Politics/Slapfights - Ancient history to modern day!

[FrozenShadow]

You know, I don't really get why people get up is "digital arms" over this Gillette advertisement. It's just advertisement that tried to raise a good point, but failed badly in actually doing it. Part of this is because the ad was executed horribly and part of it is because some people have forgotten how to read/see between the lines. I mean, while talking part of the ad seems to imply all men needs to do better, there are also some imagery of men intervening with other "bad" men actions.

As matter of fact, this ad and the reaction over it is just recent example of major problem in today society. A problem that's caused by the internet at large, but especially by various social media platforms. Simply said, people had become way too touchy. You practically can't say anything these days without someone taking offense in either of what was said or very least how it was said. And this gillette ad is just perfect example of this.


As for "toxic masculinity?...why not toxic feminity?" topic. I think there is rather simple explanation for this one.


To put it simply, the lack of talk over females bad behavior is in great part a result of the fact that lots of males see this matter differently. Were something happening to a woman is seen as sexual harrassment/abuse by other women, men sees the similar case as a proof of guy(s) studness and manliness or unfathomable weakness that shall not be mentioned.

Most obvious example of this is all the news of older female student having sexual relationship with younger male student. If you've ever read any of the comments with these news/vids, you would know that 99% male commentors are actually praising this younger male student. That praise is either given because other think how lucky the guy was to have lived their own fantasy in real life or because this whole case was sign of the guys masculinity or simple to comment that this case proved what kind of stud this young male student was.

But only few males thinks, let alone even comments the possibility that this young male student could be scarred for life, because of what this female teacher did. Quite contrary, if this young male student, that was used, would ever actually complain of his experience, many of the other males would laugh at him or shout at him to give away his "man card". It's actually the same thing with matters like wives beating their husbands or women bullying the males. If the male victim ever dares to complain, there are plenty of other males ready to crucify them, because these men thinks something like these things could actually happen to a man.

So really, the lack of talks over "bad" female behavior is not because it doesn't happen, but because males see it differently. They see it either as sign of male provness (either their own or others) or as a sign of weakness that cannot be acknowledged as it couldn't have happened. Sure, not every man things like this, but there are more than enough that does so.

[Vol]

Mueller's office issued a statement contradicting Buzzfeed's "news" about there being evidence that Trump ordered Cohen to lie to Congress about Trump Tower Moscow.

Our media is legit garbage, actively harmful, partisan agents, first against the wall when the revolution comes, etcetera etcetera.

The rest of the MSM used the pretense of reporting on Buzzfeed reporting on the story, because they couldn't corroborate it, but really wanted to spread it. Just like with the Steele dossier. Scum.

[Mobius_118]

Mueller's office issued a statement contradicting Buzzfeed's "news" about there being evidence that Trump ordered Cohen to lie to Congress about Trump Tower Moscow.

Our media is legit garbage, actively harmful, partisan agents, first against the wall when the revolution comes, etcetera etcetera.

The rest of the MSM used the pretense of reporting on Buzzfeed reporting on the story, because they couldn't corroborate it, but really wanted to spread it. Just like with the Steele dossier. Scum.

The Steele Dossier hasn't been disproven, though.

And even then there's plenty of obstruction trump has been committed, that is clear as day, that has already been proven.

The smart thing would be for trump and pence to step down and flee the country. trump supporters should leave too, the unpatriotic, traitorous fucks.

[Sinekein]

I'm not saying men need to be praised for being decent people.
You're the one who is saying that, not me.

I am? Let's see...

This advert also says nothing of the men that are actually making things better despite not pandering to the one methodology/mindset the advert wishes.

It reallu looks like you are though.
Except the men who are actually making things better don't want to be praised. Those who "help women" because they want cookie points are not helping. In most likelihood, they are Nice Guys™ of one kind or another who are in it not to improve the lot of women, but to look great, score points, and maybe get laid.

What I am saying is "why do they need to tar all men with the same brush to get this message across?" Why is it that they can't call out the bad ones without also calling the decent ones just as bad? It's not about calling out the "good ones" it's about not implying they're also bad, even if it's done accidentally.

You see, this sentence is false from the very beginning because I am a man and this spot did not disgraced me, or attacked my reputation. Nor did it attack Mobius', from what I read. I've not felt attacked by this spot. I'm not guilty of anything that's criticized here and I'm conscious of the advice that's given (it's really not revolutionary ideas that Gillette is using). And again, I don't need to be praised or singled out for being a decent person.

If you're at peace with your personal behavior towards women, you have absolutely zero reason to feel attacked. If you're not, though, that's another story altogether.

But if your first reaction as a Nice Guy™ after seeing this spot is "MUH REPUTATION!", then...you didn't understand it one bit.

And if there is a problem on one side there has to be a problem on the other, at least in some ways that might be better spent trying to compromise rather than pulling one side to one standard when, by your own definitions, they're already at anyway.

What the fuck, the middle ground fallacy now? Brb, I'm gonna ask Theo what Jews did wrong to justify the Holocaust.

All I am saying is why does one language/name heavily imply a problem residing only with men and the others, when they're brought to light, find any other name than the feminine versions.

The same reason there is no "Shoah of Nazis". Really, it's not hard to understand: sometimes, a group is overwhelmingly more at fault than the other. In the case of gender issues, it's the men. That fact is no more your fault than mine or anyone else (who doesn't harass, threaten, hit or rape women) but it is no less true.

And me questioning it isn't meant to imply I even have an answer. I don't. I'm some dumbfuck. I am nowhere near as intelligent as you might think I am when I ask the questions. I have no solutions, no direction, all I can see is it's biased/the scales on one end are tipped too far on one case and the scales are tipped too far on another and it's not looking like anything we're doing is actually moving those scales in the right directions.

Toxic femininity. I have no idea honestly. Just as I have no idea what to hunt down when chasing toxic masculinity.
Why can't it just be "Toxicity"? Then we can deal with both at the same time and stop this whole "masculine and feminine" business all together.

Yet when a knowledgeable ad that researched its subject - it quotes a wide number of daily issues women face, and it doesn't even go into the most violent ones (there's no sexual misconduct or domestic violence, both of which are fare more damaging than catcalling - which does not mean that catcalling should stay as long as there is domestic violence obviously) - you dismiss it altogether as "hating on men", basically. And you spontaneously adopt the point of view not of a neutral, but of a Men's Rights Activist. That's one of my biggest issues here. If you claimed to be a MRA, then yeah, I'd be fine with disagreeing with it, but if you claim to dislike "toxic masculinity", and then act and write like all those who defend it, it's a wee bit infuriating.

And how many do you think are actually going to be convinced by this corporate mouthpiece of an ad?
How much of the money spend on shooting, paying actors, sound design, editing, transmission fees, etc, could have instead be spent directly affecting actual people's lives?

Gillette put the topic of toxic masculinity right in the middle of the public debate, which pretty much all feminists are thrilled about because usually it is quietly ignored. Even better, and as I mentioned before, highlight was placed on gender issues without being a reaction to yet another soul-crunchingly horrible event, like learning of sex crimes, or that yet another woman died under the fists of her husband. It talks about the "little things" that are making women's lives harder.

And that attention is sure to bring more money to the NGOs who directly try to improve women's lives.

How much of this is actually just a PR campaign towards the progressive male who's been moved to Dollar Shave Club because they heard them on one of their podcasts or youtube sponsors?

I don't give a crap really. Why should I? If the side-effect of a marketing campaign is fucking improving humanity, I don't see a reason to complain.

I'd take a hundred ads like this over Finding Nemo, who was a great, great movie whose effect on the world was to deplete wild clownfish populations because people wanted one in their aquarium. Almost everything today is made to bring money, whether it is art or not. If on top of that it makes lives better, then I won't whine. Even if it's not my own little life that's improved but others'.

#MeToo was a weak-ass movement to begin with. Anything born fro Twitter is.

Trump is born from Twitter. He might be a gigantic piece of shit himself but the movement he started is anything but weak. #MeToo already managed to expose a number of prime abusers that hid in plain sight for many years, so it's working as intended. Now, when there is an accusation of sexual misconduct, "vengeance" or "settlement money" aren't the first things that pop to mind anymore. And when prominent men behave like dicks in public, they don't just get the "rolling eyes" treatment, possibly with a "lockroom joke" explanation.

[Mazder]

It reallu looks like you are though.
Except the men who are actually making things better don't want to be praised. Those who "help women" because they want cookie points are not helping. In most likelihood, they are Nice Guys™ of one kind or another who are in it not to improve the lot of women, but to look great, score points, and maybe get laid.

Okay, yeah that looks to be saying that and I'll admit I didn't state my intention right there.
By "saying nothing of the good guys doing the good" I meant it as it shows that this is their only way of doing it.
Like there are many ways to tackle the problems but the ad makes it seem that only their way works. When we know that it's not true.

And, again, it's not necessarily about them wanting or needing to be praised, it's the method of which that it shames those who aren't lock-step perfect being shamed for not "doing enough", as i there is a quota to fill and all men haven't met said quota yet.

You see, this sentence is false from the very beginning because I am a man and this spot did not disgraced me, or attacked my reputation. Nor did it attack Mobius', from what I read. I've not felt attacked by this spot. I'm not guilty of anything that's criticized here and I'm conscious of the advice that's given (it's really not revolutionary ideas that Gillette is using). And again, I don't need to be praised or singled out for being a decent person.

If you're at peace with your personal behavior towards women, you have absolutely zero reason to feel attacked. If you're not, though, that's another story altogether.

But if your first reaction as a Nice Guy™ after seeing this spot is "MUH REPUTATION!", then...you didn't understand it one bit.

Well that's fine and all, but by Gillette's terms you're also not the best a man can be.
Again it's not about you feeling attacked it's about the character of being a man just for being a man that's being called into question.
Yeah, you're not attacked by the notion, but you're also tarred with the same brush as the bad guys in this video.
It doesn't matter what you feel like it's doing or not doing to you, if you identify as "man" this ad places a stance on being "the best man". The concept of a man is idolized here and placed on this pedestal of "well if you're NOT doing all of these things to make things better then you're just as bad as all the bad ones, and therefor not a good enough man" despite the fact you might not be doing much of anything to anybody.
That's what they see. They see a message of "it doesn't matter what you're actually doing, we're going to call where the line is and you're either on one side or the other" with no kind of grey area in between.
It's less about being singled out and more pointing at every single man and saying they're not good enough.
Not white men.
Not black men.
Not asian, green, turian or polka dotted.
Every. Single. Man. Implied to not be doing enough because of the fact of being a man.

What the fuck, the middle ground fallacy now? Brb, I'm gonna ask Theo what Jews did wrong to justify the Holocaust.

Yes, because I am obviously saying that every single woman deserves the same treatment as those who rape boys, or those who murder their children, or who impose ridiculous standards of living on each other, who destroy each other's mental well-being for not being conventionally pretty.
Yeah, obviously.

For fuck sake, calling out that some women are viscous twats is not the fucking same.
If you need that spelled out for you from me you've clearly not been paying attention to anything I've said in any regard.

The same reason there is no "Shoah of Nazis". Really, it's not hard to understand: sometimes, a group is overwhelmingly more at fault than the other. In the case of gender issues, it's the men. That fact is no more your fault than mine or anyone else (who doesn't harass, threaten, hit or rape women) but it is no less true.

So why the label then?
Why is fault laid at the feet of those under one label if they're not at fault?
If I wish to identify as masculine then how is it fair to place blame at my feet if I am not doing any of the things within toxic masculinity? How am I at fault for something I can not control or not doing or have never done or been in control of?
When would the identification of it be absolved from the fault?
If it is "masculine" then there must be the implication of something being inherently wrong with being masculine, right? otherwise why is masculinity toxic, yet if a woman did the exact same thing, say sexual harassment/sexual misconduct for example, then how and why is it still laid at the feet of masculinity? If men do it more often, yeah, fine, but it's not inherently just a masculine problem, no?
You can't say that it's only to do with being/identifying as masculine, so why does it always come about to being masculine?

And this isn't some "gotcha" argumentative point here I am genuinely asking. I genuinely want to know as I don't get how you can call something being the fault of one gender if there are examples of it in both. That just sounds unfair and honestly more likely to cause toxic behaviour from a bunch lashing out because they feel trapped in the identity from birth/default.

Yet when a knowledgeable ad that researched its subject - it quotes a wide number of daily issues women face, and it doesn't even go into the most violent ones (there's no sexual misconduct or domestic violence, both of which are fare more damaging than catcalling - which does not mean that catcalling should stay as long as there is domestic violence obviously) - you dismiss it altogether as "hating on men", basically. And you spontaneously adopt the point of view not of a neutral, but of a Men's Rights Activist. That's one of my biggest issues here. If you claimed to be a MRA, then yeah, I'd be fine with disagreeing with it, but if you claim to dislike "toxic masculinity", and then act and write like all those who defend it, it's a wee bit infuriating.

I'm not dismissing it outright, I just think it's not very well made.
It's way too fluff-piece-y for my own tastes.

I don't like the name of the title more than anything as it implies that men, just men as it is, not "bad men" or "wrong men" but just "men" are the problem. As a man that is a little bit annoying to me. As I've not done anything wrong. How is being a man toxic to others?
Yeah it might be some aspects of man and men but I can't sit there with everyone and say "I'm not doing this, this or this", and nor can I rely on people assuming that I am not.

I honestly feel that I can not rely on people thinking I am decent any more because I am in the the boogieman of the generation. A straight, white, male, Mid 20's - early 30's, overweight, not sexually active with not much sexual experience, European descent with some higher education, single, of geek/nerdy related cultures, enjoys gaming, spends much of his time alone, etc.
I've had social media for the past 2-3 years at the very least telling me I am the fault, I am the bad guy. For doing...what exactly?
Could you see how I, and others like myself who hit just two or three of the same descriptors might think that an ad like this might not be the most kind to their self image or might not re-enforce the same point they've heard over the last few years?

And even if that doesn't convince you of why I may write like an MRA on this issue, how about it's the fact I don't need to question the feminists side of things because I don't follow their train of thoughts very well?
That things aren't explained very well in the sense of I get the decent person angle, I do. But what if you're starting to question if you are truly decent from these types of messages. Despite doing nothing wrong you start to think if you are the bad guy after all.
And, yeah I've gone off point, but it's got to be said that anyone "comfortable" in the ad, myself included, that they clearly don't understand the other mindset of feeling that you're being called out for not being the bad guy?

I mean, could you even imagine that? Genuinely. Ignore, for a moment, that there are bigger reasons for the ad. On one thing can you feel that to some this ad might not be the best way to approach them?

Gillette put the topic of toxic masculinity right in the middle of the public debate, which pretty much all feminists are thrilled about because usually it is quietly ignored. Even better, and as I mentioned before, highlight was placed on gender issues without being a reaction to yet another soul-crunchingly horrible event, like learning of sex crimes, or that yet another woman died under the fists of her husband. It talks about the "little things" that are making women's lives harder.

And that attention is sure to bring more money to the NGOs who directly try to improve women's lives.

Quietly ignored.
Not from where I've been standing for the past few years, not by a long shot.

No, true, but I'd also be okay with there being a slightly less generalizationy ad in it's place.

I don't give a crap really. Why should I? If the side-effect of a marketing campaign is fucking improving humanity, I don't see a reason to complain.

I'd take a hundred ads like this over Finding Nemo, who was a great, great movie whose effect on the world was to deplete wild clownfish populations because people wanted one in their aquarium. Almost everything today is made to bring money, whether it is art or not. If on top of that it makes lives better, then I won't whine. Even if it's not my own little life that's improved but others'.

Improving in some respects maybe.
Teaching boys not to fight is annoying though. Some things can be solved with a good old cathartic scrap.
Hell, Mobius has wanted to do that to Theo loads, lol.

That is if it's an improvement made. I mean there is no guarantee after all.
Yeah they might draw some money to NGO's but if it's through greed is it an actual improvement or is it just trading one for the other at the end of the day?
Like, yeah, some few guys might be better people, but you still have the big corporate fatcats assholes at the top who are able to pout more influence accross and still hurt way more women than the ad might potentially help save?

Trump is born from Twitter. He might be a gigantic piece of shit himself but the movement he started is anything but weak. #MeToo already managed to expose a number of prime abusers that hid in plain sight for many years, so it's working as intended. Now, when there is an accusation of sexual misconduct, "vengeance" or "settlement money" aren't the first things that pop to mind anymore. And when prominent men behave like dicks in public, they don't just get the "rolling eyes" treatment, possibly with a "lockroom joke" explanation.

Trump had a following before Twitter existed, he's been a thing for a while.
And, again, it's more a fault of Twitter, not a supportive thing of Twitter.

Yeah, and I am sure if it wasn't around those abusers would still have been exposed. Look I'm not saying that MeToo hasn't done good. All I'm really saying is twitter sucks and anything born form it is usually a flash in the pan.

Again, I don't know who these men are who are just rolling their eyes. I have literally never seen a single one actually taken seriously at the "locker-room" comment. Every single guy I have seen use that has been met with disgust over it. Before MeToo, way, way before. I have never seen it "accepted". I don't know if it's just because I've stayed away from jocks all my life, but any time that's been placed in a situation that is actually mattering, as in outside of a sketch or a literal joke, I've only ever seen it as a bad thing.
Hey, maybe I've just been disconnected form the bad shit in the world, maybe I was already following the mantra, who knows.



But, hey, all in all this ad will fade away and some good will come of it so, honestly anything I have to say doesn't fucking matter any more.
I honestly think I am burned out on this topic now. Unless there is anything specific, or any answers to my genuine questions I'm done.
And, well I need a shave, lol.

[Sinekein]

Trump supporters harassing a Native American Vietnam vet during an Indingeous People's March. Basically the quintessence of supporting Trump: thinly-veiled racism, hate, and in all likelihood proud ignorance - I'm pretty sure they chanted "Build That Wall" because for them, Native Americans are migrants too.

Guys like this are making America so much greater.

[Mobius_118]

Trump supporters harassing a Native American Vietnam vet during an Indingeous People's March. Basically the quintessence of supporting Trump: thinly-veiled racism, hate, and in all likelihood proud ignorance - I'm pretty sure they chanted "Build That Wall" because for them, Native Americans are migrants too.

Guys like this are making America so much greater.

Yeah I saw that.

My niece is Dakota Sioux, so I've had to deal with these fucking mongrels harassing her.

That boy in the picture is ever-deserving of a lead pipe to the face.

[FrozenShadow]

Trump supporters harassing a Native American Vietnam vet during an Indingeous People's March. Basically the quintessence of supporting Trump: thinly-veiled racism, hate, and in all likelihood proud ignorance - I'm pretty sure they chanted "Build That Wall" because for them, Native Americans are migrants too.

Guys like this are making America so much greater.

Which is ironic, considering basically everyone else, but native American Indians and their descendants are migrants. But of course these children on this video don't get or even understand the irony.
Though, could you really expect anything better from students of catholic school on anti-abortion rally? I mean people like these are major candidates for Trump supporters.

[Mazder]

Those kids are absolute assholes, it's obvious with the shit-eating grin on their face.
I don't wish violence upon them but they do need some better teaching in how to be better with the native Americans, mind you, more could be done for the integration of the Native American populace and supporting them. I mean, if we're talking on just "walls", literal or theoretical, the US government has been trying to screw them over for decades now. Obama's administration might have been the best they had but even then it wasn't great, I can imagine.
Especially as a lot of the bad is done by local/state governors, right? or am I mis-remembering that?


The whole "conquered nation vs conquerors" debate does keep coming up, which, in some way I do find confusing in America's case as in some ways there should be no issue, the Native American's should be a part of the populace 100% instead of this weird grey-area where they are, yet also kind of not given the whole Reservations thing.
And I'm not even gonna pretend to understand it, just that from what I do understand they need better treatment, and have needed it for a while.
But, given the whole "who is responsible" question, the UK and France have equal stake in the treatment as well, which would put international help on the table, which would be an even bigger mess! lol!


At the same time I do wonder as a thought exercise, how their lives may change if they were to integrate more with the United States and changed their stance on the "their land" thing.
I don't wish it upon them, by any means, they're getting shafted already, but I can't help at what a mess things would be if every conquered nation had the same stance. Obliviously any going forward would not be under the same situation as those now or in the past, but it's interesting to think on. I mean, England could have soooooo many beefs in Europe from being conquered, almost as much as they did for being the conquerors, lol. And we did a lot of shit.
So much that even if we took ourselves out of the equation and made ourselves a third world nation in the process, we'd still not fix all the bad we did.

[Vol]

Trump supporters harassing a Native American Vietnam vet during an Indingeous People's March. Basically the quintessence of supporting Trump: thinly-veiled racism, hate, and in all likelihood proud ignorance - I'm pretty sure they chanted "Build That Wall" because for them, Native Americans are migrants too.

Guys like this are making America so much greater.

Thankfully, the ubiquity of personal recorders is making the lies of the press easier to disprove.

https://youtu.be/UQyBHTTqb38?t=4342

The Indian man approached the kids and was beating his drum in their face. Also there were black supremacists there, spewing their racism at the kids. This is also a big reason why the white identity is going to be a problem going forward, because very clearly the story should be that _these_ assholes are open bigots, insulting a group of teens at a peaceful protest with all kinds of nonsense. Instead, the story is fabricated nonsense about how them there white boys were being racist against n' injun. What's a white person to take away from this, if they're so fortunate to actually see context and not what the press allows them to see?

Another source: https://vimeo.com/312344885

Starts around 1:20. Kids didn't do shit but chant along a bit, endured racist abuse from the blacks/American Indians tho. It's fake news, kids did nothing wrong, fuck the media, enemy of the people.

[Sinekein]

The Indian man approached the kids and was beating his drum in their face.

That's a march. To march, you need to go from point A to point B. In that case, between point A and point B, you had a bunch of racist fuckwits singing hateful slogans because they can't tolerate the existence of people with darker skin color than they.

But I'm sure it was completely coincidental for a bunch of morons in MAGA hats to happen upon the way of an Indigenous People's March. Yessiree. Obviously a fake news false flag operation from deep state.

[Vol]

That's a march. To march, you need to go from point A to point B. In that case, between point A and point B, you had a bunch of racist fuckwits singing hateful slogans because they can't tolerate the existence of people with darker skin color than they.

But I'm sure it was completely coincidental for a bunch of morons in MAGA hats to happen upon the way of an Indigenous People's March. Yessiree. Obviously a fake news false flag operation from deep state.

That was the March for Life, an annual anti-abortion march through the capital, those kids were waiting around for their buses to pick them up.

[Sinekein]

That was the March for Life, an annual anti-abortion march through the capital, those kids were waiting around for their buses to pick them up.

And here I thought they couldn't be more despicable, but they just had an anti-abortion march to top it all. They are even more quintessential Trump supporters.

In any event, he didn't "play his drum in their faces", they gathered around him. And because they were in a group and he was alone, they felt like they owned the place. Which is a nice reminder of US history really.

They could have tried to interact with the "black supremacists" who were apparently there, but I assume their balls left them when they realized they weren't sure to win. A group against one Native American looked more fair though. I mean, when you're a class act, you have to go all the way.

[Sinekein]

Mueller's office issued a statement contradicting Buzzfeed's "news" about there being evidence that Trump ordered Cohen to lie to Congress about Trump Tower Moscow.

Our media is legit garbage, actively harmful, partisan agents, first against the wall when the revolution comes, etcetera etcetera.

The rest of the MSM used the pretense of reporting on Buzzfeed reporting on the story, because they couldn't corroborate it, but really wanted to spread it. Just like with the Steele dossier. Scum.

Yes, thankfully Trump has allies who will clearly explain that this entire story is wr...

Oh wait. He didn't.

(Note that the MSM also abundantly reported on Mueller's statement that Buzzfeed's article was inaccurate - as is their job really)

I realized that Robert Mueller must be the worst witch hunter ever really, because he seems to care about "truth" and "accurate statements" in his work.

[Vol]

Only first trimester abortions enjoys majority support among Americans in general. We're not a people that are fond of aborting our next generation willy-nilly.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson ... l-n2275329

(2) A slim majority of Americans identify as "pro choice" on the abortion question, but a 52 percent majority is at least in favor of limiting legal abortion to very rare cases such as rape, incest, and to save the life of the mother, which covers the pro-life spectrum (these answers were selected by 52 percent of women). An additional 22 percent say abortion should be illegal after the first trimester of pregnancy, leaving only about one-fourth of respondents to embrace the Democrats' radically permissive stance on the issue. Among those backing significant restrictions on abortion are nearly 80 percent of African Americans and Latinos.

https://youtu.be/t3EC1_gcr34?t=4329

He walks up, stops, then approaches them, and they begin to dance and chant along with his beat for a while. He was not alone, he had a few people with him, such as the man in the red hat who was filming right behind him. The Lincoln Memorial is in fact a public space, the teens had every right to wait there for their buses to arrive, as much as the bigots had their right to hurl racial abuse at them.

https://twitter.com/twitter/statuses/10 ... 9817504768

Close up. The teens are first doing the FSU chant that's done at football games, then they quiet down as the man beats the drum inches from the smug kid's face.

[Raga]

Democrats reject Trump's border wall proposal

Like I've said before what they want is a completely no-strings-attached reopening of the government so that they can explicitly ignore doing anything that might reduce the number of immigrants coming in, illegal or otherwise.

@abortion stuff

I got into a rather interesting debate on another forum with some zealots who are under the impression that trying to turn abortion into some sort of "shout your abortion" "family value" would somehow undermine the pro-life movement. This is the same breed of cat who's trying to get the word "forced birther" to catch on. They do not want to hear that "forced birther" under their own radical definitions encompasses probably two-thirds of the people in the country because that's how many people favor some type of regulation that has a practical effect of limiting the ability of women to get abortions whenever they want for whatever reason they want.

I am a forced birther for supporting the Hyde Amendment as an example.

[Mobius_118]

Pro-lifers can't really call themselves that. As soon as the baby is born, they could give a fuck less what happens, but ohhh no, don't you go aborting a clump of cells just because the birth control failed/rape/incest and you can't afford to take care of a baby. It's MURDER!

[Raga]

Sure, but my argument isn't about the efficacy of the term pro-life for certain radicals which is something that those people I got into the argument with don't get. These words were originally coined like 40 years ago and they have had meaning creep ever since then.

There are two countercurrents of usage which are fighting each other here. The pro-choice people specifically, at least the sane ones, want these terms to be used to represent people with opinions on the poles. Meanwhile, the pro-life people and a huge percentage of the general population want the terms or they use the terms ambiguously to represent a general location on a spectrum but not necessarily to signify a position on a pole. This does serve the interests of the pro-life people because it makes their position look more sympathetic and larger than it really is.

But the radical pro-choice people didn't emulate that success by making the umbrella of pro-choice wide like the pro-life people did. They started battening down on ideological and nomenclature purity: trying to expose the "front" of pro-life and suggesting that if you weren't aligned 100% with the pro-choice agenda then you must by default be with those crazy people who want to turn women into incubation factories and who bomb abortion clinics.

But this just won't work because the reason that the pro-life terminology creep was successful in the first place is because most people are ambivalent about abortion. Most people do find it ethically challenging in some capacity or other. I've even heard new atheists assert that it's ethically challenging. It deals with questions like personhood, when your rights trump other people's rights, potentially eugenics or other forms of intended or unintended social engineering, whether or not you can compel people to help fund things that they consider to be evil, and a host of other things. If it really gives you no pause at all I would say that your moral compass is atrophied.

That's not a defense of the pro-life position, but I am saying that they actually understand people's underlying sentiments about this better than the radical pro-choice people do and that that's not going to change no matter how militant or purist the radical pro-choice people try to make the fight.

[Raga]

The whole "conquered nation vs conquerors" debate does keep coming up, which, in some way I do find confusing in America's case as in some ways there should be no issue, the Native American's should be a part of the populace 100% instead of this weird grey-area where they are, yet also kind of not given the whole Reservations thing.

I can write a small novel about all of the stuff dealing with American Indians and their history and the way that the governments treated them and so on. Suffice to say it gets overly simplified all the time.

I'll just say one thing here about the reservation system. It's sort of damned-if-you-do damned-if-you-don't. Because of the history of having lost land and because they are radically outnumbered now there is strong cultural and sentimental desire to hold onto the reservations. They are what keeps a particular tribe alive as an actual cultural entity and spares them from erasure via assimilation.

However, most reservations are in the absolute ass end of nowhere with no jobs and in some cases not even any basic infrastructure like power lines or city water. This mattered less in 1895 or whenever when most of these were established but now they are in an economic desert.

It's an impossible decision. Leave and give up living with your tribe to actually go make something of yourself somewhere or stay where you are with your family but face almost certain economic oblivion.

[Sinekein]

Only first trimester abortions enjoys majority support among Americans in general. We're not a people that are fond of aborting our next generation willy-nilly.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson ... l-n2275329

He walks up, stops, then approaches them, and they begin to dance and chant along with his beat for a while. He was not alone, he had a few people with him, such as the man in the red hat who was filming right behind him. The Lincoln Memorial is in fact a public space, the teens had every right to wait there for their buses to arrive, as much as the bigots had their right to hurl racial abuse at them.

https://twitter.com/twitter/statuses/10 ... 9817504768

Close up. The teens are first doing the FSU chant that's done at football games, then they quiet down as the man beats the drum inches from the smug kid's face.

I did not watch the videos. I looked for what looked like a fair report, and I found one here. It indeed says that the MAGAboys were provoked (not by the Native American drummer), but that they reacted like a bunch of dumb fucks (what a surprise). And basically proved they were worthy of their hats.

I don't trust any kind of video because even when you have multiple shots of the same scene, you don't necessarily understand it all. And we've had a number of stories that are about "alternate angles" or "alternate understandings" of phone vids.

The last case was kinda egregious. It was about a Gilet Jaune protester that had been hit by a Defense Ball Thrower used by the anti-riot police. There was global outrage when a video was released that dubbed what the cops were saying to one another, and one was heard saying "Ramasse les douilles" (Pick up the sockets) - which strongly hints at cops trying to cover their mistake. But then, actual journalists analyzed the video with proper material, and it turns out that the sentence was "Ramassez-le, vous" (Pick him up) - which means that they saw the guy needed to be "picked up" and helped.

So I let journalists do their job which is analizing what is happening and reporting on it before making my mind about what happened. And when the story is corrected, like it was, I also correct my opinion. In this case, the correction was that the MAGA idiots were provoked into behaving like a bunch of racist fuckwits, instead of spontaneously doing it (and also learning that they were pro-life activitsts).

Democrats reject Trump's border wall proposal

Like I've said before what they want is a completely no-strings-attached reopening of the government so that they can explicitly ignore doing anything that might reduce the number of immigrants coming in, illegal or otherwise.

Hey, what they want is the GOP's proposal for a budget. The border security budget was created by Paul Ryan, Pelosi just copied it.

Also, the number of immigrants is already going down at the moment, including at the Mexican border. Why pray tell should the House decide to give a blank check for an expensive wall that's there to fix a mostly nonexistent issue?

It's not the number of Mexicans illegally coming to the US that's rising, it's the number of non-Mexicans through that border (and even then, the overall number of illegal migrants through that border has been going down). So if Trump really wanted to "reduce the number of immigrants coming in", instead of regularly insulting him, he should cooperate with the Mexican president to help clean up his country from gang influence - illegal migrants are one of the most lucrative traffics there is now, some gangs have been thriving helping people pass the border (or pretending they do at any rate).

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/20 ... om-mexico/
http://www.pewhispanic.org/2018/11/27/u ... -a-decade/

@abortion stuff

I got into a rather interesting debate on another forum with some zealots who are under the impression that trying to turn abortion into some sort of "shout your abortion" "family value" would somehow undermine the pro-life movement. This is the same breed of cat who's trying to get the word "forced birther" to catch on. They do not want to hear that "forced birther" under their own radical definitions encompasses probably two-thirds of the people in the country because that's how many people favor some type of regulation that has a practical effect of limiting the ability of women to get abortions whenever they want for whatever reason they want.

I am a forced birther for supporting the Hyde Amendment as an example.

[/quote]

"Radical pro-choice" - those people are a virtual non-entity in Europe. Probably because the pro-life movement is far less influential. So, opposing it kills two birds with one stone - it lowers both the number of stupid conservatives and stupid liberals.

A large majority of European countries allow abortion until 12 weeks, unless there are some life-threatening complications for the mother. The latest poll I found (2014) showed that 75% of French people favored unrestricted abortion right (unrestricted meant re:the reason for having an abortion, not a time limit), 19% supported restricted to a number of cases (rape, incest...) and only 6% wanted to limit abortion to life-threatening situations.

Funnily enough, 53% of self-identified Catholics in France are pro-choice, which is about the number in the US overall. And the Catholics are pretty much the most vocal opponents to abortion.

[Raga]

Sure but even so the law is not such that you can get an abortion at any point in pregnancy for any reason that you want paid for by the government. I'm aware of no country on Earth where that's the rule, but the radical people that I'm talking about, that's their position. And anything shy of that is forced birtherism.

[Joblom]

Sure but even so the law is not such that you can get an abortion at any point in pregnancy for any reason that you want paid for by the government. I'm aware of no country on Earth where that's the rule, but the radical people that I'm talking about, that's their position. And anything shy of that is forced birtherism.

Maybe instead of importing hostile foreigners that erode the foundations of the country we could try raising the native birthrate instead? Might go hand in hand with solving the problems of automation and would raise wages too. Say, cut the labor pool in half in the process. Make sense?

You know, I don't really get why people get up is "digital arms" over this Gillette advertisement. It's just advertisement that tried to raise a good point, but failed badly in actually doing it.

What I don't understand is why after years and years of people reacting to Leftist's patronizing and hostile tone, they never change their message. Then I remember they are intellectually dishonest cretins who never argue in good faith combined with a holier than thou attitude and it makes sense.

[Raga]

Hey, what they want is the GOP's proposal for a budget. The border security budget was created by Paul Ryan, Pelosi just copied it.

Also, the number of immigrants is already going down at the moment, including at the Mexican border. Why pray tell should the House decide to give a blank check for an expensive wall that's there to fix a mostly nonexistent issue?

It's not the number of Mexicans illegally coming to the US that's rising, it's the number of non-Mexicans through that border (and even then, the overall number of illegal migrants through that border has been going down). So if Trump really wanted to "reduce the number of immigrants coming in", instead of regularly insulting him, he should cooperate with the Mexican president to help clean up his country from gang influence - illegal migrants are one of the most lucrative traffics there is now, some gangs have been thriving helping people pass the border (or pretending they do at any rate).

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/20 ... om-mexico/
http://www.pewhispanic.org/2018/11/27/u ... -a-decade/

He actually did strike a deal with Mexico for migrants to stay there while their asylum claims were processed. It was roundly and repeatedly decried as "racist," "cynical," "illegal" and lots of other choice words.

I've said before that the wall is a boondoggle, but you are missing part of my point. I sincerely believe that *nobody* in the government (or the overwhelming majority anyway) involved in the debate about the wall actually gives a fuck if it's a useful solution to an actual problem. This is 100% a symbolic fight for all parties concerned.

The projected federal budget for 2019 is 4.47 trillion dollars. 5.6 billion is *beans.* (For a point of reference, look at the amount of money we routinely drop researching and building jets).

In January, the Democrats were supposedly so insistent on DACA that they shut down the government for a weekend over it. Now, they won't take it (along with some protections for about 300,000 additional people) in exchange for a purely symbolic gesture that does nothing and will have 0 actual impact on migration or immigration rates.

What does that say? It means they want their own symbolic victories that mostly do nothing to address the underlying immigration situation, but without allowing Trump or the right to have any of their purely symbolic victories.

If they can't even bargain on pointless symbolism, where the heck is the evidence that they have any intent to ever do anything actually meaningful in terms of negotiation or compromise?

And as for the numbers of migrants going down, this is true but I'll just say this. I'm willing to bet $20 (no, seriously, I'll paypal it to you or give it to you in Steam credits or whatever) that the instant that the Democrats get back fully in power and liberalize the asylum system the way they want to that the numbers of migrants will mysteriously and dramatically surge.

[TTTX]

Maybe instead of importing hostile foreigners that erode the foundations of the country we could try raising the native birthrate instead? Might go hand in hand with solving the problems of automation and would raise wages too. Say, cut the labor pool in half in the process. Make sense?

basically it comes down to money and greed. Companies believe cheap labor is saving them money the rich people then can put down in their own pockets.

basically one of the reasons why China is chosen among other things for companies to have their factories, + less regulations, the government is still a dictatorship like Russia is.

[Mobius_118]

Carried over from regular thread.

I've had shine from every southern state

Right. You and Anthony Bourdain.

Also, your northern redneck is showing, cuz.

And with that I'm done (outside of PMs or the slapfights thread anyway).

Yeah you know I'm a northern redneck. Guns, booze, and lifted Jeeps. I just think the government is important and our taxes should fund public works, education, and healthcare, right up there with border security that's worked for years now and non-wasteful military ventures.

But my Minnesota accent is tame, and my time in Georgia was interesting when I didn't have conservatives trying to kill me. Turns out alcohol is the greatest negotiator.

[Raga]

Your politics have nothing to do with it. I never even brought that up.

But inasmuch as "alcohol is the greatest negotiator" is an inoffensive truism, it makes for as good a place to end it as any.

[Mobius_118]

Your politics have nothing to do with it. I never even brought that up.

But inasmuch as "alcohol is the greatest negotiator" is an inoffensive truism, it makes for as good a place to end it as any.

Agreed.

Want to try MN Apple Pie or no?

[Raga]

Your politics have nothing to do with it. I never even brought that up.

But inasmuch as "alcohol is the greatest negotiator" is an inoffensive truism, it makes for as good a place to end it as any.

Agreed.

Want to try MN Apple Pie or no?

Sure. In that hypothetical scenario you can take a bottle of my dad's. I have 0 doubt that assorted species of rednecks (in difference parts of the country and in other countries at that) can make good homemade shit. They've been doing it for hundreds of years.

[Mobius_118]

If all goes well I'll be in Arizona with the girlfriend as she goes to Grad School by September, so we'll see.

[Mobius_118]

Just stay in the slap fight thread where you belong.

It's not my fault that you're such a shithead that you can't even talk to someone you hate normally. I do it all the time, and I can maintain a level of calm that you clearly cannot.

I have a suggestion: Every time you see my name, you should take a minute and do some breathing exercises. Calm down. Realize that while I've moved on from whatever bullshit seems to have happened back then, you have not. Who's really at fault here, when you're the one who keeps acting like a fucking child every time I DARE to be cordial with you.

[TheodoricFriede]

Go away.

[Mobius_118]

Go away.

Avoidance of conflict after instigating it.

How about we finish whatever problem you have, and we can move past it? I'm not going anywhere.

[Sinekein]

Sure but even so the law is not such that you can get an abortion at any point in pregnancy for any reason that you want paid for by the government. I'm aware of no country on Earth where that's the rule, but the radical people that I'm talking about, that's their position. And anything shy of that is forced birtherism.

My point is merely that those idiots are a US exception. The US also happen to have an extremely prominent and vocal pro-life movement. And I don't think the two are unrelated. The abortion debate has been front and center in the US opinion for years, you even have people who solely vote on that issue, and as a consequence, and aside from the sane opponents to those regressives, you got the birth of stupid opinions like this.

When the debate is more subdued - because people are overwhelmingly more tolerant - then fringe opinions like this stay in the shadows (and even prolife idiots remain mostly muted - now in France at least they've mostly moved towards fighting ART, and they're mostly losing that fight too).

What does that say? It means they want their own symbolic victories that mostly do nothing to address the underlying immigration situation, but without allowing Trump or the right to have any of their purely symbolic victories.

Trump's entire persona revolves around being a macho "winner". Handing him that win is more than likely to rile up his supporters and convince people that he can get things done. If his one big campaign motto remains undone by the end of his mandate, it can only hurt his reelection chances.

And I'm sorry but I can't see "getting rid of Trump" as a zero-sum game. The US would stand to be net winners if he's removed from office in 2020. And lo and behold, so would the rest of the world, what with that gigantic piece of shit shredding various climate agreements that had been signed, and encouraging coal and oil industries.

So this victory goes beyond mere symbolism. Plus they get to save $5.7bn, and not look like assholes. What have they got to lose?

And as for the numbers of migrants going down, this is true but I'll just say this. I'm willing to bet $20 (no, seriously, I'll paypal it to you or give it to you in Steam credits or whatever) that the instant that the Democrats get back fully in power and liberalize the asylum system the way they want to that the numbers of migrants will mysteriously and dramatically surge.

Of course they will. As it stands the US job system is in dire need of cheap labor. Bringing migrants in is one of the few, if not the only, way to correct that problem.

That does not mean that crime will rise, just that because the US are a rich, Western civilization, they aren't producing enough workers to fill all the low-qualification jobs they need. And they're getting older and older which means more and more retired (but live) people who use societal services but do not contribute to them. To solve it, you need a fresh workforce, and I'm pretty sure deep down the GOP would rather have the Democrats do that by bringing migrants in, instead of giving social incentives to get kids (that's an almost socialist idea). So they'll whine and appeal to fear, but they'll be extremely happy to rely on those new migrants later on (especially as for conservatives who enjoy fearmongering they're an endless source of campaign spots).

The idea that Western countries can somehow live in autarcy is ridiculous. There is no rich society on Earth that is producing enough kids to keep a steady age pyramid and constant total population.

[TheodoricFriede]

Avoidance of conflict after instigating it.

You aren't fooling anyone.

I am just happy I am not the only one that see's through you anymore.

Go away. Find a new group. Re-invent yourself there, or dont. Just go.

[Mobius_118]

Avoidance of conflict after instigating it.

You aren't fooling anyone.

I am just happy I am not the only one that see's through you anymore.

Go away. Find a new group. Re-invent yourself there, or dont. Just go.

Really? You exploded on me when I said something that was adding to the conversation.

You're fucking nuts. You're the one who has to course correct before you blow a blood vessel in your brain.

[TTTX]

It's not my fault that you're such a shithead that you can't even talk to someone you hate normally. I do it all the time, and I can maintain a level of calm that you clearly cannot.

I have a suggestion: Every time you see my name, you should take a minute and do some breathing exercises. Calm down. Realize that while I've moved on from whatever bullshit seems to have happened back then, you have not. Who's really at fault here, when you're the one who keeps acting like a fucking child every time I DARE to be cordial with you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKMMCPeiQoc

I'm going leave this here and say this pretty much define every time you talk to each other.

[TheodoricFriede]

I'm going leave this here and say this pretty much define every time you talk to each other.

Once again a reminder that I have, repeatedly, pitched a scenario in which neither of us interact ever again.

[Mobius_118]

Yeah, pretty much. Maybe we should have a dance off with knives.

Once again a reminder that I have, repeatedly, pitched a scenario in which neither of us interact ever again.

And again I tell you that isn't how life works, so start acting like an adult and deal with it.

[TheodoricFriede]

And again I tell you that isn't how life works, so start acting like an adult and deal with it.

Adult.

You sit on the corner of the playground going "Nya Nya!" and you have the audacity to call yourself an adult.

You continually interact with someone who wants nothing to do with you and you call yourself an adult.

You can barely string two sentences together without saying something vulgar and you call yourself an adult.

You're an edgelord redneck teen, and you always will be.

[Raga]

The idea that Western countries can somehow live in autarcy is ridiculous. There is no rich society on Earth that is producing enough kids to keep a steady age pyramid and constant total population.

Uh, when did I ever claim this? And, sure, all those guys making $7.25/hr in chicken plants and picking strawberries will definitely be providing all the tax money to fund Medicare and Social Security. And they certainly won't be needing any social services in the meantime to keep their kids from starving and dying of whooping cough because they have no money for immunizations and doctors.

We have gone in circles with this like half a dozen times at this point. The reason that portions of the US economy rely heavily on migrant labor is because it has been cheaper up to this point to rely on immigrant labor than it has been to do other things like automation and outsourcing (in some industries, basically the ones that require 0 skill. The semi-skilled ones such as manufacturing long since got automated or outsourced). If migrant labor becomes even incrementally more expensive (such as by say insisting that working conditions are actually humane which is something even Democrats want), you will not see a marked improvement in the lives of migrant workers. You will instead see a precipitous drop in the demand for migrant labor as businesses move towards cheaper labor models.

This is incidentally one of the reasons unemployment is so singularly abyssal for migrants in Sweden. Before the big influx of immigrants in recent years, Sweden had successfully adopted an economic model that revolved around automating and outsourcing most crappy work and having an economy dominated by highly educated, highly skilled workers. Now, there is literally nothing for these migrants to do in Sweden.

[TTTX]

Once again a reminder that I have, repeatedly, pitched a scenario in which neither of us interact ever again.

Doesn't work, when he won't do that.

Yeah, pretty much. Maybe we should have a dance off with knives.

And again I tell you that isn't how life works, so start acting like an adult and deal with it.

that would be awkward.

Yes, you can, I have done it with real life people.

[Mobius_118]

Whatever you say.

I offered you repeatedly a way to deal with your issues where we can all talk like adults without you having a stroke every time. You refused.

You continuously explode every time I dare post, yet insist that I'm the toxic one.

You're exploding over fact about scotch. Keep that in mind.

[TheodoricFriede]

Doesn't work, when he won't do that.



Yes, you can, I have done it with real life people.

Thank you. Thank you for noticing.

[TTTX]

You're exploding over fact about scotch. Keep that in mind.

Because he hates you, you idiot.

You are on his shit list and when you are on such a list you rarely get off, I should know I have one as well and there are people on it all the way back from my childhood I haven't forgiving.

[TTTX]

Thank you. Thank you for noticing.

You are absolutely welcome.

[Sinekein]

Uh, when did I ever claim this? And, sure, all those guys making $7.25/hr in chicken plants and picking strawberries will definitely be providing all the tax money to fund Medicare and Social Security. And they certainly won't be needing any social services in the meantime to keep their kids from starving and dying of whooping cough because they have no money for immunizations and doctors.

We have a high immigration rate in France and we have mostly avoided outbreaks of avoidable diseases - antivaxxers are the ones responsible when that happens (and it's not necessarily in poor, migrant-heavy areas). And the system is very far from perfect. We're absolutely dealing with the consequence of having treated migrants like shit in the past - now we act surprised because their kids don't feel very French.

Bottom line: it's not impossible with a bit of solidarity (more than there is in France, which actually doesn't mean that much).

The conundrum is always, and will always be, "we don't have money for this". But there's money. In tax havens, either outside or inside (Vermont) the US. By getting it the US could really pay for a lot of healthcare, maybe even a couple of walls. Also if the FBI started also looking at shady dealings from US companies, instead of only displaying efficiency when it comes to hammering down EU ones.

As long as wage gaps keep increasing, there can be no fully working system.

The reason that portions of the US economy rely heavily on migrant labor is because it has been cheaper up to this point to rely on immigrant labor than it has been to do other things like automation and outsourcing (in some industries, basically the ones that require 0 skill. The semi-skilled ones such as manufacturing long since got automated or outsourced). If migrant labor becomes even incrementally more expensive (such as by say insisting that working conditions are actually humane which is something even Democrats want), you will not see a marked improvement in the lives of migrant workers. You will instead see a precipitous drop in the demand for migrant labor as businesses move towards cheaper labor models.

Except outsourcing is by essence something that can only work temporarily - because you make whoever is working richer over time, see China - before you're back with the same problem. Automation meanwhile is an utopia: there will always be a need for cheap labor, and the richer a society gets, the harder it is to find "natural" members who want to do them.

Automation is also an interesting philosophical concept, because its logical extreme is a world where working is unnecessary, which means that the concept of personal wealth will need to be redefined. We're far from there, and I wager that at this rate Earth will be fucked up beyond repair before we can reach it.

This is incidentally one of the reasons unemployment is so singularly abyssal for migrants in Sweden. Before the big influx of immigrants in recent years, Sweden had successfully adopted an economic model that revolved around automating and outsourcing most crappy work and having an economy dominated by highly educated, highly skilled workers. Now, there is literally nothing for these migrants to do in Sweden.

Obviously. Sweden is a country with a very low population density which developed an economic model accounting for that fact. So obviously it is not adapted to a large influx of migrants, because those influx never happened in modern times. Germany though actively sought migrants to counteract the effects of its aging population and work in the industry, and it's mostly going well economically.

As far as demography goes, the US are much further away from Sweden than they are from France or Germany. Economically too.

[Mobius_118]

I know he hates me. I've known for years. I'm just far more forgiving. If you think I'm that much of an idiot, then you don't know me at all.

I've moved passed whatever bullshit caused this years ago. Perhaps he should do the same. It was years ago.

Thank you. Thank you for noticing.

You are absolutely welcome.

Get a room.

[Sinekein]

You are on his shit list and when you are on such a list you rarely get off, I should know I have one as well and there are people on it all the way back from my childhood I haven't forgiving.

That is absolutely not a healthy way to deal with personal relationships.

[TheodoricFriede]

That is absolutely not a healthy way to deal with personal relationships.

Amusingly, no one asked you.

[Mobius_118]

You're just being an asshole. A particularly shitty one.