Donald Trump and US politics

Scott Adams now has a YouTube channel; here's a recent video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZMpTBavyqs

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Scott Adams compares the persuasion strategies of the Anti-Trumpers to Trump.

ETA: Taken from a livestream. Skip to 2:45 if you don't want to watch him set everything up.

=^[.]^=

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

The entire purpose of this law is to ensure that there is no legal backlash for discriminatory behavior in public businesses. And let's be clear here. If the issue was businesses run by religious individuals who refused to cater to interracial couples because it violated their religion, I don't think anyone would be trying to paint this as anything more than bigotry. So why is "my religion says marriage is between one man and one woman and that tenet needs to be respected by law" different from "my religion says marriage is between two people of the same race and that tenet needs to be respected by law"?

Discrimination and bigotry aren't the same thing, so no, I'd paint it differently.

First off: we're talking about business service here. The worst effect of "discrimination" in this context is no transaction. We're not talking about violence here; there is no potential for harm.

I disagree. Even leaving aside the reason we instituted such protections for racial minorities in the civil rights act (or would you claim that a town where African-Americans get refused service at every turn in an attempt to drive them away is harmless?), reminding people of their second-class citizen status, particularly people who were disproportionately likely to face bullying and harassment for who they are, is harmful in its own right. And that's leaving aside issues like housing and employment. Such things are generally intended to be stable and are often hard to find either way, and in many places around the country, you can still be denied a rental or lease for being LGBT, or be fired from your job for the same reason. "No transaction" in the case of employment can be extremely problematic if a lot of people are doing it. There is real harm here.

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There is such a thing as righteous discrimination. For example, an employer wants to higher an employee who is skilled at the tasks vital to the position and who is reliable. Discriminating against those who lack such skills, and against the unreliable, is essential to performing the hiring task well. So the goal is not a type of culturally Marxist failure to discriminate in any manner, but instead to isolate characteristics that matter from those that don't (skin color, etc), and discriminate according to the former.

Personally, I'd take this distinction as given in a discussion about discrimination. Obviously when microsoft refuses to hire someone for the position of "Marketing Executive" because that person is a stoner who showed up late to the interview, that's not really the kind of discrimination most people have a problem with. But that's not what FADA protects. It protects the other kind.

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I don't think the government should be involved in telling anyone which characteristics are or are not relevant, regarding decisions involving an individual's private business or property. I believe businesses should have the right to deny service to any customer for any reason, no matter how stupid, insane, or vicious. Protecting freedom of speech and religion, and property rights, is an explicitly higher priority in my book that combating the people who choose the wrong criteria for discrimination.

How many other such issues should we consider religious beliefs superior to?

If my religion prohibits health care, should I be able to refuse to get my clearly sick or injured child the help they need?
If my religion prohibits education, should I be able to simply not educate my children?
If my religion prohibits me from paying taxes, should I be able to simply shirk my duty?
If my religion demands the ability to imbibe substances made illegal because they put my health at risk, should I be able to take them anyways?

The issue here is less "freedom to practice my religion" and more "freedom to shirk a rational law with a secular basis due to my religion". Why should the laws apply differently based on what one believes?

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If a baker won't bake you a cake, don't get the government to force him; find a baker who gladly will. Remember, politics is downstream from culture, not the other way around; by the time a society is in the position to pass legislation forcing non-discrimination of certain groups, it's already achieved the cultural equality to make the passage a moot point as far as benefit goes, assuming a free market.

Well... Actually, in the case of the civil rights act, politics was very much upstream from culture. Nationally, it may have gotten majority support, but in the south, the place it was actually needed, it was still wildly unpopular. Hell, there's an XKCD about that...



Interracial marriage didn't hit acceptance among 50% of the population until decades after it was legalized.

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So no, I fully recognize the right for any business to refuse to cater to homosexual couples, or to refuse to cater to heterosexual couples, or refuse to cater for no solid reason whatsoever.

I get why this position is intellectually consistent, and why one might take it, but I have to disagree, and I particularly have to disagree that this somehow qualifies as a "first amendment" issue - again, if it were, the semi-regular court cases of business-owners who object to these laws would have already led to them being overturned. You are absolutely free to abide by your religion as much as you'd like. You can't, however, expect to shirk laws instituted for valid, secular reasons simply because you hold a particular belief.

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鬼殺し wrote:

How did I come to the conclusion that I, I personally, think Trump is a menace? I watched and I used a little thing called reasoning.

Honestly just listen to yourself, you're the most privileged person who posts on these boards and your smug head is shoved so tightly up that NZ booty.

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鬼殺し wrote:

Here's the big joke. You have these Trump supporters railing against the so-called 'MSM' and their disinformation, their fake news as Drumpf himself puts it, but when it comes time to argue one's stance, they throw all these media links at you. Thankfully no one's been stupid enough to throw a Breitbart link at me yet, but it's almost as if they can't just think for themselves.

A lot of the alternative media is more reliable than the mainstream. Still, I admit there is a certain irony about linking punditry as evidence, and IIRC I've posted about it before.

http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/Vn17J/in-english-this-happened-in-sweden-friday-night-mr-president

no comment

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Schmodderhengst wrote:

http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/Vn17J/in-english-this-happened-in-sweden-friday-night-mr-president

no comment

Hey, they're learning! Last time they tried to make up a terrorist attack, they put a name to it, and people called them on it.

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sarahaustin wrote:

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Budget_player_cadet wrote:

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Schmodderhengst wrote:

http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/Vn17J/in-english-this-happened-in-sweden-friday-night-mr-president

no comment

Hey, they're learning! Last time they tried to make up a terrorist attack, they put a name to it, and people called them on it.

Remember that attack in Canada? When it was a muslim at first the Trumpsters jumped on it, but when it came out it was a white supremacist Trump supporting anti feminist they dont say a peep.

really funny thing that attack happened in Québec and I remember it clearly because I live in ste-foy Québec 3 streets away from where that attack happen and THIS is not how things went.


Before opening your mouth, make sure you know what you are talking about.

http://www.wikihow.com/Become-a-Dictator

That´s point 4, while his rallies might not only be pleasing for him, but have to do with point 6.