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Author Topic: President Trump has Covid19  (Read 11013 times)

Ghostmaker

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Re: President Trump has Covid19
« Reply #120 on: October 09, 2020, 08:06:19 AM »
I'd say a bigger problem is the zeitgeist. When there's a problem, whether a novel disease, an economic downturn, or any of the social justice issues, how many people think it's the government's job to fix it? Almost all of them. And while it's stronger on the left, no politicians on the right have seriously tried to shrink the federal octopus. We're more than a century into the growth of central government power, so it's the default mode of thinking.

It's also the source of many of our problems. The solution to an increasingly polarized society isn't to increase the power and control of the majority over everyone else. It's to decentralize, to stop trying to solve every problem at the federal level, and to let states and local municipalities decide what's best for them.
Credit where it's due, this is a pretty good hit on the problems of today.

Back in the dark ages -- the 80's -- Tip O'Neill once famously remarked that all politics are local. The problem is that here we are, forty years later, and somehow a goodly chunk of us think all power should flow from Washington.

To which my response is 'holy shit, those guys can't even agree to disagree at this point! Let's settle this at a local or state level'.

And the federal system WILL resist this, because it constitutes a reduction in their power.

Steven Mitchell

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Re: President Trump has Covid19
« Reply #121 on: October 09, 2020, 08:31:10 AM »
What I said was that the *good* and *intended* property of the Electoral College is that it guards against factionalism. It forces presidential candidates to have widespread geographic support, rather than concentrated support in just one region. I consider that to be a positive for the long-term stability of the country. By contrast, the Maine/Nebraska approach of split electors takes away this feature - if it were to be implemented by all the states - which it is unlikely to. So, I consider the Maine/Nebraska approach to make the system worse by removing it's most positive feature.

From my view, I don't think there is a simple or easy solution from our current status as a union. I think an improvement might be to expand the Senate, so the largest states have three Senate seats instead of two. For consistency, I might say if a state is more than 50% over the average state population, it should get a third seat.

I'm sure you do think that is a better solution.  It doesn't solve the issue you addressed in the first paragraph as well as the Maine/Nebraska approach does.  What it does do is conveniently lock in the rule of Democrats forever.  Not to mention create a nightmare for the census--as if there aren't already enough politics around that.

Look, I'm fine with leaving things the way they are.  There should be a counter force to the concentrated interests, and every state by being a state having essentially +2 electoral votes past their rough population is as good a solution as any.  It worked for the founders when New York and Virginia dominating was the worry.  With a few blips over adding free/slave states in pairs to kick the can down the road, it's worked most of the time since. 

Again, the original stated worry by the proponents of removing the electoral college is that people in states dominated by one party have no effective say in the presidential election.  If you want to change that, leave the +2 state votes alone and go to a more proportional allocation for the electoral votes based on population.  This leaves Wyoming along, who isn't having this problem.  It breaks California into 50 odd chunks all with one electoral vote each.  To a lesser extent, the same thing happens in Texas, Florida, New York, etc.  Austin doesn't get to dominate the state of Texas.  They do get a vote.  LA and San Fran get a few (not sure exactly how their districts lay out, but has to be more than one).  But they don't get to say what the rest of California does, except guaranteeing those +2 votes for the state.  Congressional districts aren't the only way to do the proportional break of course.  What they are is a system that works and doesn't take a lot more wrangling than normal.  (Gerrymandering is already crazy.  There's not much room for it to get worse.)

Your idea does the direct opposite of what you say.  It gives +25 electoral votes to the most dominant regions of the country without giving a voice to anyone.

Brad

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Re: President Trump has Covid19
« Reply #122 on: October 09, 2020, 11:08:04 AM »
With all due respect, and being aware I'm not from the US... most of you people enjoy your current standards of life in no small part due to the fact that the US is the biggest superpower in the world and the US dollar is essentially the world's default currency.

Pretending the US is not a monolithic country is a bit ridiculous at this point in history. You would be in a totally different (and much worse) position in your everyday life if the US was not a single country with a single army (which also happens to be by far the biggest army on the planet). Just think at the sustainability of your current national debt without the "backing" of the dollar.

Also, in practical terms, should worse come to worse, whoever gets the backing of the army wins by default and gets to control the country. At that point, the constitution, the laws, the accords between states etc. would just be pieces of paper.

That is exactly what someone who doesn't live here would say, and you'd be 100% wrong.

Also your comment about the army indicates you literally have no concept of how our military is structured. This ain't North Korea.
It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

Luca

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Re: President Trump has Covid19
« Reply #123 on: October 09, 2020, 11:26:45 AM »
Also your comment about the army indicates you literally have no concept of how our military is structured. This ain't North Korea.

Enlighten me then. Are you saying, in case of an internal power struggle, the US army would divide itself based on state origins (assuming that was the cause i.e. one or more states trying to secede)?
Because if the army does not somehow split, the result is pretty much guaranteed to be "whoever has the army backing wins".

Brad

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Re: President Trump has Covid19
« Reply #124 on: October 09, 2020, 11:34:25 AM »
Enlighten me then. Are you saying, in case of an internal power struggle, the US army would divide itself based on state origins (assuming that was the cause i.e. one or more states trying to secede)?
Because if the army does not somehow split, the result is pretty much guaranteed to be "whoever has the army backing wins".

Yeah, it probably would. Most of the actual deployed army is made up by people in the reserves and National Guard who have strong ties to their own states/communities. If (when) the US balkanizes, the "army" will cease to exist in its current form. Hell, there's an armory a couple blocks from my neighborhood, and I doubt any of those dudes would willingly start rolling tanks down the street. Most likely they'd tell the government to fuck off and essentially desert to form their own entity.
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Steven Mitchell

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Re: President Trump has Covid19
« Reply #125 on: October 09, 2020, 01:46:01 PM »


Yeah, it probably would. Most of the actual deployed army is made up by people in the reserves and National Guard who have strong ties to their own states/communities. If (when) the US balkanizes, the "army" will cease to exist in its current form. Hell, there's an armory a couple blocks from my neighborhood, and I doubt any of those dudes would willingly start rolling tanks down the street. Most likely they'd tell the government to fuck off and essentially desert to form their own entity.

More specifically, the upper ranks in the officers would probably mostly go one way or the other.  It's the Captains down to enlisted where you'd see what Brad just described.  Even in hard-line tyrannies, local troops are often reluctant to fire on their neighbors.  Now magnify that tendency.  Not saying it wouldn't happen at all, but it would fracture a lot faster than some places.

There's also the point that enlisted ranks are disproportionately filled (compared to state populations) with Southerners and Midwesterners.   Not to mention that even outside those areas, you'll often see an uneven scatter--such as rural California compared to urban California.  There's still a lot of LA troops, but you can't just look at the Californina numbers and assume that all of those folks are going to side with LA-oriented leaders.

HappyDaze

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Re: President Trump has Covid19
« Reply #126 on: October 09, 2020, 09:09:50 PM »


Yeah, it probably would. Most of the actual deployed army is made up by people in the reserves and National Guard who have strong ties to their own states/communities. If (when) the US balkanizes, the "army" will cease to exist in its current form. Hell, there's an armory a couple blocks from my neighborhood, and I doubt any of those dudes would willingly start rolling tanks down the street. Most likely they'd tell the government to fuck off and essentially desert to form their own entity.

More specifically, the upper ranks in the officers would probably mostly go one way or the other.  It's the Captains down to enlisted where you'd see what Brad just described.  Even in hard-line tyrannies, local troops are often reluctant to fire on their neighbors.  Now magnify that tendency.  Not saying it wouldn't happen at all, but it would fracture a lot faster than some places.

There's also the point that enlisted ranks are disproportionately filled (compared to state populations) with Southerners and Midwesterners.   Not to mention that even outside those areas, you'll often see an uneven scatter--such as rural California compared to urban California.  There's still a lot of LA troops, but you can't just look at the Californina numbers and assume that all of those folks are going to side with LA-oriented leaders.
Back when I was assigned to an Army Medical Center (in Washington), I felt like half the soldiers were from Texas or New York (rarely from NYC though).

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Re: President Trump has Covid19
« Reply #127 on: October 09, 2020, 09:46:14 PM »
Some interesting data on that. (EDIT: The data is a little old, but it takes a while to collect all that data; it does show that it's not your imagination about New York though.) But doesn't come straight from the people who'd actually have the real ground-truth data on that: the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC).

I thought for certain DMDC would have a report on that already, but turns out they don't. A lot of other interesting data, but not that particular question.

EOTB

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Re: President Trump has Covid19
« Reply #128 on: October 12, 2020, 04:52:04 AM »
The RPGsite has more reach than we thought: the Lincoln Project sent someone right before the election to ensure conservatives remain focused on holding their own side accountable at this critical time.   Rock always sends scissors when paper isn’t holding itself properly accountable

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Spinachcat

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Re: President Trump has Covid19
« Reply #129 on: October 13, 2020, 11:27:04 PM »
It's so sad.

The doctors tried their best, but they were unable to save Covid from Trump.


Spinachcat

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Re: President Trump has Covid19
« Reply #130 on: October 13, 2020, 11:58:58 PM »
With all due respect, and being aware I'm not from the US... most of you people enjoy your current standards of life in no small part due to the fact that the US is the biggest superpower in the world and the US dollar is essentially the world's default currency.

America's real "superpower" is our economy, not our military. And our economy only exists because of the freedom enjoyed by business and inventors. If that freedom is strangled, the economy collapses into (at best) a cyberpunk dystopia.

Pretending the US is not a monolithic country is a bit ridiculous at this point in history.

The USA has only held together due to prosperity and shared culture, but now that both are threatened, the regional differences and urban vs. rural culture issues are becoming more prominent.

The political polarization will tear us apart, probably sooner than later.

Just think at the sustainability of your current national debt without the "backing" of the dollar.

Trump and Warren Buffet have pretty much negated concerns about the laughable national debt. We're never paying it back and since the Treasury can print money, we could literally print a pile of $1 Billion dollar bills and throw them around like funny money. Or the USA goes bankrupt which certainly would happen if (or when) we balkanize.

Spinachcat

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Re: President Trump has Covid19
« Reply #131 on: October 14, 2020, 12:21:53 AM »
Are you saying, in case of an internal power struggle, the US army would divide itself based on state origins (assuming that was the cause i.e. one or more states trying to secede)?

US secession will be more ideologically drive than regional. AKA, liberal vs. conservative. It would be the culmination of the culture war into a civil war.

As most of the US military are conservatives, I suspect mass defections (possibly with their gear en masse) would be a realistic event, and if that happens, the first priority of those defectors will be their friends and family back home. 


Because if the army does not somehow split, the result is pretty much guaranteed to be "whoever has the army backing wins".

We have LOTS of combat veterans in the populace. If the US Army attacked the US populace, I suspect we'd see the Vietnam War with hamburgers instead of spring rolls.

I don't think the Harris/Biden crew can even imagine what a 1000 ex-special forces guys and USMC leathernecks could achieve if motivated, let alone if that number grew to 100,000 or more veterans and rednecks. 

Here's one of those combat vets putting our politicians on notice.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/2CoekuIoFEoN/

SHARK

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Re: President Trump has Covid19
« Reply #132 on: October 14, 2020, 01:17:00 AM »
Are you saying, in case of an internal power struggle, the US army would divide itself based on state origins (assuming that was the cause i.e. one or more states trying to secede)?

US secession will be more ideologically drive than regional. AKA, liberal vs. conservative. It would be the culmination of the culture war into a civil war.

As most of the US military are conservatives, I suspect mass defections (possibly with their gear en masse) would be a realistic event, and if that happens, the first priority of those defectors will be their friends and family back home. 


Because if the army does not somehow split, the result is pretty much guaranteed to be "whoever has the army backing wins".

We have LOTS of combat veterans in the populace. If the US Army attacked the US populace, I suspect we'd see the Vietnam War with hamburgers instead of spring rolls.

I don't think the Harris/Biden crew can even imagine what a 1000 ex-special forces guys and USMC leathernecks could achieve if motivated, let alone if that number grew to 100,000 or more veterans and rednecks. 

Here's one of those combat vets putting our politicians on notice.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/2CoekuIoFEoN/

Greetings!

Totally true, my friend! There are *millions* of veterans throughout America, between the ages of say, 28 to 60. Many of these veterans if not most of them have the same kind of training as anyone currently in active service--and in definitely a large percentage, have superior discipline, maturity, and in some cases, superior training when compared to the recent trends in feminizing and coddling of our current military in a "kinder, gentler" ethos. And when you add in the additional factors of many of these veterans resisting and fighting against fucking Communists--and the added motivation of protecting, directly, their friends, family members, and community--yeah, and armed to the teeth!--that isn't a scenario I would enjoy jumping into if I was on the other side. Any such scenario like that would make Vietnam and Iraq look like a kindergarden playground. Furthermore, in many aspects, in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the opposing guerilla forces possessed *far less* professional military training, and often were far less equipped. Any real civil war breaking out in America in today's era would be far more savage and bloody than anything this country has experienced since the first Civil War of the 1860's. The element of surprise, the diffusion of forces, spread out leadership, inability to distinguish between "combatants" and "innocent civilians" would make any government campaign of a sustained nature an absolute nightmare. Then there's the fact that in the three wars mentioned--as well as other conflicts throughout the modern era--those forces had their own women participating in every manner as well. As in many aspects, it was still limited--but in a real civil war here, in America, who wouldn't think that *millions* of American women would not also be supporting their men serving in the resistance forces? Sabotage, espionage, ambushes, torture and atrocities of every kind would be a constant and routine reality.

I'm reminded of reading and learning about a Russian woman, serving in the Donbas Republic forces just in recent years in the civil war there between Donbas, Lugansk, fighting against Ukraine. This woman is about 30ish, with two kids of her own. She volunteered to be a fucking sniper, and has gone on to serve with considerable distinction, discipline, and ruthless courage. She gained the nickname of "Snow White". Comrades of hers that were interviewed related how she has become an excellent sniper, with numerous kills to her credit. She went on to say, "Everyday that I fight and kill the enemy, is another day for my children to live". How's that for some motivation?

The interview I saw of her showed her dressed in an ad-hoc kind of uniform, with a Ghillie suit, all camo'd the fuck up. Her appearance was rough and harsh, though her weapon and gear was otherwise fucking sharp. Sweet scope, 7.62mm, she knew what the fuck she was doing. She was cold, matter-of-fact, and serious as fuck. I could tell by the look in her eyes she was a real killer, and committed.

Any civil war in America will be savage and extremely bloody.

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Re: President Trump has Covid19
« Reply #133 on: October 14, 2020, 01:51:02 PM »
Trump and Warren Buffet have pretty much negated concerns about the laughable national debt. We're never paying it back and since the Treasury can print money, we could literally print a pile of $1 Billion dollar bills and throw them around like funny money. Or the USA goes bankrupt which certainly would happen if (or when) we balkanize.
If we start printing $1 trillion dollar coins (the actual proposal), then the dollar is going to quickly lose its reserve status. And the debt is going to become a problem if interest rates ever rise. The US is in a trap.

EOTB

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Re: President Trump has Covid19
« Reply #134 on: October 14, 2020, 05:09:20 PM »
The entire world is in a debt trap.  The US has a better debt-to-GDP than a lot of other G20 economies.  None of this debt, world-wide, is ever going to be repaid. 
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