Tulsi 2020: Anti-war Democrat says she’s running for US president

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Re: Tulsi 2020: Anti-war Democrat says she’s running for US president

Post by fiby41 »

Jason wrote:
Sat Oct 19, 2019 2:19 pm
Public figures die twice, the first time when their career ends and then again when their life ends.
Forum users also die twice, the first time when they stop coming back and then again when their life ends.
Which is why I don't think bumping threads like akratic's and brute's is a great idea. But I digress...

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Re: Tulsi 2020: Anti-war Democrat says she’s running for US president

Post by jacob »

Alright, shots were fired and returned, and so I declare the duel to be over!

Maybe lets try another approach going forward. How about, at least for political issues, everybody got into the habit of doing a short "reasonable man" summary of the opposing position/whatever is being responded to before leaning in. I think if that became standard on the forum, we might just survive 2020 w/o losing people in another forum debacle. Alternatively, focus on what you agree with and talk about that---it's typically the case that all the disagreements are fought over rather minor issues on the margins---but the political process blows these entirely out of proportion.

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Re: Tulsi 2020: Anti-war Democrat says she’s running for US president

Post by Tyler9000 »

👍 I totally support that.

I personally don't care for many of Tulsi's policies, but of all the presidential candidates I think she commands the most respect. Politicians today are such poll-driven animals that it seems there's never a single principle they're not willing to abandon for more votes or party dollars. So she's definitely refreshing from that perspective.

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Re: Tulsi 2020: Anti-war Democrat says she’s running for US president

Post by unemployable »

jacob wrote:
Sun Oct 20, 2019 11:51 am
Alright, shots were fired and returned, and so I declare the duel to be over!
You don't like actual controversies here, do you, as opposed to will 4% be ok or should it really be 3.7%. Completely your privilege, of course. You must realize that arbitrarily intervening to shut down discussions may itself drive some people away.

My experience as a mod elsewhere is best practice for politics is to either allow it unfettered, but sequester it, or shut it down completely.

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Re: Tulsi 2020: Anti-war Democrat says she’s running for US president

Post by Mister Imperceptible »

Mister Imperceptible wrote:
Thu Sep 27, 2018 6:58 pm
I just looked up what “dog whistle” is on urban dictionary....yeah....I just try to remind people who say things like “White people are ________” what it would sound like if they changed it to “black people are ________.” That the left is normalizing this language is a sort of perfidious psychological subterfuge. (I think this is what Jordan Peterson means when he talks about “not ceding the lingual territory.”)

And when I state this, and tell people I won’t submit to the self-loathing, I am denounced as a neo-Nazi tiki-torch-waving MAGA hat guy. Cool. And some people think this didn’t push white people to vote for Trump.

Those darned swing states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, with their long legacy of slavery and voting for Obama :roll:
Mister Imperceptible wrote:
Fri Sep 28, 2018 9:36 am
My employment has been threatened multiple times, for nothing to do with performance, but because of the dominant anti-white male narrative (HR issues).
Mister Imperceptible wrote:
Mon Feb 04, 2019 4:20 pm
It is very easy to say that Cultural Marxism is a phantom bugaboo until you are on the receiving end of an HR complaint and false sexual harassment accusation because “hey, it’s open season on white guys, say whatever you want and they cannot fight back.” Where I roam in the halls of Corporate America, I do not hear anybody touting the inferiority of minorities and women but I do hear a good deal about the white patriarchy oppressing us all. I can’t (and wouldn’t want to, anyway) make fun of a black person’s dreads, but it is perfectly acceptable for my boss to relentlessly make fun of my “generic white guy comb-over haircut” and repeatedly tell me that I only have what I have because of my white privilege (as if my hard work had nothing to do with it). And I know that white men on the receiving end of this who do not succumb to the pathetic self-loathing often, as Peterson explains, conclude “If you want to play the identity game, I will play, and I will play to win,” and before you know it, they are parroting the alt-right. The IDW stands aloof between extremes of dark ignorance with a torch saying “There is light here in the middle” and thank goodness for that.
Mister Imperceptible wrote:
Fri Sep 28, 2018 4:35 pm
I don’t need the empathy. I’m just rejecting the anti-white male ideology. I was brought up to treat people with courtesy and respect, regardless of their race or gender. I don’t need the current leftists to tell me what is required of me to be a good person.
Mister Imperceptible wrote:
Thu Sep 27, 2018 7:29 pm
“The answer to neofascism is stopping neoliberalism. Putting another Clinton in the White House will fan the flames of right-wing extremism.”

-Jill Stein

*****

(At a book reading attended by Mister Imperceptible):

Salman Rushdie: And these idiots that voted for Jill Stein, they are just as bad as those who voted for Donald Trump.

Master of Ceremonies: Er...uh....we’re going to have Jill Stein here for a forum next week.
ffj wrote:
Sat Oct 19, 2019 11:03 am
@Dave

Jill Stein.

There has to be DNC strategists right? Backed by their overlords? I just don't understand the strategy the Dems are employing. They have had years to construct a valid threat to Trump.

If I were the king of the DNC:

Hillary, shut up and go away. You lost, deal with it.

All candidates are not to mention Russia or impeachment, in the context of you know what, it's time we stood on our own two feet and not rely on third party's to do our dirty work

All candidates on the far-left, thank you but we have to win the electoral college, it's not going away, so shut up about how evil it is and strategize around how the system works

All identity politics candidates or anyone that mentions voter ID laws, thank you but like Clinton, you need to go away. Americans are sick of this shit.

Hot topics:

abortion, safe but rare

guns, I will uphold the Constitution first and foremost and work within that context to lower deaths

borders, we are a sovereign nation but a kind one

race relations, we are all Americans first and proud of it and will always celebrate our great diversity

LGBT, we've come a long way, baby. Let's have a party

No one is to mention how evil the orange man is, but replace that low-hanging fruit with plans and policies that will benefit all Americans without mentioning identity politics

We will once again embrace the working class and never call them names or insult them. We will also not call out any one particular group as victims.

We will not tolerate violence against our political opponents or their followers and will be very vocal about it

Does such a person exist? Well spoken with command presence? I bet there does, but apparently 4 years isn't enough for the DNC to find them. This is a bit of a rant but it astounds me how inept this go-around has been in response to Donald Trump.
ffj for President
Tyler9000 wrote:
Sun Oct 20, 2019 11:29 am
lololololol0101010101
Last edited by Mister Imperceptible on Sun Oct 20, 2019 1:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Tulsi 2020: Anti-war Democrat says she’s running for US president

Post by TimeTravel »

I have to agree with Hillary on this one. After the last democratic debate, I went ahead an looked up a youtube video on Tulsi mainly because of the debate exchange she had with Buttigieg. Going down to the comments, the comments were all one sided praising Tulsi as though comments were manufactured from a troll farm trying to cause dissension. That's just my gut feeling even before Hillary mentioned on the podcast she was on.

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Re: Tulsi 2020: Anti-war Democrat says she’s running for US president

Post by jacob »

@unemployable - Controversies are almost always more work for me [as the sole moderator] but unlike many other personal finance sites, I do allow them. What I don't like are confrontations where the primary goal is to "win the debate" using e.g. rhetoric and google-fu or pwn those who disagree with some kind of "gotcha".

Roughly speaking, "fights" are allowed, but, like a boxing match, they must follow certain rules to make them interesting/entertaining to the rest of us as well. Basically, I moderate for form over content. It's not what you say but how you say it. I have in at least a couple of cases set the scene sufficiently to drive a couple of meme-warriors/shitposters out. Good riddance too.

I try to make the forum a welcome place for (3)... while discouraging or at least not encouraging the other types.
http://earlyretirementextreme.com/simpl ... havio.html

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Re: Tulsi 2020: Anti-war Democrat says she’s running for US president

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So Ego, what would have made you comfortable about TG’s answers? Every time someone levies an accusation against you, are you supposed to stop talking about the actual policies and plans and start doing a dance?
stand@desk wrote:
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Great Wisdom for ERE Minds!
Joshua Kennon wrote:

#82
08/03/2014, 5:55 p.m., CST

The secret to a successful inquisition is to charge the accused with a crime so vague that he begins to search himself for transgression, ultimately leading to self-incrimination and confession for the sake of mercy.

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Re: Tulsi 2020: Anti-war Democrat says she’s running for US president

Post by Mister Imperceptible »

ffj wrote:
Sun Oct 20, 2019 12:17 am
Refreshing, even if it didn't come from Fox News :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNjzBJWUyWI
This is basically our media in a nutshell, the “anchor” or “reporter” keeps trying to redirect Gabbard into talking about Russia or HRC drama and all Gabbard is interested in talking about here is the issues.

“We don’t like you so we are going to point the finger at you and say RUSSIAN ASSET or ME TOO.”

What a bunch of horseshit.

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Re: Tulsi 2020: Anti-war Democrat says she’s running for US president

Post by jacob »

It's asking a lot---as in a lot more than what most humans can deliver(*)---but modern politicians need to be aware and acknowledge when/if they're being played. And then explain to their acolytes what's going on($$$)

(*) Only public profiles I think understand this new game are Bannon and Pelosi.

The whole "are you an asset or not" is too simplistic for the social media era. It implies that "you're either with us or against us". It's cold war thinking. Binary. Admittedly, this is where the majority of humans are/process their viewpoints ... but that's not where democratic elections are made.

Key to this, I think, is to realize that a scale exists between being an asset in the deliberate sense (like a spy, which against the law---which is always lagging reality) and an asset in the exploitative sense. The term for the latter is "useful idiot". Note that there are also so-called "useful innocents". There's a fine line between idiot and innocent. "Useful" also exists on a scale. "Innocent" vs "Idiots" is just a matter of euphemisms.

A "useful idiot" is anyone who serves the purpose of a third party (in this case Russian psy-ops) w/o being aware of it. It's playing on a general ignorance of the greater game. There are a material number of useful idiots---enough to swing elections. These [useful idiots] are found among politicians as well as among those who vote for them and against them. The world is currently full of useful idiots!!

Psy-ops already functions as a low-level AI, that is, using human input to guide decisions that would otherwise be too numerous for one human or a group of humans to handle all of them. This is how it works in finance now ... and presumably also how it works in affecting public opinion. Basically, the methods of the system being slightly ahead of the ability to humans to properly Coordinate (<- deliberately used CCCCCC term) it. Remember, most humans are just Copying or Comparing their talking points.

What TG should have said---instead of getting combative with Hillary... (and ditto what Hillary should have said(*))---that ... "I realize that my foreign policy wrt the ME or central Asia appears aligned with Russian's ultimately taking over territory. It's understandable given the social media world we live in that Russia will try to boost these arguments. After all, the Mueller Report, etc... showed that this has been going on for several years now. Indeed, it's not like the US hasn't been doing the same thing in central America for decades by now. However, this does not mean I'm working with Russia or for Russia. It means I'm working for America. I think that the US is sufficiently powerful and sufficiently self-reliant to extricate itself from military adventures in the aforementioned areas; that the US should instead concentrate on .... This is the 21st century. It's no longer about territory in far-away places." And so on and so forth. Basically arguing for a new foreign policy.

(*) This should have been done privately, but HRC should have said something along the line of: "Remember Jill Stein or Ralph Nader and how close the margins were in 2016 or 2000. So be really careful here. Given the first past the goal post/winner takes all/electoral system, the Blue party can not afford losing any votes to the Red party in 2020. Now, you're currently polling around 1% ... but if you're going to do something crazy and run as an independent, say stuff that pulls voters off the reds rather than say stuff that split the blues."

Note that TG has said that she's not gonna run as an independent, so why start this? This should be good enough [for HRC] insofar [TG] sticks with it. If she doesn't, damn...

PS: I also like the idea of "giving advice" to the opposing party as a means of calibrating the two-party system. However, consider the conundrum on the blue team. (It's why blues currently appear to act stupid but it makes sense when you look one level deeper.) Should team blue focus on converting marginal reds ... or gathering more lazy blues who would otherwise stay at home.---This happens under the constraint of the electoral college, so the question is asked exclusively in the battleground states. This is why the primary debates are still in "search-mode" instead of track-while-scan.

PPS: I've noticed both here and elsewhere that TG is the "democrat libertarian" or a "libertarian democrat". I'm not so surprised seeing her promoted here (we have a lot of libertarians on the forums). Same reason Andrew Yang has a thread for reasons of being a techie. Yet nobody else does, and this means that the political noise here represents somewhat of a bubble currently.

($$$) It's conceivable that they already understand this and just presume voters are mostly idiots. I really hope that's not the case. Based on general behavior/science, it makes more sense that they're not aware.

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Re: Tulsi 2020: Anti-war Democrat says she’s running for US president

Post by Ego »

I don't believe she is a Russian asset.
Nor do I believe her positions innocently coincide with Russia's.

I believe her campaign is engineered to elicit Russian assistance.
Their help is valuable. She knows it. She is not colluding. She's playing chess.
Hence my disdain for her weak response.

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Re: Tulsi 2020: Anti-war Democrat says she’s running for US president

Post by Mister Imperceptible »

If I vote for anyone, am I their useful idiot?

If yes, good thing I am cynical to the point I am no one’s useful idiot, in that I see the system as so completely corrupt that I have never bothered registering to vote.
jacob wrote:
Sun Oct 20, 2019 2:14 pm
I try to make the forum a welcome place for (3)... while discouraging or at least not encouraging the other types.
http://earlyretirementextreme.com/simpl ... havio.html
By serving my self-interests, am I part of group 2 (winning)? Or by by not voting, am I part of group 4 (ignorance)?

What if THE TRUTH is that we are now in a zero-sum game, and winning is all that matters?

Why Being A Politician Is No Longer Fun
https://oftwominds.cloudhostedresources ... n5-19.html

Either I am someone’s useful idiot, or I am ignorant, right up until the point where I am rich and powerful enough that I might be able to manipulate others, leveraging big box media outlets and powerful political connections so I might be anointed Kegan Level 5. :roll:

I am pretty sure that no matter what I do, so long as I am serving my own interests and not the interests of someone else, that someone somewhere will be calling me a useful idiot, ignorant, or Kegan Level 2/3. And if I’d serve their interests instead of mine, I am sure I will be called those things anyway, with perhaps a little extra bit of contempt for having lowered myself to be the instrument of somebody else.

It would be great if this were not a zero-sum game and I could help mankind by voting either Democrat or Republican, but I do not see a damn thing indicating that is the case.

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Re: Tulsi 2020: Anti-war Democrat says she’s running for US president

Post by ZAFCorrection »

I remember ~15 years ago a facet of mainstream liberalism in the US was stuff like this being said by this person (note the unqualified support of a Putin-supported government*):

https://cindysheehanssoapbox.blogspot.c ... s-off.html

I'm wondering when that went from normal to "definitely a (un)witting Russian asset." The day Twitter was invented? It generally goes along with my suspicion that political positions are pulled out of a hat every couple of elections. If you maintain a consistent political outlook for more than a couple decades you are sure to go from trendy to completely intolerable at least once.

*It's actually kind of an interesting example because Russia hysteria should be bumping up against the instinct to support a socialist country because Socialism = always good.

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Re: Tulsi 2020: Anti-war Democrat says she’s running for US president

Post by IlliniDave »

jacob wrote:
Sun Oct 20, 2019 6:16 pm

Key to this, I think, is to realize that a scale exists between being an asset in the deliberate sense (like a spy, which against the law---which is always lagging reality) and an asset in the exploitative sense. The term for the latter is "useful idiot". Note that there are also so-called "useful innocents". There's a fine line between idiot and innocent. "Useful" also exists on a scale. "Innocent" vs "Idiots" is just a matter of euphemisms.
Fair point, but I think in the case of someone speaking who has lived in the White House, been a Senator, and been Secretary of State, the interpretation of "a [foreign entity's] asset" is most plainly understood in the vernacular/context of government officialism. In this case it would translate as 'spy'. Further when the language "being groomed" appears in essentially the same context, it implies direct interaction/coordination rather than something coincidental like a sailboat taking advantage of a fortuitous tailwind.

It gets to be a slippery slope when anyone with a dissenting opinion on their nation's political policies gets labeled a traitor/spy/etc. To me it seems like a devious use of propaganda to try to stamp out free speech. It's far too common coming from both sides of the aisle for my taste.

Since we have sort of veered into foreign influence in the context of elections, serious question: what do people think of this?

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/16/politics ... index.html

I was called out above for having an, ~"it's just the way the world works" attitude about foreign influence in elections in general (a fair characterization). And, I'm not particularly outraged over our former president weighing in to advance his vision beyond our borders even though Canada is one of our closer allies/friends on the world stage. It's less nefarious than sneaky little bots or whatever, but it probably has a bigger influence.

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Re: Tulsi 2020: Anti-war Democrat says she’s running for US president

Post by jacob »

@iDave - I concur with your first paragraph, so I'll proceed from that. This [HRC vs TG] incident was not "well-played" on HRC's part. I think she has more background/information in terms of what's going on that almost everybody, but not enough maturity/depth/complexity to play given the information. TG, however, seems to demonstrate even less. (She's younger and her current operation is smaller, so understandable.) TG just doesn't like endless wars (who does?) and therefore just wants out (but quo vadis?!). This whole interchange was a "us vs them"... it was just stupid.

It's really tricky in terms of how to communicate the complexity of the situation to the voting populace, though: How should one "phrase" what's going on wrt the Great Game as it currently is though? Given how voters (the ultimate power) exist on different levels, all responses/attacks/defenses/... need to account for where the mass of active and relevant voters are.

I worry that politicians actively turn this into an "us vs them game" using simple talking points, like treason, spy, democrats, republicans, ... because they know that sportsgame vernacular is more effective when it comes to the numbers game of getting votes than any kind of nuance. Standard personality psychology does suggest that sportsball really is how most humans think. For the rest of us, this kinda sucks though.

I'd prefer politicians to be leaders (that's my agenda) who set the tone ... rather than "representatives" who just follow the polls like some @#$@#$ professional operator. I wish there would be/come a politician who would strive to elevate the conversation. This is probably as much of a long shot as hoping that a similar thing would happen in academia.

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Re: Tulsi 2020: Anti-war Democrat says she’s running for US president

Post by IlliniDave »

jacob, if I'm understanding you correctly re Gabbard, I'd agree she's not the elder stateswoman in the exchange and her response was arguably a bit over the top as is commensurate with the environment and her relatively youthful passion. I think she was a medic over there on her first tour and that's a view through which a strong aversion to war is easily and understandably arrived at. At the same time Gabbard is the daughter of a politician and seems to have had her eyes fixed on being a politician from early on, so she clearly has and has had the political optics in mind.

I'm not an expert in Latin dropped into English but if I understand you there I don't know that she's talked specifically what her exit strategy is. That kind of thinking arguably should have taken place prior to getting directly involved to start with. We went over and helped the Kurds rid themselves of ISIS (which wasn't a completely altruistic gesture on our part obviously), and the million dollar question is indeed, "So now what?" Say what you will about Trump, but he's a leader and took action that has drawn widespread criticism. However, among the critics it's not common to hear alternate ideas proposed other than to maintain the status quo (interestingly, that's a useful definition of conservatism). Unfortunately in some parts of the world subduing one enemy just clears the way for another enemy to rise up.

I completely agree re elevating the conversation and standing down on "us vs them" applied internally. I remember a time when it was not so, or at least much less so, in the US.

I've made a career of sorts out of conveying complexity to people who don't have the time or inclination to grapple with it in detail. Granted, the complexity is not at the same level of some of this happening on the world stage (and it's technical complexity, and therefore generally devoid of the human parameter). The obvious "trick" to it is extracting the elements that impact the stakeholders and framing things in those terms. I'm afraid too many of our government leaders have identified themselves as the stakeholders (the rest of us are just revenue sources), which means they believe they can say anything to the rest of us so long as it suits themselves. Despite our brains' ability to manipulate logic, humans are largely creatures of emotion, and that's the easiest way to divide us into manageable cohorts and herd us. The "sportsball" analogy is apt for that.

One of the things that worries me is that we are arguably on the cusp of the voters no longer holding the ultimate power. It seems the establishment (which includes the unelected bureaucracy aka deep state) seems to feel they have veto authority.

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Re: Tulsi 2020: Anti-war Democrat says she’s running for US president

Post by fiby41 »

Tulsi was on Joe Rogan's podcast again, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdYud9re7-Q

[Moderator: Replaced campaign donation link---we should probably stay away from those on the forum lest it get out of hand---with link to actual interview.]

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Re: Tulsi 2020: Anti-war Democrat says she’s running for US president

Post by fiby41 »

Sorry for that I simply copied the link that opened after clicking in the mail although I don't remember when I subscribed.

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