This thread is for serious discussions of political issues. A series of rules have been developed to foster open and respectiful debate. This will be a heavily modded thread and deviations from these rules will result in removal of the posts. Debate from various viewpoints are welcome but deviations from the rules below, politics rules, or twoplustwo general forum rules, will not be tolerated. Repeated offenders will receive infractions.

Here are the thread rules;

Explain the reasoning behind your view, not just what that view is (300+ characters required).

Longer posts incentivize thoughtful debate. This is not the place for one liners or zingers. If you can't formulate a complete thoughtful post then this is not the place for your opinion. We won't be counting words, but the spirit of this rules is that repeated one liners will be deleted.

No meta posts.

There will be no discussion in this thread about the thread, its rules, or moderation. There are other threads for those discussions. All posts of this nature will be deleted.

Only post if you are willing to have a conversation with those who reply to you.

Only post if you are willing to enter into as a respectful debate with others in the thread. If you are just trying to score points or make jokes your post will be deleted.

Direct responses to a post must challenge, or seek clarification about, at least one aspect of the post you are responding too (however minor).

This thread is for debate. It is not for posting memes, tweets, or news stories unless they are being used to backup a larger point. All posts must be directly part of the conversation going on in this thread. Your post should be adding to that conversation by making counterpoints or asking for clarification.

Don't be rude or hostile to other users.

This is a zero tolerance thread for name calling or being rude. All posts of this nature will simply be deleted. If your post required the language filter to kick in it will be deleted.

No low effort comments.

Low content posts will be deleted. Do not post to simply agree or disagree with a previous post unless you are adding something substantial to the discussion. Post like "LOL", "No", "+1000" will be deleted.

Cite sources to back up factual claims.

Factual claims, not considered common knowledge, must contain a citation. Discussions of the quality of a citation are ok as long as they follow the above rules. Low content posts such as "LOL X is not a source" will not be tolerated.

I think all sides of the political sphere can agree that the state of political debate has been seriously debased over the past 20 years. Of course, this is nothing new. It has been well documented this is not the first age of hyper-partisan debate. However, perhaps only because we are living through it, it seems worse this time. I suppose it always does.

The mods on this site know I have been no model poster. I have been temp-banned a few times. I am sure some of the posters I have sparred with are rolling their eyes at this thread. All I can do is agree that my previous behaviour has, in some cases, added to the debasement of debate. I am certainly not alone. This is why a thread like this is so important.

I started on twoplustwo for its poker content. However, over time I migrated to the political side of the site, as I am sure many do. I have learned a lot from the various threads in politics, including from the right-leaning posters. I ventured into this part of the forum because I believe poker players are, on average, smarter than the general population and better able to wield logic and reason. These are traits sorely in short supply now. Thankfully, there are some sign of hope though.

Perhaps we can use the example of others to raise the level of debate on this site. Let us learn from each other, both left and right. Only good can come of it.

While I am sure the topics of discussion will shift over time, hopefully this thread can lead to fruitful debate and [dare I dream] even understanding and changed minds.

This is the first post and I hope it accomplishes two things;

1) it serves as an example of the type of post we want in this thread;
2) it serves as a jumping off point for the first discussion.

P.S. I recognize this first post is meta to some degree, but lets please keep responses focused on the state of debate rather the rules or value of this thread. If you don't like this thread please feel free to ignore it.

Just as a note, mods are on board with this so please don't post itt unless you are following the rules. Infractions will be given for repeat offenders so please don't make more work for mods than is necessary.

Thanks!

lol infractions for repeat offenders only. If you're going to troll this thread, you're going to get some time off, more than a day. I don't want this thread to be a pain in my ass, and as such, if you want to make it one, we're going to make it a bigger pain in yours. There are lots of other places for your "lol Clovis."

Noodle is a softie.

This thread is a good idea and I'm sure that people would participate. But, ironically, for a thread that is about content and discussion, this post doesn't really contain anything to discuss. You want to talk about "the state of debate" which isn't really an issue or an obvious jumping off point for a discussion; it is, as you say, quite meta. So that's strike one. And then, what is the thesis of your post? What are you arguing? You're actually not making an argument, which is strike two.

So if you want to start a high content discussion, start out by picking a concrete topic for discussion and make an argument. Stake out a position.

OK, for an opening topic of discussion, maybe this is where my thread predicting something "politically explosive" involving the Trump-Russia investigation occurring in the next 7-10 days should have been posted. (If the mods so desire, I wouldn't have any problem with transferring all the posts from that thread to this thread - after cleaning out the replies that don't conform to the rules of this thread.)

I'm 101% behind the idea of High Content Threads. But... I'm going to have to agree with SenorKeeed here.

The topic of "state of debate" is inherently and decidedly meta. It's also smuggling in a giant whopper of a unstated assumption, that being some that "states of debate" are "good", while some other "states of debate" are "not-so-good". So... to me at least... the first thing to do would be to go all meta-meta. Which immediately runs aground of the no-going-meta rule.

If fact, the no-going-meta rule is serious bug. For this to actually work, all initial Qs really need to be of the form: "If we assume X (which rules out all relevant meta considerations), then Y".

Sorry guys. I obviously wasn't clear in my op. I didn't intend that to be the only topic, or even necessarily the first topic. I intend this thread to be about many topics and any topic as long as the discussions follows the rules posted in the op. If someone has a topic they wish to raise please do so. I will be happy to engage in debate to help get it started.

So far we have not done a great job avoiding meta discussion, which I think was predicable given this is new. Hopefully once real discussion begins we can start enforcing the meta rule.

If something doesn't start in the next day or so I'll raise a topic.

Excuse me for being dense, but what (exactly) does "meta" (and "meta discussion") mean?

Discussion of the thread and it's rules or moderation rather than on topic.

The idea is to help focus the thread on serious robust discussion you limit the ability of people to complain about the rules or moderation. Those discussion are relegated to moderation threads.

Because this is a new idea it has been only meta discussion. That should fade once debate begins on topics.

That's not how I interpreted that rule at all, as evidenced by my previous comment. If this is what was meant, I withdraw my previous quibble.

The canonical example I was imagining was this:

A: <mentions the r-word in a concrete manner>. B: <whines about the PC-police>. In this example, I would say, using my above mentioned interpretation, that B went "meta"... in the sense that he's changing the subject from whatever it was about before in particular, to a new "meta-subject", that being the alleged actions of these PC-police in general.

Gonna cross-post this from the econ forum. I know the isn't really political and there's a sports forum, but I was curious to see how politics bros think about the concussion crisis, esp the ones who don't watch football.

How do we feel about the sport of football these days? Most years I buy NFL gamespass and watch several games a week, but the past few years it feels more and more ethically dubious to support an industry that's taking a savage toll on its players. I'm still gonna hedge considerably by watching weekly games on broadcast TV, but I'll def get more of my sports fix from hockey and sumo.

Anyone else in the same boat? Am I just being a Pollyanna here? Is there a case to be made that the players are okay with the risks of what they do therefore the fans shouldn't feel bad about watching them go out and play?

^^ I'm watching a preseason game and a Bengals play got an injury right as I was posting that.

Your last sentence is what matters. At this point in time, it's very clear to most/all the risks involved when you put on a helmet. If somebody decides to play football, it's their decision (or, up to a certain age, a parents decision). There's not really a reason to "boycott" or avoid putting your thoughts on a product where the risks are pretty transparent to all involved.

I watch a lotta football, although I'm more a FBS fan... and that was before the odious recent event that extinguished my original favorite NFL team. Football is necessarily going to have to change.

I *feel* there is a technological fix, which I *imagine* would involve instrumented uniforms. Not "safer" uniforms, because that only leads to harder hitting, and then things are just back where we are at. Instead, I *imagine* uniforms that have all sorts of accelerometers/etc imbedded, and that "go on tilt" if hit in a dangerous manner. That and a yellow/red card system where if you "tilt" another player (or yourself, I guess) twice, you are done for the day. Coaches would then need to train players to hit/tackle without causing this uniform "tilt".

Absolutely not. Everyone, even peeps who make the big $$$$, deserve a safe workplace environment. IMO that's an inalienable right.

Addressing these in reverse order:

I think it will still be some time before that's the case; the prevalence of CTE among NFL players was only recently discovered and still might get found to be worse. Given how much time you spend giving your life to football before you get to the NFL (in HS, college), I don't know if you can even say that players in the NFL today were fully aware of the risks of what they were signing up for.

Going beyond that, what about the values the NFL displays as a league and organization? This article points out all the misdeeds (domestic violence, DUI) players can get away with and still be celebrated within the sport, while Colin Kaepernick has been effectively blackballed for a political protest*. Roger Goodell is a piece of human garbage and the NFL has some notable douchebag Trump supporters (Brady, Belichick, Richie Incognito). Meanwhile, the NBA marches in the NYC Pride parade and their players regularly and freely speak out on important political issues (and much to Lestat's consternation, they banned Donald Sterling for life).

If I had to guess, I'd say the NFL knows where their bread is buttered and that they can't alienate white racists, while the NBA doesn't have to give a **** about losing people that probably aren't into basketball to begin with. So if you're looking at sports from a political perspective, doesn't that make your choice pretty obvious?


*edit: while conservatives and Lestats may find this to be a controversial statement and not a given, I'll say this; even if you buy the conservative argument that it's not about blackballing but that teams find his behavior to be a "distraction", only in the NFL (or at least, certainly not in the NBA) would that behavior be such a "distraction"!

Of course there are situations of injustice which arise from globalism. However, the argument loses credibility when its suggested the undesirable situations negate the value of the system as a whole. Free trade and globalism have raised more people out of poverty than the combined total of all social programs that have ever existed. Fair minded people should seek solutions to the problems and not advocate for fantasy worlds which is too commonly the position of the far left.

I am still on the pretty far left socially, and began there economically as well. I was in Seattle in 1999 protesting the WTO. I remember buying all my friend copies of No Logo. But then I went to grad school, took some economics courses, learned about some of the good ideas from economics and became convinced that the right centre has economic policies that lead to better outcomes for the greatest number of people. This is the yardstick we should be using. Yes there are losers and we need to have a social net to help them. But as I said in my original post, I've yet to see anyone present data that increased free trade and contact between nations is not a net good for the world.

One has to take pause that many of positions of the anti-globalization movement are now on the far right. This alone should at least make one question the underlying assumptions.

I'm possibly going to violate the terms of this thread for this one post at least. I'm not opposed to a high content thread in principle, but here are some problems for me:

"Attack the argument, not the person" or some such usually ends up being a sham where people are still just as disrespectful, mean or w/e, but phrase their attacks to that it's not technically against the person. There can only be real respectful conversation, at least on the internet, if there is something like real respect. If the thread is going to be heavily moderated that means some combination of not allowing people who are easily disrespectful and some people who are very hard to respect. For my part, I'm sometimes pretty disrespectful to a fairly wide range of posters in other threads. I hadn't been so much in the past, but when in Rome. I can be perfectly respectful to a wide range here, but not everyone.

I don't know that I can abide a thread where you can not make any attempts at jokes, trivial derails and the like. I think it's often the case that adopting strict rules makes things worse for everyone. In this case, everyone should have a fairly good idea of what you want for the thread. If you are the mod of the thread, I think it's a fine thing for it to just be "post in a way that Clovis is cool with" and if a new poster is not familiar with how that works "tread carefully". Although, I expect you would be inclined to give warnings first at least.

And the 300 character limit doesn't really work for me. I know 300 characters isn't very long, but it's pretty distracting. I've thought about posting before and then started to count characters and decided it's not worth it. Many times a very short reply (could be just "yeah" or something) is all that's warranted and sometimes a very short sentence really says a lot. I'll give you an example. In another thread Dvault made a long post about how perhaps government censorship isn't all bad and how it was used to prevent crackpots from expressing their segregation theories on the news in the late 60s. I made a reply saying something like "that's the same period we had a secret war where we dropped more bombs than all the forces in WW2 combined". That's not 300 characters, but I think it makes a point quite well that wouldn't be improved with 200 more characters of elaboration. If your vision for this thread is that we're trading essays, that's too bold a vision for the 2p2 politics forum imo.

Thing is, the dangers of concussions in football have really only been widely known in the past ten years or so. The guys in the NFL right now sure didn't know what they were getting in to, and I doubt the league relly gave them accurate information about what's going on.

It will be interesting to see how the millennials treat this. I predict we'll see a lot of guys retire early. Guys will get one huge hit and realize it just isn't worth it.

Raw garbage; Goodell should be shown the door. You should get insta-fired if you smack women around. It's 2017 and we still have a team called the Redskins FFS.

How are the risks of the NFL different from the risks of being a police officer, fireman, or garbage man?

I have a much bigger issue with the NCAA than the NFL. A system in which the players take all of the risks, encompasses 95% of the final product, yet reaps so little of the rewards. Whenever I hear someone extol the NCAA system using phrases such as "they get scholarships", it makes my blood boil.

Players take all the risk in terms of injury and are not financially compensated for it. Whats more, the loss of playing ability easily leads to loss of scholarship.

Not allowing student atheletes to make money from endorsements or other side business ventures is one of the most monopolistic and labor exploitive things you can do.

No technology is required if you simply mandate wrap up tackling. I get this wouldn't work so well in the trenches, but say 5 yards off the LOS any hit which knocks a player down in which the defender does not wrap up would be a penalty.

The NFL is entertainment.

Cops & firefighters take risks to, among other things, save lives. We couldn't live without the working folk who pick up our garbage. What's the same is all working folk, regardless of what they do, need a safe workplace. That's a basic human right.

True this.

Just because they aren't being directly paid doesn't mean FBSers aren't working folk in the same entertainment industry as NFLers. They deserve both to be paid direct wages by the schools, receive an education is in-kind compensation... and have a safe workplace too.

It's a tough nut to crack because of the turnover. FYI: The organizing drive at Northwestern was primarily about the same thing: health care issues.

Citation needed for " Free trade and globalism have raised more people out of poverty than the combined total of all social programs that have ever existed." As this is pretty much the opposite of commonly accepted wisdom. The WTO piece or at least the general summary is wafer thin and being sponsored by the WTO is like allowing a restaurant to conduct its own health inspection. "System says: system works". Will respond more fully at a later point.

Some of the raised out of poverty statistics I think are pretty bad. For one it has to do with money and when you do something like take subsistence farmers and peasants who largely operate without money and turn them into sweatshop wage labor you make them "richer". Also there is some goal post shifting, the standards really only apply to the very poorest countries (which means big problems accounting for people who are outside the money economy), and if you use a reasonable standard for regular poor countries you can go from very few people counted as abjectly poor to the majority of people.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opi...590729809.html

So, OP says

Free trade and globalism have raised more people out of poverty than the combined total of all social programs that have ever existed

Firstly we need to define 'free trade'. What I see is not free trade but a series of trading blocs where access is allowed according to a set of rules determined by the strongest states within the bloc. In our context I believe we are referring to the period of neo-liberal globalisation piloted in Chile in 1973 and now the standard economic model the world over - essentially deregulation and privatisation allowing Western corporations to monopolise industries, and services and public utilities, in both the global south and north. This marks the end of the post war boom period when the most significant 'social programs' developed. The balance sheet should include: the likelihood and severity of crises which have become more catastrophic in the present period; the growth of the super rich and the failure of 'trickle down'; the drive to war as states that don't play ball with the US and its economic and strategic interests are targeted for bombing, invasion and occupation.

'Social programs' are products of a mix of resistance to capitalism and part of its productivity drive, i.e. a healthy and educated workforce. To counterpose the gains of these movements/government initiatives with the success of the market is a false dichotomy. For example prior to 1945 a working class person living in the UK was comparable to living in a 3rd world country. Only investments in welfare, housing, health, education, lifted people out of poverty. The idea of using free market globalised neo liberalism to eradicate poverty at that time was an insane joke which only became popular, and indeed possible, by smashing trade union organisation to remove resistance to deregulation.

Is the tide turning? Several indicators point to this, an interesting one I have just seen now - that several African and far east states are looking to effectively renationalise water in the wake of the devastation of allowing western firms to take over supplies:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-d...gos-world-bank