US 2024 Election

[flatandy]

Very sensible of Trump to hold back so the money doesn’t go to the people that Giuiliani defamed. I’m sure it was a sensible financial device and not total grift.

[flatandy]

Giuiliani’s bankruptcy, like Alex Jones’s, is funny. But it’s also a reminder of how well bankruptcy in the US protects very rich people and prevents them from paying what they owe to the little people.

[flatandy]

Chris Christie has dropped out of the Republican race. That's the 8th of the 13 "major" candidates to go. Almost nobody will notice the difference, although it creates the outside possibility of Nikki Haley winning in New Hampshire.

2 of the 5 remaining "major" candidates are decidedly minor and haven't made the last couple of debates, so it's really just DeSantis and Haley battling it out to see who loses to Trump.

[marechal]

As bad as he is, Christie was probably the best of the bunch.

Haley seems fairly sane but is a bit of an extremist.

[flatandy]

Yeah. Haley is terrible, but terrible like bad Republicans used to be terrible. Not a functional threat to the entire concept of the state like the others are.

[flatandy]

I also think that while Haley is terrible and charisma free and weird and embarrassing, and would be a far worse President, she’d almost certainly crush Biden if she were the nominee. Partly because the media would present her as the centrist, moderate choice just because she’s not Trump or DeSantis.

[voice]

Given Trump has said openly he'd trash the constitution, become a dictator, get the rules changed so he can just keep on being president as long he wants, then Haley sounds better, despite her thinking slavery was fine. It's worth remembering when she said the civil war was about freedom to do what you wanted without the government telling you, she was not talking about the slaves, but the slave owners.

[Repat Van]

Jan 11, 2024 18:52:58 GMT voice said:

Given Trump has said openly he'd trash the constitution, become a dictator, get the rules changed so he can just keep on being president as long he wants, then Haley sounds better, despite her thinking slavery was fine. It's worth remembering when she said the civil war was about freedom to do what you wanted without the government telling you, she was not talking about the slaves, but the slave owners.

Whenever any conservative insists the civil war was not about slavery (lie) but freedom, as you acknowledge, the silent part is freedom for white slave owners, not freedom for enslaved Americans.

[voice]

Yeah, same as States Rights means the right to own human being as property in those states

[flatandy]

Why do you two hate freedom and confederation so much?

[perrykneeham]

Also, the American Civil War seems to have been fought in vain.

[moggyonspeed]

When the Far Right bangs on about States' Rights and not slavery being the cause of the American Civil War, they're missing the point, and deliberately so.

Alexander Stephens, VP of the Confederate States is on record as saying that, "Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner–stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition". He said this one month before War was declared.

The American Civil War was about slavery. Period. States' Rights? Pffft ...

[perrykneeham]

As so many of their decendents are not free in any meaningful sense, it seems like a waste of lives to have fought for an end to slavery. Perhaps the Confederates recognised that.

[happyhammerhead]

That seems somewhat defeatist.

[flatandy]

Ancestors? Surely descendants?

Anyway, right now the US incarceration rate for black people is obscene, and clearly a result of shocking racial bias, as you point out. And much of that is built on post-slavery legacy. But even so, in most cases the lack of freedom will come to an end at some point. It’s terrible but still better than the previous situation.

[perrykneeham]

Well, they were incompetent and inactive enough to get caught in the first place, so you wonder how a group of people who managed to get into that condition would ever have the wherewithal to be truly free. The evidence is there for all to see.

[perrykneeham]

Jan 12, 2024 11:21:51 GMT flatandy said:

Ancestors? Surely descendants?

Quite right. Corrected.

[mids]

Surely if black people don't want to go to jail they could always, you know, not do a crime? That's the easiest way to avoid getting locked up.

[moggyonspeed]

Jan 12, 2024 11:24:06 GMT perrykneeham said:

Well, they were incompetent and inactive enough to get caught in the first place, so you wonder how a group of people who managed to get into that condition would ever have the wherewithal to be truly free. The evidence is there for all to see.

This appears to be evident Victim Blaming which, let's be clear here, has been used by the Right in the US to somehow justify racism (typically against black people) ever since the end of the Civil War. Numerous psychologists over the years have written about this victim-blaming culture and how it is used to undermine debate about genuine freedom and social justice.

For all the help it is and to show the utter fallacy of this culture, one may as well say that those who perished on the Titanic were responsible for their own demise, that the 9/11 victims were responsible for their own deaths by essentially going to work that day, or that if only Jamie Bulger hadn't hung around with those two Liverpool boys back in '93 then he'd still be alive today.

Btw, victim blaming is reasonably easy to deal with if we have the will to do so. Hillsborough ring any bells?

[perrykneeham]

Almost as long ago, and much the same mentality. Permanent victims as a group identity. QV Ireland.