deltago "When I say ‘natural,’ I mean it in a way that the general population wouldn’t think differently about the candidate due to their gender."
That will never happen here in the US during my generation. People will complain and question it no matter what credentials the person has.
Maybe that's why it took a 100 years to get to this point. Nature is a slow process, something people tend to forget in the instant gratification present we are currently living. Now isn't soon enough for some people.
deltago "When I say ‘natural,’ I mean it in a way that the general population wouldn’t think differently about the candidate due to their gender."
That will never happen here in the US during my generation. People will complain and question it no matter what credentials the person has.
Maybe that's why it took a 100 years to get to this point. Nature is a slow process, something people tend to forget in the instant gratification present we are currently living. Now isn't soon enough for some people.
This is all that ever comes to mind when I hear this argument. He's talking about civil rights but it applies to this as well:
deltago "When I say ‘natural,’ I mean it in a way that the general population wouldn’t think differently about the candidate due to their gender."
That will never happen here in the US during my generation. People will complain and question it no matter what credentials the person has.
Maybe that's why it took a 100 years to get to this point. Nature is a slow process, something people tend to forget in the instant gratification present we are currently living. Now isn't soon enough for some people.
I dont really think this is a coherent argument. It seemingly ignores the fact that the "natural process" you keep referring to is anything but natural. Women did not gain the right to vote naturally. People didnt come to accept the fact that women should have the right to vote or to stop being considered second class citizens naturally. These events happened because of activist movements such as the suffragettes in the case of women or civil rights movement in the case of African Americans. They sought to correct an injustice in American society, and put that waaaaay ahead of worrying about offending conservatives that largely opposed both initiatives.
If we were to transpose your argument to the early 1960s, do you think it would be appropriate to tell African Americans that they seek instant gratification by virtue or wanting to be treated as equal citizens in the USA? Would you be proud of your self 60 years on for that comment (FWIW - this was a VERY comment sentiment in the 1950s and 1960s. The idea that African Americans should just wait their turn, and that eventually they'd be equal citizens. Edit - see the video @jjstraka34 posted).
I'm not saying putting a woman on the ticket is equivalent to civil rights, but I am making the argument that social progress is rarely ever a "natural process". I dont think we should be dismissing that social activism as just "instant gratification".
Good news everybody. If you've been itching to get a tattoo you can just zip on over to Georgia on Friday! Heck, get a haircut and a full-body massage while you're at it, then head on over to the bowling alley for the grand finale.
Good news everybody. If you've been itching to get a tattoo you can just zip on over to Georgia on Friday! Heck, get a haircut and a full-body massage while you're at it, then head on over to the bowling alley for the grand finale.
I wish I was kidding...
Bowling alley. Where everyone hands over their shoes and gets them passed back later, and where people use the same balls all throughout the day. So unless the bowling alleys plan on wiping down every single ball and no one plans on........you know what, it isn't worth even going over. We could do something to mitigate this, but 15-20% of the population is just going to refuse to go along. And while that may seem small percentage-wise, it is essentially enough to torpedo the efforts of the other 80%. So, we're at their mercy now. Hostages to their urge to make sure the grey roots in their hair aren't showing and so they can get back to fertilizing their lawns.
The White House keeps bandying this 60,000 number of deaths as a success metric, but I have no idea why. We're still seeing nearly 2000 deaths a day and now many states are opening up at LEAST 2-3 weeks too early, before they have even seen a decline from their peak. I don't know on which planet the number stops at 60,000, but it isn't this one. It's at over 42,000 right now.
The argument now boils down to "people die all the time, get over it". And while this is true, it's also true that what people generally ACCEPT people should die from (as in, what causes most deaths) has been pretty static for decades if not a century. You can't just introduce a whole new factor into the equation and expect people to "get over it". Especially when it has quickly become THE leading cause of death in the country.
If a lockdown is enough to inspire people to go on militant protests--a lockdown which, however inconvenient, is responding to a pandemic that has already killed tens of thousands of people--then these protestors have a very low threshold for breaking out the rifles and swastikas and calling for "liberation."
I'm wondering if a Trump defeat in 2020 would result in armed violence.
If a lockdown is enough to inspire people to go on militant protests--a lockdown which, however inconvenient, is responding to a pandemic that has already killed tens of thousands of people--then these protestors have a very low threshold for breaking out the rifles and swastikas and calling for "liberation."
I'm wondering if a Trump defeat in 2020 would result in armed violence.
deltago "When I say ‘natural,’ I mean it in a way that the general population wouldn’t think differently about the candidate due to their gender."
That will never happen here in the US during my generation. People will complain and question it no matter what credentials the person has.
Maybe that's why it took a 100 years to get to this point. Nature is a slow process, something people tend to forget in the instant gratification present we are currently living. Now isn't soon enough for some people.
I dont really think this is a coherent argument. It seemingly ignores the fact that the "natural process" you keep referring to is anything but natural. Women did not gain the right to vote naturally. People didnt come to accept the fact that women should have the right to vote or to stop being considered second class citizens naturally. These events happened because of activist movements such as the suffragettes in the case of women or civil rights movement in the case of African Americans. They sought to correct an injustice in American society, and put that waaaaay ahead of worrying about offending conservatives that largely opposed both initiatives.
If we were to transpose your argument to the early 1960s, do you think it would be appropriate to tell African Americans that they seek instant gratification by virtue or wanting to be treated as equal citizens in the USA? Would you be proud of your self 60 years on for that comment (FWIW - this was a VERY comment sentiment in the 1950s and 1960s. The idea that African Americans should just wait their turn, and that eventually they'd be equal citizens. Edit - see the video @jjstraka34 posted).
I'm not saying putting a woman on the ticket is equivalent to civil rights, but I am making the argument that social progress is rarely ever a "natural process". I dont think we should be dismissing that social activism as just "instant gratification".
Well said. I think it's important to note that the criteria here for what is "natural" or not is essentially un-falsifiable. It seems pretty ad hoc to me. Not to mention the naturalistic fallacy... plenty of things are natural that are not desirable in our society.
I also find it to be a deep lack of empathy to attack people demanding things like equal representation as "instant gratification", especially when those doing it have enjoyed full citizenship and disproportionate representation for a long time. If anything the need to be gratified seems to be running the other way, from my perspective.
And again, these standards don't seem to be applied equally. As I said, Sanders hired several people to top positions in his campaign, imo, clearly for identity box checking. There's actually no real evidence of Biden doing the same. I have to question if there's an actual principle at stake here. To me it just seems like pretext to attack candidates one is already pre-disposed to dislike.
deltago "When I say ‘natural,’ I mean it in a way that the general population wouldn’t think differently about the candidate due to their gender."
That will never happen here in the US during my generation. People will complain and question it no matter what credentials the person has.
Maybe that's why it took a 100 years to get to this point. Nature is a slow process, something people tend to forget in the instant gratification present we are currently living. Now isn't soon enough for some people.
I dont really think this is a coherent argument. It seemingly ignores the fact that the "natural process" you keep referring to is anything but natural. Women did not gain the right to vote naturally. People didnt come to accept the fact that women should have the right to vote or to stop being considered second class citizens naturally. These events happened because of activist movements such as the suffragettes in the case of women or civil rights movement in the case of African Americans. They sought to correct an injustice in American society, and put that waaaaay ahead of worrying about offending conservatives that largely opposed both initiatives.
If we were to transpose your argument to the early 1960s, do you think it would be appropriate to tell African Americans that they seek instant gratification by virtue or wanting to be treated as equal citizens in the USA? Would you be proud of your self 60 years on for that comment (FWIW - this was a VERY comment sentiment in the 1950s and 1960s. The idea that African Americans should just wait their turn, and that eventually they'd be equal citizens. Edit - see the video @jjstraka34 posted).
I'm not saying putting a woman on the ticket is equivalent to civil rights, but I am making the argument that social progress is rarely ever a "natural process". I dont think we should be dismissing that social activism as just "instant gratification".
Well said. I think it's important to note that the criteria here for what is "natural" or not is essentially un-falsifiable. It seems pretty ad hoc to me. Not to mention the naturalistic fallacy... plenty of things are natural that are not desirable in our society.
I also find it to be a deep lack of empathy to attack people demanding things like equal representation as "instant gratification", especially when those doing it have enjoyed full citizenship and disproportionate representation for a long time. If anything the need to be gratified seems to be running the other way, from my perspective.
And again, these standards don't seem to be applied equally. As I said, Sanders hired several people to top positions in his campaign, imo, clearly for identity box checking. There's actually no real evidence of Biden doing the same. I have to question if there's an actual principle at stake here. To me it just seems like pretext to attack candidates one is already pre-disposed to dislike.
Spoken by somebody who obviously likes him. Just sayin'...
deltago "When I say ‘natural,’ I mean it in a way that the general population wouldn’t think differently about the candidate due to their gender."
That will never happen here in the US during my generation. People will complain and question it no matter what credentials the person has.
Maybe that's why it took a 100 years to get to this point. Nature is a slow process, something people tend to forget in the instant gratification present we are currently living. Now isn't soon enough for some people.
I dont really think this is a coherent argument. It seemingly ignores the fact that the "natural process" you keep referring to is anything but natural. Women did not gain the right to vote naturally. People didnt come to accept the fact that women should have the right to vote or to stop being considered second class citizens naturally. These events happened because of activist movements such as the suffragettes in the case of women or civil rights movement in the case of African Americans. They sought to correct an injustice in American society, and put that waaaaay ahead of worrying about offending conservatives that largely opposed both initiatives.
If we were to transpose your argument to the early 1960s, do you think it would be appropriate to tell African Americans that they seek instant gratification by virtue or wanting to be treated as equal citizens in the USA? Would you be proud of your self 60 years on for that comment (FWIW - this was a VERY comment sentiment in the 1950s and 1960s. The idea that African Americans should just wait their turn, and that eventually they'd be equal citizens. Edit - see the video @jjstraka34 posted).
I'm not saying putting a woman on the ticket is equivalent to civil rights, but I am making the argument that social progress is rarely ever a "natural process". I dont think we should be dismissing that social activism as just "instant gratification".
Well said. I think it's important to note that the criteria here for what is "natural" or not is essentially un-falsifiable. It seems pretty ad hoc to me. Not to mention the naturalistic fallacy... plenty of things are natural that are not desirable in our society.
I also find it to be a deep lack of empathy to attack people demanding things like equal representation as "instant gratification", especially when those doing it have enjoyed full citizenship and disproportionate representation for a long time. If anything the need to be gratified seems to be running the other way, from my perspective.
And again, these standards don't seem to be applied equally. As I said, Sanders hired several people to top positions in his campaign, imo, clearly for identity box checking. There's actually no real evidence of Biden doing the same. I have to question if there's an actual principle at stake here. To me it just seems like pretext to attack candidates one is already pre-disposed to dislike.
Spoken by somebody who obviously likes him. Just sayin'...
I may be mistaken, but I think @DinoDin and I are pretty close to the same position on this issue. While I cannot speak for their opinion on Biden, I've been pretty clear that Biden (and Sanders) were basically my bottom two serious candidates for the Democratic Ticket. My point being - I dont really like him all that much, but I can still make the argument about his VP choice approach.
That said, if I was asked in a poll if I was favorable to Biden or not, I'd probably say yes because I'm not answering that in a vacuum, and have every intention of voting for him in 2020. I'd also be more likely to give a favorable response to bed-bugs than Trump, if they were running against him.
In other news - People should be careful and tone down some the rhetoric on Georgia reopening. While I think Georgia opening up is a bad, bad idea - Conservatives are about to use Georgia as a test case to argue that we should ease restrictions everywhere. Because the nation is so large, and has varying distribution of population, there's a good chance that *national* numbers will look good in the coming weeks even if Georgia's numbers start to look worse. The argument to open the whole nation will end up being something like "See? States are starting to re-open and the number of cases and deaths nationwide are decreasing". It's intellectually disingenuous, but it works great as a 15 second soundbite on Fox news and in conservative media memes.
We may have hit a relative "plateau" when you consider that most days the last two weeks have been hovering somewhere around 30,000 cases per day and 2000 deaths per day, when you account for much lower numbers on Saturday-Monday are, generally, compared to what's reported Tuesday-Friday. That was NEVER the point at which everything was supposed to go back to normal. If you compared it to a roller coaster, we have now climbed the hill. But the drop-off hasn't happened yet. It's just been level since reaching that height. But instead of waiting for that, certain states (well, fuck that, states run by Republican Governors, let's get real) have said "ok, we aren't exponentially growing anymore, so let's get this thing back in gear". It's taken a total change in society to even get to the point where the number of new cases and deaths isn't increasing everyday, and are instead just going up by roughly the same amount every 72 hours. It's like stopping a basketball game at halftime or dropping out of a marathon after the 13th mile.
deltago "When I say ‘natural,’ I mean it in a way that the general population wouldn’t think differently about the candidate due to their gender."
That will never happen here in the US during my generation. People will complain and question it no matter what credentials the person has.
Maybe that's why it took a 100 years to get to this point. Nature is a slow process, something people tend to forget in the instant gratification present we are currently living. Now isn't soon enough for some people.
I dont really think this is a coherent argument. It seemingly ignores the fact that the "natural process" you keep referring to is anything but natural. Women did not gain the right to vote naturally. People didnt come to accept the fact that women should have the right to vote or to stop being considered second class citizens naturally. These events happened because of activist movements such as the suffragettes in the case of women or civil rights movement in the case of African Americans. They sought to correct an injustice in American society, and put that waaaaay ahead of worrying about offending conservatives that largely opposed both initiatives.
If we were to transpose your argument to the early 1960s, do you think it would be appropriate to tell African Americans that they seek instant gratification by virtue or wanting to be treated as equal citizens in the USA? Would you be proud of your self 60 years on for that comment (FWIW - this was a VERY comment sentiment in the 1950s and 1960s. The idea that African Americans should just wait their turn, and that eventually they'd be equal citizens. Edit - see the video @jjstraka34 posted).
I'm not saying putting a woman on the ticket is equivalent to civil rights, but I am making the argument that social progress is rarely ever a "natural process". I dont think we should be dismissing that social activism as just "instant gratification".
Really?
Just look up Woman’s Suffrage and when it started (1700s) and look how long it took them to be on equal footing.
The Civil Rights movement didn’t start with Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. It didn’t start with emancipation or with the Underground Railroad or the Slavery Abolition Act. It started with not only rebellion on plantations and slave ships but the Abolitionism movement in the 1700s. A good read IMO is The Sugar Barons by Matthew Parker. Not only does it explain how the slave trade started, it explains why people in those times thought it was acceptable (religious reasons, slaves were actually considered part of the family, usually freed upon the owners death), how it was corrupted by greed and how the Slavery Abolition Act came to pass (and how long it actually took) and how all the slave owners just moved to America with their “property” in the window of time it took the bill from passing and the deadline to free their servants/slaves.
Bolding this because it’s the tl;dr argument I am attempting to make: Not only does it take rebellion, but it takes sympathy from those in the majority to say ‘that minority is oppressed.’ That is what takes time, changing societies view and understanding and reasoning.
So yes, the slow crawl of turning what is ‘acceptable’ into something else takes time, sometime centuries, and does exist.
So if you take my argument and supplant it into 1960s America, it boils down to “this is a historic moment in America that has taken centuries to come to fruition. But the fight is not over. Equally isn’t granted by the government, it is given by your fellow man and if he is still not willing to give it to you, keep fighting, even if it takes a century more. But do not only point out the injustices, point out why you are deserving to be treated as equal. We are all human beings and part of humanity. We are part of the future of this great country. Do not rest until every child is considered such on the day that they were born regardless of the colour of their skin.”
The good news, is that the instant gratification does have it benefits. LGBT+ rights have been pretty much fast tracked compared to these other two. None of them however, do I think are in the same privileged class as greying white males, so there is still a distance to go.
I also don’t think you are understanding my argument when it comes to having a woman on ticket. I think it is a very good thing that there is a woman on the ticket when it comes to an election. It shows how far the US has come. I just think it sets the movement back because the person on the ticket is a woman instead of all of her other qualifying benefits.
deltago "When I say ‘natural,’ I mean it in a way that the general population wouldn’t think differently about the candidate due to their gender."
That will never happen here in the US during my generation. People will complain and question it no matter what credentials the person has.
Maybe that's why it took a 100 years to get to this point. Nature is a slow process, something people tend to forget in the instant gratification present we are currently living. Now isn't soon enough for some people.
I dont really think this is a coherent argument. It seemingly ignores the fact that the "natural process" you keep referring to is anything but natural. Women did not gain the right to vote naturally. People didnt come to accept the fact that women should have the right to vote or to stop being considered second class citizens naturally. These events happened because of activist movements such as the suffragettes in the case of women or civil rights movement in the case of African Americans. They sought to correct an injustice in American society, and put that waaaaay ahead of worrying about offending conservatives that largely opposed both initiatives.
If we were to transpose your argument to the early 1960s, do you think it would be appropriate to tell African Americans that they seek instant gratification by virtue or wanting to be treated as equal citizens in the USA? Would you be proud of your self 60 years on for that comment (FWIW - this was a VERY comment sentiment in the 1950s and 1960s. The idea that African Americans should just wait their turn, and that eventually they'd be equal citizens. Edit - see the video @jjstraka34 posted).
I'm not saying putting a woman on the ticket is equivalent to civil rights, but I am making the argument that social progress is rarely ever a "natural process". I dont think we should be dismissing that social activism as just "instant gratification".
Well said. I think it's important to note that the criteria here for what is "natural" or not is essentially un-falsifiable. It seems pretty ad hoc to me. Not to mention the naturalistic fallacy... plenty of things are natural that are not desirable in our society.
I also find it to be a deep lack of empathy to attack people demanding things like equal representation as "instant gratification", especially when those doing it have enjoyed full citizenship and disproportionate representation for a long time. If anything the need to be gratified seems to be running the other way, from my perspective.
And again, these standards don't seem to be applied equally. As I said, Sanders hired several people to top positions in his campaign, imo, clearly for identity box checking. There's actually no real evidence of Biden doing the same. I have to question if there's an actual principle at stake here. To me it just seems like pretext to attack candidates one is already pre-disposed to dislike.
Spoken by somebody who obviously likes him. Just sayin'...
I'll lay my cards on the table, Biden wasn't my first choice, even when the race was down to two guys. But that being said, people are deluding themselves if they think a Biden presidency would be radically different than a Sanders presidency (or pick whatever Democrat you want). People need to recognize that the presidency is constrained by the legislature, and the federalist system. There's no magic dust where a Sanders presidency converts the Senate into M4A votes. Nor, is there even one where he can convince the current Supreme Court to consider it constitutional. I also don't have strong feelings about Biden, I don't know the guy. There's some great stuff in his career and some not so great stuff.
If you want to see real, substantive change, you need to be ready for a decades-long fight, with lots partial victories along the way. If you want to opt out and vote for the third parties, or not all, then you are de facto upholding the status quo.
I've noticed that you've made several posts about which candidates you like and dislike. This point you just made about Biden, you "can't stand" Kamala Harris. I think voters need to ask themselves if they care about politics because they want to see change, or because they want to punish and reward celebrities in some kind of reality television contest. Because if your politics centers around emotional reactions towards people you've never met, and don't truly know, you are doing the latter.
deltago "When I say ‘natural,’ I mean it in a way that the general population wouldn’t think differently about the candidate due to their gender."
That will never happen here in the US during my generation. People will complain and question it no matter what credentials the person has.
Maybe that's why it took a 100 years to get to this point. Nature is a slow process, something people tend to forget in the instant gratification present we are currently living. Now isn't soon enough for some people.
I dont really think this is a coherent argument. It seemingly ignores the fact that the "natural process" you keep referring to is anything but natural. Women did not gain the right to vote naturally. People didnt come to accept the fact that women should have the right to vote or to stop being considered second class citizens naturally. These events happened because of activist movements such as the suffragettes in the case of women or civil rights movement in the case of African Americans. They sought to correct an injustice in American society, and put that waaaaay ahead of worrying about offending conservatives that largely opposed both initiatives.
If we were to transpose your argument to the early 1960s, do you think it would be appropriate to tell African Americans that they seek instant gratification by virtue or wanting to be treated as equal citizens in the USA? Would you be proud of your self 60 years on for that comment (FWIW - this was a VERY comment sentiment in the 1950s and 1960s. The idea that African Americans should just wait their turn, and that eventually they'd be equal citizens. Edit - see the video @jjstraka34 posted).
I'm not saying putting a woman on the ticket is equivalent to civil rights, but I am making the argument that social progress is rarely ever a "natural process". I dont think we should be dismissing that social activism as just "instant gratification".
Well said. I think it's important to note that the criteria here for what is "natural" or not is essentially un-falsifiable. It seems pretty ad hoc to me. Not to mention the naturalistic fallacy... plenty of things are natural that are not desirable in our society.
I also find it to be a deep lack of empathy to attack people demanding things like equal representation as "instant gratification", especially when those doing it have enjoyed full citizenship and disproportionate representation for a long time. If anything the need to be gratified seems to be running the other way, from my perspective.
And again, these standards don't seem to be applied equally. As I said, Sanders hired several people to top positions in his campaign, imo, clearly for identity box checking. There's actually no real evidence of Biden doing the same. I have to question if there's an actual principle at stake here. To me it just seems like pretext to attack candidates one is already pre-disposed to dislike.
Spoken by somebody who obviously likes him. Just sayin'...
I may be mistaken, but I think @DinoDin and I are pretty close to the same position on this issue. While I cannot speak for their opinion on Biden, I've been pretty clear that Biden (and Sanders) were basically my bottom two serious candidates for the Democratic Ticket. My point being - I dont really like him all that much, but I can still make the argument about his VP choice approach.
That said, if I was asked in a poll if I was favorable to Biden or not, I'd probably say yes because I'm not answering that in a vacuum, and have every intention of voting for him in 2020. I'd also be more likely to give a favorable response to bed-bugs than Trump, if they were running against him.
In other news - People should be careful and tone down some the rhetoric on Georgia reopening. While I think Georgia opening up is a bad, bad idea - Conservatives are about to use Georgia as a test case to argue that we should ease restrictions everywhere. Because the nation is so large, and has varying distribution of population, there's a good chance that *national* numbers will look good in the coming weeks even if Georgia's numbers start to look worse. The argument to open the whole nation will end up being something like "See? States are starting to re-open and the number of cases and deaths nationwide are decreasing". It's intellectually disingenuous, but it works great as a 15 second soundbite on Fox news and in conservative media memes.
You are absolutely making a fair point on Georgia, but I think there's still cause for concern. The problem is these numbers may not rise for one or two weeks. And even then, I'm really skeptical of people's ability to grok things like rates -- watch people will still be comparing Georgia totals to New York totals. So I dunno, on the one hand, I think what you're saying is fair, laboratories of democracy and all that. On the other hand almost no epidemiology expert thinks the US has a handle on the outbreak.
deltago "When I say ‘natural,’ I mean it in a way that the general population wouldn’t think differently about the candidate due to their gender."
That will never happen here in the US during my generation. People will complain and question it no matter what credentials the person has.
Maybe that's why it took a 100 years to get to this point. Nature is a slow process, something people tend to forget in the instant gratification present we are currently living. Now isn't soon enough for some people.
I dont really think this is a coherent argument. It seemingly ignores the fact that the "natural process" you keep referring to is anything but natural. Women did not gain the right to vote naturally. People didnt come to accept the fact that women should have the right to vote or to stop being considered second class citizens naturally. These events happened because of activist movements such as the suffragettes in the case of women or civil rights movement in the case of African Americans. They sought to correct an injustice in American society, and put that waaaaay ahead of worrying about offending conservatives that largely opposed both initiatives.
If we were to transpose your argument to the early 1960s, do you think it would be appropriate to tell African Americans that they seek instant gratification by virtue or wanting to be treated as equal citizens in the USA? Would you be proud of your self 60 years on for that comment (FWIW - this was a VERY comment sentiment in the 1950s and 1960s. The idea that African Americans should just wait their turn, and that eventually they'd be equal citizens. Edit - see the video @jjstraka34 posted).
I'm not saying putting a woman on the ticket is equivalent to civil rights, but I am making the argument that social progress is rarely ever a "natural process". I dont think we should be dismissing that social activism as just "instant gratification".
Really?
Just look up Woman’s Suffrage and when it started (1700s) and look how long it took them to be on equal footing.
The Civil Rights movement didn’t start with Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. It didn’t start with emancipation or with the Underground Railroad or the Slavery Abolition Act. It started with not only rebellion on plantations and slave ships but the Abolitionism movement in the 1700s. A good read IMO is The Sugar Barons by Matthew Parker. Not only does it explain how the slave trade started, it explains why people in those times thought it was acceptable (religious reasons, slaves were actually considered part of the family, usually freed upon the owners death), how it was corrupted by greed and how the Slavery Abolition Act came to pass (and how long it actually took) and how all the slave owners just moved to America with their “property” in the window of time it took the bill from passing and the deadline to free their servants/slaves.
Bolding this because it’s the tl;dr argument I am attempting to make: Not only does it take rebellion, but it takes sympathy from those in the majority to say ‘that minority is oppressed.’ That is what takes time, changing societies view and understanding and reasoning.
So yes, the slow crawl of turning what is ‘acceptable’ into something else takes time, sometime centuries, and does exist.
So if you take my argument and supplant it into 1960s America, it boils down to “this is a historic moment in America that has taken centuries to come to fruition. But the fight is not over. Equally isn’t granted by the government, it is given by your fellow man and if he is still not willing to give it to you, keep fighting, even if it takes a century more. But do not only point out the injustices, point out why you are deserving to be treated as equal. We are all human beings and part of humanity. We are part of the future of this great country. Do not rest until every child is considered such on the day that they were born regardless of the colour of their skin.”
The good news, is that the instant gratification does have it benefits. LGBT+ rights have been pretty much fast tracked compared to these other two. None of them however, do I think are in the same privileged class as greying white males, so there is still a distance to go.
I also don’t think you are understanding my argument when it comes to having a woman on ticket. I think it is a very good thing that there is a woman on the ticket when it comes to an election. It shows how far the US has come. I just think it sets the movement back because the person on the ticket is a woman instead of all of her other qualifying benefits.
I'm curious: Where do you think any of that argues against my greater point?
I did not say nor suggest that the only moment of social activism occurred in the moments leading up to the acquisition of equality. If anything, my point is that this is a struggle that is *constant* - meaning, going back as far as the issue is collectively recognized.
I think your misunderstanding stems from missing that these things are connected. People only grew to accept the civil rights because other people agitated for it when it wasnt popular or acceptable. It wasnt won until (most) everyone came onboard, but it was fought for long before that.
So saying "My VP has to be woman" might not be popular with 50% of the US electorate. I dont know. What I do know is that moving the ball down court by making that statement does more to normalize a woman as president than waiting until it polls well everywhere. Activism for social progress is the inciting effect, not the end of the process.
As a corollary - I think you're completely off target about LGBTQ rights. It's taken *longer* for them, because most of these social injustices have the same jumping off point. It took much longer for LGBTQ marriage equality to occur than mixed race marriages, as an immediate example. This is, once again, not a "natural process" but an active attempt to normalize. LGBTQ are also far more likely to be targeted by laws within the USA right now that African Americans (Although African American communities are also targeted, just in less overt ways - voter suppression and the like).
I still think your "Instant gratification" argument utterly undersells the moral imperative to fight against social inequality.
The White House keeps bandying this 60,000 number of deaths as a success metric, but I have no idea why. We're still seeing nearly 2000 deaths a day and now many states are opening up at LEAST 2-3 weeks too early, before they have even seen a decline from their peak. I don't know on which planet the number stops at 60,000, but it isn't this one. It's at over 42,000 right now.
The 60,000 model projection was the total expected by 4 August in one particular model. I agree that it seems likely the total was heading well above that even if there were no change in current social distancing arrangements - let alone with the expected loosening in many states. However, that's no problem - the administration can just pick a new yardstick for measuring progress and expect everyone to forget what was used before ...
Incidentally, the 42,000 figure only includes deaths outside hospital in a handful of states (admittedly though New York is one of those). CDC guidelines are to include all deaths, so at some point in the future there should be a significant addition to those numbers as other states revise their figures.
I see that Trump has tweeted overnight he is suspending all immigration to the US. The tweet refers to the Invisible Enemy and it looks like Trump is settling on that as his preferred description for Covid-19. That is probably both intended to provide a rationale for why he didn't see it earlier and try to personify it to make it easier for his supporters to blame an entity rather than him.
In practice of course the Invisible Enemy will result in a moving target for blame as different groups are classed as giving aid and assistance to the Enemy. Immigrants are definitely one of those groups though and an easy target to blame for lots of things. While this action can be portrayed as a defense against a disease, the reality is it's not. If it were really the disease that was being targeted, the appropriate action would be something like enforcing a 14 day quarantine on all immigrants (or indeed potentially all travellers).
Trump's tweet also refers to protecting jobs. At a time when many millions of Americans have lost or are in danger of losing their job, giving them a target for their anger is an obvious tactic, irrespective of whether that target makes sense.
Of course, at this stage all that's happened is a tweet. Such tweets are not always followed through, but I'd be surprised if that happened this time. There's intense pressure on Trump to take action on the disease, so it makes a lot of political sense for him to do something he (or his base) have wanted to do anyway - whether or not that actually helps with the substantive issue.
Edit: for context, here's the latest report by Homeland Security on immigration. In 2019 there were just over 1m foreign nationals that were given permanent resident status in the US (though over half of those related to people already resident). A large majority of applications were approved on the basis they were family of US citizens. The total movements into the country (not just immigration) were 136m.
deltago "When I say ‘natural,’ I mean it in a way that the general population wouldn’t think differently about the candidate due to their gender."
That will never happen here in the US during my generation. People will complain and question it no matter what credentials the person has.
Maybe that's why it took a 100 years to get to this point. Nature is a slow process, something people tend to forget in the instant gratification present we are currently living. Now isn't soon enough for some people.
I dont really think this is a coherent argument. It seemingly ignores the fact that the "natural process" you keep referring to is anything but natural. Women did not gain the right to vote naturally. People didnt come to accept the fact that women should have the right to vote or to stop being considered second class citizens naturally. These events happened because of activist movements such as the suffragettes in the case of women or civil rights movement in the case of African Americans. They sought to correct an injustice in American society, and put that waaaaay ahead of worrying about offending conservatives that largely opposed both initiatives.
If we were to transpose your argument to the early 1960s, do you think it would be appropriate to tell African Americans that they seek instant gratification by virtue or wanting to be treated as equal citizens in the USA? Would you be proud of your self 60 years on for that comment (FWIW - this was a VERY comment sentiment in the 1950s and 1960s. The idea that African Americans should just wait their turn, and that eventually they'd be equal citizens. Edit - see the video @jjstraka34 posted).
I'm not saying putting a woman on the ticket is equivalent to civil rights, but I am making the argument that social progress is rarely ever a "natural process". I dont think we should be dismissing that social activism as just "instant gratification".
Really?
Just look up Woman’s Suffrage and when it started (1700s) and look how long it took them to be on equal footing.
The Civil Rights movement didn’t start with Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. It didn’t start with emancipation or with the Underground Railroad or the Slavery Abolition Act. It started with not only rebellion on plantations and slave ships but the Abolitionism movement in the 1700s. A good read IMO is The Sugar Barons by Matthew Parker. Not only does it explain how the slave trade started, it explains why people in those times thought it was acceptable (religious reasons, slaves were actually considered part of the family, usually freed upon the owners death), how it was corrupted by greed and how the Slavery Abolition Act came to pass (and how long it actually took) and how all the slave owners just moved to America with their “property” in the window of time it took the bill from passing and the deadline to free their servants/slaves.
Bolding this because it’s the tl;dr argument I am attempting to make: Not only does it take rebellion, but it takes sympathy from those in the majority to say ‘that minority is oppressed.’ That is what takes time, changing societies view and understanding and reasoning.
So yes, the slow crawl of turning what is ‘acceptable’ into something else takes time, sometime centuries, and does exist.
So if you take my argument and supplant it into 1960s America, it boils down to “this is a historic moment in America that has taken centuries to come to fruition. But the fight is not over. Equally isn’t granted by the government, it is given by your fellow man and if he is still not willing to give it to you, keep fighting, even if it takes a century more. But do not only point out the injustices, point out why you are deserving to be treated as equal. We are all human beings and part of humanity. We are part of the future of this great country. Do not rest until every child is considered such on the day that they were born regardless of the colour of their skin.”
The good news, is that the instant gratification does have it benefits. LGBT+ rights have been pretty much fast tracked compared to these other two. None of them however, do I think are in the same privileged class as greying white males, so there is still a distance to go.
I also don’t think you are understanding my argument when it comes to having a woman on ticket. I think it is a very good thing that there is a woman on the ticket when it comes to an election. It shows how far the US has come. I just think it sets the movement back because the person on the ticket is a woman instead of all of her other qualifying benefits.
I'm curious: Where do you think any of that argues against my greater point?
I did not say nor suggest that the only moment of social activism occurred in the moments leading up to the acquisition of equality. If anything, my point is that this is a struggle that is *constant* - meaning, going back as far as the issue is collectively recognized.
I think your misunderstanding stems from missing that these things are connected. People only grew to accept the civil rights because other people agitated for it when it wasnt popular or acceptable. It wasnt won until (most) everyone came onboard, but it was fought for long before that.
So saying "My VP has to be woman" might not be popular with 50% of the US electorate. I dont know. What I do know is that moving the ball down court by making that statement does more to normalize a woman as president than waiting until it polls well everywhere. Activism for social progress is the inciting effect, not the end of the process.
As a corollary - I think you're completely off target about LGBTQ rights. It's taken *longer* for them, because most of these social injustices have the same jumping off point. It took much longer for LGBTQ marriage equality to occur than mixed race marriages, as an immediate example. This is, once again, not a "natural process" but an active attempt to normalize. LGBTQ are also far more likely to be targeted by laws within the USA right now that African Americans (Although African American communities are also targeted, just in less overt ways - voter suppression and the like).
I still think your "Instant gratification" argument utterly undersells the moral imperative to fight against social inequality.
It's a good discussion and I can certainly see valid points on both sides. In these Covid-19 days though it might be worth thinking about how 'normal' is defined. While there are certainly voluble protesters, the majority of people in the US do seem to have accepted social distancing as the 'new normal'. That's happened incredibly quickly given how far out this sort of situation would have seemed just months ago.
I've referred to that sort of acceptance several times in the past in relation to legal and social issues. For instance the way prohibitions on drinking and driving came into being. More recently in the UK there was a strong conservative campaign waged against the idea of same sex marriage. That got forced through largely as a result of a personal commitment on the part of the then prime minister, David Cameron. Without that commitment the pressure for change wouldn't have gone away, but it could have been quite a few years before the opportunity to actually make a change came again. Since the legal change, the situation has become 'normal'. In effect, much of the conservative mindset to protect the status quo is now defending the current position and its only a pretty small fringe that wish to reverse the change.
My point I suppose is that it tends to be harder to make change than defend it. Putting in place things like all women shortlists in MP constituencies in the UK or a commitment to make the next VP a woman in the US is part of the process of change and controversial just as a result of that. However, if the impact of that change is recognized as normal by most people (and that could happen quickly) it can potentially become self-sustaining without the need to continue the use of the particular mechanisms used to institute the change in the first place.
Call me crazy, but my initial read on the situation is that there aren't many legal immigrants who are just itching to insert themselves into a country that is now the clear epicenter of a global pandemic with no universal healthcare and a cratering economy. But that's just me. Maybe there are some people just ready to jump at a chance to work for companies like Smithfield Foods, who now have TWO plants that have become legitimate hotspots on their own, in no small part because they don't give two shits about the safety of their workers or the communities they go back into after work. But if you want to know the real reason Trump is doing this, my guess is internal polling is catastrophic and it's showing him losing part of his base.
What's it going to do to stop the spread of the virus?? The answer to that is "jack-shit", just like his Chinese travel ban that wasn't actually a travel ban. Maybe people don't comprehend this yet, but WE'RE the ones with the most cases and deaths in the world. Not anyone else. We're the third-world shit-hole now. People can accept that fact or bury their head in the sand about it, but it won't make it any less true.
As for the 60,000 number, I mean......August?!? Even if the death rate dips to 1500 a day starting tomorrow, we'll still reach that number by May 3rd. Of course, 30% of the population of this country will just pretend he never used that as a numerical success barometer, because the truth simply doesn't matter anymore.
Which has been the goal from the beginning of this Administration. They're still blaming Barack Obama for not making tests for a virus that wouldn't exist until over three years after he was out of office. And the scariest part isn't that they're pushing that narrative, it's that millions of people BELIEVE it. But this should not be a surprise to anyone. The current White House Press Secretary once blamed Barack Obama for Daniel Pearl's beheading on national television and said he was golfing when it happened. Barack Obama was a state senator from Illinois when Daniel Pearl was killed. He hadn't even run for national office yet, much less the Presidency. That's how warped this shit has gotten. Where half the narratives on the right require time-travel to be plausible.
Call me crazy, but my initial read on the situation is that there aren't many legal immigrants who are just itching to insert themselves into a country that is now the clear epicenter of a global pandemic with no universal healthcare and a cratering economy(...)
I was doing a selection for a multinational with a possibility to live on US(after some months of "training", nothing set in stone) that got canceled in February and if i could live on US, i would move in my first opportunity. But illegally is something that i will never do, because it is wrong, it prejudices the US and other people who wanna do in the proper way and because upper middle class life in my home country is much better than the life of a illegal on US.
Healthcare on US is ultra expensive because is over-regulated. And if i really need a treatment, i can spend some days on my home country. Dollars worth a lot more since the pandemic. Making money in dollar even if i had to come back will gonna be amazing.
I honestly don't fear Coronavirus. I an 6' 1" tall, with broad shoulders, live in the less violent capital of Brazil and got victim of two assault attempts.
Anyway, is not related to the US but here is a amazing (and long) video about Hong Kong
The White House keeps bandying this 60,000 number of deaths as a success metric, but I have no idea why. We're still seeing nearly 2000 deaths a day and now many states are opening up at LEAST 2-3 weeks too early, before they have even seen a decline from their peak. I don't know on which planet the number stops at 60,000, but it isn't this one. It's at over 42,000 right now.
The argument now boils down to "people die all the time, get over it". And while this is true, it's also true that what people generally ACCEPT people should die from (as in, what causes most deaths) has been pretty static for decades if not a century. You can't just introduce a whole near factor into the equation and expect people to "get over it". Especially when it has quickly become THE leading cause of death in the country.
There's a BIG FREAKING WARNING SIGN on the model that says "Current social distancing assumed until infections minimized and containment implemented", although I've been having doubts on that model's accuracy.
Healthcare on US is ultra expensive because is over-regulated. And if i really need a treatment, i can spend some days on my home country. Dollars worth a lot more since the pandemic. Making money in dollar even if i had to come back will gonna be amazing.
I honestly don't fear Coronavirus. I an 6' 1" tall, with broad shoulders, live in the less violent capital of Brazil and got victim of two assault attempts.
As an American, I've got to let you know this is totally wrong. Completely wrong. You are wildly wrong saying that regulations are why healthcare is expensive in America.
It's because there are NOT ENOUGH regulations. There are a lot of middle men who drive up prices. You see there are private insurance companies, drug makers, CEOs, for profit hospitals, insurance companies, investors, advertising people etc all want to make the most money they can from healthcare.
So the price goes up. Why's it go up? No regulations to say that prices shouldn't go up. No protections against greedy people. The price goes up when there's nothing stopping it from going up. When you need healthcare it's not really optional. You can't shop around for the best deal when you're bleeding in the street. So you go and get healthcare and they want to charge you as much as they possibly can.
You don't fear Coronavirus, well good for you. You realize that you can get it and then get your mother, father, child, sick and kill them right? You probably didn't realize that because you might not have been thinking about other people. They totally exist.
You probably didn't realize that because you might not have been thinking about other people. They totally exist.
But do they though? What if they're just the materialization of a standing wavefunction? What if nothing exists but waves and we just interpret "matter" as a snapshot of those waves?
I saw this article about Typhoid Mary yesterday. The issue about passing a disease onto others while showing no effects yourself is obviously very topical at the moment given that a lot of the difficulty in stopping the spread of Covid-19 is due to pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic spread.
Although we know far more about germ theory now than in the early twentieth century, I think it's understandable that a lot of people still find it difficult to emotionally accept that a disease that has little or no impact on them could be deadly to others. Such acceptance tends to come from personal experience, but it's that type of experience that most governments are keen to save their citizens from.
Healthcare on US is ultra expensive because is over-regulated. And if i really need a treatment, i can spend some days on my home country. Dollars worth a lot more since the pandemic. Making money in dollar even if i had to come back will gonna be amazing.
I honestly don't fear Coronavirus. I an 6' 1" tall, with broad shoulders, live in the less violent capital of Brazil and got victim of two assault attempts.
You don't fear Coronavirus, well good for you. You realize that you can get it and then get your mother, father, child, sick and kill them right? You probably didn't realize that because you might not have been thinking about other people. They totally exist.
That is an unjustifiably harsh statement. Whether or not you 'fear' Coronavirus is not related to blatant disregard for other's health. I don't 'fear' Coronavirus either. Just like I don't 'fear' any other disease. However, I have no problem staying home, wearing a mask when I go out and keeping my distance from people when possible. Fear makes people do stupid things like rush out and buy two years worth of toilet paper. Understanding, on the other hand, results in calmly waiting out the storm while doing what's necessary to get this over with as soon as possible. I know which I prefer...
In summary: "Goldman Sachs is forecasting an economic recovery that has a V-shape while oil production slumps permanently - an L-shape."
It's an interesting situation. There were a number of occasions last year when electricity in Europe was being sold at negative prices, but I don't remember that for oil before.
I think the short term drop in consumption due to Covid-19 coupled with the projected long term drop due to the switch to renewables might have created the 'perfect storm'.
I think the short term drop in consumption due to Covid-19 coupled with the projected long term drop due to the switch to renewables might have created the 'perfect storm'.
Not to mention the short term production war between Russia and Saudi Arabia...
Comments
Maybe that's why it took a 100 years to get to this point. Nature is a slow process, something people tend to forget in the instant gratification present we are currently living. Now isn't soon enough for some people.
This is all that ever comes to mind when I hear this argument. He's talking about civil rights but it applies to this as well:
I dont really think this is a coherent argument. It seemingly ignores the fact that the "natural process" you keep referring to is anything but natural. Women did not gain the right to vote naturally. People didnt come to accept the fact that women should have the right to vote or to stop being considered second class citizens naturally. These events happened because of activist movements such as the suffragettes in the case of women or civil rights movement in the case of African Americans. They sought to correct an injustice in American society, and put that waaaaay ahead of worrying about offending conservatives that largely opposed both initiatives.
If we were to transpose your argument to the early 1960s, do you think it would be appropriate to tell African Americans that they seek instant gratification by virtue or wanting to be treated as equal citizens in the USA? Would you be proud of your self 60 years on for that comment (FWIW - this was a VERY comment sentiment in the 1950s and 1960s. The idea that African Americans should just wait their turn, and that eventually they'd be equal citizens. Edit - see the video @jjstraka34 posted).
I'm not saying putting a woman on the ticket is equivalent to civil rights, but I am making the argument that social progress is rarely ever a "natural process". I dont think we should be dismissing that social activism as just "instant gratification".
I wish I was kidding...
Bowling alley. Where everyone hands over their shoes and gets them passed back later, and where people use the same balls all throughout the day. So unless the bowling alleys plan on wiping down every single ball and no one plans on........you know what, it isn't worth even going over. We could do something to mitigate this, but 15-20% of the population is just going to refuse to go along. And while that may seem small percentage-wise, it is essentially enough to torpedo the efforts of the other 80%. So, we're at their mercy now. Hostages to their urge to make sure the grey roots in their hair aren't showing and so they can get back to fertilizing their lawns.
The White House keeps bandying this 60,000 number of deaths as a success metric, but I have no idea why. We're still seeing nearly 2000 deaths a day and now many states are opening up at LEAST 2-3 weeks too early, before they have even seen a decline from their peak. I don't know on which planet the number stops at 60,000, but it isn't this one. It's at over 42,000 right now.
The argument now boils down to "people die all the time, get over it". And while this is true, it's also true that what people generally ACCEPT people should die from (as in, what causes most deaths) has been pretty static for decades if not a century. You can't just introduce a whole new factor into the equation and expect people to "get over it". Especially when it has quickly become THE leading cause of death in the country.
I'm wondering if a Trump defeat in 2020 would result in armed violence.
Hopefully we'll find out.
Well said. I think it's important to note that the criteria here for what is "natural" or not is essentially un-falsifiable. It seems pretty ad hoc to me. Not to mention the naturalistic fallacy... plenty of things are natural that are not desirable in our society.
I also find it to be a deep lack of empathy to attack people demanding things like equal representation as "instant gratification", especially when those doing it have enjoyed full citizenship and disproportionate representation for a long time. If anything the need to be gratified seems to be running the other way, from my perspective.
And again, these standards don't seem to be applied equally. As I said, Sanders hired several people to top positions in his campaign, imo, clearly for identity box checking. There's actually no real evidence of Biden doing the same. I have to question if there's an actual principle at stake here. To me it just seems like pretext to attack candidates one is already pre-disposed to dislike.
Spoken by somebody who obviously likes him. Just sayin'...
I may be mistaken, but I think @DinoDin and I are pretty close to the same position on this issue. While I cannot speak for their opinion on Biden, I've been pretty clear that Biden (and Sanders) were basically my bottom two serious candidates for the Democratic Ticket. My point being - I dont really like him all that much, but I can still make the argument about his VP choice approach.
That said, if I was asked in a poll if I was favorable to Biden or not, I'd probably say yes because I'm not answering that in a vacuum, and have every intention of voting for him in 2020. I'd also be more likely to give a favorable response to bed-bugs than Trump, if they were running against him.
In other news - People should be careful and tone down some the rhetoric on Georgia reopening. While I think Georgia opening up is a bad, bad idea - Conservatives are about to use Georgia as a test case to argue that we should ease restrictions everywhere. Because the nation is so large, and has varying distribution of population, there's a good chance that *national* numbers will look good in the coming weeks even if Georgia's numbers start to look worse. The argument to open the whole nation will end up being something like "See? States are starting to re-open and the number of cases and deaths nationwide are decreasing". It's intellectually disingenuous, but it works great as a 15 second soundbite on Fox news and in conservative media memes.
Really?
Just look up Woman’s Suffrage and when it started (1700s) and look how long it took them to be on equal footing.
The Civil Rights movement didn’t start with Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. It didn’t start with emancipation or with the Underground Railroad or the Slavery Abolition Act. It started with not only rebellion on plantations and slave ships but the Abolitionism movement in the 1700s. A good read IMO is The Sugar Barons by Matthew Parker. Not only does it explain how the slave trade started, it explains why people in those times thought it was acceptable (religious reasons, slaves were actually considered part of the family, usually freed upon the owners death), how it was corrupted by greed and how the Slavery Abolition Act came to pass (and how long it actually took) and how all the slave owners just moved to America with their “property” in the window of time it took the bill from passing and the deadline to free their servants/slaves.
Bolding this because it’s the tl;dr argument I am attempting to make: Not only does it take rebellion, but it takes sympathy from those in the majority to say ‘that minority is oppressed.’ That is what takes time, changing societies view and understanding and reasoning.
So yes, the slow crawl of turning what is ‘acceptable’ into something else takes time, sometime centuries, and does exist.
So if you take my argument and supplant it into 1960s America, it boils down to “this is a historic moment in America that has taken centuries to come to fruition. But the fight is not over. Equally isn’t granted by the government, it is given by your fellow man and if he is still not willing to give it to you, keep fighting, even if it takes a century more. But do not only point out the injustices, point out why you are deserving to be treated as equal. We are all human beings and part of humanity. We are part of the future of this great country. Do not rest until every child is considered such on the day that they were born regardless of the colour of their skin.”
The good news, is that the instant gratification does have it benefits. LGBT+ rights have been pretty much fast tracked compared to these other two. None of them however, do I think are in the same privileged class as greying white males, so there is still a distance to go.
I also don’t think you are understanding my argument when it comes to having a woman on ticket. I think it is a very good thing that there is a woman on the ticket when it comes to an election. It shows how far the US has come. I just think it sets the movement back because the person on the ticket is a woman instead of all of her other qualifying benefits.
I'll lay my cards on the table, Biden wasn't my first choice, even when the race was down to two guys. But that being said, people are deluding themselves if they think a Biden presidency would be radically different than a Sanders presidency (or pick whatever Democrat you want). People need to recognize that the presidency is constrained by the legislature, and the federalist system. There's no magic dust where a Sanders presidency converts the Senate into M4A votes. Nor, is there even one where he can convince the current Supreme Court to consider it constitutional. I also don't have strong feelings about Biden, I don't know the guy. There's some great stuff in his career and some not so great stuff.
If you want to see real, substantive change, you need to be ready for a decades-long fight, with lots partial victories along the way. If you want to opt out and vote for the third parties, or not all, then you are de facto upholding the status quo.
I've noticed that you've made several posts about which candidates you like and dislike. This point you just made about Biden, you "can't stand" Kamala Harris. I think voters need to ask themselves if they care about politics because they want to see change, or because they want to punish and reward celebrities in some kind of reality television contest. Because if your politics centers around emotional reactions towards people you've never met, and don't truly know, you are doing the latter.
You are absolutely making a fair point on Georgia, but I think there's still cause for concern. The problem is these numbers may not rise for one or two weeks. And even then, I'm really skeptical of people's ability to grok things like rates -- watch people will still be comparing Georgia totals to New York totals. So I dunno, on the one hand, I think what you're saying is fair, laboratories of democracy and all that. On the other hand almost no epidemiology expert thinks the US has a handle on the outbreak.
I'm curious: Where do you think any of that argues against my greater point?
I did not say nor suggest that the only moment of social activism occurred in the moments leading up to the acquisition of equality. If anything, my point is that this is a struggle that is *constant* - meaning, going back as far as the issue is collectively recognized.
I think your misunderstanding stems from missing that these things are connected. People only grew to accept the civil rights because other people agitated for it when it wasnt popular or acceptable. It wasnt won until (most) everyone came onboard, but it was fought for long before that.
So saying "My VP has to be woman" might not be popular with 50% of the US electorate. I dont know. What I do know is that moving the ball down court by making that statement does more to normalize a woman as president than waiting until it polls well everywhere. Activism for social progress is the inciting effect, not the end of the process.
As a corollary - I think you're completely off target about LGBTQ rights. It's taken *longer* for them, because most of these social injustices have the same jumping off point. It took much longer for LGBTQ marriage equality to occur than mixed race marriages, as an immediate example. This is, once again, not a "natural process" but an active attempt to normalize. LGBTQ are also far more likely to be targeted by laws within the USA right now that African Americans (Although African American communities are also targeted, just in less overt ways - voter suppression and the like).
I still think your "Instant gratification" argument utterly undersells the moral imperative to fight against social inequality.
The 60,000 model projection was the total expected by 4 August in one particular model. I agree that it seems likely the total was heading well above that even if there were no change in current social distancing arrangements - let alone with the expected loosening in many states. However, that's no problem - the administration can just pick a new yardstick for measuring progress and expect everyone to forget what was used before ...
Incidentally, the 42,000 figure only includes deaths outside hospital in a handful of states (admittedly though New York is one of those). CDC guidelines are to include all deaths, so at some point in the future there should be a significant addition to those numbers as other states revise their figures.
I see that Trump has tweeted overnight he is suspending all immigration to the US. The tweet refers to the Invisible Enemy and it looks like Trump is settling on that as his preferred description for Covid-19. That is probably both intended to provide a rationale for why he didn't see it earlier and try to personify it to make it easier for his supporters to blame an entity rather than him.
In practice of course the Invisible Enemy will result in a moving target for blame as different groups are classed as giving aid and assistance to the Enemy. Immigrants are definitely one of those groups though and an easy target to blame for lots of things. While this action can be portrayed as a defense against a disease, the reality is it's not. If it were really the disease that was being targeted, the appropriate action would be something like enforcing a 14 day quarantine on all immigrants (or indeed potentially all travellers).
Trump's tweet also refers to protecting jobs. At a time when many millions of Americans have lost or are in danger of losing their job, giving them a target for their anger is an obvious tactic, irrespective of whether that target makes sense.
Of course, at this stage all that's happened is a tweet. Such tweets are not always followed through, but I'd be surprised if that happened this time. There's intense pressure on Trump to take action on the disease, so it makes a lot of political sense for him to do something he (or his base) have wanted to do anyway - whether or not that actually helps with the substantive issue.
Edit: for context, here's the latest report by Homeland Security on immigration. In 2019 there were just over 1m foreign nationals that were given permanent resident status in the US (though over half of those related to people already resident). A large majority of applications were approved on the basis they were family of US citizens. The total movements into the country (not just immigration) were 136m.
It's a good discussion and I can certainly see valid points on both sides. In these Covid-19 days though it might be worth thinking about how 'normal' is defined. While there are certainly voluble protesters, the majority of people in the US do seem to have accepted social distancing as the 'new normal'. That's happened incredibly quickly given how far out this sort of situation would have seemed just months ago.
I've referred to that sort of acceptance several times in the past in relation to legal and social issues. For instance the way prohibitions on drinking and driving came into being. More recently in the UK there was a strong conservative campaign waged against the idea of same sex marriage. That got forced through largely as a result of a personal commitment on the part of the then prime minister, David Cameron. Without that commitment the pressure for change wouldn't have gone away, but it could have been quite a few years before the opportunity to actually make a change came again. Since the legal change, the situation has become 'normal'. In effect, much of the conservative mindset to protect the status quo is now defending the current position and its only a pretty small fringe that wish to reverse the change.
My point I suppose is that it tends to be harder to make change than defend it. Putting in place things like all women shortlists in MP constituencies in the UK or a commitment to make the next VP a woman in the US is part of the process of change and controversial just as a result of that. However, if the impact of that change is recognized as normal by most people (and that could happen quickly) it can potentially become self-sustaining without the need to continue the use of the particular mechanisms used to institute the change in the first place.
What's it going to do to stop the spread of the virus?? The answer to that is "jack-shit", just like his Chinese travel ban that wasn't actually a travel ban. Maybe people don't comprehend this yet, but WE'RE the ones with the most cases and deaths in the world. Not anyone else. We're the third-world shit-hole now. People can accept that fact or bury their head in the sand about it, but it won't make it any less true.
As for the 60,000 number, I mean......August?!? Even if the death rate dips to 1500 a day starting tomorrow, we'll still reach that number by May 3rd. Of course, 30% of the population of this country will just pretend he never used that as a numerical success barometer, because the truth simply doesn't matter anymore.
Which has been the goal from the beginning of this Administration. They're still blaming Barack Obama for not making tests for a virus that wouldn't exist until over three years after he was out of office. And the scariest part isn't that they're pushing that narrative, it's that millions of people BELIEVE it. But this should not be a surprise to anyone. The current White House Press Secretary once blamed Barack Obama for Daniel Pearl's beheading on national television and said he was golfing when it happened. Barack Obama was a state senator from Illinois when Daniel Pearl was killed. He hadn't even run for national office yet, much less the Presidency. That's how warped this shit has gotten. Where half the narratives on the right require time-travel to be plausible.
I was doing a selection for a multinational with a possibility to live on US(after some months of "training", nothing set in stone) that got canceled in February and if i could live on US, i would move in my first opportunity. But illegally is something that i will never do, because it is wrong, it prejudices the US and other people who wanna do in the proper way and because upper middle class life in my home country is much better than the life of a illegal on US.
Healthcare on US is ultra expensive because is over-regulated. And if i really need a treatment, i can spend some days on my home country. Dollars worth a lot more since the pandemic. Making money in dollar even if i had to come back will gonna be amazing.
I honestly don't fear Coronavirus. I an 6' 1" tall, with broad shoulders, live in the less violent capital of Brazil and got victim of two assault attempts.
Anyway, is not related to the US but here is a amazing (and long) video about Hong Kong
This looks surreal BECAUSE of those two cops just calming looking on.
As an American, I've got to let you know this is totally wrong. Completely wrong. You are wildly wrong saying that regulations are why healthcare is expensive in America.
It's because there are NOT ENOUGH regulations. There are a lot of middle men who drive up prices. You see there are private insurance companies, drug makers, CEOs, for profit hospitals, insurance companies, investors, advertising people etc all want to make the most money they can from healthcare.
So the price goes up. Why's it go up? No regulations to say that prices shouldn't go up. No protections against greedy people. The price goes up when there's nothing stopping it from going up. When you need healthcare it's not really optional. You can't shop around for the best deal when you're bleeding in the street. So you go and get healthcare and they want to charge you as much as they possibly can.
You don't fear Coronavirus, well good for you. You realize that you can get it and then get your mother, father, child, sick and kill them right? You probably didn't realize that because you might not have been thinking about other people. They totally exist.
But do they though? What if they're just the materialization of a standing wavefunction? What if nothing exists but waves and we just interpret "matter" as a snapshot of those waves?
Although we know far more about germ theory now than in the early twentieth century, I think it's understandable that a lot of people still find it difficult to emotionally accept that a disease that has little or no impact on them could be deadly to others. Such acceptance tends to come from personal experience, but it's that type of experience that most governments are keen to save their citizens from.
That is an unjustifiably harsh statement. Whether or not you 'fear' Coronavirus is not related to blatant disregard for other's health. I don't 'fear' Coronavirus either. Just like I don't 'fear' any other disease. However, I have no problem staying home, wearing a mask when I go out and keeping my distance from people when possible. Fear makes people do stupid things like rush out and buy two years worth of toilet paper. Understanding, on the other hand, results in calmly waiting out the storm while doing what's necessary to get this over with as soon as possible. I know which I prefer...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/oil-prices-negative-why-fall-zero-coronavirus-demand-explained-a9475326.html
(It's an interesting article and worth reading in full.)
In summary: "Goldman Sachs is forecasting an economic recovery that has a V-shape while oil production slumps permanently - an L-shape."
It's an interesting situation. There were a number of occasions last year when electricity in Europe was being sold at negative prices, but I don't remember that for oil before.
Not to mention the short term production war between Russia and Saudi Arabia...
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/21/us/coronavirus-rural-hospitals-invs/index.html