Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, March 11, 2025
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131 comments
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).
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Lara Trump, nepo-baby and truly abysmal chanteuse, says we are not being grateful enough. She told Hannity, another pathetic sycophant, that we….
Ewww…
@Daryl: Yeah……hard pass on that one. 😉
@Daryl: Trump is the one kissing Elon’s feet.
@Daryl:
Why?
Interesting FT graphic posted to Krugman substack:
“PNG”
More from the Krugman piece:
“Krugman”
Above is the concluding part of the whole piece.
I dislike and advocate against the current Israeli government’s “settlement” policy.
Some would call me anti-semetic because of that. Pro-Hamas, even. Because criticizing A means you are for B.
—
I think think the Mahmoud Khalil arrest and deportation proceedings deserves a front pager deep dive.
What are the limits on legally suppressing speech? That he is a green card resident? That he advocates against your preferred policy? The definition of peaceful assembly.
Seems like a pretty big First Amendment issue.
@de stijl: Plus ICE intentionally misrepresented his immigration status. He had a Green Card but ICE said he had a student visa. In addition, it is my understanding only a immigration court judge can revoke a green card.
Unless we put penalties on government malfeasance, then we don’t have any rights or freedoms anymore.
Remember the day before the Election when we were all wondering if it was going to be a situation where we referred to it as “The Before Times”?
I will confess that while I had a sense of existential dread about a second Trump presidency, I did not expect it to be…..this bad. This bad, this fast. Or that Elon Musk would essentially be given the keys to the country.
It’s official: under Trump, America is hopeless.
The inscription on the Statue of Liberty must be changed to read:
“All who enter here abandon all hope.” Welcome to the inferno.
Not all billionaires are morally bankrupt assholes. But just enough are, to make the “multiplier effect” of wealth working in concert a real killer.
@de stijl:
When you break down what he supposedly has done, it’s obvious what the true intention is. Basically, if there’s an anti-Israel climate on campuses it’s due to Israel’s actions, and the country’s talentless and moronic American defenders are not helping. They’re angry about that, and not the 100 students who sat on a lawn and committed the grave crime of trespassing, and they’re angry about support for Israel cratering amongst the educated. And they’re angry that their side is as bad as it is.
I’m sure this anger is the widespread anger of MAGA, and it’s why the Trump regime has turned punitive after a month. There’s a genuine Nazi-level of inferiority which dominates MAGA politics.
@de stijl:
I was on campus one day in my youth during a “die in”. That happened a lot back then. Circa 1985, so probably anti-nuke. I was almost running late for an appointment so really couldn’t deviate around because the “bodies” that were intentionally placed to make that quite difficult. That was their point.
Not really sure how intentionally annoying people going about their regular business wins converts, but whatever, sort of get it – it did get me to think about their point of view, but many even most folks are just gonna think “Oh, fuck off!”
I stepped over folks. A lot of folks. Didn’t really have a choice. I knew most of them, many by name. “Sorry!…Hey, Michelle! How you doing?” “Hi!” “Hey, Brad”.
I didn’t have a problem with what they were doing, I just needed to get into the Student Center like now. AKA stupid center. AKA stupor center.
Your right to protest will impinge others’ use of public space. Where is the line there? I stepped over it, literally. What does ethically / civically good and effective protesting look like?
I did a very low-key version Forrest Gump’s “Sorry to have fight in the middle of your Black Panther Party.”
The point of the protest is to get unengaged folks to think about the topic critically. Because other communication means aren’t working.
How do you successfully get people to acknowledge and think about your issue without annoying them too much?
Trump authoritarian fan favorite arrested.
Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte arrested over ICC warrant for crimes against humanity
@Jax:
The felon pretty much tried to do much the same in his first usurpation. He was restrained by 1) his own incompetence, 2) the unwillingness of cabinet officials and department and agency employees to break the law and shatter all norms, and 3) the lack of any kind of plan or objective beyond “does this make the rapist look bad?”
Factor 2 is gone. Factors 1 and 3 remain, but the rapist also adopted the plans and methods of the Project 1939 fascists.
He’s not constrained by the fascist’s plan, either. So he’s doing the usual incompetent, clueless, stupid things like tariffs, like threatening allies (soon to be former allies), and outright insane things like ethnic cleansing in Gaza or taking over the Panama Canal.
Short of the felon dropping dead soon, I don’t see what else we can hope for.
Good legal discussion over the Mahoud Khalil case. Sure to be among the many:
131. Five Questions About the Khalil Case
@Jax:
I always assumed we would one day descend into quasi-fascism. I didn’t anticipate it would be a literal dumb-ass like Trump.
I naively assumed our fascists wouldn’t be this stupid and obvious.
@Rob1: The resolution would have no practical effects, and contained DEI language.
I have been watching Pantheon on Netflix. It’s about UI, uploaded intelligence. Not a fan of anime, but the concept and execution of Pantheon is worth it.
The bad guy is based on Steve Jobs, with a little Elon tossed in. William Hurt provided his voice. I think it was probably the last thing Hurt did before he died.
I recommend it because it’s thought provoking about our own future. There seems to be a movement with the tech world for finding immortality and god status, displacing traditional religions in the process. This show deals with that and more. Can Big Tech and humanity co-exist long term?
@becca:
IMO any kind of upload or copy or cloning of someone creates a duplicate separate from the original. Ergo while to the duplicate and everyone else it may seem all goes on as before, the original would be dead and never know anything about what happens afterward.
@Kathy: I think you would enjoy the thought processes and theories the show presents, whether feasible or outlandish. There’s a lot of gamer culture and more way outside my wheelhouse, but I could gather right away it’s a cautionary tale.
I can see you doing an Amy Farrah Fowler on the show, bursting my bubble like Amy did to Sheldon regarding Raiders of the Lost Ark. Take that as a compliment.
@becca:
Talk about bursting bubbles… I’ve never been able to separate Amy from the loathsome antivaxxer who plays her.
The flaw in Raiders is not whether Indy’s actions matter or not, but that at the climax he’s helpless and an almost literal Deus Ex Machina saves the day. When I first saw it, I half expected Marion to turn into a pillar of salt.
@Scott:
Thanks! I really appreciate that. That was really a salient and useful link. You rock!
I’m pretty sure any number Trump can think of, Doug Ford can think of one higher:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2025/mar/11/donald-trump-latest-us-politics-news-live
Anyone else getting flooded by Democratic candidate fundraising texts?
We haven’t seen the government’s case against the Columbia permanent resident student, but others have built quite a good case for deportation from public sources.
@Kathy: Blossom-Amy an anti-vaxxer!?!
My day just went to hell.
@Kingdaddy:. Democratic candidate fundraising texts…
Texts? Not one from the Democrats or any other political gaggle.
I do get many emails from the Democratic Party asking for support. I just had to drop $2000 on my 2013 Ford Fusion so I’m tapped out.
I get very few unsolicited texts. Now and then I get a notice from some Turnpike that I owe tolls. I have run many of those “Roads of the Future” starting with the New York State Thruway with my parents in the ’50s but none in the last seven or eight years.
(still haven’t been dunned by the Nigerian Toll Road Authority)
@Kingdaddy:
I just checked my text spam folder, and yes quite a few. Long ago I started marking all those as spam–even before this particular period of utter uselessness from the Dems. The Democratic Party clearly ignores their own “do not sell or giveaway my information” checkbox.
@Fortune:
Jesus’s core message is love for diversity, equity, and inclusion. The “anti-woke” crowd is lying to everyone. And if they run under the banner of The Cross, they are hugely hypocritical and deserving of the same criticism Jesus leveled at the Pharisees.
So Fortune, be honest and say it right here — you support the preeminence of one group, exploitation, and exclusion. Own up to your misanthropy.
@JKB:
Critically the government–you know, the ones responsible for his abduction–have not made this case, or made any case for that matter. You are pretending that there’s been an accusation of a crime. There has not been. This has been a warrantless abduction because the President didn’t like a person’s speech.
JKB: are you OK with empowering a president to abduct any person in America because the President doesn’t like that person’s thoughts? Be specific in your answer, or stfu with this BS.
@Neil Hudelson:
Of course not! JKB’s only okay with empowering a REPUBLICAN president to abduct any person in America because the President doesn’t like that person’s thoughts
@Rob1: the Pledge of Allegiance is definitely DEI. “And Liberty and Justice For All”. That’s got woke cooties all over it.
@Kingdaddy: I contribute when I’m inspired. Participation both financially and with time and effort is requisite to democracy. Voting is the most minimal effort.
So despite receiving annoying hyperventilating spam, I accept that it is necessary; I block it and just focus on what I see as my best contribution.
The fundraising is an absolute necessity. Money enables campaigns. Plus it takes money to raise money. We are shackled to those realities.
My take: if one doesn’t pitch in somewhere, somehow, in time and/or money, then don’t bitch about the state of affairs. Posting comments doesn’t count.
I was a campus security guard. Work-study minimum wage. Door puller. Walk around in uniform. Escort drunk people home. Tell drunk or high idiots to knock it off, you are being too loud and annoying. You are doing vandalism, please stop.
If anything was going remotely sideways outside of my training (four hours) or ken (limited) I’d radio base to get the St. Paul cops here asap, then get to a safe distance.
There were no full-timer pros on the night shift or overnight. It was just other idiots like me, work-study kids. We were cheap bodies. Our titular boss was a raging alcoholic who was blatantly drunk daily.
If you know anything about a college campus, all of the weird, bizarre shit happens at night, weekends, weekend nights. Absolutely zero (almost) weird shit happens during the M-F day. Boss and full-timers worked days. Wage leeches! Technically on call at night, but just useless.
We’re “policing” our peers. If we fuck it up, be an asshole, push it too hard, everyone will know about it by the end of the week.
We, in the absence of literally any leadership or training whatsoever, invented our own system. Basically, it boiled down to if it’s just idiots being idiots – defuse to the best of your ability. If it’s anything beyond drunken dumbassery, or you are scared, radio base to call the cops now. We make minimum wage and didn’t receive any meaningful training.
We self-organized into semi-competency.
One of my best professional accomplishments. I’ve brought it up in every job interview since. I was 19 or 20 at the time.
Had we run into a situation like Columbia’s on-going Gaza protest, yeah that’s an administration problem.
@Rob1: Motte: DEI is innocent Christianity. Bailey: DEI is difference-baiting and discrimination.
I saw that Mr. Trump announced on X that he was going to buy a Tesla tomorrow to show his support for Musk. I would be more impressed if he bought 10,000 shares of TSLA.
@Rob1:
Suffer the little children to come unto me.
One more data point in the never ending stream of bad:
It’s fairly standard in residential real estate in Cook County during the attorney approval process to extend the deadline for the Buyer to determine if flood insurance is necessary to run with the mortgage contingency. I routinely agree to this request without much thought. Today, I’m drafting a response and I don’t think I can agree to that. I think if I do without explicit client approval I’m committing massive malpractice. In doing a quick bit of research I came across this idiocy:
https://www.downsizinggovernment.org/trump-right-end-fema
This is a serious question, are they 1. full of shit, 2. blinded by fanaticism, or 3. really, really, really fucking stupid.
I get that most ordinary Floridians don’t understand that this would destroy Florida (and MS, AL, LA, probably others) and assuming there is a commensurate reduction in tax payments from NY, CA, IL, PA, and a couple others (I know, fucking stupid right) that the Blue states could probably be fine. I mean, it’s a pointless loss, but they could probably be fine.
@becca: Yeah. I think that big tech and humanity can coexist just fine. Then again, I also belong to a religious sect that believes that wanting to be like God was the start of the problem. No conflict at all.
ITT: Fortune demonstrates the efficacy of the linguistic manipulation described by Rufo, highlighted by Steve in the Orwell thread. The use of ‘baiting’ is the result of the approach Rufo outlined for CRT, applied decades ago to the term ‘race-baiting’.
There is exactly one answer to this: Fortune admits that they think white people are the primary targets of discrimination and hate—performance of victimhood as fictional as any Sci Fi lit.
Rufo laid out the plan, one that is tried and true. Fortune is implicitly admitting that they have no interest in truth or reality by continuing to use phrases that have been intentionally inverted from the original meaning to suit a particular worldview.
@Slugger: He also claimed that the Tesla boycott is illegal, which of course is nuts, but could be a nugget of pretext for something. Perhaps he’ll insist that the government purchase Tesla vehicles, or otherwise take action to increase Tesla’s market share among private owners.
If the republican CR passes the House and the Senate (with the help of several democrats), then the administration will have inordinate flexibility to direct spending, due to the absence of normal congressional direction.
@Beth:
And this is a serious answer: 4 bloody malicious, and 5 all of the above.
@Kurtz: It took me a few minutes to find the term “race-baiting” goes back about a hundred years.
Switched to iPhone after exclusively using various Android flagships. Originally an HTC, then to Samsung, detour to Nexus, back to Samsung.
The transition has not quite been seamless, but has been smoother than I thought it would be. Previously whenever I would use someone else’s iPhone to help them find something, I would be swiping like I’m on a Google phone. But that has been less of a problem than I thought.
On the upside, many of the apps found on both seem to be better designed and optimized in iOS. Plus, the Moog Model D app is exclusive to Apple and wow is it impressive.
Switched to iPhone after exclusively using various Android flagships. Originally an HTC, then to Samsung, detour to Nexus, back to Samsung.
The transition has not quite been seamless, but has been smoother than I thought it would be. Previously whenever I would use someone else’s iPhone to help them find something, I would be swiping like I’m on a Google phone. But that has been less of a problem than I thought.
On the upside, many of the apps found on both seem to be better designed and optimized in iOS. Plus, the Moog Model D app is exclusive to Apple and wow is it impressive.
@Fortune: ” Motte: DEI is innocent Christianity. Bailey: DEI is difference-baiting and discrimination.”
Fortune: I have to put up these two opposites because I can never actually take a stand on anything, preferring to post vague trolly nonsense.
For heaven’s sake, at least Paul L had a point of view — that cops are all evil except when they work for Republicans and that women are all sluts desperate to accuse real men of rape. Loathsome? Sure. But at least he had a reason for posting.
You?
@wr: Crap. Sorry for touching the toad. I’ll go back to ignoring the poisonous little reptile.
@Fortune:
And it had the opposite meaning from how you use it. Unless you really think pointing out racism by whites stokes hatred toward whites. I’m well aware that is the position of some prominent GOP pols. But I don’t assume that every GOP voter signs onto that particular framing. Actually, “framing” gives that position too much credit.
A willful commitment to deafness and blindness is not something to admire.
To that point, I explained all of this in a response to @Connor in that shitshow of a discussion that lasted for several days. I’m sure you remember some of that weekend.
Also, IIRC, it may have made it into a Joyner frontpage post a few years ago. I don’t think you were commenting then, but I could be wrong on both counts.
@wr: Do you know the difference between a motte and a bailey? Do you really think I’m supporting both? Has anyone ever used the phrase “motte and bailey” because they thought both positions were equally good?
@wr:
It’s a weird drug, isn’t it? No discernible high, but a vicious hangover.
FYI: toads are amphibians.
@Kurtz: The important thing is to think of the other person as less than human, I guess.
@wr:
More Colorful Fortune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCmtWYX4DDU
Personally, the most Chewbacca part was the innocent Christianity bit. huh, wut.
@Fortune:
There’s like a 30 second gap between your post angry that someone doesn’t understand your analogy, and your post pretending not to understand analogies. Impressive! Next time combine them into one post and it’ll be art.
@Fortune:
That’s just your twisted rationalization. I’ve read enough of your posts to know what dogs you lie down with.
I think it depends on which Holy Roller sect you subscribe to.
Are the poor blessed or not?
Q: Why did the chicken’s egg cross the border?
(A: trade war)
@Fortune:
If you think dehumanization is the point, I suggest you go back and read (again?) Kingdaddy’s post that explained the metaphor.
—
I continue to engage you, because I am trying to understand you. I don’t expect that you will change your mind, but I do hope that you think.
The problem for me is that the only way to find out whether you are thinking is in your posts. Many, if not most, of the others here have written you off. I get why they have. But ask yourself why some of us continue to engage you in good faith. (Insert my well-worn admission that I am not always exactly friendly.) FYI: the fact I substantively respond at all is a recognition of your humanity.
I can’t speak for the others who continue to respond to you, but I personally get the impression that you long ago constructed a barrier similar to the poisonous toad metaphor, but it is internalized—embedded in every step of your thought process. The other key difference is that the toad metaphor is designed to solve a particular political problem present in all varieties of authoritarianism; your barrier is built in service to simple partisanship—the weaponization of a necessary heuristic.* Those are separate, but increasingly related observations.
You actually looked up “race-baiting”. I find that heartening. More heartening is that you did not respond immediately to the point of my reply as it implies that you need to think a little. But unless you respond after some reflection, the exchange dies. ETA: And I’m still left wondering if your lack of substantive response is actually indicative of reflection or if it is due to time-constraints or laziness or partisanship or cognitive capacity.
I get that is a natural consequence of this forum and our times. ETA: But it speaks to the difficulty of worthwhile communication and the category in which others have coded you. I note that you did something similar with me by claiming you added me to your “do not bother” list. Is their a difference between that and others considering you a poisonous toad?
Do you see my perspective a little more clearly?
*JKB is a more extreme example of this; @Connor the most extreme.
@Rob1:
Damn, I was hoping you would shed some light on the motte and bailey question. I didn’t think that fallacy fit. Even if it did fit, I didn’t think it made the point that @Forunte thought it did.
But I figured it may be due to my own limitations.
@Neil Hudelson:
This is not a pipe
@Fortune:
I had to look up your Motte-Bailey reference, and am struck by how well it describes the hypocrisy of your own debate process even to the point of employing the very same dodge in ongoing discourse!!!! How very Gingrich of you. You cannot substantively defend the deficit of your beliefs either morally or factually, so you counter with two-faced duplicitous blather.
Again I say to you and yours, diversity, equity, inclusion are completely congruent with the core message of Jesus. And it is truly twisted, and cynical that the people who rally behind Rufo and his anti-woke fabrication to make their anti-pluralism power grab use The Cross to manipulate a segment of the population to vote 1) against the self interest of fairness and 2) vote against the moral code of their espoused Godhead. Yeah, that’s some kind of twisted, man.
@JKB: None of the things you report are crimes. Not one. If a citizen did those things, there would be no deportation. Green card status can only be revoked for certain crimes. But there are no crimes here.
Your case for “deport him” consists of “I don’t like him and I don’t like what he stands for”.
Good lord man, as a college student, I would daily walk by the guy on a soapbox talking about how great Communist China was and how wonderful it would be if we could be more like them. I would think to myself how great it was to live somewhere where you were confident enough that you could let nutjobs like that maunder on in public.
What has got into you?
@Rob1:
Based on this definition, Fortune believes that “DEI is difference baiting and discrimination” is desirable but ultimately indefensible, while “DEI aligns with Christianity” is undesired position which one retreats to when hard pressed.
Huh.
I guess I’m surprised by her honesty. I have a feeling she’s surprised by it as well.
Or she could mean something entirely different, who knows! Her main goal seems to be obfuscating any position she approaches.
@de stijl:
MAGA Republicanism is dedicated to seeing that, that is the only recourse for little children and their suffering. Thoughts and prayers, baby!
@de stijl:
Cue Judy Collins singing “It Isn’t Nice.“
I would like to offer some food for thought on the term “incel” I don’t want to point any fingers, or police anyone. And yet, I actually kind of despise the use of “incel” to describe certain political entities.
The term “incel” comes from “involuntarily celibate”. Which is a polite way of saying, “I can’t find anyone who wants to have sex with me”.
This is a complex phenomenon. It probably does not all devolve down to choices an individual is making. “Involuntarily celibate”, aka “not getting any”, is a common situation that a very wide variety of people find themselves in, and it isn’t a good thing for any of them. This is a condition that some women, some men, some cis, some trans, some gay, some straight and anything else people find themselves in. It is not fun. It is probably not all their fault, either. Not that it’s anyone’s responsibility to fix their situation.
Ahem. Let me say that again, to make sure you get it. It is not anybody’s responsibility to fix someone’s involuntary celibacy. In particular, it is not responsibility to have sex with someone because they are sad or angry about not getting laid.
Being sad, or perhaps angry about not getting laid is pretty common.
But referring to people as “incels” is a sexual slur. It is used to describe people as sexually unfit. There was a time when only people I despised used sexual slurs, which were right up there with calling someone a “retard” in my book.
But then, there are lots of men here in Silicon Valley who seem to many to be sexually undesirable. However, this is not actually the case. There is an issue here, because there are quite a few more men here than women. Conversely, in Salt Lake City there are more women than men, but I don’t see anyone calling those women in SLC who go to great lengths to attract a partner “incels”.
Meanwhile, I know plenty of male nerds who have sexual partners, or stable marriages (for heteros) or partnerships (for the gays). Being good at STEM may preclude a sexual relationship in some women’s eyes, but this is far from universal.
I mean, I don’t see why anybody would find Elon Musk attractive, and yet it is quite clear that there are any number of women out there who do.
Meanwhile, “incel” does not describe what’s wrong with such persons, like, at all. Not one bit. Yeah, it’s fun, and it gets the audience to cheer, (I just watched Steven Colbert use this kind of slur, to joy from his audience. I am not happy about this.) But it does it actually pinpoint the issue you have with said person. I think it may be related to the issue, but it moves the spotlight away from the blind arrogance that is actually the problem.
Which is why I’m posting this. I am hoping for some inspiration for a better term that describes these problem people. I do not want to demean people over their inability to get laid. I know some trans people that came to me with joy about finally getting laid after a long, long dry spell. I would rather not include these people in a category.
So, can we find a better name for the people we actually don’t like?
@Neil Hudelson: This can’t be the first time you’ve heard of the motte and bailey fallacy, but I’ll pretend along with you. I won’t pretend I said “Motte: DEI is difference-baiting and discrimination. Bailey: DEI is innocent Christianity.”
What I said was, Rob1 created a motte (modest and easily defendable) of DEI as innocent Christianity but is really presenting the bailey (more controversial and harder to defend), which is DEI as it really occurred, toxic and discriminatory.
@Kurtz: “FYI: toads are amphibians.”
I know that. I was just testing you.
@wr:
Hell, I’ll lick the toad.
@Beth:
They’re gleefully hurting America, but hurting themselves more. What if cancer also directly gave you chemotherapy?
I just question whether it will be an effective chemotherapy, or whether it will be too toxic the to body and not quite toxic enough to the cancer.
@Fortune: maybe if you didn’t act like a fairly simple script.
@Rob1: You do realize you linked to an article claiming Christians use motte-and-bailey fallacies, but not addressing my claim at all?
@becca:
Sorry about that.
She’s been backpedaling her antivax position since it caused controversy. Recent developments might get her to backpedal the backpedal.
@Jay L Gischer:
What if they self-identify as incel?
A random person’s ability or inability to make a meaningful enough interpersonal connection with a potential sexual partner is not my problem.
Not my circus. Not my monkeys.
Combo pak! Not my business & I don’t care.
@Fortune: so you’re back to understanding how analogies work now?
@de stijl: I accidentally wandered over to an incel forum a while back. It was full of angry individuals circle jerking over their hatred of “foids” and tall people. They seemed to both love and hate “chads”. All of them self identified as incel and the forum name included incel.
@Kingdaddy: I get flooded with fundraising appeals of all varieties on all media every day. They comprise a significant part of my spam folders and recycling bag daily.
@JKB: Comforting to know that you applaud legislative suppression of First Amendment rights. Thank you for clearing this up.
@de stijl: You don’t have to care about them. It doesn’t matter if they self identify. Many black people refer to themselves in certain ways that I would not use, for instance.
The issue is that the problems that we see, that we complain about, have very little to do with whether they have sex or not.
As an example, the DOGE employees are digging around the Federal databases in ways that are insecure, threatening, inappropriate. They are enabling, if not committing, illegal acts.
Whether they have sex or not is not remotely relevant to what’s wrong with what they are doing.
They are soldiers in an army of corruption.
@Neil Hudelson: You say I’m taking the imagery of dehumanization too literally, Gustopher says I deserve it. Gustopher says I follow a basic script, you can’t follow a 2-3 sentence argument. I’m sure you’re both right though.
@Fortune: Enough of the citing of secondary sources. What do you think Jesus said? Show us your sources. (Hint: “Nothing” is probably the wrong answer.)
@Fortune:
We have had this conversation before, in different terms. I specifically asked you to explain your position and you never did.
The previous terms were (paraphrased):
Equality good; equity immoral.
Again, please explain. Just claiming it is “toxic” and “discriminatory” is insufficient. It is not an argument.
In the previous thread, I explained that this debate is also expressed as: equality of opportunity vs equality of outcomes.
I went on to point out that those who express a pro-equality, not equity position (or opportunity, not outcomes) provide no means to evaluate or measure whether equality exists in the status quo.
My position is that equity is used as a measure of equality. In the more traditional terms, the only way to demonstrate equality of opportunity is to measure outcomes.
You’re free to point me in the direction of another method. But I don’t think you can, because I don’t think it exists.
Look, your political heuristic works in some situations, but when it does not, the task becomes redefining terms like CRT or race-baiting or even adopting the opposition’s previous position (as a last resort, the shift among conservatives from opposing colorblindness to promoting it if it maintains the current hierarchy) rather than questioning the heuristic.
It preserves a particular worldview by maintaining the current prescription even if one has become more nearsighted over the years.
In short, the maintaining the worldview itself is the goal, not a better world.
Pick any norm—sexual orientation, sex, gender identity, race—the very presence of something outside a category is somehow offensive to those in the normative cohort.
That ain’t freedom.
That ain’t liberty.
That ain’t equality.
Well, the price of eggs appears to have dropped, according to Newsweek.
I suppose Trump will be demanding thanks.
@just nutha: How does a person even answer that? Where do I start? I think Jesus said what He’s recorded saying in the Bible, among other things, but that’s not an answer you’re looking for. If I narrow it to the context of Rob1’s comment, I’d start by saying Jesus would accept diversity and inclusion by the contemporary meanings of the words but not equity according to the modern definition. Jesus was indifferent to class, race, sex, et cetera. The modern definition of equity, and the policies collectively known as DEI, are fixated on class, race, sex, et cetera.
@Kurtz: I remember the conversation, I thought your comments were dumb and I’ve given up reading you, but I saw this and it’s on-topic, so here goes. Equality can’t be fairly measured, it can be strived for but never really attained because it’s conceptual. Equity can be measured but it’s unjust. You can’t use equity as a proxy for equality because it measures something different.
Equality has to exist within the heart. I can interview ten people for three jobs and I might find the three Asians to be the best choices. If two blacks find the results unfair they can only point to the results, not the state of mind that arrived at them.
So I’m making two points. 1 Equality can’t be quantified. 2 Equity measures something other than equality.
@Matt:
No one is “owed” sexual naughties just by existing. That’s shit you earn.
Be positive. Be you. Be gracious. Be open. Talk. Or don’t. Figure it out. If it happens, cool. If not, cool. Now you know.
Don’t expect transactional sex unless you hired a sex worker, and even then they can back out any time they want to.
A first date isn’t a transaction, it’s an opportunity. (Or third date, or twentieth.)
I hate Reddit and this Andrew Tate bullshit mindset.
Andrew Tate has a very noticeable “weak” chin. Very un-Chad. Is he a beta cuck?
I have a bigger lower jaw that protrudes more in profile than Andrew Tate’s. Ergo, I’m the *real* alpha male. My jaw is more pronounced than Tate’s! I win!
These people are fucking deranged.
No one “owes” you sex. Grow the fuck up.
Apparently Trump is firing half the DOE staff today, by 6 p.m.
@Jay L Gischer:
What are you on about? You seem determined to die on a hill today. I’m thinking it’s “incels have feelings, too”, but maybe it’s “why is it okay that black people can use the n-word?”
What’s your point? Who, here, has used “incel” as a slur?
I guess it’s appropriate Southwest is choosing to die the same year as its country did.
Ok. That’s overly dramatic. It will just be one of many airlines, indistinguishable from the others.
@Fortune: if I had the ban hammer here, I would hammer your ass so hard. You desperately want to have your status as oppressed victim validated, and I want you to be happy — and gone! Total win-win.
I would encourage those with a ban hammer to do you a kindness.
Ukraine cease fire deal about to be confirmed?
Also, resumption of intelligence sharing?
Interesting announcement right after Ukraine shows it can penetrate deep into Russia. Showing the world that they might not fold like a cheap suit even with President Trump wanting to abandon them.
The problem for Russia is that unless Trump can deliver Ukraine on a silver platter after we abandon Ukraine…Russia still would have a Ukraine problem even if they declare victory over Ukraine, and Putin knows this.
@Fortune:
Is equality a mental object or is it in one’s heart? Make up your mind.
And again, you do not explain how equity is unjust.
By the way, mental objects as well as things “in the heart” manifest in action. Or is your claim that we can’t judge those actions, because we cannot be sure what mental object or which part of the content of one’s heart resulted in that action?
I’m guessing that in your view, Jesus is the only entity capable of truly judging whether one believes in equality. Convenient, that.
But you don’t need dumb ol’ me to explain why that may present a small problem for any appeal to justice, right?
Perhaps the problem is not that I am dumb, but that your worldview is incoherent. But you have faith in post-death revelation.
For your sake, I hope Jesus agrees with your assessment of equality, because it may not be Him who delivers the definitive, revelatory exegesis.
@Jay L Gischer:
Except they self-identify as incels. It’s like referring to pro-lifers as pro-lifers. As a rule of thumb, address people as they want to be addressed.
Within reason, of course. I’m not going to use the latest palatable term for White Supremacist, because it isn’t clear, and I don’t care if someone is preferred pronouns are “it/its” as I simply will never refer to a person as an inanimate object*.
Incel may be etymologically derived from “involuntary celibate” but it’s really its own thing. It’s a culture. A vile culture, but a culture. Many of them aren’t even celibate, as they go to prostitutes and such (never say sex work isn’t work…). And the involuntary part is that they are just repellant personalities who look down on every woman who is not their precise aryan goddess because they hate women, they only like the idea of women — they choose to be that way, because they feel community with their horrible incel friends.
——
*: and those who cannot bring themselves to call me queer because they can only think of it as an insult can just guess and pick a label for me if they must
@just nutha:
One would think that person would respond with some quotations from the Gospel. Or at least something from one of Paul’s letters.
Hell, I would probably be more understanding of their inability to go beyond assertion when questioned if I thought their intuitionist approach to ethics is at least based on something from the Bible. Even if it is the result of shoddy hermeneutics.
But I’m now questioning whether they have any first-hand knowledge of the contents of the Gospels. Or perhaps they know it exposes their expressed religiosity is at odds with what one finds in those books.
But maybe @Fortune is correct—I am dumb. I held onto the hope that there was more to the person behind that handle for far longer than a smart person would.
@Jay L Gischer:
Respectfully, I think your wrong and giving them too much credit. Incel ideology goes well beyond the simply “I can’t get laid”. There are tons of people that can’t get laid and don’t make it everyone’s problem. Here check this out:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45284455
What changed?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliot_Rodger
This isn’t just “I can’t get laid”, this isn’t just misogyny, to be an incel, to claim that identity is to claim an evil as a core part of yourself. Normally when people pull all that “wah, I don’t want to be thought of as a victim, blah” it irritates me. It’s like trying to deny a truma happened. But whatever, I generally leave it alone. The one exception to this is the incel movement which is a curdling of victimhood into evil. In a lot of the incel cases, whatever other trauma they may have, they also traumatize themselves by refusing to deal with their shit. Like, I get it, holy fuck do I get it, dealing with your truma is a nightmare. But the only way through is through, not by blaming someone else. And with them it’s ALWAYS someone else’s fault. It’s the women (foids), its the men (chads), inevitably it’s black people cause why the fuck not jump into the latrine of race science. It’s never just I can’t get laid, or I’m lonely. It’s something far worse.
I also want to add a little post script to this. Please understand that I’m trying to be respectful to you with this, but you don’t understand how bad and how dangerous it can get because you fundamentally can’t. I do not say that lightly. Cis men, particularly hetero cis men fundamentally cannot cannot get it. Part of this inability is innate to cishet men, but part of the problem is also that women are conditioned to keep this under wraps with violence and gaslighting. Sometimes its just easier to keep your mouth shut and move on.
Now, pre-transition, I very much didn’t get it either. I should have caught on, but didn’t. Honestly, I didn’t fully get it either until I was on an El train at night going home. Maybe 11 pm. But it was summer and I was a little buzzed and a little high and I was wearing a short skirt and a bikini top. Four men got on and started talking about how they had beat a gay guy with a belt and started working themselves up to rape me. That’s when I fully understood. Whether they actually were or not, they very much wanted me to know that forcibly raping me was on the table. I texted a group chat to say that if I stopped texting for 30 seconds they should immediately call the police.
Yesterday, in between comments here, while I was in a well lit, fully peopled mall, a guy started following me. See, I never for get that I’m trans. But sometimes I forget that even though I’m 6ft tall, 200 pounds and pushing 50, I’m a conventionally attractive woman. I forget that and it always takes me a minute to realize a guy is hitting on me. I did realize it though and I realized he was following me and that even though I said no three times and that I didn’t want a coffee with him he wasn’t going to stop. He must have noticed that I got real unfriendly and was obviously looking for the police and he left. This fundamentally doesn’t happen to cishet guys. You can’t know what it’s like. For some cis women, this shit is constant. It probably would be for me if I was a little shorter, skinner and younger. But that’s an awful comfort.
So, no, incel isn’t a slur against guys that just can’t get laid. It’s an ideology that says “I am owed and I will destroy to get what is mine.” That’s what Elliot Rodger taught them.
@Fortune:
Jesus was indifferent to class? Mr. “Give All Your Money To The Poor” was indifferent to class?
I’ll grant you that he was indifferent to sex, as the 12 apostles were clearly chosen through a merit based system and there just weren’t any women who were as qualified as even the least of those 12 men.
I believe it was in the Gospel of Andrew Lloyd Weber and Time Rice where a Jesus sang “Peter will deny me, three times will deny me — but any woman I interviewed for the position would have denied me four times or more.”
And Judas… would a woman have sacrificed her immortal soul for His glorification? I think not. Women are incapable of sacrificing themselves to advance a man’s plot line, except in comic books that are written by men.
@Matt:
What is a “foid”?
[opens an Incognito tab just in case]
Probably not about feldspathoid minerals.
Found it. Whoa! (Incel slang for a woman. Clip of ‘femoid’). TIL.
See, lads, here is a good example why you are not getting naughties with the ladies. JFC! You know what would improve your chances by a lot? DON’T BE A FUCKING ASSHOLE!
Is the species doomed at this point? Who knows? Thankfully, I’ll be dead.
@Fortune:
Ah! Finally, a point that can be expanded on. What do you see as the “modern” definition of “equity” and how is it different than the “ancient” one? And how does that distinction in definition affect how we should understand and approach DEI? I bring this up because it’s possible that you have misidentified which of your positions is the motte and which is the bailey. Or are claiming that one or the other (or both) is (are) false on its face. At this point, I don’t know which is the case (and it’s possible that you don’t either, you’re simply copying an idea you found somewhere, but I won’t make that accusation). Would you elaborate, as others have also requested that you do? (I’m suspecting that you won’t because doing so risks deconstructing your own current non-argument, “just asking questions” approach.)
“Jesus was indifferent to class, race, sex, et cetera.” On this point, I will agree with you, ironically enough. Sadly for your argument, my agreement comes with a sticking point: Jesus was indifferent to class, race, sex, et cetera because distinctions based on those points constitute the most basic sin of all–rejection of the “second great commandment” “you shall love your neighbor [in the same manner]* as you love yourself.”
This distinction is no small matter because it means that the way humanity handles questions of class, race, sex, et cetera are fundamentally selfish and (dare I say it… yes, I dare) evil. If, in fact, the way we handle those issues is evil by nature, the question becomes what action is required on the part of humans to restore the original understanding of how class, race, sex, et cetera should work. Should such concepts even exist? If they shouldn’t (my position BTW) how do we go about obliterating them without DEI emphasis given that the defaults are all “wrong?” (And I would contend that they are “wrong” citing one version of the brief order for confession and forgiveness that goes “We confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.** We have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed by what we have done and by what we have left undone.” [emphasis added]***
In brief, though not very, is the question “what does Jesus think” fleshed out in greater, though imperfect detail. What do you make of the argument? How am I misunderstanding the teachings of Jesus, ancient wisdom, the nature of CRS, etc./the immutability of CRS etc, the perniciousness of DEI, how anti-DEI is really the opposite of the old-time bigotry that has always been a part of the life in the US since before the 3/5th compromise? Any or all of it. I’m open to a vision of the world you inhabit because, as I’ve said before, I think we see the world through dramatically different lenses.
This is mine. What’s yours?
*I note in my quotation that “in the same manner” is an addition of my own choosing. You might choose to explain why “in the same manner” is an untenable extension of the thought of “love your neighbor as yourself” if you wish. I’d be interested in your thoughts on that because I get very few challenges beyond “I just don’t like your interpretation.”
**Thus one relatively straightforward explanation for why DEI must be and overt/active position rather than a passive one.
***Yet another argument toward a proactive approach to DEI–we must take steps toward undoing what our inaction causes.
@de stijl:
Hey, @Matt, I posted something that looks like I was dumping on you. I wasn’t. I was riffing on a thing you said.
Read it back later and saw the @Matt at the top. You were my very worthy jumping off point, but it also sorta looked like you were the OP.
Sincerely apologize. I fucked up. Sorry! I promise to do better in the future.
On a slightly happier note, check this out:
https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/have-you-no-decency-republican-calls
Now, for a little inside baseball. I am very happy Rep. McBride is in the room where it happens. But goddess damn if she’s not the absolute milquetoast T girl on the planet. To abuse a wonderful joke, she makes Wayne Brady look like Malcolm X. Sister, if you’re gonna make a “Madame Chair” zinger, you gonna add some heat. Now, I realize that I am, ahem, an extreme mouthy bitch, even amongst my sisters. But we tend to be a intense bunch.
I want to draw your attention to the real heat. Check out Bill “Swingin Dick” Keating. He catches that little weasel fucker and whips his head around and STARES HIM DEAD IN THE FUCKING EYE, from what a foot away and then doesn’t back down one bit.
And check this out, Ol’ Swingin’ Dick Keating almost calls McBride “he”. You might not catch it, but I do, cause I get it all the fucking time. But Keating catches himself in an instant and pummels the little coward until he tucks tail and runs away. It’s a thing of beauty.
@Neil Hudelson: JKB is coming across as a person who actually enjoys when a person he doesn’t agree with has to suffer.
@inhumans99: At the moment prospects for the truce are not looking good as Russia has flat turned it down. Meeting is still underway though.
Putin’s refusal of the truce Trump wrung out of Zelenskyy puts Trump in an awkward position. Is Trump even capable of getting mad at Putin? I honestly don’t know.
@de stijl:
This all by itself was worth the thumbs up! 😀
@de stijl:
Your fingertips to White Jesus’ ears.
@CSK: I hope he’s firing the half that does the most important work so that we’ll see what the crash looks like right away. (Sort of like ATCs and Nuclear Safety workers.)
(And yes, I am a [expletive, deleted])
@Kurtz: I never expect that. Most evangelicals that I’ve met “know” only those things about the Bible that their pastors tell them it is okay to “know.” With that as the case, they are incapable of saying what they believe.* I don’t think that pastors do any of the building up of disciples much anymore. And did very little as I was growing up.**
But I suspect that you’ve already groked this out.
*In the words of the Apostle Paul (since you brought him up), being able to “give an answer for the faith that lives within you.”
**But I can see where the problem comes from. The very same pastor who warned me that I was dangerous because I was “one of those people who believes he can just read the Bible and decide for himself what it means” also lamented to me one day that it was very hard to come up with sermon topics that will be acceptable to everyone in the congregation. Even 50-mumble years ago, marketing was already corrupting the faith.
Did I miss something?
No comments about eggs? They were routinely cited in comments when it was convenient for you guys.
@Gustopher:
I often refer to myself as “it”. Daily.
Preface, I am highly susceptible to earworms.
Whenever I get out of the shower and slather my body in lotion, my mouth spits out “It puts the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again.” Happens everytime. Not terribly OCD, but it would be odd and would suck hard if I didn’t say it out loud. So I do.
A line from The Silence Of The Lambs dug into my head hard and then into my daily hygiene thing.
I’ve been saying that for decades.
When I saw Ted Levine in Monk I cracked up hard. “Dude, it’s you!”
@Connor: What about them? House brand is still $6.99/doz at the Safeway closest to my house. Is my area getting price gouged?
(And FTR, I’ve never once complained about Trump breaking his promise on egg prices because I remember him walking it back in an interview the day after he promised to lower the price. I’m just bringing it up because I thought Connor knows something that I may have missed because I stopped paying attention to the issue beyond seeing that I still don’t want to pay what Safeway wants to charge.)
@Just nutha ignint cracker: I’m fine with your second and half your third paragraph. I should note class and race aren’t meaningful distinctions, but sex is. I don’t accept the DEI concept though. It’s a form of discrimination, and I don’t support evil means for good ends, even if I believed DEI would produce good ends.
As for the difference between old and new definitions of equity, I like Wikipedia’s article on social equity. I think it’s a more accurate term to describe the modern understanding of equity.
@Connor:..Did I miss something?
Yes you did. Twice. Can’t believe that you missed a mention of your boyfriend Trump.
@Kurtz: I didn’t say you’re dumb, I said some of your comments are. If you comment without thinking about the difference, it’s going to be a dumb comment. Read, think, formulate, reply.
@Connor: I guess ctrl-f “eggs” was too much work?
@Connor: Care to discuss the markets?
@Gustopher:
Luke was a basic bitch. Stole all the best bits from Matthew and Mark. John, too!
Just rewritten slightly and fronted like it was all his. Poser.
@Fortune:
It was a sarcastic remark, as was my reference to it in another post. I thought the faux-folksy phrasing would have tipped you off. Did you think Shirley Jackson wrote a history of an actual lottery? Did you think Swift was sincere in his proposal?
Okay, okay, maybe it was my fault for introducing a small element of style into an internet post.
By the way, even an LLM can tell the difference between our posts:
Full disclosure, these were the two posts I fed ChatGPT, @Kurtz and @Fortune.
And before you claim you’re the victim of a biased chatbot, it is not evaluating which one of our positions is correct. It is only evaluating whether your reply is responsive to my positions.
Note that it points out that my initial response could lead to a meaningful discussion, but your post did not engage. This is exactly the behavior Steven, Bernius, I, and others have highlighted to you in the past. If an artificial-not-quite-intelligent bot can see it, what does that say about you?
Maybe it is you who needs an instruction manual for how to respond. And a little work on reading comprehension. And some practice at good faith.
You’re the worst kind of hypocrite—you would never acknowledge to us that you don’t meet your own stated standards.
But yeah, tell me again that I don’t argue from an intellectual perspective. I mean, you’re the one rigorously interrogating concepts, right?
But it’s okay, because Jesus knows you are blessed. Good for you. (So you do not misinterpret: I’m not just better than you at substance, I am better at mocking my opponent, too. I respect religious folks who demonstrate a knowledge of their faith, not ones who think merely identifying as such is sufficient.)
You’re out of your league.
@Kurtz:
For the record, this is a correct assessment (and definitely applies to the interactions in this thread).
@Fortune:
No man, that’s where your brain has been programmed to reflexively go with D.E.I, without considering the huge moral incongruity that you carry around with it, let alone appreciating the benefit to humanity for “all to be for all.”
@de stijl:
I sorta fucked up my friend’s coming out as gay reveal to me. Mid 80’s. Coming out was pretty hard then as a general rule as far as I know. Could be quite dangerous.
I out-loud said basically, “it’s cool. I don’t care. We are totally fine. This is not an issue for me.”
He was non-plussed, sorta pissed off that I didn’t care that he was gay. Who you sleep with is not my business and I don’t care.
He sort of expected me to be taken aback or negative. I was pleased that he thought enough do this really personal thing with me. To share that.
He got sort of annoyed that I didn’t care. I sort of got annoyed that he thought I would be kinda homophobic, or react negatively.
Basically, he was unprepared for unreserved acceptance and he expected resistance.
We got over it pretty quickly, but it was odd and I remember it. It didn’t go off as planned and it got a bit weird. Sometimes, not giving a shit about your friends’ bedroom stuff can have slightly negative consequences.
But, as a rule, I stand by that 100%.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Pretty much unpacks the essential truth of Jesus’s message.
But the anti-DEI crowd isn’t interested in the authentic details of this topic. Not at all. No, they are primarily interested in two things: 1) undermining liberal influence in our social process as a means to usurp political power 2) reinstating white preeminence including insulation from personal accountability for behaving badly.
This is manifestly true, because if a moral aim of “fairness” were their goal, they would not base their criticism on cherry picked failings of D.E.I, or CRT, or E.S.G, but seek to to resolve those issues. Rather, they prefer to reverse hard fought humane labor standards provide school vouchers to their cronies, punish longtime allies, impose misogynistic laws on women, and the such. Their profession of “spiritual faith” all to often appears little more than the opportunism of networking.
Do you know what is really great damn song?
Jesus, Etc.
Yeah, that’s the name. No foolin’! Jesus, Etc.
By Wilco.
It’ll make you think about stars differently.
@Fortune:
Pish posh. So you support evil because you see opposing evil as evil?
Kind of like accepting intolerance and the harm it does, because to do otherwise would be — intolerant. You’re confused.
Here’s where your anti-woke rationale goes off the rails: the sheer weight of documented data supports our understanding that long standing bias serves to benefit the “in group” to the detriment of “out groups” — and that we can produce policy that improves long term outcomes for “out groups” —- and when that happens society is more productive and more stable. But this gives bigots a sad, and creates political opportunity on the cheap.
@Connor: Eggs are still high, Drew. You’re probably “too rich and connected to care”, though, right? Also, I have heard from multiple hatcheries that the chicks they are sending out are dying en route, thanks to the drama with the USPS. So much for “backyard chickens”. (eyeroll so hard I get a migraine)
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Cracker opened up some whoop-ass! Pretty sure we need to have a beer with Luddite before the shit hits the fan. 😉
@de stijl:
Yes, it is. Not my favorite song on that album, but definitely great.
You know, I was gonna go with Alestorm and fuck them fucking wankers, but….
I remember being 6 years old and watching this on our 3 channel tv.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLIAp5nr0q0
@Fortune: Not much light there.
“…but sex is…”. Okay, why? How? How does this belief inform the policies of the nation. So far this is only an assertion. Flesh out the policy that it dictates should be or how Trusk is honoring American values via however you imagine sex is a meaningful distinction.
“I don’t accept the DEI concept though. It’s a form of discrimination, and I don’t support evil means for good ends…”
Okay, why not? How is it a form of discrimination? Why is it an evil means? How do we overcome the problems with “what we have left undone?” What’s the affirmative response to discrimination in your model?
Why do you find social equity a satisfactory response. Argument consists of evidence (source) and analysis (you). You gave the source, where’s the you? In all three of your points.
@Fortune: Show me, on the doll, how DEI has ever hurt you? Name one time your “standing” in the world was made worse by “what you think of” as DEI.
Connor probably has a different problem, right now…..poor Connor/Drew, he just watched billions of dollars blow up because of his chosen chaos monkeys. Man, that’s a lot of…..zero’s. How’s Uncle Clarence going to help you now?
@de stijl:
You are deliberately dehumanizing yourself, as a cheeky movie reference, in the privacy of your own home. You are not asking the public at large to join in.
The “it/its” pronoun people are very rare, but they’re my default go-to gentle-punching-bag in the world of pronoun people. The people who really need to give a little, and that even if the language is flexible and changing (it’s not on “it”, but maybe I’ll be proven wrong in 20 years or so), you need to be patient with those who take a while to catch up.
I also really wish the “they/thems” found a different pronoun. Singular-they has been around in some contexts for hundreds of years, but not this one, and you really need to understand the OED to understand the distinctions, but most people can feel them. Instead it’s a weird uncanny valley thing and people claiming it’s always been around and other folks feeling gaslit and irritated and weirdly tricked and they don’t know why. That’s my biggest pet peeve.
The square peg either goes in the square hole, or we can stick it on the rectangular hole so long as we are being clear. Yes, the square peg has always fit in the rectangular hole, but we never did that, don’t lie to me and say we did.
Similarly, there’s a really complicated set of rules for which adjectives go in which order. You don’t understand the rules, but you know them and use. If you have a car that is green and new, and you aren’t putting a specific emphasis on it, it’s almost always described as a new green car, not a green new car. If you swap it, something is mysteriously wrong. It’s a sad, wet wallaby, not a wet, sad wallaby.
Anyway, if I were legally allowed to take a medium soft glove and slap people who try to explain that singular they-them has always been with us, just like we’ve always been at war with Oceania, I would. They’re monsters.
I’m sure that a well trained psychoanalyst would be able to diagnose me as having Personality Disorder Foo, specifically type 3, subclause 8 in the DSM-5 from just this. And, the number of other software engineers I’ve known who went from really annoyed by singular-they to only slightly annoyed after discovering that it is officially recognized as slightly different in the OED, and they aren’t wrong to think it’s new, is surprisingly large.
Don’t tell me my pattern recognition doesn’t work! Monsters! All of them!
@Jax:
He didn’t get the job he wasn’t qualified for because DEI police made the manager interview a qualified minority who would otherwise been overlooked, and that minority got hired instead of him.
@Jax:
Bam! Exactly right. Not only that, but how has transgender access to medical care or the myriad of rightwing agitiprop strawmen harmed any of these people, beyond the ideas promulgated by warped representation as political strategy. But suuuuure, blow up strategic international alliances and tank the economy.
@Jax: @Rob1:
This criticism doesn’t exactly work for @Fortune’s claim. Keep in mind you are talking about a person who drew an analogy between suicide bombing and abortion.
You are talking about someone who argues that DEI is intrinsically discriminatory, but denies that race and class are meaningful distinctions. (Note the missing qualifications there.)
But the more critical part is this: You are talking about a person who has a Sunday School, George Lucas conception of good and evil. Manichean.
What that means is that person does not have the capacity and/or skills and/or training and/or will to weigh things beyond two categories.
Look back at that person’s post history. Do you see anything that gives the impression of a mind? I’m not arguing that a mind does not exist there, it’s a question if whether there is evidence that mind is being applied here.
I agree with Rob1’s list of things that have zero bearing on the lives of others. But that does not matter if one sees the world in two distinct categories, no overlap.
Does it result in contradiction? Yes. But that is just God moving in mysterious ways.