The General American Politics Thread

[Your Vest Friend]

A dead horse to beat or a (sometimes, dunno about petty cases like the symbols) deserved target because of how dickish it can be? I can't say for America, but in Ireland with regard to the recent vote, the Catholic church had the arrogance to assume that its influence would assure a no majority because of having so many followers of faith, but a good number voted against the church's word and basically said "Get your shit together, Catholic Church". It's a real hot button topic amongst the religion and the general masses at large.

 

Might be a few years before America gets to that stage though.

[Patticus]

Atheists are barred from holding public office in seven states, and are held in suspicion (if not contempt) by many American voters. Despite the widespread Islamaphobia present in the US, Muslims are more readily trusted than atheists, where their election is permitted.
 
Christianity may be mocked and attacked for various reasons regularly in the US, but it is under no hint of a threat of its membership being barred from holding office based on their faith, which would be closer to actual persecution, and people trust its followers a great deal more than most other segments of society, especially atheists. People who believe that Christianity in America is under some kind of terrible assault are paranoid and delusional. It is no more under attack today than it was when Thomas Jefferson wrote, on the subject of all religions (Christianity being the one he was best acquainted with), "I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded upon fables and mythologies."

[Tani Coyote]

Thomas Jefferson also believed that we should all be farmers so I'm not inclined to take his worldview at face value because I actually like human beings having the option to live good lives. Furthermore, I'd rather believe in a "fable" than the idea it's fine and dandy to own other human beings for my personal gain.

Anyway. I think it's never a good idea to start "we are more persecuted than you" contests. Every identity group struggles with its own unique issues and to sweep one group aside on the basis of another's worse position is good for nothing but fostering animosity. There's no great persecution of Christianity but to argue it's beloved and accepted by the whole of society would be just as false. I mean, when you see terms like "X-Mas" and the like, it's clear there's someone trying way too hard to remove religious elements from a lot of things that are already fairly secularized.

Is the Prince of Egypt a religious film, or just a film that was inspired by a religious story? Should we rename Moses, Ramses, God, et. al. to avoid imposing religious values on an audience? No, that'd be ridiculous. That person is reading way too much into it and that's on them.

But to tie this back into politics. While I believe in a strong separation of church and state, I don't see much issue with tame expression of religious figures and symbols in the halls of the state for reasons already mentioned; they only take on as much meaning as you allow them to. "In God We Trust" is an extremely minor thing to fuss over compared to churches being allowed to lobby governments. I'm more concerned with laws and proposed laws than a cross here, a crescent there, or a Star of David over there. Laws absolutely impact our well-being as citizens and should be kept free from religious influence.

[Patticus]

I know what Jefferson was about, why he's somewhat overrated and this and that, my point was that Christianity is no more being actively persecuted now (on this continent) than it was within earshot of the nation's founding. Is it mocked and attacked? Oh, certainly. Does it deserve it? Most of the time, absolutely, and some of the time, inevitably not. It is not persecuted though - if anything, it still sits top a pedestal. How many politicians have vehemently claimed to be Christians in order to not lose an election? It is undeniably an asset to be a Christian in this country, not a persecution warrant. There are several other groups out there able to claim that they are actively persecuted, but Christianity as a group is not among them.

 

As for the separation of church and state, no government figure should be able to choose what is and what is not acceptable without checks and balances assuring that one faith does not get its big monument at the state capital while another is denied, for example. The most visible church/state connection needs to be at the school level, where teachers impartially give pupils a run-down of the world's major religions and their beliefs, as well as those of several noted dead faiths (Hellenic etc). This serves not to indoctrinate kids, but to prevent the spread of ignorance regarding faiths more prevalent in other countries, i.e. Islam, which combats racism.

 

Faith schools need to be scrapped though, that shit isn't acceptable.

[Tani Coyote]

While I can see the argument against faith schools, I don't think we can really touch those without invading parents' privacy. After all, plenty of parents take their kids to church, teach them their beliefs, etc. It's ultimately a thorny issue because we need to establish a precursor to a police state to ensure impartiality.

What we can hope for, on the other hand, is that scientific standards are met in faith schools. In addition, some universities are run by religious organizations - including the not-exactly progressive RCC - but are very open towards diverging ideas. I think pursuing a similar model for primary and secondary schools would be a good compromise.

The primary goal of any educational institution should be to promote critical thinking. Saying you don't believe in God shouldn't be met with a crack across the knuckles, but a request to submit why you lean that way.

Most university teachers don't punish you for having opposing arguments, but they absolutely want you to have some sort of logic behind your reasoning.

[Tani Coyote]

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/05/here-are-7-things-people-who-say-theyre-fiscally-conservative-but-socially-liberal-dont-understand/

Or, "Why Right Libertarianism is Terrible."

This article does a well enough job pointing out that for the most part, fiscal conservatism and social liberalism are antithetical to each other.

Fiscal conservatism ultimately leads to a system that perpetuates crime, poverty, and racism.

And as it points out, the rebuttal of fiscal conservatives not opposing spending so much as waste is also a red herring, because it implies that fiscal liberalism is all about wanting to waste money.

No, fiscal liberalism is about guaranteeing basic human rights, a stable economy (something all the deregulation and tax cuts in the world haven't done), and overall ensuring that we're not living in some Medieval Law of the Jungle society.

[Lisbon]

So, Open Carry has been passed by Texas legislature and it has been sent up to the offices of I-Can't-Believe-It-He's-Actually-Worse-Than-Rick-Perry, just waiting to be officially signed off.

 

As a Texan, I feel this was inevitable at this point. It's fucking stupid, and I'm not going to feel very comfortable seeing people walking around flashing guns on their person as if it's the days of the wild west, but it was going to happen seeing the way this state is run. I'm angry at this, but I'm only letting out a sigh of defeat in response.

 

Why? Why just let people parade around with pistols out like it's no big deal? I don't get it. I don't see how anything positive can come out of that. At best it'll intimidate potential criminals, but at what cost? I sure as hell wouldn't feel safe if I was walking down the street, seeing people with guns strapped to their waist like it's no big deal. Especially seeing the way some of the people in this state operate. Crime rates will probably soar as a result, and I would put money on riots and shit breaking out because the cops down here sure as hell aren't going to react the same way to a black man or a hispanic man carrying around a pistol as they're going to with a white man. At best it's a Pyrrhic victory in that regard, and at worst it's just Texan politicians reminding everyone that their heads are shoved so far up their asses that the shovel would break if one tried to dig them out. I'm very much leaning towards the latter of the two being the case here.

 

I don't know why I bother getting angry at the way the state I live in is run anymore. I keep holding out for a ray of hope but at this point I don't even know why. I'm getting the hell out of here one day.

[Patticus]

Given that open carry for some shotguns and rifles has been in effect in Texas for some years now, I can't say I know how adding some handguns to the mix will change things down there. I really can't help but feel a distinct unease at this development, though. Even living in a concealed carry state, I just don't trust anyone I think might have a gun on their person. Knowing, actually seeing the gun(s), would likely make me even more fearful for my own and my family's lives.

 

I guess I just don't trust people.

 

 

Meanwhile, Republican Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake have just sold off an Apache holy site, declared a protected area by Dwight Eisenhower in 1955, to a mining group. Oak Flat has been the fantasy of many a mining mogul over the years because of the rich deposits of copper and other ores beneath the ground there, but thankfully its protected status has, up to now, been safeguarded, its grounds unsullied by hard hats, big diggers and other mining equipment.

 

Sens. McCain and Flake did what Republican senators do best: they made a dirty end-run around the opposition. In December, they slipped a provision putting Oak Flat up for sale into the hundreds of pages of legislation that made up the Defense Authorization Act, a law funding the military whose passage was considered crucial. As a last-minute rider, the deal escaped public scrutiny — a common maneuver amongst corrupt politicians.

 

http://reverbpress.com/politics/arizonas-gop-senators-play-dirty-sell-apache-holy-site-foreign-mining-company-video/

 

The site is ancient, its petroglyphs and other artifacts dating back I don't even know how many centuries, and hell, it's a really important site to Apache culture. Fortunately, there is hope...

 

What has been done can — and should be — undone. A federal Environmental Impact Statement has to be issued before the transfer can take place. That process will take several years. In the meantime, public pressure on Congress could lead lawmakers to repeal the Arizona senator’s’ disgraceful rider.

 

This can and must be stopped. The Apache have been fucked over too many times already, at the hands of people just like McCain and Flake. It's beyond time to stop.

More information:

[Tornado]

Why? Why just let people parade around with pistols out like it's no big deal?

The obvious response is to ask why it is a big deal. Texas isn't anywhere near the first state to pass open carry laws.

[Patticus]

I'm honestly more concerned about this forthcoming "Draw the Prophet Mohammed in front of a Mosque" biker event, scheduled to be held before they do their anti-Islam protest there. There being in Phoenix, AZ. The attendees have been encouraged to bring their guns and (paraphrasing) "make use of your second amendment rights," which just sounds like they're quite prepared to kill anybody who tries to interrupt their little hate-fest.

Then again, to own a gun you really do have to be prepared to end lives, otherwise you'd own a stun gun or something.

Senseless provocation.

[shdowhunt60]

 I guess I just don't trust people.

 

http://crimepreventionresearchcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Concealed-Carry-Permit-Holders-Across-the-United-States.pdf

 

Consider the two large states at the front of the current debate, Florida and Texas: Both states provide easy web access to detailed records of permit holders. During over two decades, from October 1, 1987 to May 31, 2014, Florida has issued permits to more than 2.64 million people, with the average person holding a permit for more than a decade.3 Few -- 168 (about 0.006%) -- have had their permits revoked for any type of firearms related violation, the most common being accidentally carrying a concealed handgun into a gun-free zone such as a school or an airport, not threats or acts of violence. It is an annual rate of 0.0002 percent. The already low revocation rate has been declining over time. Over the last 77 months from January 2008 through May 2014, just 4 permits have been revoked for firearms-related violations. With an average of about 875,000 active permit holders per year during those years, the annual revocation rate for firearms related violations is 0.00007 percent – 7 one hundred thousandths of one percentage point. For all revocations, the annual rate in Florida is 0.012 percent.

 

Considering how incredibly low the rate of revocations for concealed carry permit holders are, why?

[Patticus]

Considering how incredibly low the rate of revocations for concealed carry permit holders are, why?

 

That is quite worrying. Why are the numbers so low? I know that those states aren't just chock full of really good gun owners. How many violent and generally angry people are out there, right now, carrying firearms? How many acts of firearms-related domestic violence in these states are not ending up in the violent spouse losing their license, when we know that firearms up the chances of death in cases of domestic abuse?

That doesn't make me feel better, it makes me feel worse.

 

 

Incidentally, the revocation figures are going to drop further if/when the GOP decides that carrying guns into airports and schools is just dandy. The trend is presently toward guns everywhere, after all. Not that an armed citizenry has ever stopped a mass murderer, which seems to be half the rationale for the push toward lax/no gun laws, the other half being home defense.

[shdowhunt60]

...

 

Man, you must be a blast at parties.

[Tornado]

How many acts of firearms-related domestic violence in these states are not ending up in the violent spouse losing their license, when we know that firearms up the chances of death in cases of domestic abuse?

Should be none of them, since domestic violence convictions come with a (federal) comprehensive ban on firearm ownership since 1997.

 

Not that an armed citizenry has ever stopped a mass murderer,

 

Whether or not that statement is actually true, that link is an atrocious source to back it up.

 

 

 

Appalachian School of Law shooting in Grundy, Virginia

Gun rights die-hards frequently credit the end of a rampage at the law school in 2002 to armed "students" who intervened. They conveniently ignore that those students also happened to be current and former law enforcement officers, and that the killer, according to police investigators, was out of ammunition by the time they got to him.

Logically, that means that police wouldn't have been able to do anything either.

 

 

Middle school dance shooting in Edinboro, Pennsylvania

An ambiguous case from 1998, in which the shooter may well have already been done shooting: After killing a teacher and wounding three others, the 14-year-old perpetrator left the dance venue. The owner of the venue followed him outside with a shotgun, confronting and subduing him in a nearby field until police arrived. The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, who himself recently argued for more guns as an answer to gun violence, told me this week that one police source he talked to about this case said that it was "not clear at all" whether the kid had intended to do any further shooting after he'd left the building.

So what? Does that mean that stopping him from escaping wasn't necessary?

 

 

High school shooting in Pearl, Mississippi

Another case, from 1997, in which the shooting was apparently already over: After killing two and wounding seven inside Pearl High School, the 16-year-old perpetrator left the building and went outside near the parking lot. The assistant principal—who was also a member of the Army Reserve—ran out to his own vehicle, grabbed a handgun he kept there, and then approached the shooter, subduing him at gunpoint until authorities arrived.

Again, just letting him go would have been preferable? I get that the claim being countered is that it prevents shootings, but that article isn't framing these examples in that context.

 

 

New Life Church shooting in Colorado Springs, Colorado

In 2007 a gunman killed two people and wounded three others before being shot himself; the pro-gun crowd likes to refer to the woman who took him out in the parking lot as a "church member." Never mind that she was a security officer for the church and a former cop, and that the church had put its security team on high alert earlier that day due to another church shooting nearby.

Sounds like the exact opposite of what the article was saying.

 

 

Bar shooting in Winnemucca, Nevada

In 2008, a gunman who killed two and wounded two others was taken out by another patron in the bar, who was carrying with a valid permit. But this was no regular Joe with a concealed handgun: The man who intervened, who was not charged after authorities determined he'd committed a justifiable homicide, was a US Marine.

Again, sounds good to me.

 

 

Shopping mall shooting in Tacoma, Washington

As a rampage unfolded in 2005, a civilian with a concealed-carry permit named Brendan McKown confronted the assailant with his handgun. The shooter pumped several bullets into McKown, wounding six people before eventually surrendering to police after a hostage standoff. A comatose McKown eventually recovered after weeks in the hospital.

That's not proof of anything at all. So that guy tried to stop him but couldn't is better than doing nothing?

 

Courthouse shooting in Tyler, Texas 

In 2005, a civilian named Mark Wilson, who was a firearms instructor, fired his licensed handgun at a man on a rampage at the county courthouse. Wilson was shot dead by the body-armored assailant, who wielded an AK-47.

So this guy tried to stop him, and the guy who decked himself out in something that would have stymied anything short of a SWAT Team was able to kill him, means that it is worse than doing nothing? I have to imagine someone running around in body armor with an assault rifle is enough of a statistical outlier that we don't have to start worrying about it.

[Patticus]

One point of the article was that when mass murderers are stopped, the people who do the stopping successfully tend not to be Average Joe citizens; they are current or former members of law enforcement or the military with professional firearms and combat training, and often have years of experience under their belts. Not an undisciplined armed citizenry as the NRA and the GOP envision, but experts who just happened to be there.

 

We both know that unless you want a citizenry comprised entirely of weapons experts, along with lots of strict checks and balances that Wayne La Pierre would abhor, the solution to these events would be to prevent them from happening in the first place, and we've already gone into extensive detail on that and the surrounding subjects. But that isn't going to happen any time soon. The trend across America right now is firearms deregulation with no safety net, or at least not a strong one. Low license revocation figures do not comfort me, because every week it seems I hear about a new shooting (mass or otherwise), a new case of domestic violence resulting in murder, some kid who found their parents' gun and killed themselves or someone else.

[shdowhunt60]

Law enforcement? Professional firearms training? Please, don't make me laugh.

[Patticus]

Yes, I'm sure that I have spectacularly ballsed my argument up, as is wont to happen when I become fixated upon proving a point in this thread.

[Tornado]

One point of the article was that when mass murderers are stopped, the people who do the stopping successfully tend not to be Average Joe citizens; they are current or former members of law enforcement or the military with professional firearms and combat training, and often have years of experience under their belts. Not an undisciplined armed citizenry as the NRA and the GOP envision, but experts who just happened to be there.

Former or current military there is a point to be made, but police officers and security guards rarely get any more training and background investigation than someone who applies for a concealed carry permit in a may-issue state. The amount of times LAPD or NYPD officers have had to put fifty some odd bullets at unarmed people and (luckily) only hit them maybe once suggest to me that the take rate is a bit better for private citizens' training than it is for law enforcement.

[Patticus]

Sadly, you're probably right. Taken together with the obvious cases of police brutality, wrongful shootings, mind boggling ammunition waste, corruption, rampant racism and general bigotry, and their eagerness to militarize... Shit, the police in this country have terrifyingly low standards for their applicants! God damn...

 

As for security guards, well, I guess it's cheaper to just put someone in a uniform and have them take a written test about the law and such than it is to provide them with any degree of training. No wonder half of the guards at my workplace look like they were plucked from Jimmy McGill's clientele registry.

 

I should not have used them as examples, but there is a clear case to be made for anyone who works with or just owns an operational firearm to have to receive the appropriate military-level firearms training and purchase the appropriate accessories and such (at a discount?) afterwards.

 

Christ on a bike, the state of this country. Root and branch change is desperately needed everywhere, isn't it?

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

It's rather sad when the police are the least trusted with guns than the citizenry. Even more sad that, as a minority, I can trust the intentions of someone trying to rob me more than someone who's supposed to serve and protect. (thank god I haven't been a victim of such cases where I live - which is in Texas, ironically enough. lol)

[shdowhunt60]

Former or current military there is a point to be made, but police officers and security guards rarely get any more training and background investigation than someone who applies for a concealed carry permit in a may-issue state. The amount of times LAPD or NYPD officers have had to put fifty some odd bullets at unarmed people and (luckily) only hit them maybe once suggest to me that the take rate is a bit better for private citizens' training than it is for law enforcement.

In fact, I would argue they train far less. Your average cop probably only shoots to make his annual qualifications. And even then, I've heard a lot of anecdotal stories of them passing underqualified minorities and women, so they can "maintain diversity". Meanwhile, Joe Blow probably goes to the range every WEEK.

Who do you think is going train more? The guy given his gun, because it's his job to have one, or the guy that got one because he wants one, and he enjoysenjoys shooting it?

[Patticus]

Let's see. Ummm... is the answer both, because that's what common sense dictates that people with guns must do, to keep from being more a danger to the public safety than many criminals? Because it is lunacy to give people with little training access to deadly weapons and expect them to use them in a proper and responsible manner?

 

I would have thought that extensive firearms training would be the norm for law enforcement, because of the danger that relatively untrained firearms users pose. Why do they train so little? Why is it not written into law? Just because it might bore them, that doesn't mean it isn't worth every taxpayer penny to ensure that the cops assuring the public's safety aren't fucking idiots. Training up to a certain skill level should be mandatory, no ifs or buts, no candy or nuts, so that if you do have a lunatic going about harming others, he or she or they can be brought down with a single incapacitating shot to the leg, instead of fifty shots everywhere, which may very well (and probably already have) injure or kill innocent bystanders.

 

 

In the UK, things are obviously quite different. For the police, if even a single shot is fired by an officer, said officer is immediately suspended from front line duty while an investigation is undertaken to ascertain whether or not the shot taken was justified. Do we have that here? If not, can we? Please?

[shdowhunt60]

That would be ideal, but Police Unions have made the standards so unbelievably low, and make it next to impossible to fire a cop who's flat out bad at his job. I certainly wouldn't trust my life to these people when it came to it.

[Patticus]

Unions and Old Boys' Clubs do not a healthy mix make. Old Boys' Clubs don't mix well with anything really, they're so corrupting. I'd suggest that it might be time to try to legislate against them, but that probably wouldn't be workable.

 

On the subject of police incompetence and such, a report has just come out which suggests that American police officers kill, on average, more than two people per day.

 

The paper said that during the first five months of this year, 385 people - more than two a day - were killed.

The number of black people was disproportionately high among the victims, especially unarmed ones.

Official statistics rely on self-reported figures from law enforcement agencies.

They suggest about 400 people have been killed each year since 2008.

The US has seen a number of controversial cases where unarmed black people have been killed by white police officers.

Police are allowed to use deadly force when they fear for their lives or the lives of others, however there is currently no reliable way of tracking police shooting deaths.

Instead, the government relies on self-reported figures from the nation's 17,000 law enforcement agencies. The figures exclude killings deemed not to have been justified.

The Washington Post says it logged every fatal shooting in 2015 by police in the line of duty using interviews, police reports, local media reports and other sources.

It found a homicide rate of almost 2.6 per day so far this year - more than double the average 1.1 deaths per day reported in FBI records over the past decade.

"These shootings are grossly under­reported," former police chief Jim Bueermann told the newspaper. "We are never going to reduce the number of police shootings if we don't begin to accurately track this information."

Among the report's other findings:

• Black people were killed at three times the rate of whites or other minorities when adjusted for local population
• Most were armed, but one in six was unarmed or carried a toy weapon
• 365 men and 20 women were killed
• Most (118) were aged 25-34, while 94 were 35-44. Eight were children younger than 18
• In all three 2015 cases in which charges were subsequently filed against police officers, videos had emerged showing officers shooting a suspect during or after a chase on foot.

[Tani Coyote]

The police are an institution. Their job is to propagate themselves at this point. They're the ones who lobby for tough laws because it gives them work. They're the ones who lobby for heavy police presence, even though the studies we've taken show there is pretty much zero correlation between crime and presence.

 

Most people are good. We only need a minimal police presence to address those who aren't.

 

A military is much more necessary than the police, because those who rise to power in any country inevitably seek more, and will happily walk over their neighbors if they look too weak. But as for police? We can probably get rid of a good deal of them.

 

I'm all for gun ownership as a deterrent, furthermore, since I don't want to wait ten minutes for cops to arrive while there's a psycho banging on my door. I certainly don't object to mandatory firearms training. It doesn't even have to be military level - a lot of accidents can be avoided if people simply follow the basic rules that every gun course teaches new shooters.

 

Sadly people ignore them. Case in point: my sister. We went shooting one day as a family. She decided "lol I'm gonna point this unloaded assault rifle at Mom!" She's laughing her ass off, my Mom is panicking. As far as I'm concerned, she should never be allowed to have a gun at all anymore. "Well isn't that overreacting?" Fuck no. If you're such a dumbass you're going to point a supposedly unloaded weapon at someone - which bee tee dubs is a leading cause of many accidental shootings - I think society's not losing much by removing your ability to defend yourself. Sure you're vulnerable now, but do we really want people who don't know basic gun safety breeding?

 

Anybody who owns a functional gun needs to not think of themselves as owning a piece of property like merchandise they got at Wal-Mart, but as a responsible citizen. Just as you're supposed to follow all the rules of the road when you're driving, you need to follow all the rules of firearms when you have one that works.

 

Store the ammo outside the gun if not separate. Never point it at someone. Always leave the safety on. Don't put your finger on the trigger unless your intent is to shoot. We really don't need to go to boot camp to understand these basic rules.

 

Now law is more complicated since people have different temperaments, but that's what background checks are for. But overall, the rule here is simple as well: unless there is a clear and immediate threat to your person or someone else's, you do not have the right to shoot. If you pull up in your car and see a guy walking down the street with your TV, you still don't have the right. Bullshit like Castle Doctrine aside, it's really not that hard to understand just cause for lethal force.

 

Sure someone's going to find it unjust that you're supposed to retreat, but it's for your benefit as much as the criminal's. Why do you assume you're going to win the firefight if you go after them? You might end up as the one dead, or you both might. You're not special, you're just another human being with a weapon. Unless you're in immediate danger, it makes sense for both your sake and the criminal's to just back off and let the police handle things.

 

Now, on another topic...

 

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/ayn_rand_worst_aunt

 

A full disclaimer I'm not an Objectivist, but I think they're unfair here.

 

Ayn Rand is terrible for wanting to treat a family loan as a business transaction?

 

Speaking as someone who has been burned way too many times by friends and family on money, I fully endorse her side of things here.

 

The people who are most likely going to kidnap our children, sexually assault us, steal from us, etc. are not those random joes walking around, but the people we're supposed to trust. Our precious family unit is actually very dysfunctional in most cases.

 

Her political views aside, I don't think she's at fault for wanting to teach responsibility. It's no different than giving children chores. She's trying to say that if you have debts, repay them. What's evil about that?

 

Let's remove Rand from the image here and go with someone a lot more widely respected: Aristotle. Aristotle believed people became virtuous through habit, and upbringing was a key thing here. Would a relative saying "hey I'll give you a loan but repay it a month, a year, or ten years from now" or "I'll give you a loan but you must pay it back with this amount on each of these dates." promote financial responsibility more?

 

It's things like this that keep me from identifying as liberal. A lot of liberal activists just look for any reason to rip a right-wing theorist to the point they won't even concede maybe they have a point here or there. It's like Sean Hannity latching onto false numbers for Obama's spending on trips all over again to score points with his audience.