US Election 2016

[sinewav]

Brutal takedown, thanks for writing all that. I learned things.

[Lucifer]

Everybody should stop and watch this entire series.

https://youtu.be/4xGawJIseNY?si=mcEaQuQck2LfdxMN

It's called the alt-right playbook, and one thing it explains is why we're never going to get through to Kyle. Hopefully, Kyle, you'll watch it and get a better idea what the media you're consuming in your bubble is actually doing.

[kyle]

I'll take the pause and address this first, I am still working on a reply to what z-man said, Thanks for explaining all of that so far.

https://youtu.be/4xGawJIseNY?si=mcEaQuQck2LfdxMN

It's called the alt-right playbook, and one thing it explains is why we're never going to get through to Kyle. Hopefully, Kyle, you'll watch it and get a better idea what the media you're consuming in your bubble is actually doing.

Watched the first one, I don't think I'll waste my time with any more unless you think some would be beneficial, these all pull on emotional strings of people to try to make them feel like the right is bad, because bad groups tend to support the right.

My stance on why I voted the way I did is simple, what's important to me.

I don't want anyone to limit what I can say, read or talk about, IE I want anyone to be able to say all the BS lies they want, I can use my own brain to know it's BS, I don't need anyone to shelter me from that, If i do fall for the BS, It's my own fault.

I want secure borders, you have argued it was not secure in the 1500's so why should it be today, I think that's the wrong way to look at the border, As I've said I am all for people coming here from any background, as long as they do it properly, and yes, there likely needs to be more funding to allow proper immigration, but opening the wall to just about anyone has many hidden dangers.

I want racism dead, and I feel that the democrats have effectively switched the racism and hatred towards white people, via Eat the rich and DEI, I'm not saying that it's near as bad as slavery days, I'm just saying that it's started getting away from equality to all. And that's the thing I still need to address more from previous posts. But in the smallest form, I want everyone who is willing to and able to be able to succeed in life, There are certain jobs that require certain skills, IE an Olympic swimmer, not everyone has a body built for that, you can have all the determination to do well, but you just simply lack the body to be able to do that. But I think anyone could pick up skills to make them much better off if they want to.

I want to be able to become rich, I don't want the country wasting money on pointless things and make taxes go up more and more, We often never get value out of the spending the government does, but yet somehow both sides are making around 100% gains on their stock portfolios last year. It's almost like insider trading. (before you fact check me on that, I only mean a few of them and not all, but gains are pretty big for a lot of them) Less rules and bureaucracy, will mean less admin fees in things, why is medical insurance so expensive, because of all the rules and regulations, it's so bad that there are companies that are set up that all they do is determine if a claim is valid or not, and they do this for all insurance companies.

I'm not saying the right is perfect, there are flows, I'm just saying their values I more align with now, vs the left, climate change is a big thing, but things that were being done to try to stop it, were not that effective, the prices and everything is shifting to more renewable energy. It reminds me of when the government gave each household some money to buy a converter box for Digital TV, the converter boxes were I think around $50 and you got a $40 coupon, making it $10, Once those Coupons expired, the converter boxes were only $10,

[Lucifer]

I'll take the pause and address this first, I am still working on a reply to what z-man said, Thanks for explaining all of that so far.

https://youtu.be/4xGawJIseNY?si=mcEaQuQck2LfdxMN

It's called the alt-right playbook, and one thing it explains is why we're never going to get through to Kyle. Hopefully, Kyle, you'll watch it and get a better idea what the media you're consuming in your bubble is actually doing.

Watched the first one, I don't think I'll waste my time with any more unless you think some would be beneficial, these all pull on emotional strings of people to try to make them feel like the right is bad, because bad groups tend to support the right.

Please watch the whole series. It's not "the right is bad", it's "this is how the alt-right communicates and why their media bubble works like it does". I don't expect nor want you to change any particular views because of this series, I want you to see how your media bubble works to radicalize people and reflect on whether or not that has happened to you, and if it hasn't, why not? That would be a great discussion for us to have, but everyone having it would need to watch this series.

I don't want anyone to limit what I can say, read or talk about, IE I want anyone to be able to say all the BS lies they want, I can use my own brain to know it's BS, I don't need anyone to shelter me from that, If i do fall for the BS, It's my own fault.

You already have this. It is mostly people on "your side" pushing for book bans, I feel obligated to point out. What you don't have, and you can't have, is freedom from consequences. Also, you can't have free speech that requires infringing upon someone else's right to speech in order to preserve yours. This is what deplatforming, aka "cancel culture", is all about. A private company that doesn't want to fund hate speech is under no obligation to do so. So when/if Netflix finally drops Dave Chappelle, it won't be censorship, it'll be a private company that doesn't want to fund the BS he says. You can't have a special right to free speech that requires Netflix or Facebook or X/Twitter or whoever to let you say whatever you want. These private companies also have a right to free speech, and if they don't want certain types of speech on their platforms, they're under no obligation to allow it.

That's why Nebula exists, actually. It's a direct response to YouTube's policies about what can and can't be put on their platform. But Nebula isn't a free speech panacea, it's invite-only for creators. That means you have to be big enough and interesting enough to get an invite to put content on Nebula. (Yes, I already looked into it, because I've been caught in YouTube's web)

I want secure borders, you have argued it was not secure in the 1500's so why should it be today, I think that's the wrong way to look at the border, As I've said I am all for people coming here from any background, as long as they do it properly, and yes, there likely needs to be more funding to allow proper immigration, but opening the wall to just about anyone has many hidden dangers.

That's not the argument I made at all. The argument I made is that white people came here illegally, and have no moral ground to stand on when they whine about non-white illegal immigrants. You've complained a lot about the "insecure" borders, but you've said nothing about Elon Musk working here illegally nor all the white immigrants that overstay their visas and manage to slip through the cracks and ultimately are able to be here anyway, legally, but the same path isn't available to non-white immigrants.

We all want secure borders. Full Stop. Quit trying to portray the left as not wanting that. You're lying through your teeth when you do that. Not one single leftist here has argued that bad actors should be allowed to come in this country and do bad things.

We just don't think Trump's solution is the right one, morally, legally, or ethically. I mean, come on, he separated families to punish then for being here illegally. Since when is "walk across an invisible line on a map without permission" a serious enough crime to warrant having your kids taken from you, and your kids' parents taken from them? THAT is what you voted for, and this time, you knew you were voting for it.

I want racism dead, and I feel that the democrats have effectively switched the racism and hatred towards white people, via Eat the rich and DEI, I'm not saying that it's near as bad as slavery days, I'm just saying that it's started getting away from equality to all. And that's the thing I still need to address more from previous posts. But in the smallest form, I want everyone who is willing to and able to be able to succeed in life, There are certain jobs that require certain skills, IE an Olympic swimmer, not everyone has a body built for that, you can have all the determination to do well, but you just simply lack the body to be able to do that. But I think anyone could pick up skills to make them much better off if they want to.

Nope, it's simple power accounting. If white people have more power than they would in a non-racist society, then in order to make society non-racist, that power has to be taken from them and given to the people who had less power because they weren't white. That's what DEI is all about.

Eat the rich has been a bipartisan political position for decades now.

I want to be able to become rich, I don't want the country wasting money on pointless things and make taxes go up more and more, We often never get value out of the spending the government does, but yet somehow both sides are making around 100% gains on their stock portfolios last year. It's almost like insider trading. (before you fact check me on that, I only mean a few of them and not all, but gains are pretty big for a lot of them) Less rules and bureaucracy, will mean less admin fees in things, why is medical insurance so expensive, because of all the rules and regulations, it's so bad that there are companies that are set up that all they do is determine if a claim is valid or not, and they do this for all insurance companies.

This is one of the few places where we actually agree on what's happening. There's even a movement from people on the left to strip away the ability for congresspeople to invest directly on the stock market, because we keep catching them doing stuff that, for anybody else, would be insider trading. You should read actual left-wing news, because there's a lot here you'd agree with.

Of course, Trump is going to do what he did before and use the federal government to make himself richer, and to loosen up regulations so that everyone who helped him will get richer, and you and I will get nothing for it.

Not only is this a both sides do it thing, you voted for the guy who's open and brazen about how he's going to just make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Oops. Whichever democrat ran against him would do the same thing in a lot of different ways, and it's going to take a lot more than just voting to fix this problem. I'm not suggesting violence, mind you, but something like the Occupy movement, but bigger.

I'm not saying the right is perfect, there are flows, I'm just saying their values I more align with now, vs the left, climate change is a big thing, but things that were being done to try to stop it, were not that effective, the prices and everything is shifting to more renewable energy. It reminds me of when the government gave each household some money to buy a converter box for Digital TV, the converter boxes were I think around $50 and you got a $40 coupon, making it $10, Once those Coupons expired, the converter boxes were only $10,

You can't criticize climate change policies without at least acknowledging the massive effort that has actually crippled those policies as they've been passed, an effort that comes from the right. Who opposed the Green New Deal? Why did the Green New Deal not work? Oh right, because it was never significantly implemented because of pressure from the right.

It is nice to see right-wingers starting to admit that climate change is real. It would have been nice if they'd done so back when we could have prevented the 1.5C rise that's already happened. We're dangerously close to a runaway greenhouse effect that could be apocalyptic, and now the right-wingers are stepping up to whine about how the policies that have made it through their silly and destructive gauntlet didn't work, which is exactly what they wanted, and this whole bit is covered in the series I linked to at the beginning. You really need to watch it. This specific topic is addressed at one point in the series.

[Word]

I thought this video about "cyber-libertarianism" might be interesting to you guys:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nST5BggdfUs

Also this one about Musk always siding with China and Russia because he needs their resources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syGKhF3DcuI

[Z-Man]

A maybe better title for that video series Lucifer linked would be "How to spot typical bad faith arguments", they are kind of universal, it just so happens it's the alt-right that is most fond of using them. I don't think kyle used any of them? The Musk/Weidel talk is of course one long Gish Gallop. Anyway, here's what I would consider the most helpful one:
How to Radicalize a Normie

On their national gathering, Alice Weidel topped herself and vowed to rip out all wind turbines, calling them "windmills of shame". That is interesting considering she complained about the nuclear power plants, which were providing about 3% of our power... the turbines now provide 30%. I wonder in which world that makes sense?

They also doubled down on their Islamophobia, they intend to outlaw wearing headscarves in schools and other public institutions. You can read more about their Islamophobia in their (now outdated) manifesto, just search for "Islam", "Muslim" and the like, it's around page 48, they have a whole section about how they want to restrict Muslims (specifically them, of course, Christianity is fine, that's part of Proper German Culture), and it permeates throughout the whole program.

For example, on the topic of animal welfare, they are surprisingly FOR REDUCING animal suffering, which is odd because that would be MORE regulation which they are usually against, and rise the cost of meat production and make it less competitive. Surprising until you get to the bit where they want to outlaw the slaughter forms compatible with Muslim and Jewish beliefs (they are already outlawed in general, but exceptions can be made for these religious groups, which is what the AfD wants to get rid of). That's page 86.

Freedom of Religion is guaranteed by our Constitution (Grundgesetz), Section 1 (Fundamental Rights), Article 4, without exception. That's notable because other fundamental rights come with exceptions and contain clauses that permit them to be limited by laws, or explicit limits. So the AfD program is unconstitutional in its current form. Suprise!

No, I did not read the whole program, I'm not mad.

[sinewav]

...the right is bad, because bad groups tend to support the right.

This is a pretty important point that shouldn't be just hand-waved away...

[kyle]

Anyway, here's what I would consider the most helpful one:
How to Radicalize a Normie

Watched, No I am not effected by anything like that, I'm not Gabe at all, and won't be. I feel like Lucifer is more like the Gabe of the left though, so deeply into the left ideology he puts blinders on to the shit the left is doing wrong, because well he doesn't want to be called racist or sexist, before actually thinking that hey, I'm not Sexist or racist, but you can go way to far into bending the laws to prioritize hiring of "minority" groups

I consider myself more Anti-party, I balance as much of what I can from the right and left. I mean how the can the left run city of California have a drained emergency water tank, prior to the fires destroying the city? To me they find the best ways to funnel money back into their pockets, rather than actually getting the stuff done. Why are companies fleeing Delaware, If you look into their government you can see it's been ran by the left for a decade or two. They have seeded their court system with anti-business judges, The same judge who forced Elon to buy Twitter, is the same judge that claimed shareholders could not approve his Tesla pay package, because they left out the connections the Tesla Board of directors had to Elon, in that proxy statement, but if you look proxies of the members getting added to the board, it is disclosed. She ruled that shareholders were dumb and could not read, and she did it a second time after shareholder reapproved it. Actions by the party speak louder than what the so called parties ideology is about. This kind of stacked judicial system with party bias is not good for America.

...the right is bad, because bad groups tend to support the right.

This is a pretty important point that shouldn't be just hand-waved away...

Both parties in the US are destroying the US, there should be much more middle ground, but group think is killing America with the two party system. I'm just hoping that First buddy Elon will talk some scene into what Trump does.

Not only is this a both sides do it thing, you voted for the guy who's open and brazen about how he's going to just make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

There are many ways to become rich under either side, you just have to figure out the way to hack the money system, maybe people remain poor because they are too afraid to do that or simply don't know how to, Maybe you can't become a billionaire, but you can have the **** you kind of money.

I want you to see how your media bubble works to radicalize people and reflect on whether or not that has happened to you, and if it hasn't, why not?

I'm pretty sure it's not my media bubble, I'm not afraid to push back, and the important things I go to the source of the news, not some news site. FYI I cannot stand Fox news, which in the US is supposedly the Right wing media, do you think it is?

These private companies also have a right to free speech, and if they don't want certain types of speech on their platforms, they're under no obligation to allow it.

Good point, but it was the government stepping in and saying you need to take down certain posts, they are shooting themselves in the foot leaning into the bans the government is telling them to do, Note now Facebook is shifting to community driven moderation instead of Company hired "fact" checkers. Also worth reading the Twitter Files, https://x.com/shovas/status/1607468172914966528 For instance on Hunter Biden's Laptop https://x.com/shellenberger/status/1604871630613753856

Nope, it's simple power accounting. If white people have more power than they would in a non-racist society, then in order to make society non-racist, that power has to be taken from them and given to the people who had less power because they weren't white. That's what DEI is all about.

Again, capability over skin color is most important, making it an attack that "white" has more power than "black", just further encourages racism. I still think about this high school cheerleader, apparently very capable, and I am going to assume she was better than some people that made the team, this could be a flaw in my part, maybe she truly was bad at it. Anyway when she did not make the team, she posted a picture of her self on some social media with the caption this is what it takes to make the team. You can probably guess the make-up she had on, blackface. It was a statement based on her feelings, I'm not even sure if she knew the wrongness of that, The post initially over the summer resurfaced during the school year, and there were groups trying to hunt her down to kill her. This then triggered a huge set of conversations in that school, in fact that day they had a lock in to address concerns. through several other discussions, the district was forced to bring in some company to try teach students about racism, One of the things they implemented was wall to give tribute to history each month, A month for Women history, black history, Hispanic history, Chinese history, and some others, but you know what they did not have a month for, white men history, they came up with this wall to show diversity, but they isolated the most predominate group of people. and I bet it likely backfired because of this, this was all a few years ago, I don't know the actual outcomes, but sounded like it was bad as it was sexist against men.

Eat the rich has been a bipartisan political position for decades now.

Either Way it needs to end, it's prominently focused with unions, Should be replaced with learn how to become rich instead. IMO paying union dues to the Rich union leaders, is a way to become even more poor. You From IRC chat see this differently, but at the same time, you wanted to get away from that job anyway, getting a union there may have made you feel at ease about it, but still you would essentially be paying the rich unions, in hopes of them getting you something better, where you could just jump into something else.

Of course, Trump is going to do what he did before and use the federal government to make himself richer, and to loosen up regulations so that everyone who helped him will get richer, and you and I will get nothing for it.

I'll get something with my Tesla shares You have to invest or else you will remain poor and fell like you are getting nothing. I really do hope they eliminate the kickbacks and stuff though.

[Word]

I'm not Gabe at all, and won't be.

Still, literally everyone here is at pains to tell you you are at least close to him in spirit (I have a cousin and a few colleagues who'd fit that description as well, these are my reference points when reading your posts). The video explicitly states that it's not comprehensive and everyone has their own quirky ideology, and it predicts that a conversation like this probably won't help as much as, say, having a family member affected by right-wing policies (admittedly, republicans do a great job at portraying something sinister that originated from their own policy-making like it's one's personal responsibilty, or the democrats', or will of God, whenever it suits them). That said, even you yourself somehow come dangerously close to call out your own way of dealing with crap from the right-wing bubble, then dismiss it:

so deeply into the left ideology he puts blinders on to the shit the left is doing wrong, because well he doesn't want to be called racist or sexist,

...the right is bad, because bad groups tend to support the right.

Well, yes! But Lucifer is self-aware enough to know his approximate place on the "leftist spectrum". It's difficult for all of us to get a grip on your position because you acknowledge some stuff that is going on on your side and then trivialize what I'd call the fundamental USP of the MAGA movement, which is "it's ok to be racist and enact racist policy because we aren't really racist and have moved past it, let's work to keep the Mexican rapists out of the country and black folks in jail and women in the kitchen. See? Nothing racist about that!"
I run out of good metaphors for which I'm sorry, but for me that's a black-and-white-choice that until Trump I didn't even know was up for debate again. Nazis/facists are bad and the villain in every movie because. Being critical of Musk and Trump means to attack someone's identity and self-image (note how I avoid using "Elon" like he's some next-door neighbor or fellow armagetron player, or the son of God, because he's the richest man of the world with destroying democracy as a hobby. There is no scenario where you, the little guy, benefits from defending him and drinking the X kool aid).

What I'm writing to you here is what I'd never say out loud to my right-wing cousin, because it's like his whole identity is now built on the belief that everything the AfD and Trump do is good. His father was a likeable conservative with hints of xenophobia who died of lung cancer about a decade ago. As far as his son is concerned, sometimes it seems like my cousin has this Norman-Bates-thing, meaning he wants to be an over-the-top-version of his late father and parrots political views from a different time and place as a coping mechanism. His girlfriend is right-wing too. His sisters don't talk to him anymore. His mother doesn't want to lose him and somehow pretends to have the same racist worldview when he is around and doesn't when he is not. If my cousin, now a 200%-version of Gabe, ever comes back to the ground, it will be a hard landing. It's like he is trying to live someone else's life. I'm curious if you recognize a similarity, kyle.

Note now Facebook is shifting to community driven moderation instead of Company hired "fact" checkers.

Or maybe it's cheaper and more profitable for Facebook "to let Nazis be Nazis"?

white men history

To commemorate the ongoing genocide of white men? I'm not saying white men can't have big problems but imagine for a moment you have these problems you have on top of being a minority, suffering from some rare disease, and/or having to raise kids as a single woman with low income. I'm sure an online forum makes it easy to leave one's empathy at the door and I'm guilty of that as well, but I guess empathy is the key missing here.

Should be replaced with learn how to become rich instead. IMO paying union dues to the Rich union leaders, is a way to become even more poor.

That's already what 50% of youtube is, people telling you how to get rich fast, with no requirement for effort or values to sustain a meaningful life. I do agree that union leaders are usually corrupt. Still better than the rich people corrupting them though.

[Z-Man]

...the right is bad, because bad groups tend to support the right.

This is a pretty important point that shouldn't be just hand-waved away...

Yeah, if the Nazis cheer at what you're doing, stop and think about that for a minute.

...

Now that is a mostly Gish Gallop. Won't research what it is you're even referring to for most of that. Most of it sounds just like incompetence, which is also a bipartisan project
See, the Problem with Democracy is that to get to a high power elected position, you need the right policies, sell them well (rhetoric), maneuver your party power structure, and have charisma. To actually govern well, you need knowledge and competence in Law, Economics, Sociology, and whatever other specialties your office requires. Much of that has nothing to do with what gets you elected. That is why a functioning state has a competent Administration, with people with long term jobs, sworn to serve the Office, not the person in the chair, to help out the elected officials. (That is what they deride as the "Deep State", what Project 2025 aims to replace with people whose main qualification is loyalty to Trump, I'm sure that will go fine) That teamwork does not always work, then you get kerfuffles.
Yeah, I forgot where I was going with this.

... but you know what they did not have a month for, white men history,

You had that class. It's just called "History". Without cheating on yourself, which persons did you learn most about in History? For me, it's
Hitler
Napoleon
Julius Cesar
Charlemagne
Barbarossa
Bismarck
Louis XIV
George Washington
Martin Luther (not King, the older one)
Hammurabi
Cato the Elder and Hannibal
Mahatma Gandi and Martin Luther King were lumped together, for you, King was higher on the list, I hope.
We did not learn about Reagan, Gorbachev, Thatcher and Helmut Kohl, we lived through that
The only woman we may have learned about would be Cleopatra, and quick, what did she do? From what I remember, seduce Roman Emperors, bathe in donkey's milk and die by voluntary snake bite. There is, of course, so much more.
So that's one Black guy in there, one from India. Hammurabi, Hannibal and Cleopatra would not be accepted as White by White Supremacists, I guess. Note how far down the list they all come?
There are more white dudes I could think of that we learned something about, Stalin, Churchill, Lincoln, Robespierre, Columbus, Henry IIX, Alexander the Great (well, he is portrayed as white), Nero, Caligula, Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle, but definitely not a single other Black person. We may have learned about Queens Elisabeth and Victoria, not sure. Jeanne d’Arc may have been a footnote.
Of course: The concept of Race was invented much later than most of these people lived.

Getting rich on stocks: That's nice, but by definition, not everybody can do that. The system does not magically produce more wealth than the economy can provide, and that still comes from the workers (or robots, maybe). The best you can hope for, if everyone invests big into stocks, is that everyone reclaims a part of what capitalism is sucking out of them. But if you buy overvalued stocks, hoping for a rising price, know where that money goes on average? To those who are already rich. They got in before you.
But of course, if you see a way to make a profit and it works for you, go for it!

I thought this video about "cyber-libertarianism" might be interesting to you guys:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nST5BggdfUs

That video makes a point I wanted to make, only far better. Musk does not really care about Free Speech, at least X is not the haven for Free Speech he claimed he would turn it into. It's severely rigged, demonstrably so, exactly as they previously claimed Twitter was, only Right leaning now to the point where it is in danger of toppling over. Has anyone here, not following Kamala Harris, seen a Tweet from her in the "For You" feed? I haven't, and my bubble was all "Bike Lanes, more Bike Lanes", but several from Musk and Trump, and even though I clicked the "Thanks, but no more of that please" button, they kept coming up... not just new ones, the same ones again sometimes. After three or four tries of that, I had enough and blocked them, at least that worked.
(When I was referring to one of my news sources as Communists earlier, that was half joking, they just detest Capitalism. That video producer, now he is a proper Communist. That does not make him wrong here, though!)

[sinewav]

...maybe people remain poor because they are too afraid to do that or simply don't know how to
...
Again, capability over skin color is most important...

Hey, you keep not understanding something fundamental about how the world works and I think it's because you've fully bought into the myth of meritocracy. In meritocracy, successful people have children that go to better schools and those children become more meritorious than children from less successful parents. This is why we have diversity admissions in education. Financial success is almost entirely due to where you were born, not what you know or how good you are at something. Also, "hacking" the money system really means "exploiting", usually people. If you're really good at exploiting people you can make enough money to change laws so people continue to be exploited. You seem to be aware of this corruption but somehow keep blaming the poor and minorities?

Sadly I think you're a lost cause so I don't have anything more to add, I just hope one day you're realize there is something more important than being a solider in a culture war that ultimately does not benefit you in the slightest because the people who started it don't care about you at all.

[Z-Man]

Another thing about what the AfD actually did that might be of interest:
https://www.dw.com/en/german-afd-scheme ... a-45819198
This is a report from the beginning of the development. In several states, they installed web portals where pupils could report on teachers who criticized the AfD. These portals are gone by now, or I'd link to them, but an email to send reports to still exists.
The legal background is that Teachers are supposed to be politically neutral. Which is true, that is the law, but the common interpretation is that they just are not allowed to give voting advice or call for participation in political demonstrations. They absolutely are allowed to state their opinion, even say who they're voting for, and are encouraged to promote democratic values.

The obvious intent there is to stifle free speech.

*sigh* I did get curious and not fond of death threats, so wanted to find out more about that blackface cheerleader story, but couldn't find anything on that specific thing. Lots of blackface cheerleaders, though. Pointers? Edit: klye answered that privately as it would be just a distraction here.

[Word]

One other thing, why reduce yourself to the label "white guy who is being discriminated against" when there are lots of positive things you can say about your abilities and experiences that make you special compared to most other white people, or just people in general, or, say, show you belong to a special sub-group of IT experts, or a great community of open source gamers, for example. A racist worldview can also include being racist towards oneself, falling short of becoming a blonde blue-eyed ubermensch or whatever the current ideal self looks like from your perspective, which begets self-hate as well as hate of others/the other.

[Lucifer]

A racist worldview can also include being racist towards oneself,

There are black people who are white supremacists. I've known at least one.

[kyle]

I've decided to refrain from engaging in any form of racism discussion here, I don't believe that any of us are racist, doing so just moves the conversation in the wrong direction. We just simply doing have the same believes in how to deal with racism, which is a separation of left and right at the moment. I feel the left has went too far, on that and several other things, and you likely are not going to change my view of this, at this time, and it really does not matter that much, until in 2 years when we re-elect the house. Again I'm not supper far right leaning, so maybe I switch more left next election cycle, we shall see, I typically vote a fairly split ticket anyway.

So lets get back to the discussion of the German election and the AfD, and other parties, I really would like to know how I would vote, given more options to vote for.

Here is wrote up a few days ago, I still have not had time to finish looking into an writing questions in regards to more recent things. I know that Z-Man has posted some things that one of the videos I link to talks about.

Their read of the Constitution and lesser documents (the Geschäftsordnung, Order of Operations of the Parliament) was that it is the sole right of the largest fraction to suggest candidates for the President, the strongest fraction this time being the AfD. It has to be said that the written rules there are EXTREMELY vague, which is a flaw they need to fix (and the left wing parties tried to fix beforehand, but were rejected by the conservatives...), but later, the local Supreme Court ruled that they were wrong, so they were wrong.

So it still basically a conflict of how the rules were interpreted, I would not argue the court ruled correctly either, I'm guessing they ruled in their way to also block AfD, because potentially both interpretation may have been correct. You really need some law reform like we do in the US. i'm also not sure if you have the same issues as the US where bills to fix things are not clean and have other things in them too. This is how they make claims that some parties voted against something, where there are a lot of hidden things in the bill that they did not want.

(My stance in a nutshell: It's good that we ended nuclear, but we should have ended coal first.)
She did not promote wind and solar power, at least not significantly. Sure, they talked a lot about it, but actions did not follow. Under her rule, there were a lot of roadblocks to building renewable energy power plants.
....
Power plant shutdown: Yes, unfortunate timing, but that decision was made long ago and was not reversible at that point. They had no fuel left, replacement would have taken a while, and in anticipation of the planned shutdown, had not received safety inspections for longer operation, and no replacement operators for retiring staff had been hired, let alone trained. Stretching the operation for a couple of months was really all that could be done, and we made it through fine without ANY power outages.

Your stance is right, I did not realize it was facing closure, but who put it on that trajectory years ago?

Taxes:
https://youtu.be/cpjKbWKZn00?si=-HEiK1BM7vBEoIxU&t=920
Lies. Our average income TAX rate is actually quite low in comparison:
https://www.worlddata.info/income-taxes.php
The average worker spends barely over one month working for "The State".
Now, it's true that there are other deductions from salaries, like mandatory health and unemployment insurance, which add up. They are not for the state, however, but for the workers and their families.

I think this is her point, yes you get health care and unemployment benefits(which she does not mention the healthcare part), but her issue is that those funds are not just supporting you, but are also supporting refugees. Mainly saying this because after I posted yesterday I watched https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEqDks-h-qM

Crime rates are also not "skyrocketing".

After that, they go on about the California theft thing. And I have to ask: Do you have a Bullshit Detector? A bit in your brain that goes "Hang on, that sounds ridiculous, it would be horrible and/or really stupid if that were true, let me check?", and then you go and check whether it is true? A good Bullshit Detector does still produce false positives and false negatives, mind. The false positive rate, when you go check on something, and it turns out to be true, because sometimes things are horrible and/or stupid, should be between 25% and 75% ballpark. Yeah, that's a case where it should have raised an alarm.
All theft is still a crime in California. Misdemeanor is still a crime, you can still go to jail for it.

This goes back to the other topic were I said crime is rising, her "skyrocketing" is overstating it. I put these two together, because somewhat related, It's good that violent crime is down, but it's this theft topic, that is under-reported, Yes it is true "All theft is still a crime in California. Misdemeanor is still a crime, you can still go to jail for it." but if the police don't enforce it, which they are not in California, you effectively can steal things and get face no charges. I get why the BS detectors go off, but when stores literally start locking down all shelves in the stores, It makes me wonder why? I actually "stole" from a store a month or so ago, was under $10 and I literally walked right back in an paid for it, I just missed scanning it.
So back to this point if the data is not being reported because law enforcement is not doing their jobs, then crime looks lower than it actually is.

Weidel claims three times that Gender Studies is all they teach in school these days. I checked with Z-Girl, her sum of knowledge in Gender Studies is that there are men and women and (probably because I said it) diverse people and... foxes. I'm glad she is open-minded. So if they are teaching Gender Studies at all, they're doing a terrible job.

My guess is this is probably location specific, at least that's how it is in the US, My state actually has laws against it up until some age/grade.