President Trump's funny insults

[Heathen Hammer]

Repeating something that was debunked before over and over again won't make it true, Pointofviewgun.

[PointOfViewGun]

Repeating something that was debunked before over and over again won't make it true, Pointofviewgun.

Nor does it make it debunked to merely claim it to be debunked.

[alhoon]

Like I pointed out in the Academy, if you have government regulating market on behest of private entities (beyond anti-monopoly and necessary protectionism a-la 1800s USA), it isn't really capitalism.

It is not healthy capitalism same as the Stalin Era was not healthy communism.

The government regulating market with "anti-monopoly" and protectionism is also against capitalism. But if you don't do it, Free Market collapses.
Pure capitalism is simply doomed to fail.

Also right/left dichotomy is rather subjective and drawn out.

Not really, no.

Moderation is incredibly dangerous to democracy. As we can see with political systems in many Western countries, cult of moderation is little more then collectivism shrouded with illusionary pretense to "rationality", while electorate itself is stripped from any political choice, as electoral alternatives would presumably present same policy with slight cosmetic alterations (kinda like 2000-2016 USA, where neocons in GOP would pretend to defend family values, while neoliberals among Democrats would pretend to defend LGBT rights). The only way out is the choice and abandonment of moderation.

I very strongly disagree. On the contrary, moderation is paramount for democracy as far-right or far-left leads to authoritarian governments that are not democratic. See Franco, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, etc etc.
It is a very dangerous line of thought to think that divisiveness and far-right or far-left are the ways to preserve democracy.

Also, for the record 2000-2016 was not bad for USA. Electoral alternatives didn't present different policies when it came to covert or overt warmongering because the majority of people didn't want anything else, HH.

Yes, Trump got the vote of the war-weary, but it was not just that that led to him winning the elections. The "cosmetic alterations" also brought the conservatives to his camp. So did his tough-on-trade and strong-borders rhetoric.

[Heathen Hammer]

It is not healthy capitalism same as the Stalin Era was not healthy communism.
The government regulating market with "anti-monopoly" and protectionism is also against capitalism. But if you don't do it, Free Market collapses.
Pure capitalism is simply doomed to fail.

I strongly disagree. Free market can exist and function on its own. State-run economy, on the other hand, can not.

Not really, no.

I think drugs, prostitution and guns should be legal, does that make me left-wing or right-wing?

I very strongly disagree. On the contrary, moderation is paramount for democracy as far-right or far-left leads to authoritarian governments that are not democratic. See Franco, Stalin, Mao, Hitler, etc etc.
It is a very dangerous line of thought to think that divisiveness and far-right or far-left are the ways to preserve democracy.

Also, for the record 2000-2016 was not bad for USA. Electoral alternatives didn't present different policies when it came to covert or overt warmongering because the majority of people didn't want anything else, HH.

Yes, Trump got the vote of the war-weary, but it was not just that that led to him winning the elections. The "cosmetic alterations" also brought the conservatives to his camp. So did his tough-on-trade and strong-borders rhetoric.

"Far" politics can't be authoritarian if they can be voted out.
Lack of alternatives presented by cult of moderation, on the other hand, is anti-democratic in its essence. In US they didn't present different policies simply because population had no choice but two vote for one of the two parties, both of which didn't really differ from each other in any fundamental way. Trump "broke the wheel" so to speak, he fundamentally changed political landscape by making anti-establishment rhetoric a viable political option (whether Trump is/was truly anti-establishment is another question).

[alhoon]

I think drugs, prostitution and guns should be legal, does that make me left-wing or right-wing?

It makes you Liberal. If you want them regulated and heavily taxed, you're leftwing. If you want them to be businesses regulated by the market with little oversight and contribute with their taxes and the salaries of their workers, you're rightwing.


@Free market on its own:
If the state doesn't intervene to block monopolies, then after a few years the market would be cornered by a few big businesses establishing oligopolies, cartels or monopolies defeating the Free Market.
If the state does interfere and legislates to block "big fish eats small" then the state moves away from the Free Market.
I.e. no, Free market cannot exist.

""Far" politics can't be authoritarian if they can be voted out. "
Not really, no. Fanatics will turn on the other side because they are intolerable. They will remove the other side's ability to vote them down. You won't have the "cult of moderation", you would have the KGB or Gestapo making sure dissenters are suppressed instead of free to vote their argument.

"The minor differences"
Nope, there were always Trumps and Sander-Warren types. They were not popular in the past, as simple as that. They represented the 10% while the 90% was content with the "Trivial differences". That's where the crux of our disagreement is.
The choices were there, but they were not popular. Things changed and Trump's unpopular opinions managed to bubble through. Frankly, not because 40% of the electorate agrees with those unpopular views, but they dislike the other side.

I.e. those views you dislike are still espoused by 80% instead of 90% as it was 10 years ago, but fear of the immigrants and war fatigue and "I am bored with the same opinions" led part of that 80% to align with the hardcore Trumpeteers.

[Heathen Hammer]

It makes you Liberal. If you want them regulated and heavily taxed, you're leftwing. If you want them to be businesses regulated by the market with little oversight and contribute with their taxes and the salaries of their workers, you're rightwing.

Yet modern liberals want to ban guns.

@Free market on its own:
If the state doesn't intervene to block monopolies, then after a few years the market would be cornered by a few big businesses establishing oligopolies, cartels or monopolies defeating the Free Market.
If the state does interfere and legislates to block "big fish eats small" then the state moves away from the Free Market.
I.e. no, Free market cannot exist.

Oligopolies can't form without state regulating on their behalf.

""Far" politics can't be authoritarian if they can be voted out. "
Not really, no. Fanatics will turn on the other side because they are intolerable. They will remove the other side's ability to vote them down. You won't have the "cult of moderation", you would have the KGB or Gestapo making sure dissenters are suppressed instead of free to vote their argument.

You can't have KGB or Gestapo do that if population is armed and has freedom of expression.

"The minor differences"
Nope, there were always Trumps and Sander-Warren types. They were not popular in the past, as simple as that. They represented the 10% while the 90% was content with the "Trivial differences". That's where the crux of our disagreement is.
The choices were there, but they were not popular. Things changed and Trump's unpopular opinions managed to bubble through. Frankly, not because 40% of the electorate agrees with those unpopular views, but they dislike the other side.

I.e. those views you dislike are still espoused by 80% instead of 90% as it was 10 years ago, but fear of the immigrants and war fatigue and "I am bored with the same opinions" led part of that 80% to align with the hardcore Trumpeteers.

Its not that they weren't popular, its just that establishment had a tighter grip on public opinion. Internet kinda killed mainstream media, or at least dealt it a deadly blow. Again, voters simply had no other choice but to vote for one of the middle-of-the-road candidates, as anyone more or less opposed to establishment in fundamental way would be crushed by smear campaign, misinformation or just outright ignored by mainstream media.

[Akar]

I am probably one of the most liberal people on here and I have zero interest in banning guns and have a growing collection of them, you need to find a different straw-man to criticize. Beto O'Rourke tried to gain support as the anti-gun candidate and he was shouted down and shoved out of the primaries and the media spotlight. No one is trying to take away your guns. It is impossible to do that without an absurdly out of left field SCOTUS decision or an even more left field constitutional convention. SCOTUS has been incredibly clear in the past, and especially recently, about the people's right to bear arms and that that right extends to almost the full extent of modern weaponry that is not explicitly banned by law.

Stop saying "Liberals want X" without providing sources for your claims.

[Cope]

Biden, Buttigieg and Warren all support a federal ban on the sale "assault weapons" (similar to the '94 AWB). Sanders goes further, claiming to support a ban on "assault weapon" ownership. So it's not unreasonable to say that liberals do want to ban some guns.

[Akar]

I stand corrected on that point. However I think it's fair to say that there's important differences between taking away guns and what the '94 AWB did. The provisions of the AWB specifically grandfathered in older weapons and wouldn't have called for the seizure of any guns like Beto's dumbass claimed. Most importantly though, it was passed and expired before DC V Heller was ruled on, which means that any new bill would have to contend with SCOTUS's recent rulings regarding guns. While I may have been technically wrong (the best kind) about no liberals wanting to take your guns away, but I think my point about it being an almost impossibility is fair.

[Heathen Hammer]

I am probably one of the most liberal people on here and I have zero interest in banning guns and have a growing collection of them, you need to find a different straw-man to criticize. Beto O'Rourke tried to gain support as the anti-gun candidate and he was shouted down and shoved out of the primaries and the media spotlight. No one is trying to take away your guns. It is impossible to do that without an absurdly out of left field SCOTUS decision or an even more left field constitutional convention. SCOTUS has been incredibly clear in the past, and especially recently, about the people's right to bear arms and that that right extends to almost the full extent of modern weaponry that is not explicitly banned by law.

Stop saying "Liberals want X" without providing sources for your claims.

Beta lost not because he is anti-gun, but because he has the charisma of a flipped portable toilet.
Pretty much every Democratic front-runner supports "banning" weapons classified under an intentionally vague definition. Whether such bills would pass is another question, but the fact of the matter is that pretty much every prominent candidate from Democrats wants to put them on the table. Hence why Liberals demanding gun control is a thing.

[MarchOfThePigs]

Two of my favorites!!!

[alhoon]

Yet modern liberals want to ban guns.

And they censor "bad words" and punish "wrong-thing".
They are not true Liberals.

Oligopolies can't form without state regulating on their behalf.

Wrong.
Successful businesses will keep growing and without the government putting arbitrary difficulties on their path, they will consume the competition. Microsoft and Apple cornered the market before the government started regulating for them. Same with Facebook, google and Amazon.

You can't have KGB or Gestapo do that if population is armed and has freedom of expression.

Evidently not true. KGB and Gestapo started from the armed polarized, non-moderate population and initially had strong popular support. Once they were established, there's no way armed civilians can do crap against a government. That's why the USA constitution talks about militias: to have trained paramilitary armies, not just guns in your house.
It is armed population that allowed especially communists to come to power and establish the KGB.

You have to realize, that armed population doesn't mean "population that agrees with you" or "population that will fight with you". It means armed population which may put up a regime you strongly disagree with and establish their KGB and all. You wouldn't like the Antifa to take over USA, would you?
KGB wouldn't show up in a big confrontation with the population. They would break down your door in the middle of the night and drag you and your family to prison at the first hint you may put up a fight. Your neighbor would not fight with you, he would be the one ratting you out. You would be alone with your gun in your pijamas against 5-6 well trained and armed policemen and if you escaped? Your armed neighbor would shoot you in the back and get a medal.
KGB were not super-agents, they were people like your neighbor, the clerk in office 13, the car mechanic. The heavy lifting was usually left to the police... or the armed populace.


However... I agree that freedom of expression would significantly lower the chances of a secret police forming. To be sincere, many people want a secret police in some way, but with freedom of expression you can talk to them and explain to them that the secret police is not their friend and will not arrest the people they want out, but whomever the Secret police want out.

[Heathen Hammer]

And they censor "bad words" and punish "wrong-thing".
They are not true Liberals.

Indeed.

Wrong.
Successful businesses will keep growing and without the government putting arbitrary difficulties on their path, they will consume the competition. Microsoft and Apple cornered the market before the government started regulating for them. Same with Facebook, google and Amazon.

But government does regulate for them. I don't mind seeing government recognize some of these services as public utilities. With that size come different responsibilities.

Evidently not true. KGB and Gestapo started from the armed polarized, non-moderate population and initially had strong popular support. Once they were established, there's no way armed civilians can do crap against a government. That's why the USA constitution talks about militias: to have trained paramilitary armies, not just guns in your house.
It is armed population that allowed especially communists to come to power and establish the KGB.

You have to realize, that armed population doesn't mean "population that agrees with you" or "population that will fight with you". It means armed population which may put up a regime you strongly disagree with and establish their KGB and all. You wouldn't like the Antifa to take over USA, would you?
KGB wouldn't show up in a big confrontation with the population. They would break down your door in the middle of the night and drag you and your family to prison at the first hint you may put up a fight. Your neighbor would not fight with you, he would be the one ratting you out. You would be alone with your gun in your pijamas against 5-6 well trained and armed policemen and if you escaped? Your armed neighbor would shoot you in the back and get a medal.
KGB were not super-agents, they were people like your neighbor, the clerk in office 13, the car mechanic. The heavy lifting was usually left to the police... or the armed populace.


However... I agree that freedom of expression would significantly lower the chances of a secret police forming. To be sincere, many people want a secret police in some way, but with freedom of expression you can talk to them and explain to them that the secret police is not their friend and will not arrest the people they want out, but whomever the Secret police want out.

As I said, if Germans and Russians had guns and freedom of speech neither of those regimes would have succeeded.

[alhoon]

As I said, if Germans and Russians had guns and freedom of speech neither of those regimes would have succeeded.

The Russians had guns and freedom of speech. That's how they spread the communist ideology and then overthrown the previous regime and installed USSR.
Gestapo's roots were from the time the Nazi party were armed thugs - not government.

Especially in USSR's case, stronger gun control would have made it much harder for the communists to succeed.
In the case of the Nazi party? Laws prohibiting hate-speech in the 20s (i.e. less free speech) would have made their impact much lower.

To go back to Trump comparisons, the Nazis divided German public opinion, turning one against the other and became the stronger block after dividing the moderates ... using many of Trump's tactics.

[Heathen Hammer]

The Russians had guns and freedom of speech. That's how they spread the communist ideology and then overthrown the previous regime and installed USSR.
Gestapo's roots were from the time the Nazi party were armed thugs - not government.

Especially in USSR's case, stronger gun control would have made it much harder for the communists to succeed.
In the case of the Nazi party? Laws prohibiting hate-speech in the 20s (i.e. less free speech) would have made their impact much lower.

To go back to Trump comparisons, the Nazis divided German public opinion, turning one against the other and became the stronger block after dividing the moderates ... using many of Trump's tactics.

Bolshevik's rise to power was result of foreign funding and intelligence assistance, rather then some popular revolt. Just before the October coup, Lenin and his cronies lost the elections with embarrassing results.
Needless to say, Bolsheviks enacted insanely harsh gun control policies to prevent population from revolting against them. Gun control is a staple of authoritarian government who no longer wants to be held responsible by the population.
Hate-speech laws wouldn't have done a thing against NSDAP rise to popularity and would only make them more popular as they could present themselves as freedom fighters and Weimar regime as oppressors.
Also come on now, comparing Trump to NSDAP is blatantly intellectually dishonest. Trump is hardly as divisive as his opponents are.

[Ludicus]

But government does regulate for them. I don't mind seeing government recognize some of these services as public utilities. With that size come different responsibilities

Bollocks.
In fact, when oligopolies (dominance by two or three firms) maintain the same prices, they ought to be considered members of a pre-fixing conspiracy.And let's not confuse use monopolies with oligopolies. Oligopolies are a new form of feudalism.If I remember it well,the original Tea Party was actually a protest against a tea monopoly. Why in the hell a private monopoly is good and a state monopoly is bad?
Under monopolies, prices are high and the quality low,



---

You can't have KGB or Gestapo do that if population is armed and has freedom of expression

Nonsense. You can have both, a dictatorial regime and Robespierre. Freedom of speech does not prevent anarchy.

[Heathen Hammer]

In fact, when oligopolies (dominance by two or three firms) maintain the same prices, they ought to be considered members of a pre-fixing conspiracy.And let's not confuse use monopolies with oligopolies. Oligopolies are a new form of feudalism.If I remember it well,the original Tea Party was actually a protest against a tea monopoly. Why in the hell a private monopoly is good and a state monopoly is bad?

Private monopolies rarely survive in real free market economy when governments do not regulate in their interests.

Nonsense. You can have both, a dictatorial regime and Robespierre. Freedom of speech does not prevent anarchy.

This has nothing to do with what I said. Secret police will have problem crashing into your place in the middle of the night to take you to a re-education camp if you can greet them with armor-piercing rounds fired from a fully-automatic weapon. And government will have a problem convincing public about necessity of such secret police if you can freely argue against it.

[Aexodus]

In many ways, I would have thought the roots of the Gestapo and their overbearing and thuggish style of policing began with the NSDAP SS and SA. Once these paramilitaries get into the power don’t they become the new state police?

[Love Mountain]

When people talk about secret police they immediately think of the Interior Ministry, of the Gestapo, and the like. What is far more terrifying to me are things like COINTELPRO during the peak of the Cold War in United States. Even today, various law enforcement and such can mistakenly, or perhaps insidiously, ruin your life if you are guilty of "wrongthink". While this is not a realistic concern in today's society, President Bush used war fervor to push the Patriot Act, which normalized the dangerous powers given to the Executive, these norms were executed and pushed further during Obama's years, and today, President Trump is actively using the Justice Department to pursue his own personal goals. A cleverer Republican can easily use these powers to completely undermine the Republic and solidify one party rule.

I'm less fearful of the thugs, than I am of the quiet paper pushers.

[alhoon]

Secret police will have problem crashing into your place in the middle of the night to take you to a re-education camp if you can greet them with armor-piercing rounds fired from a fully-automatic weapon. And government will have a problem convincing public about necessity of such secret police if you can freely argue against it.

No, they won't have any problem.
Because you're asleep in the middle of the night and you are too poor to afford that and they are 6 trained guys with armor piercing rounds fired from fully-automatic weapon while you're a lone, sleeping civilian. And they have no problem usually shooting your kids and call it an accident.
And while the government would of course have a problem convincing the public about the necessity of such secret police if you can freely argue against it... the others can also convince the public of the necessity of such secret police.

As such:
- Freedom of Speech helps but not too much - while it can also cause the downfall, as it happened with the spread of dangerous ideologies
- Having a gun in your house can do squat to stop an authoritarian regime to come to power. You're not the only one armed, the other side also has armed civilians. The only way for an authoritarian revolution to come to power is... through an armed population. Like it happened in Russia. The Red Army of the Bolseviks was initially composed by armed civilians, that managed to overthrow their government and install a very authoritarian regime.

As I said earlier: Bolseviks instituted gun control after they came to power. Their revolution was only possible because they had an armed, radical population. Yes, they were not too popular. But they were the radical 15% and they were armed. That's enough.

About Trump's divisive tactics:
Yes, his opponents are also divisive, but he uses the "point the finger towards minorities" and "divide and conquer" tactics. No, he's certainly not as bad as the NSDAP. But that's a low bar...


Anyway, In my opinion, one of the main problems with your line of thought HH is...
You're too sure "your side" will be the one that has the popular support.

Armed revolution in the USA? That's a 0.01% chance buddy as things are awesome for USA.
However, if that 0.01% turns up... it is more possible at this time that this would be the ANTIFA and progressives overthrowing Trump and install a dictatorship. Why? Because the one in power is Trump and not a radical progressive.
You wouldn't like to live in an ANTIFA dictatorship, would you HH? Then you should be against guns.

And before you go "We would totally crush the craven and pathetic ANTIFA in an armed confrontation"... that means you automatically assume the armed people would take your side and not theirs.
But if we're talking about an armed revolution (the 0.01%) of ANTIFA, that means they would have the numbers.

Now, if you say "Hey! I am not talking about that revolution, I am talking in the case of an evil liberal POTUS and a sycophantic congress that try to take away my freedoms!"
For them to come to power = they have strong support. You can call the other side sheeple if you want, but they would still have numbers. As such armed population = more enemies for you to fight against.

As I said: You don't want an ANTIFA dictatorship where the armed gangs of civilians come into your house and drug you out so that illegal immigrants can live in your home? Then you should not want free guns.