HereAndGone
10mo ago
HereAndGone
10mo ago
Somebody enlighten me, what was the slur verse of a Michael Jackson song (of all things)?
HereAndGone
10mo ago
Ah, the Before Days. You didn't miss much, I can tell you. The same old same old trotted out and fought over until everyone was too exhausted to keep going and agreed to stop (much like the Wars of Religion in 16th to 18th century Europe).
HereAndGone
10mo ago
HereAndGone
10mo ago
Ah, that old friend instead of the other old friend I suspected!
HereAndGone
10mo ago
I'm right-wing and I wouldn't wipe my shoes on Hanania. I think you're trying way too hard, to the point where I'm getting paranoid "are you Impassionata?" vibes.
HereAndGone
10mo ago
Gaines is also a former employee of the DHS which is just another point of evidence of low level gop aligned staffers having pro Nazi/antisemitic views.
I have no idea who Gaines is and I care even less, but as a former low-level public service minion that part made me laugh. The DHS in the USA is a hive of scum and villainy, huh? If you're a low-level employee, then you must be... dun-dun-dun... a Nazi!
Let's take a look at the demographics of the DHS (ain't statistics wonderful?) All them low-level female, disabled, BIPOC employees who are secret Nazis! Tidying up the table a bit:
White (Non-Hispanic or Latino) 51.7%
Hispanic or Latino 22.8%
Black or African American (Non-Hispanic or Latino) 16.7%
Asian 6.3%
American Indian or Alaska Native 1.0%
Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander 0.7%
Two or More Races 0.8%Male 65.4%
Female 34.6%
Individuals with Reported* Disabilities 15.4%
Individuals with Targeted** Disabilities 1.3%*"Reported disabilities" includes employees who self-identify as an individual with a disability or targeted disability ...and employees who were appointed under hiring authorities that take disability into account, i.e., 30% or More Disabled Veteran Appointment and Schedule A Hiring Authority, who have not otherwise self-identified as having a disability.
** "Targeted disabilities" are a subset of reportable disabilities that the Federal Government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis. Targeted disabilities listed on the SF-256 form include: developmental disability, traumatic brain injury, deaf or serious difficulty hearing, blind or serious difficulty seeing, missing extremities, significant mobility impairment, partial or complete paralysis, epilepsy or other seizure disorders, intellectual disability, significant psychiatric disorder, dwarfism, and significant disfigurement.
Federal workforce in general, stats from 2023:
Sixty percent of the federal workforce identified as white compared to 76% in the private sector. Nearly 19% of the federal workforce identified as Black and 10% identified as Hispanic compared to 13% and 19% of the U.S. labor force, respectively.
While 40% of the federal workforce was comprised of individuals who identify as part of a racial or ethnic minority group, this number diminishes significantly at higher levels on the General Schedule scale. People of color make up much of the federal workforce in positions from the GS-2 to GS-6 level, these grade levels typically comprise lower and entry-level administrative positions. White employees make up much of the workforce above the GS-7 level, which consists of mid-level technical and first-level supervisory positions and top-level technical and supervisory positions.
Twenty-six percent of career Senior Executive Service members identified as a person of color in fiscal 2023, a small increase from 25% in the previous year. Of the federal workforce that was not on the GS scale, 37% identified as a person of color.
The overall federal workforce was 55% male and 45% female, compared to 53% male and 47% female in the total U.S. labor force.
Women made up the majority of the federal workforce in GS-3 to GS-9 positions. Notably, 73% of GS-6 employees are female. Men made up much of the workforce above the GS-10 level, the SES and positions not on the GS pay scale.
Women made up the majority of the federal workforce in GS-3 to GS-9 positions, while men made up the majority of the workforce above the GS-10 level, the SES and positions not on the GS pay scale.
Individuals who have served in the uniformed military service constituted a considerable segment of the federal workforce. At the end of fiscal 2023, 30% of federal employees were veterans compared to 5% of the total employed U.S. civilian labor force. In the same year, 25% of new federal hires were veterans.
In fiscal 2023, 21% of the federal workforce identified as having a disability or serious health condition. Of those employees, 2.7% indicated having a targeted or serious health condition and 7.8% identified as having other disabilities or serious health conditions. The other 10.5% of employees with a disability had either an unlisted or undisclosed disability.
Thirty-two percent of federal employees hold a bachelor’s degree, and another 21% have an advanced degree. Federal workers possess bachelor’s and advanced degrees at a higher rate than the overall U.S. labor force—53.8% to 40.4% in 2023.
So - feds are slightly less white and Hispanic and slightly more black than the general workforce, slightly more male, especially in higher-level/more technical grades (the higher up you go, the whiter and more male the management levels get, which tracks with private industry as well), more likely to be veterans, and somewhat better educated than the general workforce.
Pick your Nazis out of that.
HereAndGone
10mo ago
See, I'd be way more convinced by the "no, nobody is trying to say that modern Nazis are members of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei from back in the 30s" were they not, like magicalkittycat, so desperately dragging out "look! swastikas on flags! fascist salutes! they're Nazis!"
Make their damn minds up: if they don't mean "Nazi as in Hitler" then say so, but they can't. They want the connotations of "Nazi like Hitler, no literally, if you tolerate this then you will have the Fourth Reich" to whip up fear and loathing and resistance and opposition. But then they also want to try and make any critics of their hysteria look absurd by "no you idiot of course we don't mean literal Germans from 1936, you oaf, you buffoon, you cretin".
HereAndGone
10mo ago
He's worn Trump sweaters and said "It's Trump 2024 or this country is going down the toilet" and "Everybody's got to go out there and fucking vote for Trump, especially if you live in Florida. Bro, he is the last stand we got, man".
So voting for Trump makes one a Nazi? Well, thanks for the clarification of your viewpoint.
HereAndGone
10mo ago
At this stage, where everyone to the right of Karl Marx is a Nazi, I too am "Bring on the Nazis". If we're going to have fascists under every bush, let them be real fascists out in the open where we can fight them and not "well you are not convinced that someone can be a non-binary trans femme presenting masc butch two-spirit gender fluid genderqueer person with a feminine penis who is a Real Woman in every sense the same as your cis het self, so you are indeed Goering come again" fascists.
HereAndGone
10mo ago
A flag with a swatiska embedded in it was spotted in the office of Representative Dave Taylor. Rep. Taylor has called it out and condemned it, and it's quite possible he never noticed it before himself but it does seem to be another sign of the embedded antisemitic and pro nazi rhetoric in lower level staffers if one of them put it up.
You really are doing bad-faith arguments. I looked this up, and it seems to be something between a hoax and an (ahem) false flag operation:
Multiple GOP congressional offices earlier this year received American flags with "optical illusion" swastikas embedded in them, two Republican sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.
The news comes one day after Rep. Dave Taylor, R-Ohio, called the flag with the swastika “vile” and “deeply inappropriate” after the symbol was seen in one of his staffers’ offices in the background of a meeting.
One of the sources, whose office received a flag back in January, said it was initially difficult to see the flag's swastika with the naked eye, calling it an “optical illusion.” But once the swastika in the center of the flag was discovered, the flag was thrown out, the source said.
The matter is also being investigated by the GOP-led House Administration Committee, in addition to the U.S. Capitol Police.
So unless you want to argue that NBC is right-wing propaganda (and since some of the committed made that very argument about the NYT nothing is beyond the bounds of possibility), then the story is that some person or persons unknown did this in secret, possibly for the very purpose of causing a scandal about GOP swastika flags, and if so, that someone is probably from the very same wellspring as you, magicalkittycat, with your eagerness about "oh noes DAE realise the GOP was a swarm of fascist Nazis parading around swastikas?"
I was inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt, but this second post makes it very plain that you are grinding a partisan axe, and now I have no trouble ignoring anything you may hyperventilate about.
HereAndGone
10mo ago
Guy drives me up the wall about 90% of the time with his posts about how he used to write for John Oliver, but every so often reality bonks him over the head hard enough that there is common ground between us on "this is freakin' stupid".
And he was where I heard about Katie Porter's performance, and that one was genuinely funny (though with the material he had to work with, it would have taken real genius not to be funny there).
HereAndGone
10mo ago
Nobody is suggesting that these guys are members of the NSDAP, an organization which was disbanded long before they were born.
...Imagine you are a 25yo white nationalist in today's America. Now you could get a swastika tattoo and join the Aryan Brotherhood or something, but then you will never make a difference. Or you could join one of the two major parties, and the one closer aligned to your views are the Republicans.
....Jokes in small groups are a great way to reach a common understanding that Nazis are not icky. Obviously not everyone who plays along is a Nazi, perhaps some only like the jokes because the SJ people are whining about the Nazis all the time, but it is very much a step in the right direction, moving the overton window where you want it to go.
So... they're not Nazis but they totally are Nazis. Just because we (the side calling them Nazis) are not saying they are formally members of a defunct political party but in fact we do mean that they are indeed members of a defunct political party in everything but formal name of the party.
My head hurts. Clearly I am too stupid to get the fine nuances of "I'm not saying they're Nazi Nazis but I am saying they are Nazi Republicans" or "Republican Nazis" or "Nazi fascist nazi Fascist".
HereAndGone
10mo ago
Not everyone who tells rape jokes is into rape culture, obviously, some people just like dark humor, but they can certainly be used to transport the message "rape is not a big deal".
While I think those jokes are tasteless and crude, I am now reminded back when me and my peers were twelve to fourteen year old girls telling dead baby jokes. Good grief, où sont les neiges d'antan! Did dead baby jokes back in 1978 lead to the liberalisation of abortion in the Ireland of 2018? After all, they must have been used to transport the message "dead babies are not a big deal".
HereAndGone
10mo ago
From the accusations and counter-accusations flying around, it seems to be real but also seems to be an internal power struggle, where A leaked to Politico in order to get B (and possibly C and D and E) in trouble, trigger a purge, then A gets the good-boy pat on the head and slides another rung or two up the greasy pole in the party structure.
Gotta love internal back-stabbing for the sake of advancing a mediocre career 🙄
HereAndGone
10mo ago
It's amazing how this point is brought up when someone defected thinking the other side could do nothing, and then realized they were wrong.
I think all us righties, of whatever degree of farness to the right, on here smile wryly when the outrage emanates from the other side. It's like something Scott posted a while back about honour versus dignity cultures. The clash between the two, when someone dares the other person "what are you gonna do about it? gonna hit me, you coward?" and then acts shocked and surprised when they get a punch in the face. That's not supposed to happen! You're not supposed to resort to violence! You're supposed to back down when the tough talking goes on! But someone from the honour culture comes from a system where if you talk tough, you better be ready and able to back it up. Dare someone to punch you in the face, nobody will think you were mistreated when you get punched in the face.
The lefties engaged in a lot of "yeah, what are you gonna do about it?" talk and behaviour. Now they're shocked and appalled when the other side don't play by their rules of their game and just back down and take it.
HereAndGone
10mo ago
Eh, Young Republican chat thread isn't on the same level as pissing on the altar. I'll save my outrage stocks for worse things.
HereAndGone
10mo ago
I would find even hipster irony declarations of support for Hitler to be a step too far, but then I'm old. I'm out of touch. I'm two generations behind the bright young things of today and the tearing down of conventions because they stifle our individual liberties and oppress wimmen'n'minorities.
Good taste has long ago been dumped out with everything else in the bathwater, and relabelled tone policing, which is a sin because it means you are trying to restrict the expression of lived experience of wimmen'n'minorities.
These are the very same people who ripped down that fence, they don't get to be appalled when the bull runs out of the field straight at them.
HereAndGone
10mo ago
The elites of Silicon Valley have cozied up to Donald Trump in a way that's unprecedented in the history of modern democracy.
Can we get a date range on that? Because it makes a big difference if you mean "modern as in the past fifteen years" or "modern as in the past one hundred and fifty".
They've lined the pockets of his presidential library foundation, supported his white house renovations, paid for his inauguration
Allow me a moment to be shocked, shocked! that never ever before has a politician, a political party, or political campaigns received bucketloads of cash from Silicon Valley and/or other business types.
HereAndGone
10mo ago
It might be a microaggression, the more up-to-date please fill me in on whether microaggressions are still the equivalent of burning someone at the stake or if we've moved on to trans genocide instead as the most heinous of crimes?
HereAndGone
10mo ago
I was a Daily Show watching Dem-voting asshole internet atheist
Even the guy who used to write for John Oliver and still is liberal in every conceivable way is getting fed-up of the activists blowing up mountains out of molehills and the 'trust the science' bullshit being, well, bullshit.
HereAndGone
10mo ago
Anyway, "this girl is fully retarded" is hardly worth clutching pearls over... maybe imitation pearls?
Remember a little while back when there were finger-wagging lists of words that were no-no because they were ableist, including describing things as "things are insane round here" or "we're crazy busy this week"?
So terms like 'retarded' are no-no because slurs and because 'excuse me, my brother is retarded, how dare you?' as per this article ("When someone casually says, “she’s so crazy” in an off-handed way, they could be talking about someone like my mom.")
HereAndGone
10mo ago
This storm in a teacup seems to be getting more juicy/spicy, since rumours are swirling. Milo (yes, 'tis he) is claiming that the leaker was Gavin Wax who co-operated with Politico (in a way that frankly reminds me of the guy who pointed Cade Metz at Scott and fed him tidbits as part of his axe-grinding with the Rationalists).
Is this the result of internal power-struggles or in-fighting, and Wax is trying to destroy a particular opponent/rival? Has anyone got the inside scoop on this? If this is all a catfight over person or persons trying to get into the inner circle/back in/kick the other guy out, it becomes way more interesting than "bunch of idiot college kids do idiot stuff" (because the kind of people who join The Young Whatever Party groups in college, no matter what country, tend to be a particular type who are both politics wonks and politically ambitious, hoping to parlay involvement in such groups into some sort of political career, and nobody else gives a damn. See William Hague).
HereAndGone
10mo ago
However, some Republicans in high places don't seem to view it as a major deal. Such as JD Vance, whose only comment is to call it "pearl clutching"
This'll teach me to read the linked text (particularly ironic because I'm bullish on 'go back to the sources'). Vance had a leetle more to the comment than just "this is pearl clutching" (so ignore it); he was contrasting it with the guy who was talking about hoping Jennifer Gilbert's children would die:
This is far worse than anything said in a college group chat, and the guy who said it could become the AG of Virginia. I refuse to join the pearl clutching when powerful people call for political violence.
The dispute is:
Person on left: "if you hold view A/believe thing B/do not agree with me on position C, you are a Nazi!"
The idea is "this is so terrible an accusation, any person wanting to be thought of as good or on the right, decent side will be so appalled, they will immediately change their views and drop the Nazi opinions".
The outcome, though, is "because everything and everyone has been called a Nazi, the sting of the accusation has faded". Hence the actual result is:
Person on right: "That makes me a Nazi? Guess I'm a Nazi, then!"
Outcome: person on left faints all over the place about "OMG, the righties really are Nazis! This person just came right out and admitted they were a Nazi!"
But the person on the right is thinking "I have good and sufficient reasons, in my opinion, to hold the views I do. Therefore, I am not going to shift my beliefs merely on the grounds of being called a bad name. I don't care if you think I'm a Nazi, I know I'm not a Nazi, so go right ahead and call me one; I don't care, it does not affect me, you might as well call me a lizard person from the planet Zogabong".
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