Quote from: golden1 on November 23, 2016, 08:56:35 AM
Based on the information sources you use to make judgements about things as based on your criticisms of HRC, I don't believe you. You will rationalize whatever you need to in order to avoid picking up that gun. You will transform the world into what you want it to be rather than fight for the rights of others you refuse to empathize with.
OK, so this is an important thing for you to recognize about yourself. There are legitimate criticisms of HRC. You get that right? As there will be with any candidate. Dismissing those concerns offhandedly because you don't like their source, despite the fact that my source is the associated press, it's CNN, it's VOX. Instead of defending the candidate, good with the bad, Democrats went with, and the irony here is just staggering, "we have the best candidate, the very best, great qualifications, super qualified. So much legislation she's passed, just the best. Also foreign experience, she knows lots of leaders, lots of people. Those bad things people are saying, you know, sometimes people just say bad things about you, and that's OK, that's OK folks."
The Democratic primary was the only place where actual policy got discussed. The Democrats decided in the general they didn't need to talk about actual policy beyond vague counters to Trump's campaign "they don't have a plan, we have a plan." Well, where's the details? Who is paying for it? What constitutional authority gives the government the right to do any of this? It was more important to BEAT the other side than it was to win, and so both sides looked terrible.
I don't like HRC so I'm not worth listening to? I just don't understand this. Before this election, I had some great conversations on this board where I learned a ton about all sorts of different issues
You are putting words in my mouth based on your own obvious biases. I never said Clinton wasn't flawed. Of course she was, but if you have the idea that somehow she didn't have specific policy plans means you really didn't do research at all, because she had extremely detailed policy plans readily available.
Everyone has biases. You obvious love of libertarian style government is yours. If libertarianism is so great, where are all the successful libertarian countries you can point to as examples? Libertarianism is a noble ideal that tends to wilt when faced with reality.
She did not talk about those plans. Go re-watch the debates. You've got a captive audience to describe in detail exactly what you're going to do and you use the excuse that your opponent is ridiculous to squander the opportunity. She could've come out there and totally ignored him, let him self-destruct, but she just couldn't do it. She didn't believe we were smart enough to understand her plans, and she didn't think she had to deign to sell them to the American People. She came off as entitled and arrogant, elitist and mean. Source: I watched the debates.
I wasn't putting words in your mouth, you made assumptions about my sources and used that to dismiss my arguments, as many are prone to do. Not everyone who disagrees with you is less informed. I went to her website and read through her policy proposals. There's some good stuff in there. There's some stuff that horrified me. There's some stuff I didn't particularly care about. There's even one or two things that were enough for me to not want her as president, even if she had been a good person. I did this the day before I voted, when she had maximum time to refine and polish each one. I did the same for Trump, and Stein, and Johnson. For the most part, they were all trite, undetailed, shit. Including HRC's. Because the election wasn't about policy. It was about character. So certain were they that Trump couldn't win a character contest, they ran with one despite having a horrible candidate themselves. All while claiming and still claiming that Trump is weak on policy. So why not make the election about that?
I am absolutely biased towards libertarian sentiments, and the reasoning stems from exactly the same place as the current worries about Trump. Nobody should be able to worry you like that, celebrating that your chosen dictator is likely to win, and then being upset when another group's chosen dictator wins, is the height of hypocrisy. Understand that how you feel now is only avoidable in the future through consistent application of small government principles. Any powerful government will eventually make you feel the way you feel now. Nobody should have that power, and when you gave it away it was to thunderous applause. Trump didn't come in and take it, you hurled it at your chosen one, as Republicans did with Dubya before that.
Successful libertarian countries? Well, I'll let this quote argue that for me.
"His question makes as little sense when you replace “libertarianism” with, say, “atheism” or “environmentalism” or “feminism.” Operating in a liberal-democratic system that is driven by what Isaiah Berlin described as “value pluralism,” libertarian intellectuals and activists aim at affecting the world of ideas and the political process through the policy concepts they propose, not at establishing a Utopia based on their principles."
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/2013/06/13/a-question-libertarians-can-answer-easily/So my libertarian bias calls on me to visit a messageboard such as this where there are people that I know are extremely intelligent and capable, and point out to them that their leaders are not acting in good faith, are not trying to help them, are not advocating for policies that are right and good. They are instead, on both right and left, seeking to consolidate power. And to the extent they use that power, they do so only insofar as it will help them remain in power. And so the decades long war on poverty has resulted in a massively larger government and substantially more people living in poverty. As the decades long war on drugs has resulted in many more drugs and many more people in prison. And the war on communism resulted in no actual failings of communist states. But the inexorable passage of time did bring about the failure of many communist states, because time grinds down economic systems that do not work.
Are you generally operating under the conditions of, maybe I am wrong? Or are you viewing the world with the assumption you are right? My thesis on this election is that at this point, it has never been easier for you to see just how shitty your party is. It is an opportunity. I see some signs that Democrats and Republicans both, not the leadership but the people in it, are really looking around. The truth is, I have far more in common with those people who showed up to vote for BHO but stayed home for HRC than I do with anyone who voted libertarian or republican, and never have I been more sympathetic to the near-majority that didn't vote at all.
