What DBZ party did you vote for in the australian election?

[gogeta97]

Fair enough but in what world does life or death hinge on an election? Do you honestly think people will die because one person made a stupid edit to their ballot? I don't even find it funny myself but some people in this thread are just overreacting.

[Nejishiki]

I'm afraid elections truly do affect the lives of others, even if you do not directly feel the consequences yourself, for any particular reason.

[gogeta97]

I'm afraid elections truly do affect the lives of others, even if you do not directly feel the consequences yourself, for any particular reason.

I am aware that they affect lives, but he is acting like people will die just because of that one vote. He said elections are a literal life or death situation for some people. That just seems like a gross over exaggeration.

[VegettoEX]

Considering there are countries in this world where people are indeed being murdered for, say, their sexual orientation... yes, a focus on voting and putting future decisions in the hands of people whose views align with your own is important and does literally mean life or death in some cases.

If you're going to bring the "real world" to the discussion, we're going to be real right back at you. I also agree that the topic creator has an awful sense of humor and an awful sense of reality, and I think it should be discouraged and condemned.

[Kunzait_83]

Fair enough but in what world does life or death hinge on an election?

Holy shit. You really asked this question?

THIS world. The really real world. Earth. The planet you're fucking standing on right now.

I'm not Australian, I'm (not so proudly at this point) an American, so I can only speak for us. And thanks to who was voted into office in my country at various points, we have on our tally over 1.3 million human lives lost on account of our foreign interventions since 2003 or so. 1.3 million. Dead. Gone. And if you genuinely believe all or even most of those deaths were all "terrorists who deserved it", you're both delusional and very much wrong.

Our drone program since 2008 has slaughtered almost as many totally innocent civilians in the middle east as actual ISIS or Al Qaeda militants. Small children and elderly farmers get blown up by our missiles or raked to pieces with machine gun fire from manned drones. Regularly. We've even massacred wedding receptions, that later turned out to be totally free of any members of any terrorist group. This was very largely predicated on which elected leaders have called the shots while in office. Imagine how IMMEASURABLY different world history of the last 15 solid years would've probably been, how many literal millions of people would still be alive, without a corporate megalomaniac like Dick Cheney seated at the levers of power post-9/11? He didn't just waltz into the White House all on his own: he was put there. By votes.

To say nothing of our healthcare system, also in place due to who's in office and who's elected. Our system pre-Obamacare had it so that anywhere between 20,000 and 45,000 people die every year from lack of proper health insurance. Its gotten somewhat better than that since Obamacare, but not by near enough. But I'm sure the extra couple of thousand or so people whose lives are saved every year are REALLY goddamn thankful for that anyway.

To say nothing of our infant mortality rate, which is among the highest in the entire world. Infant mortality: that means newborn babies dying in childbirth at a rate that dwarfs most other non-third world nations due to in part to a variety of factors, including excessive, needless over-spending on a broken, archaic insurance system, lower income hospitals being over-worked, under-funded, and drowning in needless paperwork and insurance red tape at the expense of being capable of focusing more on maintaining a baseline standard of proper care, etc.

And criminal justice: our police training is backwards and hyper-paranoid, training officers to see even average, everyday citizens as potential threats and to meet even the most minor infractions with potentially lethal force, while our prison system is rife with institutionalized racism that favors jailing young African Americans for non-violent minor drug offenses while being extra-lenient on upper class, well off whites who are guilty of heavily violent offenses.

Dozens upon dozens of innocent, unarmed kids (black AND white, but disproportionately black) are gunned down, tazed, brutalized, abused, and permanently injured or crippled every single year by a violence-crazed police force that trains its officers to act like an occupying army rather than servants of the public trust. Who you vote for, who's in office can EASILY impact this and save people's lives.

There was an 18 year old kid awhile back (white in this case) who was driving to a friend's house to play video games who was pulled over on suspicion of marijuana possession. The whole thing was caught on video: with NO justifiable cause for doing so (the kid was plainly not resisting in any way) the cop tazed him in the chest for several minutes too long, and then slammed his skull into the concrete sidewalk. The tazer put him in cardiac arrest, and the pavement facial gave him permanent brain damage and sent him into a brief coma. He's alive, but his memory is permanently fucked and his life is ruined forever.

Viewable here. Not for the faint of heart, especially at the end.

I bring this one particular example up specifically because this kid looked like and could've easily been ANYONE on this forum and others like it. Some perfectly average, random, teenage gamer-type. Now with permanent brain damage. Compliments of our shitty criminal justice system and horrendous police training.

This wasn't just some random, isolated fluke of a tragedy: this has real, genuine connections to our (the United States') stagnant criminal justice laws and corroded standards for policing. Which you can help directly impact by fucking voting, by having even a CURSORY knowledge of your own local political landscape, and generally just being at least a halfway informed, responsible goddamn adult. Or else maybe the next kid to get their skull pancaked on a sidewalk by a cop over nothing could be you, or someone else you know.

And of course, gun violence: we have over 11,000 gun deaths per year, thanks in large part to negligent, lax gun laws, with no signs of reform due to political corruption and legalized bribery in congress by gun manufacturers.

Who you vote for and who gets elected directly affects ALL of these things.

You wanna know who lives and dies based on an election? Try asking the family members of the 49 people gunned down in the Pulse nightclub in Florida recently, just for starters. Or the parents of Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut, whose children (all within the 10-ish range) were all massacred by a maniac with easy legal access to guns. Or the family of people like Tamir Rice (age 12), Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Freddie Gray, and far, FAR too many more to name, all murdered senselessly by corrupt, poorly trained police officers, all of which could have been avoided with proper criminal justice reform. Who gets elected, who's in office in other words. I'm sure most of the surviving relatives of these people find that who's in office and who's overseeing the laws is of IMMENSE importance.

This of course is just America. Every country has its own problems which can so often be rooted back to politics. Every country. Britain right now is suffering INCREDIBLE economic misery right now thanks entirely to the direct results of a recent election (though its arguable, depending on who you ask, that in doing so they MAY have averted even worse decades down the road).

But the point is politics and elections have some of the most SEVERE consequences imaginable for MILLIONS upon millions of men, women, and children. Every single vote counts. Every single vote carries the weight of those lives. It may not seem like it a lot of times, but they do.

The people in high office impact the law. The law impacts the quality and standard of living for EVERYONE in a civilized society in countless ways (obvious and less obvious). And the people in office get there in a free, democratic society (ostensibly at least, but that's a whole other matter) by way of votes. The votes of people like even the dumbshit OP who wasted his for a joke that's not even particularly funny or clever to begin with.

If you are incapable of understanding or grasping this very plain, simple fact, incapable of connecting these very basic, rudimentary dots (who runs the laws = who lives and dies), then its perfectly and absolutely fair to then question which planet exactly you've been living on all this time. Cause it sure as hell can't be this one.

"In what world does life or death hinge on an election?"

This may be among the single most terrifyingly stupidest questions ever asked.

[Metalwario64]

There was an 18 year old kid awhile back (white in this case) who was driving to a friend's house to play video games who was pulled over on suspicion of marijuana possession. The whole thing was caught on video: with NO justifiable cause for doing so (the kid was plainly not resisting in any way) the cop tazed him in the chest for several minutes too long, and then slammed his skull into the concrete sidewalk. The tazer put him in cardiac arrest, and the pavement facial gave him permanent brain damage and sent him into a brief coma. He's alive, but his memory is permanently fucked and his life is ruined forever.

Viewable here. Not for the faint of heart, especially at the end.

I bring this one particular example up specifically because this kid looked like and could've easily been ANYONE on this forum and others like it. Some perfectly average, random, teenage gamer-type. Now with permanent brain damage. Compliments of our shitty criminal justice system and horrendous police training.

I hate discussing politics anymore, but this is the first I've seen and heard about this (and infuriates me as every other police brutality case I see that goes unnoticed), and that is also indicative of our corporate media. I can't even find anything about it on NBC and MSNBC's sites through a Google site search of his name.

[Kamiccolo9]

Weimar Germany elected its Chancellors. Hitler lost the election, and yet was still given a prominent government position that he later maneuvered into control of the state because he had such a strong following in the election.

Every vote matters, even if you lose. You never know what that show of support will accomplish later on down the road.

[gogeta97]

*rant*

Okay fine, I will admit it was a stupid question. Calm down.

Again make no mistake, I'm not trying to undercut the importance of voting in any way. Your initial statement just made it seem as if OP's decision will literally, directly result in people dying and it will be all his fault. That just seems like an overreaction to me. Feel free to disagree but it does.

Anyways this thread should probably be locked before it turns into another "Does anyone want to discuss the social issues of Dragonball?" thread. That's definitely where it's headed.

[Kanassa]

*rant*

Okay fine, I will admit it was a stupid question. Calm down.

Again make no mistake, I'm not trying to undercut the importance of voting in any way. Your initial statement just made it seem as if OP's decision will literally, directly result in people dying and it will be all his fault. That just seems like an overreaction to me. Feel free to disagree but it does.

Anyways this thread should probably be locked before it turns into another "Does anyone want to discuss the social issues of Dragonball?" thread. That's definitely where it's headed.

It seems to be heading more towards a political discussion of the presidential candidates, though that is much more away from dragonball and will just devolve into ''Which of the two are the biggest shitheads!?'' (From what I know as a UK person). Either way, kind f pointess in this thread.

[Soppa Saia People]

I love how this went from, stupid joke thread, to politic talk. Oh Kanzenshuu, never change
[spoiler]Except the ability to edit posts full time again.[/spoiler]

[bigray]

I love how this went from, stupid joke thread, to politic talk. Oh Kanzenshuu, never change
[spoiler]Except the ability to edit posts full time again.[/spoiler]

lol I'm new here too. i thought 'if it wasnt DBZ related then it wasnt allowed.' but ill know for next time what will happen


i honestly thought the conversation would have went like this...

POST #2: I think Whis would make a great prime minister for Australia. he seems to have great integrity for the party hes supporting (its a shame hes supporting a destruction party at the moment)

POST#3: I would have voted for Master Roshi's sex party! bleeding noses all day!

maybe i should have left the pics out

P.S

just for the record... if i had to vote in an election where Donald Trump was running for president then id do everything to vote against him. I hope everyone doesnt take him seriously because hes a laughing stock overseas.

[Kanassa]

P.S

just for the record... if i had to vote in an election where Donald Trump was running for president then id do everything to vote against him. I hope everyone doesnt take him seriously because hes a laughing stock overseas.

Even when his only formidable opponent is Clinton?

[Kamiccolo9]

P.S

just for the record... if i had to vote in an election where Donald Trump was running for president then id do everything to vote against him. I hope everyone doesnt take him seriously because hes a laughing stock overseas.

Even when his only formidable opponent is Clinton?

Clinton has much, much more international prestige than Trump. Like, it's a dinosaur fighting an ant.

[Kanassa]

P.S

just for the record... if i had to vote in an election where Donald Trump was running for president then id do everything to vote against him. I hope everyone doesnt take him seriously because hes a laughing stock overseas.

Even when his only formidable opponent is Clinton?

Clinton has much, much more international prestige than Trump. Like, it's a dinosaur fighting an ant.

Clinton is just as insane and destestible as Trump, it's just Trump is more memeworthy.

[gogeta97]

Clinton has much, much more international prestige than Trump. Like, it's a dinosaur fighting an ant.

What do you mean exactly?

[Kamiccolo9]

Clinton is just as insane and destestible as Trump, it's just Trump is more memeworthy.

I don't think you realize how insanely far right from the rest of the world the U.S. is. Clinton's got nothing on Trump, especially internationally. She's fairly popular abroad, while Trump is a joke.

[Kunzait_83]

For the record, yeah, America is a far right wing loony compared to much of the rest of the first world today. Unquestionably. Its been that way for pretty much the entire 21st century thus far, if not longer. As a country we have almost ZERO sense of self-awareness for how utterly and gobsmackingly BATSHIT we look right now to every other nation. This has to change. ASAP.

So yeah. Election.



Clinton is, morally and ethically, a piece of garbage. Full stop. I wouldn't so much as trust her to tell me what time it is, and she absolutely strikes me as the kind of person who would drink the blood of a newborn infant from its opened jugular if it meant getting the tiniest bit more power for herself.

The financial corruption she's been involved with behind the scenes her whole career is FAR too long reaching to recount, she's long been in favor of rampant Wall Street deregulation (a root source of much of our economic misery, including the '08 crash), she both supported the Iraq war back in the day and currently supports a full scale war in Syria for absurdly nebulous reasons that have little to do with national security, and she's also, during her time as Secretary of State, helped to arm South African child soldiers. So she's technically also an accomplice to child murder to boot (so anytime you see her in one of her political ads playing with a bunch of smiling kids, by all means reach for the nearest vomit bag and upchuck your lower intestines). She's in a lot of ways the American Margaret Thatcher, and that's a bone-chilling prospect in itself.

BUT on the other hand, Trump is an overgrown manchild intellectually (and we've all seen how well electing an in-over-his-head moron with no idea what he's doing for president worked out for us for most of the 2000s), an open racist, nowhere NEAR as anti-corruption as he claims he is (coming from a 1980s corporate raider like him, I don't buy his trade protectionism rhetoric for two seconds: its like Wayne LaPierre running for office on an anti-gun platform), and has tendencies towards blatantly fascist thinking and ideology. His economic policies alone run the risk of crashing the WORLD economy on a scale humanity's never had to deal with before, and the kind of open, knuckle-dragging bigotry and hate-mongering he inspires and encourages is a national shame and embarrassment that should frankly be mortifying and infuriating people even more than it already is.

His whole border wall thing alone would be a national catastrophe, and he's insinuated numerous times he'd have no problems doing an open military invasion of Mexico if they refuse to pay for it, which would be an international clusterfuck of epic proportions. Not to mention the "opened libel law" shit he desperately wants, which would eviscerate freedom of speech in journalism. And his support for re-instating Bush-era torture. And murdering the families (including children) of ISIS members. He'd essentially be the American Tayyip Erdogan, but even stupider. Possibly a heavy contender for the stupidest political leader in history.

Full Metal Jacket summed it up best: "Its a big shit sandwich, and we all gotta take a bite."

Between the two, we've had Clinton's type in power many, many, many, MANY times before. We're all sick to the soul of it unquestionably, but what Trump represents is NIGHTMARISHLY worse on a titanic scale. Don't get me wrong, she's deplorable and hideous... but if nothing else she's also COMPETENT at a baseline level. She'd keep the busted-ass, rickety ship afloat another 4 years, and we all get to live to fight another day and try again. Hope for something better lives on, etc.

We've already had one incompetent imbecile in power for the first 8 years of the 21st century, and it nearly drove the country over a cliff. We've BARELY kept our heads above water in the Obama years after that. I genuinely don't know if we'd be able to make it through another round of something like that (probably even worse in many respects) in any way intact as a country.

I viscerally loathe the both of them, I'd IMMENSELY rather it were Sanders obviously (I might even be writing him in come November, not sure yet), but if it HAS to be one or the other with NO other alternative... then *pauses to gargle some bleach* Clinton. Much as I'd rather she were rotting in a Federal penitentiary right now (and I don't buy for a second that the reason she isn't somehow has nothing to do with her husband having a "friendly personal chit chat" recently with the Attorney General: we've indicted a fucking five star GENERAL over less serious shit than her charges), the damage Trump would do if he attempted even a QUARTER of what he says he wants to do would be horrific beyond comprehension. To paraphrase from Sam Harris: "Hillary's bad. Trump's unthinkable."

I trust Hillary to, if nothing else, not blow up the country for 4 years and literally NOTHING ELSE besides that. Trump is a genuine risk to the entire fucking planet. The brain damaged 4chan dipshits who support him have NO fucking earthly idea the kind of fire they're playing with. And if they do and don't care, then they're even more sociopathic and broken to their core than I'd already long-since thought they were (which was quite a goddamned lot).

Both Hillary and Trump are monsters. I don't want either one of them anywhere near the levers of power. But one is a slow and incremental death by poison - which buys you time at least to try and reverse it - while the other is a much more immediate demise by gunshot wound to the skull, in which case you're just fucked. If you hate her because she's just going to continue to slowly and gradually drift the car towards a cliff (as well you should), then it makes absolutely NO SENSE whatsoever to think that the best and most rational response then is to instead pick the guy whose clearly going to just gun the gas pedal and make a bee line straight over the edge.

Better the devil you know and all that.

[bigray]

just heard this on the news... 'its a democratic right to waste your vote.' so my vote was just as valid as everyone else complaining in this thread as if it was a crime. as you have a democratic right to use it and not waste it. GOKU FOR PM!

[Captain Awesome]

In regards to its purpose, I'm just expressing how I felt about his post and maybe he will reply back with how he feels about my response.

There isn't a whole lot that I can add after Kunzait's wonderfully articulate wall of text, but I will give you a little bit of context.

Generally in Australia, elections are decided on election night, we have two major parties and the result is often clear well before all of the votes have been counted. However in the current election we are now four days out without a clear winner with many voters abandoning the rather binary politics of Labor vs Liberal for minor parties, the consequence of this is of course a very tight election with some seats having as little as 60 votes deciding the difference.

So I would argue that my response is perfectly reasonable given the circumstances. I love Dragonball as much as anyone here, but it makes me sad to see fandom so cheaply invoked in lieu of contributing to the democratic process.

[Zephyr]

And of course, gun violence: we have over 11,000 gun deaths per year, thanks in large part to negligent, lax gun laws, with no signs of reform due to political corruption and legalized bribery in congress by gun manufacturers.

I'd say that poor mental health is arguably a larger cause of any kind of violence than anything else. Gun laws are also as lax as they are, if not mostly then at least significantly, because of their necessary role in keeping a corrupt ruling class in line (and for personal individual self defense). Gun rights were put in place for a reason, and wanting that reason to be respected doesn't necessarily entail corruption or bribery. It is unfortunately true, however, that in the wrong hands, these deadly weapons are easy tools for violence. That's why I think mental health is the true focal point of an issue like this. It's the necessary thing missing that is preventing both ideals from being jointly realized.

Not that this detracts at all from your point; this country's definitely an embarrassment (though I'd argue that the species itself is an embarrassment, when compared to what it could be), and violence is a key reason for this. Just felt that the "gun violence" point deserved to be more fleshed out, since it's one of the more complex and divisive issues that you touched on.