The Virginia Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of High-Quality Posts

[Horus]

So one doesn't have the right to wear it "of their own accord"? Are we going to arrest little old Russian women for wearing the scarf over their heads?

I agree that this is not a simple question, but to be required to cover one's entire face ought to be questionable on its face.

I simply don't believe that people do this truly on free will.  I believe that they are coerced.

We have unmasking laws for "secret societies" in public (i. e. the Ku Klux Klan).  We have laws adding to the penalties for wearing masks in robberies.  Banks nowadays request that I remove my hat and sunglasses.  Are there going to be special exceptions to cater to Sharia misogyny on this?

I agree it's not an easy question.  There are arguments on both sides.  I view the practice as oppression of women, and I don't wish for it to be protected in law, or in practice, in the US.  And I want men who attach importance to women wearing these burqas to get the message that "We don't do this here!".  Indeed, there are a number of things that should be reflected in our laws that tell foreigners who with to reside in the US, "We don't do that here!".  Because the reason we don't do "that" is to protect our system of government and our system of individual liberties for all. 

I'm perfectly willing to cede a couple of points to the pro-ban crowd, but I don't think they can all be taken at once, and this in general has been a part of my disaffection from a lot of political organizations. For those saying that this is a Christian society, and such empowers the government as our representative to ban certain non-Christian religious practices, fine, sure, but that is a necessarily distinct argument from those saying that we need to reinforce a secular society. The double edged sword of using religious/ethnic identity in speaking to one crowd, and then shouting about secularism and liberal values to another for the sake of the same goal strikes me as either dishonest or stupid. In such a vein, it makes me uneasy to see people that are either very religious, or very attached to a religious identity, talk about the need to regulate another religion. Given the rate at which social change is happening in this country, and that there are those already who would seek to curb certain "freedoms"--homeschooling, private schooling, tax exemption status, etc.--no one should be surprised when "They Come For You". Should there ever be a committed, secular political majority in the United States, it's going to look very hypocritical when conservatives talk about religious freedom to protect themselves from the types of measures they sought to enact on the basis of "secularism". This same dichotomy of secular and religious talking points (dependent on audience, of course) is why I have a hard time of seeing conservative complaints about Islam's "theocratic" nature in general as sincere or far-sighted. That we have a strong Christian tradition in this country is without doubt. That we also are a society that, from its basis, has made pluralism--sometimes overenthusiastic pluralism--a core value, is also true. That said, these two systems have often run aground each other even as they have been allies. For all the sensationalism, I have a hard time seeing the "secular" rationale behind a ban of any sort of religious clothing not becoming a weapon in someone else's hands later.

If a burqa ban is deemed necessary for public safety, then by all means, but that's not a conclusion I think we should jump to lightly, and would need to be backed up by research--not that our lawmakers would ever let intellectual inquiry inform their decisions.

[Horus]

I see. The president supports people who chant "The Jew's will not replace us" but pointing out obvious corruption from foreign powers that bomb innocent Palestinians is the actual anti semitism...the definition of irony.

[Horus]

Israel apologists are such jokes. She never singled out Jewish people; she referred to political influences that push for allegiance to a foreign state. The Zionist lobby has a plethora of non-Jewish members; just as there are plenty of Jewish people who dislike Israel and the Zionist lobby’s influence on American politics.

People are intentionally reading into Omar’s remarks something that isn’t even there. This is exactly her point: you can’t even criticize Israel in this country, let alone challenge it politically, due to the corrupting influence the Zionist lobby’s money has had on American culture and institutions. She should never have apologized for her previous statements and damn sure shouldn’t back down to the well financed pressure she’ll receive for these truthful statements.

Israel is a racist, Jewish supremacist, colonial, ethnostate akin to Apartheid South Africa that contributes to and benefits from an international coordination of political pressure, financial “investments” (bribery), and organized violence against Arab citizens and neighbors. The only reason Israel hasn’t been justly internationally condemned repeatedly is because of the pressure exerted on the American political system, which has shown itself to be remarkably receptive to such pressures. They’re currently being accused of war crimes by the UN due to their recent horrific actions against civilians in Gaza. Of course, thanks to the Zionist lobby’s capture of the American political class, any resolutions against Israel that pass through the Security Council will be immediately shot down.

[Horus]

His work on combating AIDS does not absolve him from his war crimes. While you can make the argument that the Iraq War and torture were mostly Cheney's and Rumsfeld's, the buck stopped with him and he deserves to be tried at The Hague with both of them.

He successfully nominated one political hack to the Supreme Court (Alito) and tried to nominate another (Harriet Miers). He botched the handling of Katrina, which I don't believe was done out of racial animus but general incompetence. However, he won reelection on the backs of homophobes and Islamaphobes, and while he's not personally anti-Muslim, his warmongering destroyed the lives of thousands of Muslims abroad. He endorsed a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

I am no longer of the belief that a politician can be separated from their politics. Their actions are always a reflection on them as people and while he deserves credit on PEPFAR, his presidency caused more long-term damage than any president since Reagan. It doesn't matter how "nice" he is.

I agree with Dule that we should be governed by exceptional leaders, not your friendly neighbor whose annual Fourth of July barbecues you attend. The rehabilitation of Bush is one of the worst things to come out of the Trump presidency. Neoconservatism and "cowboy diplomacy" are evil and so is Christian conservatism.

[Horus]

Has it struck anyone else that CRT is extremely America-centric? It's almost as if no other race has practised slavery, or that whites set out to enslave blacks because of their skin colour. As far as I am aware, that last point is untrue - whites often enslaved other whites whom they had beaten in battle, for example.

Notice how the slavers are still the white ones in the scenario you mentioned lol. Racial relations on US are very very specific though.

They might be something like 2nd most diverse country in the world, behind only Brazil, in terms of how many different people from all around of the world eventually moved there. With the specificity that historical approach was more of segregation, which prevented miscigenation. So the racial lines tend to be very strongly divided and not spread under a wide spectrum.

That’s something that naturally creates conflicts. I feel like here the combo of miscigenation + the cohesive cultural assimilation prevented tensions in the same level even if the bloody colonial history was even more racist and violent, because stimulated people to believe we’re all Brazilians regardless of how we look like. The creation of Brazilian identity as mixed-race and of a place where there’s no “Brazilian look” (Everyone from any part of the world can look Brazilian).

In the US, besides not having as many mixed people, the way speech constantly singles out minorities by their race as if they don’t belong to the country is something very particular. Black Americans are referred as AFRO-Americans in order to reinforce the fact that they came from outside the US, as if they aren’t fully Americans. White Americans are never called Euro-Americans, they’re just “Americans”.

It’s weird but it’s like, I think Black American culture is seen from the inside as a “niche” thing, separated from what the country treats as if it was the “real” American culture (based on the white majority social construct).

There’s lots of racism here and depending on what particular aspect/angle you’re focusing from, it’s worse. But in terms of the social construct of the nation identity, miscigenation really stimulated to redefine all these external immigrant influences as “Brazilian” regardless of where in the world they came from. Like, there are no “rules”, people could be a Syrian immigrant celebrating their African religion in a Japanese park in a town with Germanic architecture. And that would still be “Brazilian culture”.

Same way White Americans have more in common culturally with Black Americans than with White Europeans. There’s something that connects them whether they like it or not, so there’s no reason to act like Black Americans (or Asian Americans, US Latinos, etc) aren’t really as Americans as them. White US people should drop these supremacist thoughts inherited from Europe and colonial history, because they aren’t European or even perceived as such. And even Europe today is becoming increasingly multirracial, even considering the fact there’s still strong resistance against it there too because of old racist ideals of “pure culture”

[Horus]

You guys are effectively saying your immense understanding and respect for science is going to allow your life to be held hostage INDEFINITELY because a subset of people are not smart enough to get vaccinated.  If you can’t see that as hysterical, maybe you’re too far gone.

People should get the vaccine or live with the consequences, and indefinitely suspending basic tenants of peoples’ social lives that provide the most happiness and give the most meaning/connection in life out of a rather irrational fear (i.e., unvaccinated idiots are going to spread a disease I’m 100% protected against as far as serious illness goes) is literal insanity.  Complete, fear-based hysteria.  

It’s like some of you actually support public health measures to stop human beings from getting sick … not hospitalized, not killed, much less not only as a measure to stop ICUs from overcrowding … but literally to stop DISEASE as an abstract entity in its tracks.  That idea is so unnaturally stupid I can’t even entertain it, and thankfully most in society agree and are just moving on with life.  Anyone is free to wear a mask their entire life (outside even!  LMFAO) and avoid crowds and become a reclusive, Zoom-bound loner, but that type of thinking will remain in the minority.  Thankfully.

[Horus]

I miss angus

[Horus]

Support children being themselves, give total freedom of expression and figuring out what they want, there's no harm in that and it's a good thing.

But active medical intervention to delay the natural development of healthy bodies shouldn't happen. There's a real problem that a large number of adolescents feel dissatisfied with the gender roles they feel coerced into (which is understandable given boys being exposed to toxic masculinity and not able to express weakness, girls exposed to increased sexualization, objectification, and not being taken seriously, etc), but that the trans community that feels like their escape from that, instead pushes people onto a path of medical transition. In the minds of trans activists, discomfort with those gender expectations = gender dysphoria, and the only solution to it is full-on social and medical gender transition, which people often won't appreciate all the negative consequences of for a long time.

I feel that medicating adolescents needs to stop, but also that to improve people's mental health the communities they turn to need to stop pushing medication as "the solution". I view it as part of the same disturbing trend as online social media bullying, the prevalence of identification with fake mental disorders, the amount of alarmism in today's world, and overall a sharp decline in adolescent mental health. It's a crisis and nothing's being doing about it. Though it's hard to know what can be done about it.

[Horus]

You don't get a 1 free war crime punch card for having endured historical trauma or terror, nor do you get to inflict collective punishment for even the most heinous of crimes. In Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces repeatedly liberated ISIS strongholds. They were confronted with civilian populations who were in many cases deeply sympathetic to one of the most monstrous groups in human history, a group which had inflicted unspeakable atrocities on them and their countrymen. They still consistently allowed for those civilians to escape the battlefield at great personal risk. I see no reason why Israel ought not to be held to this standard.

[Horus]

OSR, I'm afraid no amount of crosstabs will be able to convince me that 14-year-olds should be blown up with missiles. There is no use in trying.

Dule, I respect you and am moderately surprised at this position coming from you, so serious question: do you think that Israel should be prevented from attacking (...given that this will basically certainly lead to renewed power for Hamas, over the people of Gaza most critically) or that countries which obey international law should be forced to value the lives of bystanders as highly as the lives of their own soldiers (...given that this would be an incentive structure highly helpful to countries which don't obey international law)? I wouldn't normally associate your thought patterns as objecting to the conduct of the war.

Anyway, we live in a fallen world and sometimes there are justified wars against Nazi tweens. There is no use denying it; one can only cry and then act.

Here is the best summary of my views on this conflict that I can give.

On 10/6, Israel apparently had no idea that an attack from Hamas was coming. It did not know Hamas' positions or where the missiles would come from. On 10/7, Hamas attacked. Immediately after that attack, Israel conducted airstrikes that they said targeted Hamas compounds, command centers, tunnels, and other strategic targets.

My initial reaction to this was of course pro-Israel, as it should be for anyone seeing Hamas' atrocities on the news. But as these airstrikes continued, I had to ask myself: Am I supposed to believe that in those 48 hours, Israel went from knowing nothing whatsoever about Hamas' bases and plans to suddenly knowing enough to carry out targeted strikes against them?  This was a massive failure of Israeli intelligence under Likud. What is more likely: That those intelligence failures were patched up within a few hours and that enough information was assembled to accurately strike Hamas, or that Netanyahu was being equally sloppy in his response so he could look like he was doing something?

The comments from Israeli government officials over the past month, coupled with the actual results on the ground, have confirmed my suspicion that the latter is the case. If Israel were using our money to go after Hamas surgically, I would not have a problem with its response. But the facts do not indicate that this is the case. Israel has killed over 10,000 civilians in one month. Israeli politicians, media figures, and settlers routinely make comments about how Gaza must be "obliterated" or "depopulated." Pro-Israel protesters in the US have openly and gleefully stated that this gives Israel an opportunity to "kill all Palestinians." Likud cabinet ministers have floated the idea of nuking Gaza. They have called Gaza a "city of evil" with "no innocents." Israeli government officials have suggested that because IDF soldiers supposedly found copies of Mein Kampf in "children's rooms" in Gaza, this means that even Palestinian children are legitimate targets. They have bombed churches, hospitals, mosques, homes, and businesses without issuing any apologies. They ordered the mass evacuation of northern Gaza, and then they bombed the evacuees.

I have known for a long time that Netanyahu was an evil monster, but the tidal wave of genocidal rhetoric currently spewing from the Israeli government is beyond anything I could have ever imagined. I'm well aware that supermajorities of Gazans supposedly support Hamas, but given the demographics of the strip, I cannot condone the murder of teenagers who were socialized into antisemitism. It is a basic liberal principle that no matter how vile someone's views are, they should not be killed for them-- hence why I am so disgusted by smoothbrained OSR and his crosstabs on "public opinion" in Gaza. What exactly is the implication behind that data? That we should kill 77% of Palestinians because they support Hamas? That they're all legitimate military targets? That their lives don't matter? If OSR thinks that 77% of Gaza is the moral equivalent of Nazis, then what exactly does he mean when he says Gaza needs to be "denazified?"

I have always supported Israel in the past because I thought the Israelis were still willing to work towards a two-state solution or a more secular, inclusive version of the Israeli state. With Likud in charge, this simply isn't true anymore. Netanyahu has unleashed the settlers on Palestinian land, illegally bulldozing Palestinian businesses and seizing their homes. Now he is planning more land grabs by forcibly depopulating Palestinian territory in response to 10/7. Until Netanyahu is removed from power and Likud is purged from the Israeli government, Israel will be an apartheid state.

[Horus]

While I am really disgusted over the global hate campaign towards trans people and especially trans children, I am also concerned with where the activists are taking the movement. As a gay man, I feel like the "lgbt" movement is not representative of my thoughts and identity anymore and so many people I have talked to feel similar to me but can't talk out loud for fear of being attacked. Sexual orientation and gender identity debates have been really diverging from one another to the point I don't think it is wise to categorize all of them in the same term. Even gender identity debates have been shifting to the point there are wide differences between who transition vs. people who think there is no such thing as gender.

I would like to make it clear that I stand with the trans community against any kind of hate attack or dehumanization attempt. Everyone deserves to feel comfortable in their skin and live the way they want without the fear of being oppressed or threatened. However, I don't think many of the arguments presented by the activists are convincing on some subjects such as sports. I also think there are natural discussions about many topics that are sensitive and new such as locker rooms and bathrooms where I can understand both sides of the argument. It is not easy to come to conclusions on sensitive topics and listening to arguments that try to slamdunk important discussions and vilify others is not helping to reach solutions.