MemberYes my friend, I have.
Trump lost the election. The courts said so too.
Hope you are ok friend. Stay safe and spread the love.
2020 US Presidential Election
- Thread starter Born To Slay
- Start date
Trump lost the election. The courts said so too.
Hope you are ok friend. Stay safe and spread the love.
Yeah not only America, but also South Africa. It's not like South Africa being close to a full blown civil war before apartheid ended was a better place. There's a reason why homicide rates started to drop dramatically after apartheid ended because life under apartheid was awful. Do I need to mention the Apartheid State being war mongers invading their neighbours?
Been to South Africa, and both blacks and whites seem to be happy for now from the ones I have spoken to. One white guy told me, that a good thing about apartheid ending was that he met his closest friend in school who happened to be black, which happened after the end of segregated schools.
A certain online community likes talking about South Africa being a better place under apartheid. They're more subtle about it however, as you can't sound like a full blown "you know what" in moderate communities.
This is what South Africa has implemented in more detail and I hope America does not go down this route. Affirmative action and quota systems is systemic racism. Unless they are qualified or have merit, no one should be jumping the queue.
- BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) – Companies are scored based on the quota of black ownership, senior managers, training, as well as suppliers. These scores then translate into their ability to compete for government tenders.
- Affirmative Action – The SAPS (South African Police Service) operates a quota system policy for hiring and promotion. Positions will be left unfilled if the appropriate demographic candidate cannot be recruited, even if another qualified person is available.
- University Enrolment – First year students are registered on a racial quota basis. In some cases there are different admission requirements for different demographics. For example: to study medicine at the University of Cape Town (UCT), white and Indian students require at least a 78% average on their National Senior Certificate, whereas black students only requires 59%. This is largely as a result of the quota system requiring privileged access for certain ethnic groups - In 2016 the University of Kwazulu Natal quota for medical students is 69% black African, 19% Indian, 9% coloured, 2% white and 1% other.
- Sports - Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula plans to impose quota systems in athletics, cricket, football, netball and rugby.
Look at what is happening to the white farmers in South Africa. They are getting killed and the police and the government have done nothing to stop it. Since apartheid was ended, why did many white South Africans leave then? They left because they were limited in their opportunities due to affirmative action and quota systems. We should be picking people based on merit and not the colour of their skin.
No they don't, you'd need Republican votes to amend the constitution. You can't just amend it with a simple majority. You'd need two thirds of both houses.
Eliminating the electoral college would let urban areas control everything. Horrible idea. The founding fathers wrote the constitution to be upheld and followed. These liberal groups do everything in their power to limit this. Look at California, beautiful state destroyed by liberals.
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I don't think they do. If I remember correctly, it would take a constitutional amendment to abolish the electoral college, which is a very high hurdle. The resistance it would meet from Republicans would be enormous.
@Lucifer -- Not that I'm a big fan of affirmative action, but I'm curious what your prescription might be for addressing the systemic racism that is deeply embedded in the American DNA, and has been endemic in this land since even before its inception in 1776?
If I were to start a list of systemic racism, I'd first think of slavery, lynching, job discrimination, housing discrimination, education discrimination, voter suppression, civil rights abuses, sending black people to jail for sometimes lifetimes for crimes they did not commit, and on and on and on.
But you don't even touch on those things when you (indignantly?) bring up the topic of systemic racism. The systemic racism I reference seems a whole lot more egregious than a black student that might got a spot in a school even though their grade point average was a 1/2 point worse than somebody else.
White farmers being killed was always a problem before apartheid ended (it was like a war zone before the end of apartheid), just that certain online communities seem to be more bothered about it all of a sudden when it serves their interests. I used to be part of those right-wing communities actually in my younger days, but I started to leave and rethink my beliefs when I noticed they had a very strange pattern of calling specific groups of people "sub-humans" and they're very subtle about these things. They had an obsession with South Africa's affirmative action too.
Actually when I checked back on that community months after changing my beliefs, it started to turn into a full blown Neo-Nazi group praising Hitler and fully embracing White Supremacy (they were 100% serious as they were just insulting every non-white on the planet). It was r/european from Reddit which was a "free speech" alternative to r/Europe, but it got banned anyways due to them inciting violence if I recall correctly. My beliefs weren't exactly extreme at the time, just that a lot of my dumb views were getting downvoted in r/Europe (I was living in Italy temporarily) and just wanted a place I can post my views. I was pretty right-wing, although I didn't shift too hard to the right.
If you're one of these people, I recommend you do the same as I did and reconsider your views because that's the kind of people you are unknowingly getting your information from.
Corruption existed under the Apartheid state as well, except with the added warmongering such as invading Angola so they can prolong their system of oppression until they couldn't get things control where Namibia broke off and then right after, Apartheid ended. Just that the Post-Apartheid state adopted the same government and structures, including corruption and all the other problems that came with it such as poverty. Nelson Mandela did enact some policies to build unity among the whites and blacks which did work as racial division did improve. Things don't get fixed over night.
I have a lot to criticise about South Africa's current government, and a lot of the problems seemed to be adopted from the Apartheid era like what I mentioned with poverty as South Africa isn't exactly the richest nation in the world.
Most of White South Africans leaving came shortly after Apartheid fully ended in 1994. Think about this, but if you lived in a system that you benefited greatly from which required the exploitation of others, wouldn't you feel like leaving once the benefits are removed? The system was racist and required lots of exploitation which benefited a smaller minority. A lot of them supported apartheid and there's a reason why they kept it for decades. As you can see here, the most noticeable drop in white South Africans leaving came very shortly after apartheid ended where they didn't spend much time experiencing the new system even though it was starting to show results such as homicide rates dropping thus already becoming safer than under Apartheid. Below is the white South African population in 1995 and 1996.
1995 - 5,224,000
1996 - 4,434,697
Here's homicide rates dropping right before a huge amount of South Africans left, so they left while the country was statistically getting safer already.
The white South African population was on a slow decline after apartheid ended, however now their population has started to grow since 2007 even with a lower fertility rate. Below is the white South African population again:
2007 - 4,352,100
2020 - 4,679,770
The homicide rates are still lower than they were before apartheid ended and whites are still the most well off. Mind you the conditions of South Africa still makes it ready for more civil unrest and who would most likely revolt? The poor of course as they have nothing to lose. Maybe the current government is trying to reduce poverty for groups that got hit the hardest by decades of apartheid, and it just so happens that affirmative action policies might be a quicker fix for it even though it might not be the most idealistic for all. To them it's just more pragmatic to get faster results and to provide some stability in society because it could be a lot more worse. One day when things equalise, maybe they would drop it altogether. As you can see, the poverty rates even went down for whites too, never-mind the non-whites.
So I don't see how South Africa adopting a couple of affirmative action policies is the end of the world. If the US adopted South Africa's policies (It's fear mongering. They won't), I don't see how the country would be any worse off than it is now. Things weren't always nice in South Africa and it isn't as simple as they make it out to be where you can put 100% of the blame on a few affirmative action policies where you need to study the history and the current conditions. It's like saying vaccines causes autism when they go based on correlation=causation, which has been known to be completely wrong.
Some countries have more extensive affirmative action and are richer than that country so I don't see how South Africa is the most unique nation in this because it's really not a new thing -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action
Basically don't believe everything you hear from the internet especially questionable communities like the one I experienced, but your choice because I said my piece and this isn't a thread about South Africa.
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Gabriel Sterling is a fast talking bright guy. I see he didn't take any questions. He said he wasn't invited to the Georgia Senate Election hearings. It would have been interesting to see him go against the non-partisan unbiased testimony of some of the statistical and forensic experts. That would have made for great fireworks.
The people that testified just seemed so honest and so angry that I don't know why anyone wouldn't believe them. It shouldn't be totally about Trump, but more about honest elections. If Republicans would have cheated the Democrats would have gone ballistic.
I think I'm going to bow out of this thread. I had enough.
The people that testified just seemed so honest and so angry that I don't know why anyone wouldn't believe them. It shouldn't be totally about Trump, but more about honest elections. If Republicans would have cheated the Democrats would have gone ballistic.
I think I'm going to bow out of this thread. I had enough.
Woman Arrested For Alleged Election Fraud, Illegal Voting In Texas
I'm glad they have caught this person for election fraud and illegal voting in Texas.
This is a win for USA democracy. I hope they catch more people like her in the upcoming weeks and months.
I'm glad they have caught this person for election fraud and illegal voting in Texas.
This is a win for USA democracy. I hope they catch more people like her in the upcoming weeks and months.
Some of them like to LARP a lot. I kinda wish they would stop with the dick-measuring contest and replace it with role playing a civil war in their own backyard to help themselves cope with losing the election. They seem quite happy cosplaying as a cheap knock-off of Rambo at every pro Trump protest. Sadly, some are still grieving about it.
It's preferable to them bringing up how they're more likely to cause a massacre with their pea shooters.
I'm like, wow cool, you will be better at massacring your own countrymen. Your point being? Nothing exactly to be proud of.
The Trump supporting 'Biden stole the election' mentality in a nutshell (thanks to the British philosopher Stephen Law):
'Dave believes dogs are spies from the planet Venus. He views any canine with great suspicion, for he believes they are here from Venus to do reconnaissance work. Dogs, Dave supposes, secretly send their reports back to Venus, where the rest of their fiendishly cunning alien species are meticulously planning their invasion of the earth. Their spaceships will shortly arrive from Venus to enslave the human race and take over the world.
Unsurprisingly, Dave's friends think he has a screw loose and try to convince him that dogs are comparatively benign pets, not cunning alien spies. Here's a typical example of how their conversations with Dave go:
DAVE: It's only a matter of weeks now! The spaceships willarrive and then you'll wish you'd listened to me. We mustact now—let the government know!
MARY: Look, Dave, dogs are pretty obviously not space invaders, they're just dumb pets. Dogs can't even speak, for goodness sake, let alone communicate with Venus!
DAVE: They can speak—they just choose to hide their linguistic ability from us. They wait till we leave the roomqbefore they talk to each other.
PETE: But Venus is a dead planet, Dave. It's horrifically hotqand swathed in clouds of acid. Nothing could live there, certainly not a dog!
DAVE: Dogs don't live on the surface of Venus, you fool—they live below, in deep underground bunkers.
MARY: But then how do earth-bound dogs communicate with their allies on Venus? I've got a dog, and I've never found an alien transmitter hidden in his basket.
DAVE: They don't use technology we can observe. Their transmitters are hidden inside their brains!
MARY: But Pete is a vet, and he's X-rayed several dog's heads, and he's never found anything in there!
PETE: In fact, I once chopped up a dog's brain in veterinary school—let me assure you, Dave, there was no transmitter in there!
DAVE: You're assuming their transmitters would be recognizable as such. They are actually made of organic material indistinguishable from brain stuff. That's why they
don't show up on X-rays. This is advanced alien technology, remember—of course we cannot detect it!
MARY: But we don't detect any weird signals being directed
at Venus from the earth.
DAVE: Of course, we don't—like I said, remember, this is advanced alien technology beyond our limited understanding!
PETE: How do dogs fly spaceships? They don't even have hands. So they can't hold things like steering wheels and joysticks.
DAVE: Really, Pete. Think about it. You are assuming that their spacecraft will be designed to be operated by human hands. Obviously they won't. They'll be designed to be maneuvered by a dog's limbs, mouth, tongue, and so on.
You can see how this conversation might continue ad nauseum.Mary and Pete can keep coming up with evidence against Dave's belief that dogs are Venusian spies. But, given sufficient ingenuity,Dave can always salvage his core theory. He can continually adjust and develop it so that it continues to "fit" the evidence.
CONFIRMATION—THE "FIT" MODEL
Clearly, Dave's theory about dogs is not well confirmed by the available evidence. The first moral we can extract from this example is that, whatever is required in order for a theory to be well confirmed, rather more is required than achieving mere consistency with that evidence.
As Dave illustrates, any belief, no matter how ludicrous, can be made consistent with the available evidence, given a little patience and ingenuity. Believe that the earth is flat, that the moon is made of cheese, that the World Trade Center was brought down by the US government, or that George W. Bush is really Elvis Presley in disguise? All these theories can be endlessly adjusted and developed so that they remain consistent with the available evidence. Yet they are obviously not well confirmed. The claim that Young Earth Creationism is at least as well confirmed as its scientific rivals relies crucially on what we might call the "fit" model of confirmation. According to the "fit"model, confirmation is all about "fitting" the evidence. But more is required for genuine confirmation than mere "fit," which any theory, no matter how absurd, can in principle achieve.'
The title of Law's book from which this is taken ('Believing Bullshit') is an apt summation of the unfalsifiable, Trump supporting mentality that exists among those fringe members of his constituency that stormed the Capitol.
'Dave believes dogs are spies from the planet Venus. He views any canine with great suspicion, for he believes they are here from Venus to do reconnaissance work. Dogs, Dave supposes, secretly send their reports back to Venus, where the rest of their fiendishly cunning alien species are meticulously planning their invasion of the earth. Their spaceships will shortly arrive from Venus to enslave the human race and take over the world.
Unsurprisingly, Dave's friends think he has a screw loose and try to convince him that dogs are comparatively benign pets, not cunning alien spies. Here's a typical example of how their conversations with Dave go:
DAVE: It's only a matter of weeks now! The spaceships willarrive and then you'll wish you'd listened to me. We mustact now—let the government know!
MARY: Look, Dave, dogs are pretty obviously not space invaders, they're just dumb pets. Dogs can't even speak, for goodness sake, let alone communicate with Venus!
DAVE: They can speak—they just choose to hide their linguistic ability from us. They wait till we leave the roomqbefore they talk to each other.
PETE: But Venus is a dead planet, Dave. It's horrifically hotqand swathed in clouds of acid. Nothing could live there, certainly not a dog!
DAVE: Dogs don't live on the surface of Venus, you fool—they live below, in deep underground bunkers.
MARY: But then how do earth-bound dogs communicate with their allies on Venus? I've got a dog, and I've never found an alien transmitter hidden in his basket.
DAVE: They don't use technology we can observe. Their transmitters are hidden inside their brains!
MARY: But Pete is a vet, and he's X-rayed several dog's heads, and he's never found anything in there!
PETE: In fact, I once chopped up a dog's brain in veterinary school—let me assure you, Dave, there was no transmitter in there!
DAVE: You're assuming their transmitters would be recognizable as such. They are actually made of organic material indistinguishable from brain stuff. That's why they
don't show up on X-rays. This is advanced alien technology, remember—of course we cannot detect it!
MARY: But we don't detect any weird signals being directed
at Venus from the earth.
DAVE: Of course, we don't—like I said, remember, this is advanced alien technology beyond our limited understanding!
PETE: How do dogs fly spaceships? They don't even have hands. So they can't hold things like steering wheels and joysticks.
DAVE: Really, Pete. Think about it. You are assuming that their spacecraft will be designed to be operated by human hands. Obviously they won't. They'll be designed to be maneuvered by a dog's limbs, mouth, tongue, and so on.
You can see how this conversation might continue ad nauseum.Mary and Pete can keep coming up with evidence against Dave's belief that dogs are Venusian spies. But, given sufficient ingenuity,Dave can always salvage his core theory. He can continually adjust and develop it so that it continues to "fit" the evidence.
CONFIRMATION—THE "FIT" MODEL
Clearly, Dave's theory about dogs is not well confirmed by the available evidence. The first moral we can extract from this example is that, whatever is required in order for a theory to be well confirmed, rather more is required than achieving mere consistency with that evidence.
As Dave illustrates, any belief, no matter how ludicrous, can be made consistent with the available evidence, given a little patience and ingenuity. Believe that the earth is flat, that the moon is made of cheese, that the World Trade Center was brought down by the US government, or that George W. Bush is really Elvis Presley in disguise? All these theories can be endlessly adjusted and developed so that they remain consistent with the available evidence. Yet they are obviously not well confirmed. The claim that Young Earth Creationism is at least as well confirmed as its scientific rivals relies crucially on what we might call the "fit" model of confirmation. According to the "fit"model, confirmation is all about "fitting" the evidence. But more is required for genuine confirmation than mere "fit," which any theory, no matter how absurd, can in principle achieve.'
The title of Law's book from which this is taken ('Believing Bullshit') is an apt summation of the unfalsifiable, Trump supporting mentality that exists among those fringe members of his constituency that stormed the Capitol.
Is this what "Make America Great Again" means? Looks a bit like a police state to me. 20,000 members of the National Guard branch of the US military are in DC due to FBI concerns relating to possible terrorist attacks from Trump's Y'all Qaeda.
They're there because of these guys:
They're there because of these guys:
When it comes to the limits of free speech and a consideration of what it is appropriate or inappropriate for a President to state in public, the most obvious example to draw on is one described by John Stuart Mill.
Mill contrasts a newspaper article in which the author claims that corn dealers are starvers of the poor, and the same view spoken (or communicated via a placard) right outside a corn dealer's house. The first is a controversial opinion that should be allowed to enter the public debate, even if the view is false or immoral; the second is, in those circumstances, an act of incitement to violence and unacceptable.
Interestingly, Trump arguably already crossed that line during his first presidential campaign. At Wilmington, North Carolina on August 9th 2016, he said this about Hillary Clinton: 'If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is.'
Additionally, Trump used the expression 'son of a b.itch' with reference to black athletes, called a political opponent 'Pocahontas', oversaw a denunciation programme that targeted Mexicans, published a list of crimes committed by immigrants, transformed an office on terrorism into an office on Islamic terrorism, helped hurricane victims in in Texas and Florida but not in Puerto Rico, spoke of 's.hithole countries', referred to reporters as enemies of the American people, and claimed that protestors were paid.
So this latest episode is just one of many.
Regardless, he should be impeached, and anyone who voted for him should hang their heads in shame (as well as signing up at the earliest opportunity for a course in inductive reasoning that takes in thinkers like Hume and Popper).
Mill contrasts a newspaper article in which the author claims that corn dealers are starvers of the poor, and the same view spoken (or communicated via a placard) right outside a corn dealer's house. The first is a controversial opinion that should be allowed to enter the public debate, even if the view is false or immoral; the second is, in those circumstances, an act of incitement to violence and unacceptable.
Interestingly, Trump arguably already crossed that line during his first presidential campaign. At Wilmington, North Carolina on August 9th 2016, he said this about Hillary Clinton: 'If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is.'
Additionally, Trump used the expression 'son of a b.itch' with reference to black athletes, called a political opponent 'Pocahontas', oversaw a denunciation programme that targeted Mexicans, published a list of crimes committed by immigrants, transformed an office on terrorism into an office on Islamic terrorism, helped hurricane victims in in Texas and Florida but not in Puerto Rico, spoke of 's.hithole countries', referred to reporters as enemies of the American people, and claimed that protestors were paid.
So this latest episode is just one of many.
Regardless, he should be impeached, and anyone who voted for him should hang their heads in shame (as well as signing up at the earliest opportunity for a course in inductive reasoning that takes in thinkers like Hume and Popper).
This is besides the point of this thread but I would love to know how you got yourself out of those communities. That kind of self deprogramming seems extraordinarily difficult and I applaud you for it.
The electoral college lets rural areas control everything, hence the country teetering into autocracy under Trump. Horrible idea. BTW, study after study shows that red states have the highest misery index.
They caught 2 or 3 in Pennsylvania as well (all Trump voters in that state). The reason they ruled "no systemic voter fraud" in court in these cases is because it is always just a handful, affects both parties and is so rare it doesn't affect the outcome (and is punishable by jail).
Donald Trump was just a professional of going bankrupt.
I just hope the IRS can get its cut in taxes before that happens... again.
@just1morething, so far I've watched the first half an hour of your link (I will watch this a half an hour at a time because it's so long).
All of Rudy's points so far were disputed by Georgia election oversight (who were *all* republicans btw and all supported Trump going into the elections).
Even his first point is a misrepresentation: "They wouldn't let them look at signatures," he claims. That's because the signatures were checked at the time they were separated from the envelope. And, of top of that, an audit was performed at the request of the Trump campaign and found 99.9% of the signatures matching.
Onto his voting machine claims. IF that were true, it would show up on the manual recount. The paper trail does not involve the voting machines. So examining the machines does not matter. And that's why the judge did not move forward with that. I.e. if the machines changed votes, they wouldn't match the paper trail. Which brings me to the testimony of the woman around 28 minutes. She brings an example of one voter who got an error message on a poll pad machine. She claims the font was suspicious and she hadn't seen that in another county. She was saying it should have been off by one but they reported balanced. I'm not sure what went on here but the paper trail (which was recounted by a bipartison group), did not report more than a handful of votes in the entire state being off (less than a few dozen), which means it did not change the outcome. Even in her testimony, she estimated 4 in her county and the other person she talked to, said it was "about 20." It seems if this was anything other than error it would be in an amount that should have made a material difference (i.e. if you are going to commit fraud, it should be an amount more than 100 in the whole state) so this seems like a legit error if it occurred. It honestly seems in her case, she's trying to look at this through a lens where she is trying to see it as fraud because she also said that seeing a car plastered with Biden stickers was suspicious (seriously, what kind of moron would commit sophisticated fraud but make it obvious with a car full of stickers. lol).
His argument about not examining the ballots falls flat because there was no court order establishing how and (more importantly) by whom this should be done. Otherwise you have the Trump campaign claiming to see a problem with ballots or even tampering with them. Why would the state of Georgia be worried about this? Sterling spells this out in the link I provided: Giuliani can't be trusted. He deliberated altered video evidence and that's why Georgia released the unedited video publically on their election website to counteract this lie.
So, when the first speaker after Giuliani talks about the video, he is talking about a video that Giuliani deliberately edited (that again, they posted the unedited video on the state of Georgia election website). So, his testimony is based entirely on an altered, deliberately misleading video. He was shown a false video with a false narrative and making a testimony based on what is shown to him. It's very, very clear he was never shown the full video that Georgia ended up posting on their election website to counteract the lie so of course he's outraged by what Giuliani has edited to push the lie not by what really happened.
It's interesting that you say "I wish they would have let Sterling attend." Let me ask you this, does any part of you think it's odd that Raffensperger offered to give to Trump (on the leaked phone call) personally all the evidence he and the state of Georgia had that the election is fair. Trump refused. Why would Trump refuse to even *see* this evidence?
I'll watch the rest later or another day. I'm 40 minutes in.
All of Rudy's points so far were disputed by Georgia election oversight (who were *all* republicans btw and all supported Trump going into the elections).
Even his first point is a misrepresentation: "They wouldn't let them look at signatures," he claims. That's because the signatures were checked at the time they were separated from the envelope. And, of top of that, an audit was performed at the request of the Trump campaign and found 99.9% of the signatures matching.
Onto his voting machine claims. IF that were true, it would show up on the manual recount. The paper trail does not involve the voting machines. So examining the machines does not matter. And that's why the judge did not move forward with that. I.e. if the machines changed votes, they wouldn't match the paper trail. Which brings me to the testimony of the woman around 28 minutes. She brings an example of one voter who got an error message on a poll pad machine. She claims the font was suspicious and she hadn't seen that in another county. She was saying it should have been off by one but they reported balanced. I'm not sure what went on here but the paper trail (which was recounted by a bipartison group), did not report more than a handful of votes in the entire state being off (less than a few dozen), which means it did not change the outcome. Even in her testimony, she estimated 4 in her county and the other person she talked to, said it was "about 20." It seems if this was anything other than error it would be in an amount that should have made a material difference (i.e. if you are going to commit fraud, it should be an amount more than 100 in the whole state) so this seems like a legit error if it occurred. It honestly seems in her case, she's trying to look at this through a lens where she is trying to see it as fraud because she also said that seeing a car plastered with Biden stickers was suspicious (seriously, what kind of moron would commit sophisticated fraud but make it obvious with a car full of stickers. lol).
His argument about not examining the ballots falls flat because there was no court order establishing how and (more importantly) by whom this should be done. Otherwise you have the Trump campaign claiming to see a problem with ballots or even tampering with them. Why would the state of Georgia be worried about this? Sterling spells this out in the link I provided: Giuliani can't be trusted. He deliberated altered video evidence and that's why Georgia released the unedited video publically on their election website to counteract this lie.
So, when the first speaker after Giuliani talks about the video, he is talking about a video that Giuliani deliberately edited (that again, they posted the unedited video on the state of Georgia election website). So, his testimony is based entirely on an altered, deliberately misleading video. He was shown a false video with a false narrative and making a testimony based on what is shown to him. It's very, very clear he was never shown the full video that Georgia ended up posting on their election website to counteract the lie so of course he's outraged by what Giuliani has edited to push the lie not by what really happened.
It's interesting that you say "I wish they would have let Sterling attend." Let me ask you this, does any part of you think it's odd that Raffensperger offered to give to Trump (on the leaked phone call) personally all the evidence he and the state of Georgia had that the election is fair. Trump refused. Why would Trump refuse to even *see* this evidence?
I'll watch the rest later or another day. I'm 40 minutes in.
What started it off was actually reading some reactionary YouTube comments as silly as that sounds, especially if the video was about the refugee crisis which was a huge thing when the war was going on in Syria. I basically believed all of the nonsense they were sprouting such as that Germany became a more dangerous place since taking more refugees, when actually the country became the safest it has ever been after the refugees came in. It was pure propaganda, because there's undeniable evidence that overall the country is the safest it is now in terms of crime rate than it has ever been (still lowering too); this just contradicts the conspiracy theories. So if we are going by their "correlation=causation" philosophy then you might as well say bringing in refugees made Germany safer, if we are going to play by their rules:
Germany's crime rate fell to lowest level in decades in 2018
Mind you, even after the facts were thrown in my face, I still didn't believe it because I was too brainwashed by right-wing propaganda, however at the same time I was calling people stating actual facts as brainwashed (you know some of these folks). I used to trust only trust bullshit sources such as Breitbart as well and thought Ben Shapiro was a "badass" (I was young ok?), but now I just roast the guy lol. I used to visit Germany regularly and been to these areas where a lot of refugees were and let me say, I still felt safer than the majority of Europe and North America. Seriously if you go to Germany, you'll be fine walking in most places. Even after facing the reality of this experiencing it first hand, I was still trying to refuse to change my views.
What made me start to rethink my beliefs was a combination of things. One was how deranged a lot of these people sprouting these right-wing propaganda were and I really started to question them when they were using very dehumanising languages on only non-whites such as calling them "sub-humans" and "cockroaches". When they see stories about a white Polish immigrant beating up a non-white refugee, the comments were supportive of it, however when the roles are switched, their hypocrisy came through where they're ok with immigrants being violent as long as they're white. Not only that but they had violent fantasies about hurting them and forcibly kicking them out, but they covered it under the "self defense" talk because "mUh wHItE gEnOCide!!!1!!1!!". They're subtle about it where they won't say "I want to throw a muslim family in the ocean", but they'll say things like "any muslim refugee who commits crime in Europe should be sent back to their own war zones and let's see how long they will live", things like that.
This community wasn't only Europeans, but many other nationalities outside of the continent, and it was mainly countries where there's lots of white people. If I recall correctly, there was a survey they done which showed this community for Europeans, was actually filled with more North Americans and people from Australia/New Zealand. After a while it started to turn like a very toxic hive mind. Turns out this hive mind took off the mask and fully embraced White Supremacy, Hitler, Mussolini, Nazi Germany, Fascism, thought the Apartheid State of South Africa should have killed off more of the native population etc etc. I only got as far as believing muslim refugees were a problem, but I never started to embrace Neo-Nazism like they did after I left that community.
This is a small detail, but I remember going to get a haircut at a barber's and this Syrian refugee was cutting my hair. He spoke to me and I started to really fully drop my views completely at that point. It's because he came off as a normal person who was kind and showed a lot of respect towards me and his boss where he didn't fit the description right-wingers were describing muslim refugees to be. It may not sound like the most ground breaking thing as I was just getting a haircut, but it was life changing for me.
Then afterwards I started to learn more by speaking to real muslims to understand what they go through and also talking to leftists asking them to debunk some right-wing propaganda I believed in as I was living in a different reality. Leftists in my opinion came off as less hostile and their arguments seemed more logical, while the right-wingers I mentioned got angry when you bring up the source being unreliable even though it would actually help them become more believable to moderates (in a way, their own arrogance will be their downfall which is probably for the best). Right now I'm the complete opposite of where I was back then and I am always skeptical the next time I sense far-right propaganda.
That's my story, on how I got close to fully embracing far-right ideology.
Thanks so much for sharing that. Your Syrian refugee story supports this theory I have always supported that exposure is the anecdote to racism, homophobia etc.
This is why when the gay community started coming out of the closet and people realized how much of their friends and family (that they loved) were gay, homophobia melted away except for the extremist types.
Similar with sexism as well (which is so much less in people under 50) because society is now used to women in leadership positions and having colleagues (and earnest friends) of both genders that they respect in their work places. Again, except for the extremist types.
People in integrated areas tend to be less racist, too. For exactly those reasons. It's no accident that the white supremacy capital of the US is in Idaho, where few black people actually live. You still have bigots everywhere of course, but looking at percent of population they are much less in more mixed areas.
- Jan 25, 2013
- 3,549
- Tinnitus Since
- 2008
- Cause of Tinnitus
- TMJ disorder, airplane barotrauma, noise exposure.
I would focus on Fulton County and the statistical evidence of 90-95 % Biden votes. Those are some bright people providing unbiased evidence. Was Sterling ever asked about that? The SOS would not cooperate when repeatably asked about seeing the physical ballots. Strange. I guess we're not going to affect the outcome on this thread, that's for sure.
There is no "outcome" on this thread.
But I will ask this, why didn't the state legislature subpoena this information? The state legislature does have this power, if they really wanted to see it so badly, why not use their authority to subpoena the physical ballots and force officials to testify?
My family and I live in New York and we're very happy here. We'd never want to move.
- Jan 25, 2013
- 3,549
- Tinnitus Since
- 2008
- Cause of Tinnitus
- TMJ disorder, airplane barotrauma, noise exposure.
