domain:youtube.com
hydroacetylene
1yr ago
I have no doubt that, like most people in the 19 teens, the suffragettes were racist and often couched their goals in those terms. This doesn’t have much to do with their final goals; in fact I think it rather unfair to judge people who died the better part of a century ago by modern progressive standards, even to the extent(very limited) that modern progressive standards are a good thing to judge anyone by.
With all that being said, my comment is ‘I love when they fight each other’.
hydroacetylene
1yr ago
Mods, can we get a mega thread for Biden’s age?
Correct, she would be running on ‘Obama’s third term’, not ‘Michelle’s first’.
I mean, obviously, the bigger problem either way is that her life in which she doesn’t run for office is one in which she’s paid to hear about how great she is, and her life in which she does run for office is based on getting insulted by Trump while people call her a tranny and the media pries into minor facets of her personal life for an outside shot at having the most difficult job in the world.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1yr ago
there's been considerable concern lately about declining participation in the forum. This is the most political ferment we've seen in a while; why dilute it?
nopie
1yr ago
The issue with Biden's dementia was revealed by Biden himself 4 years ago. In one response to Trump he revealed that he knows the details of the test used to assess dementia. Apparently he had been evaluated by doctors already then. We just have never been told the results and how they have changed with time.
Leaking this information would reduce uncertainty but essentially it would be the same that we can infer from videos but more precise.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1yr ago
While I can actually agree with that, I think that such people are a very small minority - and I also don't think he closed the border in any way that matters. The situation is still a mess, and Biden can't even begin to offer a real answer because his donors and political cohort want to make sure that the problem stays a big problem (because that big problem is incredibly profitable for them).
zeke5123a
1yr ago
This just seems like “my outgroup lies” by Scott. There were just sooo many videos and incidents.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
1yr ago
I imagine the motive here is to further deny the white public from admiring their supremacy in any way. It is a reminder that you can’t have white heroes or stories, not in the foundation of the Republic (what we saw a few years ago) and not even in the misguided women’s rights movement, and certainly not in pseudohistorical entertainment (Bridgerton, Hamilton). You have to let them know that every white achievement is stained in blood and evilness. So to have a musical — the culture of the wealthy liberal base — extol heroic white women is a faux pas that must be balanced by blackening their reputation. Expect an update story and cast in future productions. At least to me this genuinely has the most predictive power for which things are criticized and altered. It’s not actually about purity spiraling, as we know (for instance) that MLK was a pro-rape plagiarist [2]. There won’t seriously be change to the connotation of MLK because of this.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1yr ago
The agenda is something else entirely (in the case of "cancel suffs," I strongly suspect that it's some combination of "How dare a musical about white women win a bunch of awards?" and some theater in-group fighting) and the claims of caring about factual history are a mask.
My personal read for a lot of these cancellation attacks is that the ultimate motive is freeing up a seat at the table for them or their friends. The protestor is here informing the culprits about their moral failings, which puts them in the position of having superior knowledge and adherence to left wing priorities. Obviously the people being protested have to go, and conveniently enough there are some people right here who know what they did wrong, and can recommend a replacement who won't be so problematic.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1yr ago
If you're in a job interview, and you say something like "well sure maybe I'm a bad writer, but at least I know how to work a computer!" it doesn't really help you very much, even if the other applicants in fact are bad at computers. If you are responding to allegations about your age by... uh, confirming allegations about your age, and bringing up a different point, that's just mutual destruction, it doesn't actually help you much. I mean clearly in his worldview everyone has a binary choice, so if it truly were zero-sum, he'd be making a smart point. However, that's not how elections work, and especially not this one. Turnout is a thing.
And in fact more broadly, people have been debating whether it would be better to have an incompetent but moral leader, or a competent but immoral leader for a long time, it's a core philosophical debate. Hanging your whole strategy on appealing exclusively to people both a) accepting this framework and then on top of that b) preferring the former of the two is not a winning recipe. Both of those assumptions are very shaky! I know a fair number of people who actually do prefer a competent narcissist over a useless do-gooder due to the stability, and hope that the economy will be better with the trade-off.
This is really in "fiery but mostly no material injury" territory. What is there to even say to it other than we know the material injury is intentional because we can watch them gloat about it? Even just by reading your comment history?
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1yr ago
Well, I've been saying the whole time that if they really, really insist on running Biden, Biden is taking the wrong tactical approach and should have leaned on the "team effort" aspect from the very start. The fact he has not chosen to do so makes me worry that he actually does not in fact have a sufficient team mindset to lean on people enough. I think the Cabinet would pull through okay, but the attitude and humility makes a difference. Domestically at least, you are more or less correct that we'd be fine.
However, I should offer the massive caution that foreign policy-wise, which is actually a good third of the job (sometimes more, but rarely less), his specific capacities actually still matter a great deal. There's some noise from European diplomats who have noticed some stuff, apparently. Despite a lot of painting the mil-ind complex and foreign policy industry as hopelessly deep-state (though there's certainly some strong institutional instincts and inertia), the simple fact is the president actually has an astonishing degree of both latitude as well as actual power, not just ceremonial, to make things happen. For example, if Trump decided to take us out of NATO, he basically could, probably even over the objections and even laws of Congress if we're being honest. In other words, the institutions can't do anything about batshit crazy moments. They have to be pretty bad to be considered.
wemptronics
1yr ago
His outgroup does lie. Frequently and, sometimes, brazenly. That's politics, baby. It's not so reasonable to assume they are baseless smears to the extent that you're surprised by something closer to the truth given the facts in this case. Like the Hunter laptop story. That was a true story. It was even a believable story. But, it was also a timely political smear, which reasonable people are skeptical of. Folks should not take every claim in political attack ads at face value.
Outright shoving them into the Republican propaganda box isn't doing people like Scott any favors. I would not be surprised if Scott hadn't paid attention to or watched any Biden old clips-- certainly not selectively edited ones posted to pwn libs on X.com.
I believe it was Michael Moynihan of the Fifth Column that said, a couple years ago now, what sold him that Biden's age was a real problem was the distinct omission of it as a topic in media. That late night talk shows didn't make jokes about his boomer moments was evidence itself this was not a concern people were interested in even laughing about. Then again, I'm not sure we'll ever really see a late night talk show scene that sees hosts take D-politicians to task for jokes.
wemptronics
1yr ago
There's not enough posts to justify a megathread. This is the megathread. I can collapse chains easily. Browsing thread and yeah, this could have gone in a pinned comment or something.
there342
1yr ago
I expect them to yield to this pressure eventually. No progressive, left-wing, or liberal movement seem to really have any leverage they ever seem willing or able to use against attacks from the left. I don't see how they could fight back without painting a big target on their back.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1yr ago
Re-reading my comment I think it came across as if I'm trying to split hairs a little too much. If Biden were to get swapped out I think people would have a right to be mad, but if the actual winner of the whole election got switched out, people would have a right to be maximum furious. The latter case is the sort of existential democratic crisis that is worth getting existential mad about. The current what to do about Biden crisis is not existential and thus the anger should be some degree lower than maximum.
Perhaps the better question would be, let me set up this scenario, which would be "more fair" or "more democratic"?
-
Biden dropping out at some point during his presidency, and Kamala taking over. No one voted for Kamala in the primaries, well, to be more specific many voted against her. Biden chose her as an individual with zero direct democratic input after winning the primary. Biden is the source of democratic legitimacy here.
-
Biden dropping out now, and a new candidate taking over at the convention. No one would be voting directly for the candidate like a primary, which is a weaker link of democratic authority, but on the other hand the delegates were chosen more or less democratically from the party constituents and are the source of democratic legitimacy here.
Both scenarios clearly have a break in the direct line of "democracy", defined more lazily here as just "people should have voted for the person who ends up in charge", which is why I say the word is unclear and "fair" is better -- and that it's hard to directly compare which is better without using more accurate words. It's also why a some political scientist types get exacerbated when we call our system of government a democracy, because it isn't. The whole "representative" idea comes into play at some point, and we just need to reasonable decide where to make the tradeoff of general direct democracy vs. vesting that authority indirectly in another.
Put another way, who has the better claim to representing Democrats? Biden as an individual, or the delegates in aggregate? So it might seem like I'm splitting hairs, but actually it's a pretty significant question. Honestly, I think given the circumstances, the delegates actually have a stronger case. The first bullet point is undermined by the self-evident behind the scenes work of the party apparatus itself to stifle other would-be competitors, several states decided they wouldn't even bother with primaries before any serious challenge even emerged. In other words, we can't escape the shadow the DNC and related party machinery casts over the whole thing. I think the second bullet point is "more fair".
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
1yr ago
I've just started with Vagrus:The Riven Realms, which is a combination Roadwarden, Sunless Seas with a bit of Darkest Dungeon combat. Really enjoying it. Great if you like merchant caravan style games in a fantasy post apocalyptic setting.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1yr ago
As someone who has gone into the weeds on this, I do not think you want to start getting into the origination of COVID, Peter Daszak and the ecohealth alliance et al. There aren't any wins for progressive politics in that direction.
FirmWeird
Randomly Generated Reddit Username
1yr ago
Someone else has already written this up for me, so I'll just quote them.
With the launch of OxyContin, in 1995, Purdue unleashed an unprecedented marketing blitz, pushing the use of powerful opioids for a huge range of ailments and asserting that its product led to addiction in “fewer than one percent” of patients. This strategy was a spectacular commercial success: according to Purdue, OxyContin has since generated approximately thirty billion dollars in revenue, making the Sacklers (whom I wrote about for the magazine, in 2017, and about whom I will publish a book next year) one of America’s richest families.
But OxyContin’s success also sparked a deadly crisis of addiction. Other pharmaceutical companies followed Purdue’s lead, introducing competing products; eventually, millions of Americans were struggling with opioid-use disorders. Many people who were addicted but couldn’t afford or access prescription drugs transitioned to heroin and black-market fentanyl. According to a recent analysis by the Wall Street Journal, the disruptions associated with the coronavirus have only intensified the opioid epidemic, and overdose deaths are accelerating. For all the complexity of this public-health crisis, there is now widespread agreement that its origins are relatively straightforward.
...
Her filing was studded with damning internal company e-mails revealing that, even in the face of a skyrocketing death toll from the opioid crisis, members of the Sackler family pushed Purdue staff to find aggressive new ways to market OxyContin and other opioids, and to persuade doctors to prescribe stronger doses for longer periods of time.
Stingray3906
11mo ago
So to have a musical — the culture of the wealthy liberal base — extol heroic white women is a faux pas that must be balanced by blackening their reputation.
I think there is some merit to the opinion that a Broadway musical is not an appropriate venue to tell such controversial stories. It's am entertainment product, first and foremost. It exists to make money before anything else. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to put such a show on as a truly non-fictional retelling at a museum or non-profit cultural center, where they have staff that can evaluate the script, characters and cast, sets, music etc. to be period correct and sensitive to context.
Well it sounds like to me, these protestors simply want the appropriate context applied to the show. Was it right to interrupt the show? I'd say no. But to write off their concerns as meritless, I'm not so sure of that.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
11mo ago
I think a little bit of the MLK discussion stems from a desire to use something like the legal "fruit of the poisoned tree" idea, since many of the bad things we know about him were, though in many (not all) cases true, were also the result of a racist and politically-motivated smear campaign by Hoover's FBI. I'm a little sympathetic. The other angle, of course, is that hero worship never went away, it just changed targets for a little bit.
The balance of how much as a society we "allow" hero worship is still a major point of debate. Personally, I feel we've swung too far on the hate and criticize side of things, to the point where some of my friends are saying things like we shouldn't teach patriotism too much in schools because it could be dangerous or is dishonest or something. I think that since it's generally harder to build up than it is to tear down, maybe we should lean a little bit towards letting hero worship alone. Or even, in the case of public schooling, both deliberately start with positive indoctrination, and then deliberately add some critical nuance a little later. Neither of those two sequential steps are optional, it doesn't work without both. For adults where it might be "too late", the question is more like what's worse, cynicism or idolatry? I actually don't know. I think we could use some passionately wrong people in today's society more than we need cynical nothings.
In this case, given how little the general public knows about the suffrage movement, I think it's probably completely and totally fine to go all-in on a production even if it lacks context or is exclusionary or whatever it is. The lower the knowledge, the more tolerance for simplistic narratives, that's kind of just how we learn, for better or worse.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
11mo ago
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ashley-biden-diary-claims/
Snopes rates the following claim as "true":
https://www.msn.com/en-US/news/us/joe-bidens-daughter-ashley-admits-her-diary-entries-are-real-in-court-letter-showers-with-dad/ar-BB1mWabj links to Twitter posts that have screenshots of the relevant page (including claims that she was hypersexualized at a young age), along with Ashley's submission to the court.
More options
Context Copy link