I could not discuss politics with those people. What I find with a lot of Trumpers I’ve tried to talk politics with is that their arguments lack research and depth. Frankly, anyone who identifies as a racist and is proud of it can fuck right off.
Look at how nauseatingly repulsive and hypocritical the alternatives are.
I despise trump but I have to admit a small part of me wants him to win just to see those leeches get what they deserve.
Complete fakes pretending to care about all minorities but throw them under the bus to protect only themselves at the first opportunity. Liberals make me sick these days.
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Fuck that noise. The US is a two party system with a horrible design. Trump has openly courted white power movements, infected our government with evangelical Christianity when it’s supposed to remain non religious and used levers of power to enrich himself and his friends. I may not consider myself a Democratic but I’m sure as shit voting for them despite some of their more cringeworthy moments. The alternative is four more years living under an administration who considers me, Black people, other LGBT+ people, immigrants, Brown people, indigenous people…well really anyone who isn’t white, straight and Christian, subhuman.
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Interesting Josh, would you vote Republican if Bush or Romney was running?
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Not a chance. I’m not a Democratic because I pull too left on fiscal issues not because I pull central.
Oh okay, I wonder what you mean by that though. IE would you say you’re a progressive or…?
A big ol’ socialist :auba:
Idk really know if I’d qualify as a progressive because I work as a prosecutor which makes me think I get excluded from that movement by default. My brother’s gf didn’t want to meet me when they first got together because I worked as a prosecutor which naturally meant I spent all day plotting ways to incarcerate young Black men with no evidence.
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And presumably its actually only half your day you spend doing that. 
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I don’t believe that really. Do you have mixed feelings over some cases though? The public obviously need to be protected from the worst criminals. But do you have some cases you’re ambivilant about, such as weed and 3 strikes? I mean I did have a black girlfriend in California who claimed her uncle got sentenced under the 3 strikes rule because of a minor drugs charge and because he associated with ‘known criminals’.
Anyway as a professional what are your thoughts on Chauvin? Do you think he could get off on the manslaughter charge (and hence all charges)?
Jokes on them Sham. As a government employee I rarely spend any time doing actual work! 
But in all seriousness, I have very strong feelings about the US criminal justice system. Mostly we ask it to handle issues and problems that truly belong to social workers. I developed a bit of a reputation for being ‘soft’ I guess? So I handle burglary cases and the occasional child abuse or manslaughter by automobile case. Working in the burglary unit (it’s a unit of one, I always win employee of the month) really cemented my view that a lot of the people who come through the CJS aren’t bad people, they’re people who did something wrong because they were in a dire financial situation or bumbling through addiction. As a prosecutor/ADA I have very limited tools to enact actual restorative justice. I can’t force someone into rehab, I can’t force feed someone meds to get their bipolar disorder under control, I can’t force the economy to rebound and create near full employment. But I can do my best to craft plea offers that take into account why people steal things and how burglary victims often report feeling unsafe in their home as their biggest concern. Nobody wants to hear that “Oh that’s just Dan, he’s off his meds, sorry he smashed up your windows and slept in your daughter’s bed while you were on vacation.” But that guy doesn’t belong in prison, he needs help. It definitely leads to me butting heads with my victims and got me accused of being racist when I told an older Black couple that my main concern was getting the defendant into mental health treatment and if he could pay for the front door he damaged that’s great but it’s ultimately not my concern since they have insurance.
And yes, there are a very very small amount of people who are violent or don’t give a shit about society who might need to be kept separate or monitored but I really think the USA has to rethink how it doles out “justice” and “punishment.” We incarcerate way too many people and expect them to just renter society with no skills and no coping mechanisms. That’s ignoring the whole weed issue or over policing in communities of color. Those two things alone deserve their own thread.
@arsenescoatmaker I realize I didn’t address your question about it the Floyd case. Obviously I haven’t read the discovery so I can only go off whatever leaked out. It appears to be a very clear case to me that Chauvin murdered him. I cannot think of any justification (i.e.: defense of self, others, regular old ‘officer safety’) that would necessitate placing your weight on another human’s neck for almost nine minutes. Ever. Period. Full stop. I’m sure we’ll hear a lot in the coming months about how George Floyd was this or that as the defense team try to pull the jury pool a certain way. We’ll have people like Tucker Carlson or Ed Norris trying to carry the Police Union’s water in the media. And obviously Trump will weigh in, he can’t help himself. But it appears to be straight up murder. Intentional, pre-meditated murder. I couldn’t give a flying fuck if that type of hold was authorized by the FOP out there, it should not have been used in that situation for that amount of time.
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Agree. The system is completely broken. The Primaries see to it that it stays that way. I’m registered Dem to vote in primaries, but I don’t always vote Dem. I’m all for the candidate, but sometime voting for a party is a necessary evil. Of the ‘democartic’ political systems in the western world that I’m familiar with, voting for the lesser of the 2 evils is never more true than in the US. As such, I will vote Dem because Trump needs to go.
Would you feel better if the USA had a Parliamentary system? I did research in college on parliamentary systems versus the US system and came away thinking that Europe by and large had it figured out and the US was stuck with a system created to prop up old slave owning states.
Maybe I’m guilty of romanticizing politics in Europe. I’m sure folks in Hungary or Belarus would tell me I’m being naive.
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It’s not perfect over here, but I do prefer the system overall. I’m most familiar with Ireland (lived), UK (live) and the Netherlands (spouse is Dutch and the family there keep up with politics). None of these are perfect, but so much better than what’s in the US. But the UK right now is clearly demonstrating just how wrong it can all go even in a system I see as more balanced than the US.
I think what appeals to me the most is not having to vote for the lesser of two evils. The Dems aren’t really an actual left party at all and the GOP has gone off the deep end. In a parliamentary system I could at least vote for a socialist or social justice party and hope they form a coalition with the Dems.
Also the “no confidence” vote leading to snap elections really appeals to me. I don’t think there’s any way Trump could have held on to power in a parliamentary system. Shit, he didn’t win the popular vote so there’s no way he’d even be in office under a popular vote parliamentary system.
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Yes, I like both of those. Althought the ‘no confidence’ vote isn’t easy and definiltey doesn’t always have the best outcome.
Gosh, can you imagine politicians in the US trying to work in a coalition.
The electoral college is what pisses me off even more than the 2 party system. It’s a bloody joke.
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Is this perception down to the whole administration or just Trump?
Thanks for typing that mate. Can’t be an easy job and it would be so so easy to do what you do and be a complete and utter cynic.
Have they any of those Justice for Vets programmes where you are? Those sound interesting to me from the brief amount I’ve heard about them.
It’s the whole administration.
People like Mike Pompeo at Dept. of State and Mike Pence as VP who are very open about injecting their Christian beliefs into government. People like Bill Barr who has acted like a bag man for Trump’s more fascist tendencies.
@shamrockgooner I think there’s a real split in the ADA/Prosecutor community. Some of it is generational, younger prosecutors who lean left and who embrace something approaching restorative justice versus other (sometimes older, but not always older) prosecutors who really want to continue with the system as it currently exists.
The office I work in has an elected prosecutor leading it who delegates a lot of discretion to low level prosecutors like myself. Not all offices are like that and I think if I had to work as a so-called “line prosecutor” who has to vet plea offers through five different layers of supervisors before being told to offer the max or not drop a 25y w/out parole despite the qualifying crime being kind of piddly shit, I wouldn’t last in the job. I’d like to think that without more progressive prosecutors handling things, our replacements would be more hardcore “tough on crime” types. And I just don’t believe in that. It might look or sound good to certain audiences but I don’t know that it solves anything.
I actually wrote a proposal for establishing a Burglary Diversion Division which got shot down (no money to fund it) which would have allowed burglary defendants to perform community service and/or pay the cost to fix the window/door/whatever, stay off drugs for 12 months and get their case dismissed. We have to have more stuff like that going on. That wave of reform is coming and I think a lot of prosecutors/ADAs don’t want to hear it. I’m not saying Larry Krasner’s approach in Philly is guaranteed to work everywhere, but it’s a hell of a lot better than grinding young Black men through the system.
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Pence is awful, worse than Trump imo. As much as I wanted Trump out, a successful impeachment would’ve seen Pence take over. This is another issue with the way the government is set up. For me, if a President is impeached, then an election should take place. Giving it to the VP or any other official appointed by the President is a joke and not solving any problem.
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Absolutely agree. Promoting any official appointed by the President after he himself has been impeached is quite literally saying: “okay, you can’t have the power publicly now, but you can still use that power through the guy you selected while you hide behind the scenes”. Doesn’t sound quite right when you think about it.