The Sam Spade Memorial Good Post Gallery

[Marokai Backbeat]

Whether or not this is the intention is besides the point, whenever you use the term "political correctness", a phenomenon that doesn't have a basis in reality,

As insufferable (and usually bigoted) as the right-wing critics of "political correctness" usually are, this is demonstrably false.

Your opinion has layers of nuance and complexity to it and is therefore uncomfortable and wrong.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Most presidential historians rank by consequentiality, rightly or wrongly. That's why top ten lists are dominated by some shady and perhaps controversial characters who still have effects reverberating today - Jackso, Polk, Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt etc. Coolidge was never a man interested in building a 'legacy' and indeed a few decades after his presidency, all remnants were eroded away. That small government, austere and Prohibitionist, vaguely isolationist, highly protectionist model he craved was washed away by FDR and his successors; the modern GOP (even those who speak highly of the man) has no desire to return to that party.

He firmly didn't understand or even care about how the very role of President had shifted beneath his feet. Consider the contrast between Reagan and his hero Coolidge when disasters struck. After the Mississippi floods, Coolidge didn't really get that he was expected to be something more than a distant figurehead. Was it an admirable stance, as he maintained, to avoid politicking by staying away? Possibly - but as future President Reagan would show upon the Challenger disaster, such aloofness was rapidly becoming fatal for the role of POTUS. In foreign policy and immigration, again, Coolidge laid no lasting impact. His Immigration Act lasted the longest time, but that would be dismantled in the Johnson administration - now recognising the Act as an anachronistic racist failure.

Again there is much to admire about the character about of Calvin Coolidge - his steps against racism (aforementioned Immigration Acts aside)and lynching were extremely laudable. I get why he is loved by a certain type of person. I even get his 'wit' - although it reminds me of social awkwardness more than anything else. But was Calvin Coolidge a man of consequence, a president who will be go down in the ages? No, of course not. And, quite frankly, that is just how he would prefer to be remembered.

[Marokai Backbeat]

No. Despite having the technological ability end such ailments, poverty, malnutrution, repression, premature mortality, disgusting working conditions, war, inequality, illiteracy and deprivation are endemic, and even treated as "just part of the natural order". I'm increasingly convinced that one of the enemies of human progress is the nation-state, but petty nationalism continues to shackle us, and most every other internationalist I've met sounds like a hippy-dippy moron. Even in my first world country, we are led by a small clique from a handful of public schools; yet any attempt to challenge the supremacy of these institutions is met with a screech. The idle rich get away with murder while the poor get sucked dry. There is no solidarity between oppressed persons, despite the fevered dreams of trots. Abuse of children and women by those in powerful goes on unabated. Despite the grave strain the World is under, the system is only achingly slowly moving or even conceiving the thought that will give arise to such a shift.

I mean liberal capitalism is the best solution that has been tried out at the moment. But to say such a system is the best humanity can come up with would basically border on misanthropy...

[Marokai Backbeat]

Yeah, it's a good thing that people don't constantly talk that way about political orientation, sports, and literally everything else that people disagree over.

Seriously, I'm with Joe.  It's such a weird attack to me, considering that Christians are frequently hugely dismissive of atheists and yet I generally don't see people presuming that pithy criticisms of atheism are try-hardism (or whatever the fedora thing is supposed to represent).  Is it because one behavior is more "socially weird"?  If so, that's a terrible reason.

It just seems self-evident that uncommon beliefs (<5% of the population), no matter how correct they may be, will be disproportionately held by kooks.  I don't get the point of mocking that.  Isn't it more of a problem when people with widespread beliefs behave dismissively like that?  If so, why is the presumption of try-hardism disproportionately levied at the uncommon beliefs?  Isn't dismissing people who express uncommon beliefs as kooks/try-hards is part of the reason why not many normal people express uncommon beliefs?

Sometimes this stuff seems especially vicious among online liberal types, almost as if they were going out of their way to prove that they're "not one of those people" -- even if means being dickish to people who aren't actually being kooks or try-hards.

I recognize that this is OT and I might even still technically moderate this subforum (idk) but I needed to rant.  I seriously don't get you sometimes, Internet.