Video of the day -- a small contingent who've gone mental
Some more plain common sense, which (again) the people who most desperately need to hear it will diligently ignore.
posted by Infidel753 at 12:47 AM
01 February 2022
Some more plain common sense, which (again) the people who most desperately need to hear it will diligently ignore.
About Me
- Name: Infidel753
- Location: Portland, Oregon, United States
Individualist, pro-technology, pro-democracy, anti-religion. I speak only for myself and not for any ideology, movement, or party. It has been my great good fortune to live my whole life free of "spirituality" of any kind. I believe that evidence and reason are the keys to understanding reality; that technology rather than ideology or politics has been the great liberator of humanity; and that in the long run, human intelligence is the most powerful force in the universe.
Previous Posts
- Link round-up for 30 January 2022
- The adventures of stupid people
- Link round-up for 23 January 2022
- Eye update -- hopefully final
- Video of the day -- Dr Steel Back and Forth
- Improving words (24)
- Link round-up for 16 January 2022
- Eye update (2)
- Not so polarized?
- Eye update
God doesn't exist
Evolution happened
Global warming is real
Homosexuality is normal
Aging is a curable disease
The election was not stolen
Everything "spiritual" is a lie
Free speech is for everybody
Humans do not have "souls"
Men can't become women
Fetuses are not persons
Words are not violence
Taiwan is a nation
Pluto is a planet
19 Comments:
Maher has moments of lucidity and he can be funny. He's also a rich, privileged, middle aged white man with all the benefits that being that brings, so he should shut up about things that he does not live or knows about. He's flippant because he can. Also, Liz Cheney is not and will never be a hero. And she is indeed, Darth Vader's daughter.
The one thing he says that rings true is that not everything can be prevented. There'll always be bigots, and racists, and greedy idiots and rabid homophobes that will try and make life for others a living hell while making a buck. And that, I think, cannot be regulated.
XOXO
He makes some very good points. I’ve always liked him, since I love sarcasm. And much of this is what’s probably behind some trump support and anti vaccine mentality. But the Democrat"s overreach doesn’t make up for the real danger in what the republicans ultimately want to do with authoritarianism, religious laws and climate and environmental damage.
Sixpence: He's also a rich, privileged, middle aged white man
Irrelevant to whether or not what he says is true, which is the only thing that matters.
he should shut up about things that he does not live or knows about
Rubbish. We need as many people as possible speaking out on these issues, not "shutting up" because they don't check some arbitrary set of identity boxes. And people can know a great deal about things that don't directly connect with their "lived experience" or whatever the current buzzword is.
This is an ad hominem attack which, just as I expected, diligently ignores the substance of what he's saying.
Mary: But the Democrat"s overreach doesn’t make up for the real danger in what the republicans ultimately want to do
That danger is real -- which is why talking about these things is so important. If we want to stop Republicans from winning elections, we need to confront and address the rising tide of lunacy on the left which is increasingly handicapping Democrats in the fight to defeat the Republicans. Because if Democrats keep doing things that drive mainstream voters away, guess who ends up benefiting from that at the ballot box.
The people who want Maher and me and the few others who raise these issues to "shut up" are, in practical effect, helping the Republicans, by preventing the left from dealing with the problem.
He is still white, rich and entitled and wallows in privilege and even though I'm sure he knows what he's talking about, he chooses to ignore it. More privilege, of course. The issues he mocks are far from being important to him but need to be addressed. It's a common neo-liberal quasi-libertarian move to attack 'progressives' for being too 'woke' and he uses that. The points he is making are made with de-contextualized and cherry picked events chosen for his amusement and easiness of mockery. But some are valid.
What he's saying is that some people are being extra in what respects social issues and that may be true. But him bringing Mr. Potato head renders his point as moot as me bringing up Candace Owens and Minnie Mouse's pantsuit or her take on the moon landing, or Fucker Clarkson and the green M&M's sexiness or the such.
Maher plays into the 'I'm better than you' and he's not. He's just a dude with a TV show that gives him tons of money.
XOXO
I hope neither Bill - or you - shut up about these issues.
"things that drive mainstream voters away"
Things like that don't necessarily drive democrats to the republican side but do discourage them from voting at all.
Sixpence: He is still white, rich and entitled and wallows in privilege
More irrelevant ad hominem stuff. He could be a Martian and it wouldn't change the fact that he's right about this. You can quibble about individual examples, but the whole woke mentality and attitude is doing real damage to the Democrats' electoral chances, and therefore is helping the Republicans and increasing the risk that they'll get back in power. That's the point.
Ricko: Thanks -- I don't intend to and I'm sure Maher doesn't.
Mike: Don't forget that there are a lot of voters who aren't particularly committed to either party. That's a big part of what I mean by mainstream. And increasing numbers of women and especially Latinos are trending Republican -- still a minority among those groups, but a growing one. The left seems determined to ignore this and tell anybody who looks into the reasons for it to shut up. It's exactly the most disastrous possible approach.
One question. I get what you’re saying and moderately agree, but why is it that Democrats can push and say these woke ideas and our fear is that they will turn away the people not strongly party affiliated, but the likes of Majorie Greene, Hawley, Bohbert(sp) etc. and what they spew, doesn’t worry the Republican Party in the same way? It’s crazy stuff too and downright dangerous, where as the woke business is just kooky.
It’s a strange world when a law to ad a safety alarm for a child still in the back seat, pushes more buttons than the two bomb threats to black colleges that occurred today and a threat to pardon all Jan. 6th insurrectionists.
Mary: Those two situations are actually very analogous. The lunacy pushed by people like Greene, Boebert, etc energizes their party's extremist fringe but risks turning off mainstream voters, just like the lunacy pushed by the woke-oids on the left. More conventional Republican politicians should indeed be worried about this, and I think many of them are, but they're afraid to speak out due to fear of Trump and his easily-enraged mobs. I think a lot of more moderate Democratic leaders also understand that the woke fringe crap is hurting the whole liberal cause, but again, many feel intimidated from speaking out about it, though some do in some cases (Pelosi came down like a ton of bricks on Ilhan Omar's early anti-Semitic garbage, for example). There are a few commentators on the right who do openly attack the dangerous right-wing extremists, though not many. I'd consider them analogous to people like Maher on the left.
Where the similarity breaks down is that even though the right-wing crazy stuff is objectively more dangerous to freedom and democracy, the left-wing crazy stuff antagonizes normal mainstream non-politically-engaged voters more, because more of it takes forms which threaten an intrusion of ideology into everyday life. I wrote about that issue here. So the Democrats have more to lose electorally from the woke stuff than the Republicans do from the crazies on their side.
Isn't it inevitable that in a nation as big as the USA which only really has two parties - yes, I know you've got Greens and Libertarians and Communists and whatever but none of them matter a tinker's cuss really - that both major parties will be extremely broad churches? And that a centrist Republican and a centrist Democrat probably have more in common with each other than either has with the extreme fringes of their respective parties?
Oh, and I read your linked previous piece on the damage the left inflicts upon itself. I agree. Basically you nailed it infidel.
Have you seen...
https://twitter.com/TitaniaMcGrath/status/1281023987242487808
I'm amazed at quite how racist I am.
Dare I say it?
A huge show on ITV in the UK in the '80s was a satirical puppet show called "Spitting Image". It routinely laid into Maggie Thatcher as evil and the Labour Party as inept. The show's producers were left wing. I have seen the interviewed since and they simply couldn't understand why they did more harm to the left cause than the right.
People will take "evil" over "idiocy" any day of the week as long as they can believe the evil folks are in the same tent but pissing out. It is just the way of things.
NickM: a centrist Republican and a centrist Democrat probably have more in common with each other than either has with the extreme fringes of their respective parties
Dubious. Even the moderates on both sides are far apart. Joe Manchin is the most conservative Democrat in Congress, but he supports things like unions and higher taxes on the rich that are anathema to pretty much all Republicans.
However, don't forget the vast mass of voters in the middle who aren't committed to or identified with either party. They may even be the majority now, as both parties are more and more captured by their lunatic-fringe elements. Those are the mainstream voters I'm most concerned about.
Thanks about the linked post. I think it's the most important political post I've ever written.
Titania McGrath is a great satirist. And in most cases, on that post, I know exactly what she means. Pretty much everything is denounced as racist these days. It's bad because it takes the mickey out of discussions of real racism, which remains a serious problem.
I loved Spitting Image back in the 80s. I wasn't nearly savvy enough back then to grasp, or even care, who was being most damaged by it. I mainly liked their less-political sketches and parodies about Reagan.
I think both major Parties are leaning towards extremist views, which, for us Moderate Independent types of Voters, makes it very difficult to have anyone running for Office that would be representative of the moderation and sanity we believe is most helpful. Extremism rarely has worked out well, doesn't matter if it's far Left or far Right. At the present time the far Right have the most rabid base and Lunatics they voted in... so for me, are the most present Danger to Democracy and most inclined to Violence and ginned up Cult of Personality that can be manipulated by their Leaders. The far Left right now are probably just causing more people NOT TO VOTE at all, from the feedback I'm getting from Voters who'd never support the Right... but now have no Faith in the Left.
I'm starting to feel that way myself. For many years there's been no way I could vote for the Republicans because they advocated too many things I could never support. Now I'm starting to feel the same about the Democrats. I've always said one should vote for the lesser of two evils because if you don't you're facilitating the greater evil, and in principle it's still true, but some of this stuff now..... it's a gut-wrenching situation.
Maher again presents a well-crafted argument. The notion that more rules will improve society also permeates the administration of schools and hospitals to such an extent that the best educators and caretakers are leaving those professions. It's total folly.
we're fucked
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