I agree with you on the non-terrestrial aliens. But this idea of the "Space Force" is the kind of idea of 5-year old would come up with to do when they are President. Who is going to be in this branch?? Regular soldiers?? What the hell do they know about being in space?? Astronauts?? They are interested in scientific advancement and discovery, not weaponizing space. Even if they hypothetically were put into space, what exactly would they be doing up there?? This is probably the dumbest thing he has come up with yet, and that is saying something.
No one seriously thinks that the Space Force is actually going to become a reality (if it did, though, just expand the Air Force, which already worries about space-based things like tracking tens of thousands of objects as small as individual wrenches).
I wouldn't call it "dumb", only mis-timed. As I noted, at some point someone "will* weaponize things being put into orbit (presuming they haven't done so already) and I agree with @BillyYank --getting a presence off the surface of the planet is a forward-thinking thing to do. Without a presence off-world, at some point when the planet-killer meteor hits if we are still stuck here then absolutely everything we have ever done will have been for nothing. Ozymandias was right about that, at least.
I'm curious. You cite free speech and (rightfully) condemn the act of silencing opposed political ideas. You say Alex Jones' banning from some sites is an example of this.
"Alex Jones getting mass-banned from large portions of the internet, Google, Facebook, Apple and more, in the same day: A predictable and inevitable consequence of the modern day political strategy to silence, deplatform, and unperson anyone not-leftist for wrongspeech or wrongthink, imposing a climate of fear where everybody is afraid to speak their minds or say controversial or unpopular things for fear that they, too, will be the latest victim of the outrage mob."
But also complain that Sarah Jeong is allowed to speak.
"New York Times hiring blatant and unapologetic racist Sarah Jeong- predictable and inevitable. Hatred of whites is acceptable and altogether mainstream on the left. NYT hired her not in spite of her hatred of whites but because she is representative of them and their ideology. This has been tolerated and supported for so long, it's no surprise it's making it's way into the most mainstream of mainstream political outlets."
What makes these two exapmples different? Alex Jones shouldn't be silenced, because its wrong to silence people. But Sarah Jeong shouldn't be supported or allowed to speak in offcial capacity because what she says is bad?
I don't care about either of these people, and I don't lean either way politically. But I'm having a hard time resolving these two different stances with your value of free speech.
@Mathsorcerer "No one seriously thinks that the Space Force is actually going to become a reality"
Define "No one". I talk to people regularly who still swear up and down that "The Wall" is going to happen. I'm sure that there is a sizeable number of people who are all in on the Space Force idea as well.
The discussion about free speech and Facebook is silly. Free speech has nothing to do with Facebook. As a private service they have every right to filter content in whatever way they want to.
I've expressed the same sentiments in regards to the forums here. But this forum is a small platform and there are similar-sized equivalents elsewhere, while there is no real equivalent to Facebook or Twitter.
The problem is that Facebook and other social media have become standard platforms for political discourse. It might be legal at the moment for them to host or refuse to host any given content on their site, but being banned means that your speech has less impact than someone who wasn't banned. A private company doesn't have the power to fully silence someone, but a company that controls a major platform has the power to cripple a popular person or organization's influence.
I don't know where exactly we should draw the line, but at some point, a social media platform becomes important enough that banning someone from the platform leaves them with less effective free speech (less influence) than others.
I'll shed no tears for Alex Jones, but I'm worried that this will set a bad precedent.
I've expressed the same sentiments in regards to the forums here. But this forum is a small platform and there are similar-sized equivalents elsewhere, while there is no real equivalent to Facebook or Twitter.
The problem is that Facebook and other social media have become standard platforms for political discourse. It might be legal at the moment for them to host or refuse to host any given content on their site, but being banned means that your speech has less impact than someone who wasn't banned. A private company doesn't have the power to fully silence someone, but a company that controls a major platform has the power to cripple a popular person or organization's influence.
I don't know where exactly we should draw the line, but at some point, a social media platform becomes important enough that banning someone from the platform leaves them with less effective free speech (less influence) than others.
I'll shed no tears for Alex Jones, but I'm worried that this will set a bad precedent.
So?
You couldn’t walk into a radio or television station and demand your time to speak your mind about a topic. At most you could call in, have your phone call screened by a producer who may or may not give you the air time to speak your mind.
A person’s free speech wasn’t being infringed upon when that was the standard political discourse. It was still a private company controlling the message even more so than the extent that Facebook/Google/Twitter do.
Free speech means the government won’t prosecute you for speaking your mind. That doesn’t save a person from slander/libel or defamation claims against those very same words. That doesn’t mean a person can break the terms of agreements they agreed to by using the site.
And unlike television and radio. A person, with the resources, that Alex Jones has, can start his own website and host his own content with its own ad revenue stream as long as it doesn’t violate his ISP terms of agreement.
I've expressed the same sentiments in regards to the forums here. But this forum is a small platform and there are similar-sized equivalents elsewhere, while there is no real equivalent to Facebook or Twitter.
The problem is that Facebook and other social media have become standard platforms for political discourse. It might be legal at the moment for them to host or refuse to host any given content on their site, but being banned means that your speech has less impact than someone who wasn't banned. A private company doesn't have the power to fully silence someone, but a company that controls a major platform has the power to cripple a popular person or organization's influence.
I don't know where exactly we should draw the line, but at some point, a social media platform becomes important enough that banning someone from the platform leaves them with less effective free speech (less influence) than others.
I'll shed no tears for Alex Jones, but I'm worried that this will set a bad precedent.
But how can this argument be made that Facebook, Twitter and Youtube are large enough and have enough of a corner on the market to be regulated as a sort of public utility or good, yet the very internet service that is needed to even access them isn't held to the same standard?? When the Trump Administration killed Net Neutrality, as far as I'm concerned those on the political right have surrendered any ground to make this argument. If they want to start regulating the internet as a public utility again, THEN we can talk about Facebook, Twitter and Youtube being regulated. But not a second before the internet service providers themselves are held to the same standard.
Mind you, I am certain MANY on the right don't like what happened with Net Neutrality, but I sure didn't hear much of a fuss when it was destroyed. What I do know is that every Democrat in the Senate was on board with passing legislation to bring it back, and that they can't get even a modicum of Republican Senators to join them. So this seems to me to be a situation where the consequence of voting a certain way makes the argument about Facebook, Twitter and Youtube very hard to make. Everyone knew Trump would do this. And I can't really abide the idea that websites are going to be regulated as a public utility (which is likely a decent debate to have) when the very ability to even ACCESS them is the wild west.
Beyond that, this is also clearly now a situation where certain conservatives complaining about what is generally know as "deplatforming" all of a sudden are totally and utterly opposed to free markets, which is supposed to be a central belief of that political philosophy. Again, it's ok for bakers to deny service to homosexuals but it's not ok for Youtube to target conservatives. I'm just looking for the smallest ounce of consistency in how we are going to have these debates.
Beyond that, there is a very real argument to be made that Alex Jones is a legitimate danger to the lives of certain people. The Sandy Hook parents have received death threats. The man doesn't just think that one or two mass shootings in the last 5 years was staged, but that ALL of them were false flags conducted by some liberal cabal in the government. The guy is at a bare minimum right on the line of yelling fire in a crowded theater. I'll also remind people that Alex Jones is ground zero for the type of people who show up with a gun at a pizza parlor in DC because Alex Jones has told them there is a pedophile ring being run by Hillary Clinton and John Podesta in the basement of said restaurant. Someone is going to get killed because of this guy sooner than later. I hate Donald Trump with the fire of a thousand suns, but I'm not accusing him of having people murdered or suggesting he is personally running a child sex ring.
The discussion about free speech and Facebook is silly. Free speech has nothing to do with Facebook. As a private service they have every right to filter content in whatever way they want to.
What's more shocking/sad/apparent is that Twitter alone doesn't mind people who peddle lies, fake information, conspiracies, and hate mongering. Twitter is a ok with that. Twitter needs to die like Myspace.
That's not changing anybody's vote so I really don't see what this proves. People will be stupid enough to believe that Donald Trump got 2 billion votes? ABC will announce a winner without checking that their facts are right? You can't hack a voting machine. This article totally explains why I'm against on-line voting however...
This country needs a federally mandated law that puts every precinct onto paper ballots. Flat-out. At this point I am suspicious of anything else. Honestly, I've had serious concerns since 2004 when the CEO of the company that provided the voting machines in Ohio was a die-hard Bush supporter. There is no longer any way to verify whether or not our results are being tampered with. The only thing we have to rely on is the word of the people tabulating the votes. That isn't good enough anymore.
I'd also point out that this trend of exit polls being wrong is not a long-time phenomena, but a recent one, which also has always deeply concerned me.
Beyond that, even if Russian hackers didn't change any votes, we know for a FACT they easily accessed the voting rolls in multiple states. If anything, that was just a dry run for the real thing.
Did we ever get a resolution to that story in (I think) Georgia where the hard drive containing the vote information was DESTROYED before it was set to be presented in court??
- Real. Something a person can actually hold. - Standardized. Ballots should look the same if a person is voting in Alaska or Florida. - Authentic. There should be something to state that it is a real ballot for that district. This can be little as a rep person’s initials as they hand the person a ballot. - Secure. Something that will not tell anyone what the votes says until they are counted. - Double count. Every time a ballot is handed to person a tally should be made. This tally should equal the amount of ballots in the box.
All ballots should be sealed and held for 2 years after an election for auditing purposes. One person is responsible for this and would be held accountable if the audit comes up negative. One person per state/region would be responsible for the sealed boxes, being held accountable if they are tampered with prior to an audit. 10% minimum of boxes per state would be required to be audited following the election. If counts are off from official record, all boxes from that area are to be audited (within a reasonable per cent. One or two ballot miscount would be acceptable for example). These audits would not change the election results (that’d just be shitty for everyone), however, public would be informed of descpencies and all actions to rectify it.
I normally favor electronic systems for everything on the grounds that it's more efficient--and I like the electronic voting machines I've used in the past--but with Russia actively attempting to access voting machines, I think it's safer to go with paper ballots. They might be slightly slower, but they're much harder to fiddle with remotely, and if there's anything in this country that needs to be 100% reliable, it's our elections.
Did we ever get a resolution to that story in (I think) Georgia where the hard drive containing the vote information was DESTROYED before it was set to be presented in court??
According to a Politico article last month, the case still isn't resolved. It does seem pretty clear that the deletion was intentional--Georgia's Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, apparently gave contradictory statements on why the deletion happened. And deleting a server right after the server becomes relevant to a legal suit sounds like classic destruction of evidence.
This might be difficult to do, however. Shortly after the plaintiffs filed their lawsuit in July 2017, technicians at Kennesaw State University wiped the Center’s servers clean, destroying any evidence that might have been on them. Two backup servers also were wiped a month later—news the plaintiffs learned only months later after obtaining emails that disclosed the data destruction. Kemp’s office initially distanced itself from the destruction, accusing the technicians of “ineptitude” for wiping servers that were part of litigation. Kemp later said, however, that the wiping had simply been standard operating procedure performed any time servers were taken out of service.
The good news is that FBI agents in Atlanta made a mirror image of the server that Lamb breached when they were investigating his intrusion, and the plaintiffs are hoping the judge overseeing their case will rule that they can examine this image. It’s unclear, however, whether the image preserved everything that was on the server and whether the image still exists.
A spokesman for the FBI’s Atlanta office refused to comment on the matter and referred POLITICO to KSU. KSU did not respond.
On the anniversary of last year's "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, the same group is gathering 3 hours away on Sunday, in DC this time. Presumably to celebrate the terrorism and murder they perpetrated last year. Never let it be forgotten that BEFORE Heather Heyer was killed, the previous evening featured a group of white nationalists surrounding a church where an inter-faith prayer service was taking place while carrying lit torches chanting "blood and soil". No matter what he claims today, everyone knows how Trump responded after it happened. And it is not something a President should ever get absolution for.
I read somewhere about a country having paper ballots and reading the results in public. Seems like a good idea to improve transparency and trust. Instead of the secret schenanigans we have nowadays.
So what is the plan for this kid exactly in the minds of immigration officials?? That she should fend for herself on the streets of Peru??
That is not 'attempting to deport'. Nobody has threatened this girl with deportation. The parents' are in jeopardy of having an 'illegal immigrant' living with them but nobody is bashing down their door. The girl isn't even illegal yet. Much ado about nothing. Again...
That is not 'attempting to deport'. Nobody has threatened this girl with deportation. The parents' are in jeopardy of having an 'illegal immigrant' living with them but nobody is bashing down their door. The girl isn't even illegal yet. Much ado about nothing. Again...
Zero tolerance is zero tolerance. Why would we *ever* give the benefit of the doubt to an administration that willfully separated children from their parents entering the country - even when those parents were sometimes simply seeking asylum?
Sorry. That ship has sailed. I dont doubt for a moment that Jeff Sessions would have any issue deporting a 4 year old back to Peru. He lost all moral credibility at the border this year.
So the U.S. administration is attempting to bully the U.K. into breaking their word with Iran instead of working with the E.U. on attempting to uphold the agreement.
Not long after Trump threatened to stop trading with any country that traded with Iran, the U.S. ambassador to the U.K., Woody Johnson stated:
"The President has been explicit: any businesses which put their own commercial interests in Iran ahead of the global good will risk serious consequences for their trade with the United States," Woody Johnson wrote in the Telegraph.
"Only by presenting a united front can we exert the maximum possible pressure on the Iranian regime and get them to finally change course and put an end to their malign and reckless activities both at home and abroad."
First off, this administration knows nothing about “the global good.” What’s good for Trump doesn’t mean it’s good for the world.
Secondly, only the UK ambassador has echoed Trump, relying on the uncertainty of what happens after Brexit to threaten them with sanctions or lost trade. Hopefully U.K. tells them to stuff it.
It is sounding like this administrations foreign policy is a one trick pony by applying illigal sanctions and tariffs in attempt to get their way. This attitude will bite them back eventually as no one is going to want to deal with them and exporting American products are going to become more and more difficult as the world adjusts to the U.S. semi closed borders.
It’s already happening with soy. American businesses need to speak up before he bankrupts them all like a cheap New Jersey casino.
So the U.S. administration is attempting to bully the U.K. into breaking their word with Iran instead of working with the E.U. on attempting to uphold the agreement.
Not long after Trump threatened to stop trading with any country that traded with Iran, the U.S. ambassador to the U.K., Woody Johnson stated:
"The President has been explicit: any businesses which put their own commercial interests in Iran ahead of the global good will risk serious consequences for their trade with the United States," Woody Johnson wrote in the Telegraph.
"Only by presenting a united front can we exert the maximum possible pressure on the Iranian regime and get them to finally change course and put an end to their malign and reckless activities both at home and abroad."
First off, this administration knows nothing about “the global good.” What’s good for Trump doesn’t mean it’s good for the world.
Secondly, only the UK ambassador has echoed Trump, relying on the uncertainty of what happens after Brexit to threaten them with sanctions or lost trade. Hopefully U.K. tells them to stuff it.
It is sounding like this administrations foreign policy is a one trick pony by applying illigal sanctions and tariffs in attempt to get their way. This attitude will bite them back eventually as no one is going to want to deal with them and exporting American products are going to become more and more difficult as the world adjusts to the U.S. semi closed borders.
It’s already happening with soy. American businesses need to speak up before he bankrupts them all like a cheap New Jersey casino.
They did the same thing with Germany, as one of the FIRST acts of our newly confirmed Ambassador was to basically order and threaten Germany to stop doing business with Iran. He then gave an interview to a far-right publication basically stating support for Merkel's political opposition. Imagine acting like this when you are a GUEST in someone else's country. Imagine going to someone's home for a dinner party and the first thing you do is DEMAND that your host buy the ingredients for dinner at a store of your choosing. And then for good measure you insult their wife and tell them they should have married someone else.
American businesses (by and large, and especially small businesses) won't turn on him until their pocket book starts taking a significant hit. It wasn't, in the end, Iraq or Katrina or trying to privatize Social Security that sunk Bush's numbers into the abyss. it was his core base of supporters finally getting hit personally and watching their retirement funds evaporate. People can sing whatever tune they want in the interim about always supporting Trump, but the moment their financial situation takes a mortal hit, they will start singing a different tune.
That is not 'attempting to deport'. Nobody has threatened this girl with deportation. The parents' are in jeopardy of having an 'illegal immigrant' living with them but nobody is bashing down their door. The girl isn't even illegal yet. Much ado about nothing. Again...
Zero tolerance is zero tolerance. Why would we *ever* give the benefit of the doubt to an administration that willfully separated children from their parents entering the country - even when those parents were sometimes simply seeking asylum?
Sorry. That ship has sailed. I dont doubt for a moment that Jeff Sessions would have any issue deporting a 4 year old back to Peru. He lost all moral credibility at the border this year.
You may have your doubts about Sessions but I'm sorry, until somebody tries to actually deport this girl NOTHING HAS HAPPENED!
They did the same thing with Germany, as one of the FIRST acts of our newly confirmed Ambassador was to basically order and threaten Germany to stop doing business with Iran. He then gave an interview to a far-right publication basically stating support for Merkel's political opposition. Imagine acting like this when you are a GUEST in someone else's country. Imagine going to someone's home for a dinner party and the first thing you do is DEMAND that your host buy the ingredients for dinner at a store of your choosing. And then for good measure you insult their wife and tell them they should have married someone else.
That is not 'attempting to deport'. Nobody has threatened this girl with deportation. The parents' are in jeopardy of having an 'illegal immigrant' living with them but nobody is bashing down their door. The girl isn't even illegal yet. Much ado about nothing. Again...
Zero tolerance is zero tolerance. Why would we *ever* give the benefit of the doubt to an administration that willfully separated children from their parents entering the country - even when those parents were sometimes simply seeking asylum?
Sorry. That ship has sailed. I dont doubt for a moment that Jeff Sessions would have any issue deporting a 4 year old back to Peru. He lost all moral credibility at the border this year.
You may have your doubts about Sessions but I'm sorry, until somebody tries to actually deport this girl NOTHING HAS HAPPENED!
Yup. We can't just assume that somebody we don't like is doing something bad, simply because we don't trust them. We can't criticize someone based on a hypothetical.
Bear in mind Rule 5: keep things substantive, and focus on real events.
I'm curious. You cite free speech and (rightfully) condemn the act of silencing opposed political ideas. You say Alex Jones' banning from some sites is an example of this.
But also complain that Sarah Jeong is allowed to speak.
What makes these two exapmples different? Alex Jones shouldn't be silenced, because its wrong to silence people. But Sarah Jeong shouldn't be supported or allowed to speak in offcial capacity because what she says is bad?
Sorry that i'm getting back to you a bit late, but this was a fair question and I feel it deserved a response.
We are completely in agreement that there is a blatant double standard at work here, one I acknowledged in my own post a few times. Sarah can make racist statements for years and still be allowed into the halls of the establishment and into public life, no apparent roadblocks occurring as a result of her proven track record of racism. Jones, on the other hand, under the vague claims of hate speech towards trans people and muslims, is banned from almost all major corners of the internet in coordinated fashion and in the span of a single day. Racism is acceptable for liberal journalists and unacceptable for...anyone not fulfilling at least one of the previous two categories, apparently.
But you do go too far in assuming what I want to see be done, rather than asking. I do think these examples are different, don't get me wrong, but I actually wouldn't want to see her fired OR Jones kicked from the internet. Sarah's blatant anti white racism and NYT's acceptance of it is a gift. I've been pointing out the virulent racism against whites that is celebrated and promoted in left wing circles and left wing political figures for so long, and she comes along and hands me yet more proof of everything i've been saying on a silver platter. I would love to see these people's real beliefs be permitted to be shown uncensored to as wide an audience as possible, because ordinary people recoil from the kind of hierarchy-by-ethnicity that underlies so much of progressive thought these days. So no, keep her and keep Jones in my book. Let people honestly air their ideas and let the bad ones be criticized out of existence.
What I would like to see, are consistent and objective standards. It's abundantly obvious the culture of political correctness the left has promoted so heavily for so long is nothing more than a weapon they can use to destroy people they don't like. Were racism or hate speech really a bad thing that we need to exile people for, we would see people on the left get punished for it, instead of getting a free pass. I'd like to see a world where the left doesn't get to ruthlessly destroy people's lives for statements and actions that will mean nothing if they say or do it themselves, with no accountability. Ban people for hate speech or do not, either way, do so in a manner where there is an equal playing field for all.
I'd like to say this would be the only example of it, but it's really not. From the highest ranks of the Democrats on down and in their media we see it consistently. Keith Ellison one of the top DNC guys is a former member of the anti semitic nation of Islam and many Democrats, including him and Obama and Maxine Waters and more had ties with racist black nationalist Louis Farrakhan. If Trump had met with or praised someone half as racist as Farrakhan, say, someone like Richard Spencer, we'd be having the media equivalent of a nuclear meltdown at the moment. This is the equivalent of Trump and John McCain and other high up republicans meeting with David Duke and we hear little to nothing of it, let alone any sort of penalty. Trevor Noah can call aboriginal women ugly. Left wing media can say virtually anything about whites.
But really, this is just my "white fragility" in action, I just need to dry up those "white tears" because what I don't realize is my "white privilege" makes it all okay. In fact, Huffington Post made a chart on what offends white people and why. Really, it's just my "white authority" is being challenged and that's what makes me so upset about the whole thing.
I've been pointing out the virulent racism against whites that is celebrated and promoted in left wing circles and left wing political figures for so long...
It's abundantly obvious the culture of political correctness the left has promoted so heavily for so long is nothing more than a weapon they can use to destroy people they don't like... I'd like to see a world where the left doesn't get to ruthlessly destroy people's lives for statements and actions that will mean nothing if they say or do it themselves, with no accountability.
I agree with your complaints about anti-white sentiment--I've long found it grating myself--but stereotyping liberals as racists is against the Site Rules and the thread rules.
I've long found the concept of "white privilege" and the phrase "to those with privilege, equality feels like oppression" frustrating and condescending. I personally can see numerous ways in which I've been privileged, some of which may well be due to being white, but I can't abide by the stereotype that white folks are uniformly privileged by default, or that disagreeing with far-left orthodoxy makes you a closet tyrant who just wants to preserve their own power at the expense of others.
I don't dispute that being white makes you less likely to suffer from certain problems, but the notion that it's universal and inherent is a stereotype.
Both concepts are impervious to logic and detached from the boundaries of evidence. Ever since Peggy McIntosh coined the term, there's this idea that privilege is "invisible," and that people who dispute its existence must be ignorant. Problem is, if it's invisible... then it's a non-falsifiable hypothesis. I don't think "you can't see it because it's invisible" constitutes a valid proof. If it is real, it's provable.
Claiming that it's invisible is a cheap cop-out. You can't just define everyone who disagrees with you to be blind to reality.
The second phrase, "to those with privilege, equality feels like oppression," is a complete Catch-22: If you disagree with me, that means you're secretly an ally to the evil forces of oppression. It's used to dismiss every criticism of the concept of white privilege... and it, too, is based on a stereotype: "white people don't agree because they're inherently ignorant."
Every single bullet point is a variant of "white people are ignorant" or "white people are evil." This is not an intelligent argument; this is just another string of lazy stereotypes.
When you begin with the assumption that people who disagree with you are stupid and bad, it's impossible to ever change your mind because you've defined the world such that you can only be right.
Let's assume EVERYTHING about this so-called anti-white reverse racism is true, just for a hypothetical. Let's assume that many white people are sick of having to hear about how bad they are. That is essentially the extent of it. They have to HEAR about something. Because no matter what happens, their skin color isn't going to cause them to get pulled over for no reason by a cop a dozen times a year. It's not going to cause them to lose out on an apartment or follow-up interview for a job because their name sounds too black. It isn't going to cause them to be sentenced to 20% longer criminal sentences for committing the EXACT same crime as someone of the majority racial demographic. It isn't going to cause their kids to get punished more in school for committing the EXACT same infractions as someone of the majority demographic. All of which ABSOLUTELY takes place everyday in this country and is backed up by statistical evidence:
Being white isn't going to cause people to call the cops on you for such everyday mundane activities as being a child selling lemonade without a "license", legally having a BBQ in a public park, falling asleep in a commons area at a college dorm room, checking on a house you are selling as a real estate agent, or not even being able to spend 5 minutes waiting for a friend in a Starbucks before a veritable SWAT team is called in to haul you off to jail. These are only about 5 examples of the DOZENS I have read about just in the last 3 or 4 months:
So when people talk about "white fragility", they are doing so because simply having to listen or hear about how our society or even individual actions a person may take are racist is absolutely NOTHING compared to the never-ending avalanche of bullshit African-Americans and other minorities in this country have to endure on a daily basis just to EXIST. It surrounds them like a choking gas cloud, and can't possibly be understood in any real way without having to live through it on a daily basis. We are talking about one group basically having their feelings hurt with words and the other side not being allowed to exist as full members of society without having to wade through a swamp full of bullshit to get to the same place everyone else does just by walking out the door.
If we are going to talk about the tangible effects of racism being directed against you, on the side of African-Americans we have 150 years of slavery, broken promises on Reconstruction, another 100 years of de-facto slavery in many parts of the country and 100% 2nd class citizenship, and NO opportunity to create generational wealth for the vast majority of the history of this country. And on the white side we have.......someone being harsh to them on the internet or possibly losing their ability to broadcast on Youtube.
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I wouldn't call it "dumb", only mis-timed. As I noted, at some point someone "will* weaponize things being put into orbit (presuming they haven't done so already) and I agree with @BillyYank --getting a presence off the surface of the planet is a forward-thinking thing to do. Without a presence off-world, at some point when the planet-killer meteor hits if we are still stuck here then absolutely everything we have ever done will have been for nothing. Ozymandias was right about that, at least.
GOP: "SPACEFORCE"
I'm curious. You cite free speech and (rightfully) condemn the act of silencing opposed political ideas. You say Alex Jones' banning from some sites is an example of this.
"Alex Jones getting mass-banned from large portions of the internet, Google, Facebook, Apple and more, in the same day: A predictable and inevitable consequence of the modern day political strategy to silence, deplatform, and unperson anyone not-leftist for wrongspeech or wrongthink, imposing a climate of fear where everybody is afraid to speak their minds or say controversial or unpopular things for fear that they, too, will be the latest victim of the outrage mob."
But also complain that Sarah Jeong is allowed to speak.
"New York Times hiring blatant and unapologetic racist Sarah Jeong- predictable and inevitable. Hatred of whites is acceptable and altogether mainstream on the left. NYT hired her not in spite of her hatred of whites but because she is representative of them and their ideology. This has been tolerated and supported for so long, it's no surprise it's making it's way into the most mainstream of mainstream political outlets."
What makes these two exapmples different? Alex Jones shouldn't be silenced, because its wrong to silence people. But Sarah Jeong shouldn't be supported or allowed to speak in offcial capacity because what she says is bad?
I don't care about either of these people, and I don't lean either way politically. But I'm having a hard time resolving these two different stances with your value of free speech.
Define "No one". I talk to people regularly who still swear up and down that "The Wall" is going to happen. I'm sure that there is a sizeable number of people who are all in on the Space Force idea as well.
The problem is that Facebook and other social media have become standard platforms for political discourse. It might be legal at the moment for them to host or refuse to host any given content on their site, but being banned means that your speech has less impact than someone who wasn't banned. A private company doesn't have the power to fully silence someone, but a company that controls a major platform has the power to cripple a popular person or organization's influence.
I don't know where exactly we should draw the line, but at some point, a social media platform becomes important enough that banning someone from the platform leaves them with less effective free speech (less influence) than others.
I'll shed no tears for Alex Jones, but I'm worried that this will set a bad precedent.
You couldn’t walk into a radio or television station and demand your time to speak your mind about a topic. At most you could call in, have your phone call screened by a producer who may or may not give you the air time to speak your mind.
A person’s free speech wasn’t being infringed upon when that was the standard political discourse. It was still a private company controlling the message even more so than the extent that Facebook/Google/Twitter do.
Free speech means the government won’t prosecute you for speaking your mind. That doesn’t save a person from slander/libel or defamation claims against those very same words. That doesn’t mean a person can break the terms of agreements they agreed to by using the site.
And unlike television and radio. A person, with the resources, that Alex Jones has, can start his own website and host his own content with its own ad revenue stream as long as it doesn’t violate his ISP terms of agreement.
Mind you, I am certain MANY on the right don't like what happened with Net Neutrality, but I sure didn't hear much of a fuss when it was destroyed. What I do know is that every Democrat in the Senate was on board with passing legislation to bring it back, and that they can't get even a modicum of Republican Senators to join them. So this seems to me to be a situation where the consequence of voting a certain way makes the argument about Facebook, Twitter and Youtube very hard to make. Everyone knew Trump would do this. And I can't really abide the idea that websites are going to be regulated as a public utility (which is likely a decent debate to have) when the very ability to even ACCESS them is the wild west.
Beyond that, this is also clearly now a situation where certain conservatives complaining about what is generally know as "deplatforming" all of a sudden are totally and utterly opposed to free markets, which is supposed to be a central belief of that political philosophy. Again, it's ok for bakers to deny service to homosexuals but it's not ok for Youtube to target conservatives. I'm just looking for the smallest ounce of consistency in how we are going to have these debates.
Beyond that, there is a very real argument to be made that Alex Jones is a legitimate danger to the lives of certain people. The Sandy Hook parents have received death threats. The man doesn't just think that one or two mass shootings in the last 5 years was staged, but that ALL of them were false flags conducted by some liberal cabal in the government. The guy is at a bare minimum right on the line of yelling fire in a crowded theater. I'll also remind people that Alex Jones is ground zero for the type of people who show up with a gun at a pizza parlor in DC because Alex Jones has told them there is a pedophile ring being run by Hillary Clinton and John Podesta in the basement of said restaurant. Someone is going to get killed because of this guy sooner than later. I hate Donald Trump with the fire of a thousand suns, but I'm not accusing him of having people murdered or suggesting he is personally running a child sex ring.
I'd also point out that this trend of exit polls being wrong is not a long-time phenomena, but a recent one, which also has always deeply concerned me.
Beyond that, even if Russian hackers didn't change any votes, we know for a FACT they easily accessed the voting rolls in multiple states. If anything, that was just a dry run for the real thing.
Did we ever get a resolution to that story in (I think) Georgia where the hard drive containing the vote information was DESTROYED before it was set to be presented in court??
- Real. Something a person can actually hold.
- Standardized. Ballots should look the same if a person is voting in Alaska or Florida.
- Authentic. There should be something to state that it is a real ballot for that district. This can be little as a rep person’s initials as they hand the person a ballot.
- Secure. Something that will not tell anyone what the votes says until they are counted.
- Double count. Every time a ballot is handed to person a tally should be made. This tally should equal the amount of ballots in the box.
All ballots should be sealed and held for 2 years after an election for auditing purposes. One person is responsible for this and would be held accountable if the audit comes up negative. One person per state/region would be responsible for the sealed boxes, being held accountable if they are tampered with prior to an audit. 10% minimum of boxes per state would be required to be audited following the election. If counts are off from official record, all boxes from that area are to be audited (within a reasonable per cent. One or two ballot miscount would be acceptable for example). These audits would not change the election results (that’d just be shitty for everyone), however, public would be informed of descpencies and all actions to rectify it.
Seem simple enough?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/the-trump-administration-is-ensnared-in-another-border-dispute--this-time-with-canada/2018/08/11/43bcc8aa-9800-11e8-818b-e9b7348cd87d_story.html?utm_term=.b260e7629e72
https://kdvr.com/2018/08/09/colorado-parents-fighting-to-stop-legally-adopted-four-year-old-daughter-from-being-deported/
So what is the plan for this kid exactly in the minds of immigration officials?? That she should fend for herself on the streets of Peru??
Zero tolerance is zero tolerance. Why would we *ever* give the benefit of the doubt to an administration that willfully separated children from their parents entering the country - even when those parents were sometimes simply seeking asylum?
Sorry. That ship has sailed. I dont doubt for a moment that Jeff Sessions would have any issue deporting a 4 year old back to Peru. He lost all moral credibility at the border this year.
Not long after Trump threatened to stop trading with any country that traded with Iran, the U.S. ambassador to the U.K., Woody Johnson stated:
"The President has been explicit: any businesses which put their own commercial interests in Iran ahead of the global good will risk serious consequences for their trade with the United States," Woody Johnson wrote in the Telegraph.
"Only by presenting a united front can we exert the maximum possible pressure on the Iranian regime and get them to finally change course and put an end to their malign and reckless activities both at home and abroad."
First off, this administration knows nothing about “the global good.” What’s good for Trump doesn’t mean it’s good for the world.
Secondly, only the UK ambassador has echoed Trump, relying on the uncertainty of what happens after Brexit to threaten them with sanctions or lost trade. Hopefully U.K. tells them to stuff it.
It is sounding like this administrations foreign policy is a one trick pony by applying illigal sanctions and tariffs in attempt to get their way. This attitude will bite them back eventually as no one is going to want to deal with them and exporting American products are going to become more and more difficult as the world adjusts to the U.S. semi closed borders.
It’s already happening with soy. American businesses need to speak up before he bankrupts them all like a cheap New Jersey casino.
American businesses (by and large, and especially small businesses) won't turn on him until their pocket book starts taking a significant hit. It wasn't, in the end, Iraq or Katrina or trying to privatize Social Security that sunk Bush's numbers into the abyss. it was his core base of supporters finally getting hit personally and watching their retirement funds evaporate. People can sing whatever tune they want in the interim about always supporting Trump, but the moment their financial situation takes a mortal hit, they will start singing a different tune.
Bear in mind Rule 5: keep things substantive, and focus on real events.
We are completely in agreement that there is a blatant double standard at work here, one I acknowledged in my own post a few times. Sarah can make racist statements for years and still be allowed into the halls of the establishment and into public life, no apparent roadblocks occurring as a result of her proven track record of racism. Jones, on the other hand, under the vague claims of hate speech towards trans people and muslims, is banned from almost all major corners of the internet in coordinated fashion and in the span of a single day. Racism is acceptable for liberal journalists and unacceptable for...anyone not fulfilling at least one of the previous two categories, apparently.
But you do go too far in assuming what I want to see be done, rather than asking. I do think these examples are different, don't get me wrong, but I actually wouldn't want to see her fired OR Jones kicked from the internet. Sarah's blatant anti white racism and NYT's acceptance of it is a gift. I've been pointing out the virulent racism against whites that is celebrated and promoted in left wing circles and left wing political figures for so long, and she comes along and hands me yet more proof of everything i've been saying on a silver platter. I would love to see these people's real beliefs be permitted to be shown uncensored to as wide an audience as possible, because ordinary people recoil from the kind of hierarchy-by-ethnicity that underlies so much of progressive thought these days. So no, keep her and keep Jones in my book. Let people honestly air their ideas and let the bad ones be criticized out of existence.
What I would like to see, are consistent and objective standards. It's abundantly obvious the culture of political correctness the left has promoted so heavily for so long is nothing more than a weapon they can use to destroy people they don't like. Were racism or hate speech really a bad thing that we need to exile people for, we would see people on the left get punished for it, instead of getting a free pass. I'd like to see a world where the left doesn't get to ruthlessly destroy people's lives for statements and actions that will mean nothing if they say or do it themselves, with no accountability. Ban people for hate speech or do not, either way, do so in a manner where there is an equal playing field for all.
I'd like to say this would be the only example of it, but it's really not. From the highest ranks of the Democrats on down and in their media we see it consistently. Keith Ellison one of the top DNC guys is a former member of the anti semitic nation of Islam and many Democrats, including him and Obama and Maxine Waters and more had ties with racist black nationalist Louis Farrakhan. If Trump had met with or praised someone half as racist as Farrakhan, say, someone like Richard Spencer, we'd be having the media equivalent of a nuclear meltdown at the moment. This is the equivalent of Trump and John McCain and other high up republicans meeting with David Duke and we hear little to nothing of it, let alone any sort of penalty. Trevor Noah can call aboriginal women ugly. Left wing media can say virtually anything about whites.
But really, this is just my "white fragility" in action, I just need to dry up those "white tears" because what I don't realize is my "white privilege" makes it all okay. In fact, Huffington Post made a chart on what offends white people and why. Really, it's just my "white authority" is being challenged and that's what makes me so upset about the whole thing.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/anna-kegler/the-sugarcoated-language-of-white-fragility_b_10909350.html
Can you even ****ing imagine a chart like this for any other race or class of people in existence.
Accusing people of racism is not acceptable here.
I don't dispute that being white makes you less likely to suffer from certain problems, but the notion that it's universal and inherent is a stereotype.
Both concepts are impervious to logic and detached from the boundaries of evidence. Ever since Peggy McIntosh coined the term, there's this idea that privilege is "invisible," and that people who dispute its existence must be ignorant. Problem is, if it's invisible... then it's a non-falsifiable hypothesis. I don't think "you can't see it because it's invisible" constitutes a valid proof. If it is real, it's provable.
Claiming that it's invisible is a cheap cop-out. You can't just define everyone who disagrees with you to be blind to reality.
The second phrase, "to those with privilege, equality feels like oppression," is a complete Catch-22: If you disagree with me, that means you're secretly an ally to the evil forces of oppression. It's used to dismiss every criticism of the concept of white privilege... and it, too, is based on a stereotype: "white people don't agree because they're inherently ignorant."
This is the chart @WarChiefZeke mentioned.
Every single bullet point is a variant of "white people are ignorant" or "white people are evil." This is not an intelligent argument; this is just another string of lazy stereotypes.
When you begin with the assumption that people who disagree with you are stupid and bad, it's impossible to ever change your mind because you've defined the world such that you can only be right.
https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/11/17/16668770/us-sentencing-commission-race-booker
https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/4/5/17199810/school-discipline-race-racism-gao
Being white isn't going to cause people to call the cops on you for such everyday mundane activities as being a child selling lemonade without a "license", legally having a BBQ in a public park, falling asleep in a commons area at a college dorm room, checking on a house you are selling as a real estate agent, or not even being able to spend 5 minutes waiting for a friend in a Starbucks before a veritable SWAT team is called in to haul you off to jail. These are only about 5 examples of the DOZENS I have read about just in the last 3 or 4 months:
https://www.vox.com/first-person/2018/5/17/17362100/starbucks-racial-profiling-yale-airbnb-911
So when people talk about "white fragility", they are doing so because simply having to listen or hear about how our society or even individual actions a person may take are racist is absolutely NOTHING compared to the never-ending avalanche of bullshit African-Americans and other minorities in this country have to endure on a daily basis just to EXIST. It surrounds them like a choking gas cloud, and can't possibly be understood in any real way without having to live through it on a daily basis. We are talking about one group basically having their feelings hurt with words and the other side not being allowed to exist as full members of society without having to wade through a swamp full of bullshit to get to the same place everyone else does just by walking out the door.
If we are going to talk about the tangible effects of racism being directed against you, on the side of African-Americans we have 150 years of slavery, broken promises on Reconstruction, another 100 years of de-facto slavery in many parts of the country and 100% 2nd class citizenship, and NO opportunity to create generational wealth for the vast majority of the history of this country. And on the white side we have.......someone being harsh to them on the internet or possibly losing their ability to broadcast on Youtube.