Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, October 24, 2024
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73 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
Follow Steven on
Twitter and/or
BlueSky.
It never ceases to shock me that Trump’s comparison of 1/6 rioters to the ww2 Japanese-American internment camps wasn’t a bigger deal. 1/6 was not a day of love.
Obviously Japanese-Americans are angry, but you know, immigrants, amirite?
Oh shoot
Gun control Democratic style.
@Bill Jempty: Democrat sure, but Kunce is also, a gun owner and Second Amendment supporter. Or rather a supporter of the 2nd amendment as interpreted by the gun lobby starting in the late 70’s. Before that we had sane restrictions on gnus, especially in public, that was “discovered” to be unconstitutional after 200 years of sanity.
My take away from this story and others like it that highlight how common unintended discharges of a firearm really are, is that the current interpretation of the 2nd, brought about by reactionary conservatives (talk about a oxymoron) is well and truly nuts.
We’re getting a new roof on the house today and it goes without saying that the first language of the crew isn’t English. Prime candidates for a trumpian repatriation, with a stop at a trumpville internment camp.
@Sleeping Dog: I was having a conversation yesterday with my patio paver guy who was here to do some repairs – a second-generation Mexican-American.
He said he probably wasn’t going to bother voting, but asked who I was voting for. I told him Harris (I was wearing a Harris/Walz button on my shirt), and he said “Why? I mean, Trump is crazy, but why Harris?”
I explained to him that I wasn’t Trump’s target – he is – but I do care about other people and want to live in a world where people are treated kindly and with dignity, not tossed aside and given no hope. He then told me that he was going to go ahead and vote for Harris too – not that it will matter much here in California, but I think there are a lot of people out there who haven’t really thought much about it.
I think these conversations go a long way toward motivating folks to vote.
@Tony W: I commend you on your efforts.
This, however, baffles me:
Why isn’t Trump being CRAZY enough?
People can bleat on all day about policies and positions and political theory. Ultimately, none of that matters if one candidate is a stark-raving lunatic who is a global embarrassment.
@Rick DeMent:
Now wildebeest, gazelle, yaks, and all manner of other feral ungulates are free to wander hither and yon with no restraint whatsoever…
All thumbs.
Earlier this morning I gave an up vote to @Stormy Dragon: 09:17 comment as I think that it is rather clever. I saw the tally 1 next to the Thumb Icon. Another successful ballot cast!
After loading and re loading Thursday’s Forum page I scrolled down to the Stormy Dragon comment to find that nothing was registered next to the Thumb Up icon. Not even a zero (0) that sometimes appears in that space.
I will check again as soon as I post this since I know that the OTB voting system can be fickle. I hope this gets resolved before election day.
Edit: Now I see 2 up votes. I can only assume that one of them is mine.
From Politico yesterday, They’re Just Over It: How Trump Has Converted Male Frustration Into a Movement:
It’s hard not to be pissed off by all this. What exactly favors women? We have a woman running for our nation’s top job, and people are still judging her clothing (the Daily Beast*) and asking if America is ready for a woman president. Women still fight the glass ceiling and old boys’ network in office places all over the country. Schools may be better designed for girls’ success than boys, but the structure of schools hasn’t changed in hundreds of years. Why is it suddenly a problem for boys now?
There was a huge blowup on Threads when a male Democratic strategist made a comment about men getting left behind by Democrats, and when asked for specifics, he talked about white male suicide rates, and men not going to college or getting enough sex. He was slammed by women, and rightly so. As one woman asked, are men not part of all the groups that the Democrats and specifically Harris are targeting: families, small business owners, veterans, students, seniors, low-wage workers?
Women in general are working so hard just to stay above water. We work hard at school, in the workplace, and taking care of our families, and we still face barriers and obstacles men don’t have. Yet somehow their struggles are still our fault.
* Quote from the Daily Beast:
@Monala:
It’s always a woman’s fault: first mom, then the teacher and later on the girlfriend(s), and ending up with the wife. Nothing is ever a man’s fault as long as there’s a pair of ovaries somewhere close by.
I think and hope my wife and I raised our sons differently, and my new daughter-in-law told us that my son is almost fully trained to be a husband. We were very proud.
We’ve Come a Long Way Baby!
R Herbert Hoover
defeats
D Al Smith
1928
@Monala: There is a conversation to be had. I have things to say. There is a very big risk that if I were to speak at length, it would get interpreted as anti-women, anti-feminism, anti-Harris. I am none of those things.
Let’s circle back to this.
@Jay L Gischer: please do. I understand what Mike Reynolds often says about men being a problem we can’t ignore. But too often when it comes to asking about what can be done, the answer is to resent and diminish women’s achievement.
@Monala:
Agreed. May I also suggest that it would be helpful to apply this universally, and not immediately denigrate the achievements of anyone who doesn’t fit into one’s preferred classes, even if they are a white male.
I’m an old codger with way too much self confidence and too many scars to be much affected by people constantly implying that all my accomplishments are due to my being a white male and essentially I just walked into everything without meaningful effort. But there are many men, especially younger ones, who may not appreciate the constant disparagement.
@Mister Bluster: My Catholic grandfather used to tell me that when Al Smith was defeated by Hoover, Smith sent a one-word telegraph to the Pope – “unpack.”
As I noted yesterday, the strike against Boeing goes on.
Fact is Boeing’s employees gave up a lot the last time their contract was negotiated, and are trying to get all of it back. I think one large part is pensions, which Boeing naturally doesn’t want to reinstate.
I’ve been wondering, too, why the Clinton administration allowed Boeing to acquire McDonnell Douglas. I know the business and regulatory environment at the time was far different, and McDD was on the verge of extinction. But who thought reducing the number of American mainline commercial jet manufacturers to one was a good idea?
@Monala: Yep.
I’m exhausted by it. My gawd, women couldn’t even have their own credit card or bank account until the ’70s, and consistently have to do twice the work for half the credit. We still get talked over. We’re still more at risk to be abused or murdered by a partner. But we point this out and ask that it please be corrected and it’s turned into this grievance-fest, for men–some of whom feel comfortable enough even in this allegedly hostile environment to call for the repeal of the 19th amendment.
That men feel marginalized by a handful of minor advances would, in a perfect world, be a point to be absorbed and discussed.
@Stormy Dragon: Grin ….
@Bill Jempty:
Ah … the Second Amendment … Republican style.
Remember way back when in 2008, Justice Scalia in his Heller decision wrote:
In the succeeding 16 years I’ve yet to hear more than a negligible few Republicans publicly refer to Scalia’s Heller opinion as a basis for ‘reasonable’ regulation of firearms. Most Republicans likely fear that they would be termed or primaried out by their own Party if they expressed support for this important yet purposely overlooked section of Scalia’s Heller opinion. I would guess that over 80% of Congressional Republicans disagree with Scalia on this.
@Monala: Sadly, there are phenomena that are in fact zero sum, at least in the near term. In race- and gender-based policy changes, every advantage/benefit/job/opportunity/whatever that goes to a minority hire/female/transgender/whoever is a tangible loss to some (CRT TRIGGER WARNING!!!) white male who would have been the default preferred class candidate.
That’s “the problem for boys” that I think people are talking about. Sadly, it’s also “the problem that can’t be fixed” because the old default can never be restored. This may be the big lie (more likely unspoken truth) of the civil rights era: at some future point, “normal” would return, but “normal” isn’t coming back, ever. Not here, not in the GQP. Turn and face the strange; it goes by a new name now. It’s called “the future.”
@al Ameda:
We should cut to the chase and pass a bill requiring the government to issue every citizen a 1 kiloton warhead, and allowing private enterprise to sell subsidized warheads of up to 700 megatons.
An armed society is a polite society.
@Monala: @Jen:
Go read Dr. Taylor’s Thursday tab on The 87 Things Donald Trump Has Said About Women if you really want to get your blood boiling.
@Kathy: I’m starting to think that all women should be armed at all times in a Trump environment, given that we’ve just had another actress report that Trump molested her.
@Kathy: I grew up in Seattle. For as long as I’ve been alive, Boeing has been a bifurcated business: a small core of elite respected and protected employees in the middle of a sea disposable “human resources” (well paid in many cases, but still disposable and churned relentlessly). Boeing’s labor problems are built into its system and philosophy.
As to why the merger, to the extent that I recall, the choice was between “rescue” by merger and “rescue” by some vulture capitalist entity. Which to choose… hmmm…
An interesting new article finds that, in addition to being less crime-prone than North American native-born citizens, immigrants are also more willing to fight for their (adopted) country.
I guess you can’t walk across the border with bone spurs.
@CSK: The blood of sane American women isn’t boiling fiercely enough already?
Masochism much?
@just nutha:
McDD at the time held quite a few military contracts, including the F-15. Their commercial plane division wasn’t doing all that well. They’d had the cargo door design issues with the DC-10 in the 70s (sound familiar?), and all their “new” models were modifications on existing ones, namely the MD-11 of the DC-10, and the MD-80/90/95 of the DC-9 (sound familiar?).
Recent historical commentary has it that McDonnell made for the decline of Douglas when the former acquired the latter (I won’t ask again, as it should be obvious by now).
The thing is if McDD had to be sold to another company to survive, it shouldn’t have been to Boeing.
There’s never a Doc Brown DeLorean around when you need one…
@Grumpy realist: I think that makes about 27 women on the record that Trump sexually assaulted or molested them. I would assume that this is the tip of the iceberg. It’s just a guess, but maybe he’s committed sexual assault in five to ten times as many women. He was the quintessential New York playboy back in the day, and we know from his Access Hollywood tape that no definitely was yes to him.
Sometimes I think there should be an ad that just plays the tape and has a voiceover saying “imagine if he’s talking about your wife, your daughter, your granddaughter”. Still can’t how any woman can vote for him.
@Jay L Gischer:
We haven’t had a hundred comment argument on a new topic in ages. I welcome this.
@Monala:
I think we are creating a vision of masculinity that encourages behavior that makes all of these things more likely. A overly independent man who is isolated, ignorant, and kind of a shithead that women rightly shun.
When boys are listening to Jordan Peterson* and Andrew Tate, they aren’t going to turn out well.
Also, men could be having more sex, even if women find them repulsive, by just turning gay.
——
*: I was having a brain freeze and nearly blamed the failure of boys to become decent people on Robert Pattinson, famed actor in Twilight.
@Gustopher: I’ve watched quite a few of Jordan Peterson’s early psychology lectures and found them quite fascinating. The problem is that he seems to have a) totally gone off the deep end about women (we’re not all alike. A lot of us don’t want kids and have no interest in raising them) and b) self-pity is the greatest dope in the world and Jordan Peterson has become its pusher to young men.
A hell of a lot of young men don’t believe in the word “NO!”
@Kathy:
Just my vague decor it wasn’t the alternative that MD was going to go bankrupt?
Edit: I saw you alluded to this up top. But I don’t think there was an American Aerospace company of sufficient size to take on MD, except for Boeing.
@CSK: Ugh, no thanks. I am having enough trouble with my blood pressure lately, and I am almost certain that the cause is the election.
Seriously considering going offline until it’s all over.
In his fancy new thread about the border, Dr. Taylor writes:
This is where Trump’s tariffs come in — by tanking the US economy, it will reduce the demand for labor, and the incentive for people like Marco to come here. Y’know, people like Marco. Brownish people.
It all ties together.
(I just figured I didn’t want to immediately start shitposting in the comments of the post Dr. Taylor spend time pulling together)
@CSK: Trump’s opinion of women has all the sophistication of a 13-year-old boy’s. If it’s a woman he likes, even if it’s his own daughters, they’re a sex object. If it’s a woman he dislikes, they’re ugly or stupid or both.
@Tony W: Also the economy. Republican administrations going back to Gerald Ford have all ended in economic calamity. Trump has made clear that he’s going to court economic disaster with his crazy tariff scheme. Tell him the economy is too important to entrust to Republicans.
@Gustopher: @Grumpy realist:
My wife is a LPC. She made a comment the other day that strikes me as being tangential to (or maybe a subset) of some of the issues of young men’s behavioral tendencies (I’m searching for a neutral term here and can’t find it). As is so much these days, it involves the internet. It seems as though the quantity of available pornography are impacting men’s and women relationships. Simplified, young men are having sexual expectations that young women don’t want to participate in. There is a deep chasm of misunderstanding that needs to be bridged there.
@MarkedMan:
Maybe Boeing was the only one who could take on McDD. It was still a terrible idea.
I need to find info on that era. Lockheed clearly was out of the commercial plane business after the L-1011 fizzle, and Convair, a division of General Dynamics, had failed at commercial airliners even earlier.
Not that I consider the consolidation of European commercial airline production in Airbus to be good, either.
Remember the great baby formula shortage a few years ago? it was due to problems with one manufacturer. There’s no comparable shortage of commercial aircraft as far as the public is aware, but the airlines do notice.
Partly it’s ameliorated by some excess capacity, but it’s beginning to cause problems. For instance, a big part of Southwest’s problems is the delay in getting the MAX 7 into service. The MAX 8 is a bit too big for its business model. In part this means hanging on to 737-700s, but they don’t have enough of them. Instead they have had to use the MAX 8 for routes where it is excess capacity, which costs money in extra fuel.
It’s better on the widebody front because Bowing does not depend on a single line. But the loooong delay for the 777-X is taking a toll.
If these issues persist, it’s possible China’s COMAC may make inroads with the C919 narrow body in Asia. So far there are no orders outside China, and I think it hasn’t even been certified by the FAA or EASA, but right now it’s the only alternative to the duopoly.
BTW, often planes made by Eastern Block countries are perceived to be primitive and unsafe. Granted few airlines outside Communist countries ever took soviet jets. But no C919 has crashed yet, compared to two 737-MAX8s.
@Scott: Clearly, we need to aggressively market a better porn to young teenagers, where the fantasy is that their partner loves them or at least likes them, rather than that they can perform 12 physical stunts.
I am only half joking.
Kids are going to access porn — it’s really hard to block the internet completely. If the most harmfully unrealistic is what is easily available, that’s going to shape their expectations.
Back in the late 1990s, I thought the way to get marriage equality would be to start distributing “lesbian” wedding porn to 14 year old boys and just wait a generation. Men marrying men would just be an afterthought, an apparently accidental consequence.
Maybe we need to also start making sure we have porn that explains that tariffs hurt the working class, that the Laffer curve is laughable, and that the electoral college is bad. I’m not sure how that would work. Oklahoma is an electoral cuckold, always watching the action unfold.
ETA: just noticed the last sentence has a rhyme. Alas, I’m meeting folks for lunch soon and will not have time to write a terrible poem about Electoral College Erotica.
@Kathy:
Sounds reasonable to me. What was the “other company?” Who, in US aerospace was big enough to afford to buy it?
Not a trick question, btw; I really don’t know.
@Kathy:
Hah! Variations on that could apply to so many things!
@Scott: plus young men’s participating in social media groups that tell them what they want to hear….
I saw a version of this play out in Japan when I was there. Young Japanese women deciding that they would prefer to a) move abroad b) stay single, or c) marry non-Japanese rather than find a “nice Japanese boy” and settle down. It kept sending the politicians into fits.
(And American guys? American women will just walk away if they think they won’t be respected in a relationship. Your claimed “alpha-male” position isn’t fooling anyone. Grow up.)
@Gustopher:
I would agree except that recent hundred-comment arguments have consisted of the same 8 people saying the same stupid things a dozen or so times each. I still gave you a thumbs up for the trolling/snarking potential.
@just nutha:
See a couple of posts above. TL;DR I don’t know, either.
On lighter topics, the other day I thought I’d never seen a dog or a cat who hadn’t figured out stairs. I’ve heard of other animals climbing stairs, particularly rats and snakes. Evidently it’s that obvious how they are used.
But then I wondered how sentients with a different body plan might build stairs, or for that matter other things they’d use like vehicles and chairs. Seeing there are no other sentient species nearby, and that all vertebrates on the planet have the same body plan (with extensive modifications), it’s all speculation. Alas, I’ve yet to come up with some kind of notion.
@Grumpy realist:
Seeing this comment reminds me of a comment I heard a teenager make near the start of my career in the 90s:
@Gustopher: And I for one, thank you for it. The shitposting will come soon enough.
@MarkedMan: And sometimes terrible ideas are the only ones available for countries committed to pure market capitalism.
@Gustopher:
@just nutha:
We’ve already passed yesterday’s output. That’s not bad.
And I haven’t decided whether to post on my non-problems involving podcast apps, the Goodreads challenge, and green potatoes.
@Kathy: Sentient cat- or dog-like creatures wouldn’t build stairs, or much anything else for that matter. No thumbs. 🙂
@just nutha:
That was part of a premise of a Clarke story i don’t recall very well. You had sentient beings with hoofs and horns, but no hands. They could do high level math and such, but not much else. It involves dumber sentients with something approaching hands with fingers, which can be trained to make stuff.
Far from Clarke’s best.
But I didn’t say sentient dogs or cats. I said sentients with a different body plan. Say with four legs and two arms, or two tentacles. Or something with radial symmetry.
@MarkedMan:
We’re still dealing with the fallout of 3 terrible ideas:
1) supply side (aka Voodoo) economics.
2) lax antitrust enforcement as a form of consumer welfare
3) the persistent notion that the two above are actually good ideas.
@Kathy:
The entire reason McDD failed is that its management became enthralled with the GE “numbers are the only thing that matters” leadership style. And McDD’s management won the merger, implemented the same corporate culture, and all signs point to now having also tanked Boeing.
The only way Boeing turns around is by achieving better FTQ [first time quality] on the shop floor… so why are they working so hard to screw everyone working that floor? They need to give the union each and every demand the union has made – and beg the workers to stay at the company.
Disgusting on so many levels. Another WTF for normal people, just another day for the Trump crowd:
From Vanity Fair:
Republicans have said a lot of weird, wildly disturbing things in their time, but perhaps nothing has come close to the creepiness that was on display on Wednesday night, when former Fox News host Tucker Carlson told a crowd of Donald Trump supporters that the ex-president needs to give America—which he likened to a “hormone-addled 15-year-old” girl—a “vigorous spanking.”
Interesting that he would bring up a 15-year-old girl. Even if it were legal, what normal father would ever spank his 15-year-old daughter?
Of course, the crowd ate it up.
After Tucker Carlson likened Trump to “daddy” tonight, and said a reelected Trump would need to give the media and Democrats a “spanking,” the rally crowd “went wild,”
@alaynatreene
reports. Later, when Trump came on stage, the crowd screamed “Daddy’s home” and “Daddy Don”
@Lucysfootball:
Some great daddy figure. He wants to bang his own daughter. An example of fatherhood for all men, right? Sure.
@CSK: Well, like his own children, we are waiting for him to kick off.
Reflecting on Trump’s increasingly bizzare behavior of late it occurred just how much he has on the line in this. He has to know if he loses he will face all those cases, which can only be delayed for just so long. His support, after losing to Sleepy Joe, and (the horror! What would Daddy have called him?) a black woman, will vanish. He has to know all those politicians he bullied are seeking a chance to take an enormous dump on him if they ever believe it’s safe to do so. Trump Inc? With a CEO with his rap sheet? A real estate holding company under constant attack from the kind of suits Rudy and others of his merry gang are facing. In short: Utter destruction.
He wins? He becomes the law. King of the most powerful nation the earth has ever known.
It’s like that guy who put everything he had, the house, the car, every cent to his name on red at Vegas. All or nothing, but that guy was not facing a potential jail term and could change his mind until the bet was down. Is Trump losing his marbles? Almost to be expected. Wouldn’t be a bit shocked if Trump keeled over from a stroke somewhere in the next couple weeks.
@Rick DeMent: A ricochet is not an unintended discharge. I’ve been actively shooting guns for over 30 years and I have never experienced or witnessed an “unintentional discharge”. Nor have I ever seen a person injured as a result of hunting or shooting at a range. I am very selective about who I hunt or shoot with so that might be a factor.
Before 1934 you could buy REAL assault rifles, anti-tank rifles and machine guns for cheap without even a background check. Legit walk into a gun store and buy a fully automatic machine gun same day. Hell you could buy that stuff via mail order.
My favorite were the mail order ads for the “anti-bandit thompson”.
You could still buy that stuff until 1986 but it would require a form 4 which was a minor formality. That’s why you see mention of “preban” on some machine guns being sold. Meaning they were manufactured prior to 1986 and thus can be transferred without all the hassle of a modern machine gun. Lots of m16s, m60s and m2/3s floating around from that.
@Scott:
I wonder what Trump’s kids really think about him. His first two wives, the mothers of Junior, Ivanka, and Eric and Tiffany respectively, he discarded as if they were trash. Junior refused to speak with his father for a year when he dumped Ivana, and Ivanka has to know (since everyone else does) that her father lusts after her. Apparently the three oldest kids can’t stand Wife #3, Melania, especially Ivanka. It’s a toss-up at this point as to which of them Trump finds more sexually enticing. Probably Ivanka, who’s 11 years younger than her step-mom.
Trump refused to be photographed with Tiffany because she was “too fat” (look who’s talking). About Barron, who knows? He was raised by his mother and his Slovenian grandparents, and may not be that well acquainted with dear old Dad.
@CSK: I am sure his failure to mention a spanking first was just an oversight on his part.
@Gavin:
In aviation circles, it’s said McDD bought Boeing with Boeing’s money.
What Boeing did was buy McDD with Boeing stock, and assuming most or all of its debt. This led to large McDD shareholders to serve in Boeing’s board, and thus they assimilated the company that bought them.
It gets worse, as Boeing later recruited and promoted several GE executives. Two were named CEO, including the last one in 2020.
@Gavin: @Kathy: I’ve seen this tendency to become what you bought repeatedly in the hospital industry. Failing hospital is bought by a (relatively more) successful hospital, which then brings the leadership of the failing hospital into senior leadership of the merger and adopts the policies of the failing hospital. I have never seen that go well. Twice I have seen it go poorly enough that the new hospital entity failed badly enough that it was, in turn, bought by a (relatively more) successful hospital system, who then proceeded to make the same mistake and bring the, now, twice failed leadership into the senior leadership of the merger. If I was conspiracy minded I would assume that the soft landing for failed leaders was the quid pro quo for doing the deal
@Scott:
I remember hearing this argument in the 90s. Along with the unreasonable standards being set by barbie, She-Ra and all that. Meanwhile I was like uh have you not paid attention to how male heroes are being presented in cartoons and action movies (He-man and dozens of other kids shows)? How is that a reasonable standard for boys to live up to? Am I going to disappoint girls because I don’t have a 12 inch coke can for a dick? Meanwhile the porn industry was the only place women were making more than men.
I don’t buy the ‘porn is the problem’ crap that has been floating around for MANY decades now. I remember when the moral police were claiming porn made young men gay because they are jerking off with a dick on the screen.
Personally I think the echo chamber of social media is a wee bit more harmful to say the least..
@Kathy:
Wow, you’re very generous. I mean, for years I’ve half-joked that we could eliminate crime if every citizen was issued a shoulder-mounted surface-to-air missile apparatus.
But, let’s do it. Pretty sure Republicans would vote for either one of our proposals, and enough Democrats would sell out to make it happen.
@al Ameda:
But what if the criminal is in a submarine? 😀
Nukes are magic. One nuke lets you win everything in a fraction of a second. Everyone knows that.
@Erik:
I actually saw something like the reverse of that. A food distribution company bought a food preparation company. The latter had tons of experience in preparing and serving food in institutional settings (corporate cafeterias, hospitals, schools, even prisons). First thing the new owner does is fire the food prep sales force and operations people.
Next thing you know, they lost like 90% of the existing customers of the company they’d acquired. I know because we took some from them.
@Lucysfootball: That’s REALLY creepy.
So gross and weird, especially when it’s considered alongside Trump’s pervy comments about his own daughter.
On still lighter topics, I found the eps of Mythbusters Jr. on Youtube.
I totally misremembered it, which is not surprising considering I only caught like three eps when it first ran.
The setup is Adam Savage with six kids go on to bust myths much like Jamie, Adam, Kari, Tory, Scotty, Jessy, and Grant did in the original show. What I remembered wrong is the kids (aged 12 through 15) figure out how to test the myths and do most of the builds that are necessary. Adam and the other two adults advise and help, but the kids really run the show. It’s a great way to watch how kids learn by doing.
Too bad it only lasted one season.
The problem with men is not women’s progress. That’s zero sum thinking. Men miss a definitional function in society. What is a man other than a human with a penis? As I pointed out a few days ago, if you killed 90% of men, homo sapiens would be just fine. Do that to women, and we are done.
And, as I said, I DGAF because I’m not ‘a man,’ I’m me, sui generis. I don’t have a problem figuring out what it means to ‘be a man,’ because it’s not a relevant question for me, but it seems a whole lot of men are having issues with it. And that’s what got us Trump. These lost boys think he’s ‘a man’ because they don’t seem able to find anyone else to define that question for them.
The problem is not caused by feminism, though the tedious feminist insistence on a binary, doesn’t help. You can’t really blame ‘men’ for being men when men don’t know what ‘men’ means and evidently no one is teaching them. And the last decade or so of demonizing men generally as toxic with very little effort to differentiate good from bad, is also really unhelpful. And the entertainment industry’s insistence that a ‘strong female character’ is a woman acting like a parody of a man, was an accelerant. Then, there’s transgenderism, and before someone decides to leap at me, remember that I have a trans daughter.
Now, for me, these confused men just seem weak, and I have a low-grade contempt for them, because, again, I DGAF what label I wear. But I’m also not what anyone would call normal.
@Matt: Porn is A problem, but it’s not all of it. I’ve been saying for years (since the 90’s, when I was a young 20 something, myself) that the problem with porn is that it sets unrealistic sexual expectations. For both men and women. Guys think all they need to do is stick it in, automatic orgasm for the woman. Women think….oh, I should be feeling something….and I’m not, and they think something is wrong with them. With young ego’s involved, it can really be devastating for both involved. It only seems to have gotten worse with the decades.
I’ve given this a lot of thought over the years, but I’m not going to go into that on this forum…..because I’m fucking 49. 😉
@Kathy: Dogs and cats came up earlier. I ran with that.
On far from Clarke’s best. I didn’t know he had any bests. Not a fan.
@Gavin:
My understanding is that’s always been the corporate culture. Most employees have always been thought of as interchangeable production parts. I never worked for Boeing though.
@Kathy:
Although cats aren’t capable of building stairs, I think most would approve of stairs built to human dimensions, especially carpeted stairs overlooking a room on one side. Stair treads for human feet make for a properly sized cat perch. And having four quick little legs, cats can choose to trot up/down while touching each step, or bound up/down touching every 3rd or 4th or 5th step.
@Jax:
49 people? Have fun and be safe. I’m not judging, at least not negatively.
@Gustopher: Giggling.
Girls and boys these days, it blows me away. My college aged child informs me that a “body count” means people they’ve slept with. Is there an app for that?!
Even THEY have noticed how bad porn is for all of them as far as unrealistic expectations. Doesn’t stop them from looking at it, but my opinion stands.
@Gustopher: I accidentally petted a skunk tonight. Just now.
Got the trap set down at the barn, smoking my last cigarette for the night, standing out in the dark by my back door. I have many cats, two black and white. Something came around the corner of my house and rubbed past my leg, so I reached down to pet it……
Suffice to say, the panic was very real. For both of us. 🙂