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Northern Ireland22439 Posts
On December 19 2023 08:21 sevencck wrote: Perhaps one of you can explain to me why the hitherto unprecedented effort to remove a leading candidate from the ballot is actually an endorsement of democracy. A basically hitherto unprecedented crook being in situ might have something to do with it?
I mean Washington is hardly lacking in people lacking ethical fibre, but Trump takes elevates overt corruption to stadium rock levels.
I mean I’m hardly an expert on convivial civility but in future if you do want any kind of actual engagement, the opening gambit of ‘you folks are against democracy and are arrogant imbeciles’ probably isn’t the best one to pull out of the quiver.
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I'm not a big fan of preventing Trump from getting on the ballot, but I am a believer that Trump should be in jail and I don't see how he can run the country from a jail cell.
Jan 6 was about much more than a bunch of people storming the capital on Jan 6th. It involved Trump lawyers trying to figure out any way they could to circumvent the election results. It was about fake slates of electors. It was about Trump demanding a secretary of state find him 10k votes. It was about finding illegal ways to keep the loser in power, period. He should be in jail for what he did and a lot of the people around him are already going to jail for it.
On Blackjack's topic, I'm with Blackjack this time. Is it a huge deal? No. On Jimmi's scale of 1-10, it's a 1 or 2. Historically, how bad were separate drinking fountains? A 3? Good thing nobody ever made a big deal about those, right? They weren't ever used as a symbol of what was wrong with the country, right?
However, the fact that people can't just say, "Yeah, that was wrong. They shouldn't have done that" and move on seems odd to me. A lot of the justifications for it seem really shaky at best.
Kwark's initial response about the supreme court bothers me. He made a decent argument for why we shouldn't pick another white man. Diversity of opinion is important for the supreme court and having a court that represents the whole of America is important. However, why did it have to be a black woman? Why not Hispanic women? Why not Asian women? Why not Middle Eastern women? Why did we disenfranchise all of those people before we even picked the next candidate?
More importantly, why are ethnic lines the deciding factor? Wouldn't it be better to get diversity on religious lines? Non-religious people are completely under-represented in the supreme court and government in general. Instead, we tossed another Christian into the mix. I guess I can take solace that she isn't the 7th catholic out of 9 justices.
The idea that someone is represented because a candidate shares their ethnicity seems off. Brett "I don't drink beer", "Beers" Kavanaugh doesn't represent me even though I'm also a white male. I doubt too many black men are looking at Clarence Thomas and saying, "yeah, we need more people like him on the supreme court." Ethnicity seems like a terrible indicator of representation.
What we need are people with empathy. We need people who can see an issue from multiple angles rather than being idealogues.
I'm saying all this as someone who does not want to see the current crop of Republicans with any power. When people are being racist, we should call it out, even if it's coming from the left. The simple, "yeah, it was a stupid move" acknowledgement is enough. We don't need to cancel anyone, just acknowledge our mistakes and try to do better. If people on the left keep trying to gaslight the country about why it's okay to be racist this time, I think you're going to piss off a bunch of people in the middle and hand this country right back to the Republicans.
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On December 19 2023 09:52 sevencck wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2023 09:43 KwarK wrote: You’re all trying way too hard for someone who is clearly not worth the time. Your time could be more productively used in flat earth YouTube channels comment sections. Your sneering contempt is doing wonders for your side politically, like I said. Good luck. Something I’ve always admired about Kwark is that he had absolutely no interest in “persuading” you by coddling. If you say “I’m voting for Trump,” he’ll tell you why he thinks that’s stupid. If you say “I’m regretting my vote for Trump,” he’ll say “good, but don’t expect any special praise for being slow to realize what we already knew.” If you say “talk like that might drive me back to voting Trump…” he’ll say “okay, then do it. It’s not my job to cure your idiocy.”
It’s the right approach, especially on a video game forum with no actual bearing on the election outcome. It’s abrasive, but it means you know Kwark means it when he does or doesn’t agree with you. All the tactical “we need to be understanding towards Trump supporters if we want to change their minds…” is mealy-mouthed and disingenuous, when mealy-mouthed disingenuousness is a lot of what they hated about liberals in the first place.
His overconfidence and abrasiveness aren’t always the best qualities, but when someone like you threatens “oo, if you’re not nicer to me you might lose the next election…” it’s exactly the right way to be.
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On December 19 2023 13:25 RenSC2 wrote:
On Blackjack's topic, I'm with Blackjack this time. Is it a huge deal? No. On Jimmi's scale of 1-10, it's a 1 or 2. Historically, how bad were separate drinking fountains? A 3? Good thing nobody ever made a big deal about those, right? They weren't ever used as a symbol of what was wrong with the country, right?
However, the fact that people can't just say, "Yeah, that was wrong. They shouldn't have done that" and move on seems odd to me. A lot of the justifications for it seem really shaky at best.
The bolded was my point by the way. As much as people want to argue “it’s just one stupid holiday party among many, get over it,” it’s really beside the point. The point is that it’s becoming acceptable to be openly discriminatory and celebratory of segregation. It’s obviously a huge step backwards.
I also think you’re quite right about pissing off people in the middle back to Republicans. Trump is polling at record numbers among black and Hispanic voters. these types of issues play very well the social justice conscious white college educated liberals but not so much with your typical working class black and Hispanic voters.
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On December 19 2023 13:32 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2023 09:52 sevencck wrote:On December 19 2023 09:43 KwarK wrote: You’re all trying way too hard for someone who is clearly not worth the time. Your time could be more productively used in flat earth YouTube channels comment sections. Your sneering contempt is doing wonders for your side politically, like I said. Good luck. Something I’ve always admired about Kwark is that he had absolutely no interest in “persuading” you by coddling. If you say “I’m voting for Trump,” he’ll tell you why he thinks that’s stupid. If you say “I’m regretting my vote for Trump,” he’ll say “good, but don’t expect any special praise for being slow to realize what we already knew.” If you say “talk like that might drive me back to voting Trump…” he’ll say “okay, then do it. It’s not my job to cure your idiocy.” It’s the right approach, especially on a video game forum with no actual bearing on the election outcome. It’s abrasive, but it means you know Kwark means it when he does or doesn’t agree with you. All the tactical “we need to be understanding towards Trump supporters if we want to change their minds…” is mealy-mouthed and disingenuous, when mealy-mouthed disingenuousness is a lot of what they hated about liberals in the first place. His overconfidence and abrasiveness aren’t always the best qualities, but when someone like you threatens “oo, if you’re not nicer to me you might lose the next election…” it’s exactly the right way to be.
Sure, but I'm not remotely interested in trying to convince him of anything. I wanted Trump to win in 2016 because like I said I think "liberals" have lost it. Since the 2016 election they've done nothing to convince me otherwise. It's been 8 years of absurd shadow projection, 24/7 media attacks, Russia collusion narrative, impeachment theatre, "stealing classified documents," and now indictments. A true circus.
Most people haven't even come close to mastering their inner tyrant, and are therefore not reliable re: tolerance and compassion. These things normally just end up being an avenue for your inner tyrant to express itself. Since I don't expect many people to see this, the meta option is to provoke them into showing who they are beneath the beautiful words. Trump's actually done a great job of this (he's actually doing it when he says he'll be a dictator on day 1, and liberals foam at the mouth). I think liberals have done a great job showing who they are and how little they care about letting people vote for who they want.
In any case, I've said what I think. If someone wants to have an actual discussion I'm game otherwise I'm out. Like I said, good luck.
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Northern Ireland22439 Posts
On December 19 2023 13:32 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2023 09:52 sevencck wrote:On December 19 2023 09:43 KwarK wrote: You’re all trying way too hard for someone who is clearly not worth the time. Your time could be more productively used in flat earth YouTube channels comment sections. Your sneering contempt is doing wonders for your side politically, like I said. Good luck. Something I’ve always admired about Kwark is that he had absolutely no interest in “persuading” you by coddling. If you say “I’m voting for Trump,” he’ll tell you why he thinks that’s stupid. If you say “I’m regretting my vote for Trump,” he’ll say “good, but don’t expect any special praise for being slow to realize what we already knew.” If you say “talk like that might drive me back to voting Trump…” he’ll say “okay, then do it. It’s not my job to cure your idiocy.” It’s the right approach, especially on a video game forum with no actual bearing on the election outcome. It’s abrasive, but it means you know Kwark means it when he does or doesn’t agree with you. All the tactical “we need to be understanding towards Trump supporters if we want to change their minds…” is mealy-mouthed and disingenuous, when mealy-mouthed disingenuousness is a lot of what they hated about liberals in the first place.His overconfidence and abrasiveness aren’t always the best qualities, but when someone like you threatens “oo, if you’re not nicer to me you might lose the next election…” it’s exactly the right way to be. If Kwark wasn’t gainfully employed elsewhere I reckon he’d have a lucrative gig as a freelance beatdown merchant.
I mean on a more serious note, understanding is always something I do try to pursue, even if there’s little chance of utilising that knowledge in aid of persuasion.
I think even on the campaign trail Trump was pretty fucking awful, but maybe at a stretch you can extend a certain benefit of the doubt to folks in 2016/17. In 2023 it’s a whole other kettle of proven awfulness. Wanna extol the virtues of your politics? Go ahead we might find some commonality, we may not. But I cant really take defences of that specific man seriously and question one’s critical faculties, or, if one accepts whatever charges I’m bringing to the convo and concludes ‘I can live with that’, I’d have serious divergence with someone on a core moral level.
No sense beating around the fucking bush on that particular topic, given how politics is so intertwined with one’s core personality and morals, and knowledge of the world my modus operandi is don’t enter the domain if you don’t want those questioned.
I haven’t seen a huge amount of evidence that hostility works to drag people around on certain things, but equally I haven’t seen much evidence that civility and dancing around awkward home truths is effective either. So pick your poison, personally I prefer the latter.
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On December 19 2023 13:56 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2023 13:32 ChristianS wrote:On December 19 2023 09:52 sevencck wrote:On December 19 2023 09:43 KwarK wrote: You’re all trying way too hard for someone who is clearly not worth the time. Your time could be more productively used in flat earth YouTube channels comment sections. Your sneering contempt is doing wonders for your side politically, like I said. Good luck. Something I’ve always admired about Kwark is that he had absolutely no interest in “persuading” you by coddling. If you say “I’m voting for Trump,” he’ll tell you why he thinks that’s stupid. If you say “I’m regretting my vote for Trump,” he’ll say “good, but don’t expect any special praise for being slow to realize what we already knew.” If you say “talk like that might drive me back to voting Trump…” he’ll say “okay, then do it. It’s not my job to cure your idiocy.” It’s the right approach, especially on a video game forum with no actual bearing on the election outcome. It’s abrasive, but it means you know Kwark means it when he does or doesn’t agree with you. All the tactical “we need to be understanding towards Trump supporters if we want to change their minds…” is mealy-mouthed and disingenuous, when mealy-mouthed disingenuousness is a lot of what they hated about liberals in the first place.His overconfidence and abrasiveness aren’t always the best qualities, but when someone like you threatens “oo, if you’re not nicer to me you might lose the next election…” it’s exactly the right way to be. If Kwark wasn’t gainfully employed elsewhere I reckon he’d have a lucrative gig as a freelance beatdown merchant. I mean on a more serious note, understanding is always something I do try to pursue, even if there’s little chance of utilising that knowledge in aid of persuasion. I think even on the campaign trail Trump was pretty fucking awful, but maybe at a stretch you can extend a certain benefit of the doubt to folks in 2016/17. In 2023 it’s a whole other kettle of proven awfulness. Wanna extol the virtues of your politics? Go ahead we might find some commonality, we may not. But I cant really take defences of that specific man seriously and question one’s critical faculties, or, if one accepts whatever charges I’m bringing to the convo and concludes ‘I can live with that’, I’d have serious divergence with someone on a core moral level. No sense beating around the fucking bush on that particular topic, given how politics is so intertwined with one’s core personality and morals, and knowledge of the world my modus operandi is don’t enter the domain if you don’t want those questioned. I haven’t seen a huge amount of evidence that hostility works to drag people around on certain things, but equally I haven’t seen much evidence that civility and dancing around awkward home truths is effective either. So pick your poison, personally I prefer the latter. I think I agree, generally speaking. I go pretty far out of my way to try to understand what someone else believes and why, and try to express my disagreements in nonaccusatory terms such that they might actually engage with them instead of just getting defensive. I don’t necessarily have the time right this moment to get in the weeds with sevencck but I’m not fundamentally opposed to it.
But I think you’re also agreeing that bending over backwards to try to make Trump supporter’s grievances sound reasonable and valid is often disingenuous. Democrats chiding each other to be more sensitive to he plight of the poor West Virginian coal miner in hopes that will win over some Trump voters feels desperate and kind of embarrassing at best, and creepy and manipulative at worst.
There were a few posters here in 2017-2018 that made a bit of a show of being repentant former Trump voters, and some people were inclined to give them a lot of praise and celebration for that; Kwark was more along the lines of “well that’s kind of an embarrassing past you’re admitting to. What do you want, a cookie?” And I always thought that seemed a lot more honest.
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Northern Ireland22439 Posts
On December 19 2023 17:26 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2023 13:56 WombaT wrote:On December 19 2023 13:32 ChristianS wrote:On December 19 2023 09:52 sevencck wrote:On December 19 2023 09:43 KwarK wrote: You’re all trying way too hard for someone who is clearly not worth the time. Your time could be more productively used in flat earth YouTube channels comment sections. Your sneering contempt is doing wonders for your side politically, like I said. Good luck. Something I’ve always admired about Kwark is that he had absolutely no interest in “persuading” you by coddling. If you say “I’m voting for Trump,” he’ll tell you why he thinks that’s stupid. If you say “I’m regretting my vote for Trump,” he’ll say “good, but don’t expect any special praise for being slow to realize what we already knew.” If you say “talk like that might drive me back to voting Trump…” he’ll say “okay, then do it. It’s not my job to cure your idiocy.” It’s the right approach, especially on a video game forum with no actual bearing on the election outcome. It’s abrasive, but it means you know Kwark means it when he does or doesn’t agree with you. All the tactical “we need to be understanding towards Trump supporters if we want to change their minds…” is mealy-mouthed and disingenuous, when mealy-mouthed disingenuousness is a lot of what they hated about liberals in the first place.His overconfidence and abrasiveness aren’t always the best qualities, but when someone like you threatens “oo, if you’re not nicer to me you might lose the next election…” it’s exactly the right way to be. If Kwark wasn’t gainfully employed elsewhere I reckon he’d have a lucrative gig as a freelance beatdown merchant. I mean on a more serious note, understanding is always something I do try to pursue, even if there’s little chance of utilising that knowledge in aid of persuasion. I think even on the campaign trail Trump was pretty fucking awful, but maybe at a stretch you can extend a certain benefit of the doubt to folks in 2016/17. In 2023 it’s a whole other kettle of proven awfulness. Wanna extol the virtues of your politics? Go ahead we might find some commonality, we may not. But I cant really take defences of that specific man seriously and question one’s critical faculties, or, if one accepts whatever charges I’m bringing to the convo and concludes ‘I can live with that’, I’d have serious divergence with someone on a core moral level. No sense beating around the fucking bush on that particular topic, given how politics is so intertwined with one’s core personality and morals, and knowledge of the world my modus operandi is don’t enter the domain if you don’t want those questioned. I haven’t seen a huge amount of evidence that hostility works to drag people around on certain things, but equally I haven’t seen much evidence that civility and dancing around awkward home truths is effective either. So pick your poison, personally I prefer the latter. I think I agree, generally speaking. I go pretty far out of my way to try to understand what someone else believes and why, and try to express my disagreements in nonaccusatory terms such that they might actually engage with them instead of just getting defensive. I don’t necessarily have the time right this moment to get in the weeds with sevencck but I’m not fundamentally opposed to it. But I think you’re also agreeing that bending over backwards to try to make Trump supporter’s grievances sound reasonable and valid is often disingenuous. Democrats chiding each other to be more sensitive to he plight of the poor West Virginian coal miner in hopes that will win over some Trump voters feels desperate and kind of embarrassing at best, and creepy and manipulative at worst. There were a few posters here in 2017-2018 that made a bit of a show of being repentant former Trump voters, and some people were inclined to give them a lot of praise and celebration for that; Kwark was more along the lines of “well that’s kind of an embarrassing past you’re admitting to. What do you want, a cookie?” And I always thought that seemed a lot more honest. If you want me to get into the weeds, you’ve got to get off the porch.
I mean I almost never actually fundamentally agree with Introvert, but I almost always find their input worth my time reading and interesting.
Too many conservatives come in and post like trash and then flounce off, attributing it to this thread being an ‘echo chamber’ rather than a problem with how they’re communicating.
I mean GH gets more shade thrown at them than any poster in here, and he’s probably the furthest left of everyone. It’s not like disagreement is confined to one quadrant of the political compass.
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One of the things I find indefensible about choosing trump as your standard bearer is that he is such an obvious moron. Famously has an attention span measured in seconds, can't sit down to read a document more than a few lines long and struggles to speak in complete sentences. To top that off, he has zero original thought - the height of his political acumen was to push the childish idea of building a wall. I genuinely don't get how one can get past that and not think 'surely we could do someone better?'
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United States24449 Posts
On December 19 2023 13:25 RenSC2 wrote: On Blackjack's topic, I'm with Blackjack this time. Is it a huge deal? No. On Jimmi's scale of 1-10, it's a 1 or 2. Historically, how bad were separate drinking fountains? A 3? Good thing nobody ever made a big deal about those, right? They weren't ever used as a symbol of what was wrong with the country, right? I don't see these two things as being in the same category. People have a right to use public drinking fountains regardless of their race, and obviously the efforts decades ago to prevent that were morally (and now legally) wrong. Is the right to attend a party of the same nature? It depends on the party. My office is hosting a holiday party today, and everyone who works there is invited. If the Director was a person of color (I'm not) and put out an all-hands e-mail "only people of color who work here may attend the party" that would be unacceptable. "The" holiday party is for everyone. If someone sends an e-mail to the employees who are persons of color and say "come to an afterparty at the pub down the street!" I don't really have a right to complain about that. I could complain that they were dumb for sending me the e-mail (like in the news item above) if they did, but that's a separate problem.
The obvious follow-up question is, what if someone sent an e-mail to the white-only staff which said "come to an afterparty at the pub across the street?" As I said earlier, that wouldn't be acceptable where I work today, but in theory it could be acceptable in the future.
However, the fact that people can't just say, "Yeah, that was wrong. They shouldn't have done that" and move on seems odd to me. A lot of the justifications for it seem really shaky at best. So just to be clear, when I disagree with someone, if you agree with them, then I should say I agree and move on? I don't think you really meant it that way, but it came across as a bit strange.
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On December 19 2023 13:55 sevencck wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2023 13:32 ChristianS wrote:On December 19 2023 09:52 sevencck wrote:On December 19 2023 09:43 KwarK wrote: You’re all trying way too hard for someone who is clearly not worth the time. Your time could be more productively used in flat earth YouTube channels comment sections. Your sneering contempt is doing wonders for your side politically, like I said. Good luck. Something I’ve always admired about Kwark is that he had absolutely no interest in “persuading” you by coddling. If you say “I’m voting for Trump,” he’ll tell you why he thinks that’s stupid. If you say “I’m regretting my vote for Trump,” he’ll say “good, but don’t expect any special praise for being slow to realize what we already knew.” If you say “talk like that might drive me back to voting Trump…” he’ll say “okay, then do it. It’s not my job to cure your idiocy.” It’s the right approach, especially on a video game forum with no actual bearing on the election outcome. It’s abrasive, but it means you know Kwark means it when he does or doesn’t agree with you. All the tactical “we need to be understanding towards Trump supporters if we want to change their minds…” is mealy-mouthed and disingenuous, when mealy-mouthed disingenuousness is a lot of what they hated about liberals in the first place. His overconfidence and abrasiveness aren’t always the best qualities, but when someone like you threatens “oo, if you’re not nicer to me you might lose the next election…” it’s exactly the right way to be. Sure, but I'm not remotely interested in trying to convince him of anything. I wanted Trump to win in 2016 because like I said I think "liberals" have lost it. Since the 2016 election they've done nothing to convince me otherwise. It's been 8 years of absurd shadow projection, 24/7 media attacks, Russia collusion narrative, impeachment theatre, "stealing classified documents," and now indictments. A true circus. Most people haven't even come close to mastering their inner tyrant, and are therefore not reliable re: tolerance and compassion. These things normally just end up being an avenue for your inner tyrant to express itself. Since I don't expect many people to see this, the meta option is to provoke them into showing who they are beneath the beautiful words. Trump's actually done a great job of this (he's actually doing it when he says he'll be a dictator on day 1, and liberals foam at the mouth). I think liberals have done a great job showing who they are and how little they care about letting people vote for who they want. In any case, I've said what I think. If someone wants to have an actual discussion I'm game otherwise I'm out. Like I said, good luck.
So, you are lost, and proud of that.
Have a nice day.
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What is actually the desired end goal of diversity? How do we know if we've successfully achieved sufficient diversity? Is there a thing as too much diversity? Does diversity compete with other goals such as merit, or does it improve those other goals? What means are acceptable when pursuing diversity?
I'd like to hear from both those on the left and right here.
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On December 19 2023 21:05 gobbledydook wrote: What is actually the desired end goal of diversity? How do we know if we've successfully achieved sufficient diversity? Is there a thing as too much diversity? Does diversity compete with other goals such as merit, or does it improve those other goals? What means are acceptable when pursuing diversity?
I'd like to hear from both those on the left and right here.
If the people making decisions are not diverse enough, like famously Boris Johnson's meetings during the pandemic that included zero women, then you get to truly awful decisions like locking victims with their abusers in their houses.
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New cycle coming up for the presidential elections.
It looks like Trump is most likely going to win and what wil happen after that is anyones guess. One nation after another is falling into autocracy.
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United States41383 Posts
Maybe a second amendment enthusiast will prevent him taking office. By voting or something.
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United States41383 Posts
On December 19 2023 20:17 EnDeR_ wrote: One of the things I find indefensible about choosing trump as your standard bearer is that he is such an obvious moron. Famously has an attention span measured in seconds, can't sit down to read a document more than a few lines long and struggles to speak in complete sentences. To top that off, he has zero original thought - the height of his political acumen was to push the childish idea of building a wall. I genuinely don't get how one can get past that and not think 'surely we could do someone better?' They’re simply contrarians. They like that we don’t like him. Whenever we go “you can’t elect a complete moron to the highest office” they get excited at the prospect of angering us. There’s still the Obama era pushback too. Obama triggered the fuck out of them with his undeniable intelligence, charisma, ad fitness for the job. The idea that a black man might govern them just because he was qualified hurts them deep in their shitty little souls.
It’s very important to them that they get the most unqualified white man they can find in charge. One with no skills, experience, or education. One that was born 3-0 up and believed he scored a hat trick. They need us to know that their identity politics is still the majority. They want an old white guy who knows nothing about virology overruling all the scientists because nobody at work listens to them anymore. They want a rich guy shitting in a golden toilet because they don’t have indoor plumbing. They want a guy who abuses women because their bitch ex wife won’t let them see their kids anymore.
They’re a very pathetic, very bitter identity politics group that are motivated by contrarianism and spite. They don’t not see that the man can’t read, they like it.
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On December 19 2023 21:05 gobbledydook wrote: What is actually the desired end goal of diversity? How do we know if we've successfully achieved sufficient diversity? Is there a thing as too much diversity? Does diversity compete with other goals such as merit, or does it improve those other goals? What means are acceptable when pursuing diversity?
I'd like to hear from both those on the left and right here.
"I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood."
The end goal is when people are treated differently and the effects of ones skin color doesn't disproportionately effect how they are treated. Its not a hard concept to understand, you need to ask some people when they feel its okay to stop fighting racism and when its time to tell people to just be okay with it.
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