/townhall/ - Townhall

>>11083
If you'll pardon the song form, I think this does a good job of exploring that notion;

War is not pleasant, to be sure, but conflict and violence are not inherently wrong.
There's a time and a place for such things. What we must always remember is the cost, that we don't act unduly.

>>11084
Would you consider that a maximally progressed society, or would those people strive for progress themselves? Would you imagine such a civilization would remain indefinitely, unchanged for millions of years, or might they have their own ideas of advancement? I don't mean to suggest these are easy questions, but it bears putting forward the implications of a "perfect" utopia being reached.

>>11085
I like the song.  It's a good point -- if you are building a utopia without war you have to ensure there aren't reasons people would want to go to war.  I suppose at the very least you'd have to say no war, and no oppressive police state.

In the end, I do believe violence is wrong.  Or maybe more generally trying to hurt people is wrong, as your song talks about starving people, which might not be violence exactly, but I think you have to count that as under the umbrella.  Or more generally still, trying to hurt people who are not credibly trying to hurt you is wrong and, even then the hurting should be at a minimum and preventative of harm.

And if my utopia starts at peace, nobody will have a reason to make war.  I have to assert there will be societal organizations and sufficient per capita resources to keep people reasonably content, so although there will be rivalries and conflict, things will be stable enough that groups will not desire the extermination of other groups.  Which I guess is utopian, but that's the tread.  :)

>>10920
In a just world, it would be up to Chris.

>>10920
The wealthy rarely do anyway. In a practical sense, this may well be a stronger punishment.
Assuming he remains banned for the set time, anyway.

>>11060
It's not an irrational fear. It's fact. Conservatives are engaged in bigotry in terms of political actions such as this Flordia measure, and people are dying as a result. It should all stop.

>>11065
I've yet to see evidence that this particular bill is killing anyone.

>>10979
>>11019
>>11013
>>11012
i'm not even gonna bother linking all the violating posts, just yeah, you were asked to tone it down and completely ignored that warning. You have a history of this kind of posting on townhall and honestly i think the place is just bad for you and your mental health, so i'm issuing a permanent ban (townhall only). You are free to appeal if you want.

Also, locking the thread since we already gave it a chance to recover once.

>>11051
>Fascists are antigovernment, though, that's why they organize as militias.
Fascists are authoritarians first and foremost.

>They're also against tyranny and oppressive states.
Definitely not.  No.  What is your definition of fascist, if it's not most simply first and foremost a totalitarian state?

>Hence why if you look up the Oath Keepers specifically you see them justly described as far right and fascists.
By who?
Why?

I can find sources calling Obama an Islamist. Didn't make it true

>>11063
Are you really not able of understanding that Amercisn fascists claim to be patriotic, libertarian, antigovernment, and so on in opposition to the current U.S. government as a part and parcel of their agenda of replacing it with a right-wing state to benefit right-wing people?

>>11067
It just appears downright contradictory and conspiratorial besides.

I've no cause to believe these groups want to replace the US with a fascist totalitarian government.

>>11059
I agree. Shame you take such strong issue with it.
Pointing out the objective fact that the MSM has significant bias in pharmaceutical interests shouldn't be controversial.

>>11061
Pointing out the objective fact that scientific reporting still exists that educates shouldn't be controversial.

Again, I hope to God you wake up at some point and put down the kool-aid.

>>11068
I agree. It's a good thing I never said it didn't exist. You keep trying to make these gotcha's out of stuff I've never said nor ever stood against.

There's no Kool aid beam drunk here, you are jumping at ghosts

This is a great argument, and it's well presented. Thank you.

I like it.

>>10924
It's rather likely that mass use of advanced electronic technology in justice is such a new thing in terms of human nature that it can't be scientifically studied yet, even if we have ideas right now? We need more time? Maybe? I agree with you. I wonder how it all shakes out. All very interesting.

>>10926
I guess I just think it's interesting because I've been trying to think of ways to use smartphones and other small devices to do science.  And you think about all that data that's out there, or could be out there.

The counter-arguments that come to my mind are: encryption and bottle-necks.

If the Nazi's had encrypted everything they recorded, they would have only needed to destroy the crypto keys.

And then, although there are countless cameras to record war-crimes, assuming you plan to take control of the region and take possession of all digital storage what matters is the data getting out before then.  And that data is mostly going to go through cell towers or broadband internet.  If your fist move severs those connections, you may be able to render the region just as information-dark as if you were marauding a village in medieval times.

>>10928
It's certainly possible that all that could happen, agreed. Not sure what future post-2000s/post-2010s military conflicts will look like.

This thread blatantly violates rule #2 (ad hominem and straw man arguments), locking.

>Under what circumstances do you feel that suicide is a moral good and/or ethical?
When the individual who is suiciding so chooses.
If you cannot determine when your life is to end, you've no autonomy.
That is solely the purview of the individual involved.

I feel like both ethically and legally individuals should have the right to end their own lives.

At the same time, though, suicide being one of the leading causes of death for young Americans is a sign right now of a fundamentally diseased culture, and it probably can't be denied if everybody started acting like Mister Rogers from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood that said suicide rate would plummet.

Ultimately, basic human niceness should be more common.

>>10851
Don't you usually seek asylum by going to an embassy? Assuming you 1st cross over to the nearest neighborhood neighboring country as is required by International law as I understand it.

I don't think I quite understand the question.
Shouldn't asylum come before entry?

>>10877
A lot in the U.S. will argue that asylum seekers tend to be inherently flawed people (such as being uneducated, being susceptible to health problems, being impoverished, being unable intellectually to learn sufficient English, and so on) such that shouldn't be able to even start the process in the first place.

I don't agree personally, but I see such a belief as being kind of popular.

>>10877
>>10879
I should be clear that I've seen this only from social media and not from actual elected people, so I genuinely don't know how widespread this anti-refugee viewpoint is.

I would think that given circumstances right now most Republicans and Democrats in actual office are kind of generally alright with refugees? They're (the refugees) getting a lot of positive news coverage now? I guess?

I know a better form of government, but I can assure you many would be inclined to disagree heheh.

"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time..." - Winston S. Churchill, 11 November 1947 ( https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-form-of-government/ )

I can't agree more.

>>10856
No, but it's better than most alternatives.

Either way, a raw democracy, one vote for every issue, would be terrible, which is why we have the system we do.
Especially in regards to the separation of powers. Local matters ought be controlled by the people it affects.

The biggest thing of all, and one I think is mostly overlooked these days; Democracy is not inherently right, nor does something being voted in by the people make it good.
Whether it's a dictator, a king, a president, or just a law passed by the mob, your rights are absolute. A violation of them is a violation of them. It's wrong, regardless of what created that break.

Isn't that more like the government unruling that they had to pay for testing?

i have, a big stack of free tests c: you can get some, in the mail!

https://faq.usps.com/s/article/At-Home-COVID-19-Test-Kits

Coronavirus testing should've been more easily available due to large-scale government action months and months ago, but I still appreciate whatever public actions are still being attempted now.

Are we

discussing the coding language?

>>10814
Most of my projects start in Python.

When I get the data structures and algorithms sorted out, they might migrate to fit in to an existing environment or run faster.  I guess I have mixed feelings about Python as a production language.

>>10802
I suppose what it all boils down to for me is that organizations such as the Koch Industries empire want to be able to takeover state and federal governments in a hostile manner the same way that they take over enemy companies, and this cannot be allowed in terms of basic ethics.

This is beyond mere capitalism, I think, but is about being able to live under the objective rule of law under a responsible government rather than being in an absolute dictatorship with a corporate façade.

>>10793
>May I ask which book?
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/533763/democracy-in-chains-by-nancy-maclean/
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/215462/dark-money-by-jane-mayer/
So far.  I tend to do sets of books to get my head around a concept.  I suppose I should read a modern Koch production, but books I mostly don't agree with are more effortful, and these are things I listen to as I walk about exploring the neighborhood and relaxing (pic: radioantenna array from my last walk).

>>10803
>the Koch Industries empire want to be able to takeover state and federal governments in a hostile manner

Large swaths of the government would become private.  I suppose it's very possible that the Koch brothers would make a bid when those parts went up for sale.

>This is beyond mere capitalism,

I take it you don't trust the Koch people to stick to any objective set of rules, even rules they might write.

>an absolute dictatorship with a corporate façade.
It might not be dictatorship, but the Koch state is not a democracy.  I think it's a republic that is constitutionally restricted from collectivist action, meaning anything that restricts the power of corporations and property owners.

I'm not sure if your mistrust is more for the system or for the people.  Maybe it's all the same, I guess, you need both.

>>10779
An America with no social or political rights seems disturbingly possible to me in the future, especially given how the U.S. federal administration in a lot of fields has grown ever more totalitarian over the past two decades over different Presidents in an unbroken pro-government fashion. Imagine telling somebody in 1999, say, that it would considered truly normal among political circles for 24/7 spying of every single American citizen's e-mails, phone calls, and personal letters. They'd have called you a paranoid loon. And yet, boom, Patriot Act and more.

>>10786

There's plenty of aspects of the US government, like the Patriot Act, that are very pro-government, yes.  That's generally to be expected.  But it is a big leap from what we have now to having no social or political rights.  The OP mentions stuff about free speech and handing out anti-government fliers as things that might hypothetically be outlawed, but as it is almost no one would support that.  Nearly the entire country exercises its right to say the government sucks every single day.  I won't say there aren't any government thugs hospitalizing people, but it hasn't happened to anyone that actually holds any kind of influence, and for them to attempt that would only martyr their target and incite the group further.  It wasn't more than a year or so ago that there was a whole insurrection staged and they can barely even contain those guys, god forbid there was an actual cause for armed conflict.

To go back to the Patriot Act, people were pretty quick to allow it for two reasons.  The first is that the government's been spying on its own citizens since spying was feasible.  The second was sometimes there's legitimate threats within the country that are trying to make it worse, perhaps by turning it into a libertarian dictatorship or something.  The second is mostly trumped up nothingness that spooks people just long enough to pass stupid laws like the Patriot Act.  But the first is something we've gotten very used to for the sole reason that it's largely unnoticeable because the legal right to spy on your citizens doesn't make it easy to do.  I can barely read all of my emails, I can't even imagine the kind of manpower it would take to actually read every single email sent in or out of this country.  What I can imagine is what a colossal waste of time that would be.  God, even 90% of our phone calls these days are automated spam centers, and the other 10% sure isn't terrorist organization.  The only thing the Patriot Act actually did was let the state bring the spying it was already doing into court as evidence, where you're still subject to a jury of peers, at least hypothetically.

We are just so so far away from anything as fantPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>10787
I see what you're saying, but I'm thinking more about directions and patterns longer term than tyranny happening overnight.

What concerns me is that U.S. government power has been on a trajectory of ever greater expansion to the detriment of the real economy: with more debt, more deficits, and more regulations coming about. The U.S. is like an airplane flying in a straight line that will eventually hit a gigantic mountain. Yet seemingly nobody seems to care about these socio-economic trends who's actually in office.

To me, in contrast, personal liberty has been on a trajectory of ever greater decline: with everything from book banning due to the violation of "Christian family values" to campaigns to fire individuals from their jobs both inside of government positions and out due to said "Christian family values" being at risk with certain types of people having too many rights. Every single day brings additional news about the screws being tightened on individuals who happen to be Jewish, gay, disabled, transgender, Muslim, or otherwise "offensive" in some way by their very nature to the hardline Christian principles that the mainstream U.S. populace demands everybody obey. It's suffocating.

The pandemic has been especially scary because wholesale, state-heavy measures such as outright banning large public gatherings happened relatively quickly and without much in the way of factual support. Governments just saw the chance to stamp on freedoms and took it without question. Now, of course, I'm no denialist about the coronavirus. Certain state measures made perfect sense and still do, such as massive public investment in treatments that boost the immune systems of those coming down with the disease. Pro-vaccine efforts can be reasonable; I'm fully vaccinated myself. I'm more just scared about the paradigm shift, you know? A few experts say basically "Let's put social life into the freezer for a while", and without really thinking things through that had to happen? Maybe I'm overly paranoid? Not sure. I wish more evidence could be provided in terms of a lot of the heavy-handed measures, at least.

Hopefully, though, I do see a possible turnaround in the future. Yet I worry about the recent past. And present.