id apparently wants to join the illustrious ranks of trademark trolls such as Tim Langdell and The North Face. Congratulations, id—you’re now a Baron of Hell.
“When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted, when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can't eat money.” — Alanis Obomsawin
A flat tax does protect the rich by making it seem like paying some small amount of their vast wealth is “fair” because they’re paying the same percentage as everyone else. But it isn’t fair—because they can afford to give far, far, far, far, far more of themselves without losing their ability to live comfortably. The poor giving up the same percentage under a flat tax is inherently unfair because they need their money in a far more acute and direct way.
Not that you seem to give a fuck about that, thought. You’ve had the Law of Diminishing Utility explained to you multiple times and you still don’t seem to either understand or care about it. You seem to believe the obscenely wealthy should remain as such, without any thought as to the effects of their greed, because making them pay more of a percentage in taxes than the poor is somehow “unfair”.
In our successes, we have a duty to give what we can to those who need it; if we don't, that's stealing from our fellow human. How is letting individual persons hoard more wealth than 99% of the country—hell, wealthier than 99% of the world—anything but stealing from those 99% the things that wealth could pay for? This country could have Medicare For All and tuition-free college and everything else “leftists” (and a lot of other people) want, but for the greed of rich people—and those who wish to protect their bank accounts.
What is so motherfucking fair about protecting the wealth of the rich at the cost of the lives of the poor? If your answer is going to be “a flat tax is fair because it’s the same percent” or some other similar “trickle-down economics works”–level delusional bullshit, don’t bother replying—you cannot and will not convince me to feel pity for someone who is worth $100 billion only being worth, say, $50 billion after taxes.
Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Thrice is a pattern. Four times or more, it’s an institution. But when a thing happens more than 100 times, it’s practically standard operating procecdure.
Let’s not forget that Republicans are also the party of the Religious Right, which has constantly complained about being “persecuted” whenever a law is passed or a government edict is handed down that supposedly “attacks” religion but actually does no such thing (e.g., mask and vaccine mandates).
Republicans are also the party most closely associated these days with white supremacist groups, which have constantly complained about being the “real victims” of racism when literally anything tries to tear down the vestiges of white supremacy within the institutions and systems of the United States.
And conservatives love to crow about how they’re being attacked by “cancel culture”, but they had no problem with people being “cancelled” when it was people they wanted to see “cancelled” getting that treatment.
Per usual, every accusation is a confession with these chumps.
Since you really don’t seem to understand the Law of Diminishing Utility, let me reframe this a bit.
In 2011, Elon Musk was worth $2 billion dollars; in 2021, he is worth over $271 billion—which means he earned an average of $26.9 billion each year of that decade. In 2011, Mark Zuckerberg was worth $17 billion dollars; in 2021, his worth over $121 billion—which means he earned an average of $10.4 billion each year of that decade. In 2021, Jeff Bezos was worth $18 billion dollars; in 2021, he is worth over $203 billion—which means he earned an average of $18.5 billion each year of that decade.
The minimum wage in the United States has remained $7.25 per hour since 2009. And for the sake of comparison: A full-time minimum wage job pays an annual salary of $15,080, which means Musk, Zuckerberg, and Bezos respectively “earned” an average of 1,783,819%, 689,655%, and 1,226,790% more than the minimum wage employee in every year between 2011 and 2021.
Tell me about the fairness in those men being worth a half-trillion dollars combined while the people who made them wealthy—the people who actually put in the labor that keeps the companies of those rich fuckers going—have to fight for a wage that lets them live. Not to thrive, not to enjoy life—to merely subsist.
Then tell me about the fairness involved in taxing people who make minimum wage at a rate that would effectively put them in a position where one car accident, one broken bone, or one missed paycheck would leave them homeless, starving, and/or financially ruined. Tell me how fair it is that the people who make the wealth for “job creators” have to scrimp and save for the sole purpose of making rent on the cheapest affordable “housing” and feeding themselves on the worst possible food they can eat while those same “job creators” could literally do nothing and still make billions of dollars every year. Then tell me how fair it is to make those rich fuckers give up so little of their obscene wealth that it barely registers to them, especially when they’ll make back all that money within days (if not hours) of paying it.
You simp for the rich because you think their generosity will trickle down. You should know by now that it won’t—not now, not ever. They will do everything they can to hold onto that wealth, regardless of whether their actions are morally righteous, ethically sound, or even legally permissible. They will have people killed to remain obscenely wealthy—and they will have no remorse about doing it.
But sure, lecture me about the fairness of a flat tax that takes away from the poor more of the money they need to survive. Tell me more about how the rich need all their huge-ass mansions and their convoy of sports cars and their padded-as-fuck bank accounts to survive. Prove to me that you care so little about the poor and the underprivileged that you will honest-to-God stump for a tax proposal that will widen the wealth gap while doing nothing to preserve the social safety net—and all for the sake of protecting the pocketbooks of people who genuinely don’t give a fuck if you live or die.
Please, I beg of you: Tell me what’s so motherfucking fair about protecting the rich at the cost of the lives of the poor.
And if you can’t—or won’t—do that, please fuck all the way off and never fucking come back, you heartless bastard.
Nobody forced you to come here, nobody forced you to read this article, and nobody here will force you to stay if you want to stop reading this site…which I’m encouraging you to do.
Says a lot about you that you refer to white people as “Americans” and black people as “blacks”. Probably not what you want it to say, tho’.
overtly that’s just what it is
Only if you think of racism as interpersonal hatred—and even then, that isn’t limited to backwater Southern towns, no matter how much you want to believe with all of your heart that the only racist parts of the United States are a few small towns full of stereotypical bigots in the deep South.
Racism does exist. But it’s not systemic.
Dylann Roof was brought in alive by the cops after murdering several Black people in a church. George Floyd was killed by the cops for selling cigarettes on the street. Systemic racism does exist in the U.S.; that you’re unwilling to study it beyond what your favorite right-wing media outlets tell you to believe about it is your problem.
You don’t solve the problem by saying whites are inherently racist.
Show me an example of any school actively teaching this exact lesson—and when I say “exact”, I mean it, because not even Critical Race Theory teaches that lesson (and you’d know that if you read more about it than your right-wing media bubble tells you about it).
Yes, yes, you think individual wealthy assholes should be allowed to hoard as much wealth as possible even if it means they destroy the economy in doing so. We get it, you simp for Elon Musk, now go kiss his ass on Twitter and leave this site in peace already.
Attacks on Twitter and Facebook for not doing ‘more’ to stop the spread of misinformation.
Saying “Twitter and Facebook could be doing more to stop mis- and disinformation” is not the same as “the government is going to make Twitter and Facebook stop hosting mis- and disinformation”, and you damn well know it.
[Show] me a Republican telling schools that it’s [okay] to teach that being white is itself evil.
Show me a Democrat saying those exact words, since you’re obviously alluding to a situation where such a thing did happen.
We should be teaching that race doesn’t matter.
Asked before, asking again: How do you propose schools teach that without also teaching an accurate recounting of the history of the United States, including slavery and the civil rights movement?
The fact is roving bands of people are destroying state and federal property. Are destroying art and monuments with impunity.
The fact that you’re still defending monuments to a country that seceded from and fought a war with the United States over the right to uphold the institution of slavery—to literally uphold white supremacy—is…telling. But not in the way you think.
The United States began in 1776. Any other statement date is revisionist, and inaccurate.
I could argue that it became an actual country in 1789, which is when the new central government created by the ratification of the Constitution held its first meetings. But that’s just splitting hairs. 😁
Yes, and…this is a problem, how, exactly? Individuals with obscene wealth should be taxed at higher rates.
Not corporate taxes.
Neither are Republicans, but I don’t see you bitching about their asses being against raising corporate tax rates.
You don’t solve poverty by destroying an individual. You keep talking about the same two people.
I do that because it is a prime example of the Law of Diminishing Utility: Someone making less than $20,000 every year has less to give than someone who makes that same amount of money in a day. That there is a spectrum of income brackets between those two extremes is an argument for a progressive tax rate that doesn’t destroy the poor or the middle class but recognizes that people who make significant amounts of money can afford to give up more than people who don’t. The only people who should be paying huge tax rates are people who make millions and millions of dollars (or more) every year.
And every dollar over a billion should be taxed 100% because being a billionaire is unethical and immoral.
“It was only days after Sami Al-Abdrabbuh was re-elected to the school board in Corvallis, Ore., that the text messages arrived. The first, he said, was a photograph taken at a shooting range. It showed one of his campaign’s lawn signs — “Re-Elect Sami” — riddled with bullet holes. The second was a warning from a friend. This one said that one of their neighbors was looking for Mr. Al-Abdrabbuh. The neighbor was threatening to kill him.” (Source)
some teachers are teaching hate. Hate the white kid. His family makes him born bad.
Even if—and that’s a big “if”—there is even a single teacher actually doing that, I know what you’re trying to allude to, which is the teaching of issues such as slavery and the civil rights movement. Well, here’s what sucks for you: Teaching history isn’t always fun. It isn’t always going to make people feel good—about themselves, about their ancestors, or about humanity in general. But if you’re learning about history in a way that does always make you feel good, you’re not learning history.
American history is explicitly tied to racism—from slavery (and the slave patrols that begat modern policing) to the civil rights movement (and the opposition thereof, up to and including the assassination of MLK). You can’t teach people about those subjects without teaching them about racism. If that upsets some people, I don’t give a damn; teaching history is about teaching accurate history, not a history that says “oh Black people wanted their children and their children’s children to be enslaved” or “slavery was good for Black people, actually”.
Learning about the past and looking at improving.
You can’t improve things if you don’t know what went wrong in the first place. And you can’t do that without looking at a truthful recounting of the past—the good, the bad, and the ugly. We can’t cure the ills of racism if we ignore its existence or treat it as only being interpersonal hatred that is limited to backwater hick towns in the deep South. To believe otherwise is to demand an obscene level of willful ignorance that has no place in public education.
We need to not teach in a way that is meant to implement new hate in response to old or existing hate.
How do you propose schools teach about both slavery and the civil rights movement in a way that conforms with your demand?
A person who gives up 50% is giving up more percent than a person giving up 40%.
Let me explain to you the Law of Diminishing Utility again.
Bob makes the federal minimum wage; Jeff makes 10 million dollars a year in salary alone. Bob can’t afford to give up 40% of the approximately $15,000 he makes every year—that’s $6,000, and that’s money he’ll need to pay bills and keep himself fed. Jeff can afford to give up 4 million dollars out of his annual salary and still live far more comfortably than Bob.
At some point, wealth becomes nothing more than a status symbol, because it stops having any actual utility to the person amassing such wealth. That is why the obscenely wealthy can afford to be taxed at higher rates than the poor: The wealthy can give up a significant sum of their money and still live comfortable, relatively worry-free lives. If Jeff Bezos lost a billion dollars out of his multiple billions of dollars of net worth to taxes, do you think he’d feel that sting as acutely and directly as would Bob if he lost $6,000 out of his annual $15,000 take?
It isn’t unfair to ask those who have far, far, far more than the rest of us to give more than the rest of us—to give more money than they will ever miss (or need) for the sake of helping everyone else. Hoarding all that wealth is unfair—and it’s also immoral and unethical.
Only someone brainwashed by pro-corporate propaganda would believe asking poor people to give more of themselves than corporations and the obscenely wealthy do (which is the current state of affairs thanks to tax loopholes and bought-off politicians) is “unfair”. That makes me wonder which corporation you’re stumping for, you union-busting bitch.
How is taxing the obscenely wealthy at a higher rate than someone working minimum wage “unfair” when the obscenely wealthy have more to give than everyone else and can give more than everyone else without risking their own personal comfort?
Yeah, they are—and they were referring to parents making threats of violence against school boards, not to parents merely being upset at school boards. Or did you ignore that like your right-wing douchecanoe brethren did?
Like I said: Tell me you’re one of them without telling me you’re one of them.
Let’s ignore the fact that trump couldn’t do a damn thing about licences and his rhetoric was nothing more than pointing out media that was continuing to lie outright.
Given that Trump believed Article II gave him the power to do whatever the fuck he wanted, let’s not and say we didn’t.
We have the government now calling for bans on speech such as misinformation about vaccinations.
[citation needed; the language must be specific about a call for a government-enforced ban on certain kinds of speech]
Book bans. Art bans. They rarely have any effect on the public outside of totalitarianism.
Wow. I didn’t think you’d actually support banning books, but damn, you’re right on the edge of doing it.
You going to tell me they’re any different than the Dems running around trying to pull this film or mark that one or censor this or that?
Censorship is bullshit regardless of who does it. But right now, the largest calls for censorship—including calls for censoring teachers from even saying certain words like “equality” and “intersectionality”—are coming from conservatives. Show me a Democrat who is trying to censor schools in the exact same way as Republicans are trying to censor schools, and you might have something approaching a point here.
Gone with the wind? Cancelled?
Gone With the Wind was never “cancelled”. DVDs and Blu-rays of the film were never taken off store shelves by retailers or recalled by the distributor. The government didn’t move to ban the film from being aired on TV or displayed in theaters. It was only ever temporarily pulled from HBO Max over concerns about the racist depictions of Black people, and supplemental materials that went up with the film when it returned to HBO Max addressed those issues.
A bunch of half-breed squirt stain neo nazis and a group of people who simply were protesting the [wanton] destruction and vandalism of historical monuments.
I hate to break this to you, but those people protesting those monuments were protesting in favor of monuments dedicated to the kind of country that those Nazis they were marching with would absolutely love. Those who march with Nazis don’t get the benefit of the doubt; if the pro-Confederacy racists didn’t want that association, they should’ve stopped marching with the Nazis.
Oh, and in case you weren’t keeping up with the Charlottesville civil trial, the dressed-in-khakis alt-right dipshits were not the only other group in town that day.
Also: “half-breed”? Jesus, Lozenge, try to sound a little less racist.
1619 is a)revisionist, b) inaccurate, and c) racial propaganda.
It’s still more accurate and less revisionist than the “patriotic” education Trump wanted installed. I doubt he would’ve wanted schools teaching kids anything about slavery that wasn’t whitewashed to make slaves seem like active, willing, and happy participants in their own centuries-long generational subjugation.
he earned it by wisely investing in and implementing products and services people want is bad?
Who makes the products Amazon sells? Who makes those Amazon services run smoothly? Because it sure as shit ain’t the guy making billions of dollars by sitting on his ass every day.
I like Amazon
Amazon is convenient. Amazon is quick. Amazon is paying its lowest-paid employees well below their worth for the value of the daily physical labor they provide.
You can say that, but given how you advocated for a change in the law while still complaining about how the school could be sued for doing the right thing under such changed laws, you’ve proven that you give less of a fuck about doing the right thing and more of a fuck about making the school give in to a bully(’s parents).
On the post: Rock Band Doomscroll Has Trademark App Opposed By id Software
id apparently wants to join the illustrious ranks of trademark trolls such as Tim Langdell and The North Face. Congratulations, id—you’re now a Baron of Hell.
On the post: The Latest Version Of Congress's Anti-Algorithm Bill Is Based On Two Separate Debunked Myths & A Misunderstanding Of How Things Work
Please simp for the obscenely wealthy elsewhere, you ghoul. It will do you no good here.
On the post: The Latest Version Of Congress's Anti-Algorithm Bill Is Based On Two Separate Debunked Myths & A Misunderstanding Of How Things Work
“When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted, when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can't eat money.” — Alanis Obomsawin
A flat tax does protect the rich by making it seem like paying some small amount of their vast wealth is “fair” because they’re paying the same percentage as everyone else. But it isn’t fair—because they can afford to give far, far, far, far, far more of themselves without losing their ability to live comfortably. The poor giving up the same percentage under a flat tax is inherently unfair because they need their money in a far more acute and direct way.
Not that you seem to give a fuck about that, thought. You’ve had the Law of Diminishing Utility explained to you multiple times and you still don’t seem to either understand or care about it. You seem to believe the obscenely wealthy should remain as such, without any thought as to the effects of their greed, because making them pay more of a percentage in taxes than the poor is somehow “unfair”.
In our successes, we have a duty to give what we can to those who need it; if we don't, that's stealing from our fellow human. How is letting individual persons hoard more wealth than 99% of the country—hell, wealthier than 99% of the world—anything but stealing from those 99% the things that wealth could pay for? This country could have Medicare For All and tuition-free college and everything else “leftists” (and a lot of other people) want, but for the greed of rich people—and those who wish to protect their bank accounts.
What is so motherfucking fair about protecting the wealth of the rich at the cost of the lives of the poor? If your answer is going to be “a flat tax is fair because it’s the same percent” or some other similar “trickle-down economics works”–level delusional bullshit, don’t bother replying—you cannot and will not convince me to feel pity for someone who is worth $100 billion only being worth, say, $50 billion after taxes.
On the post: More Than 100 Hertz Customers Are Suing The Company For Falsely Reporting Rented Vehicles As Stolen
Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Thrice is a pattern. Four times or more, it’s an institution. But when a thing happens more than 100 times, it’s practically standard operating procecdure.
On the post: Donald Trump Says He's Going To Sue The Pulitzer Committee If They Don't Take Away The NY Times And WaPo Pulitzers
Let’s not forget that Republicans are also the party of the Religious Right, which has constantly complained about being “persecuted” whenever a law is passed or a government edict is handed down that supposedly “attacks” religion but actually does no such thing (e.g., mask and vaccine mandates).
Republicans are also the party most closely associated these days with white supremacist groups, which have constantly complained about being the “real victims” of racism when literally anything tries to tear down the vestiges of white supremacy within the institutions and systems of the United States.
And conservatives love to crow about how they’re being attacked by “cancel culture”, but they had no problem with people being “cancelled” when it was people they wanted to see “cancelled” getting that treatment.
Per usual, every accusation is a confession with these chumps.
On the post: The Latest Version Of Congress's Anti-Algorithm Bill Is Based On Two Separate Debunked Myths & A Misunderstanding Of How Things Work
Of all the questions I asked, of course you didn’t answer the most important one.
LOL get fucked
On the post: The Latest Version Of Congress's Anti-Algorithm Bill Is Based On Two Separate Debunked Myths & A Misunderstanding Of How Things Work
And yet…
…you don’t.
Since you really don’t seem to understand the Law of Diminishing Utility, let me reframe this a bit.
In 2011, Elon Musk was worth $2 billion dollars; in 2021, he is worth over $271 billion—which means he earned an average of $26.9 billion each year of that decade. In 2011, Mark Zuckerberg was worth $17 billion dollars; in 2021, his worth over $121 billion—which means he earned an average of $10.4 billion each year of that decade. In 2021, Jeff Bezos was worth $18 billion dollars; in 2021, he is worth over $203 billion—which means he earned an average of $18.5 billion each year of that decade.
The minimum wage in the United States has remained $7.25 per hour since 2009. And for the sake of comparison: A full-time minimum wage job pays an annual salary of $15,080, which means Musk, Zuckerberg, and Bezos respectively “earned” an average of 1,783,819%, 689,655%, and 1,226,790% more than the minimum wage employee in every year between 2011 and 2021.
Tell me about the fairness in those men being worth a half-trillion dollars combined while the people who made them wealthy—the people who actually put in the labor that keeps the companies of those rich fuckers going—have to fight for a wage that lets them live. Not to thrive, not to enjoy life—to merely subsist.
Then tell me about the fairness involved in taxing people who make minimum wage at a rate that would effectively put them in a position where one car accident, one broken bone, or one missed paycheck would leave them homeless, starving, and/or financially ruined. Tell me how fair it is that the people who make the wealth for “job creators” have to scrimp and save for the sole purpose of making rent on the cheapest affordable “housing” and feeding themselves on the worst possible food they can eat while those same “job creators” could literally do nothing and still make billions of dollars every year. Then tell me how fair it is to make those rich fuckers give up so little of their obscene wealth that it barely registers to them, especially when they’ll make back all that money within days (if not hours) of paying it.
You simp for the rich because you think their generosity will trickle down. You should know by now that it won’t—not now, not ever. They will do everything they can to hold onto that wealth, regardless of whether their actions are morally righteous, ethically sound, or even legally permissible. They will have people killed to remain obscenely wealthy—and they will have no remorse about doing it.
But sure, lecture me about the fairness of a flat tax that takes away from the poor more of the money they need to survive. Tell me more about how the rich need all their huge-ass mansions and their convoy of sports cars and their padded-as-fuck bank accounts to survive. Prove to me that you care so little about the poor and the underprivileged that you will honest-to-God stump for a tax proposal that will widen the wealth gap while doing nothing to preserve the social safety net—and all for the sake of protecting the pocketbooks of people who genuinely don’t give a fuck if you live or die.
Please, I beg of you: Tell me what’s so motherfucking fair about protecting the rich at the cost of the lives of the poor.
And if you can’t—or won’t—do that, please fuck all the way off and never fucking come back, you heartless bastard.
On the post: Biden Administration Intervenes In Donald Trump's Silly Lawsuit Against Twitter To Defend Section 230
Nobody forced you to come here, nobody forced you to read this article, and nobody here will force you to stay if you want to stop reading this site…which I’m encouraging you to do.
On the post: The Latest Version Of Congress's Anti-Algorithm Bill Is Based On Two Separate Debunked Myths & A Misunderstanding Of How Things Work
In the United States, it was.
Says a lot about you that you refer to white people as “Americans” and black people as “blacks”. Probably not what you want it to say, tho’.
Only if you think of racism as interpersonal hatred—and even then, that isn’t limited to backwater Southern towns, no matter how much you want to believe with all of your heart that the only racist parts of the United States are a few small towns full of stereotypical bigots in the deep South.
Dylann Roof was brought in alive by the cops after murdering several Black people in a church. George Floyd was killed by the cops for selling cigarettes on the street. Systemic racism does exist in the U.S.; that you’re unwilling to study it beyond what your favorite right-wing media outlets tell you to believe about it is your problem.
Show me an example of any school actively teaching this exact lesson—and when I say “exact”, I mean it, because not even Critical Race Theory teaches that lesson (and you’d know that if you read more about it than your right-wing media bubble tells you about it).
On the post: The Latest Version Of Congress's Anti-Algorithm Bill Is Based On Two Separate Debunked Myths & A Misunderstanding Of How Things Work
Yes, yes, you think individual wealthy assholes should be allowed to hoard as much wealth as possible even if it means they destroy the economy in doing so. We get it, you simp for Elon Musk, now go kiss his ass on Twitter and leave this site in peace already.
On the post: The Latest Version Of Congress's Anti-Algorithm Bill Is Based On Two Separate Debunked Myths & A Misunderstanding Of How Things Work
Saying “Twitter and Facebook could be doing more to stop mis- and disinformation” is not the same as “the government is going to make Twitter and Facebook stop hosting mis- and disinformation”, and you damn well know it.
Show me a Democrat saying those exact words, since you’re obviously alluding to a situation where such a thing did happen.
Asked before, asking again: How do you propose schools teach that without also teaching an accurate recounting of the history of the United States, including slavery and the civil rights movement?
The fact that you’re still defending monuments to a country that seceded from and fought a war with the United States over the right to uphold the institution of slavery—to literally uphold white supremacy—is…telling. But not in the way you think.
I could argue that it became an actual country in 1789, which is when the new central government created by the ratification of the Constitution held its first meetings. But that’s just splitting hairs. 😁
On the post: The Latest Version Of Congress's Anti-Algorithm Bill Is Based On Two Separate Debunked Myths & A Misunderstanding Of How Things Work
Yes, and…this is a problem, how, exactly? Individuals with obscene wealth should be taxed at higher rates.
Neither are Republicans, but I don’t see you bitching about their asses being against raising corporate tax rates.
I do that because it is a prime example of the Law of Diminishing Utility: Someone making less than $20,000 every year has less to give than someone who makes that same amount of money in a day. That there is a spectrum of income brackets between those two extremes is an argument for a progressive tax rate that doesn’t destroy the poor or the middle class but recognizes that people who make significant amounts of money can afford to give up more than people who don’t. The only people who should be paying huge tax rates are people who make millions and millions of dollars (or more) every year.
And every dollar over a billion should be taxed 100% because being a billionaire is unethical and immoral.
On the post: The Latest Version Of Congress's Anti-Algorithm Bill Is Based On Two Separate Debunked Myths & A Misunderstanding Of How Things Work
“It was only days after Sami Al-Abdrabbuh was re-elected to the school board in Corvallis, Ore., that the text messages arrived. The first, he said, was a photograph taken at a shooting range. It showed one of his campaign’s lawn signs — “Re-Elect Sami” — riddled with bullet holes. The second was a warning from a friend. This one said that one of their neighbors was looking for Mr. Al-Abdrabbuh. The neighbor was threatening to kill him.” (Source)
Even if—and that’s a big “if”—there is even a single teacher actually doing that, I know what you’re trying to allude to, which is the teaching of issues such as slavery and the civil rights movement. Well, here’s what sucks for you: Teaching history isn’t always fun. It isn’t always going to make people feel good—about themselves, about their ancestors, or about humanity in general. But if you’re learning about history in a way that does always make you feel good, you’re not learning history.
American history is explicitly tied to racism—from slavery (and the slave patrols that begat modern policing) to the civil rights movement (and the opposition thereof, up to and including the assassination of MLK). You can’t teach people about those subjects without teaching them about racism. If that upsets some people, I don’t give a damn; teaching history is about teaching accurate history, not a history that says “oh Black people wanted their children and their children’s children to be enslaved” or “slavery was good for Black people, actually”.
You can’t improve things if you don’t know what went wrong in the first place. And you can’t do that without looking at a truthful recounting of the past—the good, the bad, and the ugly. We can’t cure the ills of racism if we ignore its existence or treat it as only being interpersonal hatred that is limited to backwater hick towns in the deep South. To believe otherwise is to demand an obscene level of willful ignorance that has no place in public education.
How do you propose schools teach about both slavery and the civil rights movement in a way that conforms with your demand?
On the post: The Latest Version Of Congress's Anti-Algorithm Bill Is Based On Two Separate Debunked Myths & A Misunderstanding Of How Things Work
Let me explain to you the Law of Diminishing Utility again.
Bob makes the federal minimum wage; Jeff makes 10 million dollars a year in salary alone. Bob can’t afford to give up 40% of the approximately $15,000 he makes every year—that’s $6,000, and that’s money he’ll need to pay bills and keep himself fed. Jeff can afford to give up 4 million dollars out of his annual salary and still live far more comfortably than Bob.
At some point, wealth becomes nothing more than a status symbol, because it stops having any actual utility to the person amassing such wealth. That is why the obscenely wealthy can afford to be taxed at higher rates than the poor: The wealthy can give up a significant sum of their money and still live comfortable, relatively worry-free lives. If Jeff Bezos lost a billion dollars out of his multiple billions of dollars of net worth to taxes, do you think he’d feel that sting as acutely and directly as would Bob if he lost $6,000 out of his annual $15,000 take?
It isn’t unfair to ask those who have far, far, far more than the rest of us to give more than the rest of us—to give more money than they will ever miss (or need) for the sake of helping everyone else. Hoarding all that wealth is unfair—and it’s also immoral and unethical.
Only someone brainwashed by pro-corporate propaganda would believe asking poor people to give more of themselves than corporations and the obscenely wealthy do (which is the current state of affairs thanks to tax loopholes and bought-off politicians) is “unfair”. That makes me wonder which corporation you’re stumping for, you union-busting bitch.
On the post: The Latest Version Of Congress's Anti-Algorithm Bill Is Based On Two Separate Debunked Myths & A Misunderstanding Of How Things Work
How is taxing the obscenely wealthy at a higher rate than someone working minimum wage “unfair” when the obscenely wealthy have more to give than everyone else and can give more than everyone else without risking their own personal comfort?
On the post: The Latest Version Of Congress's Anti-Algorithm Bill Is Based On Two Separate Debunked Myths & A Misunderstanding Of How Things Work
Yeah, they are—and they were referring to parents making threats of violence against school boards, not to parents merely being upset at school boards. Or did you ignore that like your right-wing douchecanoe brethren did?
Like I said: Tell me you’re one of them without telling me you’re one of them.
On the post: The Latest Version Of Congress's Anti-Algorithm Bill Is Based On Two Separate Debunked Myths & A Misunderstanding Of How Things Work
Jesus fucking Christ.
On the post: Hypocrite Grifters Project Veritas Scream About Press Freedom, Then Run To Court To Silence The NY Times
Damn, you really do hate the First Amendment, don’t you.
On the post: The Latest Version Of Congress's Anti-Algorithm Bill Is Based On Two Separate Debunked Myths & A Misunderstanding Of How Things Work
Given that Trump believed Article II gave him the power to do whatever the fuck he wanted, let’s not and say we didn’t.
[citation needed; the language must be specific about a call for a government-enforced ban on certain kinds of speech]
Wow. I didn’t think you’d actually support banning books, but damn, you’re right on the edge of doing it.
Censorship is bullshit regardless of who does it. But right now, the largest calls for censorship—including calls for censoring teachers from even saying certain words like “equality” and “intersectionality”—are coming from conservatives. Show me a Democrat who is trying to censor schools in the exact same way as Republicans are trying to censor schools, and you might have something approaching a point here.
Gone With the Wind was never “cancelled”. DVDs and Blu-rays of the film were never taken off store shelves by retailers or recalled by the distributor. The government didn’t move to ban the film from being aired on TV or displayed in theaters. It was only ever temporarily pulled from HBO Max over concerns about the racist depictions of Black people, and supplemental materials that went up with the film when it returned to HBO Max addressed those issues.
I hate to break this to you, but those people protesting those monuments were protesting in favor of monuments dedicated to the kind of country that those Nazis they were marching with would absolutely love. Those who march with Nazis don’t get the benefit of the doubt; if the pro-Confederacy racists didn’t want that association, they should’ve stopped marching with the Nazis.
Oh, and in case you weren’t keeping up with the Charlottesville civil trial, the dressed-in-khakis alt-right dipshits were not the only other group in town that day.
Also: “half-breed”? Jesus, Lozenge, try to sound a little less racist.
It’s still more accurate and less revisionist than the “patriotic” education Trump wanted installed. I doubt he would’ve wanted schools teaching kids anything about slavery that wasn’t whitewashed to make slaves seem like active, willing, and happy participants in their own centuries-long generational subjugation.
Who makes the products Amazon sells? Who makes those Amazon services run smoothly? Because it sure as shit ain’t the guy making billions of dollars by sitting on his ass every day.
Amazon is convenient. Amazon is quick. Amazon is paying its lowest-paid employees well below their worth for the value of the daily physical labor they provide.
The wrong Amazon is burning.
On the post: The Latest Version Of Congress's Anti-Algorithm Bill Is Based On Two Separate Debunked Myths & A Misunderstanding Of How Things Work
You can say that, but given how you advocated for a change in the law while still complaining about how the school could be sued for doing the right thing under such changed laws, you’ve proven that you give less of a fuck about doing the right thing and more of a fuck about making the school give in to a bully(’s parents).
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