Politics 2015

[Magnetized]

Countless pages of reasonable discussion and you've come away with the impression that backers of the second amendment are scared, paranoid soulless gun worshipers? I think it says a lot more about your beliefs than those who support gun ownership.

 

I totally stand by what I said. Just because discussions are reasonable, polite, and fact-filled, that doesn't keep them from being pointless and a frustrating waste of time. Nobody's changing anybody's mind on this subject--I don't think anyone on here is even slightly moving in one direction or another. So what is the point?

 

Personally, it breaks my heart to even read things like "An AR-15 in .223 is fine for hunting deer; I've done it. My friend killed a large axis (species of deer native to India) buck 2 weeks ago with an AR at a range of 300 yards. But since it's not a very powerful round it's typically used to take close shots -- often to the head. Note that there are AR-15s manufactured in many different calibers, including the much more powerful .308." Yeah, that's a factual, dispassionate statement, not rude at all, and if that's your thing, I can't stop you. But from MY perspective, it's so cold and brutal that it turns my stomach. To me it IS a soulless fetishizing of guns and violence, like keeping track of statistics and details of the caliber and appropriateness of one gun or another for one purpose or another, but caring not one bit about the fact that we are talking about weapons of DEATH and DESTRUCTION!!! Who wants to spend time thinking about this or expending any energy on it? Not me. We're not influencing each other in any way that I can discern.

 

I hope I'll be able to keep to my commitment to stop reading these gun posts. And I will try to stay off my high horse about this in the future. I mean no disrespect. We just don't see the world the same way.  

[Hixter]

Nobody's changing anybody's mind on this subject--I don't think anyone on here is even slightly moving in one direction or another. So what is the point?

I'm certainly not trying to change anybody's mind. My gun posts are typically in response to a stated falsehood; sometimes they're just a reminder that everyone doesn't hold the same opinion and just because someone disagrees doesn't make them wrong/stupid/insane/violent.

 

To me it IS a soulless fetishizing of guns and violence, like keeping track of statistics and details of the caliber and appropriateness of one gun or another for one purpose or another, but caring not one bit about the fact that we are talking about weapons of DEATH and DESTRUCTION!!!

One man's weapon of death and destruction is another man's method of gathering dinner. I never hunted (or owned firearms) until I was almost 50, but I've grown to enjoy it and the time that's spent with friends. I feel less guilty about eating venison sausage than I do factory-raised meat, to be honest.

 

I mean no disrespect. We just don't see the world the same way.  

Likewise.

[tinnitus photography]

http://www.gallup.com/poll/158729/men-women-veterans.aspx

 

Maybe your figure takes into account all males and not 18+? 25% seems to track pretty well with what I've found in my circle of acquaintances.

 

[Bob_Roberts]

That would be nice, especially since their primary victims are fellow Muslims. Blame America for all the world's problems, but it's much more an internal problem for people in in the Middle East region than it is an external one. 

That's such an a-historical view.  The United States and the West have not been passive observers in the disintegration of the Middle East but, rather, very willing and active participants.  As such, the external and internal dichotomy breaks down.

 

It's hard for me to say this, but sometimes I wonder if what we're seeing played out in the Middle East right now is the old British strategy of "divide and conquer."  After all, by pitting Sunni against Shiite and by funding the most retrograde sectors in the Middle East, it allows us to control the resources more easily than if the the Middle East had some form of political unity.  The strategy is cynical.  Then again, maybe our foreign policy gurus are indeed just idiots.

[Hixter]

I just counted up all of my neighbors: 9 out of 16 men are veterans. One out of 16 women is a veteran. I guess we're overachievers.

 

Then again, maybe our foreign policy gurus are indeed just idiots.

I think that's a much more likely scenario than some secret plot to pit Muslims against one another. They're going after each other across wide swaths of the world and they have been for centuries.

 

Although this article claims that Assad is guilty of funding and growing ISIS:

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/12038032/As-long-as-there-is-an-Assad-there-will-be-an-Isil-hell-make-sure-of-it.html

[The Inside of Outside]

I just counted up all of my neighbors: 9 out of 16 men are veterans. One out of 16 women is a veteran. I guess we're overachievers.

 

1 out of 13 men, and 0 out of 11 women in my neck of the woods. A neighborhood of underachievers.

 

I like how fivethirtyeight's writers thoroughly explain how they get the data and come up with answers to these types of questions. I really enjoy reading their articles.

 

Also just realized a potential difference in the percentages that people quote on this topic - some try to meaure % of veterans who fought in wars, and others try to meaure % of people who have served in the military during wartime or peacetime. Fivethirtyeight's appears to be wartime vets.

[Vacant Horizon]

Damn people......guns like you describe are only used for hunting people not animals.  Okay maybe most people don't use them to hunt real people, just fake target people, but they are for that only.  Maybe they are used to protect yourself against dangerous people, but it's only people. Most of the guns in circulation are not for hunting animals, there simply are not that many animals to hunt.  You can kill a bunny or a raccoon with a fairly low caliper rifle; you need something a little stronger for a deer or a bear or a moose or an elk, but still... 

 

This country is busy hunting people, not animals.

 

Disclaimer - I live in what we all know is one of the most dangerous cities in the country, although my home is in a fairly safe neighborhood, but shootings do occur.  I work in the neighborhoods where people are shot all the time.  I don't carry a gun, don't own a gun, and am not consider buying one.  Call me stupid, but I just don't see the need.  Those people who think they do need them I guess it's fine, but look deep into your soul why you are so paranoid of your fellow human beings that you think you need one. 

 

I'm really tired of this debate and what the first amendment means.  Own guns if you need to because you are that afraid, but maybe try and be a little less afraid.  You have a right to own a gun, but think of what is says about you as a person.  Meanwhile I am going to walk this earth in the little time I have left and not worry about being gunned down. IF it happens, so be it.  Maybe this topic doesn't belong in politics at all, maybe it belongs in philosophy or religion.

 

Louie

Chances are basically zero that you'll be gunned down by anyone…be it a terrorist or whatever.  Now if you owned a gun, those chances go way up.  If we really wanted to decrease our death rates we'd quit eating crap and driving cars.  We have more of a chance dying by 'walking' or 'suicide' than from terrorists.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/04/16/eight-facts-about-terrorism-in-the-united-states/

[Vacant Horizon]

That's such an a-historical view.  The United States and the West have not been passive observers in the disintegration of the Middle East but, rather, very willing and active participants.  As such, the external and internal dichotomy breaks down.

 

It's hard for me to say this, but sometimes I wonder if what we're seeing played out in the Middle East right now is the old British strategy of "divide and conquer."  After all, by pitting Sunni against Shiite and by funding the most retrograde sectors in the Middle East, it allows us to control the resources more easily than if the the Middle East had some form of political unity.  The strategy is cynical.  Then again, maybe our foreign policy gurus are indeed just idiots.

 

Chaos has always been the goal in the mideast.  It's good for business and politics.

[John Smith]

In my department at work there are 10 men, 2 have served, 12 women, 0 served. Of the people outside of work that I regularly do things with none other than me have served, men or women.  I have a basketball group I regularly pay with maybe 15 regulars 3 have served. So in my small sample I would say the female % is 0 while the guys is closer to 10%.

[Bob_Roberts]

I think that's a much more likely scenario than some secret plot to pit Muslims against one another. They're going after each other across wide swaths of the world and they have been for centuries.

I basically believe that our best strategists in the West do understand the Middle East and have adopted the "divide and conquer" strategy.  That doesn't mean that there are many more who have various ignorant justifications for supporting Saudi Arabia and giving arms to the "moderate" Sunnis among other things.  In the end the rationale doesn't matter because the end result is the same: unending conflict that enriches the military industrial congressional complex while allowing the West a say in the oil politics of the region.

 

The period from 1919 to 1970 saw much Sunni Shiite unity:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shia%E2%80%93Sunni_relations#1919.E2.80.931970

[Bob_Roberts]

[lost highway]

They should make an app called "Freudagram".

[tinnitus photography]

I just counted up all of my neighbors: 9 out of 16 men are veterans. One out of 16 women is a veteran. I guess we're overachievers.

 

some ex-military guy living in Texas = sufficient sample size to draw conclusions about military service in the US.

 

 

go on, please tell me more.

[tinnitus photography]

I think that's a much more likely scenario than some secret plot to pit Muslims against one another. They're going after each other across wide swaths of the world and they have been for centuries.

wide swaths of the world?

 

[Bob_Roberts]

[Bob_Roberts]

#GOPDildo

 

I guess it's a thing.

[Winston Legthigh]

some ex-military guy living in Texas = sufficient sample size to draw conclusions about military service in the US.

 

 

go on, please tell me more.

Of all the things to bust on Hixter, you're riding him on his guesstimate of military service demographics?

[KevinG]

This is interesting. It really shows the mind of the GOP. While it is good to see the GOP attack and rebuke the rhetoric of Trump, but disheartening to see they would still support him if he was the nominee.

 

http://mashable.com/2015/12/08/donald-trump-republican-nomination/#jJLJ19oTxaqO

 

And really Huckabee, any Republican is better than Clinton? I always joked the Right would vote for Hitler if he had an R after his name. I guess I am not too far off.

 

Props to Sen. Graham for being a stand up sensible human.

[The Inside of Outside]

That cracks me up.

[tinnitus photography]

Of all the things to bust on Hixter, you're riding him on his guesstimate of military service demographics?

admittedly that's a pretty easy target, but just underscores the myopia in general...

[tinnitus photography]

good insight here... i think this really helps explain the gulf between the Hixters and the mes of the nation:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/12/obama-isis-speech-terrorism/419055/

 

 

For George W. Bush, the fight against jihadist terrorism was World War III. In hisspeech to Congress nine days after 9/11, Bush called al-Qaeda “the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century ... they follow in the path of fascism, Nazism, and totalitarianism.” Many Republicans still see the “war on terror” in these epic terms. After the Paris attacks, Marco Rubio didn’t merely warn that the Islamic State might take over Iraq, Syria, and other parts of the Middle East. He warned that it might take over the United States. America, heargued, is at war with people who “literally want to overthrow our society and replace it with their radical Sunni Islamic view of the future.” In his telling, the United States and “radical Islam” are virtual equals, pitted in a “civilizational conflict” that “either they win or we win.”

RELATE

Obama thinks that’s absurd. Unlike Rubio, he considers violent jihadism a small, toxic strain within Islamic civilization, not a civilization itself. And unlike Bush, he doesn’t consider it a serious ideological competitor. In the 1930s, when fascism and communism were at their ideological height, many believed they could produce higher living standards for ordinary people than democratic capitalist societies that were prone to devastating cycles of boom and bust. No one believes that about “radical Islam” today. In Obama’s view, I suspect, democratic capitalism’s real ideological adversary is not the “radical Islam” of ISIS. It’s the authoritarian, state-managed capitalism of China.

[Hixter]

admittedly that's a pretty easy target, but just underscores the myopia in general...

Myopia? I posted a link to a Gallup poll. There are more than 20 million veterans in this country and that's an indisputable fact. The demographics in my neighborhood may not jibe with the national figure, but nobody can contest the fact that one in 4 or 5 adult American males is a veteran.

[Doug C]

Myopia? I posted a link to a Gallup poll. There are more than 20 million veterans in this country and that's an indisputable fact. The demographics in my neighborhood may not jibe with the national figure, but nobody can contest the fact that one in 4 or 5 American males is a veteran.

Huh? 13.4% is not "one in 4 or 5"

 http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/what-percentage-of-americans-have-served-in-the-military/

 

That’s not your question though, is it? You’re interested in the percentage of Americans who have ever served — perhaps because as a veteran yourself, you know that former members of the armed services vastly outnumber current personnel. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is interested in a similar question — and to answer it, they use their own data as well as numbers from the Department of Defense, the U.S. Census Bureau, the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration. As of 2014, the VA estimates there were 22 million military veterans in the U.S. population. If you add their figures on veterans to the active personnel numbers mentioned above, 7.3 percent of all living Americans have served in the military at some point in their lives.

But since only 2 million veterans and about 200,000 current personnel are women, that overall percentage varies a lot by gender — 1.4 percent of all female Americans have ever served in the armed services, compared to 13.4 percent of all male Americans.

[Hixter]

Huh? 13.4% is not "one in 4 or 5"

 http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/what-percentage-of-americans-have-served-in-the-military/

As I've mentioned before, there is a difference between "all male Americans" and "adult American males." It's kind of silly to include toddlers in the equation.

[Winston Legthigh]

Guys - military participation percentages are a sideshow to the shitshow.

 

The only reason Hixter even brought it up was that he was guessing at an answer as to why so many AR-15s are owned in the US. He guessed that part of the reason probably has to do with military service. He's probably right that military service has something to do with it. 

 

Christ.