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U-S-A! The American Politics Thread. (Read 499895 times)

TobyD

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It doesn't help much with where things are, but Jon Ronson's 'Things Fell Apart' podcast has a fascinating episode on the origins of the anti-abortion movement: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0011cpq

IIRC, the Democrats were anti abortion and the Republicans historically more pro choice before the 1980s? I listened to another podcast on the issue,  it might have been stories of our times. 

TobyD

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In response to the mass shooting in Texas, the state legislator calls for arming teachers.  Sickening doesn't begin to cover it.
BBC News - Texas shooting: 19 children among dead in primary school attack
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-61573377

James Malloch

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In response to the mass shooting in Texas, the state legislator calls for arming teachers.  Sickening doesn't begin to cover it.
BBC News - Texas shooting: 19 children among dead in primary school attack
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-61573377

These quotes, from the article, show how fucked up the USA is with respect to guns.

Quote
Active shooter lockdown drills are a common part of the school curriculum, from primary to high school.

Quote
Guns overtook car crashes to become the leading cause of death for US children and teenagers in 2020, according to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last month.

Nails

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(May 11th 2022) U.S. appeals court overturns California ban on semiautomatic rifle sales to those under 21. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-05-11/federal-court-rules-california-ban-on-gun-sales-to-people-under-21-unconstitutional

What can you do when you have a significant proportion of Americans who are more outraged that Under 21s aren't allowed to buy semi-automatic guns in California, than they are about the litany of gun related atrocities. Just sad!

TobyD

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In response to the mass shooting in Texas, the state legislator calls for arming teachers.  Sickening doesn't begin to cover it.
BBC News - Texas shooting: 19 children among dead in primary school attack
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-61573377

These quotes, from the article, show how fucked up the USA is with respect to guns.

Quote
Active shooter lockdown drills are a common part of the school curriculum, from primary to high school.

Quote
Guns overtook car crashes to become the leading cause of death for US children and teenagers in 2020, according to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last month.

It is horrible that the facts are so appallingly obvious. This doesn't happen anywhere else in the developed world, but still a significant part of the population are willing to listen to the voice of the wealthy lobbyists, and try to rely on an obvious misinterpretation of the constitution to justify anyone to own an assault rifle.

A historic and anachronistic law being utilised as a political lever; it is as though the law in France that you aren't allowed to call a pig Napoleon (apparently true) were killing hundreds of thousands of people, and half the country supported it. 

sherlock

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A couple of years ago I was bouldering with an American para-climber and their sight-guide. They were perfectly normal, balanced folk until I broached the subject of gun control. The sight guide mentioned that they were thinking of buying a gun and when I asked why was told "My gym is in a bad area."
So many people, from all walks of life seen to think guns are a good idea.

jwi

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I think they are beyond saving. All US climbers I taked with about guns when I was there some fifteen years ago seemed like  clinically insane gun enthusiasts to me --- and I grew up on the Swedish countryside where gun ownership is high but where no one in their right mind would 1) own a handgun and 2) bring it to the crag with 3) a bullet in the chamber. Something I came across more than once. I am just happy that there is an ocean between us, making smuggling of guns tricky. I pity Mexico and Canada, but I have no pity left for US.

tim palmer

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I think they are beyond saving. All US climbers I taked with about guns when I was there some fifteen years ago seemed like  clinically insane gun enthusiasts to me --- and I grew up on the Swedish countryside where gun ownership is high but where no one in their right mind would 1) own a handgun and 2) bring it to the crag with 3) a bullet in the chamber. Something I came across more than once. I am just happy that there is an ocean between us, making smuggling of guns tricky. I pity Mexico and Canada, but I have no pity left for US.

  I have been to America to climb and travel a lot, I have almost never had this experience.    Almost everyone I have met who I have discussed it with have been pro gun control and this is borne out in the polling, the majority of Americans want stricter controls (see gallup). 

Gun control is another area in which the majority are disenfranchised by the right wing, I have enormous sympathy for people living in the US on this and a litany of other issues.

America bashing is easy but I think many of the institutional and social issues there are of increasing importance in the UK.

sherlock

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For clarity I wasn't America bashing but the rest of your post was spot on.

SA Chris

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You would think people working in Colorado ski areas and skiing are fairly enlightened, but a lot of the guys i worked with carried handguns in to work every day (had to check them in at resort security) and they could spot guys getting on charlifts with concealed carries (telltale bulge under jacket). You are not supposed to carry weapons in the ski area, but us lifties were told not to confront them, but notify security, though no-one ever bothered AFAIK.

We used to go to a saloon / bar in a town just out of the resort (cheaper beer!) and you would often see locals sitting at the bar with a handgun in a holster. Used to scare the crap out of me, but none of my American friends seemed bothered, and in conversation few seems to in favour of gun control, and I know some of them who were keen hunters and got firearms for their kids so they could hunt together, from about age 9.

I was on a running facebook page, where people were talking about the best way to carry your handgun when running.     

This is not bashing as such, just saying how it is part of a culture very different to the UK.   

largeruk

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Gallup’s rolling poll shows support for stricter gun laws generally at 52% in the US but this is down from 78% in 1991 and 67% in 2018. This trend seems to show that broadly Americans are becoming less and less in favour of stricter gun controls despite there having been 900 more school shootings in the US since Sandy Hook a decade ago. Why might this be?

IMF research into the social impact of inequality in America (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2882614) shows "there has been a sharp decline in the extent to which individuals trust one another, and other social capital indicators, over the past 40 years in America". Perhaps this has contributed to people having more libertarian attitudes towards gun control. Ultimately, there are likely real limits to how functional you can expect the USA to be given that people don’t trust each other combined with increasing levels of distrust of government (of either political persuasion). If the perception is that government can’t/won’t protect people (regardless of who’s in power), many people conclude they have to at least consider protecting themselves and their families. This chimes with my personal (anecdotal) interactions with American friends and colleagues.

Meanwhile, the NRA is promoting an appearance by Donald Trump at its 150th annual conference this weekend. Ironically, guns won't be allowed at the conference. As Trump is an ex-president he gets Secret Service protection which has taken over the venue and it doesn’t allow guns...

seankenny

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I was walking to a crag in Joshua Tree with some American climbers. The wash had a Y shaped junction, from the other direction to the one we took came the noise of semi-automatic rifle fire. Lots of it. The Americans rolled their eyes, explained this was strictly illegal in a national park, but it wasn’t worth alerting the authorities because then there would be a “situation” which would be more trouble than it was worth. Who knew what had driven someone to go out into the desert and fire blindly?

California doesn’t feel like a gun nut place and lots of people I met hated gun culture, but it’s always there beneath the surface.

Like jwi, by this point I don’t really have much sympathy any more. I say this as someone who broadly likes the US and finds lots to admire in American culture.

TobyD

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SA Chris

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That millions of background checks a month graph surprised me. I did a quick google and 20 million guns were sold in America last year.

chris j

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California doesn’t feel like a gun nut place and lots of people I met hated gun culture, but it’s always there beneath the surface.

I worked briefly on an oilfield vessel in the Gulf run out of Fourchon in Louisiana. One of the officers was from California and one of his favourite rants was about how the environmentalists had forced him to use lead free ammunition for hunting...

This was also shortly after Obama was first elected and there was a lot of talk among the officers about how for his own good he had better not visit Louisiana. The amount of hate on the radio phone in shows at the time was also startling. The cultural differences across the USA are quite staggering I think, it is really becoming (has always been?) several different countries stitched together under the federal umbrella.

TobyD

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BBC News - Supreme Court ruling expands US gun rights
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-61915237

Just what the country needs to stem the constant epidemic of gun violence and mass shootings,  more concealed firearms. 

remus

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Roe v Wade has been overturned https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-61928898

Seems an amazingly regressive move.

Ed: a question for those more familiar with the US legal system than me: what's the reasoning behind having judges appointed for life? Maybe only seems obvious from the current point in time, but it seems like the supreme court is going to be very conservative for a long time which strains the separation between politics and the judiciary.
« Last Edit: June 24, 2022, 04:34:09 pm by remus »

SA Chris

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2  steps back in 2 days. Impressive.

edshakey

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Not surprising the decisions are regressive when rules written in the 1700s are being used to justify decisions today.

Sure, the constitution says people should have the right to bear arms, but when that's making it possible to have more than one mass shooting a day, maybe it's time to rethink some stuff  :shrug: not sure the guys in 1791 were expecting that when they wrote it (or if they were, it doesn't mean they were right!)

Bradders

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Not surprising the decisions are regressive when rules written in the 1700s are being used to justify decisions today.

Sure, the constitution says people should have the right to bear arms, but when that's making it possible to have more than one mass shooting a day, maybe it's time to rethink some stuff  :shrug: not sure the guys in 1791 were expecting that when they wrote it (or if they were, it doesn't mean they were right!)

Well that was actually part of the problem with Roe v Wade, and why it has now been overturned; it was an attempt to crowbar the right to an abortion into law under the existing constitution. I.e. arguing that the constitutional right to privacy meant that abortion should automatically also be legal, which to me has always seemed like extremely shaky ground. Obviously abortion isn't mentioned explicitly in the constitution.

This approach to gaining nationwide abortion rights was obviously easier at the time, with a more liberally minded court, than doing the actually democratic thing and making a law in Congress and the Senate that could then be protected by the court instead of struck down. In that sense, this is actually a win for democracy in that the elected state representatives can decide what to do for their state. If the people of each state don't like it they can vote to remove those representatives. The tragedy is that in the meantime, lots of suffering will be caused.

Although you also can't get away from the fact that to a lot of people abortions are utterly abhorrent. I personally think they're wrong, but I get where they're coming from.

Either way you're absolutely right, the excessive reliance on a document written such a long time ago is completely bonkers.

On gun rights and school shootings, I'm at a stage where if I were Joe Biden I'd be putting an executive order in place funding armed guards for every school. On the basis that the priority has to be protecting children, and that can be accomplished much more quickly and easily than restricting gun ownership. If it doesn't work then at least you'll have tried, and you'd also be able to counter the nonsensical argument that more guns = a safer society.

joel182

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the left has been warning about the overturning of Roe for a long time now.

next on the list are Obergerfell (same sex marriange), Griswold (contraceptives) and Lawrence (same-sex sexual activity).

here is a guide on post-Roe abortion resources written last month, many of the drugs have a multi-year shelf life (some up to 5 years), surely good to be prepared if you or anyone in your life may need access to an abortion over the next few years

Bradders

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This is from the latest ruling:

"And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe [has] enflamed debate and deepened division."

I totally agree with that. Wherever you stand on the issue (and I am 100% pro choice), pushing major changes to society via undemocratic back door means was never going to end well.

edshakey

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Well that was actually part of the problem with Roe v Wade, and why it has now been overturned; it was an attempt to crowbar the right to an abortion into law under the existing constitution. I.e. arguing that the constitutional right to privacy meant that abortion should automatically also be legal, which to me has always seemed like extremely shaky ground. Obviously abortion isn't mentioned explicitly in the constitution.

This approach to gaining nationwide abortion rights was obviously easier at the time, with a more liberally minded court, than doing the actually democratic thing and making a law in Congress and the Senate that could then be protected by the court instead of struck down. In that sense, this is actually a win for democracy in that the elected state representatives can decide what to do for their state. If the people of each state don't like it they can vote to remove those representatives. The tragedy is that in the meantime, lots of suffering will be caused.

Agreed, it's certainly not written clearly into the constitution, it was always going to be up to debate - but rather than using that as a reason the amend the constitution/write new laws, the Republicans only want to go back to how it was. And many many women will suffer for it. Lots of supporters bring out the "Offer the women support to have the child" line; well you don't do that by supporting the kind of policies the Republicans come up with nowadays.

next on the list are Obergerfell (same sex marriange), Griswold (contraceptives) and Lawrence (same-sex sexual activity).

Scary times over there. The UK is a mess right now but it's looking blissful compared to the state of the US. Who knows what damage could be done by a Republican majority in both houses + Republican president come 2024, with the supreme court by their side.

andy popp

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Wherever you stand on the issue (and I am 100% pro choice), pushing major changes to society via undemocratic back door means was never going to end well.

This current court - in terms of representation - and this decision - in terms of public opinion - are both profoundly anti-democratic.

joel182

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Scary times over there. The UK is a mess right now but it's looking blissful compared to the state of the US. Who knows what damage could be done by a Republican majority in both houses + Republican president come 2024, with the supreme court by their side.

We should be aware that our right wing looks to America for guidance.

Last month, The Times published an article in support of overturning Roe.

This is the kind of fight our right wing will look to have once they overturn the Human Rights Act

 

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