American Politics

[Shuckle]

http://i.imgur.com/CGhFu0j.mp4

I wish I could hotlink but it's not working.

[JustAnotherUser]

Trump's rise to power is actively giving confidence to neo-nazi groups. CNN literally ran the line "Alt-Right Founder Questions if Jews are People" after a speech made by Richard Spencer - like that's not some utterly despicable thing. The media is cowering away from terms like "racist" because of some overblown fear of kicking a hornet's nest.

I think most of my ire is not with Trump himself, looking back on it; I still think the man's a pig-ignorant blowhard, make no mistake, but with everything him becoming president represents. An apathy to - or even an embracement of - racism, homophobia, and other prejudices held by people in positions of power. I'm not interested in getting into an intense debate again if Trump himself is or isn't x type of prejudiced, but you can't tell me I have no reason to be concerned when the man's hiring people like Steve Bannon to advise him. They're pretty devious, too - the whole Hamilton shitstorm nicely deflected away from the $25 million dollar settling of the Trump University case, after months and months of fighting against it - shielding the public eye from his u-turn.

I'm just... scared. Hillary Clinton had her flaws, but this political nightmare alternative just isn't worth it. People wouldn't be scared of losing everything under her, or of the possibility being killed - maybe not because of Trump's government itself, but of the culture of hate it's slowly breeding.

[Connor]

While I agree with a lot of your post there are plenty of people who could have feasibly been scared of a Clinton presidency. She wanted to enact a no-fly zone in Syria and was not quiet about it - this would have absolutely, and I can say this with absolute confidence, have inspired a reaction from Russia. War with Russia would make many, many people fear for their lives.

I'm not defending Trump - I think both candidates were abhorrent and frankly that just highlights that as awful as Trump is, the reason (in my eyes mind, before I'm ripped to shreds for this) things have gone the way they have is because the establishment on both ends of the spectrum were a fucking disgrace. The Republicans couldn't have had less direction if they put a drunk blind man in control of a car, while the Democrats were quite clearly only ever going to accept a Clinton nomination. That allowed an obvious opportunist like Trump to just saunter on in.

[JustAnotherUser]

Fair point, honestly - I keep forgetting to consider the possibility of Clinton pissing off Russia. A war starting up in that situation would be equally terrifying, if only for the possibility of a second coming of Cold War-level tension over nukes - or, god forbid, the actual use of them.

[Doppleganger]

Trump has also vowed to make killing the Trans-Pacific Partnership his first act in office.

I was overjoyed at the news, but like SOPA before it, a new TPP-like plan will come. We need a permanent solution to settling the matter of copyright or else it's just new legislation after new legislation of the same thing.

[Talon87]

I did not think about this, but one of my Republican friends brought to my attention yesterday that House and Senate Republicans seem determined to defang the FCC -- I would bet that it's because they're in the pockets of Comcast -- and now that they have the White House, Senate, House, and (soon) Supreme Court, there is nothing to stop them --

-- which means good-bye, open Internet. Say good-bye to your Netflix and your BitTorrent. What does TPP matter to a man like you, Doppel, if the Internet is no longer worth using?

[Doppleganger]

I don't think it's the FCC in particular, nor do I think it's because they're on Comcast's payroll. Heck, everywhere I've lived, Comcast has had barely a footprint when it comes to internet service.

Trump is anti-government. He wants to strip away most of the benefits for government employees and initiate the longest hiring freeze in history. He wants to close down and blow up a multitude of agencies, the FCC is not particularly special in that regard.

Rather, I would consider the IRS the agency at greatest risk. A switch to a flat tasx makes most of it superfluous.

[Talon87]

The motives are irrelevant. The point is, we're at risk of losing the Open Internet here in America and all you're focused on is TPP. The TPP is bad and would, in one very specific view, bring an end to the livelihoods of most American otaku culture fans. But a closed Internet would be several orders of magnitudes worse and would affect all Americans.

If tomorrow you told me, "Clinton is pro-TPP and pro-Open Internet, Trump is anti-TPP but also anti-Open Internet," I'd hand it to Clinton in a heartbeat. The TPP sucks, and negatively impacts me personally, but losing the Open Internet would just ... I feel like it would roll us back to how we used to use the Internet in the 1990s, visiting crappy official websites like pokemon.com or nbc.com and still not really finding anything there of merit to warrant spending much time online. No more Netflix, no more YouTube, no more Twitch ... anything that is bandwidth intensive, whether by virtue of popularity (e.g. YouTube) or by data sizes (e.g. Netflix), you could kiss good-bye.



This video is 2½ years old, but if you haven't seen it before or could use the refresher, give it a look. It's a very sleek package combining E/I with opinion piece in just five minutes.

[deoxys]

Trump is super anti-Net Neutrality. All signs point to him using his power to bring an end to Net Neutrality.

I'm pretty fucking tired of Net Neutrality being under constant attack and trying to argue for an open internet. I wish these assholes would fuck off and stop trying to shed the internet of all progress it's made in the last 15 years. Funniest thing is, this is the only thing I could see getting Trump's supporters on /pol/ and The_Donald to turn on him, as far as I can tell, and once that happens it will be too late. I've warned about this numerous times, but I'm either told it's all talk, or I'm overthinking it, or I'm an idiot. I don't understand how people can possibly be so blind, no, willingly ignorant to something, like an internal defense mechanism of some kind.

[Shuckle]

Originally Posted by deoxys

Trump is super anti-Net Neutrality. All signs point to him using his power to bring an end to Net Neutrality.

I'm pretty fucking tired of Net Neutrality being under constant attack and trying to argue for an open internet. I wish these assholes would fuck off and stop trying to shed the internet of all progress it's made in the last 15 years. Funniest thing is, this is the only thing I could see getting Trump's supporters on /pol/ and The_Donald to turn on him, as far as I can tell, and once that happens it will be too late. I've warned about this numerous times, but I'm either told it's all talk, or I'm overthinking it, or I'm an idiot. I don't understand how people can possibly be so blind, no, willingly ignorant to something, like an internal defense mechanism of some kind.

Hillary Clinton knowingly held a private server containing classified emails (and even hired someone on government money to manage it), rigged the DNC to ensure her nomination, and runs an incredibly suspect "charity" that receives fat donations from governments around the world, including Norway and Saudi Arabia.

Bill Clinton's "tough on crime" policies contributed heavily to the disenfranchisement of 13% of the black male population, and he got away with perjury.

I understand just fine actually.

Trump and Pence keep assuring us that they stand for "all Americans" and that they want to "#draintheswamp." I think if he was planning not to do that, he wouldn't be quite so obvious about not actually doing that.

[deoxys]

I'm pretty tired of the Hillary debacle man. It's been done over and over and over, we all know what she did. She was a terrible candidate. I'm not going to defend it. I never even wanted her as the nominee. I even said back when she was winning primaries, in this very thread, that her getting the nomination could absolutely mean a Trump win, and nobody wanted to believe it.

In the end, to me, the things Trump wants to do are far more offensive than what Hillary did do. I don't like either of them, but that's just how I see it. We shouldn't even be having this discussion, but here we are.


>Trump and Pence keep assuring us that they stand for "all Americans" and that they want to "#draintheswamp." I think if he was planning not to do that, he wouldn't be quite so obvious about not actually doing that.

He's filling the swamp with more swamp creatures just of a totally different variety. Jeff Sessions as the Attorney General? Of all people? Do we even need to touch the other nominations? The only thing that will make my head explode is if Tulsi Gabbard gets the SoS pick. To me, it looks like they're afraid of her as a threat in 2020 and want to keep their "enemies closer", as they say - pure politics. But if it does happen, I won't deny it being a good pick, I'll merely question the motives.

[Stealthy]

Tulsi Gabbard isn't a great 2020 pick, she's mostly just loved by burned Bernie supporters because she was one of his few notable endorsements, and she resigned from her position at the DNC to do so. Compare to Xavier Baccera, who's popular in places like Reddit because he's a somewhat prominent Hispanic politician who is neither a Republican nor Julian Castro.

Also, she's Hindi. And the country just elected Donald Trump. In 4 years we may be begging for something else... But yeah. Could be a liability as much as an asset.

[Doppleganger]

So apparently "Calexit" is being floated around by butthurt liberals. I'm surprised conservative media hasn't dropped a load of outrage at this. It's one thing to protest the president. It's another to, you know, urge succession from the union.

Originally Posted by deoxys

I'm pretty tired of the Hillary debacle man. It's been done over and over and over, we all know what she did. She was a terrible candidate. I'm not going to defend it. I never even wanted her as the nominee. I even said back when she was winning primaries, in this very thread, that her getting the nomination could absolutely mean a Trump win, and nobody wanted to believe it.

Nobody wanted is not the same as nobody did. Mozz and I were dead certain Hillary was going to crush Trump.

[Talon87]

I would think being governor of South Carolina would be a bigger deal than being ambassador to the United Nations, especially when you have little to no foreign policy experience and when Americans take an increasingly dismissive view of the UN's power. Thoughts, then, on why Haley would accept the nomination? On why Trump would make it?

I feel like for Trump, it's to simultaneously do two things. One, to pour water on the fire that says Trump's the KKK's man. What better way to silence critics than to appoint an ethnic minority and outspoken opponent of Neo-Confederates? Two, to create a vacancy in the post (of SC governor) and to allow a white man more sympathetic to KKK desires to assume office. Haley could do more to quell the KKK in South Carolina as governor than she could as a UN ambassador. With her out of the picture ...

The problem is, this assumes what I consider to be the ultra-leftist conspiracy theory that Trump is more than racist -- he's in bed with the KKK. And I honestly don't think that's true. But if it's not true, then I feel like this move is very, very strange and difficult to explain. Was it really worth it to tap Haley when she can do more good as South Carolina governor than she can as an inexperienced diplomat?

And as for Haley, why would *she* accept? Surely she doesn't fear failure to be re-elected governor, as surely she would be re-elected, no? Is she doing this to try and gain the skills necessary to become President? Maybe. Maybe she realizes her foreign policy depth is shallow and she's diving head first into it in order to become more presidential come 2024 or some such.

[Doppleganger]

KKK Trump, like Neo Nazi Trump, are being treated as seriously by the media as birtherism was. Which is to say, very seriously, to a comedic extreme.

Trump, as a former birther himself, likely realized this. Even if that conspiracy theory is 100% wrong, Trump still feels motivated to confront it, because otherwise, people will roll with it like it is true.

Originally Posted by Talon87

If tomorrow you told me, "Clinton is pro-TPP and pro-Open Internet, Trump is anti-TPP but also anti-Open Internet," I'd hand it to Clinton in a heartbeat. The TPP sucks, and negatively impacts me personally, but losing the Open Internet would just ... I feel like it would roll us back to how we used to use the Internet in the 1990s, visiting crappy official websites like pokemon.com or nbc.com and still not really finding anything there of merit to warrant spending much time online. No more Netflix, no more YouTube, no more Twitch ... anything that is bandwidth intensive, whether by virtue of popularity (e.g. YouTube) or by data sizes (e.g. Netflix), you could kiss good-bye.

I'll have to disagree with you on this.

I hate how the internet has opened up to "normies" and "casuals" and whatnot. I hate how it's been monetized and commoditized. I liked it a lot more when it was exclusive and less interpersonal. The internet was never a secret club, but in its infancy it was also a lot less punishing for what you say.

If I could have my way, I'd prefer the web of 2004-2007 to what we have today. But I'd also prefer the internet of 1999-2003 to what we have today.

Before YouTube, there was Newgrounds, AtomsFilms and eBaums. Before Netflix, there was Supernova, Demonoid, and The Pirate Bay. The internet was once the place where the smart and savvy ruled, and I'd much prefer a return to that oligarchy than where the plebeian is paramount.

Losing Japan and access to its culture pretty much kills any interest I have in the internet, except for my banking business. That is definitely a worst-case scenario for me.

I'm confident that even if Trump screws things up, there are hard counters around his policies. But the TPP could - and likely still will - destroy Japan's media culture, open internet is like being the king of a dead kingdom.

[Talon87]

I'm surprised you can even say this. With TPP, there would at least be legal venues like CrunchyRoll for anime or (lol) Fakku for hentai. But with closed Internet, even CrunchyRoll would crumble. You'd literally be without way to watch anime. Streaming is prohibitively bandwidth-expensive, and in a world where bandwidth determines whether your content is allowed in or not by the ISP, we're going to see a return to JPGs, GIFs, and Flash animations, a departure from MP4s and streaming media.

Don't get me wrong. I agree with you that the TPP is really bad and would grossly affect us. I just don't think it's even in the same ballpark as closed Internet is, even for Western fans of otaku media, let alone your "normies".

[Doppleganger]

Originally Posted by Talon87

I'm surprised you can even say this. With TPP, there would at least be legal venues like CrunchyRoll for anime or (lol) Fakku for hentai. But with closed Internet, even CrunchyRoll would crumble. You'd literally be without way to watch anime. Streaming is prohibitively bandwidth-expensive, and in a world where bandwidth determines whether your content is allowed in or not by the ISP, we're going to see a return to JPGs, GIFs, and Flash animations, a departure from MP4s and streaming media.

You're talking to a guy who would go to extreme lengths to get around having to pay for things. I don't care how cheap iTunes, Crunchy, Fakku, Netflix or whatever: I will steal it, or I will not have it at all.

My idea of a targeted ad is, "how to bankrupt Google and imprison all of its employees in a Russian gulag". This is close to honesty - I absolutely hate Google and AT&T now, as I consider their spying and data mining the gravest of privacy violations. I have to resist the urge to buy AT&T stock, since my instinct hates the company so much it tells me "buy it all up and take control for yourself!" even though that is impossible for a single person.

This is also why I don't have any qualms about using adblock - I'm not interested in anything companies could possibly sell me. I don't have issues pirating Japanese media either because the Japanese don't really have a formed market abroad for things like J-Pop, J-Dramas (or really light novels) and the like. Scattered fans across many countries is not an audience worth investing in.

If I wanted to support creators in Japan, I'd import merchandise, which has higher profit margins than anime/manga/light novels anyway. For ten years I have longed to own a Perfect Fusion GaoFighGar and I'm really close to getting the funds free to pursue one. It's worth like $1200 now. For a toy.

An awesome toy. But a toy nonetheless. That's where the real money is!

[Shuckle]

Originally Posted by Doppleganger

KKK Trump, like Neo Nazi Trump, are being treated as seriously by the media as birtherism was. Which is to say, very seriously, to a comedic extreme.

Trump, as a former birther himself, likely realized this. Even if that conspiracy theory is 100% wrong, Trump still feels motivated to confront it, because otherwise, people will roll with it like it is true.

And yet he has swamp creatures on his cabinet including people who literally call themselves the "Face of the alt-right."

It just doesn't add up to me and I'm really curious what his game plan is here.

I hate how the internet has opened up to "normies" and "casuals" and whatnot. I hate how it's been monetized and commoditized. I liked it a lot more when it was exclusive and less interpersonal. The internet was never a secret club, but in its infancy it was also a lot less punishing for what you say.

If I could have my way, I'd prefer the web of 2004-2007 to what we have today. But I'd also prefer the internet of 1999-2003 to what we have today.

Before YouTube, there was Newgrounds, AtomsFilms and eBaums. Before Netflix, there was Supernova, Demonoid, and The Pirate Bay. The internet was once the place where the smart and savvy ruled, and I'd much prefer a return to that oligarchy than where the plebeian is paramount.

It's called the deep web and it's not actually that exciting. Smart and savvy will ALWAYS rule no matter where you are or what you do; it's just that there are easy routes now for those who want in on some of the easy and immediate benefits of the Internet (communication and information). That's a good thing.

I mean you're preaching to the choir here. I was neither old enough nor given enough freedom to become a tech-savvy early adopter when it comes to the Internet, and I wish that I had been.

I don't have a point I'm just commenting on this.

[Doppleganger]

Originally Posted by Shuckle

It's called the deep web and it's not actually that exciting. Smart and savvy will ALWAYS rule no matter where you are or what you do; it's just that there are easy routes now for those who want in on some of the easy and immediate benefits of the Internet (communication and information). That's a good thing.

If we go by that definition of "deep web" than UPN qualifies, as it is obscure relative to the mainstream. Even Serebii and BMG don't have the traffic that really gives the sense of them being "mainstream" despite Pokemon's recurring appeal to casuals and the like, given what we've seen in Pokemon Go. It's part Pokemon, part forum, all part niche that serves as the barriers to entry into the community. I'm sure a Facebook group dedicated to Pokemon somewhere dwarfs what we see there.

I much rather prefer UPN to a Facebook group. But UPN would be a literal grave without FB/PASBL as the draw to bring in hew members, and that's where the Web 2.0 problem really complicates things.

If you make accessing the "deep web" too difficult, the only people who eventually finish the journey are older, accomplished folks with no inherent compulsion to stay. We've had translators and the like come to UPN when Talon has commented on their blogs and whatnot, but none have actually stayed here because they liked the community.

In 2000, I was an idiot 13 year old. I found BMG without using Yahoo or Google, which were in their infant stages and didn't properly index things. The infrastructure I used - webrings, site rankings, and indexes such as the Anime Web Turnpike - largely don't exist anymore.

So for websites that do not permit the use of crawlers, getting a steady influx of new blood to keep the community young (and interesting) is a tall task. It can't be too hard or too hardware/physically restrictive. Or else you'll just be talking amongst your old friends, or eventually into an echo chamber.

[Stealthy]

Gotta say, I can't think of a damn thing but membaberries right now.

[Rangeet]

It's looking like Jill Stein might just redeem herself by demanding recounts in the key states.

Oh, sure, grasping at straws a bit, but it would be simply glorious if recounts reveal some major shit, Clinton keeps her hands clean, and both Democrats and Republicans have reason to revamp the electoral college.

[Talon87]

... Is this for real!?

[Doppleganger]

It's been widely reported, so yes I'd say it's true.

Trump got his revenge against the media personalities. If they leak what he said off the record, they'll lose their privileges to interview him during his presidency proper. In a way it was getting that off his chest for a fresh start, but it was about as petty and nasty as you could be.

[phoopes]

Originally Posted by Doppleganger

I don't think it's the FCC in particular, nor do I think it's because they're on Comcast's payroll. Heck, everywhere I've lived, Comcast has had barely a footprint when it comes to internet service.

Lucky you.

[Shuckle]

Originally Posted by Rangeet

Oh, sure, grasping at straws a bit, but it would be simply glorious if recounts reveal some major shit, Clinton keeps her hands clean, and both Democrats and Republicans have reason to revamp the electoral college.[/B]

I thought you said you didn't believe in miracles?