The Sam Spade Memorial Good Post Gallery

[LLR]

I can only imagine the reaction if Hillary won as expected.

"LOL, what a bunch of [r-words]! They said he could win Minnesota and he can't even win safe-R North Carolina."
"How stupid and educated are the Trump cultists to expect a win!"
"It was so obvious. No one would consider that kind of lunatic! America is stupid but not that stupid"
"Just as I predicted - a shy Hillary effect. Easy 10 point win!"

Comparably, Trump supporters around here have allowed Hillary people time to grieve as we understand the loss was tough, especially under these circumstances. I apologize more people coming out and acknowledging that they actually voted for him is tough on you.

[Santander]

I can only imagine the reaction if Hillary won as expected.

"LOL, what a bunch of [r-words]! They said he could win Minnesota and he can't even win safe-R North Carolina."
"How stupid and educated are the Trump cultists to expect a win!"
"It was so obvious. No one would consider that kind of lunatic! America is stupid but not that stupid"
"Just as I predicted - a shy Hillary effect. Easy 10 point win!"

Comparably, Trump supporters around here have allowed Hillary people time to grieve as we understand the loss was tough, especially under these circumstances. I apologize more people coming out and acknowledging that they actually voted for him is tough on you.

Proof that smilo is possibly the best poster here.

[Beet]

The catch is that a respectable, richer, less vulgarly attention-seeking Trump would have probably been too little known to run for president. Imagine if Steve Bren, Bill Ross, or Bob Toll were to run for President. Do you know who those are?

Real estate is too unglamourous to make you Bezos, Musk, or Jobs-level famous. It does not produce fortunes large enough to make one as a famous as, say, Warren Buffett either. Maybe he could tone down the vulgarity and tastelessness while remaining well known, and our cameras would today be trained not on Trump Tower but 740 Park or one of the larger townhouses on the UES. But it'd be hard.

[bagelman]

Natural selection is eugenics. We just need to stop leftist attempts to redefine strong as weak and beautiful as ugly.

Quite ironic given the implicit leftist endorsement of positive eugenics (at least for such valued traits as promiscuity and indolence)

Not leaving people to starve in the streets for being worthless lazy sluts or the children thereof='positive eugenics,' apparently. Slink off back to /pol/ where you belong, fash.

I would think that taxing those that are better able to plan for the future to fund those that cannot (and providing more money for each additional kid) is the very essence of "encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits"

The purpose of these policies, you vile piece of sh**t, is to ameliorate the situation caused by the fact that these people are already having these children. Sure, you can argue that the effect of the policies is to tacitly encourage poor women to have 'too many' children--if you assume that the working poor of this country are Hugolian mauvais pauvre who value children and their lives based on how much sweet sweet welfare moolah they're 'good for'. However, arguing that says far more about you than it does about them, and the proposed 'solutions' that eventuate from this type of thinking obscure the real issues at play and also lead to endemic pediatric malnutrition in what is otherwise a first-world country.

One of the biggest actual reasons why poor women have 'too many' children too young and by too many men (no scare quotes around too in these cases because these are actual objective problems; I, the Catholic convert, am certainly not going to argue that teen pregnancy and promiscuity are somehow adiaphora) is that they simply see no reason not too, because unlike their f**ked-up neurotic 'betters' most of them still see children as a blessing and as a light to lives that don't really have much else going for them. Why not have a child at sixteen, if your chance of going to college is equally nonexistent whether you do or not? Why not shack up with another man after a while, if the father of your first child won't and can't marry you because he's in prison for a bullsh**t drug offense? Your proposed answer--'because if you do we will let you and your children die in a heap, you abhorrent slut'--certainly is an answer, but so are 'because you have legitimate hopes and dreams' and 'because public universities are actually affordable these days' and 'because you actually have attainable models of stable married love and family in your community who aren't senescent grandparents who got married back in the old days when the working class was still intact'.

I've been compared to Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the past, and I took that as a compliment because while Moynihan may have had some racist presuppositions and was certainly more of an advocate of 'tough love' in welfare policy than I think is appropriate he also did actually have a vision of an America in which working families of all races could form and stay together and live free from want. He identified the problem as that too many children were being raised without fathers—a debatable diagnosis, and obviously one that’s ~problematic~ by a lot of people’s lights, but one that’s a far cry from saying that it somehow constitutes ‘eugenics’ to not let ‘the wrong kind’ of children (or children born to ‘the wrong kind’ of mothers—WHORES WHORES WHORES WHORES WH, amirite?) have intolerably horrible lives and die miserable screaming deaths.

You cannot kill the poor mothers of America or their children. You can starve them and let them die of preventable diseases and kick them out onto the mean streets to your heart’s content, but there will always be more of them as long as people live free from outright murder, relatively free from forced sterilization, and spiritually free from the cancerous idea that children are at worst crushing burdens and at best optional accessories to be looked into (and if necessary made to order, possibly even using one of these disgusting tarts as a surrogate—it’s not like she’s using her womb for anything that would reasonably be more important to her than the precious Chester Peyton Fairweather IV you selected from his dozens of siblings) once you’re sick of your Bichon Frise. You can bitch and moan about having to support these undeserving ‘takers’ or ‘forty-seven-per-centers’ all the livelong day, but it’s useful to reflect, especially this time of year, that the primal image of the mother and child will still be here when all the best-laid plans of the upper and upper-middle classes are one with Nineveh and Tyre. We should by now have all learned the bitter lesson, that none of us in the end are ‘makers’.

P.S. It’s impossible to know the ultimate destiny of all but a select few people, and I’m certainly not one to despair of the mercy of God on even the most inveterate sinner, but it’s a distinct possibility that your namesake is currently burning in hell for his sins against the American reading public. I hope he is not. But if he is, there would be worse places to put him than the second ditch of the Malebolge, reserved for flatterers. Henry Louis Mencken spent his life flattering and fawning and toadying to a pseudo-intellectual pukwudgie aristocracy half of his own invention, insinuating his readers into his little cabal where they could titter about how superior they were to the ‘boobs’ and anybody so uppity as to try to better herself through something like the Chautauqua Movement. To snowclone a devastating but somewhat unfair observation that Christopher Hitchens, the farce to Mencken’s tragedy, made about Mother Teresa, not only did Mencken think it was beneath him to comfort the afflicted, he didn’t even bother to afflict the comfortable. For your sake, I hope you mend your ways and do not follow after him.

[White Trash]

Was just about to post that here. Nathan is becoming one of my favorite posters.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Oh that's good.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It's not really surprising he would hire CEOs of large corporations.  This is Trump's world and these are the people he knows.  The problem with this of course is that working in the private sector where your job is to maximize profit even if that means breaking laws (or finding ways so that the laws don't affect your business) is very different than being a public servant where your job is the exact opposite.  You're basically asked to switch from being selfish to being selfless and I'm not sure how easy that is or how willing they are to do it.
The Bush administration had many people from the public sector, especially from the oil industry and the construction sector and we all saw where that led us (these were probably the only two industries that benefited from the war in Iraq).

[Simfan34]

Memorialise this for the ages:

Re: Post something that makes no sense--

Donald Trump will become the next President of the United States.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

Banning abortion is doomed to fail...it's like prohibition.

Before Roe vs Wade...there were a million abortions done a year under the table. All banning abortion would do is move it back to those circumstances. And since we all know that no state would be willing to fully enforce jailing women who have abortions, just like with prohibition, then the ban is doomed to fail.

Never understood pro-lifers, their viewpoint on abortion is doomed to fail just like in every other country where abortion is banned

This argument only works if you presume, at least on some level, that there's nothing wrong with abortion. What it essentially boils down to is "Well, people will get abortions anyway, so we may as well help them do it safely." I could just as easily say "Well, people will murder each other anyway, so no since trying to stop them. Better that they do it out in the open where people can get help and defend themselves rather than in some back alley where people are defenseless." If you believe that abortion is murder, neither of these arguments make sense - because murder is a fundamentally wrong action. It's not about making it "rare". It's not about making it "safer". It's about doing everything we can to stop it. If we even save one life as a result of abortion prohibition, it's worth it. Because every human life is precious.

Furthermore, you assume that every woman out there who wants to get an abortion will stop at nothing to get it. That's obviously not true. Even leaving aside the natural inclination of the populace to follow the law out of fear of getting caught, the current situation is one in which women are quite frankly told this by pro-choice organizations, counselors, employers, doctors, and so on: "Well, you want that promotion, don't you? You want that high role in the military, don't you? You want lots of money for yourself, don't you? You don't have enough money for your child, do you? Well, get an abortion. It's legal, so it must be moral!!!!!!!!!". Women are told to not even think about whether it is moral, because it being legal makes it moral (logic that blows up when pro-choice people go on talk shows and tell people to not "legislate morality"), and to not even enter the child into their considerations, just think about themselves, themselves, themselves. With that sort of advice, it's not hard to see why you would resolve to get an abortion. In a world where abortion is illegal, counselors and doctors would never bring it up. A woman would express displeasure at being pregnant and simply be told "it's a fact of life". Abortion would only be promoted in whispered conversations, hardly the yuge-promotion-by-every-medium-possible it gets now. So it follows that abortion would become less common.

Furthermore, the idea of abortion taking place in some side street with no safety procedures is a myth created by the abortion industry. The term "back-alley abortion" actually meant that people would enter a doctor's, nurse's, or midwife's office to get an abortion through a door accessed through the back alley rather than through the front door, to avoid arousing suspicion from any hostile observers. No inherent bad medical practice is meant by the term.

http://afterabortion.org/2011/the-truth-about-back-alley-abortions/


--------------

Finally, I know what you're going to say. "Well, why not pass policies that reduce abortion without making it illegal!", to which my response is "Why is it that democrats only care about making abortion rare when boxed into a corner?". Aside from a few lines on NARAL's website about "supporting reducing the need for abortion", I've seen no evidence that democrats really even care that abortion is rare. The idea of abortion being rare was removed from the democratic platform in 2008. Bill Clinton coined the phrase "Safe, Legal, and Rare", but Hillary simply used "Safe and Legal", a language repeated by democrats across the country, including by NARAL itself at times. The word rare has disappeared. When Hillary defended the pro-choice position in a debate, it was all about "I don't want to make that decision for her". I never heard her describe birth control or sex education as something that could reduce the need for abortions, or even clearly say that reducing the need for abortions is important, then or at any other point in the campaign. Wait, don't tell me why. It's because you believe that what is developing in the womb is not a "human", or at least not a "person". That's where every single argument for abortion derives from, or at least what it needs to survive - the belief that we aren't dealing with a "proper" member of our species, when in fact we are in every respect.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The idea that white working class voters backed Trump due to "white identity politics" makes no sense whatsoever because so many of them voted for a Black graduate of Harvard Law School who is a champagne sipping, latte liberal. The difference was that he actually made an effort to campaign on tangible policy issues, distanced himself from "special interest groups" (to his credit, Obama earnestly seemed to despise people like George Soros), actually campaigned on accomplishments, like rescuing the auto industry etc.

Maybe white working class voters backed Trump due to "white identity politics". Maybe they're racist. What history should teach you is that this shouldn't matter: the white working class was the bedrock of the Democratic Party from the 60s onward and backed stereotypically liberal candidates against Republicans time and time and time again. The Iron Range of Minnesota never budged in its support for people like McGovern and Humphrey and so on.

So yeah, I think you should pull your head of your rear end and realize that this is prejudice. Do you know who loved George H.W. Bush's blatant and disgusting race-baiting campaign? Affluent "moderates ". Do you know who voted for Dukakis regardless of the fact that he loved Willie Horton Negroes or whatever? A bunch of gun-toting hicks. I suspect that people like you only care about racism when it comes from those people and sounds like it's in the wrong tone but when it sounds respectable and is hidden, it's acceptable and okay.

edit: mostly I think it's wild that a bunch of idiots online think that the white working class is racist meme holds up when so many of these people voted for Obama twice. Maybe they're racist but it's good that Obama tricked racists into voting for him, proof that racism can be shallow and unimportant in the polling place. The less important that is in motivating people, the better. You don't want to encourage people to act on racism by daring them to act on it by scolding them. So dumb that I have to be punished for this mentality when it's white liberals who are promoting it.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

The idea that white working class voters backed Trump due to "white identity politics" makes no sense whatsoever because so many of them voted for a Black graduate of Harvard Law School who is a champagne sipping, latte liberal. The difference was that he actually made an effort to campaign on tangible policy issues, distanced himself from "special interest groups" (to his credit, Obama earnestly seemed to despise people like George Soros), actually campaigned on accomplishments, like rescuing the auto industry etc.

Maybe white working class voters backed Trump due to "white identity politics". Maybe they're racist. What history should teach you is that this shouldn't matter: the white working class was the bedrock of the Democratic Party from the 60s onward and backed stereotypically liberal candidates against Republicans time and time and time again. The Iron Range of Minnesota never budged in its support for people like McGovern and Humphrey and so on.

So yeah, I think you should pull your head of your rear end and realize that this is prejudice. Do you know who loved George H.W. Bush's blatant and disgusting race-baiting campaign? Affluent "moderates ". Do you know who voted for Dukakis regardless of the fact that he loved Willie Horton Negroes or whatever? A bunch of gun-toting hicks. I suspect that people like you only care about racism when it comes from those people and sounds like it's in the wrong tone but when it sounds respectable and is hidden, it's acceptable and okay.

edit: mostly I think it's wild that a bunch of idiots online think that the white working class is racist meme holds up when so many of these people voted for Obama twice. Maybe they're racist but it's good that Obama tricked racists into voting for him, proof that racism can be shallow and unimportant in the polling place. The less important that is in motivating people, the better. You don't want to encourage people to act on racism by daring them to act on it by scolding them. So dumb that I have to be punished for this mentality when it's white liberals who are promoting it.

Came here to post this

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Wow, a few very basic and cursory remarks by me became extremely controversial. Lawmakers make laws, the governor serves under them. I would have said the same back when I was a Democrat.

Because it seems like you're dumbing down the entire situation to dismiss what they are doing. First off, they are taking away a boatload of appointments from the Gov simply so Cooper can't appoint any Democrats to any positions of significance and they are transferring powers to offices Republicans control all in a bid to control power. Just normal lawmaking? They called a special session just weeks before a Democrat takes over, a session that might not even be constitutional and made a ton of huge changes to the way the government works literally without any real discussion over a 24 - 36 hour period. Come on Beet.

Second, part of this package of shame includes changing the way the State Supreme Court hears constitutional challenges and appeals. This isn't a coincidence. Democrats just won the majority back on the bench and Republicans are seeking to impede the ability of the State SC to hear challenges to the GOP's controversial laws in a reasonable amount of time. Now, instead of the court being able to hear challenges to their inevitable gerrymanders in 2021-2022, it'll have to go through possibly years of additional appeals as the GOP-majority appellate court takes their sweet old time. This was the whole point - extend the amount of time they can abuse rigged maps or unconstitutional voter suppression laws.

And that doesn't really touch on all of what they are doing here.

So yes, your post was very reminiscent of how Republicans seem to like to address dirty tricks their party pulls - simplify it as you did or rationalize in some other way. I mean you didn't even seem phased by the intent here, or the specifics even. You just b-lined it right for the justifications department.


All of which makes your statement so silly:

This controversy is a bit absurd.

And if you can't see why you are being absurd yourself, then I dunno what else to say.

[Inks]ing obliterated. The Vicar of Beet status: The Told Man and the Sea.

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

Merry Christmas everyone!

Here is a 'holiday special' post (because this issue matters a great deal to me and I can't not respond to it)


People who are severely mentally or physically disabled are a burden. A huge burden. As are the elderly and most children for that matter (I'll leave that there for reasons that should be obvious) A massive part of my old job was acting in a medical-legal capacity with children who were severely disabled. I have first hand experience of the family difficulties and the support difficulties surrounding this. I have allocated funding, medical treatment, respite care and long term residential care. I've communicated with those who can communicate. I've appointed legal advocates for them. I have went to court for them.

It's taxing and ludicrously expensive. You can love someone to the point you'd do anything for them, but they are still a burden. Saying someone is a 'burden' or a 'strain' says nothing and implies nothing with respect to how you actually view that person. Pretending otherwise, or feigning obliviousness is in fact, a backhanded insult. If you couch a 'burden' in neutral 'loving' terms, that leads to people not taking your requirements and your needs for help and assistance seriously. Because 'didn't you say they weren't a burden?' We're already seeing this (in the UK at least) when it comes to residential provision. I'm sorry Nathan, but saying that caring for someone who can't care for themselves is a 'privilege and honor' is nothing but wank. It's not. It's a duty. It's a burden. And if you're doing it or thinking about it as some form of self reflection of penance then you'd last 5 minutes either caring for a loved one or for others in a voluntary or professional capacity.

That's point one. Point two, and on a different line of thought entirely, is that those who have an debilitating or inhibitive disability that is hereditary and that they would not wish upon their childrenas much they are able to deal with it in themselves, tend to be the most supportive of ways and means to mitigate this. Which pro-life fetishists tend not to have much time for because that involves both the act of termination and the use of embryology (founded as it is on the destructive study of embryos in the first instance, and the selective manner of implantation) as factors. The alternative is not having biological children; surrogacy or adoption. And while all of these are wonderful and noble things to do, it is a slap in the face to someone who can use these means in order to have their own biological children.

[Mr. Smith]

Here is a 'holiday special' post (because this issue matters a great deal to me and I can't not respond to it)

It matters a great deal to me as well, I suspect not for entirely dissimilar reasons.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I hardly think acknowledging and being sincere about the burdensome aspects of being a caregiver and processing the experience as salutary are mutually exclusive, but what do I know, it's not like I've been on both ends of this dynamic at different times in my life or anything.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Excuse me?

I simply don't think it's morally acceptable to cut a swath through one's own children in order to selectively decide what aspects of one's life they inherit. You can sneer at this (and yes, you are sneering, and have been for months if not years) and imply that it means my attitudes towards people's inner eugenic thought processes are wicked and unfair all you like but all doing so accomplishes is frustrating me and making me hope you never speak to me again.

I don't wish to discuss this or any related subject with you further.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

The idea that white working class voters backed Trump due to "white identity politics" makes no sense whatsoever because so many of them voted for a Black graduate of Harvard Law School who is a champagne sipping, latte liberal. The difference was that he actually made an effort to campaign on tangible policy issues, distanced himself from "special interest groups" (to his credit, Obama earnestly seemed to despise people like George Soros), actually campaigned on accomplishments, like rescuing the auto industry etc.

Maybe white working class voters backed Trump due to "white identity politics". Maybe they're racist. What history should teach you is that this shouldn't matter: the white working class was the bedrock of the Democratic Party from the 60s onward and backed stereotypically liberal candidates against Republicans time and time and time again. The Iron Range of Minnesota never budged in its support for people like McGovern and Humphrey and so on.

So yeah, I think you should pull your head of your rear end and realize that this is prejudice. Do you know who loved George H.W. Bush's blatant and disgusting race-baiting campaign? Affluent "moderates ". Do you know who voted for Dukakis regardless of the fact that he loved Willie Horton Negroes or whatever? A bunch of gun-toting hicks. I suspect that people like you only care about racism when it comes from those people and sounds like it's in the wrong tone but when it sounds respectable and is hidden, it's acceptable and okay.

edit: mostly I think it's wild that a bunch of idiots online think that the white working class is racist meme holds up when so many of these people voted for Obama twice. Maybe they're racist but it's good that Obama tricked racists into voting for him, proof that racism can be shallow and unimportant in the polling place. The less important that is in motivating people, the better. You don't want to encourage people to act on racism by daring them to act on it by scolding them. So dumb that I have to be punished for this mentality when it's white liberals who are promoting it.

Came here to post this

Credit where credit is due, that was a superb post.

[Maxwell]

Honestly, still a "dying majority party" resistant to the new demographic and economic realities, and stubbornly clinging to the old ways. That's evidenced by a 2.1% popular vote loss and massive deficits in the big urban blue states. Old white people are certainly dying and that's one reason the popular vote went to the Democrats. They are also a regional party (South, Midwest) which is why they're having popular vote and mandate problems.

I think the obstruction of Obama was a serious error that led to increased polarization - a kind of polarization that will rebound to the Democratic Party's benefits, when the dam bursts.  

You're being intellectually dishonest here. You make no note of how Trump of all people over performed Romney with Hispanic and Black voters by 2% and 3% respectively. Imagine what a non-asshole Trumpist will be able to do.

That would never happen, since Trump's entire appeal is being an asshole.

this so much. This is why I just boil over whenever I read posts that are like "WHAT IF TRUMP NEVER MADE ANY GAFFES I WASN'T PAYING ATTENTION ALL CAMPAIGN"

[Crumpets]

.

 What I never understand about American politics is the inability to understand the importance of foregrounding certain issues on the ground. Both parties tend to get weakened when they decide to run their campaigns with either big button issues like abortion and guns or issues that are abstract for a lot of people .

Let's take abortion. I've seen some people argue that Dems should abandon the issue. And yes, four years ago people with equal sincerity were arguing that the GOP should also abandon the issue. Both approaches would be suicidal. The pro life and pro choice groups are a large part of the dems activist base, and you need activists to be a campaigning party. But crucially - here's the crux - whenever a candidate seems to have abortion as 'tgeir big thing ... they lose. Let's be real: if you are a self identified activist for pro life or pro choice issues, you are not going to swing, and almost certain to turnout. Beyond these people, abortion as an issue is peripheral. They may define as whatever, but they have issues that are far less abstract and relevant to their lives:

- social security
- healthcare
- education
- cost of living
Etc.

None of the issues that Dems ran with (ok, maybe gun control) is necessary poison or cause for immediate concern. But  the Dems did an awful job at framing these issues. Police reform was an issue that Dems jumped the gun on, associating it with the activist movement BLM rather than integrating BLM's raw and real energy within the platform in a way that is relevant to all people (I.e. even though white people are also liable to get bonked by a uniformed thug, the dem messaging allowed it to be compartmentalised as "an issue for blacks" which robbed it of its potential).

So my conclusion is people are arguing that Democrats should or shouldn't be more liberal, or focus to much or not enough on identity politics are basically missing the point. Foreground the economy with bland themes on the ground. Jobs, health, jobs, education, infrastructure, economy.

[Mr. Smith]

None of the issues that Dems ran with (ok, maybe gun control) is necessary poison or cause for immediate concern. But  the Dems did an awful job at framing these issues. Police reform was an issue that Dems jumped the gun on, associating it with the activist movement BLM rather than integrating BLM's raw and real energy within the platform in a way that is relevant to all people (I.e. even though white people are also liable to get bonked by a uniformed thug, the dem messaging allowed it to be compartmentalised as "an issue for blacks" which robbed it of its potential).

Yeah, things like BLM drive me nuts.

Because of my history, I relate a lot of things to the gay rights movement, and this could have gone the path of either of our two most prominent issues:  employment protections and marriage equality.

Employment protections have been a major priority for the Human Rights Campaign for decades, dating back to a time when marriage equality was still a fringe issue.  I think the reason for its failure to date is that it ultimately doesn't have universal appeal.

The underlying assumption is that America must have groups with a different legal status.  (African-American affirmative action is probably the most prominent example.)  These separate legal statuses started as remedies for the most blatant historical discrimination, but liberals seem to want to see how many additional victim groups can be added to the list.  Although not intentional, issues like employment protections (for an enumerated and ever-growing laundry list of small groups, of course) produce an image of a Liberalism that wants to balkanize America as much as possible.

In contrast, marriage equality has more of a universal appeal.  In this case, it was individual gay couples who were fighting for the right to be treated the same as all other couples.  (In contrast to the operatives pushing for employment protections, marriage equality was much less of a top-down issue, and it was never really the darling of the gay political leadership.  There may be a lesson in there somewhere.)

Coinciding with the rise of the marriage issue, increasing numbers of people began coming out of the closet, so the absence of same-sex marriage meant that nearly every American knew someone who could never marry anyone they ever fell in love with.  The "separate legal status" issue was flipped on its head, with those opposed to marriage equality seeming to be the ones to want gays to have a separate legal status.

But enough of my rant on gay rights issues.  Back to Black Lives Matter.

This would have been so easy to make a universal issue.  Police overreach, in theory, is an issue that should make large numbers of people uneasy.  Although it might be applied disproportionately to minorities, it has probably affected, to some degree, large swaths of the population.  There are even those on the Right who probably would have complained just as loudly against an overzealous government and against government employees.

Instead, BLM made this a Blacks-only movement.  Police overreach became a "Black" issue.  Other people need not concern themselves.  There was a point in time when this could have become an "American" issue, but that opportunity seems to have been squandered.  

On the whole, I have a negative opinion of Social Justice Warriors.  They mean well, and I often agree with their goals, but sometimes it seems as if being right--after all, if you're right, you should never compromise on anything less than total victory--is just more important than actually achieving anything.

End of rant.


Back to the gay marriage issue, it seems to me that there were even conservative arguments for marriage equality.  If you argue that the opposite of marriage is not abstinence (which is absurd) but cohabitation, then you could argue that opponents of marriage equality were undermining marriage by creating a large number of couples who were becoming role models for how to live without marriage.

Out of curiosity, are domestic partnership registries even still around?  I never hear anyone talk about them anymore.

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

Gender, unlike sex, is a social construct with little to no basis in human biology. So the obvious answer is number 4.

Well I would quibble with that. I'm pretty sure that though the means by one which expresses their gender is a construct, gender identity is rooted in biological reasons. When children with indeterminate genitals at birth have been raised as the opposite gender (including an infamous case of psychological mispractice) they often in adolescence display signs similar to Gender Dysphoria in trans individuals.

Anyway, my instinct is that I have little inclination to be thrown into an asylum or whatever (I have enough problems with self-esteem without having to wear hospital gowns all day :/ ) so I lean against the second option. The bathroom debate makes me cringe. Mostly at the GOP seeing as the average Republican congressmen is probably a sex predator themself, so it feels a bit like projecting.

added an I(bolded) for readability.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Of course, rapid economic growth in the developing world might stumble due to an impeding trade war, a strengthened dollar that causes debt crises elsewhere, a deepening of the commodities bust, a Chinese financial crisis etc. Inequality within the developing countries has risen, severe poverty remains an intractable problem throughout Latin America etc. This does not even begin to mention the fact that Venezuela is a failed state, that the Philippines elected a mass murderer, that Turkey and Egypt are full-blown authoritarian states now, that Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya are failed states.

Even at a global level, things are awful and trying to paper over this fact by pointing to a decades-long trend comes across as being seriously tone-deaf. You aren't going to find many people in, say, Mexico or China who are feeling optimistic right now. Throughout the world, people are very discontent about the status quo and, even if economic performance in the developing world is decent, it's falling short of people's expectations.

Here's the thing about this nonsense: it doesn't only come across as tone-deaf because it seems to lecture working class Americans or Europeans. It comes across as tone-deaf because it seems to lecture anyone who isn't doing well at the moment. Do people living in extreme poverty in Guatemala care about global trends? No, of course not.

We still live in a world characterized by mass murder, mass population displacement, oppression, disgusting levels of inequality, environmental degradation, avarice/greed and cruelty. 2016 is a year that solidifies this characterization and there's no grounds to be optimistic right now.

[Intell]

This technocratic obsession with "competence" and "qualification" as the being most crucial criterion in choosing political leadership, as if politics is nothing but a managerial job - as opposed to, you know, a question of choosing between values, ideas and models of society. This is one of the most insidious ideological tools for the promotion of neoliberalism.

I was just going to put that here. Beat me to it.

[Horus]

I don't know why people are wobbling around issue as if it detracts from your status as a liberal if you condemn the worst excesses of people ostensibly on your side using politics to satisfy their horrible desires: these four people commited hate crimes and should have the book thrown at them.

I mean, if you really want to be all Gramscian about this and say the distorted and toxic nature of American politics that has culminated in a caricature in thuggishnes being given the highest office In the land has led to this violence being considered appropriate, whatever. But people still have individual agency and these individuals used their agency to kidnap and torture a vulnerable adult for their own merriment.   them, in other words. Hopefully they'll spend twenty years regretting their idiotic thughishness.

[NeverAgain]

I've always liked Perriello, but I'll be volunteering for Northam.  

Change your avatar then.

First of all, Northam is not a Dixiecrat or anything like that. He's not even as conservative as Webb for that matter. He's a typical VA Dem, but further, Perriello isn't even some "progressive hero". He just happened to fight for Obamacare and the Obama administration when it wasn't popular to do so.

Also, you have a Green avatar, lol. Why do you get to insinuate that Miles is too conservative to be a Democrat, if by your own admission you don't fit in the Democratic spectrum either? You should be aware that VA is not a progressive bastion, exemplified by the slew of centrist politicians, as well as Bernie getting crushed in the primary.

My hackishness, and newfound hate of ShadowOfTheWave has made me put this here.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

You won't get anywhere on this site of nanny staters, friend.  Liberty is but an inconvenience in the strive for a perfect society.

Amen.

[RINO Tom]

I don't think I've ever been in here, thanks Grumps.