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.
On November 28 2017 03:52 Shiragaku wrote: [quote] What I am trying to get at is you wouldn't refuse to be friends with a liberal because Hillary and Obama did certain things that are not progressive so why is it acceptable to do the same to a Trump supporter, assuming they are not calling you a cuck every other sentence.
A Hillary supporter whose support of Hillary was predicated on her covering up of sexual abuse (as in that's why they liked her) would be morally unacceptable to me. A Hillary supporter who supported her in spite of that because there was no better alternative would be fine for me. The problem is that Trump supporters don't get to claim that there wasn't a less racist alternative to Trump. They can only say that the racism wasn't a significant factor to them.
And when racism in the 21st century seems to be defined as not giving disrespect to certain people, is that the worst thing that someone can believe in? Whenever I hear people use that argument, it really sounds like they are crying wolf at this point. Racism really doesn't mean anything to most people anymore when it is constantly being applied.
What people fail to see is that Trump's campaign was not built upon racism, it was in reaction to the people left behind with globalization and many of them live in a worst situation than they did years or decades ago and when they have to pay respect to groups of people or use phrases they have never even heard of years ago, how do you expect them to react?
On November 28 2017 03:59 Plansix wrote:
On November 28 2017 03:50 Shiragaku wrote: [quote] I don't know about you guys, bust most of my friendships with liberals ended was over shit like cultural appropriation, the legitimacy of gender fluidity, and my criticisms of campus identity politics.
In California, lots of gay people said that they were scared for their lives because Trump is in office and statistically and anecdotally, that is bullshit. Lots of women with nice jobs and attending good universities continue to insist they are oppressed when they are in a pretty good position compared to most Americans. And so many PoCs on college campuses engage in outright bullying and use their identity to cynically silence people. When you look more into their background, its not uncommon to see that they came from good families.
I can befriend people with many different political views and can still disagree with them, but with many urban progressives, I am always one comment from being socially ruined.
I also hear that a lot of gays don’t want to move out of MA or RI because the rest of the country is so unfriendly to them. I know people who have come back to the area because the rest of the country treated them like this. I have had Muslim friends who straight up left this country because it treated them so poorly. You don’t seem that interested in believe these folks, so I would argue that you value your political views more than their friendships.
I have grown up in rural America and there was definitely racism and homophobia. There were times when people refused to serve my mom because she was Asian and we had gay people who were bullied and eventually committed suicide. And the anti-Muslim sentiment was there, but on a personal level, most Muslims were integrated for the most part. But the Islamphobia is pretty bad and it is getting worse. However, with people like Jon Stewart and shows like Glee, that all changed so fast for the better. Rural America, although not San Francisco or New York is definitely way much friendly and livable than it used to be. When I moved to California, it was even better, especially for someone like me, but one thing that irks me is when I see people who have never experienced racism claiming oppression like some reward. I know what bigotry was like in action and there is nothing more infuriating when people in liberal bubbles LARP as a minority in their fictionalized view of suburban/rural America and use it to cynically promote their worldview.
No one is "missing" anything concerning why Trump won. You're at least a year late to this discussion.
Rural white America is desperately clinging to "the good old days" where they could work in an outdated or obsolete economy and perpetuate a casually xenophobic and misogynistic culture and everyone was OK with it (insofar as no one bothered to do anything about it). Now society is pushing back, forcing conservatives to actually "play fair" on the socioeconomic front, and conservatives are losing their mind and think that losing the intrinsic privileges that they had at the expense of women, minorities, LGBTQ, etc. is the same as systemic oppression. It's the ultimate hypocrisy when they love to throw out lines about "special snowflakes" and whatnot.
Does this explain why so many people turn to Trump? Yes.
Does it mean they're right or that it's ethically justified? Hell no.
The irony being that they're embracing "snowflake" from Fight Club's critique of male fragility without understanding that you weren't meant to root for Tyler Durden's terrorist group.
That movie gets harder and harder to watch every year. The story about the 20 year old guy showing it to his grandfather, saying the movie really spoke to his generation. The grandfather was stunned and told his 20 year old grand kid, “That is how they turned young men like you into Nazis.”
It's why we need to keep some liberal arts majors around. They can let the STEM folks know when a movie has subtext and is actually deconstructing and critiquing an idea.
On a completely tangential note, the Matrix being a metaphor for living as a trans person blew my mind.
We had this very discussion about the book Dune and it's relationship to Middle East politics. And the STEM folks were all shocked that people would take the space epic and think it had anything to do with earth politics. Even though the Fremen use Arabic words and live in the desert filled with super LSD that controls travel(space oil).
That Matrix subtext makes me like that first movie more and somehow dislike last two even more.
Edit: oh I never thought of the red pill reference. That's beautiful.
Even more interesting since any major sci-fi/fantasy work is riddled with social commentary. LotR was loaded with social/political themes. Everything written by Heinlein (e.g. Starship Troopers) had so much social commentary that it smacked you across the face. This stuff just goes on forever.
JRR Tolkien (and Christopher, who finally retired, god bless the man for spending his entire life curating his dad's work) explicitly denied any intention to comment on real world issues. The parallels to WWII are incidental, not allegorical. Though there are plenty of references to Welsh and other mythology.
You can't deny there are depictions of real world issues within it and that commentary and comparison are unavoidable. Frodo and Samwise are from different social classes, for example.
On November 27 2017 11:05 LegalLord wrote: Bummer to hear that from a columnist I actually think is pretty good.
I don't think there's anything wrong with his statement. Its not a binary statement where if you don't support Trump, you support the Democratic Party. You can still support, say, Mike Pence or choose some other conservative politician.
At this point, you're dumber than a sack of bricks if you STILL support Trump. We're talking about a man who clearly understands little about the world, who barely does his job, is obsessed with the media instead of America, doesn't give a shit about the people he specifically campaigned for, is flipflopping around what he campaigned for and is busy trying enrich himself and his family through the most powerful office in the world.
If you look at all of this and still think "fake news", there's nothing to talk to you about because you're living in a different reality. He's an utter legislative failure whose only achievement is getting a SC appointed, despite having majorities in both the house and senate. Which wasn't even his success but rather McConnell pulling the strings. You can't even say that he's like Jimmy Carter either because Trump is objectively a terrible person.
It's a very dangerous thing to declare there is only one opinion left to have on the situation, and to ruin personal friendships over politics. I still think he's worthy of support on some issues and opposition on others. He has helpfully made great progress bringing attention to some of society's discarded topics (in ways where polite discourse just gets dismissed, you racist bigots). If you declare there is no reason to support him whatsoever and will politicize your interpersonal friendships, there's less reason to hope for a period of national healing and unity in the future. Talk to the other side and don't rely on the right or left's propaganda to color your judgments.
It's fine to preach healing and unity, but you're choosing the wrong person to blame. The blame lies with the person actively sowing the damage and the disunity. The blame lies with the person who launches a social media war against anyone and everyone who says things he disagrees with. The blame lies with the person who calls for brown people to be fired when they make a statement about racism, and conveniently ignores white people who do the same. The blame lies with the person who campaigned on a wall, to keep the rapists out of our country, that the rapists would pay for. The blame lies with the man who sides with a sex offender and pedophile, silencing women when it's convenient for him politically. The blame lies with the person who says he'll drain the swamp, then hires people who are even deeper in companies' pockets, threatening our free speech.
You're absolving the president of a lot of responsibility in what he has done when you think "the left" is to blame for everything. He's gotten where he is by sowing chaos and discord among Americans, inciting and encouraging hate crimes and marginalizing people who just want to be treated the same as you. He has a very loud mouth, and people like you listen to him. Consider that.
Let me get this straight: You side with the person breaking personal relationships over politics and want to say the other side forced you to adopt such an idiotic stance?
I don’t care if you want to blame Trump, Nazis, or lizard people for the status quo, I just thought you had more moral agency than this.
Over siding with Donald Trump? The man who has done, and is doing, all the above I detailed, which you conveniently didn't argue? What the fuck kind of question is this? YES.
There's a reason I haven't had much energy for this lately. Your posting is as garbage as ever.
If it is justifiable to break friendships with Trump voters of what he stands for, then I find it perfectly reasonable to destroy my friendship with people who vote for liberal voices.
Hillary laughed when she talked about killing Qaddafi, I mean she literally destroyed a country HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW. In Palestine, when Hamas won over Fatah, she said that the elections should have been rigged, her track record regarding gay rights is just as shaky, if not worse than Trump, and she and her husband created the modern prison state that destroyed the African American community. Obama also did similar, most damning thing being was his record high deportations. But should people try to one up other progressives in moral purity? Hell no, it's a really stupid and dishonest game.
I find it disingenuous when people get so self-righteous about Trump, yes he is repulsive but there is definitely a double standard coming from many liberals and even leftists.
Please stop with this false equivalence bullshit. Hillary was not elected, and nothing she has done or ever will be able to do is nearing 1000 times as bad as what Trump is doing at the moment. She isn't tearing down the country brick by brick. Would she have done that if she was president? Let's say for the argument that the answer is yes: Then that would be an issue we would be dealing with right now. But we're not, we're dealing with Trump because he got elected. Blindingly supporting anyone despite all the awfulness they're doing isn't near acceptable, and that is why I would immediately dis-friend myself from anyone who does.
She was Secretary of State. Yes, she was not the president, but we can judge her from her previous policies.
On November 28 2017 06:39 ticklishmusic wrote:
On November 28 2017 06:25 Shiragaku wrote:
On November 28 2017 06:13 ticklishmusic wrote:
On November 28 2017 06:02 Shiragaku wrote:
On November 28 2017 05:59 ticklishmusic wrote:
On November 28 2017 05:36 Danglars wrote:
On November 28 2017 05:24 kollin wrote:
On November 28 2017 05:21 Dangermousecatdog wrote: Plansix, you seem to have this thing against "STEM folks". You seem very...insecure.
A lot of the pro-Jordan Peterson types who whine and cry about postmodernism infesting universities and corrupting students tend (completely anecdotally) to be STEM students.
A lot of the backlash would be completely avoided if anti-Jordan Peterson types didn't overplay your hand. Behave normally, call him a doom-and-gloomer, and nobody bats an eye. Reprimand a TA for showing one of his gender pronouns debate to stoke discussion kind of does the opposite.
It's super cringey if you listen to the whole thing.
Or maybe the university administration and professor handled this right in the eyes of my more leftward friends here, I hardly know anymore on transgenders and pronoun law.
i don't find a 40 min gotcha vid to be a very compelling argument for liberals ruining discourse on college campuses and elsewhere. wait, didn't we have a rule about posting 40 minute videos to prove a point?
This case is extreme, even the UCs don't do this, but what is happening in the video is outright bullying and trying to link the suicide and bullying of trans people to a Jordan Peterson interview with Steven Paikin.
the problem with these gotcha vids is that they are gotcha vids, which inherently undermine themselves. how can i trust that the TA didn't set it up to be an antagonistic meeting before by being a dick prior, or that she isn't guiding the conversation in some way to get the other side to say shit that makes them look bad? i'm not particularly inclined to trust this video based on the long description with links to videos about 'marxist vs communist professors' either.
look at the sort of nonsense pulled with planned parenthood.
Was any of this so extreme that it could somehow be linked to people feeling threatened or under attack? If she was acting out of place, then a simple "Calm down, be more professional, don't be a dick" would have been warranted. One of the people in the video goes so far to use Jordan, Hitler, and Milo in the same sentence. Shit, they could have said "You are suppose to teach grammar, punctuation, and writing a thesis statement, not politics, know your place."
And even if she was being outright reactionary, then it's not the worst thing. We live in a world where we always hear the Holocaust is evil, racism is horrible, rape is horrible, and transgenderism is not a mental illness. They are in a university where someone proposes an idea that is very much in contrary to the truth. They are in one class of one course where one of those ideas is challenged and the reaction is that something is being horrifically imposed on them. It's one peep of dissent among a grand choir! One class and then people feel oppressed as being implied in this video! They are in a university, they have their minds! They can challenge whoever they want with their mind. If they feel unable to challenge, they can research more on the topic but, if they feel threatened to the point of suicide, then that person does not deserve to be in a university
i think the question goes back to is jordan peterson an acceptable or needed voice on gender identity in the classroom. i would argue probably not.
it's not always necessary to have "both sides" of an argument present. in biology classes professors don't give much airtime to the creationists (or they shouldn't). false equivalence.
until very recently, being LGBTQ really fucking sucked. now it only kind of really sucks most of the time. that's the context that "bringing up the other side" happens in.
I agree that Jordan Peterson is a not acceptable, but he represents a huge part of the culture wars. The reaction to people like him is to simply condemn them morally, not to actually debate against their ideas. It's not like Peterson is a memelord going "THERE ARE ONLY TWO GENDERS LOLOLOL" he actually puts forth a lot of coherent arguments and rather than condemning bad ideas, people should be able to argue against bad ideas.
peterson's about as qualified as any member of this forum to speak on gender identity (heck, maybe less even, some people here probably got their degrees in something relevant). he can write nicely, but that doesn't excuse that most of his arguments are pretty much youtube hot takes garbage. a couple posters wrote very good tear down posts about why peterson is an ignoramus commenting on shit he knows nothing about hiding behind his PhD in a only tangentially related subject.
edit: i want to say it was farva or igne? or maybe someone who's left us like samz or oneofthem
In that case, we should produce more people like sam and Igne rather than self-righteous people who think they are too good to challenge their ideas.
On November 28 2017 03:49 KwarK wrote: [quote] You don't have to excuse one to condemn the other. You're forcing a false dichotomy.
What I am trying to get at is you wouldn't refuse to be friends with a liberal because Hillary and Obama did certain things that are not progressive so why is it acceptable to do the same to a Trump supporter, assuming they are not calling you a cuck every other sentence.
A Hillary supporter whose support of Hillary was predicated on her covering up of sexual abuse (as in that's why they liked her) would be morally unacceptable to me. A Hillary supporter who supported her in spite of that because there was no better alternative would be fine for me. The problem is that Trump supporters don't get to claim that there wasn't a less racist alternative to Trump. They can only say that the racism wasn't a significant factor to them.
And when racism in the 21st century seems to be defined as not giving disrespect to certain people, is that the worst thing that someone can believe in? Whenever I hear people use that argument, it really sounds like they are crying wolf at this point. Racism really doesn't mean anything to most people anymore when it is constantly being applied.
What people fail to see is that Trump's campaign was not built upon racism, it was in reaction to the people left behind with globalization and many of them live in a worst situation than they did years or decades ago and when they have to pay respect to groups of people or use phrases they have never even heard of years ago, how do you expect them to react?
On November 28 2017 03:59 Plansix wrote:
On November 28 2017 03:50 Shiragaku wrote:
On November 28 2017 03:30 Plansix wrote: [quote] You continue to miss the point. These people are told about the problems we face due to the results of the election. We explain it to them like polite people. They respond that they do not believe our problems are real. So we are not friends with them.
I don't know about you guys, bust most of my friendships with liberals ended was over shit like cultural appropriation, the legitimacy of gender fluidity, and my criticisms of campus identity politics.
In California, lots of gay people said that they were scared for their lives because Trump is in office and statistically and anecdotally, that is bullshit. Lots of women with nice jobs and attending good universities continue to insist they are oppressed when they are in a pretty good position compared to most Americans. And so many PoCs on college campuses engage in outright bullying and use their identity to cynically silence people. When you look more into their background, its not uncommon to see that they came from good families.
I can befriend people with many different political views and can still disagree with them, but with many urban progressives, I am always one comment from being socially ruined.
I also hear that a lot of gays don’t want to move out of MA or RI because the rest of the country is so unfriendly to them. I know people who have come back to the area because the rest of the country treated them like this. I have had Muslim friends who straight up left this country because it treated them so poorly. You don’t seem that interested in believe these folks, so I would argue that you value your political views more than their friendships.
I have grown up in rural America and there was definitely racism and homophobia. There were times when people refused to serve my mom because she was Asian and we had gay people who were bullied and eventually committed suicide. And the anti-Muslim sentiment was there, but on a personal level, most Muslims were integrated for the most part. But the Islamphobia is pretty bad and it is getting worse. However, with people like Jon Stewart and shows like Glee, that all changed so fast for the better. Rural America, although not San Francisco or New York is definitely way much friendly and livable than it used to be. When I moved to California, it was even better, especially for someone like me, but one thing that irks me is when I see people who have never experienced racism claiming oppression like some reward. I know what bigotry was like in action and there is nothing more infuriating when people in liberal bubbles LARP as a minority in their fictionalized view of suburban/rural America and use it to cynically promote their worldview.
No one is "missing" anything concerning why Trump won. You're at least a year late to this discussion.
Rural white America is desperately clinging to "the good old days" where they could work in an outdated or obsolete economy and perpetuate a casually xenophobic and misogynistic culture and everyone was OK with it (insofar as no one bothered to do anything about it). Now society is pushing back, forcing conservatives to actually "play fair" on the socioeconomic front, and conservatives are losing their mind and think that losing the intrinsic privileges that they had at the expense of women, minorities, LGBTQ, etc. is the same as systemic oppression. It's the ultimate hypocrisy when they love to throw out lines about "special snowflakes" and whatnot.
Does this explain why so many people turn to Trump? Yes.
Does it mean they're right or that it's ethically justified? Hell no.
The irony being that they're embracing "snowflake" from Fight Club's critique of male fragility without understanding that you weren't meant to root for Tyler Durden's terrorist group.
That movie gets harder and harder to watch every year. The story about the 20 year old guy showing it to his grandfather, saying the movie really spoke to his generation. The grandfather was stunned and told his 20 year old grand kid, “That is how they turned young men like you into Nazis.”
It's why we need to keep some liberal arts majors around. They can let the STEM folks know when a movie has subtext and is actually deconstructing and critiquing an idea.
On a completely tangential note, the Matrix being a metaphor for living as a trans person blew my mind.
We had this very discussion about the book Dune and it's relationship to Middle East politics. And the STEM folks were all shocked that people would take the space epic and think it had anything to do with earth politics. Even though the Fremen use Arabic words and live in the desert filled with super LSD that controls travel(space oil).
That Matrix subtext makes me like that first movie more and somehow dislike last two even more.
Edit: oh I never thought of the red pill reference. That's beautiful.
Even more interesting since any major sci-fi/fantasy work is riddled with social commentary. LotR was loaded with social/political themes. Everything written by Heinlein (e.g. Starship Troopers) had so much social commentary that it smacked you across the face. This stuff just goes on forever.
I keep going back and forth on Starship troopers. On one hand its a look at what a modern looking fascist state would look like but on some days it seems like it almost tries to glorify or justify fascism with the "bugs" being the non humans and the humans being Germans. The intelligence uniforms get really uncomfortably close to SS unforms for me and I worry that the main characters are all apart of a weremacht complicit army.
On November 27 2017 11:59 doomdonker wrote: [quote]
I don't think there's anything wrong with his statement. Its not a binary statement where if you don't support Trump, you support the Democratic Party. You can still support, say, Mike Pence or choose some other conservative politician.
At this point, you're dumber than a sack of bricks if you STILL support Trump. We're talking about a man who clearly understands little about the world, who barely does his job, is obsessed with the media instead of America, doesn't give a shit about the people he specifically campaigned for, is flipflopping around what he campaigned for and is busy trying enrich himself and his family through the most powerful office in the world.
If you look at all of this and still think "fake news", there's nothing to talk to you about because you're living in a different reality. He's an utter legislative failure whose only achievement is getting a SC appointed, despite having majorities in both the house and senate. Which wasn't even his success but rather McConnell pulling the strings. You can't even say that he's like Jimmy Carter either because Trump is objectively a terrible person.
It's a very dangerous thing to declare there is only one opinion left to have on the situation, and to ruin personal friendships over politics. I still think he's worthy of support on some issues and opposition on others. He has helpfully made great progress bringing attention to some of society's discarded topics (in ways where polite discourse just gets dismissed, you racist bigots). If you declare there is no reason to support him whatsoever and will politicize your interpersonal friendships, there's less reason to hope for a period of national healing and unity in the future. Talk to the other side and don't rely on the right or left's propaganda to color your judgments.
It's fine to preach healing and unity, but you're choosing the wrong person to blame. The blame lies with the person actively sowing the damage and the disunity. The blame lies with the person who launches a social media war against anyone and everyone who says things he disagrees with. The blame lies with the person who calls for brown people to be fired when they make a statement about racism, and conveniently ignores white people who do the same. The blame lies with the person who campaigned on a wall, to keep the rapists out of our country, that the rapists would pay for. The blame lies with the man who sides with a sex offender and pedophile, silencing women when it's convenient for him politically. The blame lies with the person who says he'll drain the swamp, then hires people who are even deeper in companies' pockets, threatening our free speech.
You're absolving the president of a lot of responsibility in what he has done when you think "the left" is to blame for everything. He's gotten where he is by sowing chaos and discord among Americans, inciting and encouraging hate crimes and marginalizing people who just want to be treated the same as you. He has a very loud mouth, and people like you listen to him. Consider that.
Let me get this straight: You side with the person breaking personal relationships over politics and want to say the other side forced you to adopt such an idiotic stance?
I don’t care if you want to blame Trump, Nazis, or lizard people for the status quo, I just thought you had more moral agency than this.
Over siding with Donald Trump? The man who has done, and is doing, all the above I detailed, which you conveniently didn't argue? What the fuck kind of question is this? YES.
There's a reason I haven't had much energy for this lately. Your posting is as garbage as ever.
If it is justifiable to break friendships with Trump voters of what he stands for, then I find it perfectly reasonable to destroy my friendship with people who vote for liberal voices.
Hillary laughed when she talked about killing Qaddafi, I mean she literally destroyed a country HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW. In Palestine, when Hamas won over Fatah, she said that the elections should have been rigged, her track record regarding gay rights is just as shaky, if not worse than Trump, and she and her husband created the modern prison state that destroyed the African American community. Obama also did similar, most damning thing being was his record high deportations. But should people try to one up other progressives in moral purity? Hell no, it's a really stupid and dishonest game.
I find it disingenuous when people get so self-righteous about Trump, yes he is repulsive but there is definitely a double standard coming from many liberals and even leftists.
Please stop with this false equivalence bullshit. Hillary was not elected, and nothing she has done or ever will be able to do is nearing 1000 times as bad as what Trump is doing at the moment. She isn't tearing down the country brick by brick. Would she have done that if she was president? Let's say for the argument that the answer is yes: Then that would be an issue we would be dealing with right now. But we're not, we're dealing with Trump because he got elected. Blindingly supporting anyone despite all the awfulness they're doing isn't near acceptable, and that is why I would immediately dis-friend myself from anyone who does.
She was Secretary of State. Yes, she was not the president, but we can judge her from her previous policies.
Did you not read the part where I, word for word, stated that it does not matter because she is currently not President? You are literally defending someone's actions based on potential actions by someone completely unrelated at this point.
In that case, you are deliberately narrowing what can be argued and what cannot. What can I say? Be good to your friends I guess.
If Hillary was elected and Trump was sent back to running his company and shitposting on Twitter, would it be acceptable to unfriend people who still support him?
I'm not narrowing it doesn't because you're defending a mans actions using hypotheticals. It's not how this works. Your apples can't be orange because what if they were mangos! If Hillary was president and did the same things as Trump, I would have said the exact same thing. But she's not, so it doesn't matter.
anyone wanna discuss an issue of substance rather than the nonsense (and people countering said nonsense) that this thread has been today?
Only thing I can think of like that is my old note about reducing executive power via an amendment ot allow the creation of lesser legislative bodies to take over some of the regulatory work.
On November 27 2017 11:59 doomdonker wrote: [quote]
I don't think there's anything wrong with his statement. Its not a binary statement where if you don't support Trump, you support the Democratic Party. You can still support, say, Mike Pence or choose some other conservative politician.
At this point, you're dumber than a sack of bricks if you STILL support Trump. We're talking about a man who clearly understands little about the world, who barely does his job, is obsessed with the media instead of America, doesn't give a shit about the people he specifically campaigned for, is flipflopping around what he campaigned for and is busy trying enrich himself and his family through the most powerful office in the world.
If you look at all of this and still think "fake news", there's nothing to talk to you about because you're living in a different reality. He's an utter legislative failure whose only achievement is getting a SC appointed, despite having majorities in both the house and senate. Which wasn't even his success but rather McConnell pulling the strings. You can't even say that he's like Jimmy Carter either because Trump is objectively a terrible person.
It's a very dangerous thing to declare there is only one opinion left to have on the situation, and to ruin personal friendships over politics. I still think he's worthy of support on some issues and opposition on others. He has helpfully made great progress bringing attention to some of society's discarded topics (in ways where polite discourse just gets dismissed, you racist bigots). If you declare there is no reason to support him whatsoever and will politicize your interpersonal friendships, there's less reason to hope for a period of national healing and unity in the future. Talk to the other side and don't rely on the right or left's propaganda to color your judgments.
It's fine to preach healing and unity, but you're choosing the wrong person to blame. The blame lies with the person actively sowing the damage and the disunity. The blame lies with the person who launches a social media war against anyone and everyone who says things he disagrees with. The blame lies with the person who calls for brown people to be fired when they make a statement about racism, and conveniently ignores white people who do the same. The blame lies with the person who campaigned on a wall, to keep the rapists out of our country, that the rapists would pay for. The blame lies with the man who sides with a sex offender and pedophile, silencing women when it's convenient for him politically. The blame lies with the person who says he'll drain the swamp, then hires people who are even deeper in companies' pockets, threatening our free speech.
You're absolving the president of a lot of responsibility in what he has done when you think "the left" is to blame for everything. He's gotten where he is by sowing chaos and discord among Americans, inciting and encouraging hate crimes and marginalizing people who just want to be treated the same as you. He has a very loud mouth, and people like you listen to him. Consider that.
Let me get this straight: You side with the person breaking personal relationships over politics and want to say the other side forced you to adopt such an idiotic stance?
I don’t care if you want to blame Trump, Nazis, or lizard people for the status quo, I just thought you had more moral agency than this.
Over siding with Donald Trump? The man who has done, and is doing, all the above I detailed, which you conveniently didn't argue? What the fuck kind of question is this? YES.
There's a reason I haven't had much energy for this lately. Your posting is as garbage as ever.
If it is justifiable to break friendships with Trump voters of what he stands for, then I find it perfectly reasonable to destroy my friendship with people who vote for liberal voices.
Hillary laughed when she talked about killing Qaddafi, I mean she literally destroyed a country HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW. In Palestine, when Hamas won over Fatah, she said that the elections should have been rigged, her track record regarding gay rights is just as shaky, if not worse than Trump, and she and her husband created the modern prison state that destroyed the African American community. Obama also did similar, most damning thing being was his record high deportations. But should people try to one up other progressives in moral purity? Hell no, it's a really stupid and dishonest game.
I find it disingenuous when people get so self-righteous about Trump, yes he is repulsive but there is definitely a double standard coming from many liberals and even leftists.
Please stop with this false equivalence bullshit. Hillary was not elected, and nothing she has done or ever will be able to do is nearing 1000 times as bad as what Trump is doing at the moment. She isn't tearing down the country brick by brick. Would she have done that if she was president? Let's say for the argument that the answer is yes: Then that would be an issue we would be dealing with right now. But we're not, we're dealing with Trump because he got elected. Blindingly supporting anyone despite all the awfulness they're doing isn't near acceptable, and that is why I would immediately dis-friend myself from anyone who does.
She was Secretary of State. Yes, she was not the president, but we can judge her from her previous policies.
On November 28 2017 06:39 ticklishmusic wrote:
On November 28 2017 06:25 Shiragaku wrote:
On November 28 2017 06:13 ticklishmusic wrote:
On November 28 2017 06:02 Shiragaku wrote:
On November 28 2017 05:59 ticklishmusic wrote:
On November 28 2017 05:36 Danglars wrote:
On November 28 2017 05:24 kollin wrote: [quote] A lot of the pro-Jordan Peterson types who whine and cry about postmodernism infesting universities and corrupting students tend (completely anecdotally) to be STEM students.
A lot of the backlash would be completely avoided if anti-Jordan Peterson types didn't overplay your hand. Behave normally, call him a doom-and-gloomer, and nobody bats an eye. Reprimand a TA for showing one of his gender pronouns debate to stoke discussion kind of does the opposite.
Or maybe the university administration and professor handled this right in the eyes of my more leftward friends here, I hardly know anymore on transgenders and pronoun law.
i don't find a 40 min gotcha vid to be a very compelling argument for liberals ruining discourse on college campuses and elsewhere. wait, didn't we have a rule about posting 40 minute videos to prove a point?
This case is extreme, even the UCs don't do this, but what is happening in the video is outright bullying and trying to link the suicide and bullying of trans people to a Jordan Peterson interview with Steven Paikin.
the problem with these gotcha vids is that they are gotcha vids, which inherently undermine themselves. how can i trust that the TA didn't set it up to be an antagonistic meeting before by being a dick prior, or that she isn't guiding the conversation in some way to get the other side to say shit that makes them look bad? i'm not particularly inclined to trust this video based on the long description with links to videos about 'marxist vs communist professors' either.
look at the sort of nonsense pulled with planned parenthood.
Was any of this so extreme that it could somehow be linked to people feeling threatened or under attack? If she was acting out of place, then a simple "Calm down, be more professional, don't be a dick" would have been warranted. One of the people in the video goes so far to use Jordan, Hitler, and Milo in the same sentence. Shit, they could have said "You are suppose to teach grammar, punctuation, and writing a thesis statement, not politics, know your place."
And even if she was being outright reactionary, then it's not the worst thing. We live in a world where we always hear the Holocaust is evil, racism is horrible, rape is horrible, and transgenderism is not a mental illness. They are in a university where someone proposes an idea that is very much in contrary to the truth. They are in one class of one course where one of those ideas is challenged and the reaction is that something is being horrifically imposed on them. It's one peep of dissent among a grand choir! One class and then people feel oppressed as being implied in this video! They are in a university, they have their minds! They can challenge whoever they want with their mind. If they feel unable to challenge, they can research more on the topic but, if they feel threatened to the point of suicide, then that person does not deserve to be in a university
i think the question goes back to is jordan peterson an acceptable or needed voice on gender identity in the classroom. i would argue probably not.
it's not always necessary to have "both sides" of an argument present. in biology classes professors don't give much airtime to the creationists (or they shouldn't). false equivalence.
until very recently, being LGBTQ really fucking sucked. now it only kind of really sucks most of the time. that's the context that "bringing up the other side" happens in.
I agree that Jordan Peterson is a not acceptable, but he represents a huge part of the culture wars. The reaction to people like him is to simply condemn them morally, not to actually debate against their ideas. It's not like Peterson is a memelord going "THERE ARE ONLY TWO GENDERS LOLOLOL" he actually puts forth a lot of coherent arguments and rather than condemning bad ideas, people should be able to argue against bad ideas.
peterson's about as qualified as any member of this forum to speak on gender identity (heck, maybe less even, some people here probably got their degrees in something relevant). he can write nicely, but that doesn't excuse that most of his arguments are pretty much youtube hot takes garbage. a couple posters wrote very good tear down posts about why peterson is an ignoramus commenting on shit he knows nothing about hiding behind his PhD in a only tangentially related subject.
edit: i want to say it was farva or igne? or maybe someone who's left us like samz or oneofthem
In that case, we should produce more people like sam and Igne rather than self-righteous people who think they are too good to challenge their ideas.
i defer to the actual knowledgeable people who have said that peterson's ideas and arguments are bad. that seems like a logical course of action versus getting a grad degree in the relevant subject. the argument that everyone needs to be able to 100% provide a workmanlike academic criticism of peterson's arguments is kind of silly.
going back to it for us uneducated folks, kwark's "don't be a dick" maxim seems pretty good.
Looks like we have more fake right-wing sting operations from Project Veritas aiming to hoax the liberal media ongoing. The second time they've been pre-empted that I can remember. They really need to hire some people who actually work in real news to understand how to better fabricate these stories...
On November 28 2017 03:52 Shiragaku wrote: [quote] What I am trying to get at is you wouldn't refuse to be friends with a liberal because Hillary and Obama did certain things that are not progressive so why is it acceptable to do the same to a Trump supporter, assuming they are not calling you a cuck every other sentence.
A Hillary supporter whose support of Hillary was predicated on her covering up of sexual abuse (as in that's why they liked her) would be morally unacceptable to me. A Hillary supporter who supported her in spite of that because there was no better alternative would be fine for me. The problem is that Trump supporters don't get to claim that there wasn't a less racist alternative to Trump. They can only say that the racism wasn't a significant factor to them.
And when racism in the 21st century seems to be defined as not giving disrespect to certain people, is that the worst thing that someone can believe in? Whenever I hear people use that argument, it really sounds like they are crying wolf at this point. Racism really doesn't mean anything to most people anymore when it is constantly being applied.
What people fail to see is that Trump's campaign was not built upon racism, it was in reaction to the people left behind with globalization and many of them live in a worst situation than they did years or decades ago and when they have to pay respect to groups of people or use phrases they have never even heard of years ago, how do you expect them to react?
On November 28 2017 03:59 Plansix wrote:
On November 28 2017 03:50 Shiragaku wrote: [quote] I don't know about you guys, bust most of my friendships with liberals ended was over shit like cultural appropriation, the legitimacy of gender fluidity, and my criticisms of campus identity politics.
In California, lots of gay people said that they were scared for their lives because Trump is in office and statistically and anecdotally, that is bullshit. Lots of women with nice jobs and attending good universities continue to insist they are oppressed when they are in a pretty good position compared to most Americans. And so many PoCs on college campuses engage in outright bullying and use their identity to cynically silence people. When you look more into their background, its not uncommon to see that they came from good families.
I can befriend people with many different political views and can still disagree with them, but with many urban progressives, I am always one comment from being socially ruined.
I also hear that a lot of gays don’t want to move out of MA or RI because the rest of the country is so unfriendly to them. I know people who have come back to the area because the rest of the country treated them like this. I have had Muslim friends who straight up left this country because it treated them so poorly. You don’t seem that interested in believe these folks, so I would argue that you value your political views more than their friendships.
I have grown up in rural America and there was definitely racism and homophobia. There were times when people refused to serve my mom because she was Asian and we had gay people who were bullied and eventually committed suicide. And the anti-Muslim sentiment was there, but on a personal level, most Muslims were integrated for the most part. But the Islamphobia is pretty bad and it is getting worse. However, with people like Jon Stewart and shows like Glee, that all changed so fast for the better. Rural America, although not San Francisco or New York is definitely way much friendly and livable than it used to be. When I moved to California, it was even better, especially for someone like me, but one thing that irks me is when I see people who have never experienced racism claiming oppression like some reward. I know what bigotry was like in action and there is nothing more infuriating when people in liberal bubbles LARP as a minority in their fictionalized view of suburban/rural America and use it to cynically promote their worldview.
No one is "missing" anything concerning why Trump won. You're at least a year late to this discussion.
Rural white America is desperately clinging to "the good old days" where they could work in an outdated or obsolete economy and perpetuate a casually xenophobic and misogynistic culture and everyone was OK with it (insofar as no one bothered to do anything about it). Now society is pushing back, forcing conservatives to actually "play fair" on the socioeconomic front, and conservatives are losing their mind and think that losing the intrinsic privileges that they had at the expense of women, minorities, LGBTQ, etc. is the same as systemic oppression. It's the ultimate hypocrisy when they love to throw out lines about "special snowflakes" and whatnot.
Does this explain why so many people turn to Trump? Yes.
Does it mean they're right or that it's ethically justified? Hell no.
The irony being that they're embracing "snowflake" from Fight Club's critique of male fragility without understanding that you weren't meant to root for Tyler Durden's terrorist group.
That movie gets harder and harder to watch every year. The story about the 20 year old guy showing it to his grandfather, saying the movie really spoke to his generation. The grandfather was stunned and told his 20 year old grand kid, “That is how they turned young men like you into Nazis.”
It's why we need to keep some liberal arts majors around. They can let the STEM folks know when a movie has subtext and is actually deconstructing and critiquing an idea.
On a completely tangential note, the Matrix being a metaphor for living as a trans person blew my mind.
We had this very discussion about the book Dune and it's relationship to Middle East politics. And the STEM folks were all shocked that people would take the space epic and think it had anything to do with earth politics. Even though the Fremen use Arabic words and live in the desert filled with super LSD that controls travel(space oil).
That Matrix subtext makes me like that first movie more and somehow dislike last two even more.
Edit: oh I never thought of the red pill reference. That's beautiful.
Even more interesting since any major sci-fi/fantasy work is riddled with social commentary. LotR was loaded with social/political themes. Everything written by Heinlein (e.g. Starship Troopers) had so much social commentary that it smacked you across the face. This stuff just goes on forever.
I keep going back and forth on Starship troopers. On one hand its a look at what a modern looking fascist state would look like but on some days it seems like it almost tries to glorify or justify fascism with the "bugs" being the non humans and the humans being Germans. The intelligence uniforms get really uncomfortably close to SS unforms for me and I worry that the main characters are all apart of a weremacht complicit army.
You've gotta separate the book from the movie with Starship Troopers which can be tough. The movie becomes a slightly mixed message because Verhoeven lifted a few scenes directly from the book which make the government/message more similar to Heinlen's original view of the government (which was incredibly positive) in some scenes, but rarely.
A lot of the visuals aren't lifted directly from Heinlen or anything; it used to be another script entirely.
On November 28 2017 07:25 zlefin wrote: anyone wanna discuss an issue of substance rather than the nonsense (and people countering said nonsense) that this thread has been today?
Only thing I can think of like that is my old note about reducing executive power via an amendment ot allow the creation of lesser legislative bodies to take over some of the regulatory work.
That just seems like an easy way to creep into crazy levels of bureaucracy. The problem with creating non political entities is that their existence from their birth till their death is inherently political.
On November 28 2017 07:25 zlefin wrote: anyone wanna discuss an issue of substance rather than the nonsense (and people countering said nonsense) that this thread has been today?
Only thing I can think of like that is my old note about reducing executive power via an amendment ot allow the creation of lesser legislative bodies to take over some of the regulatory work.
That just seems like an easy way to creep into crazy levels of bureaucracy. The problem with creating non political entities is that their existence from their birth till their death is inherently political.
how is it any more bureaucracy than currently exists? it seems to be the same amount of bureaucracy.
also it doens't have to be truly apolitical, that's not the point. nor is it a demonstration that they can't and/or won't work (in fact they seem to work better than the other parts of the government in practice) do you have some other, better plan to address the underlying problem?
On November 28 2017 03:52 Shiragaku wrote: [quote] What I am trying to get at is you wouldn't refuse to be friends with a liberal because Hillary and Obama did certain things that are not progressive so why is it acceptable to do the same to a Trump supporter, assuming they are not calling you a cuck every other sentence.
A Hillary supporter whose support of Hillary was predicated on her covering up of sexual abuse (as in that's why they liked her) would be morally unacceptable to me. A Hillary supporter who supported her in spite of that because there was no better alternative would be fine for me. The problem is that Trump supporters don't get to claim that there wasn't a less racist alternative to Trump. They can only say that the racism wasn't a significant factor to them.
And when racism in the 21st century seems to be defined as not giving disrespect to certain people, is that the worst thing that someone can believe in? Whenever I hear people use that argument, it really sounds like they are crying wolf at this point. Racism really doesn't mean anything to most people anymore when it is constantly being applied.
What people fail to see is that Trump's campaign was not built upon racism, it was in reaction to the people left behind with globalization and many of them live in a worst situation than they did years or decades ago and when they have to pay respect to groups of people or use phrases they have never even heard of years ago, how do you expect them to react?
On November 28 2017 03:59 Plansix wrote:
On November 28 2017 03:50 Shiragaku wrote: [quote] I don't know about you guys, bust most of my friendships with liberals ended was over shit like cultural appropriation, the legitimacy of gender fluidity, and my criticisms of campus identity politics.
In California, lots of gay people said that they were scared for their lives because Trump is in office and statistically and anecdotally, that is bullshit. Lots of women with nice jobs and attending good universities continue to insist they are oppressed when they are in a pretty good position compared to most Americans. And so many PoCs on college campuses engage in outright bullying and use their identity to cynically silence people. When you look more into their background, its not uncommon to see that they came from good families.
I can befriend people with many different political views and can still disagree with them, but with many urban progressives, I am always one comment from being socially ruined.
I also hear that a lot of gays don’t want to move out of MA or RI because the rest of the country is so unfriendly to them. I know people who have come back to the area because the rest of the country treated them like this. I have had Muslim friends who straight up left this country because it treated them so poorly. You don’t seem that interested in believe these folks, so I would argue that you value your political views more than their friendships.
I have grown up in rural America and there was definitely racism and homophobia. There were times when people refused to serve my mom because she was Asian and we had gay people who were bullied and eventually committed suicide. And the anti-Muslim sentiment was there, but on a personal level, most Muslims were integrated for the most part. But the Islamphobia is pretty bad and it is getting worse. However, with people like Jon Stewart and shows like Glee, that all changed so fast for the better. Rural America, although not San Francisco or New York is definitely way much friendly and livable than it used to be. When I moved to California, it was even better, especially for someone like me, but one thing that irks me is when I see people who have never experienced racism claiming oppression like some reward. I know what bigotry was like in action and there is nothing more infuriating when people in liberal bubbles LARP as a minority in their fictionalized view of suburban/rural America and use it to cynically promote their worldview.
No one is "missing" anything concerning why Trump won. You're at least a year late to this discussion.
Rural white America is desperately clinging to "the good old days" where they could work in an outdated or obsolete economy and perpetuate a casually xenophobic and misogynistic culture and everyone was OK with it (insofar as no one bothered to do anything about it). Now society is pushing back, forcing conservatives to actually "play fair" on the socioeconomic front, and conservatives are losing their mind and think that losing the intrinsic privileges that they had at the expense of women, minorities, LGBTQ, etc. is the same as systemic oppression. It's the ultimate hypocrisy when they love to throw out lines about "special snowflakes" and whatnot.
Does this explain why so many people turn to Trump? Yes.
Does it mean they're right or that it's ethically justified? Hell no.
The irony being that they're embracing "snowflake" from Fight Club's critique of male fragility without understanding that you weren't meant to root for Tyler Durden's terrorist group.
That movie gets harder and harder to watch every year. The story about the 20 year old guy showing it to his grandfather, saying the movie really spoke to his generation. The grandfather was stunned and told his 20 year old grand kid, “That is how they turned young men like you into Nazis.”
It's why we need to keep some liberal arts majors around. They can let the STEM folks know when a movie has subtext and is actually deconstructing and critiquing an idea.
On a completely tangential note, the Matrix being a metaphor for living as a trans person blew my mind.
We had this very discussion about the book Dune and it's relationship to Middle East politics. And the STEM folks were all shocked that people would take the space epic and think it had anything to do with earth politics. Even though the Fremen use Arabic words and live in the desert filled with super LSD that controls travel(space oil).
That Matrix subtext makes me like that first movie more and somehow dislike last two even more.
Edit: oh I never thought of the red pill reference. That's beautiful.
Even more interesting since any major sci-fi/fantasy work is riddled with social commentary. LotR was loaded with social/political themes. Everything written by Heinlein (e.g. Starship Troopers) had so much social commentary that it smacked you across the face. This stuff just goes on forever.
I keep going back and forth on Starship troopers. On one hand its a look at what a modern looking fascist state would look like but on some days it seems like it almost tries to glorify or justify fascism with the "bugs" being the non humans and the humans being Germans. The intelligence uniforms get really uncomfortably close to SS unforms for me and I worry that the main characters are all apart of a weremacht complicit army.
The book Starship Troopers is not very closely related to the movie Starship Troopers. I think people were talking about the book here.
The movie is kinda strange, but basically a pretty obvious satire. And i think a lot of the point is that fascism always tries to look justified to those on the inside. Fascists always have an evil outside enemy that can not be reasoned with, and threatens the very core of their being. The bugs are just the natural evolution of that. The movie is mostly in-universe, and thus full of the in-universe fascist propaganda, while expecting the out-universe viewers to realize how tempting the fascist view of the situation is, while also looking behind that propaganda and realizing how fucking awful that military state actually is.
It might have overestimated its viewers there.
Or it is just a bad action movie celebrating fascism. It is hard to tell.
Anyways, the book doesn't have a lot to do with the movie.
On November 28 2017 03:52 Shiragaku wrote: [quote] What I am trying to get at is you wouldn't refuse to be friends with a liberal because Hillary and Obama did certain things that are not progressive so why is it acceptable to do the same to a Trump supporter, assuming they are not calling you a cuck every other sentence.
A Hillary supporter whose support of Hillary was predicated on her covering up of sexual abuse (as in that's why they liked her) would be morally unacceptable to me. A Hillary supporter who supported her in spite of that because there was no better alternative would be fine for me. The problem is that Trump supporters don't get to claim that there wasn't a less racist alternative to Trump. They can only say that the racism wasn't a significant factor to them.
And when racism in the 21st century seems to be defined as not giving disrespect to certain people, is that the worst thing that someone can believe in? Whenever I hear people use that argument, it really sounds like they are crying wolf at this point. Racism really doesn't mean anything to most people anymore when it is constantly being applied.
What people fail to see is that Trump's campaign was not built upon racism, it was in reaction to the people left behind with globalization and many of them live in a worst situation than they did years or decades ago and when they have to pay respect to groups of people or use phrases they have never even heard of years ago, how do you expect them to react?
On November 28 2017 03:59 Plansix wrote:
On November 28 2017 03:50 Shiragaku wrote: [quote] I don't know about you guys, bust most of my friendships with liberals ended was over shit like cultural appropriation, the legitimacy of gender fluidity, and my criticisms of campus identity politics.
In California, lots of gay people said that they were scared for their lives because Trump is in office and statistically and anecdotally, that is bullshit. Lots of women with nice jobs and attending good universities continue to insist they are oppressed when they are in a pretty good position compared to most Americans. And so many PoCs on college campuses engage in outright bullying and use their identity to cynically silence people. When you look more into their background, its not uncommon to see that they came from good families.
I can befriend people with many different political views and can still disagree with them, but with many urban progressives, I am always one comment from being socially ruined.
I also hear that a lot of gays don’t want to move out of MA or RI because the rest of the country is so unfriendly to them. I know people who have come back to the area because the rest of the country treated them like this. I have had Muslim friends who straight up left this country because it treated them so poorly. You don’t seem that interested in believe these folks, so I would argue that you value your political views more than their friendships.
I have grown up in rural America and there was definitely racism and homophobia. There were times when people refused to serve my mom because she was Asian and we had gay people who were bullied and eventually committed suicide. And the anti-Muslim sentiment was there, but on a personal level, most Muslims were integrated for the most part. But the Islamphobia is pretty bad and it is getting worse. However, with people like Jon Stewart and shows like Glee, that all changed so fast for the better. Rural America, although not San Francisco or New York is definitely way much friendly and livable than it used to be. When I moved to California, it was even better, especially for someone like me, but one thing that irks me is when I see people who have never experienced racism claiming oppression like some reward. I know what bigotry was like in action and there is nothing more infuriating when people in liberal bubbles LARP as a minority in their fictionalized view of suburban/rural America and use it to cynically promote their worldview.
No one is "missing" anything concerning why Trump won. You're at least a year late to this discussion.
Rural white America is desperately clinging to "the good old days" where they could work in an outdated or obsolete economy and perpetuate a casually xenophobic and misogynistic culture and everyone was OK with it (insofar as no one bothered to do anything about it). Now society is pushing back, forcing conservatives to actually "play fair" on the socioeconomic front, and conservatives are losing their mind and think that losing the intrinsic privileges that they had at the expense of women, minorities, LGBTQ, etc. is the same as systemic oppression. It's the ultimate hypocrisy when they love to throw out lines about "special snowflakes" and whatnot.
Does this explain why so many people turn to Trump? Yes.
Does it mean they're right or that it's ethically justified? Hell no.
The irony being that they're embracing "snowflake" from Fight Club's critique of male fragility without understanding that you weren't meant to root for Tyler Durden's terrorist group.
That movie gets harder and harder to watch every year. The story about the 20 year old guy showing it to his grandfather, saying the movie really spoke to his generation. The grandfather was stunned and told his 20 year old grand kid, “That is how they turned young men like you into Nazis.”
It's why we need to keep some liberal arts majors around. They can let the STEM folks know when a movie has subtext and is actually deconstructing and critiquing an idea.
On a completely tangential note, the Matrix being a metaphor for living as a trans person blew my mind.
We had this very discussion about the book Dune and it's relationship to Middle East politics. And the STEM folks were all shocked that people would take the space epic and think it had anything to do with earth politics. Even though the Fremen use Arabic words and live in the desert filled with super LSD that controls travel(space oil).
That Matrix subtext makes me like that first movie more and somehow dislike last two even more.
Edit: oh I never thought of the red pill reference. That's beautiful.
Even more interesting since any major sci-fi/fantasy work is riddled with social commentary. LotR was loaded with social/political themes. Everything written by Heinlein (e.g. Starship Troopers) had so much social commentary that it smacked you across the face. This stuff just goes on forever.
I keep going back and forth on Starship troopers. On one hand its a look at what a modern looking fascist state would look like but on some days it seems like it almost tries to glorify or justify fascism with the "bugs" being the non humans and the humans being Germans. The intelligence uniforms get really uncomfortably close to SS unforms for me and I worry that the main characters are all apart of a weremacht complicit army.
Ninjaed by simberto xp. As an aside I read the book before I saw the movie, and I still assumed it was satire. My oppinion of Heinlein dropped a lot (he was like my favourite author as a kid lol) when I realized the book is deadly serious.
The book is pro militarism pro government, and was written as a rebuke to Vietnam draft dodgers afaik. The movie satirizes the book ( and military/violence worship in general) the similarity with the SS uniforms is almost certainly very intentional.
I would prefer agencies with more input from congress and overall management. I dislike how every agency is under the control of the executive branch, but many of them are expected to be independent. It provides too much political cover for congress to whine about “unelected officials” and not govern. Senator makes a living demonizing the EPA, but still like that they test your state’s water and asses the fire risk every year. Congress has been to hands off with this stuff.
On November 28 2017 07:52 Plansix wrote: I would prefer agencies with more input from congress and overall management. I dislike how every agency is under the control of the executive branch, but many of them are expected to be independent. It provides too much political cover for congress to whine about “unelected officials” and not govern. Senator makes a living demonizing the EPA, but still like that they test your state’s water and asses the fire risk every year. Congress has been to hands off with this stuff.
that would be nice; but that's not looking like a feasible option. it seems clear that congress intends to pass the buck, and will continue to do so because it is in their interest to do so, as that's what gets the most votes. alternate ways to hold congress accountable for its performance; i'll have to try and come up with some of those.
On November 28 2017 07:25 zlefin wrote: anyone wanna discuss an issue of substance rather than the nonsense (and people countering said nonsense) that this thread has been today?
Only thing I can think of like that is my old note about reducing executive power via an amendment ot allow the creation of lesser legislative bodies to take over some of the regulatory work.
That just seems like an easy way to creep into crazy levels of bureaucracy. The problem with creating non political entities is that their existence from their birth till their death is inherently political.
how is it any more bureaucracy than currently exists? it seems to be the same amount of bureaucracy.
also it doens't have to be truly apolitical, that's not the point. nor is it a demonstration that they can't and/or won't work (in fact they seem to work better than the other parts of the government in practice) do you have some other, better plan to address the underlying problem?
Well you're talking about making new legislative bodies to over see regulatory work. These people have to be selected somehow probably by executive decree while being okay with congress somehow and then have everything they do be looked at over their shoulder by the courts. They need authority to make laws like obviously a legislative branch but gain their legitimacy from the executive branch while the justical system has to back up everything they do.
I agree that the executive branch should have its powers over the day to day running of various departments in a larger embrace of the underlying federalist philosophy that the government is built on. Have the departments wholly run by the person picked by the executive but have their job only revocable then by congress or the supreme court. Some sort of hybrid of the way the supreme court is picked but not for life or so.
On November 27 2017 11:59 doomdonker wrote: [quote]
I don't think there's anything wrong with his statement. Its not a binary statement where if you don't support Trump, you support the Democratic Party. You can still support, say, Mike Pence or choose some other conservative politician.
At this point, you're dumber than a sack of bricks if you STILL support Trump. We're talking about a man who clearly understands little about the world, who barely does his job, is obsessed with the media instead of America, doesn't give a shit about the people he specifically campaigned for, is flipflopping around what he campaigned for and is busy trying enrich himself and his family through the most powerful office in the world.
If you look at all of this and still think "fake news", there's nothing to talk to you about because you're living in a different reality. He's an utter legislative failure whose only achievement is getting a SC appointed, despite having majorities in both the house and senate. Which wasn't even his success but rather McConnell pulling the strings. You can't even say that he's like Jimmy Carter either because Trump is objectively a terrible person.
It's a very dangerous thing to declare there is only one opinion left to have on the situation, and to ruin personal friendships over politics. I still think he's worthy of support on some issues and opposition on others. He has helpfully made great progress bringing attention to some of society's discarded topics (in ways where polite discourse just gets dismissed, you racist bigots). If you declare there is no reason to support him whatsoever and will politicize your interpersonal friendships, there's less reason to hope for a period of national healing and unity in the future. Talk to the other side and don't rely on the right or left's propaganda to color your judgments.
It's fine to preach healing and unity, but you're choosing the wrong person to blame. The blame lies with the person actively sowing the damage and the disunity. The blame lies with the person who launches a social media war against anyone and everyone who says things he disagrees with. The blame lies with the person who calls for brown people to be fired when they make a statement about racism, and conveniently ignores white people who do the same. The blame lies with the person who campaigned on a wall, to keep the rapists out of our country, that the rapists would pay for. The blame lies with the man who sides with a sex offender and pedophile, silencing women when it's convenient for him politically. The blame lies with the person who says he'll drain the swamp, then hires people who are even deeper in companies' pockets, threatening our free speech.
You're absolving the president of a lot of responsibility in what he has done when you think "the left" is to blame for everything. He's gotten where he is by sowing chaos and discord among Americans, inciting and encouraging hate crimes and marginalizing people who just want to be treated the same as you. He has a very loud mouth, and people like you listen to him. Consider that.
Let me get this straight: You side with the person breaking personal relationships over politics and want to say the other side forced you to adopt such an idiotic stance?
I don’t care if you want to blame Trump, Nazis, or lizard people for the status quo, I just thought you had more moral agency than this.
Over siding with Donald Trump? The man who has done, and is doing, all the above I detailed, which you conveniently didn't argue? What the fuck kind of question is this? YES.
There's a reason I haven't had much energy for this lately. Your posting is as garbage as ever.
If it is justifiable to break friendships with Trump voters of what he stands for, then I find it perfectly reasonable to destroy my friendship with people who vote for liberal voices.
Hillary laughed when she talked about killing Qaddafi, I mean she literally destroyed a country HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW. In Palestine, when Hamas won over Fatah, she said that the elections should have been rigged, her track record regarding gay rights is just as shaky, if not worse than Trump, and she and her husband created the modern prison state that destroyed the African American community. Obama also did similar, most damning thing being was his record high deportations. But should people try to one up other progressives in moral purity? Hell no, it's a really stupid and dishonest game.
I find it disingenuous when people get so self-righteous about Trump, yes he is repulsive but there is definitely a double standard coming from many liberals and even leftists.
You don't have to excuse one to condemn the other. You're forcing a false dichotomy.
What I am trying to get at is you wouldn't refuse to be friends with a liberal because Hillary and Obama did certain things that are not progressive so why is it acceptable to do the same to a Trump supporter, assuming they are not calling you a cuck every other sentence.
A Hillary supporter whose support of Hillary was predicated on her covering up of sexual abuse (as in that's why they liked her) would be morally unacceptable to me. A Hillary supporter who supported her in spite of that because there was no better alternative would be fine for me. The problem is that Trump supporters don't get to claim that there wasn't a less racist alternative to Trump. They can only say that the racism wasn't a significant factor to them.
And when racism in the 21st century seems to be defined as not giving disrespect to certain people, is that the worst thing that someone can believe in? Whenever I hear people use that argument, it really sounds like they are crying wolf at this point. Racism really doesn't mean anything to most people anymore when it is constantly being applied.
What people fail to see is that Trump's campaign was not built upon racism, it was in reaction to the people left behind with globalization and many of them live in a worst situation than they did years or decades ago and when they have to pay respect to groups of people or use phrases they have never even heard of years ago, how do you expect them to react?
On November 28 2017 02:36 Plansix wrote: The problem is that you assume folks like myself are "value(ing) friendships so lightly." That isn't the case.
How dare you value your wife's well being over a friendship. You monster.
I know. I’m such a terrible person for allowing that to happen. I should have convinced lies to those friends and said it wasn’t a huge deal, wouldn’t be a problem and their desire to overtly talk about “getting the government out of healthcare” was fine.
Mind you, a couple fierce libertarian friends straight up changed their mind on healthcare after those discussions. Because those friends saw that removing the ACA and Mass health protections would hurt someone they know and made the leap that people were more important that politics.
You might actually persuade them to your side.
Another good reason to keep friends for the reasons they are your friends in the first place. If you fail to convince, move on. It shows humanity and empathy, and not the political tribalism that is too rampant these days. I don't think you have to embrace it to effectively oppose Trump--it's way too scorched-earth.
You continue to miss the point. These people are told about the problems we face due to the results of the election. We explain it to them like polite people. They respond that they do not believe our problems are real. So we are not friends with them.
I don't know about you guys, bust most of my friendships with liberals ended was over shit like cultural appropriation, the legitimacy of gender fluidity, and my criticisms of campus identity politics.
In California, lots of gay people said that they were scared for their lives because Trump is in office and statistically and anecdotally, that is bullshit. Lots of women with nice jobs and attending good universities continue to insist they are oppressed when they are in a pretty good position compared to most Americans. And so many PoCs on college campuses engage in outright bullying and use their identity to cynically silence people. When you look more into their background, its not uncommon to see that they came from good families.
I can befriend people with many different political views and can still disagree with them, but with many urban progressives, I am always one comment from being socially ruined.
I also hear that a lot of gays don’t want to move out of MA or RI because the rest of the country is so unfriendly to them. I know people who have come back to the area because the rest of the country treated them like this. I have had Muslim friends who straight up left this country because it treated them so poorly. You don’t seem that interested in believe these folks, so I would argue that you value your political views more than their friendships.
I have grown up in rural America and there was definitely racism and homophobia. There were times when people refused to serve my mom because she was Asian and we had gay people who were bullied and eventually committed suicide. And the anti-Muslim sentiment was there, but on a personal level, most Muslims were integrated for the most part. But the Islamphobia is pretty bad and it is getting worse. However, with people like Jon Stewart and shows like Glee, that all changed so fast for the better. Rural America, although not San Francisco or New York is definitely way much friendly and livable than it used to be. When I moved to California, it was even better, especially for someone like me, but one thing that irks me is when I see people who have never experienced racism claiming oppression like some reward. I know what bigotry was like in action and there is nothing more infuriating when people in liberal bubbles LARP as a minority in their fictionalized view of suburban/rural America and use it to cynically promote their worldview.
My problem with 'Rural Americans voted for Trump 'because the country left them behind' is that Trump in no way represents their interests. They fell for the same con they have fallen for for decades and after Trump disappointing them they will run off to the next conman who promises them everything they want to hear.
I get that people don't want to accept the truth, yes the country failed them by not restructuring the economy decades ago away from failing industries, yes its shit, it sucks and there is no easy way forward. But going 'My dad worked in a coal mine, I want to work in a coal mine' , 'no one wants coal anymore' , 'well, make them use it' doesn't do anything.
When offered a choice between a conman promising them the world and a shady politician with a plan she might not follow through on, the voted for the conman.
Sorry that I don't feel more sympathy for believing in the impossible.
On November 27 2017 14:06 Danglars wrote: [quote] It's a very dangerous thing to declare there is only one opinion left to have on the situation, and to ruin personal friendships over politics. I still think he's worthy of support on some issues and opposition on others. He has helpfully made great progress bringing attention to some of society's discarded topics (in ways where polite discourse just gets dismissed, you racist bigots). If you declare there is no reason to support him whatsoever and will politicize your interpersonal friendships, there's less reason to hope for a period of national healing and unity in the future. Talk to the other side and don't rely on the right or left's propaganda to color your judgments.
It's fine to preach healing and unity, but you're choosing the wrong person to blame. The blame lies with the person actively sowing the damage and the disunity. The blame lies with the person who launches a social media war against anyone and everyone who says things he disagrees with. The blame lies with the person who calls for brown people to be fired when they make a statement about racism, and conveniently ignores white people who do the same. The blame lies with the person who campaigned on a wall, to keep the rapists out of our country, that the rapists would pay for. The blame lies with the man who sides with a sex offender and pedophile, silencing women when it's convenient for him politically. The blame lies with the person who says he'll drain the swamp, then hires people who are even deeper in companies' pockets, threatening our free speech.
You're absolving the president of a lot of responsibility in what he has done when you think "the left" is to blame for everything. He's gotten where he is by sowing chaos and discord among Americans, inciting and encouraging hate crimes and marginalizing people who just want to be treated the same as you. He has a very loud mouth, and people like you listen to him. Consider that.
Let me get this straight: You side with the person breaking personal relationships over politics and want to say the other side forced you to adopt such an idiotic stance?
I don’t care if you want to blame Trump, Nazis, or lizard people for the status quo, I just thought you had more moral agency than this.
Over siding with Donald Trump? The man who has done, and is doing, all the above I detailed, which you conveniently didn't argue? What the fuck kind of question is this? YES.
There's a reason I haven't had much energy for this lately. Your posting is as garbage as ever.
If it is justifiable to break friendships with Trump voters of what he stands for, then I find it perfectly reasonable to destroy my friendship with people who vote for liberal voices.
Hillary laughed when she talked about killing Qaddafi, I mean she literally destroyed a country HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW. In Palestine, when Hamas won over Fatah, she said that the elections should have been rigged, her track record regarding gay rights is just as shaky, if not worse than Trump, and she and her husband created the modern prison state that destroyed the African American community. Obama also did similar, most damning thing being was his record high deportations. But should people try to one up other progressives in moral purity? Hell no, it's a really stupid and dishonest game.
I find it disingenuous when people get so self-righteous about Trump, yes he is repulsive but there is definitely a double standard coming from many liberals and even leftists.
You don't have to excuse one to condemn the other. You're forcing a false dichotomy.
What I am trying to get at is you wouldn't refuse to be friends with a liberal because Hillary and Obama did certain things that are not progressive so why is it acceptable to do the same to a Trump supporter, assuming they are not calling you a cuck every other sentence.
A Hillary supporter whose support of Hillary was predicated on her covering up of sexual abuse (as in that's why they liked her) would be morally unacceptable to me. A Hillary supporter who supported her in spite of that because there was no better alternative would be fine for me. The problem is that Trump supporters don't get to claim that there wasn't a less racist alternative to Trump. They can only say that the racism wasn't a significant factor to them.
And when racism in the 21st century seems to be defined as not giving disrespect to certain people, is that the worst thing that someone can believe in? Whenever I hear people use that argument, it really sounds like they are crying wolf at this point. Racism really doesn't mean anything to most people anymore when it is constantly being applied.
What people fail to see is that Trump's campaign was not built upon racism, it was in reaction to the people left behind with globalization and many of them live in a worst situation than they did years or decades ago and when they have to pay respect to groups of people or use phrases they have never even heard of years ago, how do you expect them to react?
On November 28 2017 03:59 Plansix wrote:
On November 28 2017 03:50 Shiragaku wrote:
On November 28 2017 03:30 Plansix wrote:
On November 28 2017 03:03 Danglars wrote:
On November 28 2017 02:46 Plansix wrote:
On November 28 2017 02:39 Logo wrote:
On November 28 2017 02:36 Plansix wrote: The problem is that you assume folks like myself are "value(ing) friendships so lightly." That isn't the case.
How dare you value your wife's well being over a friendship. You monster.
I know. I’m such a terrible person for allowing that to happen. I should have convinced lies to those friends and said it wasn’t a huge deal, wouldn’t be a problem and their desire to overtly talk about “getting the government out of healthcare” was fine.
Mind you, a couple fierce libertarian friends straight up changed their mind on healthcare after those discussions. Because those friends saw that removing the ACA and Mass health protections would hurt someone they know and made the leap that people were more important that politics.
You might actually persuade them to your side.
Another good reason to keep friends for the reasons they are your friends in the first place. If you fail to convince, move on. It shows humanity and empathy, and not the political tribalism that is too rampant these days. I don't think you have to embrace it to effectively oppose Trump--it's way too scorched-earth.
You continue to miss the point. These people are told about the problems we face due to the results of the election. We explain it to them like polite people. They respond that they do not believe our problems are real. So we are not friends with them.
I don't know about you guys, bust most of my friendships with liberals ended was over shit like cultural appropriation, the legitimacy of gender fluidity, and my criticisms of campus identity politics.
In California, lots of gay people said that they were scared for their lives because Trump is in office and statistically and anecdotally, that is bullshit. Lots of women with nice jobs and attending good universities continue to insist they are oppressed when they are in a pretty good position compared to most Americans. And so many PoCs on college campuses engage in outright bullying and use their identity to cynically silence people. When you look more into their background, its not uncommon to see that they came from good families.
I can befriend people with many different political views and can still disagree with them, but with many urban progressives, I am always one comment from being socially ruined.
I also hear that a lot of gays don’t want to move out of MA or RI because the rest of the country is so unfriendly to them. I know people who have come back to the area because the rest of the country treated them like this. I have had Muslim friends who straight up left this country because it treated them so poorly. You don’t seem that interested in believe these folks, so I would argue that you value your political views more than their friendships.
I have grown up in rural America and there was definitely racism and homophobia. There were times when people refused to serve my mom because she was Asian and we had gay people who were bullied and eventually committed suicide. And the anti-Muslim sentiment was there, but on a personal level, most Muslims were integrated for the most part. But the Islamphobia is pretty bad and it is getting worse. However, with people like Jon Stewart and shows like Glee, that all changed so fast for the better. Rural America, although not San Francisco or New York is definitely way much friendly and livable than it used to be. When I moved to California, it was even better, especially for someone like me, but one thing that irks me is when I see people who have never experienced racism claiming oppression like some reward. I know what bigotry was like in action and there is nothing more infuriating when people in liberal bubbles LARP as a minority in their fictionalized view of suburban/rural America and use it to cynically promote their worldview.
My problem with 'Rural Americans voted for Trump 'because the country left them behind' is that Trump in no way represents their interests. They fell for the same con they have fallen for for decades and after Trump disappointing them they will run off to the next conman who promises them everything they want to hear.
I get that people don't want to accept the truth, yes the country failed them by not restructuring the economy decades ago away from failing industries, yes its shit, it sucks and there is no easy way forward. But going 'My dad worked in a coal mine, I want to work in a coal mine' , 'no one wants coal anymore' , 'well, make them use it' doesn't do anything.
When offered a choice between a conman promising them the world and a shady politician with a plan she might not follow through on, the voted for the conman.
Sorry that I don't feel more sympathy for believing in the impossible.
The entire idea of "We're a coal family and we're proud" is a great example of how prone to tribalism humans are. How in the world do you actually positively identify with manual labor. god damn. These people are just so easily manipulated it drives me insane.
On November 28 2017 03:57 KwarK wrote: [quote] A Hillary supporter whose support of Hillary was predicated on her covering up of sexual abuse (as in that's why they liked her) would be morally unacceptable to me. A Hillary supporter who supported her in spite of that because there was no better alternative would be fine for me. The problem is that Trump supporters don't get to claim that there wasn't a less racist alternative to Trump. They can only say that the racism wasn't a significant factor to them.
And when racism in the 21st century seems to be defined as not giving disrespect to certain people, is that the worst thing that someone can believe in? Whenever I hear people use that argument, it really sounds like they are crying wolf at this point. Racism really doesn't mean anything to most people anymore when it is constantly being applied.
What people fail to see is that Trump's campaign was not built upon racism, it was in reaction to the people left behind with globalization and many of them live in a worst situation than they did years or decades ago and when they have to pay respect to groups of people or use phrases they have never even heard of years ago, how do you expect them to react?
On November 28 2017 03:59 Plansix wrote: [quote] I also hear that a lot of gays don’t want to move out of MA or RI because the rest of the country is so unfriendly to them. I know people who have come back to the area because the rest of the country treated them like this. I have had Muslim friends who straight up left this country because it treated them so poorly. You don’t seem that interested in believe these folks, so I would argue that you value your political views more than their friendships.
I have grown up in rural America and there was definitely racism and homophobia. There were times when people refused to serve my mom because she was Asian and we had gay people who were bullied and eventually committed suicide. And the anti-Muslim sentiment was there, but on a personal level, most Muslims were integrated for the most part. But the Islamphobia is pretty bad and it is getting worse. However, with people like Jon Stewart and shows like Glee, that all changed so fast for the better. Rural America, although not San Francisco or New York is definitely way much friendly and livable than it used to be. When I moved to California, it was even better, especially for someone like me, but one thing that irks me is when I see people who have never experienced racism claiming oppression like some reward. I know what bigotry was like in action and there is nothing more infuriating when people in liberal bubbles LARP as a minority in their fictionalized view of suburban/rural America and use it to cynically promote their worldview.
No one is "missing" anything concerning why Trump won. You're at least a year late to this discussion.
Rural white America is desperately clinging to "the good old days" where they could work in an outdated or obsolete economy and perpetuate a casually xenophobic and misogynistic culture and everyone was OK with it (insofar as no one bothered to do anything about it). Now society is pushing back, forcing conservatives to actually "play fair" on the socioeconomic front, and conservatives are losing their mind and think that losing the intrinsic privileges that they had at the expense of women, minorities, LGBTQ, etc. is the same as systemic oppression. It's the ultimate hypocrisy when they love to throw out lines about "special snowflakes" and whatnot.
Does this explain why so many people turn to Trump? Yes.
Does it mean they're right or that it's ethically justified? Hell no.
The irony being that they're embracing "snowflake" from Fight Club's critique of male fragility without understanding that you weren't meant to root for Tyler Durden's terrorist group.
That movie gets harder and harder to watch every year. The story about the 20 year old guy showing it to his grandfather, saying the movie really spoke to his generation. The grandfather was stunned and told his 20 year old grand kid, “That is how they turned young men like you into Nazis.”
It's why we need to keep some liberal arts majors around. They can let the STEM folks know when a movie has subtext and is actually deconstructing and critiquing an idea.
On a completely tangential note, the Matrix being a metaphor for living as a trans person blew my mind.
We had this very discussion about the book Dune and it's relationship to Middle East politics. And the STEM folks were all shocked that people would take the space epic and think it had anything to do with earth politics. Even though the Fremen use Arabic words and live in the desert filled with super LSD that controls travel(space oil).
That Matrix subtext makes me like that first movie more and somehow dislike last two even more.
Edit: oh I never thought of the red pill reference. That's beautiful.
Even more interesting since any major sci-fi/fantasy work is riddled with social commentary. LotR was loaded with social/political themes. Everything written by Heinlein (e.g. Starship Troopers) had so much social commentary that it smacked you across the face. This stuff just goes on forever.
JRR Tolkien (and Christopher, who finally retired, god bless the man for spending his entire life curating his dad's work) explicitly denied any intention to comment on real world issues. The parallels to WWII are incidental, not allegorical. Though there are plenty of references to Welsh and other mythology.
You can't deny there are depictions of real world issues within it and that commentary and comparison are unavoidable. Frodo and Samwise are from different social classes, for example.
oh, i don't disagree. life imitates art and vice versa. the point i mean to make is that JRR did not set out to deliberately make LOTR or any of the legendarium some sort of big social/ political/ philosophical commentary the way ayn rand wrote anthem (though i suppose that's a rather extreme case of a philosophical manifesto masquerading as a novel).
On November 27 2017 15:10 NewSunshine wrote: [quote] It's fine to preach healing and unity, but you're choosing the wrong person to blame. The blame lies with the person actively sowing the damage and the disunity. The blame lies with the person who launches a social media war against anyone and everyone who says things he disagrees with. The blame lies with the person who calls for brown people to be fired when they make a statement about racism, and conveniently ignores white people who do the same. The blame lies with the person who campaigned on a wall, to keep the rapists out of our country, that the rapists would pay for. The blame lies with the man who sides with a sex offender and pedophile, silencing women when it's convenient for him politically. The blame lies with the person who says he'll drain the swamp, then hires people who are even deeper in companies' pockets, threatening our free speech.
You're absolving the president of a lot of responsibility in what he has done when you think "the left" is to blame for everything. He's gotten where he is by sowing chaos and discord among Americans, inciting and encouraging hate crimes and marginalizing people who just want to be treated the same as you. He has a very loud mouth, and people like you listen to him. Consider that.
Let me get this straight: You side with the person breaking personal relationships over politics and want to say the other side forced you to adopt such an idiotic stance?
I don’t care if you want to blame Trump, Nazis, or lizard people for the status quo, I just thought you had more moral agency than this.
Over siding with Donald Trump? The man who has done, and is doing, all the above I detailed, which you conveniently didn't argue? What the fuck kind of question is this? YES.
There's a reason I haven't had much energy for this lately. Your posting is as garbage as ever.
If it is justifiable to break friendships with Trump voters of what he stands for, then I find it perfectly reasonable to destroy my friendship with people who vote for liberal voices.
Hillary laughed when she talked about killing Qaddafi, I mean she literally destroyed a country HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW. In Palestine, when Hamas won over Fatah, she said that the elections should have been rigged, her track record regarding gay rights is just as shaky, if not worse than Trump, and she and her husband created the modern prison state that destroyed the African American community. Obama also did similar, most damning thing being was his record high deportations. But should people try to one up other progressives in moral purity? Hell no, it's a really stupid and dishonest game.
I find it disingenuous when people get so self-righteous about Trump, yes he is repulsive but there is definitely a double standard coming from many liberals and even leftists.
You don't have to excuse one to condemn the other. You're forcing a false dichotomy.
What I am trying to get at is you wouldn't refuse to be friends with a liberal because Hillary and Obama did certain things that are not progressive so why is it acceptable to do the same to a Trump supporter, assuming they are not calling you a cuck every other sentence.
A Hillary supporter whose support of Hillary was predicated on her covering up of sexual abuse (as in that's why they liked her) would be morally unacceptable to me. A Hillary supporter who supported her in spite of that because there was no better alternative would be fine for me. The problem is that Trump supporters don't get to claim that there wasn't a less racist alternative to Trump. They can only say that the racism wasn't a significant factor to them.
And when racism in the 21st century seems to be defined as not giving disrespect to certain people, is that the worst thing that someone can believe in? Whenever I hear people use that argument, it really sounds like they are crying wolf at this point. Racism really doesn't mean anything to most people anymore when it is constantly being applied.
What people fail to see is that Trump's campaign was not built upon racism, it was in reaction to the people left behind with globalization and many of them live in a worst situation than they did years or decades ago and when they have to pay respect to groups of people or use phrases they have never even heard of years ago, how do you expect them to react?
On November 28 2017 03:59 Plansix wrote:
On November 28 2017 03:50 Shiragaku wrote:
On November 28 2017 03:30 Plansix wrote:
On November 28 2017 03:03 Danglars wrote:
On November 28 2017 02:46 Plansix wrote:
On November 28 2017 02:39 Logo wrote:
On November 28 2017 02:36 Plansix wrote: The problem is that you assume folks like myself are "value(ing) friendships so lightly." That isn't the case.
How dare you value your wife's well being over a friendship. You monster.
I know. I’m such a terrible person for allowing that to happen. I should have convinced lies to those friends and said it wasn’t a huge deal, wouldn’t be a problem and their desire to overtly talk about “getting the government out of healthcare” was fine.
Mind you, a couple fierce libertarian friends straight up changed their mind on healthcare after those discussions. Because those friends saw that removing the ACA and Mass health protections would hurt someone they know and made the leap that people were more important that politics.
You might actually persuade them to your side.
Another good reason to keep friends for the reasons they are your friends in the first place. If you fail to convince, move on. It shows humanity and empathy, and not the political tribalism that is too rampant these days. I don't think you have to embrace it to effectively oppose Trump--it's way too scorched-earth.
You continue to miss the point. These people are told about the problems we face due to the results of the election. We explain it to them like polite people. They respond that they do not believe our problems are real. So we are not friends with them.
I don't know about you guys, bust most of my friendships with liberals ended was over shit like cultural appropriation, the legitimacy of gender fluidity, and my criticisms of campus identity politics.
In California, lots of gay people said that they were scared for their lives because Trump is in office and statistically and anecdotally, that is bullshit. Lots of women with nice jobs and attending good universities continue to insist they are oppressed when they are in a pretty good position compared to most Americans. And so many PoCs on college campuses engage in outright bullying and use their identity to cynically silence people. When you look more into their background, its not uncommon to see that they came from good families.
I can befriend people with many different political views and can still disagree with them, but with many urban progressives, I am always one comment from being socially ruined.
I also hear that a lot of gays don’t want to move out of MA or RI because the rest of the country is so unfriendly to them. I know people who have come back to the area because the rest of the country treated them like this. I have had Muslim friends who straight up left this country because it treated them so poorly. You don’t seem that interested in believe these folks, so I would argue that you value your political views more than their friendships.
I have grown up in rural America and there was definitely racism and homophobia. There were times when people refused to serve my mom because she was Asian and we had gay people who were bullied and eventually committed suicide. And the anti-Muslim sentiment was there, but on a personal level, most Muslims were integrated for the most part. But the Islamphobia is pretty bad and it is getting worse. However, with people like Jon Stewart and shows like Glee, that all changed so fast for the better. Rural America, although not San Francisco or New York is definitely way much friendly and livable than it used to be. When I moved to California, it was even better, especially for someone like me, but one thing that irks me is when I see people who have never experienced racism claiming oppression like some reward. I know what bigotry was like in action and there is nothing more infuriating when people in liberal bubbles LARP as a minority in their fictionalized view of suburban/rural America and use it to cynically promote their worldview.
My problem with 'Rural Americans voted for Trump 'because the country left them behind' is that Trump in no way represents their interests. They fell for the same con they have fallen for for decades and after Trump disappointing them they will run off to the next conman who promises them everything they want to hear.
I get that people don't want to accept the truth, yes the country failed them by not restructuring the economy decades ago away from failing industries, yes its shit, it sucks and there is no easy way forward. But going 'My dad worked in a coal mine, I want to work in a coal mine' , 'no one wants coal anymore' , 'well, make them use it' doesn't do anything.
When offered a choice between a conman promising them the world and a shady politician with a plan she might not follow through on, the voted for the conman.
Sorry that I don't feel more sympathy for believing in the impossible.
The entire idea of "We're a coal family and we're proud" is a great example of how prone to tribalism humans are. How in the world do you actually positively identify with manual labor. god damn. These people are just so easily manipulated it drives me insane.
My brother is a mechanic and my father in law was an electrician and contractor. They were manual labor sorts of people. Humans generally take pride in the lives they build for themselves and that can be manipulated by things like the coal industry.
On November 27 2017 15:10 NewSunshine wrote: [quote] It's fine to preach healing and unity, but you're choosing the wrong person to blame. The blame lies with the person actively sowing the damage and the disunity. The blame lies with the person who launches a social media war against anyone and everyone who says things he disagrees with. The blame lies with the person who calls for brown people to be fired when they make a statement about racism, and conveniently ignores white people who do the same. The blame lies with the person who campaigned on a wall, to keep the rapists out of our country, that the rapists would pay for. The blame lies with the man who sides with a sex offender and pedophile, silencing women when it's convenient for him politically. The blame lies with the person who says he'll drain the swamp, then hires people who are even deeper in companies' pockets, threatening our free speech.
You're absolving the president of a lot of responsibility in what he has done when you think "the left" is to blame for everything. He's gotten where he is by sowing chaos and discord among Americans, inciting and encouraging hate crimes and marginalizing people who just want to be treated the same as you. He has a very loud mouth, and people like you listen to him. Consider that.
Let me get this straight: You side with the person breaking personal relationships over politics and want to say the other side forced you to adopt such an idiotic stance?
I don’t care if you want to blame Trump, Nazis, or lizard people for the status quo, I just thought you had more moral agency than this.
Over siding with Donald Trump? The man who has done, and is doing, all the above I detailed, which you conveniently didn't argue? What the fuck kind of question is this? YES.
There's a reason I haven't had much energy for this lately. Your posting is as garbage as ever.
If it is justifiable to break friendships with Trump voters of what he stands for, then I find it perfectly reasonable to destroy my friendship with people who vote for liberal voices.
Hillary laughed when she talked about killing Qaddafi, I mean she literally destroyed a country HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW. In Palestine, when Hamas won over Fatah, she said that the elections should have been rigged, her track record regarding gay rights is just as shaky, if not worse than Trump, and she and her husband created the modern prison state that destroyed the African American community. Obama also did similar, most damning thing being was his record high deportations. But should people try to one up other progressives in moral purity? Hell no, it's a really stupid and dishonest game.
I find it disingenuous when people get so self-righteous about Trump, yes he is repulsive but there is definitely a double standard coming from many liberals and even leftists.
You don't have to excuse one to condemn the other. You're forcing a false dichotomy.
What I am trying to get at is you wouldn't refuse to be friends with a liberal because Hillary and Obama did certain things that are not progressive so why is it acceptable to do the same to a Trump supporter, assuming they are not calling you a cuck every other sentence.
A Hillary supporter whose support of Hillary was predicated on her covering up of sexual abuse (as in that's why they liked her) would be morally unacceptable to me. A Hillary supporter who supported her in spite of that because there was no better alternative would be fine for me. The problem is that Trump supporters don't get to claim that there wasn't a less racist alternative to Trump. They can only say that the racism wasn't a significant factor to them.
And when racism in the 21st century seems to be defined as not giving disrespect to certain people, is that the worst thing that someone can believe in? Whenever I hear people use that argument, it really sounds like they are crying wolf at this point. Racism really doesn't mean anything to most people anymore when it is constantly being applied.
What people fail to see is that Trump's campaign was not built upon racism, it was in reaction to the people left behind with globalization and many of them live in a worst situation than they did years or decades ago and when they have to pay respect to groups of people or use phrases they have never even heard of years ago, how do you expect them to react?
On November 28 2017 03:59 Plansix wrote:
On November 28 2017 03:50 Shiragaku wrote:
On November 28 2017 03:30 Plansix wrote:
On November 28 2017 03:03 Danglars wrote:
On November 28 2017 02:46 Plansix wrote:
On November 28 2017 02:39 Logo wrote:
On November 28 2017 02:36 Plansix wrote: The problem is that you assume folks like myself are "value(ing) friendships so lightly." That isn't the case.
How dare you value your wife's well being over a friendship. You monster.
I know. I’m such a terrible person for allowing that to happen. I should have convinced lies to those friends and said it wasn’t a huge deal, wouldn’t be a problem and their desire to overtly talk about “getting the government out of healthcare” was fine.
Mind you, a couple fierce libertarian friends straight up changed their mind on healthcare after those discussions. Because those friends saw that removing the ACA and Mass health protections would hurt someone they know and made the leap that people were more important that politics.
You might actually persuade them to your side.
Another good reason to keep friends for the reasons they are your friends in the first place. If you fail to convince, move on. It shows humanity and empathy, and not the political tribalism that is too rampant these days. I don't think you have to embrace it to effectively oppose Trump--it's way too scorched-earth.
You continue to miss the point. These people are told about the problems we face due to the results of the election. We explain it to them like polite people. They respond that they do not believe our problems are real. So we are not friends with them.
I don't know about you guys, bust most of my friendships with liberals ended was over shit like cultural appropriation, the legitimacy of gender fluidity, and my criticisms of campus identity politics.
In California, lots of gay people said that they were scared for their lives because Trump is in office and statistically and anecdotally, that is bullshit. Lots of women with nice jobs and attending good universities continue to insist they are oppressed when they are in a pretty good position compared to most Americans. And so many PoCs on college campuses engage in outright bullying and use their identity to cynically silence people. When you look more into their background, its not uncommon to see that they came from good families.
I can befriend people with many different political views and can still disagree with them, but with many urban progressives, I am always one comment from being socially ruined.
I also hear that a lot of gays don’t want to move out of MA or RI because the rest of the country is so unfriendly to them. I know people who have come back to the area because the rest of the country treated them like this. I have had Muslim friends who straight up left this country because it treated them so poorly. You don’t seem that interested in believe these folks, so I would argue that you value your political views more than their friendships.
I have grown up in rural America and there was definitely racism and homophobia. There were times when people refused to serve my mom because she was Asian and we had gay people who were bullied and eventually committed suicide. And the anti-Muslim sentiment was there, but on a personal level, most Muslims were integrated for the most part. But the Islamphobia is pretty bad and it is getting worse. However, with people like Jon Stewart and shows like Glee, that all changed so fast for the better. Rural America, although not San Francisco or New York is definitely way much friendly and livable than it used to be. When I moved to California, it was even better, especially for someone like me, but one thing that irks me is when I see people who have never experienced racism claiming oppression like some reward. I know what bigotry was like in action and there is nothing more infuriating when people in liberal bubbles LARP as a minority in their fictionalized view of suburban/rural America and use it to cynically promote their worldview.
My problem with 'Rural Americans voted for Trump 'because the country left them behind' is that Trump in no way represents their interests. They fell for the same con they have fallen for for decades and after Trump disappointing them they will run off to the next conman who promises them everything they want to hear.
I get that people don't want to accept the truth, yes the country failed them by not restructuring the economy decades ago away from failing industries, yes its shit, it sucks and there is no easy way forward. But going 'My dad worked in a coal mine, I want to work in a coal mine' , 'no one wants coal anymore' , 'well, make them use it' doesn't do anything.
When offered a choice between a conman promising them the world and a shady politician with a plan she might not follow through on, the voted for the conman.
Sorry that I don't feel more sympathy for believing in the impossible.
The entire idea of "We're a coal family and we're proud" is a great example of how prone to tribalism humans are. How in the world do you actually positively identify with manual labor. god damn. These people are just so easily manipulated it drives me insane.
I can certainly understand the appeal of manual labor, in having tangible things you can touch to show for a days hard work.
EPT
