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Comments
Ruth Bader Ginsburg has passed away after her fifth bout with cancer. It's quite unfortunate, and I (tiny as I may be in the grand scheme of these things) wish her family strength in these times.
She was a strong person with an illustrious career, who usually traveled in civility and certainly inspired a lot of her fans. I might not have agreed with her politically, but that doesn't take away from her many achievements nor does it stop me from admiring her eloquence.
I'd have liked for there to be a political stalemate in the issues regarding the job she previously occupied for at least a week but there's no way people with their danged human nature are going to take a week off, especially six weeks from the American Presidential Election.
That happened about a week and a half ago.
Donald Trump's comments on RBG so far have been pretty out of the realm of realpolitik.
Of course, one could speculate that he gambled with the release that he made, but it was primarily an election move rather than a real chance at SCOTUS move. Of course, it does put McConnell at a good starting position, and I'm pretty sure those 20 names are having their lives combed through right now by the Hashtag Resistance.
McConnell and Chuck Schumer have both played politics right from the start, and so did one of Ginsburg's granddaughters, who claims her dying words were that her seat shouldn't be filled until a "new president" is installed.
You mean, "Jews made an anti-Islamic movie"? No, no. It's "Jews made a subtly-normalizing-paedophilia-to-corrupt-the-Western-Civilization-and-destroy-the-White-race movie". You know, because of course they do. They just can't help themselves. It's like aliens and cattle.
I'm pretty sure it's not. No drugs involved, as far as I can recall. The culminating point was a scene in which the pimp talked the girl into "one last job" where she was supposed to undress in front of a live camera, but instead she starts crying and wievers lose interest and the pimp's plan is ruined at the last moment. I don't remember the whole lot of it, but it was clearly about the dangers of internet and/or a modernized version of the story about a naive girl who falls for an offer-too-good-to-be-true and is forced into prostitution.
Since you guys changed the topic, that will be all of it from me for the time being, but I wanted to add that last note.
Out of that whole audience there wasn't one guy whose whole thing was crying?This feels like a "work from the conclusion" type deal.
Well, on the level that it turns out there's no Muslim backlash that turned into antisemitism, I'm glad I was wrong.
Somehow, the same thought crossed my mind while I was writing that post. But, you know. Life ain't a movie. I guess movieworld creeps are decent enough to expect their underage erotica fully consensual.
Ahem.
I should clear this up now even though I'd rather not go into this topic anymore; it turns out that though the Breonna Taylor case was tragic the exact details* more than cleared the police officers of any wrongdoing. Therefore, this case also comes to fall under "Not worth protesting for" in my book.
*Police were afforded no-knock warrant but chose to identify themselves, they were at the correct address as filed out by her boyfriend during a previous incident, both Taylor and her boyfriend were awake/alert at the time, and most of all the boyfriend opened fire first.
More controversially;
So this took a while but let's get to it.
J.K. Rowling's latest pseudonymous novel in the Cormoran Strike series, is about a male killer who stalks female victims. Thanks to our fast moving information networks, it was "revealed" that the killer dressed as a woman to stalk his victims and kill them.
Personally, when I first heard this, I wanted to find out how GMH had somehow found out the future last year when we discussed J.K. Rowling's views and the insane vitriol surrounding them on the part of trans activists. But
I chickened out because it'd have made him look goodI decided I needed to wait for more information.However, it then turned out that this information was wholly incorrect, and in the whole 900 page book, only once does the killer take on the guise of a woman, and it's wholly as a very bad disguise (a "woman's housecoat and a wig"). This is not because he enjoys crossdressing or even slightly cares for it, it's just convenient at the time, and it is only mentioned in passing.
But that was days later, and we all know nobody waits days to weigh in on such things. The usual suspects quickly wished death upon J.K. Rowling (again) amongst other things. As a cherry on top; the adorable, somehow still around Irish pop-"musician" twins Jedward unironically suggested burning J.K. Rowling books. Probably unrelated (because nobody really cares about Jedward), actually burning J.K. Rowling books also took off as a trend on TikTok.
So yeah, that happened.
righties: I'm gonna declare my area "LGBT-free zone"!
gays: how can you declare this area a "LGBT-free zone"?
righties: lol, deal with it, faggot! ecksdee
gays: hey, look, they declared this area a "LGBT-free zone"!
fucking everyone: hey, they declared this area a "LGBT-free zone"! No euromonies for you!
righties: shockedpikachu.jpg
righties: IT WAS THE LEFTIES
righties: WHY DO YOU LIE
righties: IT WAS NEVER A LGBT-FREE ZONE YOU LYING LIARS
righties: THIS IS FAKE NEWS
righties: give euromonies back please ;_;
I think you need that drunk tracksuit Poland chav meme for this.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-resolution/908/text
TL;DR is in the title:
Full text at the link.
Note that this is a resolution. This isn't even a bill that could become a law (to say nothing of the fact that even if it were it'd likely just be dead on arrival in the Senate anyway).
In other words, even for people who have concerns about the exact policy implementations, this is the easiest kind of thing by which to make a display of opinion and nothing beyond that.
https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2020193
Dafuq is wrong with those 164 Republicans?
Meanwhile, in the other hall of Congress:
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), 4 years ago: "It's just nine months out from an election, and we're not going to consider a Supreme Court nomination from the President of the United States, because it's an election year."
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), now, just weeks before an election: "We will consider a Supreme Court nomination from the President of the United States."
Other Republican senators have pretty much made it clear that their standard is pretty much "because Republicans control both the presidency and the Senate". See for example this tweet from Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa:
Well, there is "ambiguity", since his party lost the House in 2018, unlike how his party held both Houses of Congress following the 2014 elections. The House of Representative, sometimes nicknamed the "People's House", was designed with 2-year terms so that it is more reflective of popular sentiment than the Senate. His reasoning holds no water.
Who's this one?
I should have included a link to the votes but I forgot. Here it is. I'll edit it into my earlier post.
https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2020193
Also because if I claim that various statements that Mr. Trump has made are meant to and/or may have the effect of undermining public confidence in the election and the peaceful transfer of power, fourteenwings might drag me into another argument that will drag on for several days. Like, more than that which may result from what I've already posted.
You mean I'll present the other side of the argument. Like Hilary Clinton's non-stop egging on of Joe Biden to not concede.
I mean, if you're referring to the question that was asked as:
Then like, I'd be confused and annoyed as heck too.
Oh so I guess Congress should just stop the confirmation as they're allowed to in the constitution...
oh, wait, they can't
It's also completely irrelevant to goings on. I mean, everybody in this argument is basically "We should cause we can" and "You shouldn't cause we don't want to".
This is a conflation issue that could easily be interpreted as "all forms of anti-China sentiment", especially coming so soon after Donald Trump spent his whole UNGA address ragging on China re: the Wu-Flu (which I'm sure somebody would call "anti-Asian sentiment" and then shift gears and go to talk about Ebola whilst not realizing that's also geographically named).
Also this is pointless posturing so the people you're trying to cudgel are allowed to not play along. Everybody knows this, since it's politics.
I cannot believe that you genuinely think Mitch McConnell isn't lying in both of those circumstances. He didn't want to confirm Obama's pick because they controlled the Senate, but he knows that sounds bad. He wants to confirm the nice Catholic lady cause he likes her and her ideas.
Similarly, the Obama admin/various Democrats have made the opposite about face.
Politics is about enacting the policies you want when you're allowed, so yes.
By the way, people got stabbed at Charlie Hedbo again (though outside the building this time round), in the middle of their trial re: collaborators involved in the last attack on them.
1. "Congress" includes the Senate,
2. the Senate can refuse to give consent, and
3. heck, the Senate has already refused to give advice of any sort, 4 years ago, when they didn't bother to consider the nominee.
The POTUS nominating someone for SCOTUS doesn't mean the Senate isn't allowed to refuse said person.
And that goes straight to my point -- their standard is pretty much "because Republicans control both the presidency and the Senate".
It also goes to my side point that Sen. Grassley is BSing an irrelevant excuse in that tweet.
Asian = a person from Asia or of Asian ethnic origin, not a country
China = a country in Asia, not a person
Also, said sentiment (due to COVID-19) is a real thing that is affecting Asian-Americans, here in the United States, right now. (I think I might have mentioned that before in this thread.) So it's relevant to real life, and real life in this country right now, more so than "It could be misinterpreted in this way".
This makes me wonder how many votes there would be against an even simpler resolution saying ""Resolved: that people should strive not to be jerks", in the name of "we're not going to play along".
Oh, I knew McConnell was making up a bullshit reason back then and didn't actually care about consistency then, or now.
It's just that he doesn't have any grounds anymore on a moral or institution-respecting basis, and anyone may make hay of pointing out how he has no such basis and criticizing him for being craven.
You knew I meant the house, but nobody calls it the House of Representatives.
He certainly has a moral obligation to the people who voted him into office over and over, one that he is certainly fulfilling.
I see no higher respect of the institution than in using it as it's meant to be used.
I prefer "Rep."/"Representative" for this reason. (And I abbreviate "Republican" as "Repub", to go with "Dem" for "Democrat".)
Actually he is rather unpopular in his own home state.
Some of his home state's voters probably want him to do what he's doing, but not that many. It's just that no one has yet been able to cobble together enough support to beat him in a head-to-head.
If you're appealing to the framers' intent, then note that the Senate is supposed to be the slow-moving, deliberative chamber.
Duuuude, I barely know what's in the constitution for my own country, and you're here correcting an American on the interpretation of American constitution. Aaawkward.
I thought standard practice was "Rep" for Congressman/woman and (D)/(R) for Democrats and Republicans.
So are a lot of politicians, but if they've been voted into power they only owe their responsibility to those who voted.
...
Well, he pressed fast-forward this once (I'm being facetious). I don't really have an honest point to make against this, but nothing explicitly in the rules says they can't, therefore they
canmust.Well, I at least know more about the American constitution than these people. I mean, it's not hard to pick things up or read thoroughly into such topics. The Constitution, the Federalist Papers, Declaration of Independence and so on are all widely available online, and the sources I follow (left and right) are constantly harping on about this stuff.
----
I moved stuff in here from here.
Ah I was speaking more generally across the political landscape.
I mean, those guys aren't practicing social conservatism if they decide to literally burn books. That's overt radicalism, no matter what political stance you hold. It's certainly not conservative or prudent to appropriate symbols used by a fascistic national socialist party and then fail to read the room when things are presented to you honestly.
But also as I mentioned in the politics thread Harry Potter burners never go away, they just shift reasoning entirely.
Anyways to explain properly; highlighting the maniacs of a movement is a good way to smear the whole movement, and if enough people conflate the two then whatever was good in conservatism is completely lost as people shy further and further away from it.
Things like concern for nuclear families are certainly built on individuals, and therefore society's, "long-term viability".
Do you mean planetary issues?
For example, Michael Shellenberger, who is practically the only environmentalist pushing for nuclear power, seems to get more coverage outside left-leaning mainstream media, whether that be centrist/neutralyst-ish publications like Quillette or more right-leaning places.
They should be questioned and criticized, certainly, and most definitely opposed when they turn out to be bad ideas after analysis.
Just don't end up like one of these folks Storm keeps running into, who think they understand the situation in Venezuela better than him.
No true Scotsman.
Yeah, I put this example in there for a reason. I just in general don't approve of book burning, but I'm stupid.
If there's one area where I run into walls with glenn, it's the situation on the ground, because I can't argue that completely accurately.
However, when it comes to obvious pen and paper stuff that I can correctly observe from here and even write a dissertation on, then I won't back down.
Social conservatism isn't an ethnicity, it's a code of guidelines anyone can follow that vary to some extent but most certainly exclude acting like a maniac.
No I think in general when any movement or belief system starts to approve of book burning then it's gone awry.
Though I should make an exception; if the book burning is meant to shock/troll others, then that's just being an annoying provocateur and anybody who falls for it deserves whatever wasted time they spend worrying about it.
...
This exception does not apply to one-of-a-kind historic texts or similar.
I find it kind of noble, actually.
The way I'd imagine it, it should certainly exclude beating your children (to any extent) if they misbehave as long as it means you truly love them and want them to improve, but I don't think social conservatism has a logical mechanism within it that can prevent that sort of practice from being justified.
And social conservatism (as I think I have mentioned many times) fails to adapt arguments for modern situations, or at the very least has a tendency to put it's believers in a situation where what they believe is 'obvious' and so they don't need to explain it at all.
In fact, it's quite anti-inquiry to some extent? Like if I say;
glenn is actually right here, and I didn't address his point about conservatism. Instead I put in my own thoughts about how things should operate.
A lot of the benefits that we now see with (some of) the tenets of social conservatism are due to the data results of socially conservative practices, rather than compelling arguments from speakers in the field that existed pre-data or research. One thing I absolutely malign about the hyperliberalization of modern society is it's marching according to the theories and feelings even as the data and research curves in the opposite direction.
Back to social conservatism: nobody actually cared to point out why things worked until two things happened, the first more important than the second; conservatism in it's pre-2015/6* form was completely obliterated from the world stage for years beforehand, and the data proved in favor of some conservative arguments.
*Yes I mean Brexit/Trump.
Faced with the sort of person that conservatism has maligned up till that point (for example, a gay man or even just a successful, unmarried childless woman) it tends to just acquiesce into a puddle with no good reasoning to back itself up.
It's why I think, it has a similar mechanism to neoliberalism/Gen-X liberalism* where, when presented with progressivism, it all just collapses and allows the new thing to take it over.
*Gen-X liberalism is the closest that ever came to classical liberalism, but it's indulgence in hyper-free-love-ism/narcissism rather than acknowledging the failures of man is where I think that collapsed.
Anyways, all I'm saying is that we need some social conservatives, and I admire how they think in a lot of respects. I'm also very humbled by the number of things they were right about, as any young man tends to be when it turns out the oldies knew what they were doing (to a significant extent).
And yeah the proper title is "Representative". (it's also gender-neutral but at this point i'm not sure this is a perk in your opinion)
Wow, that's one very cynical way of seeing it.
Also the system isn't even built like that. The system is built so that people owe their responsibility to whoever is in the electorate, i.e. whoever may vote for them. It's not perfect though, partly because people in power get to in turn write laws regarding who can vote, and if they can restrict who gets to vote they get to be responsible to fewer people.
Incidentally...
The U.S. constitution? Yes, that makes sense to discuss, because that is a document with legal force.
On the other hand, the Federalist Papers and the Declaration of Independence have no legal force, and I've learned that if I run into people who cite them they probably are political ideology wankers who are not worth my time to argue with.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, but with regards to the nuclear family, that's actually less stable than a multi-generational living arrangement that is both (1) more communal with pooled resources and thus more resilient to economic and other shocks, and (2) more able to teach youngsters important life advice and home-ec practices and cultural traditions and so forth.
I specifically meant that term to be more general than just "planetary issues". To include such ideas as long-term economic viability.
What is this supposed to mean?
And, as a sidenote, why is it so improtant to you/your arguments, argument after argument, who famous person or opinion-profferring organization is saying what about what?
And the old ideas should be subject to the same scrutiny.
This focus on what you call "obvious pen and paper stuff" ends up being mostly harping on about ideological considerations, which, to be fair, matter to some people and do influence how some people think, but they are not truly the most important considerations when making policy. (Well, unless you actually think that practicalities ought to take a back seat to promoting the "correct" ideology in a grand war of ideas.)
The "no true Scotsman" thing applies to any grouping in general, not just ethnic groupings.
I don't know much about social conservatives' opinions on burning books specifically, but I do know I've seen politicians who make a point about (no pun intended) burnishing their conservative credentials to their electorate shifting their positions toward further extremes, according to social "litmus tests" of their positions, making said "conservative"-ness become more and more ideologically rigid in the political sphere.
If I need to be clear about this; I used to really like
gender neutralunisex terms because I thought it cleared things up better as who could hold a post in a single word, and I always bristled at style guides used by major publications which always went with "he or she", but then I learned the importance of noting the sex binary.Gender neutral terms may be neutral of
gendersex, but they are not neutral of connotations.Funnily enough once I stopped doing it the style guides at major publications became obsessed with it.
Uh, thanks?
I just meant that in general they were information that was relevance
Also say what you will about the Federalist Papers (which are basically just white papers for what would become the concepts later codified in the Constitution) but the Declaration of Independence is kind of important. It's like, if there's one piece of heritage that should be pointed to in American history for all modern Americans, it's that one.
Ah, I'll have to apologize for the phrasing that was here previously, it was overly hyperbolic and probably came off very mean-spirited.
What I mean to say is that the multi-generational model you tout starts with multiple nuclear families. If a nuclear family in these settings is broken, then the whole structure will need to compensate to try and cover up for that (which may succeed or fail but is not ideal).
Plus this sounds extremely unsustainable when it comes to living arrangements.
You think progressives have a better handle on economics?
I mean, the one thing that united the neocons and neoliberals of the 1990s/early 2000s was economic policy (it was bad Bill Clinton WTO economic policy, but still). Similarly, the EU adopted Capital A Austerity and used it like a vice on basically all the poor countries for quite a while.
Now it seems like the liberal side in the US has just abandoned functional economics wholesale* (not that this whole "printing money to deal with crises" thing the conservatives are doing really helps matters).
*Green New Deal, Single-Payer Healthcare, heck... the ACA itself.
Frankly, if I voted for someone and they took my key issue and stomped all over it, I'd be very disillusioned with the whole process.
He's specifically the guy with the idea. I guess I should have left out his name for some reason?
I mean, people are important? You can learn a lot by focusing on one figure in a field for some time, rather than trying to spread yourself thin over all the people, of which there are none who are prominent but him.
The only reason one wouldn't know names (which I provide so you guys can google and see what I mean for yourselves) is if you weren't paying much attention.
Not should be, they have been, quite thoroughly. Most bad cultural practices in Western civilization were weeded out over time that extends until quite recently.
Well yeah I figured that but then I got caught up in other stuff.
This is just everyone in the political sphere nowadays. The Anti-Racist screed decries being "not racist" as another form of racism (ie the only true position with no racism is anti-racist). Similarly; the Democratic party and absolutely any pro-life positions.
And since the political sphere has expanded to basically everything, it's basically everyone.
2. I've run into far more instances where the "sex binary" was a hassle rather than anything worth noting, because I then had to indicate two different words when I wanted to refer to one profession as a group. Such as "voice actors and voice actresses".
also i want to make a cooperation meme image involving you and transgender folks whose views you strongly disagree with involving both of y'all berating me over using "gender" and "sex" interchangeably
Cultural heritage, yes. Legal force, no.
This is how societies themselves started out lol.
Yes, because: * Innovations in energy technology are absolutely a useful field for economic reinvogoration, and also respect the fact that certain older sources of energy such as fossil fuels are far more finite in multiple ways. You don't want to run your resource dry to a crisis point before you start weaning off of it.
* Cutting out the middleman cuts costs. It also cuts out red tape for customers.
* Insurance costs less per person when more people pay into the pot.
* The larger the market share occupied by the buyer or seller, the greater their ability to set prices.
* In general, preventative care is less costly than treatment. And in general, lighter treatments are less costly than more severe treatments. For a more cost-efficient system, you want to encourage people toward the former rather than the latter.
* Healthcare costs does not respond properly to market forces anyway, because market forces don't work well with life-or-death decisions. And it's not like people even see the actual costs of their healthcare meaningfully since it gets heavily filtered through a patchwork of insurance plans. Also the price signals are a mess even then because part of the de facto price is the hassle of dealing with the red tape.
No, the more important question is "how are this guy, and his opinions on nuclear power, and your apparent main point in bringing him up regarding how he is or isn't covered by 'left-leaning mainstream media' vs. 'centrist-neutralyst-ish'/'right-leaning' sources, relevant to this conversation at all?".
You're presuming that there is a linear progress toward good ideas. But you're also saying that recently this trend is being bucked. What prevented it from being bucked back in the day? Fact is, nothing did, and there have been a variety of silly episodes in history, including this country's. That's not to say nothing went right either.
Also, a good idea at one point might not be a good idea at a later point. Case in point is pretty much anything that can be correlated with population density. For example, if you have a few people living in a place, you can throw your trash anywhere and it's super convenient and sooner or later nature will probably make use of it in some way or another. You have a ton of people living in a place and you start needing to deal with litter problems by enforcing social norms on where trash should be placed, and now you also need to figure out what to do with the trash after you put it all in one place. Turns out that stuff doesn't necessarily work the same way at different scales. This is reality, and you can't ignore these things when deciding whether ideas are "good" or "bad".
tbf the US constitution is kind of short compared to others, and I've noticed that specific parts of it come up more often in discussions in comparison to other constitutions (e.g. how many times have you seen referred to in numbered form the parts of constitutions that deal with freedom of speech? How many times have you heard about the first ammendment?)
I bet it's because it's so old.
Yeh, I gotta agree with this part, if burning a representation of some newfangled thing under the banner of defending traditional values doesn't count as social conservatism, I don't know what does.
If we treat that as part of the definition then I'm sure some liberal (or whatever the "anti-conservative" is called in that context) will point out similarities between social conservatism and "social conservatism but dumb", that a lot of what passes for social conservatism is in fact SCbD and so on until everybody is tired of unhelpful terminology.
The U.S. constitution does specify some basic procedures for the federal government. For example, it specifies how long the terms for some basic office-holders will be, and it specifies that a census shall be conducted to count all the people every ten years, and so on. There are also some details that are spelled out in vague generalities, such as the "advice and consent" of the Senate with regards to appointments to the Supreme Court.
Even without that many details, the U.S. constitution still serves as the fundamental/basic/whateveryouwannacallit law for the country. This often becomes a point of argument with regards to the various amendments, many of which spell out not specifics but general legal principles, and people inevitably argue over exactly what they mean or what their limits are -- a classic example of such a limit being shouting "fire" in a crowded theater and how doing so with malicious intent shouldn't be covered by freedom of speech.
Meanwhile in Canada:
Liberal Conservatives: "...yeah, what?"
Well, yes.
Well I try not to use "gender" anymore since as far as I'm concerned it's just a polite way to refer to "sex" without saying the (somewhat scandalous) word "sex".
Yes, but you spoke of sustainability and it's really not in a modern context.
I disagree with your views on innovation and middlemen, and I'd argue on your economies of scale/discounts theory as well, and then we get into the government nudging you into preventative care (which sounds extremely intrusive), but I really don't want to get into this.
I assumed that when you mentioned sustainability when it came to the environment, nuclear energy is one of the only ways I see clean, efficient energy being a thing, yet it's been widely denounced.
No? This is why I said "most". You never know what the bad ideas are until they're brought to your attention and thoroughly examined.
You misread the statement, when I said "until recently" I was referring to the timespan in question (the bad ideas were around until recently), not any ideas being overturned.
Well, social conservatism doesn't have to be religious conservatism or traditionalist conservatism.
All I am saying is that it is good to have sane conservatives around that you can articulate your positions against rather than driving them so far into the ground that every single idea they have is quickly maligned and tossed away.
All I said was, speaking very generally;
I'm not sure how this turned into a defense of book burning or Nazi iconography.
I specifically made a distinction as well;
They being;
I really don't want to argue this anymore. I've set out what I think every which way and now I'm just tired of re-litigating things.