62 replies to this topic

[*Anastasia]

I maintain, as I have since the beginning of the two-candidate campaign, that Clinton is the better candidate for Americans, and Trump the better candidate for the rest of the world. As a self-interested non-American, my instinct is therefore to root for Trump despite my belief Clinton will win. However, I can hardly blame any self-interested American for preferring Clinton over Trump.

 

And just as I feel that considering La Riva or Stein might be better presidents than Trump or Clinton is a low bar to clear, I still fully believe that saying Trump or Clinton would be better than the other is a low bar to clear—no matter which of the two you prefer. They're two of the single most despicable people I've ever seen thrust so close to power, and the very fact American democracy allows either of them within grasping distance of it is proof positive, in my view, that American democracy is broken, possibly irreparably.

 

The primary reason I still feel Trump is the better candidate for the rest of the world is that Clinton, sadly, still maintains an air of respectability around her. It's undeserved, it's unwarranted, but it's there. If Clinton wins, the rest of the world is very likely to, at least for the next four years, write Trump off as a fringe occurrence, and once more bury our collective heads in the sand thinking that scary though he was, sanity prevailed in the end.

 

Clinton is not the sane choice, though. She's just as dangerous as Trump—perhaps more so, on the pure basis that she's found politically-expedient ways to hide the same agenda Trump boasts openly. Which, again, makes her the better choice for Americans: she might wreak havoc, but she'll do it slowly and methodically, carefully weighing every option to ensure she maintains the illusion of sanity Trump lost long ago. This means less short-term pain for America: and as a result, longer-term suffering for everyone, and everything, America hurts.

 

I don't want that. I want America to stop doing all it currently does to harm others. I want America to stop bolstering despotic regimes whose interests align with American hegemony. I want America to stop using drones to drop bombs on children in developing countries. I want America to stop obstructing meaningful international efforts towards peaceful solutions to difficult problems, to stop obstructing action combating climate change, to stop obstructing the right of people around the world to self-determination of their own destinies. I want America to stop pushing international agreements like the TPP that grant profit-hungry corporations extrajudiciality at the expense of the wellbeing of the peoples and the environments they want to exploit.

 

There is no candidate who wants to do all of this. If there was, I would support that candidate. But it wouldn't matter, because Americans, by and large, wouldn't. And why should they? Americans benefit from being the world's only superpower; they benefit from the exploitation of others. In the absence of a peaceful, democratic solution to the problems posed by America in the world today, then, I feel the best result is the one which causes the most destruction to America's global reputation, to America's ability to maintain its standing in the world, in the shortest period of time. And between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the latter is that result.

 

As I say, I can't blame Americans for not wanting what I want. I can't blame Americans for picking the lesser of two evils for them, even if she is the greater of two evils for others. But that doesn't mean I have to be happy about the result.

[Justavictim82]

Show proof of people who fear saying they support Trump? Sorry, but that's not possible. I get at least 25 political calls a day, I do not answer them. You are basing it on people who actually respond. They've already proved that the majority of these polls also oversample Democrats. I don't know what else to tell you. 60 year olds aren't answering their phones for people who calls 10 times a day, neither are 40 year olds, neither are most people who have things to do and don't sit around waiting for political phone calls. Media bias has been proven, poll bias has been proven, open your mind, expand your news gathering beyond CNN/FOX/MSNBC. Why is Clinton campaigning so hard in PA if it's a wrap? They know more then you. They brainwash you, that's how they get you to vote for them. They know the polls aren't telling the true story, but want you to believe they are. Holy fuck the state of this nation and gullible people. Kevorkian, why did you die? I can't take living with fools anymore.

I'm gonna vote for Hillary cause Trump said he grabs pussy, but she has people promoting her who talk about fucking bitches and ho's.. man.. I just don't get it. How can people be so stupid?

So if people FEAR supporting Trump in public, how do you know their numbers if they exist at all? This is paranoia Thrash and has no basis other than you saying "Trust me". It is a chicken shit fallacy I have heard for a year. I will believe it when I see it. But then of course.... the election is rigged. I don't want Hillary. Nor do I want Trump. I wish this to become more than a 2 party system because as it stands, this system does not represent America.

[KiWi]

How do I benefit?

I don't. Not directly, and I would argue not even indirectly. Unless you consider just being able to live and not have my direct life overly complicated is a unique blessing that people in Canada, UK, Germany, France, Italy, etc don't also share.

The US, China, Russia, France, and the United Kingdom should have their entire governments hung, and the nations broken up into 50,100,1000 different nations.

Fuck each and everyone of them. And fuck Denmark too.

[voidoid]

Hillary will be an absolute disaster for the US economy if the Dems take the House.  Trump will do everything in his misunderstood powers to end the world.

 

What a wonderful choice we have:  an epic disaster is the lesser of two deplorables.

 

Frankly I have no idea who will win, but I have a strong suspicion that the polls are going to be far off the actual outcome.  The pollsters have lost their ability to get a representative sample of the entire population.  Nearly no one younger than me has a land line, so they are not part of the sample set.

[King Biscuit]

Hillary will be an absolute disaster for the US economy if the Dems take the House.  Trump will do everything in his misunderstood powers to end the world.

 

What a wonderful choice we have:  an epic disaster is the lesser of two deplorables.

 

Frankly I have no idea who will win, but I have a strong suspicion that the polls are going to be far off the actual outcome.  The pollsters have lost their ability to get a representative sample of the entire population.  Nearly no one younger than me has a land line, so they are not part of the sample set.

 

Just look at Nate Silver being totally off on the Dem primary in Michigan.

Everyone is cord cutting, thus, all polls are taken by people over 50 with landlines and cable tv.

[Justavictim82]

The way I see it, Trump has hedged his bets immensely. If he wins, he wins. if he loses, you peddles the "rigged" rhetoric and makes substantial income off of it

[voidoid]

Just look at Nate Silver being totally off on the Dem primary in Michigan.

Everyone is cord cutting, thus, all polls are taken by people over 50 with landlines and cable tv.

 

 

I'm over 50 and haven't had a land line since last century.  I still have cable since I can't imagine watching movies on my phone.

[*Anastasia]

Hillary will be an absolute disaster for the US economy if the Dems take the House.

With respect, I disagree. The economy likes stability, and Clinton is the definition of the status quo candidate. With or without the House, I don't see her making huge policy shifts that are going to disrupt the economy all that terribly.

Contrast Trump: he's a huge wildcard, and no one, not even his supporters, knows exactly what to expect of him. Can you imagine the hit the economy's likely to take the day after the election? Not because of anything he's done—he won't even have been in power!—but just because of the huge amount of unsurety and unpredictability around him.

The pollsters have lost their ability to get a representative sample of the entire population.  Nearly no one younger than me has a land line, so they are not part of the sample set.

Everyone is cord cutting, thus, all polls are taken by people over 50 with landlines and cable tv.

I get the point you're trying to make; really, I do. But that's just not how polls work. If a pollster can't get a significant-enough sample size from all voting ages, they're not going to present the results, because they will be torn to shreds for it. Even if younger respondents are less numerous than older ones, the results will be normalized to the population demographics.

The idea that young people aren't being polled because they don't have landlines is also misleading. Firstly, quelle surprise, some young people do have landlines, and will get caught up in calling lists. Again, even if they're less numerous, normalization is a thing. But by and large they won't be, because pollsters set out with a certain number of people from each demographic they intend to target, and if they reach their target of older people, they'll just keep calling until they have a decent sample size of younger ones. Secondly, more and more polls are being done through virtual online panels, which don't rely on young people having a landline, only an internet connection.

Now, both of these have their flaws still. If fewer young people have landlines, perhaps those of us who still do are somehow part of a political demographic that does not reflect the feelings of the average young person. Online polls, for their part, rely on people actively signing up to participate, and it seems reasonable to me that people with a strong enough interest in surveys to do so may also not be representative of the population at large.

Neither of these, however, are where I believe the real problem with polls lies: design. Inaccurate poll results are more likely to be caused by faulty poll design than inaccurate sampling, and as someone who takes part in a lot of polls, let me tell you, there's a lot of room for improvement as far as the actual drafting of surveys go. More often than not, I can make a pretty educated guess who commissioned a given poll just by the way the questions are worded; careful wording can get you basically whatever result you want to present to your client or to your audience.

'There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.'

Not specifically political, but let me give you an example of a survey question I've received, from a major national polling firm, to illustrate: 'Of your last 10 purchases of jewelry, how many were from each of the following brands?' What followed was a limited set of brands, most of which I'd never heard of, and none of which I'd purchased. No 'none of the above.' No 'other,' no option to write in your own brands. No way to indicate that I have not, in fact, made ten jewelry purchases in my entire life. And as an online survey, no way to advance in the survey without giving an answer of the brands listed that added up to ten—almost as if the survey was designed to show that a decent percentage of the population purchased one or more of the brands in the list.

Now, if I'm personally the sort to care about statistical validity, I could at this point just close my web browser and be done with it. Often, however, pollsters give you a small reward for completing the survey, incentivizing respondents to lie in order to finish it, statistical validity be damned. And who can blame them, when the pollsters themselves clearly don't give a damn about their own statistical validity?

Political polls usually aren't much better. True, even ones commissioned by the parties themselves are more likely to be looking for real data than a talking point to give to shareholders, but that doesn't stop them from being poorly-written, purposely or otherwise. The biggest bugbear I'm used to encountering are questions that do 'head-to-head' polls between two (or more) candidates, not allowing respondents to select candidates not on their list, or indicate that they're undecided, or indicate that they can't or don't intend to vote. And wouldn't you know it, as these are the polls that neatly add up to 100%, they're the ones media outlets prefer to rely upon.

Who can be anything but surprised when they're inaccurate?

[voidoid]

Ana:  love you babe b/c you are smart, but Hillary is my choice b/c (I'm a former Republican) she makes me fear the next 4/8 years economy but Drumpf makes me fear the end of the world.  Or at least humans existence on it.

 

My only condition is that we get a third and/or fourth party to mix up the debate.

[Redezra]

Ana, this is where you and I have to differ~ which sucks I totally love your opinions

 

While I would like a nice happy world where everyone minds their own business and works together in a nice fuzzy people-first way, it's in my interests to maintain the anglosphere's dominion. I'd like it if it was done with less bombs and more respect, but if the power brokers are more interested in military and economic dominance, then as long as it's the UK/USA/Canada/Australia/NZ over everyone else, it's honestly a better option than the alternative. In my case, that alternative is a south east asian power vacuum that China moves into.

 

I don't care how much I agree that the US and it's allies are bad, China is far worse.

 

So I'm suggesting a change to your note at the top. Clinton is the best choice for ongoing anglosphere dominion. Trump is the best choice for everyone else.

[ᗅᗺᗷᗅ]

Interesting that no one who supports Trump believes that Clinton will win.

[King Biscuit]

 Drumpf makes me fear the end of the world.  Or at least humans existence on it.

 

This.

[*Anastasia]

Ana, this is where you and I have to differ~ which sucks I totally love your opinions

 

While I would like a nice happy world where everyone minds their own business and works together in a nice fuzzy people-first way, it's in my interests to maintain the anglosphere's dominion. I'd like it if it was done with less bombs and more respect, but if the power brokers are more interested in military and economic dominance, then as long as it's the UK/USA/Canada/Australia/NZ over everyone else, it's honestly a better option than the alternative. In my case, that alternative is a south east asian power vacuum that China moves into.

 

I don't care how much I agree that the US and it's allies are bad, China is far worse.

 

So I'm suggesting a change to your note at the top. Clinton is the best choice for ongoing anglosphere dominion. Trump is the best choice for everyone else.

 

While I obviously disagree with you, I understand where you're coming from. Interesting to me, however, is that I actually disagree with you in two separate ways. The obvious disagreement is with your assertion that preserving Anglosphere dominion is desirable. I could go into the specifics of why, but frankly, you probably either know them from our previous discussions or can surmise them from such; in short, though, suffice it to say that I feel the Anglosphere is what got us into the mess we're in today, and knocking it down a peg is well worth the short-term costs to its citizens, you and me included.

 

But there's a second disagreement at play, and that's your postulate that what is good for America is, in fact, good for the rest of the Anglosphere. This is a belief I fundamentally cannot accept, an axiom from which I fundamentally cannot work. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to sit here and argue that I currently live under an American yoke as oppressive as that in the real dictatorships it enables. I might be idealistic, but I'm not blind. I know full well that in the short term, American success bolsters Canada's, and American decline means Canadian decline. The key phrase, however, is, 'in the short term.' And I don't just mean in a 'future of humanity' sort of way, either. I do mean that, too, of course: the Anglosphere's disregard for environmental concerns, its drastic overconsumption of limited resources, its obsession with destructive economic expansion? All of this is unsustainable, and if unchecked will lead to ruin in the end not only for the developing nations it exploits today, but for the Anglosphere itself as well.

 

Even setting that aside, however, even indulging in the foolish optimism that somehow these are things that could change while still maintaining American hegemony, you really need to ask yourself: does American self-interest, does the maintenance of American hegemony, depend on you? Does it depend on Oceania, on Canada, on the United Kingdom? On these pillars of the Anglosphere dominion your self-interested ideals seek to protect? I would strongly argue that it does not. American exceptionalism is for the benefit of Americans, plain and simple (rich, white Americans, at that). Any benefits you or I experience as a result of American hegemony are side effects of it, not its intended purpose. We benefit because it currently benefits America that we benefit, and any circumstance that changes that would change our fortunes as well.

 

Interesting that no one who supports Trump believes that Clinton will win.

 

It's almost like their media outlets of choice have been telling them for the past month that if Trump doesn't win, it's because the election's rigged—and pay no attention to all the opinion polls showing Clinton leading, because they're rigged, too.

 

A fortnight ago when Trump said he would keep us 'in suspense' as to whether he'd accept the election results were he to lose, a comment on the CBC News article made me happy for the first time in a long time that I'd ventured into an online comments section:

 

 

 

This is why we have a monarch, with a judiciary and military that pledge loyalty to that monarch.

Pull a $20 out of your wallet and say, 'I'll keep you in suspense.'

See that expression on the Queen's face?

That's her 'the Tower's been empty for a long time' look.

[King Biscuit]

[Redezra]

I don't think the US does much for our benefit, but I don't think the US could do what it does without it's strong allies.

 

I'm also against any and all moves away from centralised government. I like governments to be as minimal as possible, but I like it when they span vast, vast areas. The EU for example. I think it should just bloody well move to a centralised government. That way they can fix the electoral problems they have now, fix the economic (specifically monetary) problems they have now, and generally have a more streamlined and open social and economic forum. Needless to say I had a good three day mope when Brexit happened.

 

 

I like my Cyberpunk-esque futures, where the world consists of three to four supernations that act as large economic zones, where the government's sole and only purpose is to act as a service network and legal backing to the labor force. Strong international ties, wide scale free trade agreements, and supernational legal entities help me get there. Isolationism, reactionism, and nationalism do not.

[He who posts]

[voidoid]

 

 

This is why we have a monarch, with a judiciary and military that pledge loyalty to that monarch.

Pull a $20 out of your wallet and say, 'I'll keep you in suspense.'

See that expression on the Queen's face?

That's her 'the Tower's been empty for a long time' look.

 

 

If you hear tomorrow morning that Drumpf has won, would you ask Ottawa to invade and annex us?  Our military pledges loyalty to the President (CinC), which leads to the uncomfortable thought that mutiny would be a good and necessary outcome.  I had strong preferences in some previous Presidential elections, but this is the first time that I've been truly scared of the outcome.

[Thrash]

 

 

 

This is why we have a monarch, with a judiciary and military that pledge loyalty to that monarch.

Pull a $20 out of your wallet and say, 'I'll keep you in suspense.'

See that expression on the Queen's face?

That's her 'the Tower's been empty for a long time' look.

 

 

If you hear tomorrow morning that Drumpf has won, would you ask Ottawa to invade and annex us?  Our military pledges loyalty to the President (CinC), which leads to the uncomfortable thought that mutiny would be a good and necessary outcome.  I had strong preferences in some previous Presidential elections, but this is the first time that I've been truly scared of the outcome.

 

To contrast, this is the first time I've been enthusiastic about an election and I'm 44 years old. So enthusiastic about it that I want to call out tonight and ruin my perfect attendance.

[King Biscuit]

 

 

 

 

This is why we have a monarch, with a judiciary and military that pledge loyalty to that monarch.

Pull a $20 out of your wallet and say, 'I'll keep you in suspense.'

See that expression on the Queen's face?

That's her 'the Tower's been empty for a long time' look.

 

 

If you hear tomorrow morning that Drumpf has won, would you ask Ottawa to invade and annex us?  Our military pledges loyalty to the President (CinC), which leads to the uncomfortable thought that mutiny would be a good and necessary outcome.  I had strong preferences in some previous Presidential elections, but this is the first time that I've been truly scared of the outcome.

 

To contrast, this is the first time I've been enthusiastic about an election and I'm 44 years old. So enthusiastic about it that I want to call out tonight and ruin my perfect attendance.

 

That's how I felt before the DNC fucked Bernie.

[*Anastasia]

To contrast, this is the first time I've been enthusiastic about an election and I'm 44 years old. So enthusiastic about it that I want to call out tonight and ruin my perfect attendance.

 
That's how I felt before the DNC fucked Bernie.