A few days ago, I learned a new term: sealioning: Sealioning (also sea-lioning and sea lioning) is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity. That’s right, evidence, civility and sincerity are now a form of trolling. In my article, What Happens If Trans Women Aren’t Women?, I asked what is so terrible about admitting that trans women are, in fact, trans women. I asked why
I have been simply astonished at the extent to which lies coming from the "trans" cult are accepted by people who should know better. Several times I have heard from incredulous people that reassignment surgery has never been performed on anyone under 18, and it is universally accepted that puberty blockers never do lasting harm
We are witnessing a phenomenon of incredulity on the level of Trump's Big Lie.
With very few exceptions the "trans" activists maintain a state of maximal outrage and are as quick to attack allies as enemies. Reading from afar it is plain to me that they are not considerate of women or even other "trans" people, only in swelling their numbers by any means necessary.
The fact that "trans" is, unlike being gay, a phase that many go through and emerge from, but many emerge after having their bodies mutilated or their pubescent development badly affectefd.
You held your side up well, but I got so sick of G's responses that I had to stop reading halfway through. The rape and death threats are only going one direction - from trans activists to women. I don't see trans people as "under widespread threat." I see the overprivileging of trans at the expense of all other groups on the left as finally being dialed back a bit.
But tragically, that's where they come from and remain. We must own our nutjobs just as we demand conservatives, the Religious Right and Muslims own theirs.
Well, they don't, why should we? I would dispute that they are ours to rein in but it would just end up in hair-splitting that I haven't the patience for.
I will say though that their breed of inflexibility and rigidity has nothing in common with our pluralism; I see the "trans" activists as MAGAts in a mirror.
They're our embarrassing cousins. They're correctly associated with the left and assuming you categorize yourself that way (I characterize myself that way) I say they're ours and yes, SOMEONE has to challenge them, and the right has to see that not all of us approve of them either. It will alert the conservatives who aren't completely crazy (like liberals who aren't part of the Loony Left) who their compatriots and allies are.
Extremism is extremism, and every side has a few of them. I am about to start insisting the trans movement own up to their sexual predators (the way I've been hammering the Catholic Church for decades) as I DO think we share responsibility for those who are associated with us - whether their MAGA hats are red or that gawdawful colour combo on the trans flag.
The trouble is, just as the political right points at the radical left and says, "look at those leftists with their [some names here], so too does the political left point at the radical right and say, "at those crazy conservatives with their [some names here].
Those names don't apply to all since the radicals don't define the tribes as if they are a monolith.
I don't believe those numbers based upon the ones I know. But my circle is too small to be a statistic. I don't want to engage in a left right political argument.
Since you asked, I will say that the majority of the left wants to destroy the republic by getting rid of the only remaining thing that prevents the tyranny of national "democracy" by eliminating the electoral college. Then they can vindictively impose their will upon everyone leaving nowhere to run within the US.
The majority of voters are idiots choosing the lesser of two evils provided by those in power. If a choice between Trump and Biden was the best that we can do what is the virtue of voting? We might have been better served by a random warlord.
It's not hyperbole when I opine that democracy is idiotic when you live in an Idiocracy.
The Electoral College is a leftover from the era of slavery and right now it lets Senators representing under 30% of the population control the national agenda. Twice this century the EC has delivered us awesomely inadequate Republican presidents who had lost the popular vote.
I have absolutely no reservations about southern conservatives being "oppressed" by not getting things their way because southern conservatives are for the most part utterly horrible people. Yes, yes, I know, there are no "good and bad" people, only "our and their" people. Well, not in this case.
Minority rule has done America no good, and just look where it's brought us. A high school dropout in the House, a Libertarian in the Senate, a madwoman on the Supreme Court. I say end the EC and if the conservatives are so unhappy they can secede, operate under conservative economics, and starve to death.
Woah! It has a name. This appears to be a sizable enough tribe within the tribe to cause people to think they are representative. A buzz kill for many conservatives who are not of that tribe, and as big a potential fracture as the woke extremists.
What will be a bigger buzz kill will be for those many conservatives who find they're not extreme enough for the ne regime. We've seen in both fascist & communist societies what happens to people who aren't 'on board' enough.
The blood that runs in the streets won't just be liberals'.
Yep, as Bogdan Raditsa famously said, "Be careful about people whose vocabulary is yours but whose record wherever they hold power is your destruction. Do not be Koristne Budale. Do not be 𝘜𝘴𝘦𝘧𝘶𝘭 𝘐𝘯𝘯𝘰𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴."
I think that this points to the problem with political labels. The often don't mean what people think that they mean and leave incorrect impressions, especially considering how many would/could not walk their talk.
As you know, I keep a finger in the air by maintaining contact with as much diversity as possible. I often can even see why they believe what they do.
The White Christian Nationalists, if the link is to be believed, don't want anyone in my family in America. I won't be joining their club. I don't think that all Christians are that radical though. My fallout from Christianity came long ago. If I were to spend eternity praising the god who is burning my wife, the woman I love, in eternal torment because she couldn't bring herself to believe a fabulous story, would my eternal heaven be less of a hell than hers?
Are conservatives who shout, "America first" Fascists or people tired of seeing billions of taxpayer dollars going to other countries, too often for wars?
Are the champions of victimhood representative of liberals?
Does the word liberal mean what people think, or wish, that it means?
Are protestors all non-violent or violent because it is what we wish for the tribes we like or don't like?
Are the people who go out and about wearing "tactical" shit any different from people who wear a cowboy hat and boots who don't know how to ride a horse?
I see old Vietnam vets talking as if they are still the lean, mean, killing machines that they were 50+ years ago who couldn't sprint to their mailbox. Not to mention that they were not going against their own government, they (OK, we) were doing what we did with the government's blessing.
I could go on and on, but I think you should be able to get my point. Anyone who is all that a political label says that they are is a standout idiot in a crowd of idiots. Most of the talk, especially on the internet, is empty talk. I think that fears of widespread violence are overblown (I sure hope I'm right about that).
If I was worried about blood in the streets I'd go out and buy an AR-15 (I don't have one) and think that anyone worried about it who doesn't have one is just talking. From what I've been reading, current AR-15 buyers are "liberals." As a friend said to me, "Us lefties like our guns too."
I need to disagree with you on the labels thing. It's been my experience since I was quite young that most people strive to fit into categories. They look for some movement or some fad to swear allegiance to and they put a lot of effort into maximizing their conformity.
This is everywhere. From the MAGA fools to whom "Trump won" is an iconic declaration of crazy to the "trans" crowd with its inane ideological rigidity to the enthusiastic adoption of fads.
I am on a job site called Braintrust that has turned out to be utterly useless. When I started to gripe about 90% of the jobs being marked "US only" when half the the freelancers on there reside outside the USA, I got a message from one of the staff that opened with
"I am reaching out to share [the rules of online engagement]," (which I had not violated at all).
Reach out? Share? WTF does that even mean? Why not plain speech like "I am emailing you to remind ..." but this is the new corpspeak and everyone is doing it.
Nobody had to indoctrinate them. They saw other people writing this burble and leapt right on board.
Most people are compulsively conformist. Most people look for something to join. Political attitudes in the USA are not a continuum like height or intelligence, they are a bimodal distribution and we are getting ever further apart. Under Bush we could live with each other; since Trump, we are divided into distinct camps and I see little chance of this reversing anytime soon.
You've probably heard the one about an alien invasion from outer space being the only thing that would unite humanity. Right now I would not even bet on that.
When the new corporate speak was beginning, we made paper buzzword/bullshit BINGO cards and some of us took them to meetings. When someone, usually a manager, used one of those ridiculous words if it was on our card word mark it. At some point in the meeting someone would say, "BINGO! that a good point you were making" or some other nonsense to make it less obvious that we were making fun of corporate speak. it didn't stay a secret long.
Sadly, making fun of some of the new words could get you fired.
I'm in agreement with that but you also address the idea that I expressed. In the new order of the 21st Century it is hard to cling to the group identities of the old order. They have become so fractured that people increasingly either reject them outright or clarify their subgroup.
You for an example, a long-time proud liberal, do not fit under the Orwellian new definitions the radicals impose. I am seeing an increasing number of people seceding from groups they were previously comfortable in.
I think it is the result of subgroups trying to claim membership where they don't fit. A glaring example is LGBTQ[whatever else is being added]. The L & G people have an attraction to their own sex (something in common). Sex is fun. The B people are happy to have it with whomever will participate with them. If they have a preference, they seem to be able to get past it. The T people are split between the dysphoric and non-dysphoric. The Q people are outrage junkies. I don't see it as a unified group/tribe and think that some actually despise or hold one or mor of the others in contempt.
Perhaps it time to dust off our copies of Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals." in a strange new world where it is radical to be rational. While I dislike the "enemies" world, sometimes we do have genuine enemies. Hopefully without thinking we must kill them, rather than their ideas.
I hope you're right about the violence too. I'm never sure if I have a skewed idea of how crazy America has become because I haven't lived there in nearly 18 years, or whether those who are still there are the ones who need their head examined. There's some crazy shit going down there, and I was reading some Canadian articles yesterday analyzing the possibility of a US civil war, and how that would impact Canada. And I was like, shit, 35 million people are screwed unless we all head up to the mountains and let the military hordes have Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. We've still got plenty of water up there, and maybe we can train the polar bears to attack anything red white and blue :)
I worry about my family there. They're in Michigan now, but my bro and his wife are going to move to NC after my mother passes on and I really don't think they've thought this thing through.
Glad to hear though that you don't think it's time yet to buy an AR. If a grizzled old Vietnam vet isn't crapping his drawers yet, maybe there's hope...or maybe you just need your head examined :P
I just read an article that US alcohol deaths went up like 30% in the first year of the pandemic. I know opioid deaths spiralled during the pandemic, and many were believed to be intentional overdoses - i.e., suicides.
Then again, maybe the Big One is just around the corner if no one stops Putin and most of us won't be around for Christmas :P
If violence comes, I don't think it will be like the war of secession with uniformed armies. I think its most likely form would be terrorist tactics. If it goes past assassination attempts on politicians to non-government members of the other tribe, uniforms will be political bumper stickers and shirts. I have some shirts from years ago that I never wear, they'd make good rags. Bumper stickers, hell no. No matter which tribe. they make you a target of the other tribe. Who knows if and when that might happen. You could have a house full of guns and ammo and get sniped. Better to do as little as possible to make yourself a target of opportunity.
We don't have to agree on everything since neither of us have the power to change the world. Lest you forget, I tilt left or right on individual issues rather than in conformance with a political tribe.
It is common for people to say the party (tribe) moved away from their values like Jim Webb & Tulsi Gabbard did when the tribe doesn't align with their values. I hear people talking about RINOs or extreme left or right when it's just a matter of the population of the tribes not being a monolith. I reject all tribal labels since none of them define me.
The one who surprised me was George Will. but on reflection, not so surprising. He didn't become a Democrat, and probably the only reason he bailed was because his patrician pretenses were irreconcilable with Trump's crudity.
BTW he has had that same stock photo since I can remember, and he's 81 now. So it's at least 35 years out of date.
Maybe labels don't accurately define me or thee but go over to the other side and you won't find a hell of a lot of ideological diversity.
Unfortunately what I think conservatives in a theoretical "Jesusstan" would do is arm up and invade what's left of the United States. After all, they don't want their own country, they want to overthrow the one we've got. I was horrified the other day to see somewhere - forget whether it was social media or a website or a news story - in which they claimed Democrats 'want to kill us all.'
Sounds very seriously like projection to me. This is what Trump did, tell us what he was thinking himself by saying his enemies wanted to do this or that. I think these people seriously are going to start 'coming after the libs' soon like they just did for Nancy Pelosi.
I'm going to stand up for the Democrats a bit here. I know they're their own mess; they don't have all the answers; and they're part of the problem. But why is Biden considered not much better than Trump? Why was Obama similarly maligned? Let's remember the Republicans make it a point to a) Never do anything to help the American people unless they're rich enough to be their base and b) Never let the Democrats do anything good for the American people just because.
However, I do agree with your contention that the majority of voters are idiots who vote for their own obstacles to the changes they say they want to see.
So they may turn Congress back to the Republicans because they don't like the economy? Oy.
Only hatred of Trump would allow people to ignore Biden's mental state. Its not worthy of argument. If you don't see it you just don't want to see it.
As for the economy, hell yes it matters. The people the Democrats claim to represent suffer the worst. I walk past people living in the park because they can't afford a basic low end middle class. What matters more than, a roof over your head, a job, not having to choose between food and child care. People with children liked working from home when school was out so they could eat. Stores are shuttered all over the place. Put out of business by the panic that cured the flue.
Obama, I didn't mention Obama. His presidency was an order of magnitude better.
I think he shows the "slowed-down" aspect of his age but fogginess, drifting? No. Don't see it.
OTOH at his age every passing year is going to take more away and six years from now he might not even know where he is half the time.
But this mileage varies. Pablo Casals was at 96 playing gifted interpretation of Bach figured bass pieces for cello and that is extremely demanding numerical musicianship.
We *all* get a big slower as we get older...around age 37 is when you start walking into a room, can't remember why you came there, and start to worry you've got Early Onset Dementia. My mother was - I thought - a real space case when she was my age, now I'm that age and I realize her problem wasn't brain fluffiness but she was just *OLD* :) And Biden is much older than any of us, except my mother ;) Who sitll doesn't have dementia although she's definitely in no mental condition to lead the country (she's 90). I see none of the problems with Biden that I see with Mom although I don't monitor him 24x7. Mostly he reminds me of a classic movies-era cowboy with the flinty eyes and the gravely voice and the more take-no-shit attitude. Is he fuzzier than you and I? Undoubtedly, but I'll bet we'll never be that smart when we're 80.
He's STILL got more going on than the Orange Menace, who couldn't complete a thought beyond the capability of a fourth grader, and if you compare Trump to the interviews Trump gave when he was much younger, like in his fifties, he was a lot more eloquent and less crazy-sounding. Biden wasn't my first pick either but that' who the Dems went with and hell, i'd have voted for Homer Simpson over Trump.
I was forgetting what I came downstairs for when I was 18. I was smoking a lot of weed. Short term memory loss is a well-known thing. We laughed about it.
Sometimes I find myself groping for a word, but that isn't new.
True, you didn't have to hate Trump to see it. Anyone who has lived with a loved one with dementia would recognize the signs clearly. My reference was to what it would take to willfully ignore/deny it, Trump hate or partisanship.
As for "right-wing sources" reporting it, of course. You don't expect the left-wing sources to mention it do you? I use WSJ, Reuters, Asia Times, CNN, NPR, Reason and Daily Wire to get a spread across the spectrum of bias. When I was young and my hearing supported it and there was no internet, I was a short-wave radio listener. VOA, BBC, Russia, Voice of Vietnam via Cuba (I heard Jane Fonda's speech), and miscellaneous stations depending upon condition to get that spread. None of those supply discernment, you must supply your own. If you are not too partisan for that you step out of the echo chamber.
As an interesting side note, at one time I had a job analyzing RF signals pertaining to electronic warfare. Between missions I was listening to the VOA broadcast of a UN security council meeting. Anwar Sādāt was making the US look like absolute assholes and the signal appeared to fade until he could not be heard. There was no fade, the signal was tall and proud on my spectrum analyzer. The noise was modulated in at the source on every VOA frequency. When he finished speaking the fade went away. The Voice of America had jammed itself! A lesson about media bias when I was a young man that led to my quest for information source diversity.
How often does All Sides update that chart? Because I recognize several that jump up and down, back and forth on factualism and bias. I wouldn't put the National Review as far right as they have, but it's still for sure right-wing. Cnn & Fox News both bounce up and down for factualism, so does MSNBC. The Epoch Times and the Washington Examiner are both far right, not sort of right. I prefer Media Bias Fact Check myself, although none of them are the final word on everything.
Maybe I don't know the signs of dementia when I see them, but I do watch for them in my mother, and from what I read in Bob Woodward's books, Trump was handled like a spoiled, easily distracted child by his handlers when he was in office. I don't know if folks are doing the same to Biden but I suspect not. Are you sure it's dementia and not just encroaching old age? Like I said, we all get a little fuzzier as we get older, I can literally completely forget something from a few days previously and it's not that I'm getting senile, that's just how older age is for many of us and my mother was the same at my age...yet 31 years later, at 90, she's sharper than Trump. I dunno, I just don't see it in Biden but then again, we had no idea Reagan was getting fuzzy in his old age, and supposedly his family & handlers hid it from the American public until his second term was over.
I wrote that you must supply your own discernment too all needs sources. The best you can do is seek variety.. You're picking fly crap out of the pepper shaker with toothpick chopsticks trying to find fault with my non -medical opinion about one subject, Biden's mental fitness to be POTUS. That's not about partisanship. Call it what you like, but claiming he is ok to be POTUS is stunning.
I don't know why you keep mentioning Trump, be has nothing to do with it. Yeah Trump was a dumpster fire but he is no longer in office and has nothing to do with Biden.
I have posted many times that the statistics for "trans" claims exceed medical criteria a thousandfold. I wish someone responsible (e.g. not Marjorie Taylor Greene) would get this out and start pushback. Most fads have to do with ephemeral styles of hair and clothing, not permanent surgical alteration. This could be done without attacking others by pointing out that genuinely dysphoric people are being left out in the cold by the scant resources for their support being drained by people who just want attention.
Of course I doubt even Steve could write this on Medium. It take only a single report of "transphobia" to get banned from there by Roger (he/him).
I am being interviewed for a technical writing job and were I ordered to use "they" as the "nonbinary" want I would have a really big issue.
I find G’s certainty astonishing. It really highlights what happens (or doesn’t) inside the bubble of curated thought around most of us. Two examples:
A lovely and deeply liberal friend of mine had no idea Clarence Thomas was initially not included in the new Smithsonian museum of African-American history because he is a conservative.
An articulate and fascinating new friend born in Egypt and active in child psychology, father in the UN and speaking five languages had never heard of the Abraham Accords. Yes, a woman from the Middle East and deeply proud of her heritage didn’t know about one of the singular achievements towards Middle East peace in 70 years - because Trump.
...but that bubble, it’s so comforting...
So G is certain all thoughtful discussion about protecting female spaces is based on trans hatred. And puberty blockers are reversible. And no surgeries are done under 18. What in the world passes for research, informed opinion, and engaged knowledge anymore?
I appreciated your patience in response Steve - highlighting how you have to repeatedly and often gently pop that pretty bubble to let the sunshine in.
It's frightening to me how easily gaslit so many female and allegedly feminist 'allies' are. It's breathtaking how ignorant this woman is, how she only gets her information from those who blindly accept trans-activist propaganda. I'm not familiar with those Medium writers - I may have avoided them if I recognized them as loony lefties - but there were plenty who were uncritical of the trans movement, who naively accept that everyone's there because they're GD rather than some other highly suspicious reasons, like for sexual fetishism reasons and/or to harass and intimidate women with their genitals. Thanks for those articles, BTW, they'll come in handy with some 'trans-ally' anonymous coward on Twitter I've been challenging this past week (you know, the kind of with a grey head, no profile information, and a following of 11).
This is the problem with the left - it favours tolerance, but it's become *too* tolerant, and too easily swayed by misogyny in the trans movement. These guys are clever - they figured out how to get women to stop hammering them about their male privilege and accept them as alleged victims.
Let's remember that when it comes to genuine victimhood in the trans community, their biggest threat is, like it is to us natal women, male aggression. We're not the ones killing and assaulting transpeople; that is and remains a guy thing, just as harassment in toilets, spas, and violence shelters is a guy thing (funny how they always seem to have penises. Where are the trans-harassers with vaginas? Are there any? Who knows?)
Also the Nazi genocide comparisons are wearing very, very thin. There was an actual genocidal effort to eradicate the world, or at least Europe, of Jews in the last century. I've never heard anyone advocate killing or eliminating all the transpeople. If there are such voices, they're probably on the far right, but I suspect that particular trope is mostly between their ears.
Yes the most infinitesimal deviation from the most insignificant point of their ideology leads to your being called not just "transphobic" but "incredibly transphobic" and probably seeing a red box next time you log on.
Hasn't happened yet, and with a new narcissistic nutbar who suffers from delusions of adequacy taking over Twitter I anticipate that will happen even less now. Perhaps it's time to respond humourously/ironically with their own verbiage. "I find you comment incredibly hysterical that you can see *any*, let alone 'an incredible amount' of transphobia in my comment. Have you ever looked up the word phobic?"
i'm going to come up with an Inigo Montoya (overused, for sure) meme: "Transphobic. You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
I don’t think a lot of people are gnawing their nails in fear that a man in a dress and heels with some major identity disorder is going to mug them in an alley.
It annoys me no end that “phobia” is used for “hatred.” That suffix is "-misia.”
Kat Rosenfield recently had a great piece on tribalism and how certain positions are simply unspeakable...until they aren't. That's probably the worst part of the tribal discourse today ... "Oh, you have this particular discrete thought? Then you are evil and are hereby branded as an outright heretic and are forever banned from this tribe."
I had a stark instance of it on here in the original Rittenhouse post. I mentioned that there had been a video of Rittenhouse talking about how he wanted to go shoot protesters, taken on a friend's cell phone and that the judge refused to let it be played in court.
I was challenged to produce the video despite its unavailability; it had been mentioned in court but was no on YouTube or anywhere else. First time I wanted a block button on here.
TY, Steve. When You're right, You're right. For what good it does "G." I quote:
"Everyone, without exception, is entitled to their beliefs, but and its a huge but, they are not entitled to force their beliefs on to others, under any circumstances, even parents."
Gimme a break. Exactly who is it that's *forcing* their ideas on *women* and *parents*? It's another "rule for thee, but not for me" deal. And that's just plain despicable, IMO.
I have been simply astonished at the extent to which lies coming from the "trans" cult are accepted by people who should know better. Several times I have heard from incredulous people that reassignment surgery has never been performed on anyone under 18, and it is universally accepted that puberty blockers never do lasting harm
We are witnessing a phenomenon of incredulity on the level of Trump's Big Lie.
With very few exceptions the "trans" activists maintain a state of maximal outrage and are as quick to attack allies as enemies. Reading from afar it is plain to me that they are not considerate of women or even other "trans" people, only in swelling their numbers by any means necessary.
The fact that "trans" is, unlike being gay, a phase that many go through and emerge from, but many emerge after having their bodies mutilated or their pubescent development badly affectefd.
You held your side up well, but I got so sick of G's responses that I had to stop reading halfway through. The rape and death threats are only going one direction - from trans activists to women. I don't see trans people as "under widespread threat." I see the overprivileging of trans at the expense of all other groups on the left as finally being dialed back a bit.
Please don't confuse the "woke" with the "left."
As a bonafide leftist who wore armbands in 1970 and a gay man who has known real transsexuals, I formally disown those fools.
But tragically, that's where they come from and remain. We must own our nutjobs just as we demand conservatives, the Religious Right and Muslims own theirs.
Well, they don't, why should we? I would dispute that they are ours to rein in but it would just end up in hair-splitting that I haven't the patience for.
I will say though that their breed of inflexibility and rigidity has nothing in common with our pluralism; I see the "trans" activists as MAGAts in a mirror.
They're our embarrassing cousins. They're correctly associated with the left and assuming you categorize yourself that way (I characterize myself that way) I say they're ours and yes, SOMEONE has to challenge them, and the right has to see that not all of us approve of them either. It will alert the conservatives who aren't completely crazy (like liberals who aren't part of the Loony Left) who their compatriots and allies are.
Extremism is extremism, and every side has a few of them. I am about to start insisting the trans movement own up to their sexual predators (the way I've been hammering the Catholic Church for decades) as I DO think we share responsibility for those who are associated with us - whether their MAGA hats are red or that gawdawful colour combo on the trans flag.
The trouble is, just as the political right points at the radical left and says, "look at those leftists with their [some names here], so too does the political left point at the radical right and say, "at those crazy conservatives with their [some names here].
Those names don't apply to all since the radicals don't define the tribes as if they are a monolith.
Thirty percent of the right wants fascism. Seventy percent believes Trump won.
What is comparable on our side?
I don't believe those numbers based upon the ones I know. But my circle is too small to be a statistic. I don't want to engage in a left right political argument.
Since you asked, I will say that the majority of the left wants to destroy the republic by getting rid of the only remaining thing that prevents the tyranny of national "democracy" by eliminating the electoral college. Then they can vindictively impose their will upon everyone leaving nowhere to run within the US.
The majority of voters are idiots choosing the lesser of two evils provided by those in power. If a choice between Trump and Biden was the best that we can do what is the virtue of voting? We might have been better served by a random warlord.
It's not hyperbole when I opine that democracy is idiotic when you live in an Idiocracy.
You and I are often in agreement. Not this time.
The Electoral College is a leftover from the era of slavery and right now it lets Senators representing under 30% of the population control the national agenda. Twice this century the EC has delivered us awesomely inadequate Republican presidents who had lost the popular vote.
I have absolutely no reservations about southern conservatives being "oppressed" by not getting things their way because southern conservatives are for the most part utterly horrible people. Yes, yes, I know, there are no "good and bad" people, only "our and their" people. Well, not in this case.
Minority rule has done America no good, and just look where it's brought us. A high school dropout in the House, a Libertarian in the Senate, a madwoman on the Supreme Court. I say end the EC and if the conservatives are so unhappy they can secede, operate under conservative economics, and starve to death.
Woah! It has a name. This appears to be a sizable enough tribe within the tribe to cause people to think they are representative. A buzz kill for many conservatives who are not of that tribe, and as big a potential fracture as the woke extremists.
https://asiatimes.com/2022/11/white-christian-nationalists-on-us-midterm-election-mission/
What will be a bigger buzz kill will be for those many conservatives who find they're not extreme enough for the ne regime. We've seen in both fascist & communist societies what happens to people who aren't 'on board' enough.
The blood that runs in the streets won't just be liberals'.
Sorta like the French Revolution where a lot of people who had been at its center ended up losing their heads.
Authoritarianism always looks like a good idea to those who favour such personalities...until the paranoia sets in.
Yep, as Bogdan Raditsa famously said, "Be careful about people whose vocabulary is yours but whose record wherever they hold power is your destruction. Do not be Koristne Budale. Do not be 𝘜𝘴𝘦𝘧𝘶𝘭 𝘐𝘯𝘯𝘰𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴."
I think that this points to the problem with political labels. The often don't mean what people think that they mean and leave incorrect impressions, especially considering how many would/could not walk their talk.
As you know, I keep a finger in the air by maintaining contact with as much diversity as possible. I often can even see why they believe what they do.
The White Christian Nationalists, if the link is to be believed, don't want anyone in my family in America. I won't be joining their club. I don't think that all Christians are that radical though. My fallout from Christianity came long ago. If I were to spend eternity praising the god who is burning my wife, the woman I love, in eternal torment because she couldn't bring herself to believe a fabulous story, would my eternal heaven be less of a hell than hers?
Are conservatives who shout, "America first" Fascists or people tired of seeing billions of taxpayer dollars going to other countries, too often for wars?
Are the champions of victimhood representative of liberals?
Does the word liberal mean what people think, or wish, that it means?
Are protestors all non-violent or violent because it is what we wish for the tribes we like or don't like?
Are the people who go out and about wearing "tactical" shit any different from people who wear a cowboy hat and boots who don't know how to ride a horse?
I see old Vietnam vets talking as if they are still the lean, mean, killing machines that they were 50+ years ago who couldn't sprint to their mailbox. Not to mention that they were not going against their own government, they (OK, we) were doing what we did with the government's blessing.
I could go on and on, but I think you should be able to get my point. Anyone who is all that a political label says that they are is a standout idiot in a crowd of idiots. Most of the talk, especially on the internet, is empty talk. I think that fears of widespread violence are overblown (I sure hope I'm right about that).
If I was worried about blood in the streets I'd go out and buy an AR-15 (I don't have one) and think that anyone worried about it who doesn't have one is just talking. From what I've been reading, current AR-15 buyers are "liberals." As a friend said to me, "Us lefties like our guns too."
I need to disagree with you on the labels thing. It's been my experience since I was quite young that most people strive to fit into categories. They look for some movement or some fad to swear allegiance to and they put a lot of effort into maximizing their conformity.
This is everywhere. From the MAGA fools to whom "Trump won" is an iconic declaration of crazy to the "trans" crowd with its inane ideological rigidity to the enthusiastic adoption of fads.
I am on a job site called Braintrust that has turned out to be utterly useless. When I started to gripe about 90% of the jobs being marked "US only" when half the the freelancers on there reside outside the USA, I got a message from one of the staff that opened with
"I am reaching out to share [the rules of online engagement]," (which I had not violated at all).
Reach out? Share? WTF does that even mean? Why not plain speech like "I am emailing you to remind ..." but this is the new corpspeak and everyone is doing it.
Nobody had to indoctrinate them. They saw other people writing this burble and leapt right on board.
Most people are compulsively conformist. Most people look for something to join. Political attitudes in the USA are not a continuum like height or intelligence, they are a bimodal distribution and we are getting ever further apart. Under Bush we could live with each other; since Trump, we are divided into distinct camps and I see little chance of this reversing anytime soon.
You've probably heard the one about an alien invasion from outer space being the only thing that would unite humanity. Right now I would not even bet on that.
When the new corporate speak was beginning, we made paper buzzword/bullshit BINGO cards and some of us took them to meetings. When someone, usually a manager, used one of those ridiculous words if it was on our card word mark it. At some point in the meeting someone would say, "BINGO! that a good point you were making" or some other nonsense to make it less obvious that we were making fun of corporate speak. it didn't stay a secret long.
Sadly, making fun of some of the new words could get you fired.
They indoctrinate each other.
I'm in agreement with that but you also address the idea that I expressed. In the new order of the 21st Century it is hard to cling to the group identities of the old order. They have become so fractured that people increasingly either reject them outright or clarify their subgroup.
You for an example, a long-time proud liberal, do not fit under the Orwellian new definitions the radicals impose. I am seeing an increasing number of people seceding from groups they were previously comfortable in.
I think it is the result of subgroups trying to claim membership where they don't fit. A glaring example is LGBTQ[whatever else is being added]. The L & G people have an attraction to their own sex (something in common). Sex is fun. The B people are happy to have it with whomever will participate with them. If they have a preference, they seem to be able to get past it. The T people are split between the dysphoric and non-dysphoric. The Q people are outrage junkies. I don't see it as a unified group/tribe and think that some actually despise or hold one or mor of the others in contempt.
Perhaps it time to dust off our copies of Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals." in a strange new world where it is radical to be rational. While I dislike the "enemies" world, sometimes we do have genuine enemies. Hopefully without thinking we must kill them, rather than their ideas.
I hope you're right about the violence too. I'm never sure if I have a skewed idea of how crazy America has become because I haven't lived there in nearly 18 years, or whether those who are still there are the ones who need their head examined. There's some crazy shit going down there, and I was reading some Canadian articles yesterday analyzing the possibility of a US civil war, and how that would impact Canada. And I was like, shit, 35 million people are screwed unless we all head up to the mountains and let the military hordes have Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. We've still got plenty of water up there, and maybe we can train the polar bears to attack anything red white and blue :)
I worry about my family there. They're in Michigan now, but my bro and his wife are going to move to NC after my mother passes on and I really don't think they've thought this thing through.
Glad to hear though that you don't think it's time yet to buy an AR. If a grizzled old Vietnam vet isn't crapping his drawers yet, maybe there's hope...or maybe you just need your head examined :P
I just read an article that US alcohol deaths went up like 30% in the first year of the pandemic. I know opioid deaths spiralled during the pandemic, and many were believed to be intentional overdoses - i.e., suicides.
Then again, maybe the Big One is just around the corner if no one stops Putin and most of us won't be around for Christmas :P
If violence comes, I don't think it will be like the war of secession with uniformed armies. I think its most likely form would be terrorist tactics. If it goes past assassination attempts on politicians to non-government members of the other tribe, uniforms will be political bumper stickers and shirts. I have some shirts from years ago that I never wear, they'd make good rags. Bumper stickers, hell no. No matter which tribe. they make you a target of the other tribe. Who knows if and when that might happen. You could have a house full of guns and ammo and get sniped. Better to do as little as possible to make yourself a target of opportunity.
We don't have to agree on everything since neither of us have the power to change the world. Lest you forget, I tilt left or right on individual issues rather than in conformance with a political tribe.
It is common for people to say the party (tribe) moved away from their values like Jim Webb & Tulsi Gabbard did when the tribe doesn't align with their values. I hear people talking about RINOs or extreme left or right when it's just a matter of the population of the tribes not being a monolith. I reject all tribal labels since none of them define me.
The one who surprised me was George Will. but on reflection, not so surprising. He didn't become a Democrat, and probably the only reason he bailed was because his patrician pretenses were irreconcilable with Trump's crudity.
BTW he has had that same stock photo since I can remember, and he's 81 now. So it's at least 35 years out of date.
Maybe labels don't accurately define me or thee but go over to the other side and you won't find a hell of a lot of ideological diversity.
Unfortunately what I think conservatives in a theoretical "Jesusstan" would do is arm up and invade what's left of the United States. After all, they don't want their own country, they want to overthrow the one we've got. I was horrified the other day to see somewhere - forget whether it was social media or a website or a news story - in which they claimed Democrats 'want to kill us all.'
Sounds very seriously like projection to me. This is what Trump did, tell us what he was thinking himself by saying his enemies wanted to do this or that. I think these people seriously are going to start 'coming after the libs' soon like they just did for Nancy Pelosi.
It was Empty Greene said Democrats want to eliminate conservatives.
Who? Empty Greene? Like, *kill* conservatives?
Yes.
I'm going to stand up for the Democrats a bit here. I know they're their own mess; they don't have all the answers; and they're part of the problem. But why is Biden considered not much better than Trump? Why was Obama similarly maligned? Let's remember the Republicans make it a point to a) Never do anything to help the American people unless they're rich enough to be their base and b) Never let the Democrats do anything good for the American people just because.
However, I do agree with your contention that the majority of voters are idiots who vote for their own obstacles to the changes they say they want to see.
So they may turn Congress back to the Republicans because they don't like the economy? Oy.
Only hatred of Trump would allow people to ignore Biden's mental state. Its not worthy of argument. If you don't see it you just don't want to see it.
As for the economy, hell yes it matters. The people the Democrats claim to represent suffer the worst. I walk past people living in the park because they can't afford a basic low end middle class. What matters more than, a roof over your head, a job, not having to choose between food and child care. People with children liked working from home when school was out so they could eat. Stores are shuttered all over the place. Put out of business by the panic that cured the flue.
Obama, I didn't mention Obama. His presidency was an order of magnitude better.
None of that is a defense of Republicans.
Your opening line is a little weird. You didn't have to hate Trump to see the clear signs of it in him, and sorry, just not seeing that same lack of mental acuity in Biden. Apparently others have challenged this view too. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/oct/01/brit-hume/geriatrics-experts-say-brit-humes-claim-joe-biden-/
When I Google "is biden senile 2022" all I see is allegations in the right wing media about it. Why do *you* think he's senile?
I think he shows the "slowed-down" aspect of his age but fogginess, drifting? No. Don't see it.
OTOH at his age every passing year is going to take more away and six years from now he might not even know where he is half the time.
But this mileage varies. Pablo Casals was at 96 playing gifted interpretation of Bach figured bass pieces for cello and that is extremely demanding numerical musicianship.
Watch this and tell me he's showing dementia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJTilMtrp0o
We *all* get a big slower as we get older...around age 37 is when you start walking into a room, can't remember why you came there, and start to worry you've got Early Onset Dementia. My mother was - I thought - a real space case when she was my age, now I'm that age and I realize her problem wasn't brain fluffiness but she was just *OLD* :) And Biden is much older than any of us, except my mother ;) Who sitll doesn't have dementia although she's definitely in no mental condition to lead the country (she's 90). I see none of the problems with Biden that I see with Mom although I don't monitor him 24x7. Mostly he reminds me of a classic movies-era cowboy with the flinty eyes and the gravely voice and the more take-no-shit attitude. Is he fuzzier than you and I? Undoubtedly, but I'll bet we'll never be that smart when we're 80.
He's STILL got more going on than the Orange Menace, who couldn't complete a thought beyond the capability of a fourth grader, and if you compare Trump to the interviews Trump gave when he was much younger, like in his fifties, he was a lot more eloquent and less crazy-sounding. Biden wasn't my first pick either but that' who the Dems went with and hell, i'd have voted for Homer Simpson over Trump.
I was forgetting what I came downstairs for when I was 18. I was smoking a lot of weed. Short term memory loss is a well-known thing. We laughed about it.
Sometimes I find myself groping for a word, but that isn't new.
"𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘪𝘥𝘯'𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘮𝘱 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘦𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘯𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘪𝘵 𝘪𝘯 𝘩𝘪𝘮"
True, you didn't have to hate Trump to see it. Anyone who has lived with a loved one with dementia would recognize the signs clearly. My reference was to what it would take to willfully ignore/deny it, Trump hate or partisanship.
As for "right-wing sources" reporting it, of course. You don't expect the left-wing sources to mention it do you? I use WSJ, Reuters, Asia Times, CNN, NPR, Reason and Daily Wire to get a spread across the spectrum of bias. When I was young and my hearing supported it and there was no internet, I was a short-wave radio listener. VOA, BBC, Russia, Voice of Vietnam via Cuba (I heard Jane Fonda's speech), and miscellaneous stations depending upon condition to get that spread. None of those supply discernment, you must supply your own. If you are not too partisan for that you step out of the echo chamber.
https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart
As an interesting side note, at one time I had a job analyzing RF signals pertaining to electronic warfare. Between missions I was listening to the VOA broadcast of a UN security council meeting. Anwar Sādāt was making the US look like absolute assholes and the signal appeared to fade until he could not be heard. There was no fade, the signal was tall and proud on my spectrum analyzer. The noise was modulated in at the source on every VOA frequency. When he finished speaking the fade went away. The Voice of America had jammed itself! A lesson about media bias when I was a young man that led to my quest for information source diversity.
How often does All Sides update that chart? Because I recognize several that jump up and down, back and forth on factualism and bias. I wouldn't put the National Review as far right as they have, but it's still for sure right-wing. Cnn & Fox News both bounce up and down for factualism, so does MSNBC. The Epoch Times and the Washington Examiner are both far right, not sort of right. I prefer Media Bias Fact Check myself, although none of them are the final word on everything.
Maybe I don't know the signs of dementia when I see them, but I do watch for them in my mother, and from what I read in Bob Woodward's books, Trump was handled like a spoiled, easily distracted child by his handlers when he was in office. I don't know if folks are doing the same to Biden but I suspect not. Are you sure it's dementia and not just encroaching old age? Like I said, we all get a little fuzzier as we get older, I can literally completely forget something from a few days previously and it's not that I'm getting senile, that's just how older age is for many of us and my mother was the same at my age...yet 31 years later, at 90, she's sharper than Trump. I dunno, I just don't see it in Biden but then again, we had no idea Reagan was getting fuzzy in his old age, and supposedly his family & handlers hid it from the American public until his second term was over.
I wrote that you must supply your own discernment too all needs sources. The best you can do is seek variety.. You're picking fly crap out of the pepper shaker with toothpick chopsticks trying to find fault with my non -medical opinion about one subject, Biden's mental fitness to be POTUS. That's not about partisanship. Call it what you like, but claiming he is ok to be POTUS is stunning.
I don't know why you keep mentioning Trump, be has nothing to do with it. Yeah Trump was a dumpster fire but he is no longer in office and has nothing to do with Biden.
Oh I absolutely know the difference!
I have posted many times that the statistics for "trans" claims exceed medical criteria a thousandfold. I wish someone responsible (e.g. not Marjorie Taylor Greene) would get this out and start pushback. Most fads have to do with ephemeral styles of hair and clothing, not permanent surgical alteration. This could be done without attacking others by pointing out that genuinely dysphoric people are being left out in the cold by the scant resources for their support being drained by people who just want attention.
Of course I doubt even Steve could write this on Medium. It take only a single report of "transphobia" to get banned from there by Roger (he/him).
I am being interviewed for a technical writing job and were I ordered to use "they" as the "nonbinary" want I would have a really big issue.
I find G’s certainty astonishing. It really highlights what happens (or doesn’t) inside the bubble of curated thought around most of us. Two examples:
A lovely and deeply liberal friend of mine had no idea Clarence Thomas was initially not included in the new Smithsonian museum of African-American history because he is a conservative.
An articulate and fascinating new friend born in Egypt and active in child psychology, father in the UN and speaking five languages had never heard of the Abraham Accords. Yes, a woman from the Middle East and deeply proud of her heritage didn’t know about one of the singular achievements towards Middle East peace in 70 years - because Trump.
...but that bubble, it’s so comforting...
So G is certain all thoughtful discussion about protecting female spaces is based on trans hatred. And puberty blockers are reversible. And no surgeries are done under 18. What in the world passes for research, informed opinion, and engaged knowledge anymore?
I appreciated your patience in response Steve - highlighting how you have to repeatedly and often gently pop that pretty bubble to let the sunshine in.
It's frightening to me how easily gaslit so many female and allegedly feminist 'allies' are. It's breathtaking how ignorant this woman is, how she only gets her information from those who blindly accept trans-activist propaganda. I'm not familiar with those Medium writers - I may have avoided them if I recognized them as loony lefties - but there were plenty who were uncritical of the trans movement, who naively accept that everyone's there because they're GD rather than some other highly suspicious reasons, like for sexual fetishism reasons and/or to harass and intimidate women with their genitals. Thanks for those articles, BTW, they'll come in handy with some 'trans-ally' anonymous coward on Twitter I've been challenging this past week (you know, the kind of with a grey head, no profile information, and a following of 11).
This is the problem with the left - it favours tolerance, but it's become *too* tolerant, and too easily swayed by misogyny in the trans movement. These guys are clever - they figured out how to get women to stop hammering them about their male privilege and accept them as alleged victims.
Let's remember that when it comes to genuine victimhood in the trans community, their biggest threat is, like it is to us natal women, male aggression. We're not the ones killing and assaulting transpeople; that is and remains a guy thing, just as harassment in toilets, spas, and violence shelters is a guy thing (funny how they always seem to have penises. Where are the trans-harassers with vaginas? Are there any? Who knows?)
Also the Nazi genocide comparisons are wearing very, very thin. There was an actual genocidal effort to eradicate the world, or at least Europe, of Jews in the last century. I've never heard anyone advocate killing or eliminating all the transpeople. If there are such voices, they're probably on the far right, but I suspect that particular trope is mostly between their ears.
Yes the most infinitesimal deviation from the most insignificant point of their ideology leads to your being called not just "transphobic" but "incredibly transphobic" and probably seeing a red box next time you log on.
Hasn't happened yet, and with a new narcissistic nutbar who suffers from delusions of adequacy taking over Twitter I anticipate that will happen even less now. Perhaps it's time to respond humourously/ironically with their own verbiage. "I find you comment incredibly hysterical that you can see *any*, let alone 'an incredible amount' of transphobia in my comment. Have you ever looked up the word phobic?"
i'm going to come up with an Inigo Montoya (overused, for sure) meme: "Transphobic. You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
I don’t think a lot of people are gnawing their nails in fear that a man in a dress and heels with some major identity disorder is going to mug them in an alley.
It annoys me no end that “phobia” is used for “hatred.” That suffix is "-misia.”
Kat Rosenfield recently had a great piece on tribalism and how certain positions are simply unspeakable...until they aren't. That's probably the worst part of the tribal discourse today ... "Oh, you have this particular discrete thought? Then you are evil and are hereby branded as an outright heretic and are forever banned from this tribe."
https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2022/11/07/why-i-keep-getting-mistaken-for-a-conservative/
Those are my sentiments entirely. I always enjoyed Kat when I was on Medium.
Sea-lioning
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bx4X9zCCAAEf0sH?format=png&name=small
I had a stark instance of it on here in the original Rittenhouse post. I mentioned that there had been a video of Rittenhouse talking about how he wanted to go shoot protesters, taken on a friend's cell phone and that the judge refused to let it be played in court.
I was challenged to produce the video despite its unavailability; it had been mentioned in court but was no on YouTube or anywhere else. First time I wanted a block button on here.
Without the "Sea-lioning" it seems to have become a thing and argument. https://twitter.com/Cernovich/status/1587899647414063105?s=20&t=OMebTbg6FBVTdWP7P7ojBg
TY, Steve. When You're right, You're right. For what good it does "G." I quote:
"Everyone, without exception, is entitled to their beliefs, but and its a huge but, they are not entitled to force their beliefs on to others, under any circumstances, even parents."
Gimme a break. Exactly who is it that's *forcing* their ideas on *women* and *parents*? It's another "rule for thee, but not for me" deal. And that's just plain despicable, IMO.
“Women should not have to set themselves on fire to keep trans people warm.”
Absolutely beautiful and so spot on.
True, which is what makes them no better than the extreme right which is attempting exactly the same.
I don't want *either* or these nutjob teams in charge.