To that end I find it odd that so many are ganging up on StreetlightX for articulating valid concerns regarding Biden's ability... as well as his culpability in a number of them. A vote for Biden is a rejection of Trump of course, but more more subtly it also entails a continuation of... — Maw

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar - and only a cigar. Two problems with most comments here on Biden. One is proportion. And the other is plain confusion. On Nov. 3, and assuming both will live long enough, either Donald Trump or Joseph Biden will be the USA president for the next four years. One or the other, whichever is better. Near as I can tell, record, history, reason, sanity, and the good are all on Biden's side. Anything else?

Certainly enlightening. I'm surprised it's not more specific.

What worries me is that we don't worry about the same things. I'll give you mine:

1. How to escape debt fueled economic policies;
2. Global warming;
3. The information apocolypse;
4. Promoting equality and fairness;
5. Overfishing;
6. Pollution;
7. Biodiversity.

Or to summarise: corporate capitalism. 2 and 3 are long term problems that require the most immediate action in the short term. 1 and 5 are medium term and the rest is long term.

The phrase “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Monica Lewinski” is embedded in the American psyche, I’m surprised you forgot about it. — NOS4A2

That particular quote was not made under oath. The one that was made under oath was in the present tense, after the affair had ended (and hence was true), which lead to the also-infamous "that depends on what the meaning of 'is' is". Which is a delightfully philosophical point: the case hinged on whether that was a present-tense "is" or a tenseless "is".

You'll recall that he was not found guilty of lying under oath. Impeachment is just the holding of a trial, not a conviction. He was tried, and ultimately found not guilty.

Not that I especially care to defend Bill, but if we're being technical...

Apparently Rudy Giuliani was told the girl was 15 so......

Accusations you can easily make but can hardly prove.

It’s true, and I never said otherwise. For the record I supported Clinton back then, regretfully.

Certainly enlightening. I'm surprised it's not more specific.

What worries me is that we don't worry about the same things. I'll give you mine:

1. How to escape debt fueled economic policies;
2. Global warming;
3. The information apocolypse;
4. Promoting equality and fairness;
5. Overfishing;
6. Pollution;
7. Biodiversity.

Or to summarise: corporate capitalism. 2 and 3 are long term problems that require the most immediate action in the short term. 1 and 5 are medium term and the rest is long term. — Benkei

#1 - doesn't concern me because I don't think whatever economic disaster we face in the future will have anything to do with this. What'll probably kill the economy is some made up virus.
#2 - doesn't concern me because I fucking hate the cold.
#3 - We know more today than ever before. My information circle now includes those from people from all sorts of fucked up places.
#4 - I agreed with.
#5 - I used to prosecute kids who caught too many trout, so I did my share. What have you done? Fish doesn't taste that good anyway.
#6 - I take out my garbage. If we all did like me, there wouldn't be this mess you talk about.
#7 - That's what zoos are for, to protect failing creatures from Darwin.

That particular quote was not made under oath. The one that was made under oath was in the present tense, after the affair had ended (and hence was true), which lead to the also-infamous "that depends on what the meaning of 'is' is". Which is a delightfully philosophical point: the case hinged on whether that was a present-tense "is" or a tenseless "is".

You'll recall that he was not found guilty of lying under oath. Impeachment is just the holding of a trial, not a conviction. He was tried, and ultimately found not guilty.

Not that I especially care to defend Bill, but if we're being technical... — Pfhorrest

I thought the reasoning was that Jones' lawyers wrote "For the purposes of this definition, a person engages in 'sexual relations' when the person knowingly engages in or causes contact with the genitalia, anus, groin, breast, inner thigh, or buttocks of any person with an intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person." and that receiving oral sex doesn't satisfy that definition, which is what Clinton told Starr: "I thought the definition included any activity by the person being deposed, where the person was the actor and came in contact with those parts of the bodies with the purpose or intent or [sic] gratifi-cation, and excluded any other activity."

I thought the reasoning was that Jones' lawyers wrote "For the purposes of this definition, a person engages in 'sexual relations' when the person knowingly engages in or causes contact with the genitalia, anus, groin, breast, inner thigh, or buttocks of any person with an intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person." and that receiving oral sex doesn't satisfy that definition. — Michael

I'm not sure where you're from, but typically oral sex is received for cleansing purposes and not to receive pleasure.

I'm not sure where you're from, but typically oral sex is received for cleansing purposes and not to receive pleasure. — Hanover

Take it up with Paula Jones' lawyers. They wrote the definition to be used for the deposition.

Take it up with Paula Jones' lawyers. They wrote the definition to be used for the deposition. — Michael

How does that definition not include oral sex?

How does that definition not include oral sex? — Hanover

Because Clinton didn't come into contact with Lewinsky's genitalia, anus, groin, breast, inner thigh, or buttocks – only her mouth, which wasn't included in the definition.

I get that this is election is a referendum on Trump and that it is his to lose. What I don't buy is the feel-good bullshit that a Biden win is not an endorsement of the democrats. It is. It absolutely is, and anyone who wants to pretend to think otherwise is lying to themselves in the name of a pseudo-realism that disregards reality. You vote for Biden, you endorse him, you endorse what he's done, you endorse what he's going to do, and you endorse the corporatist ecology that he'll extend, expand, and entrench. Fucking own it. — StreetlightX

Big whup. STFD. :sweat:

Like Angela Davis, Noam Chomsky, et al anti-fascist leftists (& progressives), I don't see how one can disagree with the electoral position that

An anti-fascist vote is not an endorsement of the Democratic Party. — Cornel West

... unless you're too disingenuous, or your head is too far up your own anus, to tell the difference between a neoliberal disaster and a neofascist catastrophe.

How does that definition not include oral sex?

Lewinski was guilty of performing “sexual relations”, while Clinton was just a passive object, I suppose. It’s a kind of lying that only a lawyer could muster.

I can understand a principled stand against voting for anyone (e.g. deal-breaking character traits). — Baden

I understand. In fact I was once faced with such a choice (Chirac vs Le Pen 2002) and I abstained. But it's a matter of survival at this stage. If one is in a position to affect the election (voting in a potential swing state) then it's a choice between to die today, or to survive and fight another day. In this sense, votes can kill.

Trump riffing live at a rally...

I'm just gonna watch it dispassionately to purge what remains of my political emotions, in preparation for the circus of the coming weeks.

Good luck and god speed to all.

Iran just got busted pretending to be Proudboys, intimidating Dem voters, in order to hurt president Trump and help Biden.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/20/proud-boys-emails-florida/

I don't see how one can disagree with the electoral position that an anti-fascist vote is not an endorsement of the Democratic Party. — 180 Proof

Because you don't get to pick and choose which bits of reality are most soothing for you. The whole sthick about "voting for Biden is only a rejection of Trump" is feel-good Left panacea that pretends it can have recto without verso. Like I said, I get that people need a little cuddling right now because voting for a mass incarcerator and corporatist war hawk is the only actual alternative to the next domestic genocide in the US, but the self-denial does no one any good. 'Out there', the Cornel Wests and the Chomskys have a duty to do what can be done to get the message out, but in here, we're allowed to look reality in the face without pretending that blood isn't on the hands of those who vote for Biden too.

If you need twist yourself in knots arguing for your own peace of mind that supporting Biden won't translate into supporting Biden for anyone and everyone who matters - i.e. outside of a left who find themselves in a double-bind of trauma so debilitating they feel the need to continually lie to themselves, then so be it. Whatever it takes I guess.

I get that people need a little cuddling right now — StreetlightX

I don’t need any cuddling. I don’t like Biden but if I was in a swing state I would vote for him anyway and not have any guilty conscience about that.

Say your family has been kidnapped and your significant other is going to be forced to fight to the death... but you get to choose which of the kidnappers they have to fight. Picking the one less likely to kill them doesn’t make you guilty of killing them, it just means you (perhaps) failed to save them. But so long as you did your best to try, no blame should go on you, who are also a victim.

I don't know why you think I'm blaming anyone. One thing is right: you sure as hell are fucking victims - apparently too traumatized by continual failure to recognize yourself as such. You are people in a hostage situation - but you've been handed a gun, forced to kill others to let yet more survive. I don't blame you. I feel immensely sorry for you.

"Blood on our hands" casting an anti-fascist vote for Biden? If you (Russian bot-like) say so; you've not told us anything we did not already know in our guts, and only exposed that you can't grasp that this is what principled courage looks like in this historical moment. We have skin in this game, and you don't, so GFY virtue signaling, lesser evil-shaming, mauvaise foi (or пиздец algorithm).

"Blood on our hands" casting an anti-fascist vote for Biden? — 180 Proof

Yes, blood on your hands whatever you do. There's blood on you because you're fucking breathing in 2020. This isn't anyone's fault, this is not about ressentiment, it's about recognizing your objective situation for what it is. Principled courage? Absolutely. But there's nothing about that that's antithetical to recognizing the wretched creatures you - and frankly, everyone on the planet - has been turned into. And how that should make you fucking mad.

In other news, there was a small debate a while back about how when the fash comes to America, it will do so not by blood and violence but by means of its cherished institutions. This is what I meant - via Corey Robin:

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/10/21/the-gonzo-constitutionalism-of-the-american-right/

"Over the last several years, liberals and Democrats have characterized the power (and the threat) of the GOP in a particular way: Trump and the Republicans are seen as lawless enemies of the Constitution who rely on a combination of rabid rhetoric and mobilized masses to wreak havoc upon established institutions. It’s true that Trump’s tweets are toxic; the thrum of his rallies is ominous; the violence and possibility of more violence are unnerving. But that’s not, in the main, where Trump’s power, or the Republican Party’s, lies. The unsettling fact of the current regime is that it depends, ultimately, not upon these bogeymen of democracy—not on demagoguery, populism, or the masses—but upon the constitutional mainstays we learned about in high-school civics. The most potent source of the GOP’s power is neither fascism nor authoritarianism; it is gonzo constitutionalism.

...Two thirds of Trump’s [judicial] appointees are white men. Sixty-nine percent of them are graduates of elite law schools (a higher proportion than for any other president in the last forty years). Their median net worth is $2 million; their median age is four to six years younger than the judges appointed by the previous two presidents. Trump’s judges are rich, white, and built to last.

...However dubious their democratic credentials, the Electoral College, the Senate, and the judiciary are impeccably constitutional institutions. In the American mind, the Constitution is associated with all things good and democratic, but a central purpose of the document is to check majoritarian government, giving a small group of elites the power to thwart the will of the democratic majority. That is precisely what the Republicans now are doing."

My impression is that many people use the term "fascist" inappropriately. What they're trying to convey is someone is conveying a point of view that is similar to that of the guy who wrote these words:

All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be. But if, as in propaganda for sticking out a war, the aim is to influence a whole people, we must avoid excessive intellectual demands on our public, and too much caution cannot be extended in this direction.
The more modest its intellectual ballast, the more exclusively it takes into consideration the emotions of the masses, the more effective it will be. And this is the best proof of the soundness or unsoundness of a propaganda campaign, and not success pleasing a few scholars or young aesthetes.

The art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional ideas of the great masses and finding, through a psychologically correct form, the way to the attention and thence to the heart of the broad masses. The fact that our bright boys do not understand this merely shows how mentally lazy and conceited they are.

Once understood how necessary it is for propaganda in be adjusted to the broad mass, the following rule results:
It is a mistake to make propaganda many-sided, like scientific instruction, for instance.

The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan. As soon as you sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away, for the crowd can neither digest nor retain the material offered. In this way the result is weakened and in the end entirely cancelled out.

My impression is that many people use the term "fascist" inappropriately. What they're trying to convey is someone is conveying a point of view that is similar to that of the guy who wrote these words — Relativist

Maybe. I just really mean fascism. As for Trump's dog Rudy:

My impression is that many people use the term "fascist" inappropriately. What they're trying to convey is someone is conveying a point of view that is similar to that of the guy who wrote these words
— Relativist

Maybe. I just really mean fascism. — StreetlightX

I always thought "fascist" emerged, loosely speaking, from Hegelianism --- that the spearhead of evolutionary progress, as the expression of absolute will, would rise to the surface of all phenomenonal existence as a supreme species or race. A state based on such an ideology would look an awful lot like the Nazis. Also, the idea of "state" was a critical component of phenomenology.

This tweet has a bigly amount of hearts.

#1 - doesn't concern me because I don't think whatever economic disaster we face in the future will have anything to do with this. What'll probably kill the economy is some made up virus.
#2 - doesn't concern me because I fucking hate the cold.
#3 - We know more today than ever before. My information circle now includes those from people from all sorts of fucked up places.
#4 - I agreed with.
#5 - I used to prosecute kids who caught too many trout, so I did my share. What have you done? Fish doesn't taste that good anyway.
#6 - I take out my garbage. If we all did like me, there wouldn't be this mess you talk about.
#7 - That's what zoos are for, to protect failing creatures from Darwin. — Hanover

It reads like you dismiss what you don't understand, do so flippantly, which indirectly is insulting towards me but still think 4 is important. Interesting choice of words if you really did think that. More likely you just pay it lip service as I also remember how you reacted when Trump won and I pointed out half of the country didn't and that they should still be heard too. That was "tough luck" because you were all too happy getting your way. As a lawyer you're trained to sound reasonable but you're a ball of emotional contradictions.

Also, your reaction to 3 would be funny if it wasn't so tragic.

Yes, blood on your hands whatever you do ... And how that should make you fucking mad. — StreetlightX

I see. Well, impotent rage is just that: impotent (re: ressentiment). More epicurean than stoic, I nonetheless practice Epictetus & co's exercise of 'striving to change things we can change and indifference with respect to the rest', etc. Maybe we're all 'guilty' - so what? - but not all are irresponsible: we can, we must, choose to take responsibility despite unavoidable complicity with our enemies or whatever else annihilates us ... like Sisyphus ... like Spartacus ... like Nat Turner ... like Gandhi ... like Gramsci ... like Mandela ... :fire:

Rome never "fell" because the bloodthirsty Bitch is still falling; who stands nevertheless? who struggles in spite of 24/7 anesthetizing circum et panem? who will bleed - go on bleeding - in order to slow The Great Whore's insatiable bloodletting?

:mask:

I can't shake that feeling that you are talking in a Peter Sellers, Nazzi accent, it would so suit your manner of reasoning.