Politics Thread!

[F-ZeroOne]

Say what you like about Biden, but one thing I’m going to miss is four years of not having to go “Oh, what now?” every other day for four years…

[Mat]

All I'm left with is that social media's really fucked this whole thing up.

Working in traditional media, and one of the bigger commercial examples of which in the UK, I've been trying to define why traditional media is struggling; and believe me, they are struggling, as all of the people who make the content they sell are on 6 month contracts, while the bean counters and management are on permanent ones.

I've recently been refining my thoughts into something easily repeated that gets the point across, such as how traditional media is struggling to redefine itself in the face of social media companies who are free of over a century's worth of regulation. I also remember one of the lessons in my BTEC Media Studies warning of the dangers of having a news feed tailored to your individual preferences, and have watched in horror as I've seen these dangers manifest.

And I've got it down to this:

"Traditional media has to cater to one audience of many, while social media is able to cater to many audiences of one."

I strongly believe that one of the answers is to break up these monolithic companies, but they've gotten so large, a lot of the time they can just buy favourable legislation; it's gotten so bad, US corporate law is becoming global corporate law by default.
That example of the 6 month contracts above? It's their way of bypassing the legal protections UK workers would normally get and implementing a more US-style hire-and-fire system. And people are so desperate, they're signing these things.

An engineer who works with me started working here as a freelance Lighting Director, then moved to one of those 6-month temp contracts before finally moving to engineering.
He has yet to receive his permanent contract from our department, but out of curiosity, I warned him that he might want to check his old contract to see if he'd waived his rightes under the working time directive.
See, I was made aware of this when my old company was swallowed up by another, and during the TUPE process, we were made aware of this waiver. At the time, because it was a separate piece of paper, and we'd been notified about it, we naturally didn't sign it.

But sure enough, on examining my colleague's old temp contract, sure enough, there it was in black and white: notification that signing the contract would waive hise rights under the working time directive, meaning if they wanted him to, he would have to work more than 48 hours a week.

And that's one of the more insidious ways the right have gained control; they've done the boring legal work correctly assuming that traditionally left-leaning creatives won't properly read their contracts, allowing them to exploit them legally.

Sorry, wild tangent there, but with the company having just gone through another round of layoffs in less than a year, with primarily creative people being affected, I'm not in the best frame of mind.
The C-suite institute fucking stupid ideas, then the people who they rely on to make their content suffer the consequences when those fucking stupid ideas are revealed to be fucking stupid.

[Dio]

And I've got it down to this:

"Traditional media has to cater to one audience of many, while social media is able to cater to many audiences of one."

Yeah, that's a really good phrase. If a bit incomplete; a key property of the way it's changed politics is that even the AI-free algorithms turn out to be very good at capturing people's attention by feeding them any old bullshit clickbait.

(Although even the traditional media are also doing this; the mrs every now and then comes up with some rightwing nonsense and I know exactly where she's got it from, the Daily Mail website; she is on it less now, after I pointed out that my ability to spot where she's getting it from should be a red flag.)

[PFVA]

I don't think Elon Musk is nuts at all.

He's openly doing the Nazi salute at rallies.



Still believe there's some sanity in there somehow?

He may be a fascist but not nuts.

Fascism was very popular not just in Italy but also in Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Argentina and I believe also in Paraguai and Uruguay. And there is lots of people who miss it. They see it as law and order, safe streets, well behaved kids, christian education, women at home raising the children, and of course sexual orientations weren't to be talked about and were to be kept hidden, very hidden. Actually they have been presenting it to the new generations in an idyllic romantic way which is far from the truth.

Elon Musk's version seems to be an Americanised one in economic terms. Fascism believed in National Health, Social Security, and public schooling. This version now seems to believe in everything being private.

........

Regarding Trump administration policies:
Besides pulling out of the Paris Agreement and I'm one that has started to believe nothing is going to be done about the climate I also noticed he wants to pull out of the WHO, World Health Organization. That worries me. The WHO is not perfect, it has lots of room for improvement but without them it will be worse, I'm afraid that lots of people are going to die. Fm I heard today the withdrawal of the US has to be approved by the Congress, a Presidential law isn't enough. We will see.

[zip accident]

Yeah, "the opposition is nuts" is a pretty Stalinist stance, though I suspect Hitler aslo went along with it.

This is interesting though:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2d3e6zklxgo

The chair of the UK's competition watchdog has been ousted by government ministers who felt that the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) had failed to convince them it was sufficiently focused on growth.

...

Marcus Bokkerink, who has chaired the CMA since 2022, will be replaced on an interim basis by Doug Gurr, former boss of Amazon UK.

Messers Bezos and Trump are surely going to like this neutering of what used to be the monopolies and Merger Commision.

[PFVA]

I don't think Mother Nature approves the Gulf name change that Trump wants:

New Orleans isn't known for being a snow town but on Tuesday a winter storm blanketed the Big Easy in fresh snow. To the west, the first-ever blizzard unfolded in parts of Louisiana and Texas. NOLA shattered its one-day snow record with 4 inches by noon.

https://www.foxweather.com/weather-news ... nuary-2025

[KlaxonCow]

Pamela Hemphill. The 71 year old "MAGA Granny".

She deserves recognition because though she took part in the January 6th riots, she has refused Trump's blanket pardon of all the rioters, as she acknowledges that they were "wrong on that day" and is worried that Trump is "rewriting history".



The only one deserving of a pardon - as she's the only one to accept the responsibility and consequences of her actions - and she will be the only one who will not be pardoned.

The old human paradox. Those who want power are exactly the ones who should never be given it, and those who reject power would probably be amongst our best leaders but they correctly refuse the responsibility - because they actually understand what that responsibility is, realise that no-one is qualified or to be trusted (including themselves) and say "no".

(As I like to say, if I was given the job of "King of the World" my first and only action would be to remove and prohibit the job of "King of the World" and then immediately resign. Nope, not tempted to do any fiddling or meddling before resigning - because that's exactly how power gets you and corrupts you. The only act would be to make sure that "King of the World" is never allowed to happen again and then resign. My resignation speech? "We choose the Moon, not because it's easy but because it's hard. We're doing this the hard way and taking the long way round. Thank you.")

[(o)(o)]

The old human paradox. Those who want power are exactly the ones who should never be given it, and those who reject power would probably be amongst our best leaders but they correctly refuse the responsibility - because they actually understand what that responsibility is, realise that no-one is qualified or to be trusted (including themselves) and say "no".

The unfettered rise of psychopathy in political and corporate positions of power seems to be having predictably unpredictable results.

(As I like to say, if I was given the job of "King of the World" my first and only action would be to remove and prohibit the job of "King of the World" and then immediately resign. Nope, not tempted to do any fiddling or meddling before resigning - because that's exactly how power gets you and corrupts you.)

At least deploy PR in Britain before you resign, my liege.

[Dio]

(As I like to say, if I was given the job of "King of the World" my first and only action would be to remove and prohibit the job of "King of the World" and then immediately resign. Nope, not tempted to do any fiddling or meddling before resigning - because that's exactly how power gets you and corrupts you. The only act would be to make sure that "King of the World" is never allowed to happen again and then resign.)

Sulla tried that (although not the no fiddling/meddling part) his goal was absolutely to preserve the Republic. Didn't work, obviously...

Turns out that once one person has been king it becomes a lot easier for the next person (in this case, a certain Gaius Julius Caesar) to do it again.

[KlaxonCow]

(As I like to say, if I was given the job of "King of the World" my first and only action would be to remove and prohibit the job of "King of the World" and then immediately resign. Nope, not tempted to do any fiddling or meddling before resigning - because that's exactly how power gets you and corrupts you.)

At least deploy PR in Britain before you resign, my liege.

Ah, you see. It's already getting its claws into you.

Because if you're "King of the World", how can you only fix things for the UK? Can't I use my powers to give everyone PR in all the countries?

As only that would be fair and just - and would implicitly mean that I'm converting a lot of places to democracies (more than 50% of the planet is a democracy these days, but there's still plenty of places that isn't).

What about the countries that don't want it? Which system of PR should be used (you do know that, mathematically, all of them are flawed in one way or another, right?)? Do we use a system of PR to poll the people, of all the countries of the world, in which type of PR system they want? Wait a minute, that's circular.

You see, the rot is already starting to set in.

They were the only wise words I ever heard Blair speak - in his resignation speech, and I'm sure he nicked them from somewhere or got someone else to write his speech for him, as it's so uncharacteristically not him - but, to paraphrase, it was something along the lines of: "Sometimes, you have to realise that the best thing that you can do with power... is set it down and walk away".

And, come on, if you let yourself do that, then you'll be tempted. Just one more "tweak". One more little rule change.

But the real rot of "power corrupts" is an understanding that the underlying conceit of democracy - that it's all about choosing "the right person" - isn't true.

You're the Prime Minister. You're reliably informed by your intelligence services that one of your ministers is having an affair. They're Education Minister, and you have some really important education reforms that you want to bring, because you're convinced that this really is the solution that'll fix everything.

Note carefully that this scenario has nothing to do with you. You've done nothing wrong yourself. But, as Prime Minister, you're responsible - the buck stops here - for your cabinet and the government's reaction to this revelation. Note also that having an affair is not criminal, it's only a "moral failing" in people's eyes.

What are your options?

Well, you promised an honest and transparent government, so time to call a press conference and give an instant "mea culpa" - though you are throwing your minister to the wolves there, basically.

Encourage the minister to do his own confessional? What if they simply tell you "no"?

As Education Minister, this is going to ruin your education reform plans. Maybe you can convince yourself that it's "the greater good" and we'll sit on it - cover it up - until we've got our crucial education reforms through first.

After all, the fact that your Education Minister can't keep it in his trousers for 5 minutes shouldn't ruin the educational prospects of millions of children, who will be the future generations to lead us, in their turn.

I mean, phrased like that and honesty could even be seen as stupid and deeply unfair.

But if you do cover it up - or even just delay the confession to buy yourself time - then someone else will know that you know and you're stalling for time. And that person now has power over you. If they're not overtly threatening you with "give me a better job in government, or I squeal to the press", then you're still naturally inclined to "keep them sweet" because you know that they know, and you're sunk if the press or public find out that you knew and covered it up. "Greater good" or not.

What I'm getting at with this actually rather benign and mundane scenario is just showing you that no matter how flawless your moral character, the world is a complex ethical landscape full of "fuzzy grey areas".

Murder is wrong, right? Okay, you're a time traveller and now you've got a gun to Hitler's head. Are you still going to hold by "murder is wrong", when you know how many millions of lives and what utter horrors you could be preventing by just silently disposing of him long before he got anywhere or was known by anyone - and you're a time traveller, so you can totally get away with that murder, as you just jump back to the present again (though it's a very different present now, and there might be things that have changed for the worse).

Power corrupts.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with the moral fibre of the person wielding it, it will eventually rot you. Compromise after compromise after compromise - which I'm sure was all for "the greater good" all along - will eventually catch up with you.

Like Tolkien's "One Ring". Sure, give it to a hobbit because they're the least corruptible of us all. But neither Bilbo nor Frodo was entirely immune. Oh, given enough time in its presence, they would have eventually ended up like Gollum too.

Remember, democracy is a terrible system. But it's just that everything else we've ever tried is orders of magnitude even worse still.

The conceit of democracy. It's all about choosing the right person.

Okay, cool. But review history and ask yourself, when has that ever actually happened?

There are definitely some people who're massively better than others, for sure. But "the right person" is not actually a real thing, yes?

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is not democracy.

[F-ZeroOne]

Trump has just declared that it is now official US policy that there are only two genders, male and female, that this is “immutable”, and determined from “conception”.

Congratulations on being the first female US President, Mr Trump! [1]

[1] At conception, invariably all foetuses are female. Trump has just made every US citizen female, and I’m sure his bestie Elon will be just pleased as punch when she finds out.

[F-ZeroOne]

And, oh, his scrapping of DEI means that companies and government organisations can now discriminate on the grounds of race, gender or disability.

Ooh, such bad luck able straight white people!

[Dio]

Science uses the term male and female embryo all the time. Trying to be a smart-arse about things doesn't really help much, especially when it's really sort of wrong.

[F-ZeroOne]

Just at the moment, I will take all the laughs I can get. And it could make for some interesting legal arguments going forward. Also, like Mel Brooks said about Hitler, make them ridiculous.

[Harlequin]

Yes. The terms 'male' and 'female' can mean many different things in different contexts but human embryos almost always have a pair of allosomes, one being an X chromosome and the other being either X or Y. In the vast majority of cases, those embryos with an XX pairing will develop female physical characteristics; those with XY, male.