United States Politics Thread 46

[Linguoboy]

So, to some extent, people from the USA seem to have different tastes for other political offices than for President.

I kind of gave up on the general electorate after 2000 when the consensus was that, yes, Gore was better qualified in every single way than Bush, but he was a kind of a know-it-all whereas Bush was someone you could imagine sitting around having a beer with, and voters liked that. I just wanted to smack every single one of them, yelling, "When are you ever going to be invited to have a beer with the President, you dumb shmuck?" Since then all I ever hear pundits talk about every presidential cycle is some nebulous quality called "electibility" which determines what voters want. Whatever it is, it's a property non-white men can possess (rarely) but not ever women and certainly not women of colour.

On the plus side, this seems to be a quality which DeSantis does not have. There was an absolutely savage dissection of his lack of personality in the Daily Kos which concluded "Ron DeSantis has exactly one shot at becoming the Republican candidate for the presidency in 2024. He can win if Donald Trump dies."

[Raphael]

On the plus side, this seems to be a quality which DeSantis does not have. There was an absolutely savage dissection of his lack of personality in the Daily Kos which concluded "Ron DeSantis has exactly one shot at becoming the Republican candidate for the presidency in 2024. He can win if Donald Trump dies."

Are you familiar with John Ganz's "Jock/Creep theory of fascism" and his idea that DeSantis's problem is that he's more of a creep while the GOP base wants a jock?

https://johnganz.substack.com/p/the-joc ... of-fascism

(Yeah, it's on substack, but the post is free.)

[Linguoboy]

Are you familiar with John Ganz's "Jock/Creep theory of fascism" and his idea that DeSantis's problem is that he's more of a creep while the GOP base wants a jock?

I wasn't, but he essentially reaches the same conclusion as Hunter by different means. Hunter's argument is simpler: MAGAhats want a bully and no one in the running is better at being a bully than Trump. Over half told a CBS/YouGov poll that what they want in a POTUS is someone who "owns the libs" and more than 80% of those expressing a preference for Trump gave as one of their top reasons "How he deals with his political opponents".

[Linguoboy]

Most recent Pew Survey data shows that 42% of Republicans think that children should be allowed to attend school without getting the MMR (Measles Mumps Rubella) vaccine: https://www.pewresearch.org/science/202 ... ld-steady/. This despite the fact that 86% believe that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks.

[Torco]

man, this picture really makes me want to check how big the effect of the insured/uninsured thing is if you control for the effects of income, but they do find that trusting your doctor makes you less of an antivax, and that being uninsured makes you trust doctors less. it could be the case that the antivax thing takes root at least in part as an effect of healthcare insecurity.

and honestly, it makes sense, no? if yall are gonna let me die if I break a bone, or make it so expensive to access healthcare that I'd actually prefer to die than to go to the hospital and be in debt forevermore... but then you come up to me with some mistery injection and go "it's for your own goooood~"... I don't know, guess it makes suspicion more understandable.

[Ares Land]

Most recent Pew Survey data shows that 42% of Republicans think that children should be allowed to attend school without getting the MMR (Measles Mumps Rubella) vaccine: https://www.pewresearch.org/science/202 ... ld-steady/. This despite the fact that 86% believe that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks.

It makes sense ideologically I guess.

man, this picture really makes me want to check how big the effect of the insured/uninsured thing is if you control for the effects of income, but they do find that trusting your doctor makes you less of an antivax, and that being uninsured makes you trust doctors less. it could be the case that the antivax thing takes root at least in part as an effect of healthcare insecurity.

It makes a lot of sense. Uninsured people are not going to see medical practictioners very often, which means they're less likely to have a family doctor or a practitioner they trust.

[Torco]

i mean, yes, but they also perceive the medical system as predatory and abusive... hell, *I* perceive the medical sysytem as predatory and abusive, and I nominally have health coverage.

[Travis B.]

The key thing to remember is that each and every person who is unvaccinated by their own choice (i.e. they do not have a legitimate medical reason for not being vaccinated) is, to be completely honest, a threat to humanity. They provide a means by which communicable diseases can be transmitted to those who cannot be vaccinated, or who are less protected by being vaccinated, i.e. the immunosuppressed, those allergic to the components of vaccines, those for which one or more vaccinations simply did not take, and those simply too young to get vaccinated. There is no right to not be vaccinated, fundamentally, and just by existing, the willfully unvaccinated threaten those around them.

[Torco]

Nah, like... I agree that the modern antivax movement is quite without grounds etcetera... but it *is* their body, ultimately, and that doesn't trump all other considerations, but it's also not nothing. I'm all for requirements for particular things, like schools and whatever, but if some dude lives in the woods and wants to not vax, who am I to tell him otherwise.

[Travis B.]

Nah, like... I agree that the modern antivax movement is quite without grounds etcetera... but it *is* their body, ultimately, and that doesn't trump all other considerations, but it's also not nothing. I'm all for requirements for particular things, like schools and whatever, but if some dude lives in the woods and wants to not vax, who am I to tell him otherwise.

As they say, your freedom ends at someone else's nose - and needlessly risking infecting other people when this can be practically avoided or mitigated goes beyond someone else's nose.

[Travis B.]

I'm really surprised that Clarence Thomas can write a sane decision, w.r.t. the decision in Twitter v. Taamneh. That still doesn't mean that he isn't a corrupt scumbag though.

[Torco]

Like, I *want* to be totally against the antivax, but honestly the bodily autonomy thing I can't get past.

[Ares Land]

Nah, like... I agree that the modern antivax movement is quite without grounds etcetera... but it *is* their body, ultimately, and that doesn't trump all other considerations, but it's also not nothing. I'm all for requirements for particular things, like schools and whatever, but if some dude lives in the woods and wants to not vax, who am I to tell him otherwise.

That's about the standard rule for Europe, with some variation on how strict it is. It's pretty reasonable.

What I noticed is that there's a fair bit of reverse psychology at play. The more you insist on vaccines, the more antivaxxers you get.
They should have gotten prominent liberals to speak against vaccines; conservatives would have lined up to get their shots (not a serious suggestion!)

[Torco]

I'm not saying it's russia and/or china: but if I was russia and/or china I'd sure fund antivaxers and various other conspiratards.

[Ares Land]

Sputnik and Russia Today were pretty big on antivax conspiracy theories, as I recall.

[Raphael]

So Henry Kissinger has reached the age of 100. The Good, as they say, die young.

[Moose-tache]

When you kill someone, you absorb their life force.

[Ryusenshi]

An old physicist joke: "I should have won the Nobel Prize in Physics. After all, Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize. At least I never did any crime against Physics!"

[MacAnDàil]

When you kill someone, you absorb their life force.

Sylar was the strongest highlander.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Maybe he's a lich?