Conservatism
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Joey D
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I wonder if these idiots have actually ever read the Bible. Most stuff they complain about would have Jesus looking at them going "bro, I wasn't nailed to a tree for this".
Assuming Jesus was real and the stories were mostly true, there's no way he'd support some of these modern Christians. The entire New Testament is about Jesus literally hanging out with the downtrodden of society and teaching people to love everyone. Hell, he even forgave the people who betrayed him and nailed him to a cross. You bet your ass if that happened to me and I came back to life, I'd be out for sweet revenge.
Assuming Jesus was real and the stories were mostly true, there's no way he'd support some of these modern Christians. The entire New Testament is about Jesus literally hanging out with the downtrodden of society and teaching people to love everyone. Hell, he even forgave the people who betrayed him and nailed him to a cross. You bet your ass if that happened to me and I came back to life, I'd be out for sweet revenge.
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- GTP_Duke
While every word of this is true - and I've been saying it for decades - the reality is that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats would benefit from stronger third parties, so the one common ground they can manage to find is suppressing and belittling the center as much as possible. Both sides are perfectly happy to paint each other as the monster that is destroying modern America, in order to increase the hysteria and force their constituents into opposing lines like good little boys and girls.
And, unfortunately, this has proven to be an effective strategy.
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So #LiberalismIsAMentalDisorder is trending on twitter and.... surprise most of the tweets are just transphobic/anti LGBT/outdated viewpoint takes:
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Not that anyone around here operates on that kind of low brow level from an equal opposite vantage point.
Play stupid games......
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Of course it's dumb, it was posted by the same person as posted that hashtag - and the hashtag was what I was focused on. Slinging shallow insults will very rarely have any positive effect on anyone other than the "choir"/"converted". Repeating an insult with meme-like regularity will very readily make an otherwise clearly intelligent person look like an egotistical, cartoonish fool. Sadly, we're not comparing apples and ORANGEs, it's very similar exhibitionist behaviour.
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- TexRex72
You mean me!
It's okay to say it. I'm not a shrinking flower.
You may recall that I responded to your earlier protestations that a supposed narrowing of conservatism is "divisive." I responded by saying that the narrowing has been done for me. I also think I made it clear that I have no interest in safe spaces, either for myself or that another may desire, and that the "divisive" language that I use has been plucked directly from conservatives (there I go again with the narrowing).
Then again you may not recall because you didn't respond to that post (either you didn't see it or you declined to respond, and it's fine regardless) and you kind of noped the **** out for...months.
Anyway, I'm a liberal. I'll let you take that to mean whatever you will. I was in college in the early '90s when "political correctness" (BOO!!!) came about. Of course by this I mean the ambiguous invocation of "political correctness" (BOO!!!) as a response to supposed suppression of conservative viewpoints absent governmental action (this is key because the term itself, a bogeyman, alludes to a supposed corrective agenda by political actors, and it does so in an effort to tie it to governmental action without any substantive link).
Around the time "political correctness" (BOO!!!) was being bandied about, so too was one variation or another on "liberalism is mental illness" (that's the one that I heard most often, and so it's the one that I've chosen to paraphrase). It's not new. Nationalist political commentator Michael Savage, who once went on a bigoted tirade against austism of all things, published a book, Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder: Savage Solutions.
It's also pervasive. In 2019, the Freedom From Religion Foundation assisted an atheist group in Indiana in seeking relief against a public school in the state because a teacher at the school had a record of imposing religious (also political, but that wasn't the primary concern) viewpoints on students during formal instruction. Also cited in the complaint was the teacher's displaying of materials promoting religious viewpoint.
Have a look right above the cart:
This one's fun:
I like how the Free Exercise Clause is underlined but the Establishment Clause is not.
The materials cited in the complaint aren't limited to those displayed above.
Hat tip to Hemant "The Friendly Atheist" Mehta, without whom I'd not be aware of the complaint.
I don't know what came of the complaint and it's moot now because that teacher was caught on school security cameras slapping a student and isn't a teacher anymore.
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(I often struggle to find the time that I'd like to spend interacting on this forum. By the the time I'm back it sometimes feels like it'd be awkward to dredge up where I left off.)
You mean me!
It's okay to say it. I'm not a shrinking flower.
You may recall that I responded to your earlier protestations that a supposed narrowing of conservatism is "divisive." I responded by saying that the narrowing has been done for me. I also think I made it clear that I have no interest in safe spaces, either for myself or that another may desire, and that the "divisive" language that I use has been plucked directly from conservatives (there I go again with the narrowing).
Then again you may not recall because you didn't respond to that post (either you didn't see it or you declined to respond, and it's fine regardless) and you kind of noped the **** out for...months.
Anyway, I'm a liberal. I'll let you take that to mean whatever you will. I was in college in the early '90s when "political correctness" (BOO!!!) came about. Of course by this I mean the ambiguous invocation of "political correctness" (BOO!!!) as a response to supposed suppression of conservative viewpoints absent governmental action (this is key because the term itself, a bogeyman, alludes to a supposed corrective agenda by political actors, and it does so in an effort to tie it to governmental action without any substantive link).
Around the time "political correctness" (BOO!!!) was being bandied about, so too was one variation or another on "liberalism is mental illness" (that's the one that I heard most often, and so it's the one that I've chosen to paraphrase). It's not new. Nationalist political commentator Michael Savage, who once went on a bigoted tirade against austism of all things, published a book, Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder: Savage Solutions.
It's also pervasive. In 2019, the Freedom From Religion Foundation assisted an atheist group in Indiana in seeking relief against a public school in the state because a teacher at the school had a record of imposing religious (also political, but that wasn't the primary concern) viewpoints on students during formal instruction. Also cited in the complaint was the teacher's displaying of materials promoting religious viewpoint.
Have a look right above the cart:
This one's fun:
I like how the Free Exercise Clause is underlined but the Establishment Clause is not.
The materials cited in the complaint aren't limited to those displayed above.
Hat tip to Hemant "The Friendly Atheist" Mehta, without whom I'd not be aware of the complaint.
I don't know what came of the complaint and it's moot now because that teacher was caught on school security cameras slapping a student and isn't a teacher anymore.
Seems mostly like a long-winded way to explain how you chose your particular vehicle for the race to the bottom. I don't know if I'm meant to be but I'm not getting anything to convince me of the usefulness of slinging insults.
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That's assuming that you believe it's OK for the government to set price controls and provide subsidies.
I don't think it's OK. I would have voted NAY on at least 3 of those. I don't know enough about the vets bill to know one way or the other. Also, bear in mind that the alleged 'baby formula shortage' was 100% caused by bureaucratic red tape that prevented importing formula from Europe among other places.
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But is it an insult if it's a logical conclusion? I think there are only two groups that could be offended - those who are mentally ill and those who are American conservatives. I guess some people may find it offensive that the experience of being an American conservative could be compared to living with a diagnosed condition, but I'll be honest I haven't seen any objections of that kind....ever. So it's mainly American conservatives who would be offended - but do they have a valid objection if the basis of the statement is logically sound....
Now whether it's useful to state this is debateable. Maybe it could act as a wake up call for some to re-evaluate their beliefs but I feel that it is more likely that it will rub them up the wrong way and entrench their position, validating in their minds their opinion that they're on the right side of the "culture wars".
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- TexRex72
I get it. Really.
No, yeah...that about sums it up.
The mother****ers have demonstrated time and again* that they're unwilling to respond to niceties, so why should I make that what I'm bringing to the table when A) it already goes against my nature and B) the alternative is so ****ing cathartic?
*And for how long? I mean...it was conservatives who pushed back against the progressive threat of abolition, against the progressive threat of equal rights for non-whites, against the progressive threat of equal rights for women and against the progressive threat of equal rights for homosexuals. Now it's conservatives pushing back against the progressive threat of equal rights for transgender individuals.
The world's burning, and while I think I'd prefer it wasn't, I may as well get something out of it for myself. S'more?
...
Scaff
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It's got nothing to do with where individuals stand on each point, it's a rebut to the oft cited claim that both the main US parties are ideological identical.
The cause of the baby formula issue wasn't red tape, that was the cause of a solution to it failing (EU imports not being labelled to FDA standards). The cause was global supply issues due to Covid and contamination issues at factories in the US.
Thevredtaoe issue, a bill to provide the FDA with funding to better manage imports, etc, was the one Republicans voted against.
2022 United States infant formula shortage - Wikipedia
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@TexRex:
He said “the red tape” issue.
@Scaff
The EPA has plenty of funding already. Funding wasn’t the issue. MORE funding wouldn’t fix the problem, so no need to vote for it.
And the larger issue that you are missing is this: at the bottom of it, both parties are ideologically the same, because both favor authoritarian government with excessive regulation and lack of due process and proper legislative procedure.
Once they pit themselves that way against the citizens they allegedly ‘serve’, what particular flavor of authoritarianism they prefer is secondary in comparison.
He said “the red tape” issue.
@Scaff
The EPA has plenty of funding already. Funding wasn’t the issue. MORE funding wouldn’t fix the problem, so no need to vote for it.
And the larger issue that you are missing is this: at the bottom of it, both parties are ideologically the same, because both favor authoritarian government with excessive regulation and lack of due process and proper legislative procedure.
Once they pit themselves that way against the citizens they allegedly ‘serve’, what particular flavor of authoritarianism they prefer is secondary in comparison.
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Joey D
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I'm not sure it was red tape, but the shortage was certainly made worse by the government being completely useless. The FDA had known about the potential issue for months before it decided to actually do anything. If it had acted in October/November when the complaint was first made with them, it probably would've helped, or at the very least prevented babies from dying. And really, had the FDA actually kept up on inspections, it probably would've never reached that point in the first place.
The regulatory agencies in the US often give off the impression they are there to protect people, but they're pretty ineffective and lots of things slip through the cracks. More than a handful of companies work on a cost/benefit ratio too where it's sometimes just cheaper to let people get sick, injured, or die than it is to just fix the problem. These agencies are supposed to protect us from that, but they don't do a very good job. Then politicians make laws where it makes it difficult to pursue civil action against those companies.
This is part of the reason I buy into the whole "both sides are the same" argument. The only thing the Democrats have over the Republicans is that they didn't and still aren't trying to overthrow the US government. That's a pretty low bar. Past that, Democrat and Republican politicians only have their own self-interests in mind and can be influenced by money. I'm not saying other parties wouldn't do this, but since we've never really tried it, I can't say for sure. I'd at least like to try it and see because maybe someone with a different political philosophy would be better, even if only a tiny bit.
How they get the money is different though as are the issues they pretend to take up. But at the end of the day, it just comes back to getting money and the politicians doing the bare minimum to keep their job. Washington is full of ridiculous corrupt career politicians that don't give a single, solitary damn about their constituents unless, of course, that constituent writes them a big check.
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