I enjoy this future when the hard liners in the GOP play themselves.
US Politics Mega-thread - Page 8680
Forum Index > Closed |
Read the rules in the OP before posting, please. In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. | ||
Plansix
United States60190 Posts
I enjoy this future when the hard liners in the GOP play themselves. | ||
xDaunt
United States17988 Posts
On September 08 2017 01:03 Plansix wrote: You sort of summed up the entire argument. That children decide if they want to be. It is society that decided which of those things were related to being a boy or a girl, and who could do what. I don't think that the children are deciding anything. They just are what they are. | ||
Artisreal
Germany9234 Posts
On September 08 2017 00:49 Kickboxer wrote: Fair game. Maybe my personal cultural surroundings are different. I also don't object to girls being slutty, it's their own choice, but I won't respect them for that, and that's my own choice. Enjoyed a lot of your comments today, tho, thanks for the time and effort. Rant: Dude. It was you who posted that people live in different realities a few pages back. Maybe you live in 1990 in accordance with the restrictions posed on women to be sexy as fuck and at the same time Virgin Mary and that getting raped is due to promiscuous clothing or behaviour. And that boys don't cry (read express emotion). But others live in 2017, where veganism is a thing and people play videogames for a salary and footballers come out as homosexuals. Incidentally it is also a year where women and PoC do speak up against discrimination and even men start the fight against 'Manning up' (read suck it up). You don't have to be up to speed, bring imperfect is fine in these times. Even for a man. And to go back to your earlier example of your friends being stuck with bitchy wives and kids. They supposedly suffer from some sort of discrimination because of they split alimony is due and the wife gets the house and yada yada. Ok. They marry a person, impregnate them and afterwards say oops that's not for me. Tough shit. Your wife probably have up lots of career opportunities to be your child's mother while you went off and had a career. Now you're like... Bah this girl isn't for me. Whoops, your bad, have fun with the kids and no pension. Haha thanks for nothing. What else do their wives have to live on if not the continued support of theirs kids' father? Go back to their family and rely on their help until the kids are grown up? Go be a successful single mother managing work and kids and live a life worth living? Ask yourself whether you would want that for your daughter or even for yourself. | ||
Plansix
United States60190 Posts
On September 08 2017 01:17 xDaunt wrote: I don't think that the children are deciding anything. They just are what they are. Decide is the wrong word, agreed. | ||
Yurie
11692 Posts
On September 07 2017 21:23 Velr wrote: There are pre-employment drugtests? WTF? Is this normal? In Sweden it is standard practice to do a drug test when hiring in tech/industry/manufacturing (whatever it is called). Companies like Scania, Volvo and so on have 0 tolerance for drugs and programs to help people quit smoking. As far as I know Volvo used to have a saliva test while most others did a urine test a few years ago. Could be more urine or saliva by now, don't know. The equipment used is often dangerous to both you and your co-workers. I know I would have reported a fork lift driver that was on drugs at work if I saw one. | ||
Jockmcplop
United Kingdom9351 Posts
On September 08 2017 00:59 KwarK wrote: I see what you mean, but I disagree that there should be a need to come up with a way of expressing it that avoids making the people in power feel uncomfortable. If anything, making the people in power feel uncomfortable should be the point, you're trying to confront them with a dark reality and say "this thing really is a problem, change it!" Ideally the response to being told that you, a good white person who doesn't even own a hood, might still be perpetuating racism within society would be "shit, my bad, I'll try to stop doing that". Whereas if you try and frame it in completely neutral terms that don't make anyone feel like they're personally to blame then the result is that everyone agrees it's bad and that nobody does anything. But yeah, you're right in terms of the inadvertent outcome of the strategy. Apparently saying "I know you don't think of yourself as racist but you're being pretty racist" doesn't go down well, a lot of people immediately respond "no I'm not, you're the real racist!" And that sucks. I don't think the way to get around that is by refusing to challenge people in the first place though. Oh, those in power should definitely feel uncomfortable about progressive politics. I totally agree. Unfortunately, and this is another issue I have with recent racism debates, those in power are often generalized as 'all white men'. This is just untrue and simplified to the point of absurdity in my opinion. In the UK, there was recently a black model using the phrase 'all white men are racist'. She then qualified this in terms similar to the more detailed discussion we've just had here, which is fine. Unfortunately, all of this is viewed through the lens of power, which leads me to think about all those white men who work 70 hours a week on minimum wage who are implicated (or who FEEL implicated) by way of their gender and race in a huge power struggle which basically they are sitting out of. I mean should they be quitting their jobs like the model did (actually she was fired for her opinion) so they can campaign with her? Massive generalizations always come with a huge amount of error. This is another reason why specific language is important. | ||
zlefin
United States7689 Posts
| ||
Jockmcplop
United Kingdom9351 Posts
On September 08 2017 01:22 zlefin wrote: I'd say the language issue has less to do with the terms themselves; than with scum on the other side deciding to expoit the issue for political/monetary gain by both deriding the language choices (whatever they were), and by willfully only highlighting the more extreme uses/misuses of the term (i.e. highlighting only the extremes, rather than the moderates) so they can all rally against the extremes, and profit by being the ralliers. which also leads to a bunch of people fighting against all of the versions of the ideas, because they can't tell the difference and refuse to make the distinction. In some cases, yeah. Surely then, we should try and adapt our language so they don't have the choice to do that. In other cases, for example the difference between racism (the KKK) and racism (white power structure) are non existent - we are basically giving them the ammunition. | ||
Simberto
Germany11340 Posts
On September 08 2017 00:49 Kickboxer wrote: Fair game. Maybe my personal cultural surroundings are different. I also don't object to girls being slutty, it's their own choice, but I won't respect them for that, and that's my own choice. Enjoyed a lot of your comments today, tho, thanks for the time and effort. I think you should really consider that your experiences might not be universal. To me, all of what you are saying sounds as if you come from a very traditional milieu focusing on basically the values of the 50s, and you don't realize that what you see as obvious isn't as obvious to someone who lives in a more open society. It might have something to do with eastern europe being a bit more conservative in these regards when compared to western europe. You seem to have this very classic image that a man needs to be strong, muscular, and never shed a tear. He needs to protect his family through justified violence. Meanwhile a woman needs to be chaste and pure, and take care of the household. To me, this image of what the world looks like is completely outdated. I live in a safe city. I don't need to be violent to protect anybody because there is neither a threat of rampaging barbarian hordes nor wild animals. My girlfriend is a strong person who can protect herself. I see no reason to jealously guard her from other males because i trust her. She is not my possession. I would never judge anybody based on their sex life, just because that has no impact in my relationship to them. You should not respect girls for being "slutty" as you call it. You should also not disrespect them due to it. Unless you are one of the persons they are sleeping with, it is simply none of your business. What i am asking of you is having an open mind and questioning your assumptions. Try to find an actual reason as to why you think things should be the way you think they should be. If it is just "Because that is how things have always been" or "This is how things should be!", that is not a good reason. Especially if the net effect is that they are making people unhappy. | ||
Plansix
United States60190 Posts
| ||
Kickboxer
Slovenia1308 Posts
On September 08 2017 01:18 Artisreal wrote: Rant: Dude. It was you who posted that people live in different realities a few pages back. Maybe you live in 1990 in accordance with the restrictions posed on women to be sexy as fuck and at the same time Virgin Mary and that getting raped is due to promiscuous clothing or behaviour. And that boys don't cry (read express emotion). But others live in 2017, where veganism is a thing and people play videogames for a salary and footballers come out as homosexuals. Incidentally it is also a year where women and PoC do speak up against discrimination and even men start the fight against 'Manning up' (read suck it up). You don't have to be up to speed, bring imperfect is fine in these times. Even for a man. And to go back to your earlier example of your friends being stuck with bitchy wives and kids. They supposedly suffer from some sort of discrimination because of they split alimony is due and the wife gets the house and yada yada. Ok. They marry a person, impregnate them and afterwards say oops that's not for me. Tough shit. Your wife probably have up lots of career opportunities to be your child's mother while you went off and had a career. Now you're like... Bah this girl isn't for me. Whoops, your bad, have fun with the kids and no pension. Haha thanks for nothing. What else do their wives have to live on if not the continued support of theirs kids' father? Go back to their family and rely on their help until the kids are grown up? Go be a successful single mother managing work and kids and live a life worth living? Ask yourself whether you would want that for your daughter or even for yourself. I don't understand why you need to misrepresent my position, especially since I'm not sugarcoating anything and it's therefore "reactionary, primitive" etc. to begin with. Rape is atrocious and has no justification under any conditions, we can get that out of the way. I don't want women to be virgins, but I do believe it's pretty healthy for them to be picky who they go to bed with, since they can basically choose to fuck whomever they want, whenever they want. There are also very technical reasons why casual sex has a different psychological effect on a man compared to a woman. I think persuading women they have the same libido as men is not only wrong but also rather harmful, since in my personal experience, women who are overly promiscuous have various problems and mostly regret it, especially those blackout episodes that end in the walk of shame and no recollection of the guy's name. If that happens to a guy, it's mostly just funny. As for my friend, I can explain his situation in brief: he's been with his wife for over ten years, is the sole owner (paid all the money) of the apartment they live in, and has been the major provider for all this time. Though working on and off, she's mostly been a stay-at-home mom. They have two children together, and their relationship is completely fucked, they basically hate each other, for which they are naturally both equally responsible. Difference is, she is perfectly happy with her position, she barely talks to him, refuses to have sex, expects him to pay the bills and basically is happy dealing with their twin daughters. The poor guy is not only constantly pissed off, he's also sexually frustrated to the orbit and back, because she's nasty enough to have told him, repeatedly, she will pack the kids and file for divorce if he cheats on her and she finds out. In Slovenia, provided they do divorce, roughly 30% of the property goes to her, the kids, whom he loves very much and are practically the only thing keeping him sane go to her by default, and you can be bloody sure she will make it hard for him to spend time with them, as well as mandatory alimony in the amount of some 600€, which is exactly half of my friend's gross pay, to be enforced for the next 10 years. I probably don't have to explain this would effectively ruin his life. Would you say that's a fair and balanced situation in any way? I really don't think so. | ||
ticklishmusic
United States15977 Posts
Trump, Schumer agree to pursue plan to repeal the debt ceiling President Trump and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have agreed to pursue a deal that would permanently remove the requirement that Congress repeatedly raise the debt ceiling, three people familiar with the decision said. Trump and Schumer discussed the idea Wednesday during an Oval Office meeting. Schumer, Trump, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D.–Calif.) agreed to work together over the next several months to see if they can finalize a plan, which would need to be approved by Congress. One of the people familiar described it as a “gentlemen’s agreement.” Senate Democrats are hopeful they can finalize an arrangement with Trump by December. “The President encouraged Congressional leaders to find a more permanent solution to the debt ceiling so the vote is not so frequently politicized,” said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. The three people spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the contents of the meeting. Source This is the funniest shit. Looks like Trump realized that he's going to just keep taking L's if he tries to work with Congressional Republicans, so he's cutting deals with the Dems plus a few moderate Republicans. | ||
Plansix
United States60190 Posts
| ||
Danglars
United States12133 Posts
On September 08 2017 01:17 xDaunt wrote: I don't think that the children are deciding anything. They just are what they are. Does that include gender dysphoria for you (are what they are)? We're having debates about public school instruction in California if books aimed towards prompting transgender discussion are appropriate in Kindergarden or K-3 in general. Parents are a little pissed. | ||
WolfintheSheep
Canada14127 Posts
On September 08 2017 01:39 Danglars wrote: Does that include gender dysphoria for you (are what they are)? We're having debates about public school instruction in California if books aimed towards prompting transgender discussion are appropriate in Kindergarden or K-3 in general. Parents are a little pissed. "Parents are pissed" is probably the least meaningful statement you can hear about public school education. Parents are a pissy bunch. | ||
Ghostcom
Denmark4781 Posts
On September 08 2017 01:27 Plansix wrote: High level leftist tip: Slutty is the wrong word. The term commonly used is sex positive. So would you say we should adapt a new term because the other holds too many negative connotations and is pointlessly divisive? + Show Spoiler + I like the implication of the term in that everyone else must then be sex negative (or at least sex neutral?). | ||
Kickboxer
Slovenia1308 Posts
On September 08 2017 01:25 Simberto wrote: What i am asking of you is having an open mind and questioning your assumptions. Try to find an actual reason as to why you think things should be the way you think they should be. If it is just "Because that is how things have always been" or "This is how things should be!", that is not a good reason. Especially if the net effect is that they are making people unhappy. The actual reason is very simple. "It works". You erroneously believe I'm somehow traditional. I'm not. I smoke weed 24/7 and would fit the label of a "progressive" on a variety of subjects. Economically, I'm basically a leftist, I'm happy to pay my taxes and want them to go to the poor. But on the gender front, I can see and observe the world around me, and the more people are confused by their gender roles, the more problems they seem to have not only with their psyche but also with their relationships. Less and less people form stable committed relationships, you have cancer like PUA and women-hate groups on one end, and cancer like late feminism and man-hate groups on the other, and it's all shaping up to be a giant mess. I just want no part in that. As for my background, I was a wimpy, geeky kid who got bullied a lot for reading books during gym class. Accordingly, though I'm rather good looking, I also had little success with women up until my twenties. Then, relatively late in my life, I took up kickboxing and stuck to it, and the transformation the physical discipline and "patriarchal" environment has had on me is basically incredible. 10+ years into it, I'm insanely more confident, my body feels and looks great, I could realistically maul five of my old self in a physical confrontation - which prevents me from getting in those kinds of situations in the firs place - and women basically chat me up when I go out. That's why I've come to believe healthy masculinity is great for a guy, and until I'm persuaded otherwise by practical examples, I'll believe it not because of some rusty and tired patriarchal values, but simply because I can see that it works. Also, where I'm from, the jock life is long out of style. Young guys now shape their eyebrows, use facial creams and show their ankles, so it's not like I'm enforcing some kind of social terror. People like me are now the minority. | ||
Plansix
United States60190 Posts
On September 08 2017 01:42 Ghostcom wrote: So would you say we should adapt a new term because the other holds too many negative connotations and is pointlessly divisive? + Show Spoiler + I like the implication of the term in that everyone else must then be sex negative (or at least sex neutral?). We should likely treat each word in its own context and how it is used, rather than trying to make blanket rules for how we should treat all words. Call critical thinking and critique all the time. And yes, sex negative is part of appeal of using the term sex positive. | ||
Danglars
United States12133 Posts
On September 08 2017 01:25 Simberto wrote: I think you should really consider that your experiences might not be universal. To me, all of what you are saying sounds as if you come from a very traditional milieu focusing on basically the values of the 50s, and you don't realize that what you see as obvious isn't as obvious to someone who lives in a more open society. It might have something to do with eastern europe being a bit more conservative in these regards when compared to western europe. You seem to have this very classic image that a man needs to be strong, muscular, and never shed a tear. He needs to protect his family through justified violence. Meanwhile a woman needs to be chaste and pure, and take care of the household. To me, this image of what the world looks like is completely outdated. I live in a safe city. I don't need to be violent to protect anybody because there is neither a threat of rampaging barbarian hordes nor wild animals. My girlfriend is a strong person who can protect herself. I see no reason to jealously guard her from other males because i trust her. She is not my possession. I would never judge anybody based on their sex life, just because that has no impact in my relationship to them. You should not respect girls for being "slutty" as you call it. You should also not disrespect them due to it. Unless you are one of the persons they are sleeping with, it is simply none of your business. What i am asking of you is having an open mind and questioning your assumptions. Try to find an actual reason as to why you think things should be the way you think they should be. If it is just "Because that is how things have always been" or "This is how things should be!", that is not a good reason. Especially if the net effect is that they are making people unhappy. You should probably swallow a little of your own advice about having an open mind. You're clearly using superlatives and assumptions about who he is as a person just based on his mate selection preference with women. Bolded paragraph implies you brashly judge others while preaching tolerance. | ||
farvacola
United States18819 Posts
On September 08 2017 01:42 WolfintheSheep wrote: "Parents are pissed" is probably the least meaningful statement you can hear about public school education. Parents are a pissy bunch. I did some schoolwork on the recently mooted US Supreme Court case dealing with transgender bathrooms in schools, the Gavin Grimm case. No matter your take on his rights, the stuff that parents said at school board meetings during the follow up to legal action was absolutely disgusting. | ||
| ||