HereAndGone
23d 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
23d 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
23d 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
23d 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
23d 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
23d 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
24d 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
24d 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
24d 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
24d 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
24d 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
24d 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
24d 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.
HereAndGone
24d ago
(1) Bunch of twenty-somethings are idiots (2) This includes edgelord stuff like making jokes about Hitler and other topics deemed "should not be joked about" (3) Whatever really was said in the thread remains to be determined
Also, is "to cow before Trump" a direct quote or just the people writing this article being illiterate? "To cower before" makes sense, as does "to kowtow to/before". This is what happens when you let AI write your article for you! Or be too young to know how to English properly, if it's direct Young Republican quote.
(How did Politico obtain the leaked thread, I wonder?)
Yeah, if it's genuine, it ranks between "young idiot guys need a slap upside the head" and "if old enough to know better/comments are genuinely bad and not just white guy saying 'nigga' as though he's a rapper, heads must roll".
EDIT: Thank you, TheMotte, for permitting me to post a slur like "nigga" and not force me to use a dash as though this was the 18th century or I were writing for Politico, though I guess that makes me as reprehensible as a Young Republican 😁
William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words “n--ga” and “n--guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in the chat.
HereAndGone
25d ago
But WHY AREN'T THEY TALKING ABOUT THE REALLY REALLY LIKELY RUSSIAN SABOTAGE THAT JUST HAPPENED IN TENNESSEE KILLING 16 AMERICAN CITIZENS AND DESTROYING AN INDUSTRIAL DEFENSE CONCERN?
Because "blast in explosives factory" is not necessarily "OMG, the only possible explanation is Russian sabotage"? Flour mills blow up, too, as do cement plants, and they're not even deliberately making things that go "boom!"
HereAndGone
27d ago
Going off on a tangent, I saw that Katie Porter, running for governor of California and currently blowing up in the news for blowing up her campaign, is (according to Wikipedia) an Episcopalian.
And I had to laugh, because that's just so perfect. Of course she would be. Though I don't know if the Episcopalians want to be linked to someone trending right now for being an absolute bitch to her staff, amongst other things. Allegedly she fired a staff member for giving her Covid, because said staff member didn't mask while in her house, even though the staff member explained that was because she was upset about learning a friend had been murdered (and also supposedly Porter had been vaccinated previously). So yeah, charming lady, totally who you would want governing you.
HereAndGone
27d ago
If it turns out that souls and angels and demons are real, then physicists will publish articles constraining the relevant parameters of archangel Gabriel in short order.
And the theologians will go "Hi, glad to see you, and it only took you eight centuries to catch up with us!" 😁
HereAndGone
27d ago
Yeah, ELCA is the most liberal, LCMS is more conservative than that, and WELS is the most conservative, right?
If he's German-American I could see some variety of Lutheran background and of course even a liberal Lutheran probably isn't all that fond of the papacy. Still makes me laugh that he's warning Vance off; seems like the new Pope should be warned off Vance ("Careful, your Holiness, your predecessor died the day after meeting him!") 🤣
Wikipedia isn't very helpful, German Evangelicalism is probably different from the American version:
"Thiel is a self-described Christian and a promoter of René Girard's Christian anthropology. He grew up in an evangelical household but, as of 2011, described his religious beliefs as "somewhat heterodox".
This could be his parents' background:
The Evangelical Church in Germany is a federation of twenty Lutheran, Reformed, and United Protestant regional Churches in Germany, collectively encompassing the vast majority of the country's Protestants. It calls itself the Protestant Church in Germany in English. In 2024, the EKD had a membership of 17,979,849 members, or 21.5% of the German population. It constitutes one of the largest Protestant bodies in the world. Church offices managing the federation are located in Herrenhausen, Hanover, Lower Saxony. Many of its members consider themselves Lutherans."
Or they could be Evangelical in the American sense:
Despite their many similarities, evangelicals are not a homogenous group. In the German-speaking world, they can be roughly divided into three main denominations:
- Confessing Evangelicals, who value the authority of traditional church confessions , are found in conservative circles within regional churches, for example, in the No Other Gospel confessional movement and the Conference of Confessing Communities .
- The charismatic evangelicals, mainly in charismatic circles of the regional churches and in the congregations of the Pentecostal movement .
- The Evangelicals in the Pietistic tradition, mainly in the Pietism of the regional churches, in traditional free churches and in the Mennonite Brethren congregations , which were often founded by Russian-German emigrants .
He was born in Hesse, so his family could be these:
Open Evangelicals or Neo-Evangelicals: This movement takes a distanced stance towards biblical criticism but is willing to accept certain of its findings. It is found particularly among evangelicals in the regional churches. This largely includes regional church Pietism with its regional focuses in Baden-Württemberg , Hesse and Saxony and the Protestant Community Movement and its educational institutions such as the Albrecht Bengel House , the Evangelical Tabor University in Marburg, the Liebenzell International University in Bad Liebenzell , the Johanneum or the Paulinum . In the free churches they are particularly represented among the Old Lutherans such as the Independent Evangelical Lutheran Church , among the Mennonites and Methodists , although there are also "non-evangelical" Christians among these, and in the more liberal wings of other free churches.
Since we don't know, it's difficult to speculate about his childhood religious influences. Possibly Pietist-influenced Lutherans?
HereAndGone
27d ago
Yeah, Musk may be crazy and I was never a fan even back in the days when he was being worshipped as a god of tech, but he does have a Vision and a Plan. He does want to build electric vehicles. He does want to build self-driving cars. He does want to build private, reusable space vehicles. He does want to colonise Mars.
Most other high-paying, multi-million salary CEO jobs are "Tom Bimble left Wahoo! and has now joined MegaMart, replacing Tim Bamble who has gone to Wahoo!" Interchangeable guys who didn't found the company, weren't there for its rapid growth phase, and whose job is basically "don't run it into the ground, but even if you do, your contract ensures a golden parachute".
That's where the resentment comes in: I screw up in my job, I get fired. CEO Tim screws up, he is the cause of a lot of people losing their jobs, but the terms of his contract means he walks away with a million-dollar pension and may well walk into a new job.
HereAndGone
27d ago
I wondered if he might have swerved towards some branch of Orthodoxy, given his use of Greek theological terms, but as you say the gay thing does rule against it. Plus the warning about Caesaropapism, given that the prime example of that was the Byzantine church and the Eastern Churches in general don't think that Councils can be called without the authority of the Emperor (who is no more, unless we all accept Trump as the new Emperor?)
Warning Vance against the pope is very funny and possibly tongue-in-cheek, given the memes about pope Francis' death very soon after meeting Vance.
HereAndGone
27d ago
Notably missing among the horsemen of anti-science are ...the Christian right who oppose stem cell research"
Embryonic stem cell research yes, adult stem cell no.
"and CRISPRing fetuses."
Oooh, ooooh! That are me? Me am Antichrist? Yay! Fame at last!
still stuck in the 18th century alongside people like Richard Dawkins who believe that science and atheism are compatible ...Almost nobody was openly atheist in 18th century Europe."
I would like to see more development of this point. I think he's referring to The Enlightenment when open atheism did become a thing, that's when we get a lot of writings by revolutionaries and radicals (see Shelley, though that's early 19th century, and of course Voltaire with his "is he/isn't he" flirting at least with atheism). So I would be interested for his reasons as to why he thinks science and atheism are not compatible.
Theism increases the risk of some moral failings and perhaps lowers the risk of others, but the correlation is not so robust that I would really care about it"
Would you care to expand on that? Seeing as I'm in the running for Antichrist due to my retrograde religious views, I need moral guidance from those of superior virtue (that is only half-sarcastic; an outside view is always useful and I would like to see if your notion of the theistic vices line up with what I think you would say are the theistic vices).
HereAndGone
28d ago
Yeah, but why is it subconsciously affecting him? What's the peril the sister might be in? You haven't established that sufficiently, the set-up sounds like he would have reacted the same way even if there was no ferry with a sister on it tomorrow. "Whoops, oh crap, what do I do? Manual says get in touch with other person to do the dual key turn", not "I better sort this out now or else my sister's ferry will blow up in the middle of World War Three". I might be thinking "Huh, my sister is going to go down the town to do grocery shopping tomorrow" but that's not making me rush to do something in my job that isn't standard procedure. If there's no danger, there's no reason to be het-up and reacting irrationally.
The tiny scale manipulation seems to be "put pressure on by popping up message never encountered before", not "heh heh dumb fleshbag and his emotional attachments".
I'm asking "so why is it important the sister was going to be on a ferry?" and you're answering "it's not important, she was perfectly safe, that's why he reacted irrationally" and I'm going "whut?"
HereAndGone
28d ago
Apparently that's the Big Mac; it has two 1/10th of a pound patties to the Quarter-Pounder's one 1/4 of a pound patty. 2/10ths = 1/5th, so that's the 1/5 burger right there!
People pick either Quarter Pounders or Big Mac for reasons other than amount of meat; the Big Mac has more options while the Quarter Pounder is plain meat-and-bun (and cheese and condiments). Depends if you want the flavour of the pickles and sauce versus just 'gimme the meat' (and give it to me raw?)
Maybe they failed because they were trying to copy McDonalds too closely? Skip the "we give you a third of a pound for the same price as a quarter of a pound" and instead emphasise "fresh beef, better taste, superior value".
The Third Pound just sounds like really bad marketing, because they were chasing the established hold McDonalds had with their quarter-pounders. I could easily see someone going "but I don't want more meat in my burger; a quarter-pounder is big enough for me!" or if they did want more meat, then they'd go for two burgers.
It's like someone trying to compete against Coke by going "we're just like Coke only we have bigger bottles" - that's not different enough to make me switch from Coke. What's unique about your product?
That anecdote does sound too much like "it can't be our fault the product failed, it was the dumb consumers!" Tell that to New Coke 😁 Even if your customers are dumb, they are still your (potential) customers so if this approach isn't working, scrap it and go for one that does: "bigger and better for the same price!" Don't call it a third pounder, compare "we have over 5 ounces of prime fresh beef in every burger versus 4 ounces of processed meat in our rivals" to sell it, not mess around with trying to copy the brand name of a McDonalds product that is already well-established. Call it the Big Beautiful Burger! 🤣
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:
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.
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