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paulkienitz

paulkienitz's Journal
paulkienitz's Journal
July 28, 2022

third parties might be fine if it weren't for the electoral college

The Electoral College punishes third parties and makes them irrelevant unless they can basically steal a majority right away from existing parties. I think that's what the Yangsters are hoping for.

If we had a different voting system, like a ranked choice popular vote, then third parties would fluorish because they could contribute their positives without the penalty of being spoilers for the consensus majority.

I would like to hear somebody articulate a centrist position which acknowledges why centrism has failed and everyone has gone to the edges, which is basically because of income inequality and wage suppression. People are not supporting moderate status quo policies because the status quo is not supporting them back. This is the core of why Hillary wasn't able to sail to easy victory with a centrist position.

July 14, 2022

there are two Frank Wilhoits, and the one you googled is probably not the one who coined the law

https://slate.com/business/2022/06/wilhoits-law-conservatives-frank-wilhoit.html

I do like the turns of phrase of Wilhoit #2, like "Conservatism has long been surrounded by an enormous shimmering halo of pseudo-philosophy." I've noticed this myself: that through their punditry and movement leaders, right-wingers like to throw up a big facade of ideals and ideology, when in fact they don't believe in any ideology at all. The entire Libertarian movement is a piece of that fake-ideological facade, and really, so is a lot of evangelical Christianity. It's all a smokescreen for the simple fact that they want themselves to be privileged and everyone else to be suppressed or subjugated.
July 13, 2022

Biden is the most valuable and least appreciated president I've ever seen.

I thought Obama was the best prez of my lifetime but honestly, Biden is outperforming him.

July 9, 2022

the reddest flag

In some countries, people manage to own guns without enabling hordes of trigger-happy killers, but sadly, we do not live in such a country. Trigger-happy killers are abundant here, and we are forced to act accordingly. So we enact "red flag" laws to identify who we really should consider not giving guns to.

And in our culture, just wanting to have a gun is already a red flag in itself. When you say you want to keep one or more guns in your house, I feel that you are already letting me know that you have a dark side I can never fully trust.

But that's not the reddest flag. The thing that really lets me know you're not someone I want to trust with a gun is if you show clear racism. I suspect this country has a lot of racists in it who want guns just for when the day comes that they can open fire on people of color. In self-defense, of course, if only in their own minds. They think the threat they will someday need guns for is most likely to be black people.

If a red flag law was really designed to be effective, it would examine people not just for a violent history or mental instability or bloodthirsty ideation or drunkenness, but also for bigotry. Of course, the howls of protest at the unfairness at that would be deafening. They'd say we were just trying to take guns away from everyone who wants one... which in practice might not be all that far off.

July 6, 2022

If you want an AR15, my question is how many of your neighbors you think are going to need killing.

What are you afraid of? A zombie plague? A Chinese invasion? A post-nuclear battle for survival? A race war? A driveby from a rival drug cartel? Under what scenario do you think you'll need to fight an advancing horde of other people? Why do you imagine that the citizens around you are someday going to end up needing to be gunned down?

If you just want to shoot automatic weapons because it's fun, why not just go to a range that offers a rental? We could set that up. Why do you want it in your house?

June 23, 2022

racists and fascists always lie, including about what their faith is

I'm becoming convinced that today's fundamentalist evangelical christianity is not based on the bible, but on some combination of christian dominionism and white supremacism. They're defined not by their faith in Christ but by their intolerance of people unlike themselves. Their biblical literalism is a shibboleth for identifying who to reject. They insist on young earth beliefs and deny evolution because that excludes people who would allow science to tell them that other people are as good as they are. They aren't fascist to support their christianity, they're christian to support their fascism.

Lots of americans are christian in lots of ways, but I'm getting the strong impression that evangelical fundamentalism is a near 100% surrogate for racist fascism.

June 15, 2022

and we're only starting to learn about the long term disabling effects of the disease

The world is going to have an ongoing health problem just from people who once had covid, even if nobody catches it again. All kinds of scary outcomes are starting to be noticed in people's long-term health after the acute disease has ended... not just things like reduced aerobic capacity, but things like weaker immune systems, proneness to strokes and heart attacks, lasting internal organ damage... for many, covid may end up being a lifelong condition. And as far as they can tell, vaccination reduces the likelihood of these awful outcomes, but maybe only by about half.

So even a mild case that seems to go away quickly may bite you later on. But there's a simple way to avoid this risk: keep masking!

June 3, 2022

Of course they wouldn't, and we have proof.

"I don't think these BS artists can ever agree to meaningful gun laws, even if the death toll was three or even four times what it is now."

How about thirty or forty times? The death toll from irresponsible US citizens mowing each other down with sprays of covid viruses is vastly larger than the death toll from sprays of bullets, and they refuse to do anything about that either.

June 1, 2022

Trump was exactly what the GOP had wanted all along.

You think they voted for Dubya because of his groundbreaking embrace of a new ideal of "compassionate conservatism"? No, they voted for him because he was like Trump.

You think they voted for Dick Nixon because of his bold and innovative forging of a new relationship with China, or because he started the Environmental Protection Agency? No. They voted for him because he was like Trump.

You think they liked Ronald Reagan because he wore a cowboy hat, or because he's been in a movie with a chimp, or because he invaded a tiny island like that somehow made America look badass? No, they liked him because he was like Trump.

Why do you think Trump beat sixteen other candidates to be the nominee? Because Trump was the most Trump-like of the bunch. Why was Ted Cruz the last one left standing against him? Because he was the second most Trump-like.

We can now see that in the history of the Republican party, Dwight Eisenhower was an aberration. If he hadn't been there they would have picked someone Trumpish. They picked Nixon in 1960 because he was Trumpier than Rockefeller, and Goldwater over Rockefeller and Lodge and Scranton because he out-Trumped them. The impulse to push Goldwater the conspiracy-theory believer in 1964 was exactly the same impulse that pushed the conspiracy-theory seller Trump to the forefront 52 years later.

Gerald Ford got weak support because he lacked Trumpishness. George H.W. also didn't show enough for their liking, and so got lackluster support.

Trump gave the GOP base what they wanted. It's the same thing they've wanted my whole life. All that's changed is the amount of pretense that they've managed to cover it up with. It's like the evolution of professional wrestling -- in my youth, kayfabe was never broken and the audience had no idea that "kayfabe" was even a word, now fans of new stars like Roman Reigns know all about the fictionality and are still into it anyway. The fakery is now revealed for all to see, but people still want exactly what they wanted in the beginning.

The reactionary right wing is America's biggest unified voting bloc, and they didn't just turn fascist when Trump came along. They had always been like that.

June 1, 2022

I never wanted to care about trans rights.

Trans rights were never a subject that mattered to me. I've only ever known one trans person, and I didn't even like him very much. It was not, and is not, a subject that engages me personally.

But I still have to stand up to strongly defend trans rights. Why? Because the whole reason they are attacking trans rights these days is because they see it as a tactically viable starting point for beginning an attack on a whole lot of other rights. If they succeed in gaining public acceptance of bigoted anti-trans restrictions, their clear intent is to use that as a base from which to immediately extend further assaults on gay rights, women's rights, and minority rights. Their end goal is to create an America in which only white Christian patriots have full rights, and all others are less than citizens. They are attacking trans rights for the sole reason that they see these rights to be the least well defended, the most vulnerable point at which to gain an initial victory and reverse their string of defeats. It isn't simple transphobia that drives this, it's homophobia and sexism looking for a safe way to show itself. It's the whole panoply of deplorable bigotries, all focused on the one target they see as being the least protected.

We have to defend at the point they choose to attack, or they break through our lines. Then they can strike in any direction.

Profile Information

Gender: Male
Hometown: Bay Area, California
Member since: 2002
Number of posts: 1,374

About paulkienitz

Retired software engineer who thinks a lot about the future. https://paulkienitz.net/future/
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