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Comments
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Now for a post I've been looking to make for a while now:
Two really important books have been written exploring the dissent to Modern Gender Idology, and so their authors have been doing the regular book tours. The books are The End of Gender (not in the way you think) by Dr. Debra Soh, and Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier.
Dr. Debra Soh's book focuses a lot more on the neurological connections that clearly dispute it as well as the general myths that have become entrenched in this debate, and it's the one I ended up pre-ordering (yes, I haven't read either yet).
Irreversible Damage focuses more on the process of how things got this way, including a segment on Lisa Littman and her quickly killed off Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria study. I like books on history, but that puts it on a lower rung in terms of my interest right now (there are lots of books I meant to get through this year and I'm slowly trying to catch up).
At one point in an interview, Dr. Soh commented on how she's disappointed in a lot of gay men who were gender atypical as children (and are probably still so now) who are wholeheartedly advocating for these misconceptions, since they would surely be caught in the current dragnet for prepubescent social transitioning (or worse).
It's hard not to agree with her, but I'm glad I probably diverged from this stuff last year right at the point where it was either I support the ideas or reject them entirely.
Of course in my teens I was pretty into Bakugan and in my childhood I was quite into Power Rangers, but my favorite stuff was (is?) probably always what had the most pink in the marketing at the time. I hate to say this as a Card Carrying Weeb, but my love for Bakugan probably paled against my love for My Scene dolls.
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On the other side of the pond, it seems both the BBC and NHS have cut ties with the vaguely scary and certainly dogmatic "LGBT" charity Mermaids. This is in addition to re-formatting their resources on sex/gender so they try to reflect reality rather conform to ideology. This is being hailed as a victory, and it is, but I remain cautious till we see how things continue to play out for a while.
Also, since the British gender-dissenter movement seems to be driven entirely by feminists and other radical free-thinkers (ie liberal leaning people), the fact that this was done under Boris Johnson's administration and that the current Conservative government probably deserves a bit of credit is being left out.
I mean, it could also be that one girl who is currently suing the NHS for putting her into transition freefall since all the guardrails are gone, plus the Tavistock debacle, so maybe it's more that than any current administration could ever handle.
https://www.unc.edu/posts/2020/08/17/shift-to-remote/
So much for trying to force an in-person semester.
...Meanwhile, in Florida...
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/coronavirus/fl-ne-forida-education-commissioner-covid-19-guidance-20200818-av5mbih6wffvfke6ranh2yghaa-story.html
TL;DR: on 2020-08-18
The Next Day:
https://www.wesh.com/article/coronavirus-case-lake-mary-elementary-school/33648161
TL;DR: on 2020-08-19
In short, Florida has a whole bunch of laws governing how pedestrians may cross vehicular roadways, and they are very inconsistently enforced, with enforcement actions disproportionately targeting poor/minority folks. This is against a backdrop of generally inadequate pedestrian resources, such as a dearth of sidewalks, particularly in poorer neighborhoods.
While I haven't lived in Jacksonville myself, I can definitely vouch for the fact that it's inconsistently enforced. Before COVID-19 hit, I regularly crossed -- at an intersection that lacked a crosswalk (and definitely not at right angles!) -- a busy street, with three lanes and a median, no less, to get to the bank. There was a much bigger intersection not too far away, which would add another 5 to 10 minutes of walking time, which had proper pedestrian signals, and I should probably have used that, though I generally didn't because it was faster to cross where I did. (And the bank closed ridiculously early -- at 4pm.) I was never advised by police (or anyone else), until I read about this issue, that there were actually state laws regarding this. The most I had was someone asking me why I didn't just take a car, because in their judgement, taking a car would be safer. (And I'm lucky that I have a car, in working condition. If I were poorer, I might have no such choice.)
To be fair, state laws does allow for crossing a roadway when there are no crosswalks nearby, and it's defined by a specific amount of distance, if I recall correctly. But that doesn't make the situation much better, given the inconsistency of enforcement, even to the point of the police citing a nonexistent state law.
And fundamentally, people don't just jaywalk because it's fun. People understand that streets are dangerous, but they cross them out of necessity, or otherwise for practical reasons. Slapping a fine on jaywalking doesn't remove those reasons, so it does little to dissuade people. It doesn't make crossing any safer either. Painting more crosswalks, giving more proper signaling, and generally making Florida's urban and suburban areas more pedestrian-friendly would do it.
Much of Florida's development has happened after the automobile became a thing. A lot of cities are sadly sprawled out. This can be particularly bad if you live in a gated neighborhood with walls. As a kid I realized just how bad this was when I, fresh off playing Pokémon, wondered why I couldn't walk everywhere like my player-character did. I started trying to find out how long it'd take me to walk to the grocery store, and realized that the labyrinthine street layout of my neighborhood, along with its forced chokepoints, meant that it might take me half an hour or an hour just to get outside the wall behind my house.
Older neighborhoods, without security gates, are somewhat more open, and they're also more often populated by poorer people. But that doesn't mean things are better. The wealthier parts of town will at least have sidewalks and good amounts of clearance, but the poorer parts of town will have overgrown or even nonexistent sidewalks, or sidewalks right at the curb (rather than separated by span of lawn, which could arguably be a bad idea for unrelated reasons, but for now let's ignore them), and what crosswalks are present are often faded anyway. Heck, even in the wealthier parts of town, it's not uncommon to have no sidewalk on one side of the street, at all. Most everything here, except in downtowns, has been laid out with the idea that everyone will have cars to get anywhere they need.
There are some glimmers of hope, as I think planners have gradually come to realize that practically walkable/bikeable neighborhoods are good ideas, for everything from recreation/exercise to safety to economic inclusiveness. But retrofitting these ideas to existing infrastructure is a long and imperfect process. And such improvements have tended to benefit wealthier areas more (and, to no one's surprise, poorer parts of town are also demographically more minority-heavy).
Edit: Not sure if intentional.
Me too! In addition I think I accidentally switched off whatever was controlling my PolitiSpeak by quitting news for ten days.
I dun geddit
This is the most Vox way to think about things.
I can't, man. No, I can't.
...
nope I can!
You're complaining about the fines and then pretending they don't give jaywalkers pause in the same statement.
Painting more crosswalks could probably help, but you have to consider the general safety of what you're doing, and how that would affect traffic. Plus, I tend to notice that areas with high vehicle traffic aren't where people tend to walk, so unless there's a sudden epidemic of officers ticketing to the letter just because, this isn't a real thing.
It should be easier to whack some weeds than paint crosswalks?
That's because those areas not only pay more taxes, but have more politically involved citizens. I assume that that most local government work is funded by taxes (rather than federal grants), and overall in America most people who actually pay taxes skew wealthier and therefore pay more, so they're helping the poorer parts of town that way.
Plus, this thing where you equate poor and minority-heavy is taxing and draining to the mind. It's almost never relevant to the point being made, and is just elitist-speak aftertalk for how racist it turns out existence as a whole is. I mean, it's basically saying "well, it's about 10% white but it's not like like those people matter." (which in an odd way creates a literary loop about the use of the term "minority").
Double Plus, Asians (both East and South and etc) are a minority in the US, but their skew is the opposite way round, nobody ever finds it relevant to mention them,.
Consider this; we totally have poor people here, if you don't know. Those people, obviously, aren't a minority here. You're not going to help them by pointing out their skin color.
Much like Beto O'Rourke learned last year, swearing has gone from powerful in making a point (movies in the 90s), to crass (Superbad, Good Kids or whatever that movie from last year was called), to kind of just 'meh' (every character on Scream Queens, but especially Emma Robert's Chanel).
I'm not sure why people would pay normal (ie premium) rates for online college. I've seen elsewhere that people are suggesting this is the ultimate opportunity for gap years, a concept I generally dislike but see the merit in this time around.
I'd assume that they'd have to? The point of re-opening schools is to school children at a genuine capacity (why is there sudden agreement that Zoom or Skype lessons even work all that well?) and alleviate the insane psychological stress we've foisted on a generation of kids (I am so glad I was out of high school when this began), not to prevent possible C19 infections at all costs.
This isn't "Yes, let's throw caution to the wind" versus "No, we must isolate until... possibly forever if there's no decent vaccine". It's "Let's take our chances whilst acting cautiously" versus, well, I don't know what your position is, so I'll leave this space blank.
I understand that if one has living arrangements where grandparents and older family members live with them (not exactly a common situation in the US I assume), precautions must be taken, but if a K-12 kid has parents in the range of 20-50 living with them with no co-morbidities (obesity, diabetes, and so on) that kid shouldn't be denied school.
tl;dr: When did risk assessment just suddenly stop being a thing?
Sorry, I went with a fancy term for "not screwing over the poor neighborhoods".
If you want the fines to be effective you have to combine them with (1) an adequate set of designed street crossings that are practically convenient and accessible, and (2) consistent enforcement of those fines, and (if you're willing to put in the effort to be fair so as to avoid being a dick to the public) (3) appropriate signage/education/whatever to tell people that they are seriously meant to cross only at designated places and will be fined if they don't.
There are actually some places where municipalities have implemented traffic signals in the middle of a long stretch of road, complete with pedestrian and even vehicle stoplight signals.
Areas with higher (and especially higher-speed) vehicle traffic tend to be correlated with fewer pedestrians because pedestrians are't stupid and recognize that there's more danger in trying to cross, so the few people who do cross are the people who don't have a viable way around it (such as if the intersections with proper crossings are too far away), plus a handful of other randos screwing around.
This video might be your first exposure to this problem but I've heard of this a while ago from other sources.
(Also, kinda presumptuous of you to tell me what is or isn't happening in my country.)
That won't make crossings safer (or more legal), but that would at least improve the sidewalk conditions. But for whatever reason they haven't done even that, in many cases.
Actually, there's a much more practical explanation for this -- many of these wealthier parts of town are newer. Even the wealthier but older parts of town aren't as pedestrian-friendly. But the places where poor people live are correlated with older development areas.
and municipal bonds.
I did no such thing. You had this idea in mind and you started shadowboxing against it, whereas in my long-winded post the only two instances of the word "minority" are my synopsis of the video in the very first paragraph, and a statement of fact in the very last sentence -- it's well-documented and also abundantly visible (were you to visit here) that poorer parts of town are demographically minority-heavy, and this observation was relevant to the video.
And there are also poor Asian-Americans and wealthy black and brown folks. Their existence doesn't negate the presence of problems which do disproportionately affect people of certain races (by coincidential correlation or by actual bias), as well as problems that disproportionately affect poor people in general (including whites for that matter). The most that can be said to "refute" any of this is a complaint that people are talking about race in overly broad strokes, a complaint which I agree with.
That's a reasonable point to raise, though there are technological ways to enable the resources of in-person instruction, in many cases. Also, I've heard that some classes will send the students lab kits.
Obviously, things are still very much in flux as people are navigating uncharted logistical waters.
The advantages of in-person learning don't exist in a vacuum, and even if you force in-person classes that doesn't make them automatically better. Students (of at least an age when they can comprehend such things) aren't passive entities who will just sit down and soak up the pearls of wisdom handed to them in a classroom. They are aware of circumstances around them, including the possibility that they might be infected with a deadly sickness, which might have far more devastating impacts on their educational progress than shitty video calls.
I'm not going to say that schools definitely shouldn't do in-person instruction, and certainly, there are some hands-on and other activities that pretty much become impossible without in-person instruction. But it'll take time to work out the kinks and also gradually get everyone to agree to the idea that COVID-19 *is* a serious problem and to behave appropriately with regards to this, and to take appropriate personal protective measures about it, so that people can interact safely.
That kid shouldn't be denied that choice, but shouldn't be obligated, especially since the kinks are still being worked out. Also, protective equipment should be supplied to basically everyone, and also pretty much mandatory.
As a practical matter, with regards to opening school during COVID-19: We don't yet have a good set of guidelines as to how to handle person-to-person interactions on a large scale, unless everyone cooperates, which they pretty much never do when the group is large enough.
Sure, in-person instruction is valuable, but so is a safe learning environment where students have less to worry about regarding disease exposure and where students won't need to be pulled out of class if they get sick, and so is a stable learning environment where students (and teachers too!) don't have to up and change everything after a failed attempt to force an in-person semester. In-person instruction should not be seen as the be all and end all of effective education.
You take risks when you have good plans for mitigating that risk as much as is practical and then dealing with whatever's left in a manner that's not basically chaos.
We're not ready for that yet. It's possible to force things, but you end up with predictably bad results.
You can't just force society/the economy/whatever to "get on with life" when the elephant in the room is still very much present and means of dealing with it are still a largely disorganized mess themselves.
but either way i will probably just watch more GBF
Ah, I remember why I haven't done this in forever; it's extremely tedious. Did you in all actualities, really have to make three whole posts? You could at least wait until we argued out the initial things and then we could deal with the rest.
"Economic inclusiveness" is such a nebulous, nonsensical way to talk about anything that it becomes dishonest. It's not even 'fancy', it's just very bad use of language.
When you say "inclusiveness", I have no idea what you mean in this context, and such language only ever seems to happen when you're trying to get me to agree to a whole host of bad policy.
Quite obviously, you should know I don't want to ruin poor people's lives, pretending otherwise is dishonest to say the least.
It seems the fines are plenty effective if somebody needed to go out and make a whole video about them on a major online media platform.
"Consistent enforcement" goes directly against what I proposed, which is officer discretion. An officer should be able to spot a repeat offender or somebody who flots rules in other means, via the experience they have, as part of their job.
Do you want to talk to somebody about these issues or not?
Otherwise you're just trying to bulldoze us into your position. It doesn't matter where I live, what matters is how I logically arrive at my points. If I were agreeing with you, this could easily turn into "I can't believe somebody who doesn't live here gets it better than locals!"
So you're telling me that most of this whole thing where you complain about the wealthier parts of town has actually very little to do with the people's weath and more to do with their age?
Fun! Just me, my teacher 200 miles away, and the UPS guy!
It might make them worse than in-person classes used to be, but that's still next level compared to Zoom School.
But kids aren't dying in droves or anywhere near. If it's anybody's fault that they think they are, it's every non-kid telling them that's the case.
It's more likely to build resilience.
Everybody knows this, people pretending people don't know this just because they don't agree that screeching and fearmongering is the solution is the bigger issue.
Can't force people to protect themselves.
I'm not sure how what you quoted says I feel students are obligated. They're already planning on popping a camera in classrooms to livestream every class to remote learners. Because 2020 was also the year all security and privacy measures surrounding technology were miraculously solved whilst no one was looking.
Personally, I don't like the idea of messing with kid's breathing for the majority of the day for the majority of the year. I think, if you have the resources, this would be the optimal time for like 2-3 years of homeschooling, or those community* learning pod things.
*as you've all probably guessed based on my positions I hate the word "community" with all my guts, but here I mean it in the real localized "bunch of people who live near each other" sense, so really I guess I just hate it's more creepy, nebulous usage.
The question remains will we ever? Can you implement corporate-style "Best Practice" on humans who have no shared interest on the same level as a top-down organization?
Gap year~~~~
In all honesty; everything you say after this is kind of pointless. If I were genuinely in this position, despite my misgivings about being a year behind fellow students, I'd give freshman year at least a miss, and try to work out something where I tried to do the majority of my work in the second semester if I were above freshman (just to see if the situation improved).
There's either going to be a lot of grade inflation or dropouts who didn't mean to, because Zoom school just doesn't seem like a real thing to me.
I don't agree with this.
You can if the other elephant in the room is that all humans are still aging and these staying indoors policies are continuing to kill the economy (which is the main driver of comfortable human life).
Right now my stance is; Be careful, but go out into the world and do stuff. It's not going away, and believing it is going away anytime soon so we just have to be patient is really weird.
And you don't need to force anybody to get on with it, humans are antsy creatures, they won't let you force them to Stop It All or even Stop Most of It For A Literal Year either.
...
I've gutted a part of the conversation because I think the tl;dr will get us farther; I don't agree with your rhetoric on demographic issues, but I don't think any further discussion will help us get anywhere. I'm not going to lie and say I think your position has merit, but I'm not interested in arguing it further and I don't think you are either, so let's lay this bit at least to rest.
And, in all honesty, outside of this part of the debate I'm actually having fun right now.
In fact I think this is the first time I've ever even used this term, and I don't remember having read it anywhere else anyway.
Anyhow, "economic inclusiveness" is the general idea of, basically, not neglecting the poorer citizens or the poorer parts of town.
I know that people do use "inclusive" with regards to some human rights stuff, such as asking people to not be jerks to LGBTQ folks, and I wonder if you're thinking of that and letting that association color your thoughts.
I don't see where I said or implied such.
Effective at what? Deterring jaywalking? Clearly not that.
Perhaps this could be the case if the officers were warning some people while ticketing others, but if we're talking about a situation where officers ignore common (mis)behaviors and even engage in it themselves, enforcement is so spotty as to be essentially roulette to see whether someone gets unlucky.
Also, enforcement only really becomes meaningful in toward the goal of encouraging people not to jaywalk if there are reasonably adequate resources to avoid jaywalking in the first place. Otherwise, enforcement simply pushes people between a rock and a hard place.
I'm presenting information about stuff that's going on here. And you're telling me "it's not happening." This isn't even any sort of normative policy opinion type of "position". If you're telling me "this isn't a real thing", that's not just disagreeing on means, or even disagreeing on ideals; you're telling me to disbelieve my own observations, experiences, and locally-sourced information, in favor of you telling me what's going on.
I'm not sure what "complaint" you're referring to, unless you mean my complaint about gated communities, but for some reason I have a hunch you don't mean that. Correct me if my hunch is wrong though.
The wealthier parts of town (or more accurately, of this general conurbation, which contains a whole bunch of cities and towns) in the region where I live tend to have somewhat better conditions (as defined by such things as more consistent sidewalks, more distant from the roadways) for a number of reasons, including their age (because they could be developed with fewer constraints from existing infrastructure and with more experienced urban planning) and their wealth (by which municipalities and developers and residents the financial means to do more maintenance, as well as enough money to set aside land for separating sidewalks from the street curb, for example).
Though, not everything in those wealthier neighborhoods is simply peachy, either, as I've explained.
(1) Kids are not invincible to the virus, and (2) kids do not restrict their interactions to other kids, and it has already been well-established that COVID-19 is a contagious disease.
I should also remind you that Florida has a lot of old people.
If your idea of building resilience is by subjecting people to death and sickness (of others and the risk thereof to themselves), and just tell them to figure it out themselves while the world tries to move on as if nothing happened, sure.
There are an abundance of instances of people not wearing masks when/where they should or otherwise flouting rules (including ones established on private property such as business) regarding safe social interactions in public shared spaces, even within my own community.
If your only mental image of people asking others to wear masks is "screeching and fearmongering" then (1) you clearly don't have anywhere near an accurate picture of who's been asking people to , and (2) you have an ironic picture since there are a multitude of instances of people "screeching" and otherwise overreacting, sometimes to the point of vandalism or violence, in response to others asking them to wear masks in businesses. So they clearly do not already agree to the idea.
Here are just a few examples from my state:
* https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/florida/os-ne-islamorada-gift-shop-indecent-exposure-20200626-yy3ebhscknhg5bfsc7zdkyubyu-story.html
* https://www.wesh.com/article/video-shows-man-attacking-lyft-driver-over-plastic-partition-in-flagler-county/33504479
* https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/newswire/2020/08/06/covid-19-florida-man-spits-boy-restaurant-who-refused-remove-his-mask-arrested-jason-copenhaver/3307584001/
* https://www.wesh.com/article/rossen-reports-our-shipping-challenge-shows-how-fast-fedex-ups-and-usps-were/33659509
Frankly I'm not surprised that there are people overreacting to this (in both directions; my mom goes in the opposite direction when it comes to family, lol). But if you think that this overreacting is only occurring on the side of people asking others to wear masks, then you're sorely mistaken. And besides, erring on the side of caution is warranted here, given how earlier attempts to sweep this problem under the rug have led to utter (and in many cases tragic) failure.
You didn't; I simply pointed out the flipside of it.
Your sarcasm is misplaced because basically everyone's goofed one way or another using streaming tech by this point and basically everyone also knows this. For example, I attended a webinar where some trolls joined partway through and proceeded to draw dicks on everything.
It's...not that hard to breathe through one of those standard surgical-style masks? Perhaps it might not be well-suited for intense physical activity, but it's definitely useful otherwise.
Are you, like, an extreme individualist or something?
Though strangely that seems to run contrary to how you and I enjoy anime and other pop culture stuff.
In that post, I was referring to the scale of a university, which is (1) a relatively small piece of society, and (2) a place where some level of top-down control is actually feasible.
Yeah, I've seen a bunch of people talking about taking gap years, including deferring admission to college.
It certainly has never been tried on a society-wide scale the way it will most likely end up happening, and we shall see how well it works, and how much people will tweak it to improve or adapt it where necessary.
The state of Florida tried reopening. It didn't go very well. People didn't just go back to normal economic activity like nothing happened. Turns out that the problm isn't keeping everyone home; the problem is the fact that there's still a pandemic going around, and people aren't just going to ignore that.
This isn't to say that keeping everyone home forever, indefinitely, is a good idea either. Rather, we need to find ways to conduct regular social interactions but with the appropriate precautions taken.
In CRT* (which you don't know about but are using, because everybody is using it now), inclusiveness is basically doing whatever it takes to engage equity. It usually ends in arguments in favour of redistribution (Cultural Marxism* leading to Marxism) or intense affirmative action (or very recently in California, anti-Civil Rights manoeuvres), consensual or no.
It sounds good and moral, but it's not. It's just all of us with fancy educations pretending we can save the rest of the world by feeling guilty whilst turning everyone else into our permanent wards.
(And rioting).
*Critical Race Theory, which is the biggest element of Modern Social Justice.
*I know, I said this didn't exist! It does! It's just not organized at all.
See, this barely makes sense. Why not just say "they shouldn't be neglected". To be clear; do you know what you want them included in?
I did not claim any of the things you presented aren't happening, but I disagreed with your conclusions as to why they were happening and why they
We're not going to go over my "K-12[...]parents 20-50" thing again. We already did that.
Americans and Western culture in general tends to self-segretate old people out (old folk's homes, retiree communities). Ramping this up for the current state of affairs isn't unreasonable, and obviously everybody knows older people and those with co-morbidities need to take less risk than the average person.
Ah, the state of going outside everyday. (I'm being facetious, I know, please don't quote this).
You keep misrepresenting me. I said "Be careful, but go outside" and you say "Stop pretending nothings out there and be hyper careful!"
What do you think I mean when I say be careful. Follow safety precautions, but understand that people are dumb and not everybody will do what you want them to.
This is much more concerning when it happens to K-6(maybe 8) kids. Plus, I don't want to consent to being filmed daily just to go to school.
For 2-4 hour chunks over 8 ours over five days in a row?
If prompted, I'd say I believe that individuals have inalieable rights (as detailed mostly by Western philosophy/theology/culture/whatever we call it now) and the flipside of each right is a mirror "obligation" (this is what I was actually taught in school, because it was what the UN believed way back in 2000)*, as well as a responsibility to uphold that for all other citizens of their state.
What I'm saying here is that no right can exist without obligation. I have a right to life, so I must try and make sure everybody else does too, and I shouldn't kill anyone. I have a right to free speech, so I should speak freely, make sure everybody else can, and not attempt to stifle other's speech (though I can point out it's absurdities, and those people are free to ignore me or point out my absurdities in turn).
I have a right to free association, so I can hang out with whoever I want (as long as they aren't murderers or fencing stolen goods or etc) and I should let everybody else hang out with who they want.
Oh yeah my UN-sponsored education also included the right to education... I'm not sure that's a real thing... Education is certainly vital to developing great individuals, but it's most certainly a privilege.
I believe in the state because man is imperfect, and boundaries are required of him. Democratic government, which is empowered by every individual, is therefore set up to protect my rights as well as those of others. Children should be brought up to understand this, because it's not obvious to the human mind, which is tribal and self-serving.
However, government is run by humans, and is not run to Best Practice (and really, can't be) and therefore it's role should be limited to the rights/obligations, as well as helping the less fortunate to a reasonable extent (this is what we're arguing about above re:"inclusiveness").
There's a conservative school of thought that leaves helping the less fortunate to charities and community groups, and I think that too can work to a great extent. One day I may see this as The Way, but the people who fall through the cracks give me pause.
I have a complex position on this actually re:homeless people. I think getting rid of sanitariums and relaxing drug laws (I've given up my marijuana soapbox for now, so I'm talking about the rest) created a whole lot of mess, and that's government's fault.
However, I don't see charities helping the situation, even the ones with policies I'm inclined to agree with, because they can intervene with the individual rights and obligation thing we consign to government.
In this situation, I think forcibly weaning people off drugs (if they're caught out on the street doing them) is a good idea, or rounding up U18s (or those older than 65-70) and putting them in a government run facility helps both them and the general public.
It's somehow even more complicated than this, but this is just a tangent so I'll leave it here.
I would say I am an anime fan and I enjoy watching other anime fans discuss specific anime or create microchisms of culture around it, but I am not a part of any "anime fan community", nor do I believe one can be a thing.
I guess I believe there is a "zeitgeist", and individuals contribute to that zeitgeist.
Yes, individual risk assessment! Can we agree on this and leave it there?
It's kind of been waaaaay too long to expect people to figure stuff out without IRL trial runs. I don't like this thing where every trial run that fails is immediately categorized as a massive, all-encompassing failure.
Even I accept your values, you're still using a slippery slope argument.
I don't know where the hell you get this thinking, but it should be obvious that leaving a blight on one side of town is probably a bad idea, for public safety, for property values, and for the public face of the area. Also, it's just good politically, especially because those people can vote, and so can their neighbors who might not directly live there either.
Because that's an independent clause and I wanted a noun to refer to the idea. And "economic" has to do with how much money people have, and "inclusiveness" has to do with not neglecting people in the economic and political activity of a
communitygiven geographic region.Funny you should mention that because old folks' homes here in Florida have turned out to be COVID-19 deathtraps in a lot of recent cases.
No, I said "forcing in-person instruction to happen is probably still a bad idea at this point" (as it has proven to be) and "there are also some jerks out there who hate on people for asking them to wear masks because those are the rules of the private establishment they've walked into, or even for simply wearing masks within their line of sight."
(In contrast, at least those jerks who berate others for wearing masks are doing a service to the
communitypeople around them, even if they are jerks about it.)I actually had in mind your berating me that my way of enjoying anime (and J-pop etc.) doesn't fit into the mold that you've implied is expected of me by the industry, or something along those lines. And also how I favor something like a fully individualist approach to the appreciation of art, basically saying that that's the most fundamental aspect, while you're basically yelling at me stuff that I'd paraphrase as "metacontext matters!".
There were school districts planning all-remote instruction then political bosses telling them to make in-person instruction happen or their funding dies. If you want to screw up logistical planning, that's a good way to do it.
Also, no, it's not "a massive, all-encompassing failure". It's just me sitting here and going...--
...darnit, where's that one clip of Proto Man saying "I hate to say I told you so, but...I told you so", when I need it?
* this conversation is long enough that I had to look up to make sure that you two started talking about a public policy.
Edit: Better wording.
I mean, this is a Vox story, and it's what they traffic in (hilariously enough once Antiracism picked up steam I discovered they weren't even very good at it).
Addressed after the next quote*1
I used to think the slippery slope was a fallacy too until every major corporation began donating funds to an insane organization that believes in... well, things*2; the destruction of the nuclear family and Jack Dorsey slipped $10m to this guy:
*1
Right now, White Fragitility (White Identity Politics, ie that KKK stuff, but I guess infused with guilt?) and How to Be An Anti-Racist (the pointed ramblings of a black identity totalitarianist) are the hottest books of the year.
The #1 iTunes podcast right now is about how (white) parents really need to stop trying so hard to give their kids educational advantages.
This stuff bleeds out into every discussion about everything (it's designed that way on purpose), and so I'll point it out when I see it. It's all I can do. I think a pretty good starter resource is this Andrew Sullivan article (obviously I don't agree with his Orange Man Bad second half, but he can think what he wants).
*2 BLM Inc. Supercut;
As expected, this is pretty rife with the "inclusivity" I was talking about. ie We "make space" for people we've deemed can't speak without everybody else shutting up because they're [insert identity group] (this one's particularly demeaning towards women).
Doesn't this just make everyone they berate dig in to their positions? Howling maniacs are never good for your cause.
Yeah, I'm just pointing that out in an exaggerated way, you shouldn't take it too seriously (obviously words on a screen can't capture cues too well, but I don't want to be one of those guys "HAHA I'M BEING SARCASTIC" people, it ruins prose).
I mean, I find a lot of the stuff that I do is ridiculous, but I'm trying to justify it in kind of a jokey way like all other good boys who don't want to change their ways.
TANGENT
I was going to put the tangent here but apparently I've been writing this for 40m so I will stop now. I'll put the tangent elsewhere.
Uh, yeah, maybe we should stop? I mean, there's more stuff I want to say about the reopening debate but I feel like we're starting to expound on minutiae, which surprisingly enough I find is an efficient way to bloat arguments.
@fourteenwings
I'm going to try to make this quicker because digging into minutiae is, like you said, sort of a horrible amount of bloat -- and perhaps more importantly, if I follow where you're going with this, it just goes further into a (frankly, IMO) pointless tug-of-war over ideological ideas and framing.
I mean, I'm talking about not leaving the poor part of town to rot, and apparently thanks to my use of a buzzword as well as my choice of introductory video, it seems you're complaining about my framing, and somehow it gets linked to "critical race theory" blah blah blah "the destruction of the nuclear family" blah blah blah "black identity totalitarianism" blah blah blah "cisgender privilege" blah blah blah, and the stuff you're complaining about basically amounts to opinions, complaints about opinions, complaints about complaints about opinions, and so on.
With regards to racism, I disagree with the "original sin of racism" line of thinking, but I do look at current conditions and I can see how stuff happens, in the present. For example, in the present, the poorer parts of town also do happen to have a disproportionately large share of people of racial minorities. Though, unlike some other people with political opinions, I'm generally not interested in guilting people for their "sins", including those that are historical (such as "privilege" that one never sought anyway) or hypothetical (such as advocating for bad policy ideas); I'm just interested in practical solutions to improve people's lives and livelihoods. And I'm also more interested in focusing on local conditions and local geographies, where decisions can more easily be made, and impacts, felt, rather than trying to make sweeping statements about how all of "America" ought to be or otherwise ignoring the fact that all of these people are individual human beings.
If all you have is basically pushback against people berating others for such sins -- which seems to be your tack here -- then I'd question how useful it is. At best it might deter some berating; at worst it instead adds to the berating.
It does, which is why some people have tried less confrontational approaches, such as offering people masks as they walk in the door. Still, a subset of those berated do end up putting masks on, particularly if the "berating" is in the form of a gentle reminder.
While not all work is easily financially compensatable, as a practical matter, what you've written here sounds oddly like promising "exposure" to artists as if it's worth much.
I'm not sure whether you're dimissing any criticism at all of Donald Trump with regards to his role as POTUS, or arguing that Sullivan's criticisms in particular are frivolous. Either way, Trump has made quite a few poor decisions, even when he could have gained political advantage by making a better policy decision. (Though I guess you probably also disagree with that and you'll have a litany of reasons arguing that his failures were the fault of others.)
Heh, fair enough. You're right about it being hard to tell, though.
Edit: lol i thought this would be short
Well, yeah. This sort of framing is basically an opening for this stuff.
Opinions that are now the most common form of discourse. This form of discourse is bad for people, but it's out there now and it's really, really big.
Well, I think we're good here.
I think otherwise. I think words are important, and saying the words others don't want you to say is extremely important.
Plus, I mean, I did give you a good understanding of my basic political positions, so it's not like I'm just saying "These people are wrong", I just know I believe is right and what good policy would be in that direction (hint: a lot of gifted programs and a lot more meritocracy).
Well, I guess? Except in this case I'm talking about human babies? The contexts are different?
Plus, yeah, Justin Bieber got famous posting for free on YouTube, it's just hard to make it as an artist. So did Madison Beer and Johnny Orlando and a thousand other people. Not to mention "influencers".
Nobody pays anyone to take care of their own pet, and treating human offspring as being more of a burden than that is an extreme level of cynicism.
Well yeah. I mean I'd argue but it's Sullivan's perogative to think what he wants (as should I).
Donald Trump does a lot of dumb things, and 30% of his time his pushback against reporters verges into "neener-neener-NEE-ner". Donald Trump is a great comedic speaker, but I have my times when I wince at what he says because he's very off-the-cuff. I like when he's irreverent, and I understand people don't like that because it's just not done, and there are times when I find the irreverence not to work.
I don't think Donald Trump would refuse to concede the election, but even if that were a real complaint Hillary Clinton certainly hasn't conceded either. You might not, but I remember the push to instate the Popular Vote (and going by recent statements so does Kamala Harris).
I like that he revived federalism in regards to the current crisis, and I like that he accidentally taught me what the Electoral College was. I like his law and order stance, and I really like his LGB policy work. Whilst I don't agree with the recent SCOTUS ruling re:LGBTI(nfinite Genders) stuff, it was his Supreme Court pick -Neil Gorsuch, who helped make it happen, so those who disagree with me should be very pleased.
I'm wary about Jared and Ivanka working in the White House, but Jared actually figured some things out in the Middle East, amazingly enough. I really like Don Jr. as a campaign guy; he's surprisingly funny.
Like every other politician? I mean, he's not perfect, but I like a lot of what he's done. This differs from what other people like; I don't like the anti-war-interventionism (re:Afghanistan) and I like the harder stance on China which is a situation that has basically been terrible since Bill Clinton figured out Chinese induction into the WTO (the recent TenCent thing was a good move). In fact, when he takes a softer stance and negotiates so there's more mutual benefit between the powers, I tend to bristle.
I also really really like that his administration trying to figure out the situation in Israel, even if it means bypassing Palestinian authorities to deal with others in the region (because working with the Palestinian authorities hasn't worked in like, well, ever). I mean, Jared Kushner did a lot here, so I appreciate it.
I also sometimes have moments when I realize that when Donald Trump is gone (which is at the very least 2024) the Republican party will just bungle back into "Democrats-lite but anti-abortion when convenient and pro-gun when convenient" (ie RINOs*, Ted Cruz*, and Rand Paul*) and they'll just let CRT and Social Justice bomb them the way they let the sexual revolution and gay rights bomb them.
*Not everybody is Mitt Romney but a lot of people are close enough.
*To explain, I think Ted Cruz is a conservative pragmatist in the same mold as Donald Trump, but he lacks the stage presence and frequently tries to walk back into seeming like a "normal person". I don't know if a Ted Cruz administration could ever be anywhere near as bold, but I think it could pull off some decent stuff.
*And obviously I just really really like Rand Paul.
Say what you will about me, but at least I'm not a USPS Truther.
Actually, I want to know; what did you like and dislike about Barack Obama?
When Barack Obama was president, I was of the mind to like him just because. That was the done thing. I was a cool kid with the right opinions.
However, even then, there were things he did I disagreed with (a lot of which are wrapped up in his ridiculously high levels of anti-interventionism, and more "personally" his overly pragmatic response to the 2008 Recession, and this is also wrapped up in a lot of stuff about Elizabeth Warren), and now they've come to the forefront, as well as other things I've discovered recently.
And this isn't just about listening to conservatives. Even before I started reading way too much about politics and deciding my positions, I remember reading Vox articles about how Obama wasn't "progressive" enough around the start of the 2016 Primary season.
I added my tangent link.
Edit: I am not sure how we keep expanding 10 word statements into entire essays.
Funny you mention this, because I was actually complaining earlier today about how my school's gifted program wasn't implemented properly. Though my criticism had to do with how GPA was calculated and what perverse incentives that created -- but that might be relevant, because my complaint was that the calculation method used created a situation where there was an apparent meritocracy except it was more so a weird separation of "here are those people who piled on AP classes like mad and have super high GPAs and are all in the top X ranks" and "here's everyone else who's free to take a much greater variety of classes except they don't actually look as good on college applications".
Just because it's possible to get lucky and become famous from making one's art available for free doesn't mean that "exposure" is a meaningful form of compensation for someone to offer when asking for art. The latter is why the term is not viewed favorably by a variety of artists on the internet.
As for motherhood, the more economically meaningful alternative to both "be happy with what you've achieved" and direct financial compensation is to count this as a valuable service despite the fact that it is unpaid. Though I presume you already know about valuation of goods and services that cannot be directly valued by market transactions.
Also, since I missed this in my last pass: Oh, it definitely exists. It's not common, though.
If he weren't POTUS, far fewer people would give a shit about his irreverence, and it might even be amusing. However, he is POTUS, and people take his words seriously...despite my having said from the beginning that that is a very bad idea, though I can understand them taking his words seriously because if they don't then that creates a different problem, the problem of precedent.
In short, this is a serious job, and he should take it seriously.
Statements of concessions have no legal force whatsoever.
As for his statement that he might not accept an election defeat: If you take that seriously, then we're looking at him possibly threatening to create a crisis, potentially with the full powers of the presidency on his side. If you take that as frivolous irreverence, then you're (1) affording him a far wider berth for shitposting than has ever been afforded to pretty much anyone else in such a serious job, and (2) essentially saying you can ignore the parts that you simply don't think are true, which creates other problems, particularly if you're charged with implementing government policy and/or dealing with whatever happens, where clear statements of intent, followed by keeping one's word and honoring it, are very important.
You should probably also be aware that it's not just people who don't like him who take his words seriously. If you want to avoid the market volatility resulting from stupid shit like "Trump insults a company; now their stock is down", then it might be a prudent idea to replace him with someone who shitposts less. (But if laughing at stupid people is fun then I guess there's some schadenfreude comedy in someone slashing his own Goodyear tires to own the libs.)
I don't see what the national popular vote idea has to do with this, nor why that's a bad thing.
Regardless, even though Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, the result of the 2016 election is no longer being litigated, not even in the court of public opinion. (Heck, this is nowhere near the first time the popular vote winner has lost the electoral vote.)
Well I guess, if you're okay with basically just running roughshod over the Palestinians, then, sure.
IMO you are wayyyyyy to focused on this crap while most people have better things to worry about
From what I know of him, Rand Paul is both a libertarian ideologue and a horrible neighbor, and I'd like to say that's two counts against him in my book, but I wonder if they are one and the same.
As POTUS, he was decent, in my opinion. Here are a few highlights.
He stabilized the economy following a crash. He saved some number of jobs in this country by doing so. He might have gone too easy on the financial dealings (and by "easy" I mean not taking proper preventative measures, rather than exacting revenge). Though his efforts were hampered by the Republicans.
He started us down a path of improving our country's horribly inefficient and screwy healthcare system. It was unfortunate that the Republicans made insane amounts of fuss over this, in often unjustified and unreasonable ways, and were then rewarded for their shenanigans.
He did what he could to get the country back on track with reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, despite a lack of political will in Congress. He also improved vehicle fuel efficiency standards; doing so has a variety of benefits, beyond just slowing the pace of climate change.
In foreign policy, he disposed of Bin Laden, and also helped the Libyan people overthrow their dictator (which is a move I agreed with and which I often butt heads with people about). I disagree with non-intervention in Syria, though the longer the US stalled on that the more awkward the prospect of intervention became. Also, he got an agreement with the Iranians to end the diplomatic grudgematch with them, get them to give up nuclear ambitions, and stopp restricting their economy.
As a person, he seems personable, friendly, thoughtful, and patient. He has a stable marriage and family, and serves as a reasonably good role model.
And now I am
notlooking forward to a giant pile of commentary telling me how thing after thing that I just mentioned is actually a bad thing. But it is late o'clock and I'm going to sleep.There's certainly merit in knowing what classes to take depending on what you want to achieve.
Wait, are you talking about like... artists on DeviantArt and such? I thought Patreon had solved most of those people's issues.
See, this is where the cynicism lies. My relations with humans shouldn't be economic transactions except if I'm engaging in them with that explicit intention. I won't work out how to charge for loving someone, anyone at all, let alone a child.
...
It'd probably look like;
[Current Average Overall Labour Cost of Childcare]/[This part depresses that rate by employing some stats on engaged parents or even just those who truly wish to be more engaged] x [Hours required to raise child outside of school and other activities].
It's extremely subjective (especially parenting stats), but it'd probably work and also rip all of our humanity out.
I was expecting this. First of all; I'd bet like less than 5% of the global population is anything less than heterosexual. Second; in the Western world, it's actually not harmful in any way to tell people your sexuality if it's not heterosexual, going by the fact that everybody in certain circles runs to the coolest sexuality possible at any given time (ever heard of the term 'demisexual'? It was really cool for a while).
The only reason it creates 'harm' is if you oppose heteronormative thinking and wish it removed for maintaining heterosexual power structures, and so it 'harms' you by assuming you're average until you say otherwise. Basically, it's like when emo kids in the early 2000s were like "See? This is why you don't understand!"
On top of that, I guess you could believe everybody is heterosexual if you wanted, but you'd have to be really sheltered to believe that everybody does heterosexual things at all times. I mean, merely hearing that homosexual things happens means you're exposed to that information.
This specific belief BLM is railing against in 2020 of all times, was a blip (admittedly brought upon by my beloved Western culture) when we look at the arc of human culture. It was very quickly corrected, but not before being exploited by maniacs like Alfred Kinsey.
I meantioned it because he is POTUS, and I specifically said it's not the done thing for POTUSes or other serious politicians. Iunno, I think we need more of it rather than laughs generated by speechwriters with obvious pauses in speeches.
Which brings me to one point about Barack Obama. The man was and remains a brilliant orator. Everybody knows Pete Buttigieg spent 2016-2019 playing back Obama speeches whilst talking to the mirror for at least 2 hours a day.
Also, we're not talking about Goodyear. We're just not. The statement they released was an amazing set of weasel words and I'm not ready to take that apart.
Funnily enough I actually know who started that whole thing re:where Trump got it and it gets really weird following the news like this. I think I've said before I used to make fun of people who got their information via social media but it actually works?
I think... I might disagree with this?
We all do it to varying degrees? I mean, does anybody really think Donald Trump had a VP draft with Kamala Harris as the first pick?
I'm... not?
To mudsling slightly; certain people I will not mention by name who went after Goya Beans just after it's CEO met with Donald Trump, rather than because they actually said
America is a federation that stymies popular rule by majority via the Electoral College. I already think the country is too big as is (I mean it's not China where everybody can just be controlled, or India which actively tries to promote ethnocentrism) and I think that's as fair a system as any.
Except by Hillary Clinton.
If you're going to try and achieve "peace", you can try working with somebody unwilling to engage or work with others who will eventually force engagement. I don't like it, but this is a situation that hasn't been solved in even our combined lifetimes, and I'll take anything that isn't "Welp, let's just war it out then."
Nobody worries about something till it comes after them, that's just how people are, and I can't change that.
Plus, kids are genuinely being taught to "See Race" (sounds fun, right?) and stuff like the Gender Gingerbread
manperson in schools. Those kids, much like the executives who, if you remember, are giving money to BLM and putting ads out into the public consiousness about how racism is pervasive, will grow up knawing on this stuff and then you can never take it back.I don't want to see White Identitarians, I've heard of them, and those guys were horrible. Their modern remnants are of no concern to me, but if this isn't stemmed their new form will not be fun to deal with. I mean, the next time you see an Anti-Racist activist, play a game where you reverse the races in your head and just imagine the chaos that will cause.
Plus, am I really? Sports players are kneeling to this stuff, and entertainment has been on board since long before I cared.
What's with you and libertarians?
And like, he's a politician, I doubt any of them aside from the ones with brilliant PR are "good neighbours". Apparently (depending on if you buy it or not) Ellen Degeneres has been a horrible person this whole time, and she's basically like the most innoffensive thing I've ever seen.
But, actually, speaking of entertainment being on board with things; did you know that Ellen's historic comedy where she came out on TV basically bombed in ratings every season it was on after the second, but executives kept it going for four years because they believed in it's importance? That's not like, the singular way gay rights happened or even near, but it's one of the big ones.
Oh darn
there was the Obama stuff
I... I'll get back to you.
I should say though that Melania Trump is a modern fashion icon and I will not stand for her being ignored any longer.
I will probably wake up with a new vigor that allows me to absorb and dispense information, but as for right now I guess I'll just say he really shouldn't have created the CFPB/settled on Dodd-Frank and really shouldn't have paid those bribes to the Iranians for American hostages (though I mean I understand those people's families must be very grateful). He's also very guilty of the business cronyism that has plagued American presidents for quite a while now (George W. and his love of defense contractors).
And you're right; he did direct that in the way of "green energy" and such. But my feelings on how the global leadership dealt with Why the Climate is Changing and What to do about it are so very removed from Barack Obama that it's a whole other quagmire that we'll probably eventually end up duking out, but not right now. Otherwise the global climate accords like the Paris agreement and the UN's various efforts are worth slightly more than manure because the countries who were already up to it do what they said they would and the others ignore what they signed as they always do.
To be fair, the Paris agreement was probably worth slightly more than anything the UN ever figures out that isn't "Yes, it turns out we need more money!"
And I remember reading about the Kyoto Protocol as a student and then watching my mom use canned hairspray ie an aerosol literally the next morning. It was quite the jarring moment.
He was also very law and order in the sense that I dislike? Like, it was sometimes too cut and dry or never trying to live up to good moral reasoning. I always found his style when it came to general enforcement and war very callous.
That really started rubbing me the wrong way when he drew the chemical weapons line with Syria and didn't act, twice. I also don't know how I feel about America's late show in the Arab Spring, exclusively via NATO, most certainly in the case of Libya. I certainly didn't approve of the practically immediate pull-out from Libya as soon as Qaddafi/Ghaddafi was gone, because it created the power vacuum and the direct result is what we see in that country today. It certainly created the African arm of the European Illegal Immigration Crisis (which... like... let's not talk about it too much).
Sometimes I think the French had the right idea bribing that guy through the roof, but that's when my cynicism meter is very high. I have a very high opinion of France interventionism, but that's probably because it's rare and their risk is always calculated to the like .000xth digit.
I don't know how much longer I can hold this belief considering the current situation in Mali.
And I understand Crimea was primarily a NATO/EU situation that started in the faraway land of the Ukranian capital city protests thatnobody remembers, but when the push came to shove and it was clear only America was going to be willing to put their foot down, he swerved and kind of just let Russia have it? It was like chemical weapons, except they let Russia kidnap a whole region of people (some of whom, admittedly, wanted to hang with the Russians).
>I'm so tired I don't have the words
>here's all the words I assured you I didn't have
I will try really really hard to not reply, or reply with very little. If we can't even manage that, then I agree to a ceasefire in 3 or 4 posts starting with GMH's next one.
Also when I read novels about "intellectuals" where they would like, speed from topic to topic with no direction, I always assumed that was extremely unrealistic and that nobody talked like that. I never expected to actually become that sort of person.
I'm not quite sure how you're conceiving of what I'm describing, but I know that it's a common complaint of artists on the internet who are asked by people to do something (e.g. make art for their game, design their website, etc.) and then say that they won't be paid but the "exposure" will be worth it. Patreon or whatever doesn't "solve" the existence of this silliness.
You're focused on "this is not the person's intent". Of course it's not, but that's not my point. The point of valuation is simply acknowledge that the work of raising a child is economically valuable in the sense that if that person stops performing in that role for whatever reason there would be a serious gap that needed to be filled, and so here's a way to indirectly try to quantify that contribution to society/to the economy rather than assume that that person isn't doing anything.
Anyhow we seem to be talking past each other again, but this is a tangent, so whatever.
The valuation process definitely involves some subjective assumptions for parameters, but...I don't see how thinking about the calculation would "rip all our humanity out"...? If anything, it reminds us to appreciate the valuable but often invisible (from the outside) work that people do in households.
I could try to take apart everything you said, but I'm not sure if you realize that all I was replying to was the following quote:
" 'the belief that all in the world are heterosexual.' (a belief I doubt even exists in the Western world)."
And my reply was "Oh, it definitely exists. It's not common, though."
So, okay, let's make note that the topic of this reply was (at least supposed to be) the existence (or lack thereof), in the Western world, of the belief that all (people) are heterosexuals.
And here's a summary of your spiel:
1. Most people are heterosexual. (about sexuality itself, not about beliefs)
2. It's not harmful to be non-heterosexual in the Western world (about the societal consequences to a person about their own sexuality, which is only vaguely related to belief via other people's beliefs).
3. The belief doesn't cause harm in any meaningful way. (Not about the existence of the belief itself.)
4. The feasibility of having such a belief. (Again, not about its existence.)
5. Something about BLM. Which I guess is related to the original quote, though then it's about "the arc of human culture", and Alfred Kinsey.
I gradually realized you probably misunderstood me as replying to the mention of heteronormativity, but even so...??????????
Slasing one's tires to own the libs is still a very silly and counterproductive thing. But hey, it owned the libs.
Well,... ...I guess if you're only in it for the entertainment value then the usual stuff is a lot more boring.
Whether or not he did doesn't really matter since Kamala Harris has no reason to join Donald Trump's ticket anyway, and that's not "what he says is unimportant", that's "what he says is not a practical possibility".
I know you're not; I'm just saying that if you put yourself in a relevant other person's shoes you might see why it's important.
And so popular vote would be as fair. Unless you specifically don't want "popular rule by majority".
Except she's not attempting at all to reverse the outcome of the 2016 election? Sassy tweets don't do that.
And I thought you'd enjoy her sassy tweets.
You've still been ranting repeatedly about how people talk about/conceive of gender and race like it's your primary beef.
Perhaps it is, and I can't stop you from deeming that your primary beef.
I could probably put this in a way that uses words that trigger a giant rant from you in response, but...libertarianism basically assumes that individualist thinking can get everything right and basically neglects externalities.
Sidenote: This paragraph is, in a nutshell, why your replies balloon like mad. (Why mine balloon like mad is a different reason.)
You asked me about Obama. I don't see what Melania Trump has to do with this.
Though, come to think of it, I remember commenting that talking to you is like talking to my mom, despite the fact that you and my mom have very different political views. That probably has something to do with you both having loads of associations with basically everything and then going off on tangents.
I'm surprised your cynicism meter isn't already very high when you say stuff like
[quot]Crimea[/quote]I don't like what happened there and I don't like American inaction there but I don't hold that one against Obama as much because I did not see a strategically good point to intervene. In Syria it was early on and the window was sadly lost. In Ukraine I'm not sure it ever was there.
I believe individual humans can love each other, I don't believe in plans, treaties and organizations that have fail to live up to their ideals day-in and day-out.
You mentioned his family and it reminded me of this.
They're kinda sad.
Who even did this? Three randos with Instagram accounts?
The point is one specific Goodyear liked LGBT and BLM signalling, and banned expressions of supporting MAGA, All Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter (I personally prefer Back the Blue but you can't control what takes off). Their first two statements basically said "We support law enforcement when they give us their money but yeah we don't want you saying Blue Lives Matter."
It wasn't all of Goodyear, it was one branch (certainly not a rogue employee surely), but they defended that branch and tried to weasel into "Police departments, please keep giving us your money."
They've backed off now, but people who feel Goodyear doesn't share their values should take pause before settling on their tyres. I mean at this point I'm betting every other tyre place is also doing something similar so I guess just go with who's doing it the least.
It probably makes sense to just have employees wear Goodyear shirts and Goodyear masks and talk about selling you Goodyear products (and maybe the weather?) because not everything has to be political, but that boat sailed years ago.
Also, I'm not ranting. I try my best to explain my positions clearly, which is danged hard, and just because I tend to run long that doesn't make what I'm saying a "rant".
At least one rando with a Twitter account, whose tweets had been circulating around the Discord chats I'm on.
Fair enough, but don't worry much about it. I've called my own blathering on the internet "rants" and other disparaging terms myself.
[And now, time for a rant, from yours truly.]
As for the rest of your post, I feel like I'm supposed to argue with you, but frankly speaking, I'd rather sit back and watch where this whole culture war sideshow (well, I think it's a sideshow, but you clearly don't) ends up, and then I'll decide what to support or oppose at that point. I can yell at people for poor phrasing of ideas and overly broad generalizations and getting too drunk on their pet political ideologies all day long, but fundamentally I disagree with your notion that (paraphrased) the changes proposed are by and large going to result in some sort of horrid deconstruction of society as we know it. Meanwhile, some of those people pushing for change have made useful observations and hold some useful opinions about the current condition of society. I don't agree with what these people say entirely, and I've even bristled at some inconveniences that changes in society have caused me, but I'm not going to pretend that the way things were before was just peachy either.
Meanwhile, from our current presidential administration, I've seen consistent and repeated patterns of dismantling of environmental protections (basically the one thing it's competent at doing), political corruption and conflicts of interest, generally being a giant dick to people except those who are loyal (plus a handful of other questionable people), inability to take serious matters seriously, dissemination of misinformation of all sorts, ignorance of reason and science, a ignorance of actual national security interests, and turning everything good idea into a politicized sideshow or otherwise a spitefest. This isn't greatness; it's a disaster, plus a low-effort bonus reality show involving easily memeable shitposting, which might be a commentary on how people had taken normal decency for granted and only paid attention to outrage.
As for the "culture is changing in a bad direction and we need to do something about it" argument, the idea that this -- even if I accept its premise -- must be prioritized over all the problems I've just mentioned is...not prudent, in my opinion. Besides, the argument for a return to common decency and politeness is on the side opposite to Mr. Trump. On the other hand, the argument for berating people for not properly engaging in stylized displays of patriotism is devoid of patriotic meaning and runs contrary to the philosophical ideals of this country anyway.
Sidenote: John McCain would probably have been a far better president than Donald Trump. And I occasionally wonder if the country would have been better served if he had defeated Obama in 2008, if I account for the ebbs and flows of cultural elements.
I am going to try and be brief; human life will never be peachy, or possibly even near.
Nobody denies we all have problems, but solving those problems needs realism rather than idolatry directed at unrealistic schools of thought.
I think it's obvious that I'd disagree with some aspects of your post, but I don't want to delve in lest I break the ceasefire by accident.
Since I have to say it again; California wants to repeal Civil Rights law.
You act like what I'm suggesting is a huge deal; all I'm saying is I wouldn't participate and I'll point it out where I can, and lead the policy I want in the direction of meritocracy.
(This same mindset of mine leads me into conflict with some liberals/progressives as well.)
For those of you who are reading this and not familiar with it, that is not just any "Civil Rights law"; the specific conflict in this case has to do with affirmative action, the (oddly-named, due to it originating from a term in a legal document) general policy idea taking steps beyond just passive measures of avoiding explicit discrimination to aid historically excluded demographic groups, particular with regards to education and employment. The debate over affirmative action has been a thing in the US for quite a while now.
(Convenience link to the page 14w linked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_California_Proposition_16 )
As your mention of this in reply to my comment...how is this going to result in "some sort of horrid deconstruction of society as we know it"?
If that turns out to be a bad idea, then they can pass another proposition later.