Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
No bio...
User ID: 297
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
Excellent deep dive. Probably mostly wasted, alas. I could have predicted the weak conspiratorial rebuttals. "Well...I just don't believe it. Because we know They're lying!" It's all unfalsifiable. You see exactly this same rejoinder to anyone who does a deep dive on JFK, or 9/11, or Elvis. "Okay, yeah, that's what the 'official reports' and the 'evidence' says, but of course we can't trust it."
There's always a They with unlimited evidence-manipulating powers.
Every narrative will have holes you can poke in it with enough motivated reasoning. Some people can cast doubt on the color of the sky. Once they become attached to a theory that properly identifies a nefarious They, nothing is going to convince them that reality is actually mostly tawdry and just what the evidence says it is.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
This is basically all of FdB's articles lately. Lots of words to complain about how people care too much about things he doesn't care about, and like things he doesn't like. He's lost his edge worse than Scott.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
I know a lot more people on the spectrum who have decent relationships than I do people who've climbed Mt. Everest.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
They have frequently not engaged in good faith any more than the Palestinians, especially under PMs who really didn't want to make any kind of a deal and made noises about it only under US pressure. They have manipulated Palestinian leadership for political convenience and not to actually effect change in Palestine. And the West Bank settlers are particularly egregious. A lot of it boils down to fairly predictable radicalization (or at least lack of sympathy) after years of conflict. The Sabra and Shatila massacres in Lebanon, for example, were preventable had the Israelis given a fuck, but the Israeli military basically cheered it on because they were past giving a fuck.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
So, actually, at the risk of being egregiously obnoxious
You're getting there.
We're done here.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
You've clearly never debated a flat earther and it shows.
Wrong.
If a flat earther showed up here, you'd be required to follow the same rules.
I'm telling you what your available options are here. Not everywhere else on the Internet, but here.
"Don't do this" ought to also apply to people who won't do the very basics of epistemic due diligence.
Mods do not judge the quality of arguments here. People can make bad arguments. You may point out why they're bad.
If you think the argument is so bad as to not be worth the effort, you may choose not to reply.
Those are your options.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
(a) Let it go and disengage. (b) Provide links to specific citations and proactively provide an explanation of their relevance. (c) Consider the possibility that they are not "ignoring facts" but that you are both interpreting the same evidence in a way that caters to your own biases and that you need to actually make an argument.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
Well, I condemn mothers who abandon their children also, and obviously manipulating someone with pregnancy is bad. I don't think there is an ideal solution that adequately "punishes" such a mother or restitutes the father while not also being cruel to the child.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
I don't care what the mother did, I care about the child who was created by your actions, no matter how evil the mother. Yes, it sucks to have been trapped like that. It also sucks to be a child abandoned due to the caprice of not one but two parents.
You are right that we've discussed this before and won't agree. I will not change my position that there are few people more deserving of being spat on than those who'd justify abandoning a child of theirs for whatever bad actions of the other parent.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
I was talking about not despising them for being in the sex trade.
As for supporting a child you created, it's not about the woman who baby-trapped you. That sucks. But if there's a human being you created with your actions (and you chose to put your dick in her), I absolutely despise anyone who'd refuse to take responsibility for that and leave the child you created to poverty and probably being brought up in the same life, no matter how much you despise the mother.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
I don't think you're a horrible person. Most commenters (even the fellow who thinks basically all women are deceitful whores) are just seeing red flags waving and trying to save you from making a mistake while you are obviously emotionally invested in a way we are not.
If I were you I wouldn't worry a lot about whether her pictures sent from the hospital are "real." Consider it a bullet dodged (and consider why she'd be sending you proof that she aborted?) and move on. This isn't going to end in some happy love story. Do not try to be Captain Saveaho.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
I'm aware of what you think of pussy-havers, but most of them don't get into the life because they just wanted a new smartphone. You can argue they could have or should have chosen some other (likely even more miserable) grind, but you don't actually need to despise them.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
The Hundred Years' War on Palestine, by Rashid Khalidi.
Unapologetic Palestinian perspective. Khalidi is highly educated and Westernized, so occasionally makes some obligatory noises about how terrorism is bad and it's unfortunate that Israeli civilians have been killed, but this is pretty clearly performative throat-clearing before getting into how everything is always Israel's fault (or the US's). That said, makes a good case for where Israel has gone wrong (and admits some of the areas where the Palestinians have). It won't change any minds but if you want the best-articulated Palestinian perspective you can get without academic faffing about "subaltern identities" and "Zionist colonial-settler projects" (e.g., Nur Masalha and Edward Said) this is probably it.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
Dude.
Others have pretty much covered it. This is like textbook Filipina scamming 101. Your post reads like a white guy reading a list of "Dos and Don'ts in the Philippines" and carefully checking off every single Don't. I almost don't believe it's real because it's so on the nose and it's hard to believe anyone is this naive. I don't mean that to be insulting, honestly I don't, but... man.
So realtalk, you sound kind of like you are desperate for this to be real, she really is pregnant with your child and she really does love you. And no one can say that is 100% impossible. Maybe you are the one guy in a hundred (or more) who gets told this story and she's sincere. But do you really want to let yourself get milked on those odds?
Look, even if you did go back, demanded a paternity test, and it turned out to be yours, how does this end? I have known guys who married former bar girls there. It just... doesn't turn out well. Almost never. Those girls are damaged and they have already been steeped in a way of life that makes them cynical, mercenary, and not well suited for stable monogamous relationships. I am not even condemning them for it; it's a survival strategy for desperately poor women who have few other options. You can feel sorry for them, but you have to be realistic about them.
That said, on the remote chance that you really did get her pregnant, and she decides to keep it, and you can verify this, do the right thing and provide for your damn kid.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
No, this really wasn't much better than posting a LMGTFY. Don't do this.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
I am not aware of anyone laboring under another definition, least of all JK Rowling, who as far as I know, has never claimed to not be "anti trans", but I admit I haven't done a comprehensive survey here.
At least initially*, she definitely did claim she was not "anti-trans." She repeatedly said she supported trans rights inasmuch as they had a right to be respected and live their lives as they wished and not be harassed or abused. She just didn't think trans women should be treated as actually biologically women, housed with women in women's prisons, young girls should not be encouraged to have mastectomies and put on T, etc.
Yes, that's "anti-trans" by the reductive trans activist perspective that anything less than unconditional validation is anti-trans, but it's not a reasonable definition to anyone else.
It's absolutely crazy-making to me, that people read everything she has written, in which she has laid out her beliefs with care and nuance, and what they come away with is "She's a hateful bigot who wants trans people put in camps."
(Part of the reason it is so crazy-making to me is that I basically share Rowling's views. And yes, there are spaces and social circles where I know I simply cannot say this if I want to maintain those relationships.)
* Admittedly, after years of being dogpiled in public, I think her rhetoric is a bit harsher and more mocking nowadays, but I think she'd still say she believes basically the same thing, that trans women have rights which should be supported, but that doesn't include the right to be treated as a biological woman.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
I will steelman that. If "intentionally provocative" implies they were doing something illicit or unsavory, (i.e., "dogwhistling white supremacy") no, they weren't. However, the current environment, the year of our lord 2025, when woke is very much not dead, I would be astonished if the marketing team did not fully anticipate that having a hot blue-eyed blonde woman talking about her "good genes" and being unapologetically sexy (in the most traditional, "conventionally attractive" as they say, way) and white, would generate Discourse.
In other words, they knew a bunch of woke critics would flip their shit exactly as they are doing. Maybe they didn't bank on quite such a strong (and profitable!) reaction, but I'll bet they were totally pricing in attacks on the pretty white lady implying that it's good to be pretty, and probably some claims that they were pushing eugenics and Nazi imagery as well. So in that sense, that they were counting on (and possibly banking on) some unhinged reactions to generate a little controversy, yes, they were being intentionally provocative.
(And the best sexy ads are provocative. The famous Brooke Shields ad generated Discourse back in the day, not because she was hot and white, but because she was fifteen. They knew what they were doing then too.)
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
I'm a boardgamer and have to sit on my hands every time this comes up in /r/boardgames or boardgamegeek, because there is basically no tolerance allowed for any dissent. JK Rowling is a transphobic genocidal Jew-hating racist fascist and buying HP content is the equivalent of donating money to fund concentration camps.
I wish that was hyperbole. I wish I was exaggerating. That is literally what they think, and any pushback will get you banned fairly quickly.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
Even the most obnoxious hair-dyed queer tranny activist, if they were literally starving to death, I'd say "help them" and not "hur-dur, they should have picked the right side in the political fight".
You are kinder than many people here.
Both things can be true. Hamas apologists can be lying about the extent of hunger currently and the actual risk of famine, and the IDF can be fudging the truth and the Israeli government might be foot-dragging food aid in hopes that hunger will put more pressure on Hamas and weaken resistance.
I'm skeptical that Israel's plan is literally to have hundreds of thousands of dead bodies littering Gaza as they die of starvation.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
As I've just said, the point wasn't about jews in particular but the phenomenon of outside population groups reaping the harvest and then leaving when it's time to till the field.
Well, that's a bad thing to do, agreed. Glad you didn't mean Jews, since all your other posts sure looked like you were talking about Jews, until I pointed out to you that this is not and has never been true of Jews, and suddenly you aren't talking about Jews anymore. Very odd, but glad that's straightened out.
Some people feel like jews have a special case to plead regarding this, but I disagreed. Noting how many different people suffered in WW2, not just jews. Meaning jews don't have a special case to plead. You try to ignore this point by asking about jews in Germany, when in reality my point stands regardless of those particular circumstance, as the suffering of jews in Germany does not trump the suffering of Europeans elsewhere. Whose governments did plenty to get them into an early grave.
Well, yes, I'd argue equally that you could hardly condemn German Catholics, Gypsies, Slavs, etc. for being "unpatriotic" for failing to serve the Reich when they were being put in camps. You're absolutely right, this didn't only happen to Jews!
Not everyone is equally patriotic, not everyone shares the same understanding of what a nation is. But there is a very visceral line drawn in the sand that demonstrates that at some point you don't really qualify as a national.
I suppose this is true. Still a little confused about who you mean, since you're not talking about Jews.
You claim I made arguments that jews aren't real citizens and that's just a lie.
Not a lie, just confusion since, you know, you keep talking about Jews until when pressed and your examples are shown to be specious, you inform us you didn't mean Jews. Still a little confusing, but I'll take your word for it that you were in no way implying that Jews are less patriotic, loyal, or entitled to be considered full citizens and fellow nationals as anyone else.
Maybe you feel the need to police any potentially negative connotation relating to jews, for whatever reason.
This is a very odd thing to accuse me of, since I talk about lots of things besides Jews, whereas I'd say the vast majority of your participation in any thread anywhere is about Jews. So unsurprisingly, when we interact, it tends to be about Jews.
But since we've cleared up that misunderstanding about what you think of Jews, I look forward to seeing what else you can contribute!
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
No one but a mod should have been able to see it or reply to it before it was unfiltered.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
This is true, but by the same token, a lot of people wringing their hands over the poor Palestinians being ethnically cleansed, if it was another Arab nation doing it would not give one single fuck.
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
Yes, my questions are relevant to what you said. You are making arguments that Jews aren't "real" citizens because they don't show loyalty to their nation, and when I point out where this is untrue or where their nation literally unpersoned them, you say that's not what you're talking about. Sorry, you don't get to talk about only the very specific Jews who fit your generalizations.
Jews are somewhat underrepresented in the armed services in the US. Blacks are greatly overrepresented. Is this because Jews are less patriotic, and therefore blacks are more patriotic? Or is it because most Jews have better options than joining the military, and many blacks do not? Or will you find a convenient way to choose one from column A and one from column B?
Amadan
Letting the hate flow through me
3mo ago
I don't think the Holocaust is exceptional as far as genocides go. All genocides are horrific. But the Holocaust happened and it was a genocide, and genocides aren't the same as other war displacements (even if leftists today like to call everything a genocide).
If you can't see a qualitative difference in those theories, well, you make my case for me.
No.
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