I understand the point of this article, but to me the title sounds like "Joe Biden can end the drama on election night. All he has to do is get 270 electoral votes." Maybe I'm jaded because I...
I understand the point of this article, but to me the title sounds like
"Joe Biden can end the drama on election night. All he has to do is get 270 electoral votes."
Maybe I'm jaded because I consider myself relatively informed on how a presidential election works, but it seems like a pretty obvious statement.
Texas is not generally seen as a swing state though, and the point about the lack of vote by mail in Texas and how this might affect Trump's ... unique ... attitude to the election results is...
Texas is not generally seen as a swing state though, and the point about the lack of vote by mail in Texas and how this might affect Trump's ... unique ... attitude to the election results is probably a point worth making.
The very idea of course that an "investment" and "late money" can make such a massive difference is ludicrous of course. Spending money on campaigning is fine, but the way ya'll do in the US is just beyond all proportions. €5 million was "the most expensive" campaign a party spent in the Netherlands (reportedly, there is some dispute about those numbers and it may be lower), and the normal amount seems to be about €1.5 million. Of course, the Netherlands is a much smaller country, but the Biden campaign has about $1 billion to spend (and Trump $1.3 billion). That's about $3 per person, versus $0.35 (for the €5m campaign) to $0.10 (€1.5 million). And that doesn't even take in to account that much of that money goes to a few strategic states (hello Iowa and New Hampshire!) rather than the general population so the practical amount "spent per person" is much higher.
Imagine spending those $2.3 billion (plus the money from the primaries, don't even want to look there) on ... I don't know ... anything of any lasting worth? I'm not blaming either candidates on spending that money directly, but it's a crazy situation and while it's not a large amount in the context of the total US federal budget, it seems to me that this kind of money can still make a meaningful difference if spent well.
I wonder how much of it is due to the (as far as I can tell, uniquely American) attitude of "throw money at it until it's fixed" ? And also the pure myopia of American politics, hyper-focused on...
I wonder how much of it is due to the (as far as I can tell, uniquely American) attitude of "throw money at it until it's fixed" ? And also the pure myopia of American politics, hyper-focused on the current quarter.
Honestly I think some of it is just that in general US Citizens aren't very politically active. You get their attention by putting ads on their TV while they're watching Sports, or shows, and that...
Honestly I think some of it is just that in general US Citizens aren't very politically active. You get their attention by putting ads on their TV while they're watching Sports, or shows, and that costs money.
I'm just hoping for record breaking voter turnout.
You think it's any different in the Netherlands? If anything, I have the impression that people in the US are too obsessed with certain political issues (on all sides, by the way).
You think it's any different in the Netherlands? If anything, I have the impression that people in the US are too obsessed with certain political issues (on all sides, by the way).
As an American, I would accept that generalization. There are certain sacred topics that a good chunk of people feel very strongly about (eg: abortion, gun control, climate change). We've been...
I have the impression that people in the US are too obsessed with certain political issues (on all sides, by the way)
As an American, I would accept that generalization. There are certain sacred topics that a good chunk of people feel very strongly about (eg: abortion, gun control, climate change). We've been told that they are Very Important and that the Other Side is going to Destroy Everything if they get their way. The 24hr media frenzy around some of these topics amplifies it to the point where it becomes a part of people's identities. And good luck changing minds after that happens.
I was just talking about that this morning -- isn't it something to do with the Southern Strategy? Political-strategically it's brilliant -- they got a ton of people to vote against their own...
to the point where it becomes a part of people's identities. And good luck changing minds after that happens.
I was just talking about that this morning -- isn't it something to do with the Southern Strategy? Political-strategically it's brilliant -- they got a ton of people to vote against their own interests, even to the point of harm, because of a wedge issue.
It's not just on the right; I feel the left gives far too much attention to certain issues too, like some asshole not wanting to bake a cake for a gay couple. Yeah, it's stupid and homophobic, but...
It's not just on the right; I feel the left gives far too much attention to certain issues too, like some asshole not wanting to bake a cake for a gay couple. Yeah, it's stupid and homophobic, but that's people for you, and spending a lot of media time and political capital is just pointless. Just shrug it off and get your cake elsewhere. Or all the wars surrounding pronoun usage and bathroom usage; I don't really disagree with any of it, but is it really proportional? Very much not. Does it really matter than a bunch of rednecks are obsessed with their Robert E. Lee statue? It's offensive, yes, it's ignorant, yes, it's weird, yes. Hell, it's borderline homoerotic, but fighting wars over it is not meaningfully impacting the lives of black Americans. What's needed is better social mobility, socio-economic conditions, and equal access at building a life for themselves. Not fewer stupid statues.
And the police ... this ain't a racism problem. It's really not. Yes, there is racism, but the real problem is a culture of violence at the police impacting everyone. Let me put it like this: if you eliminate racism then you're still left with a hyperviolent police force. If you eliminate the culture of violence you're left with a reasonable police force that stops people when "driving while black", and because the police force is able to solve situations without violence this is a mere nuisance, not potentially lethal. It's so blatantly clear where the priority should be that it's just flabbergasting that people keep focusing on the BLM thing. I know people talk about this, but far too little. We should certainly address both but the focus should be on the biggest problem. For the time being, the entire racism issue should be a sidenote, not the main focus.
Of course, when you criticize any of that it's usually "oh, you must not care that trans people have it difficult" or "don't you want to fight racism?" or whatnot. Of course I care; but that doesn't mean your strategies are good, or that this is the best thing you can do to meaningfully improve the lives of as many people as possible. It's because I care that I want to focus on what has effect. Yes, it really sucks we can't solve racism in policing right now, but that's reality and I can't change that either.
Ya'll gotta learn how to prioritize, compromise, and accept that these are long games where not every minor battle needs to be fought like it's D-Day. Yes, it's easy to point at the current GOP and say they're unhinged and living in an alternative reality. Its like debunking Young-Earth-Creationism: a dimwitted 7 year old can do it. But just because one side of completely off the rails doesn't mean the other side is doing the right thing.
I find few political groups more depressing than American leftist/liberals because while they generally have it more or less by the right end of the stick, their priorities and strategies are just all wrong. People should be protesting on the street for a fair democratic system first. Then equal economic opportunities. Then the violent police force. And then racism. In that order. Probably have to sandwich climate change in-between there too. And you know what, once the country is in a much healthier shape overall all those racism protests will be much easier too (not that it will be easy, just easier).
Anyway, that's my politically themed rant of the week.
As a (very) white person, I feel like the thing that's been made more clear to me than anything else over the summer is that racism is both prevalent and systemic in ways that I have never even...
We should certainly address both but the focus should be on the biggest problem. For the time being, the entire racism issue should be a sidenote, not the main focus.
As a (very) white person, I feel like the thing that's been made more clear to me than anything else over the summer is that racism is both prevalent and systemic in ways that I have never even thought about. I think you make a good point about prioritization of police violence over police racism, however I think the BLM movement is leveraging the easily-understood and tragically film-able nature of police violence as a way to draw attention to a much wider range of more complex race-related issues.
You're right and I don't want to devalue the horrible experiences people have, which is exactly why it's so important we need to keep a clear head and think in terms of what will actually be...
You're right and I don't want to devalue the horrible experiences people have, which is exactly why it's so important we need to keep a clear head and think in terms of what will actually be effective and meaningful solutions rather than lose focus what it's really about. Quite frankly I feel much of progressive America (liberals, leftists, social-democratics, whatnot) is by and large extremely unfocused and driven by the "outrage of the moment".
BLM has gotten some ... pretty negative ... responses ever since it started in 2014. Most of those responses are silly and wrongheaded, but they are resonating with a lot of people. It just seems unwise to me to continue with the "BLM strategy"; it's stupid that it's so divisive, but it's a reality you can't deny. You can blame Trump or this or that, but the reality remains. Trying to find a messaging that does resonate with some people turned off by the BLM message seems like a smart move.
Of course, according to some saying "BLM isn't the most effective strategy, maybe try something else to solve it" is racist in and of itself; I've gotten plenty of flak for it on Reddit, and that's a big problem, IMO, because it shuts up voices that are on the same team, but just disagree about how to best fix a specific problem.
In the particular case of BLM, I think it bears no responsibility for the divisiveness it brings. The message "Black lives matter" isn't inherently divisive and should be easy to agree with,...
In the particular case of BLM, I think it bears no responsibility for the divisiveness it brings. The message "Black lives matter" isn't inherently divisive and should be easy to agree with, especially for anyone who watched George Floyd get murdered in public. It's the conservative opportunists who use the message to create a wedge where there needn't be one, saying these protesters are destroying cities, promoting socialism, and so on.
But more to your general point, it's true: these issues involving different minorities are simultaneously important and divisive. I came across a clip of Richard Pryor saying essentially the same thing that you do here, that it's no accident that we're constantly distracted by conflicts between groups of the American populace.
Sure, but this is irrelevant and academic. It's either effective or it's not. It's really that simple. This might come off as cold and unempathetic, but considering what we're up against (the...
In the particular case of BLM, I think it bears no responsibility for the divisiveness it brings. The message "Black lives matter" isn't inherently divisive and should be easy to agree with
Sure, but this is irrelevant and academic. It's either effective or it's not. It's really that simple.
This might come off as cold and unempathetic, but considering what we're up against (the scale of the problems, an opposition which isn't playing by the rules and will do anything to force their way through) this kind of rational and utilitarian goal-focused thinking is what's needed. We tried pointing fingers for a while and it didn't work. In fact, considering Trump's literal endorsement of a terrorist organisation it's only gotten worse. Time for something else.
It's not irrelevant; the point is that even seemingly innocuous messages can be made into wedge issues, whether or not they have anything to do with minority rights. Bernie hammered on the most...
It's not irrelevant; the point is that even seemingly innocuous messages can be made into wedge issues, whether or not they have anything to do with minority rights. Bernie hammered on the most populist messages in the primaries, messages that should have, as you say, resonated with a large portion of Americans, that were based largely on policies that we've successfully implemented in the past. Yet by the end of the primary season, many people believed he was Stalin. Your idea appears to hinge on this premise that there exist progressive positions that resonate with a large majority of the populace, and are immune to negative spin. I'm not convinced that such positions exist.
Not as a criticism of your point, but that applies to a lot of America, not just the left. Between 24hr news, social media algorithms, and politicians themselves, whatever gets the most attention...
much of progressive America (liberals, leftists, social-democratics, whatnot) is by and large extremely unfocused and driven by the "outrage of the moment".
Not as a criticism of your point, but that applies to a lot of America, not just the left. Between 24hr news, social media algorithms, and politicians themselves, whatever gets the most attention wins.
Things like BLM gain traction on large part because it finally developed a flavor that fed the machine. A machine that feeds on engagement and shits ad revenue. Part of it is due to the concerted work of activists, but a large part of it is luck. So now they understandably feel compelled to run with what is working. Working in the sense that they finally have people's attention in a world rapidly going insane.
Newspapers sell newspapers, not information. It's not just a problem in the US, I also see it in the Netherlands for example, albeit less so. We even have a term for when things get "too American"...
Newspapers sell newspapers, not information.
It's not just a problem in the US, I also see it in the Netherlands for example, albeit less so. We even have a term for when things get "too American" that's been in use for at least 20 years: Amerikaanse toestanden, it doesn't translate too well but roughly means "American things" (where "things" is usually used in a negative way, I don't think there's a word for that in English). It's usually used as a pejorative to describe some policy or actions (or things like "negative ads", which aren't too common here).
In spite of this, things are increasingly moving in this direction; guess the US is the "leader of the free world" after all, just not in the way I'd like...
Imagine if the civil war had just been about racism rather than slavery - we might have black plantation owners today. Of course, that didn't happen because the real conflicts were about the...
Imagine if the civil war had just been about racism rather than slavery - we might have black plantation owners today. Of course, that didn't happen because the real conflicts were about the actual economic structures underlying power. Today, politicians have no appetite to challenge economic power structures, so we just get southern strategy politics ad nauseum.
The slavery was informed by, and predicated upon, the deeply-entrenched racist ideas that white people were better than other ethnicities. There have been other systems of slavery in the world --...
Imagine if the civil war had just been about racism rather than slavery
The slavery was informed by, and predicated upon, the deeply-entrenched racist ideas that white people were better than other ethnicities. There have been other systems of slavery in the world -- in fact there still are, more even than ever before -- that haven't been predicated on racist ideas. I'd argue you wouldn't have had a Civil War without racism, or maybe you wouldn't have had American slavery without racism, or I don't know. I'm not a historian. I'm just saying that I don't think you can separate out the notions of American slavery and American racism. They inform each other.
You're exactly right that they inform each other and can't be separated. I guess my point was, or should have been, that racism and exploitation have never not coexisted, at least to my...
You're exactly right that they inform each other and can't be separated. I guess my point was, or should have been, that racism and exploitation have never not coexisted, at least to my understanding of history - both were necessitated by the opportunity to capitalize on the spoils of the new world and the massive demand for plantation products. I think dialogues that focus exclusively on one or the other are hamstrung.
I think this is the core of what I want to respond to. I don't think you're wrong, per se, just ... hm. All these things are happening all the time, and I think it's a fallacy to say that we only...
People should be protesting on the street for a fair democratic system first. Then equal economic opportunities. Then the violent police force. And then racism. In that order. Probably have to sandwich climate change in-between there too.
I think this is the core of what I want to respond to. I don't think you're wrong, per se, just ... hm. All these things are happening all the time, and I think it's a fallacy to say that we only have enough juice to fight for one at a time. I think that the rhetoric in that direction is ultimately a tool of those against progress, because it's self-defeating. Not everyone has to be an expert on everything, and in a functioning society, we'd be able to work on all these things at once?
I know we don't have what I'd (or I'm sure you'd) call a functioning society right now, but I don't know. I know that I'm not doing nearly enough myself. I hesitate to critique anyone else's action in the face of my inaction, I guess.
Also, the reason why people get up-in-arms about things like cake-baking, etc., is because it is disenfranchisement, it is discrimination. All of it is. Maybe a cake doesn't seem important to you, but it obviously is, and it's indicative of a larger culture that discriminates against LGBTQ people. Just this week, SCOTUS declined to hear the Kentucky case about Kim whatever-her-name-is, the Clerk of Court who wouldn't give out marriage licenses to gay couples. But 2 justices wrote dissents, and with the makeup going the way it is, that decision might be reversed. So there are implications, because American law is based on precedent.
The US system doesn't exactly encourage voter turnout; a Republican in California or Democrat in West-Virginia might as well stay home instead of vote depending a bit on which election, but it's...
The US system doesn't exactly encourage voter turnout; a Republican in California or Democrat in West-Virginia might as well stay home instead of vote depending a bit on which election, but it's the case for Presidential, Congress, and House elections in many locations.
In the Netherlands every single vote counts no matter where you live. We also have more than just two options. I can't quantify how much effect this has, but I'd be surprised if that's not a big part of the low voter turnout.
The distinction here is polling day results and long-term results. The expectation many have is that polling day results will strongly favor Trump due to in-person voting in contrast to early...
The distinction here is polling day results and long-term results.
The expectation many have is that polling day results will strongly favor Trump due to in-person voting in contrast to early voting.
So to avoid anyone being able to sow doubt regarding election results and stealing the election later on, the idea is that if anyone (like a campaign, Bloomberg or something completely else) were to in fact spend millions and loads of attention somewhere, they should do so somewhere that affects polling night results rather than long-term vote counts.
In the longterm counts, the last month Biden's had a huge favorable swing. Right now (knock on wood, things can change etc.) it's hard to imagine Trump being close to winning at all, but he may attempt other measures.
On the other hand, Bloomberg spent a lot of money on himself and it didn’t help hardly at all. An underfunded campaign is a problem, but it seems like we are well into diminishing returns. The...
On the other hand, Bloomberg spent a lot of money on himself and it didn’t help hardly at all. An underfunded campaign is a problem, but it seems like we are well into diminishing returns. The news is more important than ads even after annoying people with lots of ads.
I wonder if there's a point where excessive advertising actively hurts campaigns. I live in a solid red state so there's never much for presidential races here, but some state elections, we'll get...
I wonder if there's a point where excessive advertising actively hurts campaigns. I live in a solid red state so there's never much for presidential races here, but some state elections, we'll get a candidate who just barrages the airwaves and mailboxes with spam. It's so f'ing annoying, I love seeing them lose almost just for the sake of shutting them up, but maybe that's just me.
Even for those that support them, though, I wouldn't be surprised if it exhausts many to the point political apathy.
Even if Joe Biden won by a landslide and it was 80% to 20% by the end of the night, Trump would still whine and refuse to concede. In fact, I doubt he will concede at all.
Even if Joe Biden won by a landslide and it was 80% to 20% by the end of the night, Trump would still whine and refuse to concede.
Luckily, as far as I'm aware, conceding doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, it's more of a symbolic gesture. Al Gore conceding in 2000 mattered in a sense because it basically...
Luckily, as far as I'm aware, conceding doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, it's more of a symbolic gesture.
Al Gore conceding in 2000 mattered in a sense because it basically just meant they stopped everything going on in Florida, but if it's truly 80/20 split at the end of tallying up the votes Trump can complain all he wants, it won't make him president on January 21st (barring any other trickery)
It’s completely symbolic and means absolutely nothing in terms of actual process or governing. My point was more that he won’t give up on election night, no matter what.
It’s completely symbolic and means absolutely nothing in terms of actual process or governing. My point was more that he won’t give up on election night, no matter what.
My worry is that he won't give up, period. My view is that trump has too much to lose. He and his cronies might spend the rest of their lives in prison for interfering with justice and democracy....
My worry is that he won't give up, period. My view is that trump has too much to lose. He and his cronies might spend the rest of their lives in prison for interfering with justice and democracy. The only way to prevent that is to stay president.
What happens if Trump just... Doesn't budge? What kind of safeguards are in place in the US? Sure, congress would like to have a word, and the supreme court might have an opinion on it too, but who actually drags the orange man out of the white house kicking and screaming? And what if the senate majority is loyal to trump?
This is the very crisis we’ve faced for the past four years. Our system is designed to work with checks and balances, but when one party controls all three branches of government and are unwilling...
This is the very crisis we’ve faced for the past four years. Our system is designed to work with checks and balances, but when one party controls all three branches of government and are unwilling to hold the other branches accountable, the whole system breaks down into a system of lawlessness where people can do whatever they want with impunity.
@Deimos, bit of a weird bug when I submitted this post. I included the end period on the page title as per the actual article title, but it wasn't included when submitted. When I later try and...
@Deimos, bit of a weird bug when I submitted this post. I included the end period on the page title as per the actual article title, but it wasn't included when submitted. When I later try and edit the post title to add the end period, the save completes but doesn't append the character.
I've updated it now so that it will only remove a trailing period if the title is a single sentence. There are some minor edge-cases that it won't handle correctly, but it shouldn't matter much in...
I've updated it now so that it will only remove a trailing period if the title is a single sentence. There are some minor edge-cases that it won't handle correctly, but it shouldn't matter much in practice.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were code to automatically prune a trailing period. It might make sense to check if there's an earlier period first, to prevent it from occurring in two-sentence...
I wouldn't be surprised if there were code to automatically prune a trailing period. It might make sense to check if there's an earlier period first, to prevent it from occurring in two-sentence titles like this.
Would still trip on Mr. Whoever does a thing., but checking for that is adding needless complexity.
Yep, that's exactly what's happening. Though there should be no need to worry about it accidentally removing a period from a preceding sentence in the title, AFAIK, since the code uses rstrip and...
Yep, that's exactly what's happening. Though there should be no need to worry about it accidentally removing a period from a preceding sentence in the title, AFAIK, since the code uses rstrip and should only effect trailing characters in the title string taken as a whole.
I don't know how I feel about this. Perhaps this logic should be maintained for submissions, but bypassed for title edits—which are usually much more intentional? Falling back to human curation...
I don't know how I feel about this. Perhaps this logic should be maintained for submissions, but bypassed for title edits—which are usually much more intentional? Falling back to human curation and review instead of automation seems like the most appropriate idea—we have no shortage of title editors to ensure submissions are grammatically correct.
Because right now, the title of this article on Tildes feels super weird without the trailing period, given it's such a crucial pointer of prose. The commit message also states:
Note that this will also prevent a title from ending with "..."
But Deimos hasn't used the typographically correct U+2026 HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS character (…) here, so I have lots questions, because that code clearly will only strip periods unless there's something else elsewhere in the source code that does more general cleanup :)
I think this is more a style guide sort of decision than anything, and so keeping that consistent across the entire site is probably a good thing in that regard. What is the benefit of allowing...
I think this is more a style guide sort of decision than anything, and so keeping that consistent across the entire site is probably a good thing in that regard. What is the benefit of allowing certain titles to have trailing periods?
Although admittedly it sometimes does look a little awkward when there is a period in a preceding sentence in the same title... so maybe adding an exception in that particular case wouldn't be a horrible idea.
edit: As for it not recognizing Unicode ellipsis, I imagine that is just because this was a quick and dirty fix... and has a trailing Unicode ellipses ever even been used in a title here before?
I can't really describe it any differently than "the presence of a period in the middle of the title makes the title ending feel weird without one". There's a grammatical pause in the mid-title,...
I can't really describe it any differently than "the presence of a period in the middle of the title makes the title ending feel weird without one". There's a grammatical pause in the mid-title, and then the end trails off into the æther. I'm left hanging, and it looks bad. Did I miss something? How do I enunciate this title properly?
Like @cfabbro said, it's really a style-guide-ish choice, similar to deciding to use sentence case, not putting periods in acronyms (e.g. "F.B.I." vs. "FBI"), and so on. In general, headlines...
Like @cfabbro said, it's really a style-guide-ish choice, similar to deciding to use sentence case, not putting periods in acronyms (e.g. "F.B.I." vs. "FBI"), and so on. In general, headlines shouldn't have a trailing period, but it might make sense to only apply that to single-sentence ones.
For example, Mother Jones's style guide includes (can't link to the section directly, but it's under "headlines"):
Two-sentence headlines get end punctuation: “Here’s an Example. Like So.”
I've been meaning to add a "Posting Guidelines" page to the Docs that will include a section on title style, I should probably stop procrastinating on that.
Yeah, it does feel a bit awkward, though I also can't really put my finger on exactly why, grammatically speaking. So I created a gitlab issue for this so Deimos can decide what he wants to do...
Yeah, it does feel a bit awkward, though I also can't really put my finger on exactly why, grammatically speaking. So I created a gitlab issue for this so Deimos can decide what he wants to do with the issue: https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/-/issues/708
cc: @emdash It's a parallelism issue. If there were just one sentence -- as is the case with many headlines -- the ending period being stripped doesn't really matter. In this one, however, the...
If there were just one sentence -- as is the case with many headlines -- the ending period being stripped doesn't really matter. In this one, however, the first sentence sets up the pattern to be followed by closing the sentence with a period, and removing the last period breaks that structure. It would be even more noticeable for a title with three sentences, for example:
True, but even so, I would assume all Unicode space separators and control characters are ignored if ZWJ is. Also, sorry... but I don't make up the arbitrary award rules, I only enforce them!
True, but even so, I would assume all Unicode space separators and control characters are ignored if ZWJ is.
Also, sorry... but I don't make up the arbitrary award rules, I only enforce them!
Oh, to clarify I realized it only stripped the trailing period. I was making a suggestion of checking for an earlier period before applying that function, to omit two-sentence titles like the...
Oh, to clarify I realized it only stripped the trailing period. I was making a suggestion of checking for an earlier period before applying that function, to omit two-sentence titles like the above.
I then realized it would still fail on formal titles (Mr, Mrs) if you added that exception, but decided that was inconsequential. I probably made it more confusing than it needed to be.
I understand the point of this article, but to me the title sounds like
"Joe Biden can end the drama on election night. All he has to do is get 270 electoral votes."
Maybe I'm jaded because I consider myself relatively informed on how a presidential election works, but it seems like a pretty obvious statement.
Texas is not generally seen as a swing state though, and the point about the lack of vote by mail in Texas and how this might affect Trump's ... unique ... attitude to the election results is probably a point worth making.
The very idea of course that an "investment" and "late money" can make such a massive difference is ludicrous of course. Spending money on campaigning is fine, but the way ya'll do in the US is just beyond all proportions. €5 million was "the most expensive" campaign a party spent in the Netherlands (reportedly, there is some dispute about those numbers and it may be lower), and the normal amount seems to be about €1.5 million. Of course, the Netherlands is a much smaller country, but the Biden campaign has about $1 billion to spend (and Trump $1.3 billion). That's about $3 per person, versus $0.35 (for the €5m campaign) to $0.10 (€1.5 million). And that doesn't even take in to account that much of that money goes to a few strategic states (hello Iowa and New Hampshire!) rather than the general population so the practical amount "spent per person" is much higher.
Imagine spending those $2.3 billion (plus the money from the primaries, don't even want to look there) on ... I don't know ... anything of any lasting worth? I'm not blaming either candidates on spending that money directly, but it's a crazy situation and while it's not a large amount in the context of the total US federal budget, it seems to me that this kind of money can still make a meaningful difference if spent well.
I wonder how much of it is due to the (as far as I can tell, uniquely American) attitude of "throw money at it until it's fixed" ? And also the pure myopia of American politics, hyper-focused on the current quarter.
Honestly I think some of it is just that in general US Citizens aren't very politically active. You get their attention by putting ads on their TV while they're watching Sports, or shows, and that costs money.
I'm just hoping for record breaking voter turnout.
You think it's any different in the Netherlands? If anything, I have the impression that people in the US are too obsessed with certain political issues (on all sides, by the way).
As an American, I would accept that generalization. There are certain sacred topics that a good chunk of people feel very strongly about (eg: abortion, gun control, climate change). We've been told that they are Very Important and that the Other Side is going to Destroy Everything if they get their way. The 24hr media frenzy around some of these topics amplifies it to the point where it becomes a part of people's identities. And good luck changing minds after that happens.
I was just talking about that this morning -- isn't it something to do with the Southern Strategy? Political-strategically it's brilliant -- they got a ton of people to vote against their own interests, even to the point of harm, because of a wedge issue.
It's not just on the right; I feel the left gives far too much attention to certain issues too, like some asshole not wanting to bake a cake for a gay couple. Yeah, it's stupid and homophobic, but that's people for you, and spending a lot of media time and political capital is just pointless. Just shrug it off and get your cake elsewhere. Or all the wars surrounding pronoun usage and bathroom usage; I don't really disagree with any of it, but is it really proportional? Very much not. Does it really matter than a bunch of rednecks are obsessed with their Robert E. Lee statue? It's offensive, yes, it's ignorant, yes, it's weird, yes. Hell, it's borderline homoerotic, but fighting wars over it is not meaningfully impacting the lives of black Americans. What's needed is better social mobility, socio-economic conditions, and equal access at building a life for themselves. Not fewer stupid statues.
And the police ... this ain't a racism problem. It's really not. Yes, there is racism, but the real problem is a culture of violence at the police impacting everyone. Let me put it like this: if you eliminate racism then you're still left with a hyperviolent police force. If you eliminate the culture of violence you're left with a reasonable police force that stops people when "driving while black", and because the police force is able to solve situations without violence this is a mere nuisance, not potentially lethal. It's so blatantly clear where the priority should be that it's just flabbergasting that people keep focusing on the BLM thing. I know people talk about this, but far too little. We should certainly address both but the focus should be on the biggest problem. For the time being, the entire racism issue should be a sidenote, not the main focus.
Of course, when you criticize any of that it's usually "oh, you must not care that trans people have it difficult" or "don't you want to fight racism?" or whatnot. Of course I care; but that doesn't mean your strategies are good, or that this is the best thing you can do to meaningfully improve the lives of as many people as possible. It's because I care that I want to focus on what has effect. Yes, it really sucks we can't solve racism in policing right now, but that's reality and I can't change that either.
Ya'll gotta learn how to prioritize, compromise, and accept that these are long games where not every minor battle needs to be fought like it's D-Day. Yes, it's easy to point at the current GOP and say they're unhinged and living in an alternative reality. Its like debunking Young-Earth-Creationism: a dimwitted 7 year old can do it. But just because one side of completely off the rails doesn't mean the other side is doing the right thing.
I find few political groups more depressing than American leftist/liberals because while they generally have it more or less by the right end of the stick, their priorities and strategies are just all wrong. People should be protesting on the street for a fair democratic system first. Then equal economic opportunities. Then the violent police force. And then racism. In that order. Probably have to sandwich climate change in-between there too. And you know what, once the country is in a much healthier shape overall all those racism protests will be much easier too (not that it will be easy, just easier).
Anyway, that's my politically themed rant of the week.
As a (very) white person, I feel like the thing that's been made more clear to me than anything else over the summer is that racism is both prevalent and systemic in ways that I have never even thought about. I think you make a good point about prioritization of police violence over police racism, however I think the BLM movement is leveraging the easily-understood and tragically film-able nature of police violence as a way to draw attention to a much wider range of more complex race-related issues.
You're right and I don't want to devalue the horrible experiences people have, which is exactly why it's so important we need to keep a clear head and think in terms of what will actually be effective and meaningful solutions rather than lose focus what it's really about. Quite frankly I feel much of progressive America (liberals, leftists, social-democratics, whatnot) is by and large extremely unfocused and driven by the "outrage of the moment".
BLM has gotten some ... pretty negative ... responses ever since it started in 2014. Most of those responses are silly and wrongheaded, but they are resonating with a lot of people. It just seems unwise to me to continue with the "BLM strategy"; it's stupid that it's so divisive, but it's a reality you can't deny. You can blame Trump or this or that, but the reality remains. Trying to find a messaging that does resonate with some people turned off by the BLM message seems like a smart move.
Of course, according to some saying "BLM isn't the most effective strategy, maybe try something else to solve it" is racist in and of itself; I've gotten plenty of flak for it on Reddit, and that's a big problem, IMO, because it shuts up voices that are on the same team, but just disagree about how to best fix a specific problem.
In the particular case of BLM, I think it bears no responsibility for the divisiveness it brings. The message "Black lives matter" isn't inherently divisive and should be easy to agree with, especially for anyone who watched George Floyd get murdered in public. It's the conservative opportunists who use the message to create a wedge where there needn't be one, saying these protesters are destroying cities, promoting socialism, and so on.
But more to your general point, it's true: these issues involving different minorities are simultaneously important and divisive. I came across a clip of Richard Pryor saying essentially the same thing that you do here, that it's no accident that we're constantly distracted by conflicts between groups of the American populace.
Sure, but this is irrelevant and academic. It's either effective or it's not. It's really that simple.
This might come off as cold and unempathetic, but considering what we're up against (the scale of the problems, an opposition which isn't playing by the rules and will do anything to force their way through) this kind of rational and utilitarian goal-focused thinking is what's needed. We tried pointing fingers for a while and it didn't work. In fact, considering Trump's literal endorsement of a terrorist organisation it's only gotten worse. Time for something else.
It's not irrelevant; the point is that even seemingly innocuous messages can be made into wedge issues, whether or not they have anything to do with minority rights. Bernie hammered on the most populist messages in the primaries, messages that should have, as you say, resonated with a large portion of Americans, that were based largely on policies that we've successfully implemented in the past. Yet by the end of the primary season, many people believed he was Stalin. Your idea appears to hinge on this premise that there exist progressive positions that resonate with a large majority of the populace, and are immune to negative spin. I'm not convinced that such positions exist.
Not as a criticism of your point, but that applies to a lot of America, not just the left. Between 24hr news, social media algorithms, and politicians themselves, whatever gets the most attention wins.
Things like BLM gain traction on large part because it finally developed a flavor that fed the machine. A machine that feeds on engagement and shits ad revenue. Part of it is due to the concerted work of activists, but a large part of it is luck. So now they understandably feel compelled to run with what is working. Working in the sense that they finally have people's attention in a world rapidly going insane.
Newspapers sell newspapers, not information.
It's not just a problem in the US, I also see it in the Netherlands for example, albeit less so. We even have a term for when things get "too American" that's been in use for at least 20 years: Amerikaanse toestanden, it doesn't translate too well but roughly means "American things" (where "things" is usually used in a negative way, I don't think there's a word for that in English). It's usually used as a pejorative to describe some policy or actions (or things like "negative ads", which aren't too common here).
In spite of this, things are increasingly moving in this direction; guess the US is the "leader of the free world" after all, just not in the way I'd like...
Imagine if the civil war had just been about racism rather than slavery - we might have black plantation owners today. Of course, that didn't happen because the real conflicts were about the actual economic structures underlying power. Today, politicians have no appetite to challenge economic power structures, so we just get southern strategy politics ad nauseum.
The slavery was informed by, and predicated upon, the deeply-entrenched racist ideas that white people were better than other ethnicities. There have been other systems of slavery in the world -- in fact there still are, more even than ever before -- that haven't been predicated on racist ideas. I'd argue you wouldn't have had a Civil War without racism, or maybe you wouldn't have had American slavery without racism, or I don't know. I'm not a historian. I'm just saying that I don't think you can separate out the notions of American slavery and American racism. They inform each other.
You're exactly right that they inform each other and can't be separated. I guess my point was, or should have been, that racism and exploitation have never not coexisted, at least to my understanding of history - both were necessitated by the opportunity to capitalize on the spoils of the new world and the massive demand for plantation products. I think dialogues that focus exclusively on one or the other are hamstrung.
I think this is the core of what I want to respond to. I don't think you're wrong, per se, just ... hm. All these things are happening all the time, and I think it's a fallacy to say that we only have enough juice to fight for one at a time. I think that the rhetoric in that direction is ultimately a tool of those against progress, because it's self-defeating. Not everyone has to be an expert on everything, and in a functioning society, we'd be able to work on all these things at once?
I know we don't have what I'd (or I'm sure you'd) call a functioning society right now, but I don't know. I know that I'm not doing nearly enough myself. I hesitate to critique anyone else's action in the face of my inaction, I guess.
Also, the reason why people get up-in-arms about things like cake-baking, etc., is because it is disenfranchisement, it is discrimination. All of it is. Maybe a cake doesn't seem important to you, but it obviously is, and it's indicative of a larger culture that discriminates against LGBTQ people. Just this week, SCOTUS declined to hear the Kentucky case about Kim whatever-her-name-is, the Clerk of Court who wouldn't give out marriage licenses to gay couples. But 2 justices wrote dissents, and with the makeup going the way it is, that decision might be reversed. So there are implications, because American law is based on precedent.
The US system doesn't exactly encourage voter turnout; a Republican in California or Democrat in West-Virginia might as well stay home instead of vote depending a bit on which election, but it's the case for Presidential, Congress, and House elections in many locations.
In the Netherlands every single vote counts no matter where you live. We also have more than just two options. I can't quantify how much effect this has, but I'd be surprised if that's not a big part of the low voter turnout.
The distinction here is polling day results and long-term results.
The expectation many have is that polling day results will strongly favor Trump due to in-person voting in contrast to early voting.
So to avoid anyone being able to sow doubt regarding election results and stealing the election later on, the idea is that if anyone (like a campaign, Bloomberg or something completely else) were to in fact spend millions and loads of attention somewhere, they should do so somewhere that affects polling night results rather than long-term vote counts.
In the longterm counts, the last month Biden's had a huge favorable swing. Right now (knock on wood, things can change etc.) it's hard to imagine Trump being close to winning at all, but he may attempt other measures.
On the other hand, Bloomberg spent a lot of money on himself and it didn’t help hardly at all. An underfunded campaign is a problem, but it seems like we are well into diminishing returns. The news is more important than ads even after annoying people with lots of ads.
I wonder if there's a point where excessive advertising actively hurts campaigns. I live in a solid red state so there's never much for presidential races here, but some state elections, we'll get a candidate who just barrages the airwaves and mailboxes with spam. It's so f'ing annoying, I love seeing them lose almost just for the sake of shutting them up, but maybe that's just me.
Even for those that support them, though, I wouldn't be surprised if it exhausts many to the point political apathy.
Even if Joe Biden won by a landslide and it was 80% to 20% by the end of the night, Trump would still whine and refuse to concede.
In fact, I doubt he will concede at all.
Luckily, as far as I'm aware, conceding doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, it's more of a symbolic gesture.
Al Gore conceding in 2000 mattered in a sense because it basically just meant they stopped everything going on in Florida, but if it's truly 80/20 split at the end of tallying up the votes Trump can complain all he wants, it won't make him president on January 21st (barring any other trickery)
It’s completely symbolic and means absolutely nothing in terms of actual process or governing. My point was more that he won’t give up on election night, no matter what.
My worry is that he won't give up, period. My view is that trump has too much to lose. He and his cronies might spend the rest of their lives in prison for interfering with justice and democracy. The only way to prevent that is to stay president.
What happens if Trump just... Doesn't budge? What kind of safeguards are in place in the US? Sure, congress would like to have a word, and the supreme court might have an opinion on it too, but who actually drags the orange man out of the white house kicking and screaming? And what if the senate majority is loyal to trump?
This is the very crisis we’ve faced for the past four years. Our system is designed to work with checks and balances, but when one party controls all three branches of government and are unwilling to hold the other branches accountable, the whole system breaks down into a system of lawlessness where people can do whatever they want with impunity.
@Deimos, bit of a weird bug when I submitted this post. I included the end period on the page title as per the actual article title, but it wasn't included when submitted. When I later try and edit the post title to add the end period, the save completes but doesn't append the character.
I've updated it now so that it will only remove a trailing period if the title is a single sentence. There are some minor edge-cases that it won't handle correctly, but it shouldn't matter much in practice.
This is really great, thank you.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were code to automatically prune a trailing period. It might make sense to check if there's an earlier period first, to prevent it from occurring in two-sentence titles like this.
Would still trip on
Mr. Whoever does a thing., but checking for that is adding needless complexity.Yep, that's exactly what's happening. Though there should be no need to worry about it accidentally removing a period from a preceding sentence in the title, AFAIK, since the code uses rstrip and should only effect trailing characters in the title string taken as a whole.
See: https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/-/commit/2532df018c2d23992e662e3e7a73efe31510a8aa
CC: @emdash
I don't know how I feel about this. Perhaps this logic should be maintained for submissions, but bypassed for title edits—which are usually much more intentional? Falling back to human curation and review instead of automation seems like the most appropriate idea—we have no shortage of title editors to ensure submissions are grammatically correct.
Because right now, the title of this article on Tildes feels super weird without the trailing period, given it's such a crucial pointer of prose. The commit message also states:
But Deimos hasn't used the typographically correct
U+2026 HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIScharacter (…) here, so I have lots questions, because that code clearly will only strip periods unless there's something else elsewhere in the source code that does more general cleanup :)I think this is more a style guide sort of decision than anything, and so keeping that consistent across the entire site is probably a good thing in that regard. What is the benefit of allowing certain titles to have trailing periods?
Although admittedly it sometimes does look a little awkward when there is a period in a preceding sentence in the same title... so maybe adding an exception in that particular case wouldn't be a horrible idea.
edit: As for it not recognizing Unicode ellipsis, I imagine that is just because this was a quick and dirty fix... and has a trailing Unicode ellipses ever even been used in a title here before?
I can't really describe it any differently than "the presence of a period in the middle of the title makes the title ending feel weird without one". There's a grammatical pause in the mid-title, and then the end trails off into the æther. I'm left hanging, and it looks bad. Did I miss something? How do I enunciate this title properly?
Like @cfabbro said, it's really a style-guide-ish choice, similar to deciding to use sentence case, not putting periods in acronyms (e.g. "F.B.I." vs. "FBI"), and so on. In general, headlines shouldn't have a trailing period, but it might make sense to only apply that to single-sentence ones.
For example, Mother Jones's style guide includes (can't link to the section directly, but it's under "headlines"):
I've been meaning to add a "Posting Guidelines" page to the Docs that will include a section on title style, I should probably stop procrastinating on that.
Yeah, it does feel a bit awkward, though I also can't really put my finger on exactly why, grammatically speaking. So I created a gitlab issue for this so Deimos can decide what he wants to do with the issue:
https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/-/issues/708
cc: @emdash
It's a parallelism issue.
If there were just one sentence -- as is the case with many headlines -- the ending period being stripped doesn't really matter. In this one, however, the first sentence sets up the pattern to be followed by closing the sentence with a period, and removing the last period breaks that structure. It would be even more noticeable for a title with three sentences, for example:
The explains precisely what my hold up with the title in its current form is. Thanks!
Maybe I'm the first then? :)
🏆 "1st to break the site in that particular way" ;)
How's this? A trailing period with a zero-width space after it.
🥈 "2nd to break the site, but only in a theoretical way that was just a slight variation on 1st place's idea":PEdit: Medal revoked in stunning controversy... ZWJ after the period doesn't work! (just tested)
What a travesty. I have never seen a more unfair award in my life.
ZWSP is different than ZWJ, but maybe they're both stripped automatically.
True, but even so, I would assume all Unicode space separators and control characters are ignored if ZWJ is.
Also, sorry... but I don't make up the arbitrary award rules, I only enforce them!
Oh, to clarify I realized it only stripped the trailing period. I was making a suggestion of checking for an earlier period before applying that function, to omit two-sentence titles like the above.
I then realized it would still fail on formal titles (Mr, Mrs) if you added that exception, but decided that was inconsequential. I probably made it more confusing than it needed to be.
Ah, gotcha. And yeah, that might be a good idea... so I created a gitlab issue for it:
https://gitlab.com/tildes/tildes/-/issues/708