even as we strive to be more critical of our songwriting than other places online.

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sleepysilverdoor
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Re: A long four years

Post by sleepysilverdoor »

jb wrote:
Wed Nov 11, 2020 12:11 pm
I replied to Pigfarmer in the first line, and then you after that.

In my response to you I was trying to explain that it wasn’t the line of reasoning but rather the examples that were at issue. Sorry if I’m not doing a great job being clear about that.

There is incendiary forum behavior that we largely avoid here, and that aspect of our community is valuable even as we strive to be more critical of our songwriting than other places online.

JB
I understood/understand that the examples were the problem. Everyone else already condemned the examples as inappropriate...joining the chorus seemed redundant so I just addressed the validity of the analogy itself. Anyway, point taken, message received -- let's move on.
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Re: A long four years

Post by owl »

Hey, how cool and fun being a woman and a (I think the only?) POC in this discussion and seeing all of ...this!

Look, let me start by saying I actually really appreciate the various apologies and de-escalations that have been offered up, but I'm in an extremely bad mood today so I would like to say a few things, at the risk of stirring up this hornet's nest of shitty takes. I like and respect you all and consider you friends, but damn.

The point when someone says "you're a white man and your rights aren't in danger" is not "you're a white man, so your points aren't logically valid." Ironically, I feel like immediately using rape and lynching as examples of how a simple-majority democracy is bad basically just proves the point I think Sam was originally trying to make... if you can throw those terms around casually, purely for shock value or rhetorical purposes, they aren't real to you. They're just emotional Molotov cocktails you can toss into a discussion to try and end it. Your priorities and understanding of how policy will affect people are going to be skewed accordingly.

I don't know that this really needs to be said, but apparently maybe it does? I think it's completely absurd and offensive to make those comparisons when we were originally discussing whether the electoral college is a good thing. A fucking question about how to organize the government. Rape is not equivalent to abolishing the electoral college.

Over the course of my lifetime, I have been afraid both for my long-term rights and my immediate physical well-being, in completely real, non-hypothetical ways, both big and small, because of both my race and my gender. I have been groped in the street and had racial taunts shouted at me by strangers. (I had typed out a whole list of Things That Fucking Suck that have happened to me because of my race or gender that would never have happened to a white man but ended up deleting it for the sake of readability.) Maybe it will help make it more real, because it's someone you know? So much of this rhetoric is hypothetical and intellectual and none of it acknowledges that there is real trauma behind those words and it makes a painful mockery of them when you start pulling them out to argue about libertarian talking points or whatever. That is a point about using this kind of language, but taking a step back, also a point about how someone who is personally affected by issues may have a deeper and more nuanced understanding of what's at stake, in reality, not in a theoretical, intellectual bubble.

And to follow up on that: what is the issue with a simple majority vote? Supposedly, from what I gather above, not having the individual rights of the minority respected.

First of all: this is a ridiculous straw man argument. Doing away with the electoral college doesn't do away with all representation in government. Nobody said we should elect the President by a simple majority, and oh, by the way, also remove all of Congress, nobody gets to decide on anything except the President or having every single thing being put to the popular vote. There is always going to be a winner and a loser in any race for office, and it's important to protect the rights of the minority no matter what happens.

Second of all: Let me tell you something, I'm already not being adequately represented. This entire nation has been gerrymandered to hell and so Republicans hold far more power in this country than they should, and they certainly don't represent my viewpoints in most cases, nor do they have much apparent interest in protecting the rights of women and minorities, unless you count billionaires as a minority. [I know "women and minorities" is oversimplifying, you can add LGBTQ+, people with disabilities or preexisting conditions, low-income folks, you name it, to this list... ] And going back to the electoral college, the structure puts far more weight on a single vote in a less populated state than in a more populated state (one article I read said a single voter in North Dakota has 3.6 times more power than one in California). I don't understand the logic that says this makes sense.

I think basically a lot of people in favor of the electoral college system have made a selfish emotional decision that allows them to cling onto greater power for their own groups, or else at least hold onto something that's familiar, and are now backfilling quote unquote "logical arguments" in order to support the viewpoint they've already decided on.

How is it fair and logical, in this day and age, that someone should win the popular vote and lose the presidency?

And we already elect all kinds of other officials via simple majority vote. Why aren't we talking about how electing your city mayor or Congressman or dog catcher or whatever is the same as gang rape?

Going back to the Senate vs House question, states are historical artifacts with arbitrary boundaries and I think the House is a much more fair way of representing the American public, because representatives are more local and more or less proportionate to population. I don't actually understand why states make sense as a subdivision of government, aside from us ending up this way because of accidents of history, but I guess I'm not as angry about this since we do at least have that bicameral system. Urban vs rural makes more sense as a system of representation than pure geography but we absolutely aren't set up to deal with that kind of system.

Re gun rights and circumcision, these kind of fall into the "your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins" category for me. I have no problem with hunters having guns for hunting, but we've had enough mass shootings (well, and non-mass murders by firearm) in this country that I fall on the side of limiting this particular right. And limiting doesn't necessarily mean outright banning, but people tend to conflate "hey maybe we should have background checks and stop selling assault rifles to the general public" with "THEY'RE TAKING AWAY MY GUNS FOREVER." If an adult wants to get circumcised, or if there's a legitimate medical reason it needs to get done for a kid, sure, but I think it's basically societally-sanctioned genital mutilation of babies who can't decide for themselves. We're just used to it in our culture, so it doesn't seem barbaric and it even seems wacko and fringe to try and stop people from doing it.

There are good Republicans. There are horrible Democrats. I agree that the Patriot Act is garbage. But the Republican Party as it currently stands leans heavily fascist and white supremacist, and the actions of the party leadership in those directions only encourage that kind of behavior across the US, and I don't think that's hyperbole at all. Trump refused to condemn white supremacy in a national debate, and called out the Proud Boys on national TV, and the entire GOP (as a political entity) has been propping him up this entire time, and is still angling for a coup to reinstall him at the moment. What am I supposed to think of that? Oh OK yes it's all just about lower taxes and smaller government, right.
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Re: A long four years

Post by Billy's Little Trip »

Well this is a nice surprise. Let's hope they turn up something incriminating and not give trump more fodder for the cult.

FBI search at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home tied to classified material, sources say
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... 06deafecc8
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