President-For-Life Hopeful Donald Trump Issues Executive Order Mandating 'Patriotic' Education For Kids
from the King-Bumblefuck-the-Orange dept
When schools finally re-open to everyone and COVID is behind us (est. 2025), students will possibly have the chance to join their friends in some good old-fashioned American reeducation. God bless this autocracy.
For all of his socialism bashing, Donald Trump and his admin staff sure seem to want to align the United States with the great Communist dictatorships of the past and present. Trump welcomed America to join him in the erection of a police state and just kept going from there. Cops received even more presidential coddling and the Administration decided the state of free speech might improve if the federal government directly meddled with social media moderation.
Then there's the erection of walls and the increase in inland Checkpoint Charlies as the result of the president's focus on brown people from foreign lands. Protests against police brutality have been met with Gestapo tactics designed to limit the effect of people uniting against fascism. And the President's hatred of a free press, "closed" defamation laws, and non-sycophants has been noted repeatedly.
The latest Presidential proclamation is as problematic as his call for flag burning prosecutions. In reaction to people sensibly suggesting a lot of this country's "greatness" is built on the backs of slave labor and racist policies, President Trump has developed a plan for patriotic indoctrination of the nation's students. A new Executive Order mandates the formation of a committee to push for more jingoism in our schools. Better red-white-and-blue than dead, indeed.
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to better enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States in 1776, and, through this, form a more perfect Union, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Here's some of the "as follows," written in the way so few Executive Orders have historically been written. Taking a cue from stunt lawyer Larry Klayman's legal complaints, the Order lays on the overheated rhetoric early and often.
The American founding envisioned a political order in harmony with the design of “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” seeing the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as embodied in and sanctioned by natural law and its traditions.
[...]
[I]n recent years, a series of polemics grounded in poor scholarship has vilified our Founders and our founding. Despite the virtues and accomplishments of this Nation, many students are now taught in school to hate their own country, and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes, but rather villains. This radicalized view of American history lacks perspective, obscures virtues, twists motives, ignores or distorts facts, and magnifies flaws, resulting in the truth being concealed and history disfigured. Failing to identify, challenge, and correct this distorted perspective could fray and ultimately erase the bonds that knit our country and culture together.
This would be laughable if it weren't delivered by a sitting President. I mean, it's still pretty laughable but there's considerable executive power behind it.
The "bonds that knit this country together" are white people and their preferred religions/traditions, as far as I can tell. Any suggestion founding fathers and other political figures may have embraced racism and/or trafficked in the slave trade is apparently going to be excised in favor of a more flag-humping narrative. Also presumably on the chopping block is the history of our nation's law enforcement agencies, which were instrumental in ensuring the slave trade went uninterrupted and openly engaged in hostile acts against blacks and other minorities once slavery was abolished. The latter practice continues to this day.
Without whitewashing the past, the nation's future is in jeopardy, the President argues.
A loss of national confidence in these principles would place rising generations in jeopardy of a crippling self-doubt that could cause them to abandon faith in the common story that binds us to one another across our differences. Without our common faith in the equal right of every individual American to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, authoritarian visions of government and society could become increasingly alluring alternatives to self-government based on the consent of the people. Thus it is necessary to provide America’s young people access to what is genuinely inspiring and unifying in our history, as well as to the lessons imparted by the American experience of overcoming great national challenges. This is what makes possible the informed and honest patriotism that is essential for a successful republic.
I've got news for Trump. A whole lot of America has already "abandoned faith" in the "common story," primarily because the story isn't "common." It doesn't cross race lines and it's never been available to everyone. The idea that America is a meritocracy is ridiculous. Donald Trump is a prime example. He's a rich white man whose fortune was derived from the rich white man who raised him and gave him his fortune. It's been buttressed by favorable bankruptcy laws and a bank that now regrets propping up the finances of the most powerful man in the world.
America does offer more freedom than most countries, but the percentage of people bootstrapping themselves into financial security is a much, much smaller percentage than those who have never had to worry about financial security and have done little more than parlay their considerable riches into immense amounts of personal wealth that generally benefits no one but themselves. Any suggestion the government might want to spend less money on unwinnable wars (Terror, Drugs, etc.) and more on social services that might prevent millions of struggling Americans from going under is treated with disdain usually reserved for the long-dead Soviet Union. Meanwhile, banks run by billionaires are bailed out, even as the mortgage holders they fucked into insolvency are ignored.
Then there's this set of sentences, which sure as fuck sounds like some Maoist treacle.
Vigorous participation in local government has always been America’s laboratory of liberty and a key to what makes us exceptional. The best way to preserve the story of America’s founding principles is to live it in action by local communities reasserting control of how children receive patriotic education in their schools.
The reeducation will continue until the President's morale improves.
To that end, a bunch of current and former government officials from a number of federal agencies are being ordered to do a bunch of committee stuff and report to the President within one (1) year on how to better bathe the nation's children in red, white, and blue. Someone has to locate the "core principles" of this country's founding and connect them to the "blessings of liberty" and put all of that into a three-ring binder that had better say something about "forming a more perfect Union" if the committee members know what's good for them.
The committee also needs to plan a really kick-ass semiquicentennial celebration for the USofA. Given the President's predilection for shows of power by foreign authoritarians, this will presumably include a parade of military equipment and personnel. There are also some latent threats about funding, suggesting schools with less-than-patriotic curriculum will get the federal shaft for refusing to participate in this embarrassing charade.
This is a lousy cover of Lee Greenwood's inescapable hit d/b/a an Executive Order. This is a call for mandatory patriotism targeting the most impressionable minds in our population. This is dangerous stuff and there's no adult in the (Oval) room willing to call bullshit on Trump's masturbatory fantasies. Hopefully this will all be behind us by the end of January 2021. But if Trump retains power, we're in for a lot more flag-waving at order-point. And things like this ironically make it that much harder to be proud to be an American.
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Filed Under: donald trump, executive order, history, indoctrination, patriotism, propaganda, schools
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Republicans won't be happy until all lessons are bible studies and making flags from construction paper until they're old enough to go toil in Amazon workhouses and call centers for 50 cents an hour. History and science are the enemy as smart people ask questions.
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$0.50 / Hour? You Un-American asshole. The employer should be paid by them for graciously giving them work to do, and if they aren't white.... well, that's why they are called slaves.
/s Oh, so much sarcasm..... That sadly some idiots will happily assume I was being serious.
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Re: Re:
"...That sadly some idiots will happily assume I was being serious."
It's a bit tragic that you don't really have to consider someone an idiot for assuming the diatribe above is the honest opinion of many Very Fine People and Proud Boys.
The way the vote stands right now it looks like there are 30-40% of the US citizenry who'd look at your lines above and go "Hmm" with an approving expression.
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"50 cents an hour."
According to some conservatives, elimination of the minimum wage would result in a zero unemployment rate. However, the increase in taxpayer subsidized government assistance is never addressed, without said assistance local business would have difficulty finding employees and they will be forced out of business as a result.
These brainiacs do not think things thru.
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Unemployment rate is artificially enforced to keep wages down, so... er...
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Yes, at a certain wage, starvation will start to occur, and your slaves, err, employees won't be showing up for work anymore, which means he/she is in breach of contract -- for which of course we will sue his/her children, to force them to make up for that.
Any form of government assistance to starving workers is indeed a kind of subsidy to those slaveho...employers, and should not be given, as it is also an infringement on the free market.
You see, without a minimum wage, there is no bondage, only freedom.
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omg ... work sets you free?
you know where that quote comes from?
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Yep. I'm thinking Jeroen there is brightly describing the core of US libertarianism stripped of all the pretense the randists normally like to clothe it in.
He's being sarcastic. Lamentably less so than he thinks, however, as the US prison system can be very well described as a self-sustaining closed ecology of indentured serfdom at the very least.
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Re: Re:
"However, the increase in taxpayer subsidized government assistance is never addressed"
Exactly. They'll point to the number of jobs, and not consider the numbers of "part time" jobs that have been created so that they can avoid paying full wages and benefits, and the inevitable need for the government to pick up the tab.
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"the inevitable need for the government to pick up the tab."
More due to business whining than empathy for the poor I imagine.
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Well, a very limited bible study anyway, it wouldn't do to expose growing minds to such commie socialist ideas like 'love thy neighbor', 'turn the other cheek' or 'give a damn about the poor' after all.
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Re: Re:
Or, you know, those verses about money:
Matthew 6:24
“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
Matthew 19:21-24
21 Jesus told him, “If you want to be perfect, go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
22 But when the young man heard this, he went away sad, for he had many possessions.
23 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “I tell you the truth, it is very hard for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. 24 I’ll say it again—it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!”
1 Timothy 6:9-10
9 Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.
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It's not really surprising that US evangelical christians tend to be way more invested in the Old testament than the New. The new one which features that christ character keeps saying the stuff they don't really like.
I admit to being a bit unfair here though. Judaism is by and large by far more sympathetic a faith than...whatever it is US evangelicals pursue. I can't imagine ANY abrahamic scripture which gives the adherents leeway to define themselves entirely by what they hate.
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Just to be clear "US evangelicals" includes a number of people who are rather vehemently opposed to the horrors the current administration has blithely perpetrated. There are far too many who don't (Franklin Graham is a blight on his father's name, for example), and they tend to be listened to more by the general public for various reasons, not least of which is the very reason it's being brought up here - pointing out hypocrisy.
Those of us calling for an end to these practices and actual compassion tend to not go viral.
As to the Old Testament... their petards are hoisted there as well. The books of Law have this to say (emphasis added):
Leviticus 19:33-34
33 “‘When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. 34 The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.
Deuteronomy 10:19
And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.
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"...and they tend to be listened to more by the general public for various reasons, not least of which is the very reason it's being brought up here - pointing out hypocrisy."
It's not exactly rocket science as to why the mild-mannered and rational aren't listened to more. To whom do you pay attention, the scholarly gent three rows down holding a rational discourse on reconciling pro-life and pro-choice, or that red-faced screaming hysteric currently belting out how everyone's going to hell because God Hates <fill in Westminster Baptist's choice of the week here>?
One of those two will make headlines. The other will not.
Perhaps worse, as demonstrated by old Niemöller, the main issue with the reasonable person is that s/he considers themselves above wrangling with obvious morons and demagogues. And then too late find out that silence is itself a choice of letting the opposition move the playing field and write the rules. That's why almost half the voting US citizenry are rooting for four more years of Trump, and the perception is that brimstone-speaking pulpit thumpers are all on his side. The liberal side - both religious and secular - has been too quiet, too mild-mannered, and consistently failed to realize that trying to debate a savage beast in good faith only means giving the animal extra time to savage the chicken coop. The abject failure of the whole community of reasonable men and women to draw a line in sand and maintain it, from centuries ago until now, is why the current US of A has a social order and equality standard comparable to a third world war-riven hellhole.
"As to the Old Testament... their petards are hoisted there as well."
Not that they care. The thing about being anti-education, anti-science, and anti-life in general is that to the barely literate pastors catering to the spiritual needs of the Very Fine People it's enough to spin a yarn about a few of the more sulphurous passages about Sodom and Gomorra. To them a book is a symbol meant for thumping, not for reading. As has always been the case with zealots.
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Christianity and Others
During research on the relationship between Christianity and witch persecution, I was delighted to find a passage of the Lombard Code, circa 643 CE.
Let nobody presume to kill a foreign serving maid or female servant as a witch, for it is not possible, nor ought to be believed by Christian minds.
Imagine an age in which Christianity and rationality were believed to be complementary. Such times have happened!
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Re: Christianity and Others
"Imagine an age in which Christianity and rationality were believed to be complementary. Such times have happened!"
Ironically so. The catholic church never assumed witchcraft existed and solidly condemned superstitious rumors of the supernatural.
They were too busy throwing actual heretics to the flame, such as the misguided fools who thought the new testament meant there was no actual sanction for the pope to have a personal brothel and such or that a priest himself needed to be without sin to validly administer sacraments. I mean, there's a reason the priest is usually the lecherous horndog in all the medieval anecdotes.
Protestants were far less selective about who they burned. They had to be. With protestantism itself abolishing the validity of heresy as an accusation they had to turn to superstition and alleged "witches" if they wanted their friday afternoon barbecue meeting.
In a way the old catholic principle of not letting laymen interpret scripture proved to have at least a minor foundation in common sense, given how easily zealous protestants mistranslated "Thou shalt not suffer a poisoner to live" to apply to women suspected of being too red-headed, too educated, too jewish, or just too at odds with the local potentates.
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Re: Relax, anyone under 35 is alredy programed
Every 4th grader built a Father Serra mission miniature as a class, every 2end grader in California was required to participate in the Pina, Nina& Santa Maria myth program 75 years ago; when i protested that the flags on a 1492 square rigger would blow twurdes the bow, i was marked as "slow and troubled" for my entire 10 subsiquent years in LAUSD. Only in the US Army did i find out i was not stuped, seconded in my class at Ft. Sam Houston 91U-20 (EENT).
https://phi.history.ucla.edu/nchs/united-states-history-content-standards/ "The National Standards for History address one of the major goals for national education reform developed within the past decade. First envisioned by President George Bush and the nation’s governors in their historic summit meeting in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1989, this reform agenda took shape in the National Education Goals jointly adopted by the National Governors’ Association and President Bush a year later. These Goals were subsequently incorporated into legislation by the Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton in the GOALS 2000, Educate America Act of March 1994. Broadly supported by the American people, their state governors, their legislators in the United States Congress, and two successive presidential administrations"
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Re: Re: Relax, anyone under 35 is alredy programed
Your teachers thought the sails would be blowing toward the stern??
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Re: Re: Relax, anyone under 35 is alredy programed
Side note; East Africans were trading with China, their sales were more like wings that could push up-wind. Perhaps their stern flags trailed behind, i don't know. All that ended when the Portuguese sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and burned them out.
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As opposed to...
As opposed to indoctrination of 1619 propaganda proposed by the left.
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Re: As opposed to...
any details?
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Re: As opposed to...
I see you haven't done your due diligence again, but I shouldn't be surprised since you as a rule don't care about facts and context as long as you can spout some nonsense.
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Re: As opposed to...
Oh no, if kids learn about the shitty racist things in America's past they might not grow up to be like the shitty racists who want to whitewash over those things!
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[Citation Needed].
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An antidote to the 1619 project
https://1776unites.com/
A broad spectrum of conservative, centrist, and center-left scholars take on the distortions of the "1619 Project".
No, the 1776 Revolution was not about perpetuating slavery. (though both the rebels and the British did make disgusting moral compromises about slavery.)
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It’s fine to criticize the 1619 Project. It shouldn’t be above criticism. But for the president to say that the 1619 Project shouldn’t be used as a teaching tool — and to then propose a mandate that says schools must teach a blatantly whitewashed (and conservative-approved) version of history — reeks of fascism.
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Re: An antidote to the 1619 project
It was about keeping wealthy landowners wealthy without interference from home, slaves or no, but they sure liked their slaves. It was about being allowed to commit further genocide and take more territory. Sure there were enlightenment principles but really they were barely a thin coat of icing on the cake.
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Re: Re: An antidote to the 1619 project
Then explain why most of the founders freed their slaves when they died. The young nation needed the income of the southern states to survive, and the only way to secure it was to put off the confrontation about slavery for the time being. But many of the founders knew it would come - they said as much in their writings. Societal shifts can't happen instantly. They take time.
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Better question: For what reason did the Founding Fathers wait until their deaths to free their slaves?
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In some cases it was because the law of the land made it prohibitive or practically illegal.
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And at least in one case it may have had something to do with him fathering 6 children on a young slave child starting from when she was all of 14.
The founding fathers did try to lay a good foundation for a nation but it does no good being blind that enlightened or not they were still men of their times which means that what we today would call a day of material fit for the Hague tribunal topped off by a bout of statutory rape they'd call "Tuesday".
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Bullshit.
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In many cases, because said slaves were mortgaged to the hilt, and the manumission wouldn't be lawful unless the slaves were owned free and clear. The 'manumission upon death' was more like 'if there's anything left over after the debts are paid, free them.'
Jefferson, in particular, was known for living beyond his means.
Which doesn't exonerate his other sins.
People are complicated. He drafted a brilliant statement of ideals that he failed catastrophically to live up to.
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Re: Re: Re: An antidote to the 1619 project
"Then explain why most of the founders freed their slaves when they died."
They didn't personally need them any more?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: An antidote to the 1619 project
"They didn't personally need them any more?"
Look here, it's still a damn lot better than the Chinese and Egyptian chaps with the funny hats who insisted they needed those slaves to man the oars on their journey up the river of death and all that rot, ey what?
<above whataboutism spoken in the dulcet tones of Bertie Wooster>
It's a very odd thing about the US that it's full of constitutional scholars who've pored over the writings and contemporary descriptions of the founding fathers time and time again and could tell you - up front - that heroes of the day they might have been but cast in sight of today most of them would be in the slammer for life based on one atrocity or another.
And yet those same scholars are, more often than not, so focused on the enlightenment of their idols they speak very softly around the tacit fact that today they would fall under the most severe of trafficking laws with at least Jeffersson a bona fide full-on pedophile.
Different times.
One of the worst parts of human nature is that our "heroes" end up venerated as idols and inhuman stereotypes. Never do they get viewed critically, until long after the fact, some historian hopefully reveals their shady side.
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Cult of personality
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An antidote to the 1619 project
I've noticed that trying to bring a realistic view of the Founding Fathers to those who hold them on a pedestal is usually a non-starter, at least at first, so in personal interaction, I try to approach my points in ways that show how the Founders would likely be in agreement.
For example, the people holding the "Olden Golden Days" views and venerating the Founding Fathers often espouse this idea of returning to how they envisioned things should be.
While I don't often engage with those folks, when I do and the conversation goes in the direction of "Change is bad," I find it useful to point out that the Founding Fathers included mechanisms for change within the Constitution itself. Article V of the Constitution lays out how to Amend the Constitution.
These very Heroes therefore recognized that what they were creating would require Change as time went on; and then they immediately got busy Amending it, resulting in the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, etc. The Founders were, in fact, in favor of change.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An antidote to the 1619 project
You could also point out that without change the USA wouldn't exist, since it would still be a British Colony. Just pointing to Article 5 misses the real context behind it.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An antidote to the 1619 project
That's a fair point, but it's usually not even as coherent as "Change is bad." The elevation of the Founding Fathers on a Pedestal comes with it an (usually uninformed) idea that we should go back to when the constitution was first drafted in terms of ... something. It's not easy to get into the particulars of what, specifically, should be reverted and what shouldn't be.
Instead, it tends to stay as this amorphous idea of "things were better then" - and what I try to do is shake that cloud by pointing out that the idea of changing things to make it better is built into the very fabric of the Constitution they venerate, by the people they venerate.
So, yes, it's true that without change the USA wouldn't exist, but pointing that out on its own doesn't really make the point that additional change going forward was always part of the plan.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An antidote to the 1619 project
Exactly. That's why it's important to have that context when talking about Article 5.
But that's what many miss, the context of the times the events took place. You have to look at historical events and persons and judge them with the standard of their times.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An antidote to the 1619 project
" It's not easy to get into the particulars of what, specifically, should be reverted and what shouldn't be."
Correction; It should not be easy.
For about 30-40% of the US citizenry the answer seems to be an emotional vision of a land of milk and honey where the Slave diligently works the plantation and the Lords and Masters sip mint juleps in the setting sun as the Dutiful Wife teaches the Good Word to the Obedient Children while the Self-sacrificing Statesmen ensure that Honorable Navies gird this, the best of all possible countries, from Johnny Foreigner (especially those of non-white origin).
It's basically the Victorian dream of the british.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An antidote to the 1619 proj
I will reject your correction, here, as it describes something outside my experience. I say it's not easy because in my experience the people I was actually talking about don't have a clear picture of what the changes should be.
Outside of occasional anonymous idiots on websites I have not interacted with those espousing the picture you describe here, so they don't factor into my accounts. That's a rather different group than who I was talking about.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An antidote to the 1619 project
"Instead, it tends to stay as this amorphous idea of "things were better then" "
The Good Old Days were not so good as there was plenty going wrong at the time but, people tend to remember the good times and suppress the bad. So, the whole MAGA thing was bullshit to begin with.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An antidote to the 1619 proj
"So, the whole MAGA thing was bullshit to begin with."
It's the sort of simplistic jingoistic slogan that falls apart the moment you think about it, but obviously aimed at people who never would.
Great Again? OK, so, you admit you don't think your country is great now. So, when was it great, what made it great? How do you define "great"?
The answer is sadly all too often a nebulous past that never really existed outside of TV, while ignoring pesky facts like high taxes, social issues or outright subjugation of anyone who wasn't a straight white male that made even the fictional society they saw on TV possible.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An antidote to the 1619
The answer to when America was great is either it's always been great and still is (in which case why do we need to make it great again?), or a reference to a time that may have been great for straight white men and pretty much nobody else.
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“ or a reference to a time that may have been great for straight white men and pretty much nobody else.”
...and even then a half-assed version of that which never really existed. They’d scream bloody murder if they returned to the effective upper class tax rates of the 50s, for example, even if they be unlikely to be paying them themselves
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Re: Re: Re: An antidote to the 1619 project
"Then explain why most of the founders freed their slaves when they died." Because the slaves were dead and the cost of their upkeep could, oh, no longer be written off taxes? A dead slave tells no tales? Aum...
However, the problem with your statement is what or which "they" (died) you are referring to: the founders or the slaves?
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My biggest annoyance with the slave narrative.
I continue to be frustrated with the whole slave dialogue and how we dance around what seems (to me at least) the biggest points:
~ Slavery is peonage unchecked (or nearly unchecked).
~ In the United States, we always engaged in peonage. Even when we officially decided that slaves (or prior slaves) were persons we still engaged in peonage. We took advantage of lax worker protection regulations, payed in company scrip, we took advantage of debt slavery, we take advantage of recent immigrants, we underserve the general welfare and the (now alleged) safety nets. And we put kids in huge college debt and tell them it's their fault they can't find a decent job with an ethical boss.
(California even passed the fuck the rideshare drivers referendum. I'm fuming.)
~ We still do. In fact, our current system of less-than-living wages, gig jobs, lack of healthcare, home insecurity, food insecurity, family and community insecurity is what is driving the current popularity of fascism and movements to purge the marginalized. (BURN THE HERETIC! KILL THE MUTANT! PURGE THE UNCLEAN!). I think our plutocrats are hoping to thin out the population with a civil war (or an eradication program) so that they can all be replaced with robots.
We have good cause to keep our shame for slavery current, because we in the United States are totally still doing it and are complicit in its continuity.
Sure we're not whipping slaves out in the pasture. Instead, we've made the jobfinding process a soul-crushing heart-blackening experience, so that if anyone reports discrimination or abuse (including their own) or blows the whistle on white collar crime, wage differences, underpayments, forced crunching or whatever, the reprisal can be devastating and ruin the lives of an entire family.
If we define unemployed as everyone who wants a job that pays a living wage that doesn't have that, US unemployment is over 50%. Since the Gay 1890s, the federal labor officials have been fudging the numbers by disqualifying large segments of that population, even as women entered the job market.
Peonage is normalized in the US.
So no. Fuck the man. Fuck those who want to suppress US history of slavery. Fuck those who want to say the Civil War wasn't about slavery. It was totally about slavery. The thing is the north had already worked out its own legal alternatives to owning people by just keeping them perpetually in debt. Really, the war was about money, because everything is always about money.
We still do it. Neo-feudalism is the same as the old feudalism.
And frankly, so does the rest of the world, and we have a few nations that are slowly moving away from it. (So yeah, when we're told England had freed their slaves, note they were freed into serfdom.)
We need to stop talking about slavery as if it's an old shame. No, it's a thing we're still doing and should fucking stop. It's a fresh and current shame, and our plutocratic masters should feel shame.
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Show me any government office-holder at the state or federal level who has called for the mandated teaching of the 1619 Project in the same way that Trump has called for the mandated teaching of a whitewashed version of American history.
:earning about slavery — the original sin of the United States and the institution around which the entire country was formed — would and should be crucial to the civic life of any free-thinking American. To deny its horrors, or to deny that the American Experiment has always been “inclusive” even when it literally treated Black people as both property and three-fifths of a person, is akin to (but not exactly like) Holocaust denial. You can’t deny the things that happened during slavery didn’t happen. You can’t deny that the impact of the institution of slavery upon Black people still affects that same population to this day. If you do, you’re no better than Donald “we have to indoctrinate children the ‘right’ way, nudge nudge wink wink” Trump.
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I would like to add,
You can't deny the genocide which occurred wrt the native american people.
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But those who would like to can always shift the blame to the “savages” for, say, refusing to “integrate” with the colonizers.
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Re: "you can't deny"
Amen from me.
However, there are some folks who could deny that the sun rises daily in the temperate latitudes if it made them uncomfortable, angry, or afraid.
When I read The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein, I was very uncomfortable. I pushed on, and became angry -- but not at Rothstein, who is extremely thorough and backs up everything he says. Instead, I became angry at the politicians and schools who had lied about what had been done.
It's hard to push on into something that might make you reevaluate the dream that you and your acquaintances are living in. But it's worth it.
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Re: Re: "you can't deny"
here's another:
A People's History of the United States
Howard Zinn
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Re: Re: "you can't deny"
"It's hard to push on into something that might make you reevaluate the dream that you and your acquaintances are living in. But it's worth it."
It is. Because living a lie and pretending, for your whole life, that your nation is something it's not and never was, only means that not only are you an obvious hypocrite in the eyes of others with the lack of credibility that means - you've also closed the door hard on any chance of making your nation a better one.
The four years under Trump brought one good thing - it tore the mask straight off of the US when The Donald and an increasing flood of republicans began saying, with the outside voice, what they'd been careful only to use the inside voice for.
The news was grim. Between 30-40% of the US citizenry defines itself primarily by hatred of the other, mistrust of education, and an ideology which mimics national socialism closer than any other contemporary ideology.
It's pretty clear that until the US as a whole addresses this fact it'll be a hard sell to convince anyone - even americans - of the moral high ground and leadership quality of a country which has to strain itself getting enough people to vote the raging sociopath and pathological liar out of the president's chair.
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Re: Re: Re: "you can't deny"
For the majority, it is a third world nation.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: "you can't deny"
"For the majority, it is a third world nation."
Well, sort of. A weird type of third world nation where the infrastructure is collapsing all over, only the wealthy can afford to be ill or have accidents, but you get 58 different flavors of candy-corn and a multitude of innovative new uses of the word "food" as it is applied to stuff like pink slime and food additives banned in any nation where medical science is given credibility.
"If you visit American city,
You will find it very pretty.
Just two things of which you must beware:
Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air!"
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Third world, a nitpick
It's weird to me, having been raised during the cold-war to see how first world and third world have changed in definition. During the cold war, they meant the following:
First world: NATO nations
Second world: Warsaw pact nations
Third world: Everyone else.
Nowadays, we call post-industrialized nations first world and unindustrialized nations (which also includes pre-industrialized nations and early industrializing nations) as third world.
Now I'm a bit of a word nerd, so to me it feels clumsy, though the phrase first world problems (such as cable politics depriving some people of live sports content) seems to have locked in the new definitions of first world and third world.
I cringe when I hear it, but I cringe less with repeated exposure.
When I want to describe the high rate of squalor, unemployment (including underemployment) and lack of living security of the US, I call it late-stage capitalist.
/nitpicky_rant
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Re: Third world, a nitpick
idk, never looked up the definition.
I heard it used in reference to countries that where failing, as evidenced in their failing infrastructure and lack of ability to maintain it thus leading to famine and disease. We are well on our way down that path.
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The public education system is not a federal function and the fed has zero input on the topic.
Public education is governed at the state level with boards at the county level setting curriculum.
Conservatives are full of shit when they say the fed can legally change state policy. States rights are no longer just for bigotry.
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The federal department of education can very, VERY easily co-opt the state level. All they have to do is withhold funding if the states refuse to enact certain policies.
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Yep, see also the mandatory "accountability" testing that doesn't even care if all of your answers came from a DnD dice roll.
Or the mandatory internet snooping if you want to be able keep the cafeteria stocked.
There's plenty of examples if you care to look. Even better, if you somehow manage to avoid all of them, your district's choices for curriculum are often between the Texas BoE version and the California BoE version, so you still don't get much of a choice in what your kids learn. (Unless you're willing to fork over the cash to create and publish a whole new set of curriculum, and then buy enough of it for every student in your district, while also paying to retrain every teacher in the district to use it.)
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Yes, there are many examples of corruption, the fact it exists does not make it right or legal.
Many teachers come up with their own curriculum, they want to teach rather than indoctrinate.
Many teachers buy supplies for their students and are not reimbursed.
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and they refer to this as governing?
Yes, I realize that federal funding is a game played by all politicians, its existence is not self justifying. The fed takes money from the blue states and then bribes/extorts action in return for giving some of the money back. Red states are at a disadvantage here as they lack negotiating power. Reminds me of the whole 55mph bullshit.
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Conservatives do. Only they’re lying when they call it such. It’s actually dominance — which is what conservatives are actually interested in.
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"The federal department of education can very, VERY easily co-opt the state level."
...and just happens to be controlled by otherwise unqualified Trump appointees who are opposed to the very concept of public education. No way that would ever be abused. /s
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And this is the problem. The fed should never have been allowed to get this big, and into all these aspects of the lives of people/states. Ditto the anti-2nd'ers and their specious "you aren't going to stand up to the Govt and the Army with your lone rifle!" which misses the entire salient point: The Gov shouldn't have ever been allowed to have all the weapons and standing armies are not constitutional (only the Navy was allowed to be a US Gov branch/dept). To paraphrase Ian Malcolm, "you were so busy tripping over yourself to discredit the 2nd and owners that you never stopped to ask if the Govt SHOULD have an army!" Just because that is where we are doesn't mean it is legit or right.
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btw, "the fed" generally means "the federal reserve" not "the federal government".
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Send in the Feds - lol
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Yes you are right, I meant to put in "fed govt" there but skipped the last part.
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withhold funding to schools
Sadly, this is how the abstinence only sex education debacle got started (and is still going). The federal department of education withheld funding to school districts that didn't teach the AO curriculum or that did teach a (more) comprehensive sex education program.
And still, as of 2016, no program officially talks about consent (though some teachers will insert their own consent speech somewhere in there.)
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Re: withhold funding to schools
It was sad to watch the teenage pregnancy rates increasing as a result of that program.
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Well, I would say they are full of shit regardless. Their stated opinion is entirely dependent on getting what they want, so don't be surprised if they one day say state rights don't exist and then the next day say they do.
To be fair, it's not just conservatives that flip-flop on the issue of state rights to fit their narrative, but they seem to be in the majority.
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... is a misleading statement at this point.
If you really want to "be fair" to them, it's far better to call it for what it is: Corruption in the service of power. They are all malicious actors. Attempting to claim fairness at this point implies that they have a conscious, or that they actually care about the good of society. They don't. They only care about increasing their grip on power, and will work toward any means of achieving that goal. Regardless if it helps or harms society as a whole.
The fact that people keep trying to "be fair" to them, is the reason why their BS continues unabated.
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I agree as long as this is applied equally (there's REAL equality!) to all parties and politicians. They are ALL corrupt, DON'T work for you, enrich themselves, and sell the security of our nation to foreign interests for their benefit of accumulating more power.
That this site and its bootlickers do not understand this, and believe with wild fanatacism, that only one "side" is the problem, and the other "side" is going to save you, is disgusting and idiotic. And yes I just called all you idiots, tough shti, you brought it on yourselves. (or at least those of you who think Biden will "lead" the country anywhere but destruction) (protip: they aren't leaders, they are REPRESENTATIVES. That you treat them like leaders makes you complicit in their power grabs)
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I don’t believe either “side” of the political parties in the U.S. will save anyone. We can only save ourselves.
As for this remark:
Do you think a national pandemic with nearly a quarter-million people dead and no federally coördinated response is salvation? Because that’s what you’re getting right now, and that isn’t coming from a Biden administration.
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And you think Biden is the solution, or would have done better? We may see soon, but your slavish devotion to a known failure on this very type of thing (lets not his utter failure with the swine flu) which you just preceeded by saying we need to save ourselves (correct!) shows you are opining in just a biased (or anti) political manner, not a logical one.
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So, Trump would be better than Biden? Or just what is your argument here?
"Slavish devotion (not remotely evident) to a known failure (yeah Biden sucks)." So your completely non-slavish devotion-inspired solution is...?
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Funny thing is, by all accounts, Trump was a bigger “failure” than Biden before winning the 2016 election. Several bankruptcies, hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, that racial discrimination lawsuit, a failed casino…it’s like, geez, I know Trump failed upwards, but how many times did he fail in the first place?
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'NOW you care about possible corruption and incompetence?'
I understand the whole 'every accusation a confession' thing but even then it still amuses me when someone tries to defend Trump or attack Biden by claiming that Biden will 'sell out the country' or 'fail' in some unspecified manner, because for fuck's sake have they looked at who they are defending?
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Re: 'NOW you care about possible corruption and incompetence?'
You proceed, as all liberal progressives do due to your derangement, from the false assumption that being critical of someone also equals tacit approval of their opposite. Left/Right, Dem/Repub, Biden/Trump - it is not a zero-sum game, yet you cannot see things in any other terms because "but Trump!" is the only point you can pivot anything on.
In case you didn't read above, I don't like ANY of them. But Biden is no answer, savior, or solution. That is a statement that stands on it's own, there is not "whataboutism" vis-a-vis Trump for that idea to stand on it's own.
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If you refuse to vote “against” Trump (whether by voting for Biden or a third-party candidate), you’re all but admitting that you approve of the Trump administration’s policies and Trump’s actions as president. It’s like I read on Twitter once: Not every Trump voter is a racist, but for those voters, Trump’s racism wasn’t a dealbreaker.
If you refuse to stand against evil, you go along with it. And of Biden and Trump, one of the two is a clear evil.
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You don't know how I voted. Condemning me without evidence is exactly the kind of thing I am talking about.
I didn't vote for Trump OR Biden, if that helps. I voted "against" BOTH of them.
You may now un-judge me since you were so quick to condemn based on YOUR biases.
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Fair enough. But your willingness to overly criticize Biden and seemingly let Trump off the hook for [gestures at the past four years] is not a good look.
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"I didn't vote for Trump OR Biden, if that helps."
No, it literally doesn't help one tiny bit.
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"You don't know how I voted"
We can guess based on the evidence you're presented to us, though.
"I didn't vote for Trump OR Biden, if that helps. I voted "against" BOTH of them."
So, you voted for a candidate that had no chance of winning and by extension announced you would let everyone else choose which of the 2 viable candidates take office?
That's a major problem with the US system if you didn't get to choose a 3rd viable candidate, but it doesn't make you any better... especially when you just happen to be attacking supporters of only one of those two candidates.
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So who did you vote for? And why?
We've heard your opinion of the Biden choice; for what reasons did you avoid the Trump choice?
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"We've heard your opinion of the Biden choice; for what reasons did you avoid the Trump choice?"
Given the arguments Baghdad Bob has been pushing around here for the last four years? Barry Goldwater perhaps, or David Duke? Or, given his frequent forays into section 230 and how corporations need to justify their existence before the public, perhaps Chairman Mao?
To quite a few of the alt-right Trump himself just doesn't go far enough. Too milquetoast for their taste.
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Re: Re: 'NOW you care about possible corruption and incompetence
I'm still waiting for an answer to these questions in regards to your allegations about this site:
Can you list the "specious lies"?
Can you also list the "scurrilous and blatant falsehoods"?
Can you also list the times anyone been censored for "contradicting or demonstrably prove false your repeated and abusive misrepresentation of objective reality"?
So far you have avoided answering them which makes me conclude that you just make shit up.
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Re: Re: Re: 'NOW you care about possible corruption and incompet
Yeah I dont have time to info-dump-flood the posts with proof that you wouldnt accept anyway. I know that sounds like ducking, and it is, but I didn't make my initial statement without considering the years (been floating around this site for a decade now) of what I have seen. And it has gotten demonstrably worse, more political, and one-sided in recent years, to the point of being actual poison.
But to throw a bone, one proof is right there in the headline of this article. In no way, shape or form has Trump put forth any order or law mandating or demanding a "for life" presidency.
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Donald Trump has, on multiple occasions, “joked” about serving a third term in the White House — a clear violation of the constitutionally mandated two-term limit. Given his age right now, if Trump were to win a second term and somehow find a way to achieve a third term, the likelihood that he would die in office is significantly high. And that’s assuming Trump wins reëlection fairly and doesn’t try to take over the country via a political coup that disenfranchises millions of voters (many of whom likely voted for Trump) and ignores the will of the people because Dear Leader didn’t like the message being sent by the people.
Oh, and he also talked about China’s president being a for-life president by saying, “He’s now president for life. President for life. And he’s great. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll give that a shot someday.” You can call that a “joke” if you want, but given the willingness of Trump to treat dictators and fascists with the kind of affection one usually reserves for a high school crush, I consider it more of a warning — or, on particularly pessimistic days, a threat.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: 'NOW you care about possible corruption and inco
"Yeah I dont have time to info-dump-flood the posts with proof that you wouldnt accept anyway."
You could just provide one or two single examples. Surely with all the proof you have to hand about how wrong they are that wouldn't take long?
"But to throw a bone, one proof is right there in the headline of this article. In no way, shape or form has Trump put forth any order or law mandating or demanding a "for life" presidency."
Ah, so reading comprehension is your problem.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: 'NOW you care about possible corruption and inco
(been floating around this site for a decade now) of what I have seen. And it has gotten demonstrably worse, more political, and one-sided in recent years, to the point of being actual poison.
Oh fuck off. We've criticized every administration and if Biden actually pulls this off we'll criticize him a shit-ton too, because his tech and civil liberties policies will be a disaster.
But, there is no one with any brain cells left who can honestly claim that Trump is better for this country. Biden may be bad, but he's bad within the natural parameters of civil democracy. Trump is such a disaster for the fundamental rule of law, and the entire framework on which the US was built, that he required more pointed call outs.
If you can't see that, you are too fucking stupid to bother with, so go into whatever dark, ignorant hole you pulled yourself out of and go fuck yourself.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 'NOW you care about possible corruption and
Fair enough. I will hold you to all of that. You are not wrong about Trump, he isn't better for anything, but Biden isn't going to be your solution either. It just sucks we are stuck with either a horrible choice or a disasterous choice. It's just that I have seen far too much cheerleading for Biden here as if he is righteous and wholesome (albeit more from the commentors than the site itself TBH) and that may be true relatively compared to Trump, but be very careful what you wish for then, as you may get it, and you are not going to like it.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 'NOW you care about possible corruption
If you're talking about all humans, then sure Biden could be a lot better. If you're talking about this election, the choices are Biden or Trump, so of course people are going to evaluate Biden on his suitability for the job relative to Trump.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 'NOW you care about possible corruption
It's just that I have seen far too much cheerleading for Biden here as if he is righteous and wholesome
Where?
Seriously. Where?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 'NOW you care about possible corruption
"It's just that I have seen far too much cheerleading for Biden here as if he is righteous and wholesome (albeit more from the commentors than the site itself TBH)"
Where the actual fuck did you see anyone cheerleading for Joe "the windsock" Biden?
There have been dozens or even hundreds of comments and entire threads of how corrupt Biden is and how his history points to either a political nonentity whose only claim to merit is that he was seen as the logical old, white, conservative, dead weight to use as counterbalance to a young, black, dynamic and educated president.
The thing coming closest to "cheerleading" has been those who called for everyone to "Hold your nose and vote, because Biden Is Not Trump".
Pretty typical, Baghdad Bob, that you ignore what was actually written and rewrite it to fit your narrative.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 'NOW you care about possible corrupt
"The thing coming closest to "cheerleading" has been those who called for everyone to "Hold your nose and vote, because Biden Is Not Trump"."
Bear in mind that we're currently living in a time where a lot of supposedly pro-democracy Trump fans are protesting outside vote counting centres because any votes that don't go their way are not acceptable, and they're turning against Fox News because they are obviously too liberal since they dared call results that they didn't like.
Saying "hey, at least Biden is not a mentally ill psychopath" is cheerleading to some people.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: 'NOW you care about possible corruption and inco
Translation: I make claims I can't back up, so I'll just make some weak excuses and slink away.
If you have been reading TD for a decade you should have plenty of examples to lean on.
Considering your other attempt at history revisionism I doubt you'll find much to back up your claims about "specious lies" and "scurrilous and blatant falsehoods". But that's the problem people like you have, you misremember things to fit your internal narrative plus you can't keep track of what you have said earlier so you contradict yourself, all because you lack a consistency founded in facts.
I see you don't understand sarcasm, especially sarcasm that has some basis in truth. It's not like Trump said "And 52 days from now we're going to win Nevada, and we're going to win four more years in the White House. And then after that, we'll negotiate, right? Because we're probably - based on the way we were treated - we are probably entitled to another four after that." on 12th of October. Trump also said "We are going to win four more years. And then after that, we'll go for another four years because they spied on my campaign. We should get a redo of four years." at the Oshkosh rally on 17th of October.
It seems your "proof" is nothing of the sort. Perhaps you should start informing yourself before making baseless claims.
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"I know Trump failed upwards, but how many times did he fail in the first place?"
He was consistently bragging about how he could make money out of bankruptcy after his first casino went bust. All it really took was to stiff everyone on their salaries and services, make sure all his money was untouchable by a chapter 11, and walk off in the sunset wearing that smug grin of his.
It was only later that he found that the banks had taken notice and he suddenly couldn't raise a loan for his next scam no matter how he weaseled it around - and had to start running reality TV to make ends meet.
That was the time when suddenly Deutsche bank agreed to bankroll him for hundreds of millions with a loan guaranteed by the Russian state bank - for no apparent reason.
In hindsight Putin might as well have handed him the money in a briefcase before open camera. It's not as if the republicans would have changed their vote on the impeachment.
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I think anyone with both a conscience and empathy for other people would’ve done a better job than Donald Trump.
“Devotion”? Please. I voted for Biden because he was the only candidate with even a chance to defeat Trump. (If I had cast a vote in the primaries and we had ranked voting out where I live, I would’ve voted for Warren, Sanders, and Biden in that order.) My vote is less about getting Biden into the White House and more about getting Trump — a racist, misogynistic, transphobic, selfish, fascistic, sociopathic, cruel-as-all-hell human being who views every relationship in his life as a transaction and doesn’t care if he gets hurt so long as everyone else gets hurt in the process — out of the position of power he never deserved to hold in the first place.
Yeah, let’s not forget that the 2009-2010 swine flu pandemic caused about 114,000 confirmed cases and about 3,400 confirmed deaths in the United States.
How does that compare to the COVID-19 outbreak, again?
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Don't know where you are getting those completely false and misleading stats from, but the CDC disagrees with you:
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/2009-h1n1-pandemic.html
60 MILLION cases in the 12 months.
Wake me when we get to even one TENTH of that before March of next year.
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Okay, fair enough, but here’s the key number you left out: 12,469. That’s the number of deaths the CDC says are attributable to the swine flu pandemic.
Again: How does that compare to COVID-19?
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Obama allowed 12,000 Americans to die by the same law of symmetry that you are holding Trump to over covid.
The quantities aren't the point. If they are, then you have to defend at what # of dead American's is acceptable vs what isn't.
The point is Obama's admin also failed, and many Americans died that didn't need to.
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Under the Obama administration, 12,000-plus Americans died from the swine flu. This is a fact. Under the Trump administration, a quarter-million Americans have died from COVID-19, and that number continues to rise on a daily basis. This is also a fact.
Those quantities are the point because they show the absolute factual difference between the responses from the two administrations. The Obama administration listened to science and expertise, then did its level best to keep the swine flu from killing as many people as possible. The Trump administration listened to Donald Trump, then did next-to-nothing to keep COVID-19 from spreading and killing people. One administration gave a damn about trying to save lives; the other gave nothing but a shrug and a promise that “the virus will disappear soon” every other week. If you can’t figure out which is which, I can’t help you — nor will I try any further, as you are clearly arguing in bad faith.
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Obama: 12,000 dead despite following CDC and other guidelines in a disease outbreak that's long over and we know the final outcomes
Trump: Nearly 250,000 dead in a pandemic that's hit the US harder than most other countries, many of them due to his refusal to follow CDC guidelines, who has been mocking the experts in the field at a time when the number of infected is growing exponentially, whose first action in the area was to dismantle the team that would have been acting on the lessons learned from the previous outbreak.
Hmmm... I wonder why these are getting different reactions from people?
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"The quantities aren't the point. If they are, then you have to defend at what # of dead American's is acceptable vs what isn't. "
Bullshit.
Going by the global statistics the US should have had, by now, perhaps 30-50k american dead.
Instead there's quarter of a million and rising with expected death tolls running around 400k come next year.
At this point in the game if Trump continues "fighting" the pandemic the current way the US is looking at millions of dead at the conclusion of the disease, and an unknown multiple of that partially or wholly disabled.
Biden, just by not being and idiot might be able to cut the end game numbers to a quarter of what it would have been.
Yes, Baghdad Bob, numbers DO matter. Obama wasn't being a raging idiot about the swine flu so it managed to kill 12k americans instead of a whole lot more.
Trump has been a raging idiot about covid so it has killed around 180,000 more people than it should have.
Obama might have done better, saving 2k people. Trump only had to not actively work against the experts and 180k people wouldn't have died.
In your little world, apparently, there is no difference here. Factual reality begs to differ.
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It compares to about 10,000 that are attributable directly to COVID, using the exact same logic, measurement type and from the same agency.
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Lol. I'd love to see your proof of this, but I'll guess that it depends on a fundamental misunderstanding of how deaths are reported.
Even if not - let's say that you are correct and these aren't COVID deaths. How do you account for the hundreds of thousands of excess deaths outside of normal patterns that have happened this year if you won't accept that COVID was the cause? You still have to explain why so many Americans have died, even if you reject the obvious explanation.
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Time to wake the hell up then because those numbers don't exactly help your case, as while swine flu may have had 60 million cases it resulted in 3433 deaths in the US, as opposed the the current numbers of 3.7 million covid cases in the US and 239 thousand deaths(and counting), so if you want to point to the numbers and claim the swine flu was handled poorly then the covid response has been downright disastrous.
Related to that you might have been better off not including that link, as comparing how the swine flu was handled to how the covid epidemic has been and is being handled really does not do Trump any favors, and if anything just highlights how badly he's fucked the whole thing up in multiple ways.
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Time to wake the hell up then because those numbers don't exactly help your case, as while swine flu may have had 60 million cases it resulted in 12,469 deaths in the US,
No idea how the table on wikipeia botched the numbers so badly, but given what that number is being compared to even a four-fold increase doesn't actually change much.
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"the current numbers of 3.7 million covid cases in the US "
Active cases. There are 9.7 million overall cases (that we know of since the genius in charge has been actively opposing testing), and that number's growing by around 100k per day.
Plus, you have the fact that it a global pandemic and the US has managed to get around 14% of deaths so far despite having only 4% of the population and a head start in response compared to some countries in Asia and Europe. None of this looks good, and it will get worse.
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"that number's growing by around 100k per day."
Just a sad note as I look at yesterday's confirmed figures now - 108k newly infected and 1200 dead. Another new daily infected record, which means at that rate a million new infected in just 9 days. For comparison, it took 10 weeks to reach 1 million, around 5 weeks to reach 2 million and the gap between 8 and 9 million was 16 days. This is what exponential growth looks like. Trump's response? It's a hoax, why won't the media stop talking about it?
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And yet deaths are in a flat-to-downward trend and have been for 6 months. The large divergence between cases (non-symptomatic have NEVER been used a as a measure of a "case" before) should give everyone pause to question, and some hope, that something else is at play here. And don't even get started on the specious use of PCR to test for infection, it was never intended to be used that way and was summarily declared unsuitable by its own creator for such use. The molecular test is far more accurate but isn't the main one being used to do the mass testing. Also ask how many tests have to be run to get 100k+ results DAILY (which we know is a fraction of total tested) and see if the logistics of that hold up.
You aren't questioning what is being fed, yet you complained endlessly about the malfeasance vis-a-vis Covid and the CDC yet lap up all data without critical review
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"And yet deaths are in a flat-to-downward trend and have been for 6 months."
HAD been. They're skyrocketing again, and daily infections are higher than they've ever been.
"Also ask how many tests have to be run to get 100k+ results DAILY"
The answer is in the question if you have any sense.
"You aren't questioning what is being fed"
I am - and the evidence points to rampant UNDER reporting from Trump's desperate attempts to pretend the issue was gone before the election.
"without critical review"
Lol, there is definitely critical review, and the sensible outcome is that you have to be very stupid to be taking the figures provided by a CDC crippled in the face of a con artist fighting desperately for re-election at face value. But, the trends are clear. Multiple areas are complaining about capacity issues, and the excess deaths are clear even if your chosen venues are asking you not to think about why they're there.
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"HAD been. They're skyrocketing again, and daily infections are higher than they've ever been."
CASES are skyrocketing. DEATHS are not. You obviously have no idea what a "trendline" is or how to read a chart. A couple of days above the trendline doesnt break the overall trend, thats not how statistics work. The spike above only happened on 3 days (so far) and we are back below the trendline. Barring any other sustained spikes above, the trend is still flat-to-downward. Anyone with eyes can see that plainly on the chart.
"I am - and the evidence points to rampant UNDER reporting from Trump's desperate attempts to pretend the issue was gone before the election."
"Lol, there is definitely critical review, and the sensible outcome is that you have to be very stupid to be taking the figures provided by a CDC crippled in the face of a con artist fighting desperately for re-election at face value."
I am looking directly at whatever the main numbers are that you can find by google: "covid deaths" which is not, strictly speaking, only CDC numbers, but a combo of also Hopkins and NYT. From the "About this data:"
"It’s constantly updated from resources around the world
Data comes from Wikipedia, government health ministries, The New York Times, and other authoritative sources, as attributed."
So this is the same data EVERYONE is looking at and using as their fear-mongering news reports.
You are wrong. Try again, with critical eyes.
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"CASES are skyrocketing. DEATHS are not"
1,346 people in the US died yesterday, the highest daily number since August 18th, and death are a lagging indicator which means they will go higher. Anyone who understands the data would know this.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
"I am looking directly at whatever the main numbers are that you can find by google"
Yet, you fail to provide the links you copied from, usually the tactic of someone who wants to omit context. Interesting.
Also, it is interesting that you're obsessed with minimising the deaths as if that's the most important factor, while ignoring things like the long-term health problems the virus causes in people who don't die, in a failing economy where healthcare is determined by employment. You are, sadly, going to suffer greatly from Trump's failures.
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"Yet, you fail to provide the links you copied from, usually the tactic of someone who wants to omit context. Interesting."
I told you where I got them from. Google "Covid Deaths." The data apprears directly, its not a "link" to a site, its provided by Google.
Just because you are too lazy to type in TWO WORDS to protect your precious superiority doesn't invalidate anything.
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Oh, and fun fact I noticed relevant to my previous post (which had been delay, presumable because I linked my source, but you won’t see me whining about that unlike some people):
https://mobile.twitter.com/bnodesk/status/1326324367899455488
There are more people than ever hospitalized with COVID. If true, you’re insane if you don’t think this translates to more deaths, ever if you remain deliberately ignorant of the fact that more cases generally lead to more deaths. What’s sad is that even though this number includes people like you who denied the problem before they got infected, it’s not restricted to them.
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I was not commenting on what I want to happen, I commented on what IS happening. You can cry the sky is falling all you want but that doesn't change the actual reported data. Unless or until their is another trendline rise like there was from late-June to late-July, the overall trend in deaths is down. The case trends are way up. Instead of calling people names and slandering them, maybe you should be asking why are cases up 6 fold but deaths are not only not following in proportion (or at all) but are trending downward. According to you, this doesn't happen, and yet there it is in black and white.
No one is denying the problem is a problem, but questioning the reporting data. So there could be other reasons, like reporting issues, the fact that the PCR test (which is the main, bulk test being used) is inadequate to this purpose and is being run at far too many cycle-test levels (which will produce many false positives and is not indicative of an active infection - even Fauci himself agrees with this) to people getting tested multiple times and counting as a "case", let alone that in infectious disease, cases are only counted if they are symptomatic.
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"60 MILLION cases in the 12 months.
Wake me when we get to even one TENTH of that before March of next year."
Is that like the nearly 10 million COVID cases you have in the US right now, a rate that is rapidly accelerating in growth?
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It seems you are practicing history revisionism.
If we compare the Obama administrations response to the swine flu to the current administrations response to COVID-19, the latter is dumpster-fire of epic proportions. The current administration have consistently downplayed the pandemic all while retaliating against government employees who is trying to tell people to take the disease seriously.
In short, anyone could do a better job than Trump when it comes to the pandemic.
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"The current administration have consistently downplayed the pandemic all while retaliating against government employees who is trying to tell people to take the disease seriously"
The White House has had more infections than some countries. That's really all that need to be said.
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"And you think Biden is the solution, or would have done better? "
Biden is not a dictator wannabe.
Biden did not promise to end social security and medicare.
Biden did not claim chlorine is a good corona treatment.
... the list seems endless at this point and you still dont get it do you?
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“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful.”
Show me where he said chlorine (or bleach for that matter) in his statement.
I'll wait.
BIDEN was the one (or one of many) who said Trump said that:
"“President Trump says things like…crazy stuff he’s walking away from now, ‘inject bleach in your arm and that’s going to work,’” Biden said. “I’m being a bit — I’m not being facetious though; he actually said these things.”
Since you slanderously and materially misrepresented what was said, the rest of your "solution" list is invalid.
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"And you think Biden is the solution, or would have done better?"
Judging by the global statistics a badly trained chimp might do better. You've got six times the amount of dead you ought to have which means, bluntly put, that if you'd left the white house vacant for the period you might very well have been better off.
So unless Biden actively tries to ignore the medical experts, shits on the science, and actively disparages the methods proven to actually work then yes, he'll do better. Anyone not actively fostering plague rats would.
"...not a logical one."
Baghdad Bob, you of all people have no leeway talking about logic, when to produce your kind of logic we first have to ignore the last four years of pandemic data. No other nation in the world - not even the worst shit-pits in the third world - has managed to pull such a complete shit-show as the US has when it came to fighting the pandemic.
But as I usually say, it's no skin off my nose. We've closed our borders to US plague rats. The ones paying the price of your stupidity will be your friends and relatives, not mine. So you do you, Baghdad Bob. You do you.
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"Judging by the global statistics a badly trained chimp might do better. You've got six times the amount of dead you ought to have which means, bluntly put, that if you'd left the white house vacant for the period you might very well have been better off."
That's a joke, right? You can't possibly be that ignorant. The "estimated" dead in the USA alone was supposed to be 2 MILLION. How could you possibly know what "ought to be" the amount of dead? Thats absurd, you dont know, no one knows, and the best "expert" estimates were off by an order of magnitude and the deaths are barely half the US estimate for the entire WORLD.
The "experts" you fellate and insist we listen to were completely, hilariously, wrong.
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"The "estimated" dead in the USA alone was supposed to be 2 MILLION"
First wave isn't over yet...
"How could you possibly know what "ought to be" the amount of dead?"
It's called science. Maybe try listening to people who understand that instead of the people who are trying to pretend that the thing inconvenient to their political and financial wellbeing doesn't exist.
"the deaths are barely half the US estimate for the entire WORLD"
People most countries aren't staffed by morons and actually listened to medical advice to avoid the estimates coming true (the estimates being, of course, based on if nothing was done).
"The "experts" you fellate and insist we listen to were completely, hilariously, wrong."
They really weren't, but we've learned not to expect people who listen to fascist propaganda to understand what the experts were actually saying, let alone how things need to be adjusted in the face of on ongoing crisis.
Quick note: while the world is laughing nervously about the newest massive spike in infections and deaths in the US, Australia is recording zero infections in the previously most affected area, and almost zero for the country as a whole. The reason? They listened to those experts and took the required action. As opposed to the idiot who tried pretending it didn't exist. The blood of many is on his hands, and your reaction is to pretend reality doesn't exist.
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"Quick note: while the world is laughing nervously about the newest massive spike in infections and deaths in the US, Australia is recording zero infections in the previously most affected area, and almost zero for the country as a whole. The reason? "
They have a totalitarian fascist iron hand on the population, total lockdowns, and are beating, choking and arresting people if they are not wearing a mask, even outside. Yeah, good example to be looking at. I'm sure we should just give up every freedom here so we can compare favorably.
The fact that you support the "required action" of iron fisted repression of the populace and elimination of their rights and freedoms shows just what kind of person you are.
Want to go for touting China's response next? I'm sure they are your speed of "F the people and their rights"
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"They have a totalitarian fascist iron hand on the population"
Lol. Even if that's true, which is better - a temporary leadership that understands that viruses don't care about your politics and prefer a short-term bad situation over a long-term hellscape, or a wannabe fascist who couldn't even stop his own ass getting the virus but dooms a quarter million (so far) people to death to sooth his ego?
"I'm sure they are your speed of "F the people and their rights""
I'm sure I can name 245,943 people (so far) who might have preferred "losing their rights" over what you doomed them to, and the people who are now back to leading normal lives with full access to rights in the countries you're shitting yourself over might agree.
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Well, I'm glad you are supportive of totalitarian actions being waged against the populace as long as the ends justify the means. I'm sure history shows that sort of thing has never become any kind of problem anywhere in the world.
Shows just what kind of a person you are. Fascist dictatorial oppression in the name of "helping" and keeping people "Safe" has been used since time immemorial by those who crave power. If you can't see the problem in that, then God help you and stay the F away from the rest of us.
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Estimated Dead "supposed to be" 2 million
We're totally in the middle of an uncontained deadly epidemic.
Give it time.
When we've beaten it, if the toll is two million dead, that's plausible.
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Re: Estimated Dead "supposed to be" 2 million
"When we've beaten it, if the toll is two million dead, that's plausible."
What's sad is that if it doesn't reach that level, it won't be due to the tireless efforts of the medical community, combined with the personal sacrifices of intelligent people who didn't need legal mandates to act like sensible adults doing what was needed to contain the spread. It has to be some kind of conspiracy.
What's even sadder is that there would be so many less dead if more people had just acted like sensible adults.
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"...but your slavish devotion to a known failure..."
And this, gentlemen, is how Baghdad Bob classifies a forum which has extensively discussed and criticized Biden for being a bought crook whose only electable criteria is that he's "Not as bad as Trump" and someone you vote for while holding your nose.
Seems that lately old Bobmail/Jhon/Blue has gone right back to his old Torrentfreak M.O. where he'd simply ignore factual reality completely as long as he could shitpost.
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"or at least those of you who think Biden will "lead" the country anywhere but destruction"
At least there's a non-zero change he can avoid it and not take the rest of the world down with you, unlike his opponent.
"protip: they aren't leaders, they are REPRESENTATIVES"
Yes, so a lot of people are really interested in having the guy who lost the last election by 3 million votes to get out of the office that he's corrupted for his own personal profit to get the hell out and get someone in who can at least pretend to represent the majority of the population who live there? Just a thought...
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No Child Left Behind would beg to differ.
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No child left a dime
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'The only true and accecptable history is OUR version of it.'
Ignoring for a moment that if you feel you need to rewrite and whitewash history in order to get people to be proud of it you've all but admitted that even you don't think it's worth being proud of there is some seriously warped humor to be found in the proposed 'lessons'.
The group that has shown that they fully believe that the government and president are above the laws(at least when their party is in charge)... wants lessons against authoritarianism.
The lot that is constantly playing people against each other by demonizing anyone that isn't in full agreement with them... now supposedly wants to tell children to see all of those around them as fellow americans.
The same people that see a bunch of black americans protesting because of a long history of police brutality against them and a vastly different treatment under the law and dismisses them and their issues and violent thugs and fictional respectively... now wants to teach children that all men are equal under the law and always have been.
Oh yeah, I definitely trust that lot to put together a truthful and historically accurate lesson plan rather than baseless propaganda aimed at normalizing their corruption and brushing under the rug anything they don't care for.
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Each certificate of completion comes with a free Brown Shirt in the student's size.
What a shame he never learned anything of what this country is all about himself.
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"What a shame he never learned anything of what this country is all about himself."
The current republican agenda has far more adherents in the US by % than Hitler had in Germany. How can you say that Brown shirt doesn't represent what the US is all about?
When roughly 50% of the voting citizenry thinks that brown shirt is a grand idea it's no longer possible to believably start running the No True American fallacy.
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What's next outta trump ... Nazi Youth, League of American Girls, Handmaids?
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This site
The specious lies and bias from a site like this is exactly why section 230 protections need to be removed/rethought. I look forward to the day your site is brought to heel and you are forced to recant your scurrilous and blatant falsehoods that you hide behind "opinion" while censoring any voices that contradict or demonstrably prove false your repeated and abusive misrepresentation of objective reality.
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Re: This site
[Projects facts not in evidence]
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Damn, even the trolls have embraced fascism.
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Your open opposition to free speech and support of fascism has been noted, thanks for at least being honest about being a terrible person.
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Allow me to refer you to your liberal progressive heroes' promotion of their version of free speech: Free speech doesn't mean speech free from all consequences. And that is true. You do not have or purport free speech here, you promote silencing, deletion, and censure (not the voting aspect, that is fine as it's a communal thing and reflective of opinion).
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Your fictional version of TD definitely sounds like a worrisome place, however as it has nothing to do with the real version of the site it's also irrelevant.
Seriously, if you're going to lie and just make shit up maybe try not to go with claims that any regular will immediately know is bullshit.
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And yet…
…you complain about the consequences of speech.
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As evidence by your post earlier, you are just fine with censoring sites you don't like which makes your argument null and void.
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You are conflating censorship with limits defined by law. These are not the same thing, so try again.
Censorship is discriminatory. Adhering to the law levels the playing field for all and must be applied equally or there is no law (are no rules)
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Moderation is a platform/service owner or operator saying “we don’t do that here”. Personal discretion is an individual telling themselves “I won’t do that here”. Editorial discretion is an editor saying “we won’t print that here”, either to themselves or to a writer. Censorship is someone saying “you won’t do that anywhere” alongside threats or actions meant to suppress speech.
Now, show us where Techdirt has ever tried to censor anyone — including you.
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No, that was what you did. Any private site is wholly within the law when they moderate content as they see fit, which YOU called censorship when done here on TD.
You also argued that removing section 230 would be good because that would mean this site would cease to exist. Changing laws in an effort to silence critics or people you don't agree with, guess what that is?
You are kind of bad at this.
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Re: This site
while censoring any voices that contradict or demonstrably prove false your repeated and abusive misrepresentation of objective reality
Yup - enjoy being "censored" for coming here to whine. Perhaps you & Koby should both fuck off to Parler.
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If Parler doesn't censor comments based on political leanings and beliefs, then yes, that sounds like a much better place to find actual free speech.
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Re: Re: Re: This site
Exactly!
So then that begs the question why the OP is here, and why Koby's here complaining ad nauseum about Twitter and Facebook instead of fucking off over to Parler.
That was supposed to be the conservative bastion of freeze peach that was going to put the nail in Twitter's coffin.
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Then why are you here whining instead of enjoying your new found utopia?
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You know what? I was actually joking about Parler. then I went to check it out and I think I WILL actually f-off to it! Since it allows actual free speech and debate with far less name-calling and demonizing of anyone that disagrees with the "correct" proscribed viewpoint!
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Re: This site
Can you list the "specious lies"? Can you also list the "scurrilous and blatant falsehoods"? Can you also list the times anyone been censored for "contradicting or demonstrably prove false your repeated and abusive misrepresentation of objective reality"?
It's interesting that your "solution" for not agreeing with this site, is the need to censor it. Seems you are a grade A hypocrite.
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Not censorship. Accountability. No one is above the law, as we keep getting told by you liberal authoritarians, so now you get to enjoy the fruits of this axiom.
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Re: Re: Re: This site
Can you list the "specious lies"?
Can you also list the "scurrilous and blatant falsehoods"?
Can you also list the times anyone been censored for "contradicting or demonstrably prove false your repeated and abusive misrepresentation of objective reality"?
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Funny way of spelling “fascist control of private property”, but you do you, fam.
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Just following in the liberal progressive mold. You are about to learn the limits of "free speech" and your "right" to private property once Biden (really Harris) takes power.
You will get the government you deserve. Right in the teeth. Yet you won't cry "fascism!" but you will bend over and ask for more, like all good anti-freedom liberals do. And you will demand everything be taken away from "those people" who do support freedom.
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Sure, Jan.
Just like Obama took all your guns, Hillary was locked up, Mexico paid for the wall, and you repealed and replaced Obamacare with my sooper dooper Trumpcare.
At some point, when you're that wrong, people start thinking you're full of shit.
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Meet the first one in line to bend over.
Hope you enjoy it, but don't come around bothering the rest of us to accept it.
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So I'm to understand you don't like either main party candidate.
We've heard about your opinion of Biden. Please now share your opinion of Trump.
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Good to meet you too, chicken little!
I guess the sky's really gonna fall this time.
I know what'll make you feel better. Just investigate Benghazi again. It's amazing what playing a "greatest hits" album will do for your morale.
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"Just investigate Benghazi again"
That's always a fun thing to recall...
Terrorist attack in another country that left a couple of people dead - less than similar attacks during the Bush administration, with no direct evidence of wrongdoing by the sitting adminsitration - "thousands of hours of hearings and investigations multiple times".
Actual evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election as well as a bunch of other evidence that leaves many people close to the sitting administration convicted of criminal actions, including many close to the President, which just stops shy of finding actual incriminating evidence against the president himself - "waaah why are you people so mean?!!?"
A poorly managed response to global pandemic that leaves hundreds of thousands of dead Americans, millions more unemployed, while the numbers grow exponentially but the President does nothing and whines about the media talking about all the deaths - "meh, get over it".
The difference in behaviour is astounding.
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"Terrorist attack in another country that left a couple of people dead" ... after Bush43 reduction in embassy security funding but it was someone else's fault.
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Blame it on the black man.
When a nice white girl has friends over in modern Americana, and later becomes a less-nice white girl as she explores countercultures and sexuality, it is disturbingly common for the parents to blame the least-white of the friends as a bad influence and a slut.
And this is true even if the alleged bad influence goes around in full hijab and is obviously more reserved and conservative than the white household.
We just suck at causality.
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Don't forget the part about Trump, while blacklisted in every credible bank in the world, suddenly getting a few hundred million dollars in loans from Deutsche bank with the russian state bank guaranteeing the loan for....no reason at all.
Gosh, it's a good thing russians are so bad at capitalism they'll toss a hundred million dollars at a guy blacklisted from every credit check made without any expectation of returns.
Yet when there is evidence that Trump walked off with a few hundred million dollars of money courtesy of Putin the republican cheerleading squad can't put two and two together. Because Hillary not using a vetted server for her private correspondence was far more important than naked and obvious bribery.
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do you have a link with the evidence of the VTB guarantee? Or a source? I looked all over and could not find any.
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Just to make sure we understand each other - as far as I can tell, Forensic News “is not confirming the underlying claim that VTB underwrote Trump’s loans from Deutsche Bank. Forensic News can, however, confirm that at least some of Trump’s loans were issued by a bank subsidiary with business ties to VTB. One federal agent working on the Deutsche Bank investigation indicated that VTB is under scrutiny in the FBI criminal probe. ‘We know VTB very well,’ the investigator said on background.”
So at least from Forensic News there is no evidence backing up your claim.
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"Because Hillary not using a vetted server for her private correspondence was far more important than naked and obvious bribery."
It doesnt matter if it was relatively worse or not. It was specifically illegal, but you don't care about that because "mah TDS bad Orange"
Hillary broke the law. Period. Fact. The fact that you are more concerned about getting the bad Orange Man than you are about justice says a lot about where your values lie.
Guess "no one is above the law" is relative and only applies to those we don't like, and we ignore it in those we do (see also: Biden)
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"It was specifically illegal, but you don't care about that because "mah TDS bad Orange""
It wasn't actually specifically illegal (the rules were changed after she was doing that), but your whining would have more weight if you cared equally about the similar mismanagement of Trump and his appointees, and the Republican predecessors to Hillary who just farmed off their email to Yahoo.
"Hillary broke the law. Period. Fact."
Then why have your heroes not prosecuted her?
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"Specifically illegal"
We're in the post torture era, where the CIA Extrajudicial Detention and Interrogation Program was perfectly legal according to White-House analysts (and they cherry picked opinions that justified it.) Waterboarding, Extraordinary Rendition, Enhanced Interrogation, Black Sites.
Yeah, all of that is specifically legal in the US, despite its conspicuous unconstitutionality.
Same with the mass surveillance program featuring fun programs like PRISM and XKEYSCORE that the White House pinky-sweared was only for finding terrorists, but occasionally innocents are marked for a Xtreme search to find their life savings in cash and valuables, and law enforcement is suddenly determined to (literally) crawl up their assess and overturn their house and car to find that sweet, sweet lucre.
Do not make the argument that legality, or illegality in the US have anything to do with right and wrong.
Do not suggest being above the law (for rich people) or beneath the law (for the underclass) are not entirely normal and accepted in the US.
The US doesn't have rule of law, or just law. It doesn't even enforce the written law so much as use it to dispose of undesirables. The justice system in the United States just sucks.
Trump is a war criminal and has committed crimes against humanity. Given the state of the US court system, it would be appropriate for the ICJ to crawl all over him, and render him to face tribunal.
But that hasn't happened to George W. Bush either, for all that torture.
So for now our ex-presidents are above the law. Trump better hope and pray civil war doesn't break out, since at that point he'll be a liability as a living rally banner.
But maybe he'll want to lead the charge like Teddy Roosevelt.
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Re: "Specifically illegal"
All of that is correct. The problem is everyone thinks it ONLY applies to Trump and was NEVER a problem before Trump, and only Trump and one side need to be held to that standard. What about Obama's extrajudicial executions? Were those not war crimes as well? How about Fast and Furious? Obama literally shielded Holder from congressional subpeona, leading to Holder being the only member of congress ever professionally AND personally censured over his refusal to testify (which Obama specifically ordered)
I agree with you, but its a totality, not a partisan, issue.
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Funny how you won’t decry Trump’s fascist tendencies. Methinks you may agree with him more than you’ll ever admit (even to yourself).
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Re:
"Funny how you won’t decry Trump’s fascist tendencies."
Not that odd. It's been pretty clear since a long time ago that Baghdad Bob has a very special view on how fascism becomes "acceptable". It has to be of a style where "The Public" determines the uses to which a property owner can put their property. It has to contain a vast amount of draconian information and thought control. It has no need for courts or burden of proof because the state will decide. Corporations, to exist, should justify their existence to the public good.
...in fact, by the dictionary definitions of political ideologies Baghdad Bob is that rara avis not often seen in modern times - the kruska-eating frothing-at-the-mouth communist zealot.
Difficult to peg whether he's a Maoist, Leninist, Stalinist or classical Marxist though.
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Re: Re:
[Addendum]
So of course even if Trump makes all the proper moves for old Baghdad Bob to approve of he makes those moves while obviously being a thoroughly self-serving libertarian capitalist. No wonder Baghdad Bob keeps hemming and hawing about "Biden Bad!" and "But Obama!" but is silent as the grave about Trump. It must be as confusing as watching a movie featuring Freddy Krüger being a responsible kindergarten teacher.
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Re:
I cannot decry what I am not allowed to respond to. I had written a lengthy reply to this "you wont decry" fallacy (I am under no obligation to decry anything else, just because I decry the things I DO choose to) but that was never allowed through, and I am not going to recreate all that. Suffice to say, your demand is specious and fallacious, as once again, being critical of one does not automatically mean support of its opposite.
If you believe so, then I would suggest the problem is you and you need to check your premises before making assumptions like that.
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Re: Re:
"but that was never allowed through"
Link to the thread. I'll be willing to guess that whatever fact-free screed you posted was eventually allowed through the spam filter after your spamming ass was correctly identified as a spammer. Or, it doesn't say what you claim it does, of course.
"If you believe so, then I would suggest the problem is you and you need to check your premises before making assumptions like that."
The premise is that you're an idiot who keeps getting flagged for trolling. The evidence here seems to support that.
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Re: Re: Re:
"Link to the thread. "
Genius, how am I supposed to do that when the comments never came through? They were all in this topic/post/page.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
"Genius, how am I supposed to do that when the comments never came through?"
You can't remember the thread you posted on?
"They were all in this topic/post/page."
Which makes me wonder if they're the posts that are visible but hidden for their idiocy.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
No they are not hidden because if they were, I could unhide them and point you to them. They don't exist.
And no I can't recall the exact chain I commented them on. There are like 6 sub-topics in this page/post/comment thread (like the 1619 thing, the christian thing, etc). It was also over a week ago so no way I can recall the exact comments in the exact sub-topic I replied to. When I originally did them, I was just flying through and writing replies as I went down the page. The would have mostly been replies to replies I had already done though, so wherever my comments stop for several days, thats where they probably would have gone.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Would have been around 12pm Nov 4. I don't see any of my follow-up replies after that time that I know I wrote that day.
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"And no I can't recall the exact chain I commented them on"
How convenient.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
And I suppose you remember, without being able to verify, every comment you made in a given day, the poster, where it was in the thread, and the exact comment you were replying to? And when you make several in a thread (which you do) then recall all that over a week later?
Even if you could do all that (and you can't) do you expect anyone else to be able to? That's absurd, but you know that and don't care, because it lets you sarcastically dismiss any reason so you can maintain your smug superiority.
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It doesn’t automatically equal a denouncement of its opposite, either. Given both the current political climate and your insistence on criticizing Biden, the assumption that you’re okay with Trump and his fascism because you haven’t denounced it should be understandable.
…I could end that comment there, but I did want to go back to your comments about Biden/Harris for a sec.
Neither Joe Biden nor Kamala Harris have talked about ripping away free speech rights. While they may support a repeal of Section 230, the First Amendment still applies to people regardless of whether 230 is in place. And I haven’t seen any major Democratic candidate in any race say they’re planning laws to “silence conservatives” or whatever you think the Dems are going to do when Biden becomes president.
But Donald Trump talked about “opening up” defamation laws. He railed against members of the press for reporting the truth rather than his preferred “alternative facts”. He asked if anyone could “look at [the] license” of both NBC and CNN, which clearly implicates that he would use the power of the federal government to take both networks off the air if he could.
Of the two candidates running for president, only one has expressed a fascistic streak vis-á-vis the freedom of the press and freedom of speech. You’re whining about Biden and Harris being fascists once they get in office, but you’re not criticizing Trump for his fascist-adjacent tendencies to call for suppression of speech he doesn’t like. Whether you realize it or not, you’re showing your hand while trying to bluff.
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Re: This site
"The specious lies and bias from a site like this is exactly why THE FIRST AMENDMANT need to be removed/rethought."
Just correcting that to reflect what you're actually saying.
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Re: This site
until that day comes, you are welcome to fuck yourself in whatever fashion pleases you most
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Re: This site
WOW that is really some idea you have there dumbass...
"They said something I don't like so its false speech"
Unfortunately even without Section 230 of the CDA in play the 1st Amendment protects false speech. Hell as a privately owned website they could still censor things they didn't like.
If the site wished to censor discussion of Network Security beyond its own opinions it has the right to do so, again, guess why. 1st Amendment protections you crusty eyed hack.
So why don't you wipe that orange spray tan ring from around your mouth, and have a nice go fuck yourself.
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"specious lies and bias"
A mansplanation:
It seems you haven't been around the general conversation here in the United States. Since about 2014-2015 there has been a sharp uptick in disinformation, fringe hypotheses (what some call conspiracy theories) and pseudoscience. And in response to that, many factions have developed the bad habit of impulsively dismissing news they don't like. The President of the United States has popularized the term fake news which he applies not to made up stories (say tabloid news or yellow journalism) but news he disapproves of, often because might be shameful or might drive others to think less of him.
Pro-tip: When you criticize an opinion or news article, it's best to be specific and to cite the particular parts you want to criticize. As we're so used to impulsive accusations of falsehood as a compulsive emotional defense, such outbursts are part of the background noise. If you want to be taken seriously, you have to get into the particulars.
Also, lie implies false or misleading statements which are told intentionally, implying malice (rather than, say, changing names to preserve anonymity.) By saying someone has lied or is a liar, you are putting yourself in an antagonistic position in relation to them.
PS: Section 230 is about user content in forums, and stripping it away wouldn't stop TechDirt contributors from publishing, but might affect the forum that you Anonymous Coward and I are using. So you'd still get to hate-read TechDirt, but you wouldn't be able to accuse the writers of specious lies and bias, at least not in a comments section that they provide.
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Re: "specious lies and bias"
Considering I haven't been allowed to reply for the past 24 hours, I have no answer for you. I doubt this one will get through either, but if it does, know that ALL my comments past a certain point were disappeared and never allowed to be posted.
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Re: Re: "specious lies and bias"
This one got through.
Which means your other posts are apparently tripping the spam filter (maybe don't write in a spam-like fashion). I've tripped it before, usually by copy-pasting a post I'd made earlier; the exact match from the same IP Address likely tripped the filter. Of course I then just re-did the thing by changing up the words and it went through fine, so... try harder?
That or it's a BS claim.
I look forward to seeing them filter through the manual review process if you've tripped the spam filter.
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Re: Re: Re: "specious lies and bias"
Yeah no, it wasn't spam. I don't copy/paste or flood or advertise stuff, I hate that stuff myself. These were counterpoints to specific replies on at least 4 of these threads(?) within this topic. They were not some shill/spam crap, I typed out every one as a specific response. It was only after I had done 4 or so that I caught on to the fact that they weren't being posted. I waited a day and they still didn't post. There was nothing abusive in them, there was nothing more or less different than any of the other replies I made here in terms of content. They were very much exactly like this comment: explaining what happened and/or my position on things and taking a counter argument stance on what was said.
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Re: Re: "specious lies and bias"
And there you have it. I've solved the mystery - the "censorship" hacks are just shilling for the spammers.
They're not decrying censorship of conservative "values." They want to get rid of moderation so spam can once again flow freely.
I'm on to you.
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Next up: the retuen of the "Bellamy" salute during the recitation of the Pledge of Allegience:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Students_pledging_allegiance_to_the_ American_flag_with_the_Bellamy_salute.jpg
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Re:
Well that practice certainly got awkward after a certain point, though I imagine today's 'conservatives' and Very Fine People would see that picture and ask what the problem was.
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Liberty and justice for all.
yeah - uh huh, sure.
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Re:
Considering that term also describes the original Pledge, one could only hope it returns. The physical salute was innocuous at the time, palm-up (largely irrelevant but a difference), and only became weird later (and replaced with actual fascist language shoved into the Pledge - and on our legal tender).
But yeah, i get it, because fascists and other authoritarians would probably enjoy that salute.
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The perfect example of Republican views on "States Rights"
Education is primarily a State responsibility. So how is this executive order even remotely legally enforceable?
It seems like a truly typical Republican view of State Rights - a state should be free to do whatever it wants until a Republican tells it to do somethings, at which point it should meekly submit and do as told.
Hypocrisy? I don't see no steenkin hypocrisy.
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I see Stephen Miller's repulsive hands all over this crap.
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Stephen Miller
I get the feeling Miller's going to attach himself like a parasite to any future republican presidents. Miller is part of the Trump brand, which is now the GOP.
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The New American Exceptionalism
And I had just gotten used to the notion that the nation I was sold as a kid is a real fixer-upper, and wasn't really built right in the first place.
The problem with a national education agenda is that it creates a super clear model that the Rebel Alliance can use to recruit trainees or lone-wolf terrorists. See, this is where you are on the big pyramid, and this is how long it takes before you work off your initial debt, and this is where if you're not white, male and rich, christian and handsome they take away all your earnings.
The only way you have a chance to win is to blow shit up.
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Re: The New American Exceptionalism
"And I had just gotten used to the notion that the nation I was sold as a kid is a real fixer-upper, and wasn't really built right in the first place."
Yeah, that's a fairly optimistic view.
The US today has about 45-50% of the voting citizenry being ok with racism, misogyny, the abolition of civil rights in part or as a whole, and a message of hate and fear being the core principles all other policy must revolve around.
This may be a higher percentage of bigoted fuckwits than Germany had when Hitler took over. Once Trump is gone, that half of your nation which is a raging sociopathic wifebeating transphobic and badly educated redneck with a rageboner against black people and jews...will still be there, sitting in a corner and fuming in rage.
"The only way you have a chance to win is to blow shit up."
Eventually this will be the case, yes. Until the US has eliminated, in one way or another, the part of its current population which isn't ok with even the concept of "tolerance", every election will be one where you have to fight tooth and claw just to not let the racists win forever.
If you're really lucky and willing to spend the effort that'll be by forcing education and a better life on the next generation of trailer trash. If not it'll be after burying the violent extremists after they kick off the next civil war.
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Re: Re: The New American Exceptionalism
And said violent extremists are much better armed, and operate under color of law. (Every police department in the nation is run by them. Every one - don't defend your posh suburban one just because they're nice to you.)
What happens after they win the next civil war by exterminating what today is the majority? It's hard for me to see a scenario that doesn't end with the whole world in ashes, because someone in the middle of one of the coming succession of coups d'état will surely decide that if they go down, they'll go down with their fingers on the nuclear trigger.
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Scorched Earth
If Trump comes to the conclusion he has no way to stay in the White House, he and his zombie senate still have the lame duck session. I hope it doesn't come down to the Evil Bartlett Scenario and maybe his principal cabinet or joint chiefs of staff will deter him.
But I can count on President Trump really wanting to take all his toys and go home.
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Re: Re: Re: The New American Exceptionalism
"What happens after they win the next civil war by exterminating what today is the majority?"
Well, you're a barrel of laughs and good cheer, aren't you? My money's on there being a decade or two of dystopia first. A "Great America", "Hegemony" or - why not - a "People's Republic of the United States". I mean, the soviet model is all the current rape with the GOP these days. The outsider would be "The Fourth Reich" - but I'm not holding out for that one even if the "alt"-right would love the new dress code.
It'll be Great. And Yuuuge. With all the best words.
...honestly, I wish I could just pass both your comment and mine off as dark sarcasm...
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Re: Re: Re: Re: The New American Exceptionalism
If one is interested in where society is headed, one simply needs to review the past. (assuming revisionism is minimal)
History is littered with failed empires and many fail in similar ways for similar reasons. Apparently, present society is uninterested.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The New American Exceptionalism
There's a revised version of the old saying... those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it. While those who do remember it are doomed to watch everyone around them repeat it.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The New American Exceptionalism
Oh, it will be different this time, I promise.
We have great promises, bigly huge they are. No one has better promises than we do.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The New American Exceptionalism
That's Trump's trick. He makes a lot of grand promises, yet always finds people who don't notice he's never kept one of them.
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Magats don't like it when people learn the historical facts of American slavery and genocide? Well, suck it up, snowflakes. Facts don't care about your feelings.
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Thank You Department of Education
I went to grade school before LBJ's gift to his intellectual supporters. The Pledge of Allegiance started every day. I don't recall when that stopped but it did. Reckon fealty hurt someones feelings.
When LBJ was in office it was a boom for those who wanted federal expansion over state rights, hello Department of Education. Here we are, history is not taught, feelings more important than facts. To bad the backlash to this uneducated citizenry is having a president that excels at flimflam marketing AKA snake oil merchant.
My solution is kill off Department of Education as a failed experiment and allow states to middle finger batshit federal involvement.
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Pledge of Allegiance in schools
Reagan was president when I graduated high school. We were still saying the pledge every school day through my senior year.
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Re: Thank You Department of Education
LBJ is known for Civil Rights bills, I suppose education was part of it. You think it ended up causing less education? Interesting, why?
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