The Sam Spade Memorial Good Post Gallery

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

Do any of them make excuses for the Soviet Union and North Korea?

One does ironically. The rest don't.

[NOVA Green]

Generic platitudes about muh commies are now the height of hindsight, according to the still hilariously-named BRTD.

There's two things that made me completely turn against communism:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?action=profile;u=6976;sa=showPosts
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?action=profile;u=6269;sa=showPosts

And of course a realization that if there was any value to Marxism whatsoever, then why does no one except for edgy teenagers and college kids support it today?

If there was any value to hipster Christianity whatsoever, then why does no one except for hipsters practice it?

My lead pastor is a 45-year old father of two who lives in Edina.

Exactly, and the point you made is similarly silly.

So Marxists exist today who aren't Snowstalker-ish edgelords, people who casually talk about genocide and gulags as something completely necessary and OK and/or can only communicate in unreadably dense walls of text? Then why are they virtually impossible to find? I mean you'd think this forum with its wide variety of ideologies would attract at least a few.

None of this has anything to do with how terrible Italian communists circa 1948 were of course.

You are out of your element Donny (Dude/BRTD)

Pray tell how terrible the Italian Communists were in '48?

So look at a country where the Italian Communists were the only political movement actively engaged in the armed struggle against a brutal Fascist regime for decades, over ten years prior to the rise of the Nazis in Germany....

Sure, there were a few brutal incidents in several provinces of Italy against Fascists and collaborators, in areas that had experienced mass brutality and and genocide.... does it make it right, no.

Meanwhile you have the US/UK secret intelligence agencies that subverted the first Post WW II "Free Elections" in Italy, that basically turned the levers of power over to our "allies" that allowed the rise of the Mafia, and breaking the backs of the Communist Dock Workers in the Port Cities of Marseilles and Naples, essentially created the biggest criminal cartel network that Europe had ever experienced.....

I would recommend checking out the movie "The French Connection" and I can certainly provide you with links to academic books that describe this in much more extensive detail...

Based upon some of your comments regarding US domestic politics, I assumed you were a well read individual, but quite frankly sir, your apologies for European Fascism/Nazism and trying to create a false moral equivalency based upon Minnesota social norms of 2017, is getting a bit tiring, and a true disservice to those that fought and died in Nazi and Fascist Europe during WW II.

[Virginiá]

@KingSweden, this is the sort of thing I like to chew on, so I'll reply a bit lengthy.

Snippets...

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His supporters want retribution more than they want lasting legislative change. In fact, many of them are unhappy with the status quo but their anger is focused on retributive means, rather than means to satiate their lives. Trump's voters, mainly, are expressing anger and lashing out at other groups instead of cohesively drawing up plans to better their lives. This is masturbatory politics. (And I use that word carefully and deliberately).

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Correct. The focus on the media as the enemy is Trump's way of trying to inoculate himself from members of his own party, and expending energy on those who would dissent from him in the Republican Party. The very honest truth is this: Trump does not care about the Republican Party or the conservative movement. He does not care about who is on the 2018 ballot, just that he wins - even if it comes at the expense of the GOP. Right now, the GOP is a vehicle for his personal success.

But let's be honest. Every Republican defending him on Atlas is underestimating how much they're considered expendable by Trump. After Trump goes, he doesn't care what the future is for the GOP. He doesn't care as long as the history books lionize him.

The Republicans need to be pushing an agenda, and notice, they're not. They're spending all their time dealing with Trump and his angry tweets and the controversies he kicks up. Trump is turning into an ineffective President everytime he drives the story away from a legislative agenda and drives up his negative ratings. (Which makes it much easier for the Democrats to oppose him). 48 Democrats consistently oppose his cabinet nominations, and they read polls daily. They figure that there's room to oppose him.

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Pretty much.

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Bingo. Contrast to W's first 3 months in office, when he passed a tax cut, No Child Left Behind Act, and strove for the image of the compassionate conservative Republican eager to rebuild the Republican coalition in 2001. This is nothing like W and Trump is milking the tweets until he can't anymore. And the more he tweets angrily, the more he divides the country, the more he sets the GOP base against the Democratic base. It's like nobody in the White House understands that he needs goodwill from the country when a real situation emerges, or a recession, or whatever.

He and his supporters are so hell bent on vengeance politics that they're ignoring all the typical requisites of a governing majority - pass your agenda, create support for that agenda, debate it, and get the country behind you. Trump is systematically alienating the country he was elected to run and losing political capital in the process. He's wasted 30 days in angry repartee with the media, and saw his approval ratings dive from a tie to negative ratings.

How much longer do they think they can go? His supporters can't answer you because they don't know the strategy, they don't know the game plan, and they don't even have talking points because day to day, Trump's White House careens from crisis to crisis.

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Yes. It's akin to a one night stand compared to the work of creating a marriage. Coalitions are like marriages, you have to work at them, constantly, to keep them running. The GOP has traded marriage for a plethora of one night stands designed to create temporary happiness.

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Yup. They know he's a weak president, they know he has no mandate, and his governing coalition is weak as well. They know that from day one, there's huge pockets of opposition to Donald Trump and they are writing a story in which THEY are the moral heroes of the story, not Trump and his supporters.

Note on the supporters - they are locked in an identity battle, in which they feel compelled to support Trump against the media, because, if Trump goes down, they feel like they've lost the "war," an imaginary war for their cultural identity, but a war nonetheless. This is why they are so stubborn, because they live in fear that if they lose the cultural war, they lose everything. So they're insistent that everyone stays on the sinking ship, because they refuse to let go of the last timber of the rotting wood.

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Pretty much. We are in a period of transition, where the old majority collapses, there's emerging gridlock and decay in our political and media institutions, and we are grappling with the future. This is all a long drawn out prologue to the finale. But you knew that I'd say that.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Generic platitudes about muh commies are now the height of hindsight, according to the still hilariously-named BRTD.

There's two things that made me completely turn against communism:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?action=profile;u=6976;sa=showPosts
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?action=profile;u=6269;sa=showPosts

And of course a realization that if there was any value to Marxism whatsoever, then why does no one except for edgy teenagers and college kids support it today?

If there was any value to hipster Christianity whatsoever, then why does no one except for hipsters practice it?

My lead pastor is a 45-year old father of two who lives in Edina.

Exactly, and the point you made is similarly silly.

So Marxists exist today who aren't Snowstalker-ish edgelords, people who casually talk about genocide and gulags as something completely necessary and OK and/or can only communicate in unreadably dense walls of text? Then why are they virtually impossible to find? I mean you'd think this forum with its wide variety of ideologies would attract at least a few.

None of this has anything to do with how terrible Italian communists circa 1948 were of course.

You are out of your element Donny (Dude/BRTD)

Pray tell how terrible the Italian Communists were in '48?

So look at a country where the Italian Communists were the only political movement actively engaged in the armed struggle against a brutal Fascist regime for decades, over ten years prior to the rise of the Nazis in Germany....

Sure, there were a few brutal incidents in several provinces of Italy against Fascists and collaborators, in areas that had experienced mass brutality and and genocide.... does it make it right, no.

Meanwhile you have the US/UK secret intelligence agencies that subverted the first Post WW II "Free Elections" in Italy, that basically turned the levers of power over to our "allies" that allowed the rise of the Mafia, and breaking the backs of the Communist Dock Workers in the Port Cities of Marseilles and Naples, essentially created the biggest criminal cartel network that Europe had ever experienced.....

I would recommend checking out the movie "The French Connection" and I can certainly provide you with links to academic books that describe this in much more extensive detail...

Based upon some of your comments regarding US domestic politics, I assumed you were a well read individual, but quite frankly sir, your apologies for European Fascism/Nazism and trying to create a false moral equivalency based upon Minnesota social norms of 2017, is getting a bit tiring, and a true disservice to those that fought and died in Nazi and Fascist Europe during WW II.

Seeing as how I'm pro-Antifa and love Inglorious Basterds, I really don't see how I'm making apologies for European Fascism/Nazism. Which was also irrelevant in 1948 and weren't taking part in the election, rather it was a centrist party (which was also insanely corrupt yes and not really worth defending against anyone other than Stalinists, but at least they didn't send thousands of Italian to labor camps.)

As for why the Italian Communists in 1948 were terrible, gee I don't know, because they were openly supportive of Stalin? I mean, SERIOUSLY. Furthermore look at, I don't know, EVERY COUNTRY IN EUROPE WITH A COMMUNIST GOVERNMENT. They were awful everywhere.

(Also the election was hardly "rigged" by the CIA, as Al noted it wasn't particularly close and it's clear the Communists wouldn't have won without the CIA's involvement either. Furthermore it also completely ignores the massive Soviet intervention as well. Take out both the Soviets and CIA and it's clear that DC would've still won.)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Togliatti was a loyal Stalinist drone who would have done whatever his master requested. Like it's true that the PCI was always one of the least orthodox of Communist parties, but only began to move away from the Soviet line under Berlinguer.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Togliatti was a loyal Stalinist drone who would have done whatever his master requested. Like it's true that the PCI was always one of the least orthodox of Communist parties, but only began to move away from the Soviet line under Berlinguer.

Actually, that began under Longo, as the PCI condemned the crushing of the Prague Spring.

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

I'm sure there are some worse people at the state legislator level, since it's a big country, and a broad spectrum of awfulness exists.  But among reasonably prominent American politicians who I'm aware of, I can't think of anyone who I think would be a worse choice for president.  There are certainly people who are worse along certain dimensions.  E.g., Trump has at least run a large organization before (if not very well) so I'd guess that Ben Carson would be even more incompetent than Trump in terms of management abilities.  But Trump is pretty much uniquely terrible along a combination of dimensions:

1) He is horribly insecure, way more narcissistic than even your average politician, and has the maturity and emotional intelligence of a grade schooler.

2) He has billions of dollars of assets around the world, with no real transparency behind any of it, and so his administration is corrupt on a scale that would be impossible for most politicians.

3) He has a mercantilist view of international economics that, among other things, pushes him towards burning up the US’s relationship with many of our traditional allies because “they’re ripping us off on trade” or whatever.

4) Relatedly, he doesn’t attempt to justify the US government’s actions, either at home or abroad, in moral terms at all.  As Jonathan Chait notes here, Trump has praised authoritarian leaders for their ruthlessness countless times over the years, including praising the Chinese government for their reaction to Tiananmen Square:

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Peter Beinart is also worth a read on this topic:

”For Trump, “We Have a Lot of Killers" Isn’t a Criticism”

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I mean, who else says “Let’s steal other countries’ oil.” or “Let’s kill terrorists’ family members on purpose.”  It’s pretty horrific.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

I feel like Tarintino's movies always involve some universally despised, one dimensional villain ("Nazi's!" or "Knights of the Golden Circle" or whatever) which to me is rather annoying. He never creates a plot that demands he spend sometime drafting an original background; no, instead, he just creates his heroic persona and sends him out against the latest historical American villain in vogue.

All of his movies are basically the same: about an illegal immigrant that escapes prison and kills al-Baghdadi to avenge something something explosions something something Eva Longoria's sweaty, shiny tits, something something fireball. The end.

Of course, I also hate action movies in general. 

[The world will shine with light in our nightmare]

For the record, I'm not in Tulsi's camp for 2020 (or anyone else's for that matter), but if you want an argument for why she could be a legitimate contender beyond "muh berniebros," here goes.

First, it's not like there's a blueprint for what makes a serious contender.  From Barack Obama to Bill Clinton to George W. Bush to Ronald Reagan, there's a lot of differences among their resumes and backgrounds.  Plus, those are just people who won the presidency, not even counting the litany of people who didn't win but were definitely serious challengers in the primary.  So, I'm not sure there's any blueprint for what makes a serious contender, but there's definitely things that have helped candidates in the past.

She is a combat veteran and one of the few female veterans in congress.  Being a veteran isn't really the silver bullet that it used to be in American politics, but it's still a big boost.  Virtually any veteran politician gets labeled as a rising star (Jason Kander, etc.  Note that people are wanting him to run for president with even less experience than Tulsi Gabbard).  Being a veteran helps her in a number of ways.  It gives her real life experience to draw from outside of government and politics.  That's *always* a plus, especially when that experience is something like serving your country or being some sort of humanitarian.  It's also pretty much the backbone of her ideology.  She's used her experiences to justify a lot of her positions, from her evolution on lgbtq rights to her position on war and foreign policy.  It also helps her that she's been actively working to help veterans as a Congresswoman.  She's sponsored and worked on several veterans bills, everything from sexual assault in the military, to helping veterans find work, to helping disabled veterans get on flights, and combating child abuse.  These are all things that make her look genuine (genuine people work on issues that have always been important to them, like Tim Kaine said last year), they boost her standing among the veteran community for caring about their issues, and a lot of them are kind of issues that are difficult to attack for her opponents.  Lastly, as a woman, being a veteran helps give her an appearance of strength, even if her views on war are relatively dovish.  She's also on both the committees on foreign affairs and armed services, which are two of the traditional stepping stone committees to running for president.

She is also a prolific and skilled fundraiser with friends on capital hill.  The last I checked, she had one of the largest warchests of any politician in Hawaii with the exception of maybe Brian Schatz.  She definitely has a bigger warchest than Hirono, I know that much.  The fact that she has a contingent of loyal footsoldiers outside of her district means she has a bigger pool of donors to draw from than most people in the House of Representatives.  I know she's been taking the Bernie strategy of asking for very small donations but asking for them frequently, which proved to be a winning strategy for fundraising last year.  Her strength as a fundraiser also means that she has the ability to help other politicians if she wants to.  For example, last year she asked her supporters to donate to Rick Nolan's campaign toward the end of the election season to help him get over the finish line.  Considering that Nolan just barely won election, I wouldn't be surprised if he's feeling pretty appreciative of Tulsi.  I don't know of a lot of other specific examples, but that is exactly the kind of thing that can earn a politician endorsements in a primary.  It also means that she'll have the money to get out her message, which is always a problem for presidential contenders.  And despite arguments to the contrary, it means she is safe in her district.

Lastly, she seems to have her fingers dug into a lot of pots.  She's fairly popular on both the progressive left and the right for different reasons.  She has some fairly right wing views on foreign policy, but she's also an environmentalist and she's taken up some popular progressive causes from Dakota Access protests, to campaigning against military aid to Saudi Arabia, being anti-TPP and all that.  Like I've said before, politicians that are willing to fight for those causes do not grow on trees.  I think that this might actually be her undoing, because while it means she has a lot of potential supporters for very different reasons, it also means that lots of very different people have reasons to attack her and dislike her.  But it still means that she has a potentially wider pool of supporters than candidates that are more niche in terms of their issues and ideology.

[MT Treasurer]

Bernie is the Democrat who is built the worst for Virginia...and Trump is the Republican who is built the worst for the state as well.

Hard to know.  I'd give a slight advantage to Bernie though. 

Why do you guys think Bernie was such a terrible fit for VA?  Repressed black vote?  What exactly is the theory here?

The reason NOVA swung heavily towards Clinton in some areas was because the intelligence and establishment community was strongly against Trump... not because they loved Clinton.  Bernie was a bit more of a wild card than Clinton but much less of a wild card than Trump, so they would have still swung to Bernie.  Couple that with a diverse electorate and a generic Democrat easily wins the state despite massive rural turnout downstate.  There are simply not enough heavily Republican areas in the state to counteract NOVA.  Hillary didn't inspire massive turnout and NOVA was still way too much despite Trump inspiring massive turnout in the rural areas.  Virginia is a perpetual lost cause for Republicans, they have just enough votes to make it within 4 points but no more votes than that.

[Mr. Smith]

Comedy is subjective. Who are you to tell me or anyone else what is or isn't funny?

Perhaps you would prefer that I write posts expounding someone else's opinions? What an inane line of crap.

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Obama after her death:

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Oh, my, how transgressive! Shock humor is stupid and overplayed, and Joan Rivers was neither thought-provoking nor particularly funny. Obama’s comment, if sincere, is far from his first show of poor judgment and infatuation with celebrity gossip culture. Most likely he was just responding to the death of public figure in a respectful and politically correct way.
[/quote]

[heatcharger]

Is it too much to ask neoliberal Democratic hacks to actually learn anything from their embarrassing defeat 3 months ago?

I'm not asking them to change their minds (it's not like Ellison was a socialist, after all) but just to stop thinking the party is their property.

But I ask you this- what do you want?
Do you just want people you consider allies to win, no matter what? That's not how democracy works. In a democracy, you need to get the most votes. If you want to win, you need to win. Win primaries, win conventions, win elections. In 2016, you didn't win. Because Hillary got more votes. As simple as that. In the Party Chair elections, you lost narrowly. Because Perez got more votes. What the hell is wrong with that? It's democracy.

[LLR]

Breasts are not muscles.

Note that Adam is clearly male while Satan is clearly female.

Regards
DL

[Beet]

An WV will still vote republican. I'm sorry to be bitter but f**k em

And if Democrats keep talking about West Virginians the way you do, I can't say that I blame them for voting Republican  It drives me up the wall when I hear fellow Democrats go into these arrogant, condescending "what's the matter with Kansas" rants about how WWC voters and rural whites are stupid for not voting for people from a party that looks at them as though they were rats that just crawled out of the sewer.  I've heard folks (not politicians, people I interact with on a regular basis) whom I consider smart, generally decent people say absolutely repulsive things about low-income, working-class whites.  

Examples (they all come from folks who spent a significant amount of their lives in NYC, are either highly affluent or from wealthy families, graduated college and in some cases even went to grad school, don't talk like this about any other group AFAIK, and are extremely liberal):
 
- "Hey [name redacted], you know how so many of them [rural whites in red states] are dying of drug overdoses, especially in the South?  Wouldn't it be funny if that was kind of like natural selection in action.  I know it's horrible, but it's also kind of cool how you can still see that sort of thing occurring even today."  Fun fact: I was so shocked to hear this from the person who said it and so disgusted by the comment that I almost choked on the water I was drinking at the time (to the point that I literally fell out of my chair because I couldn't breath).

- "I want to hear one of these guys [white voters in Appalachia who supported Trump] admit that they were wrong and that if they tried reading a book or something, they'd know better than to vote for someone who will screw them over whenever he gets half a chance."

- In response to me arguing that Hillary had no message for WWC voters and that the Democratic Party can't treat them with such contempt if it wants them to be a major part of their coalition, the person who made the preceding comment replied: "How stupid are these people?  We shouldn't have to spell it out for them like that when it was obvious that only the Democrats actually cared about them!  Hillary could've just kept making money as a corporate lawyer or something, but instead she decided to spend her whole life helping those people [rural, low-income whites] and they repaid her by voting for Donald Trump.  Everything that has happened under Trump is their fault and it's about time they started admitting it and apologized to the rest of the country."  

- "The country will be so much better once all the old white people finally die off.  I know that's a terrible thing to say, but it's really true."  

- "It's really too bad that there's not a way to let West Virginia and the Confederate states secede, we'd be better off without them."  To be fair, this one was probably a joke, but you get the point.  

This is how a number of liberals in affluent, educated liberals talk about WWC voters (especially WV, I'm not quite sure what they did to be singled-out as the definitive Evil Red State by so many liberals, tbh), especially those from West Virginia.  We hear all kinds of condescending and patronizing comments about rural whites and WWC voters from national Democrats.  

Many of these folks feel the Democrats betrayed them with NAFTA and Cap-and-Trade (I have no problem with cap-and-trade and think Obama was right to push for it, just so there's no confusion) and the Democrats have no message for these voters nor is there any serious attempt to address the fact that they are getting left behind in the new economy.  For example, you never hear national Democrats calling for (much less actually fighting for) tax increases to fund programs to re-train coal miners so that they can support their families once the coal industry's slow death spiral reaches its inevitable conclusion.  

Is it any wonder that so many of these folks decide that if both parties are going to screw them over on economic issues, they might as well vote for the party whose positions on social issues are closer to their own?  I really can't say I blame them for voting that way and I think there is a real lack of empathy and an elitist, class-based sense of entitlement among many liberals regarding WWC votes.  "How dare some lower-income voters support Republicans! " 

P.S: West Virginia has a Democratic Governor and it also has a Democratic Senator who lead the fight for universal background checks (and has refused to run away from that position even in the face of Trump's landslide in WV last November, incredible political pressure from the NRA, and despite being up for re-election in 2018).  Furthermore, WV-3 could be pretty competitive with a decent candidate if Jenkins retires and WV-2 would also likely be competitive with a strong Democratic candidate (it certainly was in 2014), especially with Alex Mooney as the incumbent (a man who is exactly the type of weak incumbent in a district that leans toward his party who can get unexpectedly swept out in a wave election and will never be completely safe).

[heatcharger]

We have an innate culture.

I remember Germans and Austrians sarcastically saying things like "what do you have for cuisine in America?  Burgers?"

You know what we have?  Choices.  So very many more than you will ever have.  You are so eager to show me your fancy powdered sugar pancakes or your schnitzels or your potato salad... we've all had that already... we've had 10 million different kinds of potato salad... eggy/mayo slop, bacon oil vinegar, spicy chipotle, vegan friendly, vegan hostile, skin on, skin off, warm, cold, .. potato salad in the pot nine days old.  

Our culture is the Friday night fish fry, the Wisconsin boo-yah, the Texas BBQ, the state fair, the open road, super awful train service, football, the school band, the kids playing percussion in the atrium at a sh**tty mall with an audience of confused passersby slurping their giant smoothies...

This country is packed to the brim with culture.  And our identity is this:  We're Americans.  Subject to change.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

The short answer is "Yes".

The long answer is "Of f**king course you need taxes, unless you seriously think the 40-50% of GDP needed for the State to perform its most socially beneficial functions could all be raised through people's sheer goodwill. Look, I'm not the person to say people are selfish monsters, but come on."

[Antonio the Sixth]

I think people have a very shallow understanding of how moderation (for good reasons) happen.

Most of us don't read most posts. That is, most of us read a very, very tiny fraction of all posts. This is why a lot of people get by without being banned, because most moderators aren't accessing all information. This is also why there are always people shouting angrily on this board about "how can you ban poster X and let poster Y run freely!" Usually when that happens I have no idea who poster Y is or what their offence is. When for whatever reason someone becomes a focal point it often emerges that they should have been banned long ago. This was a case like that.

Now, let's keep in mind that this is a 7 day ban. That's a really short time. As such, it can be considered a warning. The melodrama people create over a 7 day ban is pretty over the top.

A separate issue is whether you think freedom of speech should allow posters on Dave's forum to advocate rape. You might of course think so. I'm sure other forums like AAD can accommodate that sort of thing. If Dave doesn't want it he's entitled to not have it. If you can't bear to be without comments about how rape victims are sluts who have it coming, well, the internet is a big place. There are plenty of forums where you can satisfy that urge and get to "engage intellectually" with those people. There is an odd obsession with some Atlas posters that Atlas Forum should serve all their needs, whether it be porn or defending rape but I never really understood that.

[White Trash]

We have an innate culture.

I remember Germans and Austrians sarcastically saying things like "what do you have for cuisine in America?  Burgers?"

You know what we have?  Choices.  So very many more than you will ever have.  You are so eager to show me your fancy powdered sugar pancakes or your schnitzels or your potato salad... we've all had that already... we've had 10 million different kinds of potato salad... eggy/mayo slop, bacon oil vinegar, spicy chipotle, vegan friendly, vegan hostile, skin on, skin off, warm, cold, .. potato salad in the pot nine days old.  

Our culture is the Friday night fish fry, the Wisconsin boo-yah, the Texas BBQ, the state fair, the open road, super awful train service, football, the school band, the kids playing percussion in the atrium at a sh**tty mall with an audience of confused passersby slurping their giant smoothies...

This country is packed to the brim with culture.  And our identity is this:  We're Americans.  Subject to change.

Good bless that post.

[Ebowed]

I think people have a very shallow understanding of how moderation (for good reasons) happen.

Most of us don't read most posts. That is, most of us read a very, very tiny fraction of all posts. This is why a lot of people get by without being banned, because most moderators aren't accessing all information. This is also why there are always people shouting angrily on this board about "how can you ban poster X and let poster Y run freely!" Usually when that happens I have no idea who poster Y is or what their offence is. When for whatever reason someone becomes a focal point it often emerges that they should have been banned long ago. This was a case like that.

Now, let's keep in mind that this is a 7 day ban. That's a really short time. As such, it can be considered a warning. The melodrama people create over a 7 day ban is pretty over the top.

A separate issue is whether you think freedom of speech should allow posters on Dave's forum to advocate rape. You might of course think so. I'm sure other forums like AAD can accommodate that sort of thing. If Dave doesn't want it he's entitled to not have it. If you can't bear to be without comments about how rape victims are sluts who have it coming, well, the internet is a big place. There are plenty of forums where you can satisfy that urge and get to "engage intellectually" with those people. There is an odd obsession with some Atlas posters that Atlas Forum should serve all their needs, whether it be porn or defending rape but I never really understood that.

I've seen a lot more rape apologism on this forum than AAD.  What a strange, almost projective, comment to make.

This "good post gallery" is literally named after a rape apologist / PUA MRA.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

I think people have a very shallow understanding of how moderation (for good reasons) happen.

Most of us don't read most posts. That is, most of us read a very, very tiny fraction of all posts. This is why a lot of people get by without being banned, because most moderators aren't accessing all information. This is also why there are always people shouting angrily on this board about "how can you ban poster X and let poster Y run freely!" Usually when that happens I have no idea who poster Y is or what their offence is. When for whatever reason someone becomes a focal point it often emerges that they should have been banned long ago. This was a case like that.

Now, let's keep in mind that this is a 7 day ban. That's a really short time. As such, it can be considered a warning. The melodrama people create over a 7 day ban is pretty over the top.

A separate issue is whether you think freedom of speech should allow posters on Dave's forum to advocate rape. You might of course think so. I'm sure other forums like AAD can accommodate that sort of thing. If Dave doesn't want it he's entitled to not have it. If you can't bear to be without comments about how rape victims are sluts who have it coming, well, the internet is a big place. There are plenty of forums where you can satisfy that urge and get to "engage intellectually" with those people. There is an odd obsession with some Atlas posters that Atlas Forum should serve all their needs, whether it be porn or defending rape but I never really understood that.

I've seen a lot more rape apologism on this forum than AAD.  What a strange, almost projective, comment to make.

AAD can accommodate that sort of thing for sure, because it's not viewable to everybody on the web.

[Antonio the Sixth]

This "good post gallery" is literally named after a rape apologist / PUA MRA.

Who now exclusively posts on AAD.

[Ebowed]

This "good post gallery" is literally named after a rape apologist / PUA MRA.

Who now exclusively posts on AAD.

Fair, though he has been largely MIA since October.

His vague predictions passing off as brilliance schtick fell apart, it seems.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I've never read any rape apologist posts on AAD FYI. It's funny how some here seem to think it's some sort of wretched hive when the only real content it has that goes beyond here is the swearing and the more borderline NSFW pics in the Hot Girls Thread (which by the way is most contributed to by female posters.)

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

It's hard to say whether students were bothered by it.  People are complicated.  There's been plenty of times throughout my life where someone did something that hurt me but I just smiled and said "okay."  Doesn't mean I didn't go in my room and cry afterwards.  Who knows?  Some students might even tease each other about it.  Why encourage that?

Even if it was the student's idea, the teacher could have stepped in.  They are the authority figure and need to be able to guide the students about what is acceptable behavior and what isn't.  Obviously it's awkward if they came up with the idea, but they could have just as easily done the project without actually using their classmates as the examples.  Also, it's problematic that only the black children were used as the slaves in this project.  It reinforces social divisions when people need to be coming together.  Students need to be taught about history, including the slave trade, but they don't need to be identifying each other as who would be the slave and who would be the master if this was 1786.

Maybe it wasn't a positive experience for everyone. We have no way of knowing. What is clear is that no student took any kind of action to indicate that the experience had bothered them, and that local and national media alike have chosen to sensationalize the story. That's what they do: Outrage and controversy begets clicks, views, and impressions.

We also don't know what kind of racial attitudes, whether implicit or explicit, were behind the students' actions. When children are given autonomy, they are almost guaranteed to skirt lines that shouldn't be crossed occasionally. To me, this seems like a critical part of learning. Moreover, children aren't necessarily likely to understand why they shouldn't do something just because it could be made to look bad in over-sensationalized television news pieces.

The overriding concern for me is that I don't think we need be so quick to judge what happens in a classroom. I am sure that anyone with a bit of imagination could come up with a series of horrifying headlines describing events from their schooling that were, in fact, innocuous or even valuable. That's in the nature of learning, and in the nature of children. Far more harm was done to my education by paranoid administrators, overzealous school boards, and overprotective and neurotic parents than by any mistakes made by my classmates or teachers.

Moreover, we live in a country in which teachers are constantly demeaned and controlled, regimented and rationalized. Why do you think the profession has become so low status compared to where it stood decades ago? Part of it is because brilliant career-oriented women now have more options, part of it is because the pay is awful, and part of it is because of the absurd certification requirements. But if the aging professionals whom I know are any indication, the loss of autonomy has also done a great deal to chase some of the most energetic, enthusiastic, and intelligent educators out of the field, or at least out of public schools.

(The greatest horror is in realizing that few students have any choice. Unless their parents - who are probably both overworked, very likely divorced, and almost certainly indebted - have the resources to choose how their children are educated, they will spend thirteen years or more in a system that increasingly resembles a prison sentence and that fails to bring even basic numeracy or literacy to a large share of its graduates. But this is a tangential point.)

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Hey, Feinstein, if he doesn't resign, how about you resign instead?