Essay talk:Detailed response to Secret Squirrel

Desysop you? Dude, I'm just a sysop myself. Secret Squirrel (talk) 03:17, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Thought you were a bureaucrat as well? Mr. Anon (talk) 03:18, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * We haven't had bureaucrats in almost a year. Тyrannis An iron, but caring, fist 03:19, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * What Ty said. Also, I blocked you because I was pissed at you, but also knowing you can easily unblock yourself and in the long run a block is no big deal.  I don't think I ever desysoped anyone even when I was a 'rat, nor would I have. Secret Squirrel (talk) 03:23, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

... seriously?
"Because I fear Secret Squirrel will block me and desysop me if I respond to his points about Obama on the talk page itself" this is a wiki with a anarchist-type culture, you REALLY think one person being Orwellian would last long?-- il' Dictator   Mikal  03:20, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah I was probably exaggerating there, but given the reverting spree and the 3 month long block, and being branded as a "revert-on-site" editor...
 * In any case, this is probably better done here, since the talk page thing was primarily based on edits irrelevant to this subject. Mr. Anon (talk) 03:25, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Did someone say Orwellian authoriariofascist overreaching moderator rules-mongering zealot? Because that's my job here.
 * In all seriousness, there are a few of us left who actually try to maintain fairness around here. Desysopping is something that has to be done by a community vote; one user can't do it unilaterally. 03:30, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Ok, Anon
While most here still believe Obama's the lesser evil, you're denying a bunch of things:


 * He signed PATRIOT when he was perfectly in the power not to, not like the NDAA where there was a supermajority. Blatant use of not as bad as here.
 * To not call Assange a whistleblower and take the neocon side...wow. Daniel Ellsberg, the leaker of the Pentagon Files, would probably tear you a new one.
 * While Nader's actions were clearly misguided in 2000, he's still one of the last remaining high-profile progressives out there, by US standards.
 * Please don't try to defend Obama's Nobel Peace Prize.

And Secret Squirrel, Ron Paul has literally no chance for a protest vote without leaving the GOP. He's too batshit to support anyways. Osaka Sun (talk) 03:38, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Public opinion is an important factor, as are his campaign views. I'm not supporting his decision, but I am saying that it was not a promise break.
 * Manning is not a whistleblower. Assange is a different story, but you need to set a clear distinction between what is whistleblowing and what is a legitimate national security threat. You can't just let people leak anything; Ellsberg new what he was doing. People like Manning just randomly dumped files.
 * I like Nader for what he did before 2000. And I would continue to like him if he did what he did best; lobby for progressive issues. Running as a candidate doesn't help anything at all.
 * I'm not defending the Nobel Peace Prize. It really says a lot about Bush though if not being him can qualify you :P. Mr. Anon (talk) 03:44, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I submit that it is not so much the arrest of Manning than the conditions in which ze has been held that concern me the most. I also certainly don't lay the blame for the situation entirely on Obama; it's the Pentagon (one of the most arrogantly bloated and powerful institutions in human history, which is now so monstrous as to be effectively beyond criticism by anyone including the sitting Commander in Chief) that's been problematic.
 * And here's why Obama will always be the best place to put your vote, despite these seemingly big economic and political snafus. Civil rights trump all, and he's been very responsive in almost all areas (except perhaps the politically fraught ICE issue). 03:56, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * (EC) I think that Obama has benefited greatly from the hard jolt of reality with which he was hit on or around January 20, 2009. I fail to see, though, why Obama's Nobel Peace Prize reflects upon his character at all, seeing as how he did not seek it. 03:59, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * The fact that he didn't seek it is my point; you can't criticize him for that. As I said, that prize says far more about Bush than Obama. Mr. Anon (talk) 04:02, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * About the pros and cons of casting a protest vote for Ron Paul, a protest vote is voting for someone knowing they have little to no chance of winning, but doing so to send a message, no? If there was a better choice for a vote in the primaries, I'd like to know who.  Keith Russell Judd?  Good grief.  At least with Paul the protest votes send a message that is in part correctly interpreted as disgust with both major parties' current stance on domestic civil liberties and foreign policy.  For November it looks like a coin toss: Rocky Anderson vs. Gary Johnson.  I mean I could always just not vote, hoist the red and black flag and try to rouse the workers into a general strike.  Secret Squirrel (talk) 05:05, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Ah, politics, the art of defending the indefensible. Conor Friedersdorf recently wrote a great article on the incoherence of Obama's defenders. As for Afghanistan, this lengthy occupation was one of the best gifts al-Qaeda ever got -- what bin Laden called the "bleed-until-bankruptcy" plan. AQ is not tied to a nation-state. That was one of the biggest mistakes that the architects of this so-called war on terror made. But by all means, let's continue to toy with destabilizing a nuclear power, further radicalize its citizens, and kill innocents. Shall we go full-force into Yemen next? For Mr. Anon, I guess none of this matters as long as the Paulbots are slain in internet battles. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 05:47, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * As for Afghanistan, this lengthy occupation was one of the best gifts al-Qaeda ever got... Which would explain why they are presently ten times more powerful and influential than they were in 2001 — oh, wait... 06:10, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Powerful and influential enough to be fighting a virtual war in Yemen? Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 06:37, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * According to that article, al-Qaeda is the junior partner in the Yemeni campaign. In 2001, on the other hand, al-Qaeda had global reach and commanded an amount of popularity across their own part of the world. 06:57, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * It still is global. All we did was take out the core leadership in the Af-Pak region, causing it to disperse into a bunch of splinter groups and affiliates with cells still located in 70 countries. AQAP has gained quite a bit of traction over the past few years. As The Guardian reported recently: "For the first time in history al-Qaida controls territory," an Arab diplomat in Sana'a, Yemen's capital, told me. What could be called "AQ Mark I" has been largely wiped out, but it's been replaced by a more diffuse "AQ Mark II," which seems intent on making us play a game of terrorist whack-a-mole. I don't expect that we'll see any plans for something like a 9/11 anytime soon from AQ, but they are by no means done for. The bottom line is, one of bin Laden's explicitly stated goals was to drag the US into a lengthy war of attrition, and we said, "Heck, we'll give you two for the price of one!" If you consider the campaign in Afghanistan to be some kind of resounding success, you're living in a fantasy land. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 08:35, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't expect that we'll see any plans for something like a 9/11 anytime soon from AQ... So you admit that their capacity to carry out attacks of that sort has been reduced rather than increased by the campaign?
 * If you consider the campaign in Afghanistan to be some kind of resounding success, you're living in a fantasy land. You can only say that if you move the goalposts and forget the original (stated) goal of the campaign. We did, as you say, "take out [Al-Qaeda's] core leadership" in that area, and also knocked off Osama bin Laden. 02:25, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd not necessarily defend Obama, but he is the only viable choice in this election. A Romney White House must be avoided at all costs, and protest votes unfortunately just help Romney win. 06:47, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * It always amuses me to listen to people yammer on about how ideologically indistinguishable two candidates are, right up until election time when they suddenly discover that one of the candidates is, in fact, Satan in a suit and tie, and thus all votes must go toward his ideologically indistinguishable opponent. 06:57, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * My vote doesn't really count anyway, though, as I don't live in a swing state, so my protest vote is not going to be helping Romney anyway. Also, I wouldn't say Obama and Romney are indistinguishable as Romney doesn't really have any discernible ideology. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 08:43, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * The White House to avoid at all costs was Gingrich or Santorum and that danger has passed. Romney?  Meh.  Both he and Obama are completely interchangable plastic chameleons.  Who cares one way or the other - the same policies are going to continue.  I'm amused by arguments that a vote for anyone but Major Party A is a vote for Major Party B, as if Major Party B is evil incarnate (what? and Major Party A isn't?) and Major Party A is somehow entitled to your vote.  Bottom line is a vote for anyone but out-of-the-mainstream protest candidates is a vote to continue the status quo on a whole host of issues - drug policy, incarceration, capital punishment, foreign policy, militarism and global empire, privacy and surveillance, neoliberal trade policy, TSA, militarization of the police and the list goes on.  The tricks are figuring out which protest votes for which candidate will be correctly interpreted as sending a strong message on the above, while not allowing those very real issues to be sabotaged by nutters trying to glom on like Alex Jones/LaRouche/9-11 truthers/birthers/NWO/chemtrails/whatever.  Secret Squirrel (talk) 12:52, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * As long as we're being pessimistic, why not admit that voting for candidates who won't win will never send any coherent message or achieve anything? They will be ignored, politics will grind on without them once again, and the world will be a horrible police state. Ennui!
 * Could've sworn this essay/response/thing was about whether Obama was responsible for certain bad things, though. 99.50.98.145 (talk) 13:31, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * The vote for Nader in 2000 wasn't ignored, although the "progressive" Democrat noise machine blaming Nader for taking votes that Gore was entiiitled to drowned out serious discussion of why he attracted the support he did. Nader's presence even caused Gore to shift left at the last minute and start talking about some real issues other than fuzzy math and Silicon Valley technobabble.  All the support Ron Paul is attracting is being anything but ignored.  As I noted above, it is at least in part being correctly interpreted as widespread dissatisfaction with the status quo on foreign policy and civil liberties, and is going to pressure other candidates to co-opt Paul's positions.  Keith Russell Judd getting 41% in the Democratic primary here against Obama, although that was a pro-coal protest vote and not one I'd be inclined to support, hasn't been ignored; the Obama campaign got the message loud and clear and is now scrambling to salvage its campaign in other more swingy coal states like OH and PA.  It didn't matter that the LaFollette Progressives, Non-Partisan League, Greenback, Grange, and Farmer-Labor parties never got many people elected; most of their planks were co-opted and eventually enacted.  I'd also point out that all the ferment on the far left during the Vietnam era was what brought about major, and rapid changes on everything from women's rights to the end of the draft, precisely because establishment politicians and the mainstream media were forced to change or risk even more domestic unrest.  Then there was John Brown's quixotic insurrection against slavery...of course John Brown was ignored, politics ground on, and slavery still exists. Secret Squirrel (talk) 14:05, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * BTW Obama is responsible for certain bad things. The Conor Friedersdorf article Neb linked above comes highly recommended .  I could do a point by point refutation of Mr. Anon's essay if I had a lot of time today and could spend hours on it, but many of those points are B.S. on their face. "Obama does not have direct control over the TSA", "Manning is not a whistleblower", "Afghanistan war is irrelevant to civil liberties", "David Duke is equivilant"...*facepalm* Secret Squirrel (talk) 14:13, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * My point was more that the candidates/parties aren't quite identical, and that one could similarly hand-wave the effectiveness of voting for random niches in a winner-takes-all election (primarily because there are multiple interpretations of third parties' support). I may have been distracted by Listener's "ho ho ho, people are such fools" comment, though. 99.50.98.145 (talk) 15:05, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Well the multiple interpretations are where the pitfalls lie. Votes for Ron Paul always run the risk of being interpreted as motivated by Alex Jonesism or what was in his newsletters two decades ago.  That is why some - e.g. the Natural Law Party, whatever happened to them - are just not good choices for protest votes.  Nader, Kucinich, or voting for Cindy Sheehan over Pelosi on the other hand, not so easy to misinterpret.  Secret Squirrel (talk) 15:21, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm going to have to disagree with you there on the Duke comparison, SS. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 16:46, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Supporting candidates like Ron Paul does not "send a message". Scratch that - the only message it sends is that you want the elimination of the income tax, gold standard, private mercenaries handling Al-Qaida, etc. Nor does voting for Ralph Nader. It's not going to "force the Democratic Party to move over to the left", if anything, it will do the opposite. If all the hardcore liberals leave the Democratic Party, the only people left will be moderates/centrists/conservatives. Since Nader is not going to win with only one sliver of the electorate, any vote for him is just symbolic.

You claim "Obama and Romney are the same on foreign policy". That's not true either. Romney is considerably more aggressive on matters like Iran, torture, secret prisons, etc. Even on the issue of drone strikes, Obama will probably have a lower number of drone strikes in his last year than Bush's. But if you still consider them too similar, it isn't Obama's fault or the Democrats' fault - it is the electorate's. If you want one of the parties to move closer to your point of view, you will have to do it the hard way by changing the electorate, which will take time, patience, and education. A clear example of this is Guantanamo. Even though Obama supported closing the prison, 90% of the Senate voted to block necessary funding to do so. Is it because the Senate is corrupt? No, it's because nobody wants to be the guy who brought terrorists into their state, regardless of the rationality behind it.

It has been shown throughout history that voting for third parties to "send a message" does not work. In 1912, progressives upset with Taft voted for Roosevelt and Debbs. But all that did was get the most conservative candidate, Wilson, elected. And 8 years of Wilson turned the country into what it became during Harding/Coolidge. Similarly, in 1948 and 1968, votes for Thurmond and Wallace didn't "send a message", it just made each party less racist (a good thing, but it shows how that strategy does not work). Anderson's break from the Republicans in 1980 only resulted in the party becoming more radical. Perot (though I'll always respect him for being a legitimate independent) divided the electorate and made Clinton not have support that he needed to pass important legislation.

Finally, if Obama was so clearly a traitor and voting against him is the only way to "send a message", why is Congresswoman Barbara Lee, the most liberal member of Congress today, one of his biggest supporters? If you have any doubts about Obama, compare him to FDR, the greatest President of all time. Also, if Obama tried moving "more to the left", it would be political suicide. Mr. Anon (talk) 15:40, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Interestingly, I've noticed that people like you never seem to mention Congresswoman Lee, while yelling in favor of Ron Paul or Kucinich. Exactly one member of congress voted against the Afghanistan War, and it was not Paul or Kucinich. Mr. Anon (talk) 15:48, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Barbara Lee is one of the best ones, and in fact regularly voted against her own party against intervention in Yugoslavia and Libya. But I thought we were talking about presidential candidates here.  Bringing her up is a red herring. Secret Squirrel (talk) 16:29, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Barbara Lee is not a Presidential candidate, but writing her in on the ballot is equivalent in effect to supporting people like Paul (actually better, since you won't end up supporting horrible domestic policy positions). The irony about Paul is that "progressives" who vote for him end up having to ignore the vast majority of his positions, while at the same time they attack Obama's supporters for ignoring a few pet issues. Mr. Anon (talk) 16:45, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * (ec) It's simply not true -- as SS noted above, third party candidates may not win, but the planks of third parties are often co-opted. You have a bad case of tunnel vision here. You're arguing against a straw Firebagger. I can't speak for SS, but I didn't vote for Obama in 2008 and I didn't freak out because he "betrayed" liberalism. In fact, he's doing exactly what I expected him to do: Working for the people who paid to have him elected and throwing the liberals a bone every now and then. So all your arguments amount to not as bad as and other red herrings. Plus, like I said, my vote doesn't count as I don't live in a swing state. That said, I will not be voting for Paul. There's always the Green Party, I guess. (I also recall hearing that they dropped the alt med quackery from their platform recently.) Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 16:46, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm in the same problem as Nebby; living in nebraska, we have one, maybe two "EV's that can possibly not auto vote republican, the rest of the srtate (and the majority of Ec's) go to whoever is the republican.
 * Had the pinkos bothered to listen to what Obama was saying, rather than get hopped up on his iconography and cavort about in a messianic frenzy, they would have noticed that Obama did not, in fact, share their beliefs that the Big Nasty Bankers are each equipped with a set of red horns and a spiky tail.
 * Working for the people who paid to have him elected... Those would be the people who ponied up with the other 98% of his campaign funds? 02:25, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Nader
Though I know I'm gonna get hit over the head for this, I don't think Nader was a bad vote in 2000. Looking back with hindsight, yeah, we should've elected Gore. But if you think back to the 2000 election, Gore was busy trying to disenfranchise the liberal vote. Remember how he picked Lieberman as his running mate? That, to me, didn't speak of someone I would want to support. Furthermore, and again looking in hindsight, I once asked the late Howard Zinn back in 2004 if he had any regrets about having advocated a Nader candidacy in 2000 after Bush et al started whittling away the constitution once they were elected, and his response was "Back in 2000, we knew Bush was bad. But also knew Gore wasn't much better. Then 9/11 and the war against terror and our liberties happened and we realized that voting for Gore would've been far better than letting Bush win. But thinking back to my mindset in 2000, who could've really predicted just how monstrous the Bush regime became?" 14:17, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm gonna get hit over the head for this too, but Gore would have been as bad as Bush. Vice President Joe Lieberman is a big clue here.  Bush even initially opposed the creation of TSA and the Department of Homeland Security - first proposed by Lieberman and Arlen Specter- before he caved.  Gore wouldn't have even been that good.  Secret Squirrel (talk) 14:27, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * If I remember correctly, Lieberman hadn't been much of a war hawk until after 9/11. Even then, if he got in the way, Gore could have always replaced him in 2004.
 * I find it odd how you only point to these issues as if they mean everything. Gore was 100 times better on gay rights, climate change, taxes, etc. That's just undeniable. It's likely that the Afghanistan war would have started either way, and quite probably the Patriot Act, TSA, and Homeland Security, but I don't see Gore doing things like secret military prisons or invading countries based on false premises. Mr. Anon (talk) 15:21, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Gay rights: the substantive change on this issue has come through the courts (see: Lawrence vs. Texas), independent of both major parties which have been quite obstructionist (see: Don't Ask, Don't Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act). Obama is only now "evolving" because he has had pollsters and focus groups studying the issue for years and waited until he could no longer.  In my book this is called foot dragging, not leadership.  Climate change: between Bush's denialist think-tank hackery and Gore's obsession with creepy technocratic solutions, neither was particularly ideal.  Taxes: matter of opinion.  I emphasize foreign policy and civil liberties because those are the pressing issues.  U.S. foreign policy as Noam Chomsky and Chalmers Johnson and numerous others have repeatedly pointed out, and domestically the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world, a pervasive surveillance society, out of control police abusing civil forfeiture, warrantless searches, NDAA...I'll concede we were far less likely to see torture as official policy under Gore than Bush.  On the whole I think it's a draw. Secret Squirrel (talk) 15:45, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * DADT was progressive for its time for gay rights! Before gays couldn't serve in the military at all. You're wrong about Obama as well - at the time of his endorsement of gay marriage, most blacks were against it. Now, most blacks are for it.


 * It doesn't matter which solution is "ideal", in politics you aren't going to get the "ideal". Gore had solutions, Bush did not, and Nader certainly was not helping.


 * Stop claiming that the issues you yell about are the most "pressing". That's obviously not what most people see them as, or else the candidates would be talking about them more. Also your claims about the NDAA are wrong. I've pointed this out numerous times, the Democrats actually removed the worst of the bill. Compare the final bill to the house version. Mr. Anon (talk) 15:55, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Let's make something clear: these are important issues, but if you want the candidates to talk about them, voting for third parties will not help. Mr. Anon (talk) 15:59, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Nor will voting for the people not talking about them. -- il' Dictator   Mikal  16:34, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * As I said, I was never claiming that. But the Democratic Party is the most likely to support these issues given that it actually has people who care a significant deal about them (Barbara Lee, Kucinich, among others). The issue is the electorate, and voting for Nader won't change the electorate. If the Democrats control both houses and the White House for a long period of time, the voting base will gradually turn more liberal, which will make it easier to elect candidates that support the issues you care about. Mr. Anon (talk) 16:43, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * or self-serving assholes; which both parties are made up of. -- il' Dictator   Mikal  16:45, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * What I'm trying to say is that if Democrats control the government for a while, even through the election of some moderates in certain states, people like Sanders and Kucinich will be less "fringe" and more mainstream. Mr. Anon (talk) 16:48, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * It won't happen, those who decide who gets nominated won't let somebody who's a threat to what they want in office; and if they do they will do all in their power to slam their face in the ground or corrupt them. -- il' Dictator   Mikal  16:51, 19 May 2012 (UTC)-- il'  Dictator   Mikal  16:51, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * (Dammit Mika, stop ECing me with your despair!) If I recall, the Green Party would also have gotten official recognition and/or funding if Nader had won 5% of the popular vote, which was apparently another reason people chose that route. (I doubt it would've been sufficient to create a viable third party, but it seemed to be a factor nonetheless.) 16:55, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * (Gah, double EC!) History supports me. Lincoln ran as a moderate, only being against the spread of slavery. However, he managed to guide the public into becoming more and more anti-slavery and eventually his party got the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments passed. If he had run as being a hardcore civil rights advocate, he would have not come close to the presidency. Similar thing with FDR; he ran as a moderate fiscal conservatism, but ended up redrawing the party lines themselves. His moderate actions towards civil rights got the black vote on his side, paving the way for Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson to pass full Civil Rights. Mr. Anon (talk) 16:57, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * The point is that dividing the liberal vote will not help get more liberal policies. Mr. Anon (talk) 16:57, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Hold on, this is all irrelevant. Are people here suggesting that the policies in the early 2000s would have been somehow more progressive if more people had voted for Nader? That is the main question. Mr. Anon (talk) 17:02, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes. If "more" means "52% of voters", anyway. Beyond that, I don't watch politics closely enough to see any real connections between Nader votes and liberal policies. 17:08, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I rest my case. Mr. Anon (talk) 17:13, 19 May 2012 (UTC)