US Politics Mega-thread - Page 4840

On March 11 2025 11:01 Dan HH wrote:

I know you haven't advocated for Trump, but you also can't tell us that half your posts in this thread have been about wokeism and DEI due to some meta concern. You were pretty damn passionate about each of those when propagating this messaging, your information sphere convinced you that this is prevalent, severe, and important.

And it isn't, it's a handful of people of little to no consequence. It's the equivalent of using Florida Man headlines to convince someone that Florida is the most dangerous place on the planet and needs to be sunk into the ocean to protect civilization. That's not what you did, but rather what was done to you. You were a little wiser than others and didn't fully buy into the solution, but you did buy into the fake problem and propagated it.

On March 11 2025 11:52 WombaT wrote:

Cannae disagree with much there like

Us Northern Irish can take an exam at 11 to go to Grammar schools. Which are our elite ones, we don’t really have too many private, fee-paying schools, and they’re not as high-performing anyway. Versus say, England who have private schools pumping out many a Prime Minister.

Look it’s more meritocratic in ways than quite a few places. I went to one. You’ll sure as fuck find more bright working class students in a Northern Irish Grammar than a prestige private school, or even a top comprehensive in a rich English area. Really good school, you got a catchment area, what happens to the house prices around said school? And look, who can’t go now!

Anyway, contextual rambling aside, we’ve got plenty of ‘11 plus’ tutors floating around. It’s quite a leg-up, kids spend a fair bloody while prepping, at that bloomin age. Then we’ve our GED equivalent at 15/16, then A levels from 17-18 for university.

That’s a lot of exams to prep for, and a lot of tutoring work. Tutors don’t even pretend it’s anything other than exam prep, they actively advertise their wares specially for those.

They ain’t working pro bono to help little Timmy from a deprived home to improve his literacy that’s for sure.

No wonder kids get stressed like. Gotta prep em for the rat race early. Which, really is kinda the only advantage of rigid rote learning and why it’s so popular still today among certain folks.

On March 11 2025 12:04 WombaT wrote:

My personal headcanon is that Florida Man is one singular individual, and must be stopped at all costs.

On March 11 2025 12:18 KwarK wrote:

One correction. The private schools in England are called public schools. Eton is a public school.

On March 11 2025 12:10 BlackJack wrote:


Sure... my "information sphere" convinced me that this is prevalent, severe, and important. Actually it was my information spheres as in my own 2 eyes after moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2020. You may not have noticed but I've been a member of this forum for 20+ years and I've only started posting in the US politics thread again in 2020. Maybe that's what happens when you start paying a lot more state income tax in return for epic levels of homelessness, drug abuse, mental illness, rising crime, prolonged school closures, rampant car break-ins and just an overall downward spiral of the city.

Stop listening to Fox News, BJ!

Right.. like the 76% of San Franciscans in one poll that said the city is headed in the wrong direction. Clearly they are just brainwashed by inconsequential woke narratives they heard in their information sphere. I'm sure SF has a huge MAGA following /sarcasm.

I get it. Your tag says you're from Romania. Why should you care if parents here can't send their children to school because the school boards are too busy having pointless fights over renaming the schools instead of trying to reopen them. Why should you care if high school students can no longer take advanced mathematics because it's unfair that not enough black/hispanic students are in those classes. Why should you care if restaurants get shut down because they don't want to force their staff to check people's vaccine papers. Why should you care if small businesses are repeatedly robbed because progressive DAs and judges have a catch and release policy for criminals. Why should you care if people are left in pharmacy deserts where they can't get their prescription meds because Walgreens and CVS closed down their stores after half the merchandise walks out the front door. etc. etc. It's all inconsequential to a person on the other side of the world. Trump selling Ukraine down the river to Russia is obviously more important than what happens over here.

What you like to do is take all the shit that wokeism has bred, ignore 99% of it, find the most obscure and inconsequential example of wokeism run amok and then say "this doesn't matter to anyone." Sure, it's inconsequential that in the mayoral debate our incumbent mayor thought it was a mic-drop gotcha to challenge her rival to "name 3 drag queens" as proof they are qualified to be SF mayor. It's inconsequential, but maybe, just maybe, when the majority of your constituents think your city is circling the drain and you're trying to dunk on people over how many drag queens you can name, there might a connection for why we are in such dire straits.

The San Francisco mayoral debate took an odd turn on Monday after Democrat Mayor London Breed asked one of her challengers, Mark Farrell, to name "any drag queens" and three LGBTQ advisers to his campaign.

"I’d like to ask Mark a question," Breed began saying. "You were at the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club and couldn’t name any LGBT advisers to your campaign. You were at the debate last week and couldn’t name any drag queens on your own."

"I was wondering if you could — this is an opportunity to redeem yourself. And if you could name three LGBTQ advisers for your campaign and three drag queens in San Francisco," Breed continued

“You were at the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club and couldn’t name any LGBT advisers to your campaign. You were at the debate last week and couldn’t name any drag queens on your own,” she said to Farrell. “... This is an opportunity to redeem yourself if you could name three LGBTQ advisers to your campaign and three drag queens in San Francisco.” 

During last week’s debate, many — including me — suspected that Farrell copied Safaí when asked who his favorite drag queen was. Safaí, who answered first, said his favorite was Honey Mahogany. Farrell, who answered second, said the same.
This time, pressed by Breed to name three local drag queens and three LGBTQ advisers to his campaign, Farrell gave a bumbling nonanswer.

“So we’re not gonna, we’re not gonna revise the drag queen question from last week,” he said, before going on to say that former District 8 Supervisor Jeff Sheehy is “a close friend and a supporter” of his campaign and that he has two members of the LGTBQ community on his campaign staff that he wouldn’t name because he didn’t want to “dignify” the question. 

Not naming the staffers is forgivable, but his refusal to answer the drag queen question made him look out of touch. Though one could chalk it up to an attempt to seem more serious, I think the answer is simpler than that: He probably doesn’t know the names of many drag queens. You could tell that he was panicking when he seemed to copy Safaí last week. 

If Farrell hasn’t already typed “sf drag queens” into his Google search bar, it’s probably too late. The damage is done. But how much it will matter in the long run is up for debate. However, the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club did comment on it in a social media post Monday night. 

The seven school board members talk for two hours about whether the dad brings enough diversity. Yes, he’d be the only man. And the only LGBTQ representative. But he’d be the fourth white person in a district where 15% of students are white.

The gay dad never utters a single word. The board members do not ask the dad a single question before declining to approve him for the committee. They say they’ll consider allowing him to volunteer if he comes back with a slate of more diverse candidates, ideally including an Arab parent, a Native American parent, a Vietnamese parent and a Chinese parent who doesn’t speak English.

Was this an episode of “Portlandia,” the TV satire about liberalism gone to ludicrous extremes? No, it was just another Tuesday night at the San Francisco Board of Education, a group that would provide great entertainment if the consequences weren’t so serious.

"I’d like to ask Mark a question," Breed began saying. "You were at the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club and couldn’t name any LGBT advisers to your campaign. You were at the debate last week and couldn’t name any drag queens on your own."

On March 11 2025 16:47 Uldridge wrote:
Back from the dead, right back in his talking points. This time more prolific than ever.
"Wokeism" has lost traction almost everywhere, didn't you hear?

The problem is that you don't understand why though. A very small minority made a caricature out of being a generally decent human being and that got a disproportionate amount of media attention.
Certain people got swept up in that narrative and either were misinformed about the scope, its impact or both. People on the left and the right. They both used it as ammunition, but to (for?) a different end.
The right overwhelmingly won because normal people couldn't handle the incessant stream of caricatural bullshit coming from the right sphere and basically appeased these (wo)manchildren so they would shut the fuck up about shit they have not only no clue about, but actively misrepresented to furhter their agenda.

You fell right into their trap and literally almost the only thing we read from you now are these "my city went to shit because wokeism" posts. You've become a mouthpiece for the right.
It's funny but sometimes you start to attempt to discuss something else, but it never takes you long to get back to these talking point you've been yapping about for the last couple of years. Do some deep introspection, please.

On March 11 2025 17:24 BlackJack wrote:
Never a response to any of the tangible examples I post. Always some long-winded "you've been captured by the right-wing outrage machine." Even if you want to use that argument on me, it's perhaps the dumbest theory to think SF voters are rejecting it because they have been captured by the Ben Shapiros and Charlie Kirks of the world.

On March 11 2025 18:12 Uldridge wrote:


You don't need them for that. Trump and the anti-establishment megaphones and mainstream media outlets are enough already.

Why do you need a tangible response? You've been talking about the same things for years now.

On March 11 2025 18:16 BlackJack wrote:


So your theory is that San Francisco of all places has bought into Trump and others' talking points? That's why they're rejecting wokeism at the ballots? That's why they think their city is headed in the wrong direction? I think you need a better theory.

On March 11 2025 18:19 oBlade wrote:
"Forced use of pronouns" has many layers. It also includes being compelled to introduce yourself in a politically discordant way. For example starting a struggle session by being forced to identify yourself by protected characteristics and announce what pronouns "you" use, when in reality people don't use 3rd person pronouns for themselves unless they are speaking ironically or have another issue. Being obligated to put them in your email header/footer. Being taught to ask people theirs as part of introduction rituals. Furthermore, anything invented outside the fixed class that already exists, is what's linguistically wrong. Certain parts of speech are fixed classes. It's why there's no social ritual around allowing certain people to invent conjunctions and add them to the language, like hypothetically, Russian people insisting on using "whilesky" orsky "andanov."