Hot, Bad & Unpopular Takes

[America's Sweetheart ❤/𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕭𝖔𝖔𝖙𝖞 𝖂𝖆𝖗𝖗𝖎𝖔𝖗]

I didn't realize this was an unpopular opinion until recently. but if I had to name something positive about slavery, it would be that without it my girlfriend's ancestors would never have been in the US and as such we wouldn't be together right now.

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

Jordan Peterson is wrong sometimes but is generally a good psychologist.

This is the dude that actively refused to respect his trans students pronouns because "free speech".

Note that this refusal is within contexts of debates about the issue itself and is otherwise hypothetical.  No one claimed he called them the wrong thing.

So he swore he wouldn't respect any trans students but its okay because...

He doesn't have any trans students. Try applying this logic to the N word or something.

You mean if someone wanted to be called the N word?    No, I'd refuse.

No. If someone refused to not call someone the n word.

Comparing being called the wrong pronoun to being called a racial slur semmes rather hyperbolic...

It's a difference of degree, not kind. Misgendering is still quite bad and hurtful.

[DavidB.]

I didn't realize this was an unpopular opinion until recently. but if I had to name something positive about slavery, it would be that without it my girlfriend's ancestors would never have been in the US and as such we wouldn't be together right now.

Part of why this opinion might be unpopular is because it is worded rather badly. This isn't "something positive about slavery". It is something positive about the fact that your girlfriend exists, and she would probably not have existed without slavery, but that does not mean slavery itself has any positive aspects.

Similarly, I would definitely not have been born if the Nazis had not taken power in Germany and subsequently annexed Austria, as the latter event led my grandfather to flee to the Netherlands and, later on, to meet my grandmother. This isn't something "positive" about Nazism or the Anschluß, though, and it would be in extraordinarily poor taste to formulate it as such.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

I didn't realize this was an unpopular opinion until recently. but if I had to name something positive about slavery, it would be that without it my girlfriend's ancestors would never have been in the US and as such we wouldn't be together right now.

Part of why this opinion might be unpopular is because it is worded rather badly. This isn't "something positive about slavery". It is something positive about the fact that your girlfriend exists, and she would probably not have existed without slavery, but that does not mean slavery itself has any positive aspects.

Similarly, I would definitely not have been born if the Nazis had not taken power in Germany and subsequently annexed Austria, as the latter event led my grandfather to flee to the Netherlands and, later on, to meet my grandmother. This isn't something "positive" about Nazism or the Anschluß, though, and it would be in extraordinarily poor taste to formulate it as such.

Well, I wouldn't have been born if not for the Soviets invading from the east on September 17, 1939, forcing my great-grandpa's entire family to flee (well, let's just say the NKVD has a thick file on him) across the Bug river and settling down in Warsaw (yes, I realize the irony of them being actually safer in the Nazi-occupied zone), and subsequently remaining there, save for the immediate aftermath of the Warsaw Uprising and civilian deportations. And with the eastern frontiers being annexed by Stalin after the war there was no point of returning. Otherwise I doubt my grandfather would ever have meet my grandmother, who was from the Warsaw area.

But yes, it still would be in terrible taste for me to call the war, occupation and destruction of Warsaw in 1944 "positive developments".

[America's Sweetheart ❤/𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕭𝖔𝖔𝖙𝖞 𝖂𝖆𝖗𝖗𝖎𝖔𝖗]

I didn't realize this was an unpopular opinion until recently. but if I had to name something positive about slavery, it would be that without it my girlfriend's ancestors would never have been in the US and as such we wouldn't be together right now.

Part of why this opinion might be unpopular is because it is worded rather badly. This isn't "something positive about slavery". It is something positive about the fact that your girlfriend exists, and she would probably not have existed without slavery, but that does not mean slavery itself has any positive aspects.

Similarly, I would definitely not have been born if the Nazis had not taken power in Germany and subsequently annexed Austria, as the latter event led my grandfather to flee to the Netherlands and, later on, to meet my grandmother. This isn't something "positive" about Nazism or the Anschluß, though, and it would be in extraordinarily poor taste to formulate it as such.

Yes, I'm not always the best at wording things. The bolded part is exactly what I meant, and I obviously apologize if anyone thought otherwise.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Btw, speaking of being actually "safer" in the Nazi-occupied zone, it's really a weird story. My great-grandfather's mom was Jewish and facial features were clearly semitic. A very bad face to wear in a Nazi-controlled land.

Fortunately, he was originally from Poznań, which was, when he was growing up, a part of the German Empire, and thus was fluent in German. Fluent enough to pass as a native. Sometimes when random controls on the streets or arrests occures, he just approached a German in charge and started giving him a dressing-down with an Austrian accent. A dumbfounded Nazi always apologized and let him go.

It wasn't really necessary, since his kennkarte protected him from being arrested (he needed this cover due to his high position withing the Government-in-exile Delegation for Occupied Areas), but I guess he liked to troll them from time to time

[Mr. Morden]

Similarly, I would definitely not have been born if the Nazis had not taken power in Germany and subsequently annexed Austria, as the latter event led my grandfather to flee to the Netherlands and, later on, to meet my grandmother. This isn't something "positive" about Nazism or the Anschluß, though, and it would be in extraordinarily poor taste to formulate it as such.

To take this even farther....in all likelihood, virtually no one currently on Earth who was born in the 1940s or later would have existed if the Nazis hadn't come to power, simply because the lives of everyone around at that time would have unfolded rather differently, and so many people would have married different partners and had different children.  (I guess this doesn't necessarily apply to neutral countries in far flung reaches of the globe, but close enough.).

One idea for a sci-fi story I had was what if someone had a time machine and went back in time a few centuries, and didn't do anything particularly remarkable while there, but just because of the butterfly effect from the interactions that the protagonist had while in the past, when he/she returns to the present, everyone they knew is gone, and replaced by a different set of people resulting from the new timeline.  The world as a whole is largely the same, but the individual people in it are all different.  Some sci-fi author has probably already written a story like that, but I'm not aware of it.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Governor Snyder had nothing to do with the Flint water debacle, and he is not a racist.
Likewise, photo ID laws, the death penalty, police officers, the War on Drugs, etc. are not racist, at least not inherently.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

The most recent Republican president who was not a racist was Dwight D Eisenhower.

[Virginiá]

Governor Snyder had nothing to do with the Flint water debacle, and he is not a racist.
Likewise, photo ID laws, the death penalty, police officers, the War on Drugs, etc. are not racist, at least not inherently.

It's not inherently racist, but there are no doubt racist people pushing for it for racist motives.

I do actually believe the vast majority of Republican politicians push for voter ID mostly for partisan gain. The fact that African Americans vote almost unanimously Democratic unfortunately makes them a target, but as that North Carolina operative said, if they voted for Republicans, then the GOP would not try to impede their ability to vote. Likewise, while crying "voter fraud" after losing every election is pretty distasteful, there is nothing inherently racist about it I don't think, even if voter fraud was a common excuse back in the day. The John Doe Wisconsin emails showed that Republicans used accusations of voter fraud as a dubious form of political strategy when an election goes down to the wire.

Pushing for strict photo ID laws and undermining confidence in our system with fake accusations of voter fraud is just the natural evolution of a win-at-all-costs political system, where ethics, morals and principles are ejected in favor of any advantage in winning elections. The sad thing is, some of the laws they pass don't even end up helping them, and undermining confidence in our elections doesn't always help them either, but they do it all just to have a single chance at gaining a few extra votes.

That's how little all of this matters to them. They'd rather destroy public confidence in our system than spend a couple years with no power.

[Sestak]

The most recent Republican president who was not a racist was Dwight D Eisenhower.

Ford was racist?

[RINO Tom]

The most recent Republican president who was not a racist was Dwight D Eisenhower.

What about pre-Obama for Democrats?  And you really think that Eisenhower - a man born in Texas in 1890 - was a less racist human than Gerald Ford or George W. Bush?  Like, honestly?  LOL.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

The most recent Republican president who was not a racist was Dwight D Eisenhower.

What about pre-Obama for Democrats?  And you really think that Eisenhower - a man born in Texas in 1890 - was a less racist human than Gerald Ford or George W. Bush?  Like, honestly?  LOL.

It's not like I'd call Ike a racist, but he was rather lukewarm about pursuing the civil rights until the courts took a major step on this.

[RINO Tom]

The most recent Republican president who was not a racist was Dwight D Eisenhower.

What about pre-Obama for Democrats?  And you really think that Eisenhower - a man born in Texas in 1890 - was a less racist human than Gerald Ford or George W. Bush?  Like, honestly?  LOL.

It's not like I'd call Ike a racist, but he was rather lukewarm about pursuing the civil rights until the courts took a major step on this.

I mean, he was still born in the Nineteenth Century while Bush 43 grew up with civil rights largely accepted in a lot of the country.  The criticisms about the GOP being "racist" POLICY-wise (i.e., some conjecture like opposing welfare increases makes you a racist because some reason) were around for Ike's GOP and many iterations of it before, so I don't see PNM's real point, either.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

My Obama joke yesterday was hilarious.

[America's Sweetheart ❤/𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕭𝖔𝖔𝖙𝖞 𝖂𝖆𝖗𝖗𝖎𝖔𝖗]

My Obama joke yesterday was hilarious.

Alt-right losers have no sense of humor, it's all about triggering teh libz or being as overtly offensive as possible for no real reason.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

The most recent Republican president who was not a racist was Dwight D Eisenhower.

What about pre-Obama for Democrats?  And you really think that Eisenhower - a man born in Texas in 1890 - was a less racist human than Gerald Ford or George W. Bush?  Like, honestly?  LOL.

It's not like I'd call Ike a racist, but he was rather lukewarm about pursuing the civil rights until the courts took a major step on this.

He was pretty insistent on making sure the military was fully integrated.   But he recognized school integration and wider social integration in the South was going to be more divisive and so he wanted to go gradually to avoid national conflict over the issue.

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

Serial rape should be considered worthy of capital punishment.

[Frodo]

Serial rape should be considered worthy of capital punishment.

Or worse:



I'm still stunned to have read that rapists preferred to be castrated than sent to the Wall.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

The only generation that really exists is the Baby Boomer Generation.  There is no such thing as a Gen-Xer, Millennial, or Gen-Zer.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

The most recent Republican president who was not a racist was Dwight D Eisenhower.

Ford was racist?

And HW Bush?  The evidence I've seen is the opposite: that no Republican president in that time was a racist.  Nixon was a big supporter of civil rights legislation and was good friends with Sammy Davis, even if he used some racially insensitive language in his private life.  And Reagan and Bush 2 both hired blacks to high positions (Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Samuel Pierce, etc.)  It was also Bush 1 that appointed Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court.

[Mad Deadly Worldwide Communist Gangster Computer God]

The only generation that really exists is the Baby Boomer Generation.  There is no such thing as a Gen-Xer, Millennial, or Gen-Zer.

TIL we're all Boomers

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

I remember reading somewhere that Nixon usually opposed abortion in almost every case; but then he went in the entirely opposite direction when the parents were not of the same racial group, instead wanting to force an abortion to happen in these cases.

[Goldwater]

The only generation that really exists is the Baby Boomer Generation.  There is no such thing as a Gen-Xer, Millennial, or Gen-Zer.

Really, I think that generations in general are complete nonsense. Why should I relate to someone born in 1985, ten years before me, than someone born in 2000, five years after me? And do I really have that much in common with someone born the same year as me in a completely different location and socioeconomic class?

[100% pro-life no matter what]

The only generation that really exists is the Baby Boomer Generation.  There is no such thing as a Gen-Xer, Millennial, or Gen-Zer.

Really, I think that generations in general are complete nonsense. Why should I relate to someone born in 1985, ten years before me, than someone born in 2000, five years after me? And do I really have that much in common with someone born the same year as me in a completely different location and socioeconomic class?

I agree, but I think there is something demographically relevant about a boom in the number of babies (i.e. a Baby Boomer) to the point where we can at least identify them clearly, while the others are completely made up for convenience and simplicity.