Countdown to Extinction: The 2016 Presidential Election

[drogulus]

Once again, I generally agree with that  --- but Rawls´ idea about how a perfect society should be organized is purely theoretical; IIRC,  his theory is as follows: an individual is asked to design a perfect social, economical and political arrangement; the only condition he must bear in mind is that after setting it up he will be born again in that society but he knows not beforehand what his place and status will be. Rawls argues that this is the way to really achieve real perfection. Now please tell me if this is something you can safely call a realistic proposal / approach.

Solidarity, altruism, generosity, benevolence, liberality ---all these inborn human traits and propensities have manifested themselves long, long, long, loooooong before Rawls (or Marx, for that matter) was born. To wish and hope that they will prevail over (equally inborn) human traits of atomistic individualism, egotism, avarice, malevolence and illiberality and to personally act in such a manner as to promote them is one thing --- to pretend that one knows with certainty what and how must be done in order to achieve the perfect society is quite another. As long as people themselves will be imperfect --- that is, until Judgment Day --- society (any society) will be imperfect as well. That is not to say that any statu quo should be maintained and that reform, change and improvement should not be sought when possible.

     Let's review. Rawls describes both the project, humane government, and its realization, so how can that be purely theoretical? I mean if Rawls is correct he's simply summing up the direction governments have taken, how they might change and why they won't change back. I won't evolve back into a Ceausescu-saur but why not? Why doesn't it work that way? I think it's because there's more practice in plans and plans in practice when you get to the stage of modern democracy, like software on a chip. A huge amount of philosophical working out has been left behind because it's not needed any more. It's in the behavior now.

     

To wish and hope that they will

     How did so much wishing and hoping get enacted despite the lack of perfection? Are you saying our wishes and hopes to devise a humane democratic government were fruitless but all of the progress made just happened, maybe even in spite of our attempts? Isn't that a pretty low plausibility, dare I say conservative reading of history? How do tyrants get to be good at enacting their plans for tyranny and the anti-tyrants are limited to ineffectual wishes and hopes? History doesn't show any such thing.

[Florestan]

Anyway, it doesn't matter exactly which things you measure, the same countries turn up again and again as the best places to live. The Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand fill out the top spots with monotonous regularity. All the different indexes keep saying it.

That´s precisely my point: lots of nations did not wait for Rawls and his utterly hypothetical "founding father" to teach them how to live.

[Florestan]

     How did so much wishing and hoping get enacted despite the lack of perfection? Are you saying our wishes and hopes to devise a humane democratic government were fruitless but all of the progress made just happened, maybe even in spite of our attempts?

I´m saying no such thing. I don´t even know where you got that notion. I can only notice that you left out the second part of the sentence: and to personally act in such a manner as to promote them.

[Madiel]

That´s precisely my point: lots of nations did not wait for Rawls and his utterly hypothetical "founding father" to teach them how to live.

But the relevance here is it's quite arguable that, for the last generation or two, the USA has not been one of these nations. And that Sanders, in particular, is arguing that it should be.

The USA seems to me to be built on a notion of "the great American dream" that is increasingly out of reach for most Americans. America is undoubtedly a fantastic place to be in order to become a great success. The problem is that that most people don't become a great success, and the USA does not do as good a job of dealing with those people who don't "make it".

[Jo498]

A main point of Rawls' idea of the "veil of ignorance" (design a society before you know at which social position you might end up) is that it does NOT at all strive for a "perfect society". Its strength and weakness is that it does not presuppose an idea of a "good life".
Only the minimal aspect that most people are not gamblers is presupposed.
A daredevil gambler might design a very unequal society on the slight chance he might end up a billionaire. I think a part of the mindset of many people in the US is that they kid themselves the rags to riches story might become true of them. The chances for this were probably better, say 100 years ago in the US, so the idea stuck whereas in Europe people do not entertain such dreams.

That satisfaction with life and society seems a feature of more equal societies, even among those who are well off anyway, that is a comparison between the well off in Sweden vs. Brazil or so, is a fairly recent empirical finding.

[drogulus]

I´m saying no such thing. I don´t even know where you got that notion. I can only notice that you left out the second part of the sentence: and to personally act in such a manner as to promote them.

      Rawls posits a society of people personally acting in such a way that can be described by his theory. They don't do that because Rawls wrote it, Rawls wrote it because they do it, and because Rawls wrote it, people have a refined idea of what a democratic constitutional order is "trying" to do, that is, what people do in actualizing their ideas. Practice gets turned into ideas and turned into practice and so on, chicken and egg like.

     The Republican Party Must Answer for What It Did to Kansas and Louisiana

     No, Repubs don't have to answer questions not posed by their own adherents. No "mainstream media" question about what happened in the Red State laboratory need be answered, and if it's posed it's an attack.

     Red Staters have been huddled around their campfire for so long, do they know what to do if it goes out? Steal fire from a Blue State? What if Blues decide its time to saw off the Reds? We changed our ideals, we can't carry you no more, we're going Brownback! Thing is, that's hard, the Blues don't want to go Brownback on themselves. We don't even want to saw off the Reds, stupid ideals being what they are. They're still Americans, so we can't abandon them.

[Gurn Blanston]

     
     The Republican Party Must Answer for What It Did to Kansas and Louisiana

     No, Repubs don't have to answer questions not posed by their own adherents. No "mainstream media" question about what happened in the Red State laboratory need be answered, and if it's posed it's an attack. 

We are a freaking Petri dish for social experimentation. And the claims made by the adherents of these plans (on both sides) are still being made as though the proven failures never happened. As long as you can tell people their taxes are being cut, it doesn't make a damn bit of difference what other costs are involved. In the showdown between Assholes and Morons, can there even BE a winner?

[Karl Henning]

In the showdown between Assholes and Morons, can there even BE a winner?

This is exactly the season for this rhetorical question . . . .

[drogulus]

    March of the GOPs

    Trump ata Trump a Trump a Trump

    Trump ata Trump a Trump a Trump

    Trump ata Trump

    Trump ata Trump

    Trump ata Trump ata Trump

   

     Trump can't really run and win as a third party candidate. It would come out of his own pocket. He won't spend hundreds of millions of his own money to be a human sacrifice to the Queen of Hell. The Repubs must foot the bill for their immolation, Trumps parting gift.

     

[Florestan]

In the wake of Brussels attacks:

Belgium is a failed state. Brussels' nest of radicalism is just one of the failings of a divided, dysfunctional country/

Molenbeek broke my heart. A former resident reflects on his struggles with Brussels' most notorious neighborhood

[Madiel]

In the wake of Brussels attacks:

Belgium is a failed state. Brussels' nest of radicalism is just one of the failings of a divided, dysfunctional country/

Molenbeek broke my heart. A former resident reflects on his struggles with Brussels' most notorious neighborhood

Well, if you're going to post this on the US Presidential election thread, let me respond the way I responded to both Donald Trump and Ted Cruz this morning:

My chances of being killed in a terrorist attack in Europe are far less than my chances of being killed with a gun in their country.

EDIT: I have no problem, by the way, with the proposition that there are some significant problems in Belgium and that Belgian political structures contribute to those problems. What I do have a problem with is American politicians who say "look at how awful Brussels is... we have to exclude or restrict Muslims to stop America becoming so bad" while ignoring that America is in fact far worse already. 

An American is more likely to be shot by a toddler than by a terrorist.

[Florestan]

Well, if you're going to post this on the US Presidential election thread.

I posted here because it´s the only thread where people are interested in politics. I could have started a new thread but given the history of a similar one I decided not to.

[Jo498]

Although there are a lot of people in the US killed accidentally by children playing with guns etc. there is a difference: Most of the people killed not accidentally with guns are young (often petty) criminals (frequently also wielding weapons). Whereas with terrorist attacks you can be a respectable citizen walking respectably around the train station and get shot or blown up.

That's why these suicide bombings are are more terrifying than shootings in the US. It's somewhat similar to the families killed by drone strikes in the near and middle east, although they have known for years now that they are in a war zone. Terrorist attacks are in the West still so rare that we don't believe that we are in a war zone as well.
But it's mainly the extension of the war zone from regions we only care about because there is oil there or they are geopolitically important and often let our allies do their dirty work.

http://www.politico.eu/article/why-the-arabs-dont-want-us-in-syria-mideast-conflict-oil-intervention/
https://theintercept.com/2016/03/22/families-were-blown-up-scenes-from-a-saudi-led-bombing-in-yemen/

[Madiel]

Although there are a lot of people in the US killed accidentally by children playing with guns etc. there is a difference: Most of the people killed not accidentally with guns are young (often petty) criminals (frequently also wielding weapons).

Or, you know, you can be a child playing outside who gets shot by police. Or a person who pulls into the wrong driveway and gets blasted by the homeowner as you're reversing out again.

But hey, we can trade anecdotes until the cows come home, or you can just tell me how many notional "bad people" it takes to even up with 1 "good person". I think it's about 10,000 gun deaths a year in America, so let me know if that's enough to cover the apparent difference in value between human lives.

[Florestan]

Two years earlier, Roosevelt and Stone had orchestrated a coup in Iran against the democratically elected President Mohammed Mosaddegh

False. Mosaddegh was prime-minister, not President, and he was elected by the Majlis (Parliament), not directly by the people.

Mosaddegh was the first elected leader in Iran's 4,000-year history

False. His predecessor Hosein Alā was also elected by the Majlis.

After ousting Mosaddegh in "Operation Ajax," Stone and Roosevelt installed Shah Reza Pahlavi

False. Mohammad Reza Shah acceded to the throne on 16 September 1941, ten full years before Mosaddegh´s first term as prime-minister.

And BTW, Iranians are not Arabs.

[Florestan]

I agree, however, that the US and European / EU policies in the Middle East (a misnomer, btw --- where is then the Near East?) have been an unmitigated disaster ever since the end of WWI.

[Karl Henning]

Thread Duty:

Behold the power of The Clinton Machine—the facts: Clinton wins Arizona with 58% of the vote; Sanders wins Idaho and Utah with 77%-78% of the vote.

Pundit tweets: "Clinton wins AZ; pressure on Sanders to fold his cards"

[Florestan]

Thread Duty:

Behold the power of The Clinton Machine—the facts: Clinton wins Arizona with 58% of the vote; Sanders wins Idaho and Utah with 77%-78% of the vote.

Pundit tweets: "Clinton wins AZ; pressure on Sanders to fold his cards"

 

If it had been the other way around, it would have read "Clinton landslides Idaho and Utah; Sanders barely makes it in AZ".

[Karl Henning]

Journalism would be, describing Sanders's path to the nomination as narrow.

Sucking up to The Machine is, describing it as incredibly narrow.

[drogulus]

     Based on estimates Clinton has 111% of delegates needed to win, Sanders 88%.

     Trump has 97% of delegates needed to win, Cruz has 53%.

     Cruz is in a hopeless situation unless the party machinations start to pick off Trump delegates. I wonder, though, how unpledged delegates will behave. The party machine has no one in the race. It hates itself!

     There is no means of pressuring Sanders in a race this close. The party machinery backs Clinton, the party consists largely of Clinton and Obama era loyalists, but many would like to see a more effective party acting not just to preserve gains but extend them. It's not so much Sanders/Warren as standard bearers, it's a party standard bearer pulled in their direction, with more peace in war policy, more health in health care, more wages in wage policy etc.