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@Alec
Polygamy is among the most barbaric institutions ever practiced by the human race. It made women into "prizes" for wealthy men to accumulate and hoard, it made poor men desperate enough to commit murder and rape as ways of life. Christianity accomplished the will of the "invisible hand" of progress in abolishing the practice and then in exporting strict monogamy to much of the rest of the world.
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@drafterman
Unless you believe the effects of centuries of slavery and discrimination magically vanish over night
To be fair, nobody is saying this. Slavery ended 154 years ago. I'd hardly call that"overnight". Jim Crow laws were abolished more than 50 years ago. That's not "overnight" either.
To put how long 50 years is in proper perspective, 50 years ago Singapore was more or less a 3rd world country. They themselves carried the stigma of having been colonial subjects but that didn't stop them from building a great country.
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@Greyparrot
There's no better place on the planet to be born colored than in the USA today, assuming you have 2 parents.American wealth and opportunity is insane comparatively.
Sure. This is true. But why speak in these terms? White Americans automatically expect to achieve *at least* a lower middle class standard of living. Why should a certain subsection of the population expect less than this simply because of who their ancestors were and what their skin tone is? (Mind you we're not talking about non-citizens here we're talking about Black-Americans.)
Keep in mind also that there's a concept called relative deprivation. If you're poor *compared to what's normal for your society* you're going to feel like your life doesn't have much value and, unfortunately, some other people are going to act towards you according to this same assumption. This is an issue that a desperately poor person in a society of desperately poor people doesn't have to deal with.
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@Alec
Whites: Yes. Nature does not provide automatic advantages to compensate for the socioeconomic disadvantages of being born black, so it's a clear disadvantage in almost every respect. One could justify this by saying "White privilege only exists because this is a majority white country and elsewhere other groups are privileged whereas we are not" but Africa's such a crappy place to live anyway that this logic sort of rings hollow.
Men: Yes and no. Masculinity comes with clear advantages and clear drawbacks. It's obviously a very complicated package and it's not objectively clear whether it's "better" to be born one gender or the other.
Women have ENORMOUS social privilege from possessing physical beauty. The average guy knows little to nothing of this privilege. On the other hand, women have to pay a price for this by way of monthly pains and unwanted sexual harassment.
While women do have the physical ability to *ahem* derive carnal pleasure from stimulating materials, men have a way easier go at this. They do it much more frequently and there's probably a lot more "material" for them to choose from. On the other hand, women are usually more sociable and have more and deeper friendships than men, who are an increasingly friendless demographic. In the long run the latter thing is far, far more important in determining quality of life, especially when you consider that a fair number of men do for personal and religious reasons choose to abstain from self-stimulation. In addition, it's more socially acceptable for women to be emotionally expressive and receive emotional support during rough seasons of their lives. Most men lived somewhat repressed existences in this regard.
Men have to risk the humiliation and emotional pain of rejection, since they're the ones who have to ask women out lest they be forever alone. On the other hand, women have significantly more to lose if they get paired up with a "bad" partner.
Women are the ones who have to put up with the perils of unwanted pregnancy and childbirth. This one's obviously quite substantial. But on the other hand, if a man wants to one day be the father to his unborn son or daughter, it's not his choice. The mother, even if she's his wife, can simply abort the pregnancy and there's nothing he can do about it. Because as far as the law's concerned he's nothing more than a sperm donor.
Men live shorter lives on average, even accounting for differences in lifestyle. They're more likely to be treated roughly by the police and the justice system as compared to a woman who is equally guilty. They are on occasion subjected to false rape accusations, which have the potentially to utterly destroy a man's life and deny him due process. On the other hand, a woman's more likely to be molested/raped at any age than men/boys are. Rape is a life-altering and potentially life-shattering event which is all too common.
Both feminists and MGTOW/Incel types suffer from extreme myopia as each perceives their own gender to be uniquely and unequivocally oppressed and that the problems faced by "the other side" don't matter.
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They should eventually be presented with the option. But not immediately. If, say, five or six years after Brexit the economy is still doing alright then maybe they'll reconsider. Otherwise, they should have the right to leave then. Brexit has been afforded a popular mandate several times now, so all British subjects are obliged to give it a chance before resorting to measures that would tear apart the political fabric of their country.
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@TheRealNihilist
If they actually claimed to be a University, they would do what Trump did: establish a physical location and convince some gullible people to shell out big bucks to attend phony "classes" there. Instead, it's just this YouTube channel that people watch for free. It's true that they ask for donations from viewers, but that's not so terribly unusual.
At the very least, they would claim to have a real-world University that the channel was operating from, thus affording them a credibility which is otherwise lacking. The people in the videos would claim to be "researchers" for or connected to the University, presenting their "findings" for the general public.
But they don't do that. Instead, the people giving the videos always state who they are and what kind of work or group they're connected to. They don't claim to be fricking professors.
And I said "gimmick", not joke.
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@TheRealNihilist
Yeah, the "University" part is just a gimmick. They do not seriously claim to be a university so holding that against them seems kind of petty.
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Usually it's the "all-natural all vegan no GMOs I hate big pharma" types who reject vaccines. These kinds of people tend to be quite socially liberal. Your run of the mill Evangelical Christian is not this. Having spent my entire life in the Evangelical Christian community, I've yet to come across someone IRL who refuses to get their kids vaccinated. I'm sure there is a fringe group somewhere out there which, for example, associates vaccines with the mark of the beast, but if they exist then their numbers would be few.
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@HistoryBuff
(Keep in mind that everything I'm saying here about Trump is "Assuming that he's guilty", something that could legitimately not be the case.)
So even though we know for a fact that trump has committed multiple crimes in office, you don't think we should do anything about that because some other people (who don't have the power of the presidency) also do shitty stuff? That is stupid.
You don't actually believe this to be true. Bill Clinton committed perjury and the general response to this by Democrats was "Well it's just a little thing, it doesn't really matter, the Republicans are obviously doing this for politically motivated reasons." If you were there in 1998/1999 I have no doubt your response would've been the same.
That's a joke right? Pretty much everyone on the right has bent over backwards to defend him.
Fox News hosts don't count as "everyone on the right". He has had many public rows with Republican politicians.
Because evil should be fought.
If you really meant that, your politics would look radically different than they do. Everyone's would.
Trump is abusing the power of his office in order to get a second term.
If "abusing the power of his office" is what he has to do to have a fair race in which either everyone's past gets mercilessly dredged up or nobody's does, then so be it. The problem is not Trump but rather the larger system that drove Trump to resort to the measures that he did. Either acknowledge that the entire system (including the criminally biased and monolithic news media plus the ideological collusion of 90% of celebrities and public figures to the exclusion of that roughly half of the country that thinks and votes differently) is f**ked up, and then do something about it, or leave Trump alone.
The founding fathers were afraid of someone exactly like trump seizing power.
The Founding Fathers could not have conceived of the America that Trump was a reaction against. George Washington punished gay sex with the death penalty in his army. Many of the Founding Fathers owned slaves. The systemic hatred of organized religion that permeates the modern press would've shocked even those few of them who were deists.
Of course there is, we get the money out of politics. Ban all private contributions to political campaigns. Ban elected officials from going to work at big companies after they leave office. We need to remove the ways that private companies and billionaires can control politicians. That's why we need a president like Sanders.
That is only a part of it. Politicians are motivated not just by money but also by power and prestige.
People like Sanders and Warren have not.
How could you possibly know this?
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@HistoryBuff
Also, in this instance the "crime" that Trump stands accused of is trying to turn up dirt on a guy from the other party. Normally I would consider this akin to weaponized law, if not for the fact that Trump has already had his entire past blown wide open for the public to ooh and ah over whereas his opponents pretty much get a clean pass 95% of the time. Because of the agonizingly intense scrutiny he has undergone, I regard him trying to do the same to somebody else as adding to a general proportionality.
Ultimately, since enforcement against corruption is already as selective as it is, we really do have a choice whether to let Trump go on a technical violation of the law or not. I'm not convinced that any legalities were trampled over, but either way the idea that he "has to be impeached" is bullcrap.
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@HistoryBuff
Let me put it this way.
In mainland China right now, Hong Kong and Macau notwithstanding, the general tendency of Chinese people is to think "Everything is just fine. The economy's doing great and the current government is providing stability and making China a superpower on the global stage." This is in spite of the fact that their government routinely censors freedom of speech and of the press and has committed horrific crimes against its Christian, Muslim, and Falun Gong practicing minorities. In spite of the fact that China does not hold free elections, in spite of the fact that every level of government over there is probably riddled with graft.
Why do they tolerate this? Because it's all that they know, because the status quo has been the status quo for so fricking long.
In America, the current two-party system has been in effect for over 150 years straight now. Or, that is, over twice as long as the Chinese communist party. Both parties here comprise absolutely enormous political machines that have totally dominated generation after generation after generation of local and national government.
We have term limits. Why? Because we're afraid of the possibility that if one guy is allowed to be in power for very long stretches of time he might be able to consolidate control over the government and make himself a dictator. And yet we're perfectly fine with the same two parties ruling for 150+ years straight.
I'm not going to mince words here: every aspect of American political life is totally in the grip of the Democratic and Republican parties. They do, at least in theory, have the power to cook any book, to manufacture or to silence any witness, and to render the federal bureaucracy subservient to their every whim.
In Congress there is something of a collegiate atmosphere. Lawmakers are buddies with fellow lawmakers, even with those belonging to the other party. Buddies stand up for each other, and cover for each other, when accused of something illegal. In addition, each lawmaker has obvious reason to want to cover it up if his or her self falls into corruption. The natural rationale is "I'm doing good work for the country, if I go to jail now then I won't be able to accomplish anything else" or "If I get caught doing this then my party will suffer, and my party needs to stay in power to accomplish good work and keep the bad people on the other side from having their way". Or at least, that's how the more benevolent-minded Congressmen would rationalize it. Less charitably, they'd recognize and embrace their own selfish motives.
Even when Congressmen hate each other, they know that if they make a big stink of trying to expose dirt on the other, the other guy or party could turn around and do the same to them. Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if the party bosses exchanged kompromat as a way of facilitating good relations and a basic level of cooperation.
Ultimately, the American system still works for most of its people. Corruption in Congress, so far as it most definitely does exist, is not so bad as to justify trying to overthrow 230 years of republican democracy and the stability inherent in our Constitution. If there are peaceful ways to lessen corruption, we ought to look into that, surely.
But here's the thing. Even if Trump is guilty of everything that he stands accused of (and the Establishment most certainly does have the means to frame him of stuff he didn't do), doing away with him would not being "taking a stand against corruption". Because selective enforcement of laws against corruption and graft by some political actors against others is not rule of law. It's weaponized law, which is the same as anti-law. If the Elites use the cover of law to do away with anyone who would challenge them, in such a way that the law does not hold them accountable for their deeds but rather strengthens and upholds their position of power, that is anti-law.
Trump is a billionaire, yes. But money alone does not buy you a spot in the Establishment. Trump's an obnoxious, unsophisticated blowhard. He always has been one, and so he has little in way of friends. In addition, he hasn't had a large stake in key industries/institutions such as oil, Hollywood or the university system. The Establishment is a social circle of influential/powerful people. Trump stands alone, for better and for worse.
Ultimately he is not a great reformer. All he cares about is being a two-term President who retires with a sizable base of adoring fans, because he is a man of very simple tastes. He quickly alienated the Establishment on both sides, which is why he's facing challenges and attacks from all directions. To some degree Republicans in Congress are stuck with him, but even then there are still many Republicans there who are gunning to be rid of him.
So if it's a question of one sonuvab**ch over another, why does it matter? Because there's nothing you or I can do about the larger issue of corruption in America. So the defining attribute of politicians is whether you like their policy positions or not.
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@HistoryBuff
No, if he wanted an investigation he would have referred it to the FBI or to congress to look into.
Yes, well, the FBI and Congress haven't exactly been keen on doing whatever the President asks. He's had 2+ years of experience now in trying to deal with them. If he had asked the FBI to investigate Hunter Biden, they would've made the request public knowledge and accused him of corruption all the same. He can't win by trying to work within the confines of a system that's rigged against him and hellbent on undermining him at every turn.
And given the deep connections and leverage that members of the Establishment have among each other, even if they had complied with his request their ability/willingness to conduct such impartially would've been sorely compromised from the onset. The only way to ensure an actual investigation would've been to ask somebody who didn't already have a stake in the investigation's final outcome, such as a newly elected, anti-establishment Ukrainian president.
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We know far, far too little about any of them. All we can see is a procession of carefully crafted public personas. In the Trump era we have a right to know about every skeleton in their closet.
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@coal
Abortion is my least favorite political subject, yet it is always asked about. Here you are, doing just that...
My bad. Sorry.
Do you perceive that as you grow older your tendency is to enjoy things less and less? If so, how should one respond to this, ideally?
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(Let me add to this: I've heard stories that many parents in the US enthusiastically support their child's decision to transition because they secretly don't want a gay son or daughter and would even prefer a transgender son/daughter over that. With that in mind, I think it's fair to say that if this screening were to become widely available tomorrow plenty of people would make a decision of whether to terminate based on its findings.)
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@coal
If abortion in general is not immoral, what makes sex-selective or sexual orientation selective (assuming tests for such will become available in coming years) abortions different? Doesn't the argument that this is vile discrimination rely upon the assumption that the fetus is being denied something that they are owed on the arbitrary basis of the presence of a certain trait?
Or, do you not have any qualms with it?
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@coal
Is Wahhabism acceptable so far as people freely choose to practice it?
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@coal
As in regards to our country's policies aimed at changing less economically developed nations, what should we be trying to achieve?
1. An end to state compulsion that requires people to live in a more traditional/repressed context
2. Active promotion of lifestyle choices not amenable to local indigenous custom (which obviously includes Option 1)
3. Neither, but only that the local governments are receptive to the practical interests of the United States
If option 2, is a culturally and religiously pluralistic world actually desirable?
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@Dynasty
Yep. I remember watching RPM.
That's as good a reason as any to be a Power Rangers fan. RPM was pretty much the pinnacle of older children's programming as conceived of by American civilization.
And also exorbitantly pricey to make, by the look of it. That was probably a wake-up call for Disney that their "cash cow" was looking to be more trouble for them than it was worth, so they sold it to people who didn't give a hoot about quality work or production value and pinched pennies all the way through every new season from 2011 to the present.
What happened to Power Rangers was a shame. By all indicators even the Hasbro purchase didn't solve anything. It's safe to say that the "glory days" of 2003-2009 are never coming back.
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It really doesn't matter at this point. The Palestinians can't survive in that land anyway. It's already insanely overcrowded, and to boot they appear to reject the use of birth control, meaning the problem's only going to get way worse. If every Israeli settlement was vacated tomorrow that would only buy the Palestinians some time. If Israel lifts the blockade then Palestinian violence against them would pick back up within a couple of months or years as Hamas becomes able to purchase rockets and artillery pieces on the world market, and even if not I can't imagine Palestinian economic growth outpacing the coming ecological catastrophe.
The only humane option is to evacuate all of them from the Palestinian territories and resettle them in the Arab world, which has plenty of space. Towards this end, the US and Israel could've intervened in the Syrian Civil War, set up their own government, and then shipped a large portion of the Palestinian population there.
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@HistoryBuff
Whoops, I forgot to tag you. See post #6.
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I mean the attorney general is supposed to be non partisan. They are not supposed to be an advocate for a political party or any particular person, including the president.
I'm not sure how true this is in practice, but yeah, it was a rather partisan speech, I'll admit. During Obama's presidency the common fear among Republicans was that the executive was too strong, for the simple reason that a member of "the other party" was running the executive at that time. Now the tables have turned, so they adjusted their behavior accordingly.
But the Mitch McConnell had been laughing and announcing that he was going to block everything under Obama and making it part of his election campaign that he would do it again if the Democrats won in 2020.The republicans have been destroying norms and rules for years to try to block the executive branch when it wasn't controlled by them.
This isn't as true as you might think, actually. To quote Barr in his address:
"A prime example of this is the Senate’s unprecedented abuse of the advice-and-consent process. The Senate is free to exercise that power to reject unqualified nominees, but that power was never intended to allow the Senate to systematically oppose and draw out the approval process for every appointee so as to prevent the President from building a functional government. Yet that is precisely what the Senate minority has done from his very first days in office. As of September of this year, the Senate had been forced to invoke cloture on 236 Trump nominees — each of those representing its own massive consumption of legislative time meant only to delay an inevitable confirmation. How many times was cloture invoked on nominees during President Obama’s first term? 17 times."
"Just to summarize briefly, nationwide injunctions have no foundation in courts’ Article III jurisdiction or traditional equitable powers; they radically inflate the role of district judges, allowing any one of more than 600 individuals to singlehandedly freeze a policy nationwide...Since President Trump took office, district courts have issued over forty nationwide injunctions against the government. By comparison, during President Obama’s first two years, district courts issued a total of two nationwide injunctions against the government. Both were vacated by the Ninth Circuit."
(Keep in mind that there are plenty of district court judges who were appointed by Republicans, and there were plenty such from 2009-2017. Any one of them could've done to Obama what's being done to Trump now, but for the most part they did not exercise this power.)
He thinks that the president should be a quasi dictator.
Nope. He argues that there are certain areas that belong solely to the executive, as there are areas that belong solely to the legislature or to the judiciary. Instead of this being the case, however, in the Trump era the legislature and judiciary have moved to strip the executive of much of its traditional authority/ability to operate and function, in a fashion that's without precedent in American history.
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Attorney General William Bar did, on November 15, give an address at a convention of the Federalist Society, or, more particularly, to a gathering of conservative lawyers under the banner of this organization.
In his address, he argued that the independence of the executive branch has come under unprecedented attack from the other two branches during the Trump era, pointing to record-breaking use of injunctions by miscellaneous lower courts to block initiatives of the current administration on a nationwide level, along with other grievances.
The full speech can be read here:
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@Goldtop
Says the guy who discriminates against gays and now wants to be exonerated so he can pretend to be a good guy. Too late, you've already made your bed, now you have to sleep in it. Lol.
Yup, this post just about sums up the myopia of present-day America.
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@Barney
I personally enjoy the ease of seeing if any new responses have been added to a thread to which I'm interested (the vote request thread as a prominent example), without having to click into it, and then on to the current page
Dang it, you're right. It would have that effect, wouldn't it? What I meant is that there should be no "Last post" feature on the main forums page, but there should be such in the subforum pages, as by the time you're on that page you can already see what other threads are available for posting in. However, admittedly it might not be plausible for Mike to remove one without also getting rid of the other.
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@Barney
Are there any forums currently on the chopping block you would suggest leaving separate? And are there any forums you would like added?
"Cars", "Fashion", and "Nature" could be eliminated. "Games" could be divided into "Games"/" Video Games" and "Forum Games".
but you worry change could go in the wrong direction so propose none be done.
Incorrect. My proposal is that Mike remove the "Last post" option. Him doing so would probably not be overly difficult, as it entails removing an existing feature rather than creating a new one, and doing so would significantly increase quality of use for many users, as forcing them to view a forum category page would regularly expose them to options other than whatever the "trending" topic of that given moment is.
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@Barney
Do either of you have any points in favor of the Status Quo offering users greater utility than the current proposal?
It's not that the status quo is good. Rather, it's that what you're proposing (shrinking the number of forums) will make things worse.
Mike, when designing this site, surely thought to himself "What features, if added, will improve utility?" It must've seemed intuitive at the time that to add a "Last post" feature to the right of each forum category would improve utility.
And yet, this assumption is wrong. I thought this feature sucked when I saw it on edeb8 and I think it sucks here as well.
Because you see, when people see that "Last post" option, their brains will (usually) just be like "Oh that's the thread I ought to be checking out". But let's say, for a second, that this feature didn't exist. What then? In that case, every time you wanted to check out a forum you'd actually have to click on it, and see all of the threads recently created/posted in. As it stands right now, when one thread is busy even a newly created thread in that same forum can be "drowned out" by the ongoing discussion in the other thread, and thus never viewed by anyone but the original poster.
Imagine if there was just one forum category. There would literally only be one or two active threads at any one time on DART. While what you're proposing obviously isn't shrinking the number to one, fewer existing categories will only exacerbate this problem.
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The church fought to abolish exposure in the late Roman Empire, just as it fought to abolish gladiator games and slavery. While these actions were not directly rooted in Biblical canon, they drew upon a moral understanding derived from the Gospel, the writings of the Apostles, and the OT. This was a particularly glorious age in the history of Christendom, where the Holy Spirit moved visibly upon the Church, inspiring great works.
At least one of these great works has been undone in our times by a pagan resurgence in American culture. Let's not cheer and clap as it happens.
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I did a bit of reading into the background of the bill. It was pushed hard by Jared Kushner (trump's son in law). Trump then endorsed it and pressured republicans in the senate to pass it. The trump administration was pivotal to this being passed.
Assuming that every single Republican voted for the bill (unlikely, given that Republicans have consistently framed themselves as being "tough on crime" since at least the 1980s) it would've required at least 117 Democrat Representatives (out of slightly less than 200) to muster the 358 "Yes" votes that it did.
This was a bipartisan bill, born in large part from years of pressure exerted by the left-wing press to curb the tide of "mass incarceration".
While I agree that the title is intending to lead to a specific narrative, the title is accurate.
If after the Pulse Night Club Shooting Fox News published a headline saying "49 killed in terror attack perpetrated by son of Muslim immigrants let into our country on account of pro-immigration policies that the contemporary Left has always pushed on the country" it would be technically true but not a helpful title for an article at all, wouldn't you agree?
If a large number of people are released early from prison, at least a handful are going to go on to commit crimes, because that's what former inmates do. If anything, their time in prison makes them more likely to re-offend. As Michael Dukakis would tell you, this is going to happen whether the politicians doing the releasing are Democratic or Republican.
If the fact that this happens justifies gutting the programs, then just say so. If the bill is something you would agree with had Obama backed it, then you don't get to blame Trump for whatever bad results might ensue when he decides to do so. Criticizing Trump on this particular item is tantamount to admitting "this policy we've always supported was a mistake". If the policy is still worthwhile then Trump did good in spite of what happened with this certain ex-con, and even if you hate him for everything else you can't get on to him about this one thing. On this one item you have to either concede he did good or keep quiet.
The fact that CNN, a notoriously hard-left outlet whose news anchor cried on Trump's election night and babbled nonsense about America being "no longer safe" for black people, would hate on Trump for supporting the exact kind of prison reform they've been pushing for years suggests a lack of integrity or concern for truth on their part, and instead a desire to paint Trump in a bad light literally no matter what he does. This, in turn, further casts doubt on the validity of the countless reports/rumors they and their ilk have raised about the President. Maybe some of it is true, but all of it definitely isn't.
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CNN just published a certain article. While the article's content is nuanced enough, it has a provocative headline, and if the reader doesn't bother to click on the article (opting instead to only read the headline) it'll leave exactly the impression that the media is hoping for.
It describes a bipartisan bill, signed by Trump, which released some inmates from prison. Criminal justice reform, to be clear, is a policy fixation of Democrats. Republicans and Trump simply went along with it this time.
Anyways, one such guy released is now accused of murder. The article headline read something to the effect of "Prisoner released by Trump reform accused of murder".
The reason why they'd frame it this way is obvious: anything that pushes the long-running narrative of the Trump administration being riddled with incompetency and failure they will say gladly. Even if it's mainly the Democrats' fault. As is the case here.
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@Mopac
Are you a convert to Orthodoxy or were you born into it? If the former, what attracted you to it? Was it that you were impressed by orthodox spirtuality? Some kind of apologetic reason?
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I'll accept its usage so far as it's proportionate. If they berate millennials (and, soon enough, Gen Z) for underperforming in the adult world without recognizing how ridiculously easy it was in their day compared to now, then they deserve contempt. Otherwise...
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@Jeff_Goldblum
The Prime Directive is foolhardy. If they develop naturally, they could turn into a bloodthirsty militaristic civilization which develops spaceflight and then starts attacking everybody else. If somebody had been around the block to rehabilitate the Klingons 2000 years prior to the start of the series a butt ton of death could've been prevented.
In addition, the Prime Directive does not prevent the Klingons or Romulans from intervening in a primitive civilization. Their intervention would doubtlessly be much worse so the humane thing would be for the Federation to make sure first contact happened on their benevolent terms.
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(I put it here because I didn't want to disturb the people playing mafia.)
Who else is playing this right now?
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Mississippi (2010): 58%
Alabama (2010): 67℅
Louisiana (2010): 59.3℅
Florida (2010): 57.9℅
Georgia (2010): 55.9℅
Arkansas (2010): 74.2℅
Tennessee (2010): 66.3℅
South Carolina (2017): 63.8℅
North Carolina (2010): 65.3℅
Oklahoma (2010): 68.7℅
Texas (2010): 45.3%
Please note I haven't listed every state Trump won, only southern states Trump won. But the South is less white than the North, as only one southern state exceeded the 70℅ threshold.
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Whoops, forgot Hawaii, at 26.7% in 2015.
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@PaulVerliane
You're right about California. New York is 58% non-Hispanic white, which by blue state standards is pretty good. But how about the rest? Let's take a peak.
Maine (2010): 94.4% non-Hispanic white
New Hampshire (2010): 92.3%
Vermont (2013): 94.3%
Massachusetts (2014): 73.7%
Rhode Island (2014): 76.4%
Connecticut (2010): 71.2%
New Jersey (2011): 58.9%
New York (2010): 58.3℅
Maryland (2017): 41.6%
Delaware (2010): 65.3℅
Washington D.C. (2017): 36.8℅
Virginia (2018): 62℅
Washington state (2017): 57.9℅
Oregon (2012): 77.8%
California (2016): 37.7℅
Nevada (2016): 51.3℅
Colorado (2010): 70%
New Mexico (2017): 27.4℅
Minnesota (2017): 79℅ or greater
Illinois (2010): 63.7℅
These are all places/districts Hillary won in 2016. All but four (and one of these four isn't even a state) have majority white populations, and mind you, I used a more strict definition of white to get these results. Of these 20 listed, 9 have a non-Hispanic white majority of 70℅ or greater.
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@PaulVerliane
Fourth:
Speaking of ethnic minorities, a disproportionate sum of poverty is non-white. Or, more specifically, black and Hispanic. Both groups seem to be disproportionately concentrated in red states.
Vermont, one of the most liberal states in the union, is overwhelmingly white.
THIS right here greatly contributes to the "blue states are rich, red states are poor" narrative, though of course it doesn't completely explain it away.
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@PaulVerliane
Third:
I am from the South. Not, say, Virginia. No. Virginians are carpetbaggers. When I say "South" I mean the deep South. The Gulf Coast region, to be more specific. This is one of the poorest regions in America.
And yet, where I live the vast majority of people are decently well off by American standards. They have well-maintained homes and all the luxuries that Americans take for granted. In fact, there's only one "bad part of town" (that I know of) where people live in visibly shoddy homes, and it's a neighborhood predominantly inhabited by *ahem* ethnic minorities.
That is to say, Red States, while perhaps not usually as well off, are clearly part of the First World. Hence, they would not "collapse" without subsidies.
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@PaulVerliane
Second:
The less-urbanized "interior" provides big cities with something they desperately need to sustain growth.
You see, talented and ambitious people migrate to cities from the interior because, as central commercial hubs, these places are best suited to provide them with the resources and connections to realize (or attempt to realize) their dreams.
This brain drain fuels cities and more than makes up for however much they pay in subsidies through federal taxes.
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@PaulVerliane
You've got some things wrong here.
To start with, wealth is always going to be concentrated in urban areas. Urban areas tend to vote for leftist parties. This is a correlative relationship, not a causative one. An area which was previously rural, conservative, and poor might very well become more liberal as it became richer and more urbanized.
There are several reasons for this, but one is that richer people, especially those concentrated in cities who made their wealth in the service or administrative sectors, as opposed to resource extraction, have a greater desire to be a part of the "in crowd" which controls most of the levers of society and which in America has traditionally ascribed to a paternalistic, neoliberal, quasi-imperialistic ideology that is socially left wing.
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@Harikrish
Buddha achieved enlightenment in his life time.
Funny that you should mention Buddha, whose teachings were eventually rejected in most of the Indian subcontinent. His ideas fell outside of mainstream Hindu thought, making him a schismatic. If you embrace Buddha then your relation to Hinduism is that of a Christian to Judaism.
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@Harikrish
Hinduism is a transcendental religion. It teaches spirituality and finds all life sacred. It has a God for every occasion exhibiting the omnipresence of God in everything created. You don't have to search for God in Hinduism. He is everywhere and in everything created.
So you take the Hindu gods to be allegorical for an omnipresent divinity? Why go through all that trouble just to say something Christianity, Judaism, and Islam have always taken for granted (that God is omnipresent)? What makes Hinduism special, in that sense? The only thing I can think of is the Hindu claim that all of the nature gods are real, which makes Hinduism little different from various other tribal mythologies.
It is a religion of second chances. Forgiveness is earned through Karna and cycle of rebirths
Okay...? One problem with this is, while Hinduism accepts an eternal soul, that soul evidently has little control over what the mortal body does. So there is no way to remember the sins of a past life, and yet you're punished for them anyway through bad karma in the next life. What if you were a bad guy in your past lives? For all practical intents and purposes you're a different person now from the one who did those things back then but you're being punished anyway.
and not dependent on killing or sacrificing Jews like Christian believe Jesus a Jew had to die for their sins.
This is a comical and absurd misrepresentation of the Gospel but whatever.
My God, my God why have you forsaken me!
This is also a part of Christian doctrine: that as Jesus took on the sins of the world, God the Father, perfectly holy and therefore having nothing to do with sin, had to turn His face away.
Also, Jesus's last words were "It is finished". Not "My life is finished" or "Oh crap what did I do to get myself in this pickle" but "It is finished". What was finished? His divine mission of redeeming humanity through His death.
Hinduism is the original religion of the people
So is every tribal mythology. Are you now going to tell me that every tribal mythology is true in content?
Hindus have preserved the integrity of Hinduism and all its traditional requirement.
So has Christianity. The OT of the Jews is the one that Christians use. Archaeological evidence suggests that the Christian NT canon has been the same for 2,000 years. A first century (that is, within 70 or fewer years of Jesus's ministry) Christian document called the Didache said things that were in line with mainstream Christian teaching that Christians today hold true. There is no evidence whatsoever of a "corruption" of the faith, save in the lives of individual believers who choose to persist in sin and heresy.
Christianity had abandoned the commandments that were the foundation of its distinction from other religions after it broke away from its Judaism roots.
Nope. Jesus regularly quoted the Old Testament to support His claims. It was the mainstream Jewish establishment that got it wrong, and it was Jewish individuals who were the first to believe in His Gospel and in the correct interpretation of the old writings as illuminated by His coming.
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@Harikrish
Christianity as a religion has blood on its hands.
In the broader sense, sure. Christianity is a religion and there have always been people willing to kill on account of religions. You really think there's never been a Muslim murdered by an angry Hindu? Or a Christian convert murdered by a local angry Hindu?
You do realize there's like 100-200 hundred million people in India who live their entire lives regarded as trash because their religion said they were born trash. It took Western (*cough* Christian *cough*) influences to formally abolish this perverse system but even today many Hindus take it seriously.
As a theology it portrays the God of the bible as a genocidal lunatic.
And I suppose the Hindu gods never killed anyone?
it fails scientific scrutiny. Science, archeology demolishes the events of the bible such as the Exodus, Noah's flood and Jerico as totally fictional.
And I suppose everything in Hindu scripture is scientifically accurate?
Jesus was rejected by the Jews
The Bible's pretty clear that people choose whether to accept or reject truth. The Jews rejected Jesus and that was their own failing.
the very people he was sent to save.
Yes and no. The Gospel was proclaimed "first to the Jews" but "then to the Gentiles". As a universally applicable narrative it would make no sense to offer salvation only to those members of a single small ethnic group.
The Romans crucified Jesus and to add insult to injury established The Roman Catholic Church to displace Judaism the religion that Jesus followed.
The church was institutionalized, yes. But Christianity was about 280 years old by this point.
There are 30,000 denominations of Christians because their religious leaders disagreed with the interpretation of the Bible.
This reflects the choices and shortcomings of people, not of God. At the same time, though, these "30,000 denominations" agree on 80-90% of stuff. The core doctrines of the Christian faith are accepted by all of these save maybe the Mormons and similar fringe groups.
It is impossible to die for the sins of others.
Says who? You? You can't, sure. You're a fallible human being with your own sins to pay off. But God, without blemish, the Creator of the Universe? I don't see why not.
It's important to note also: there are varying interpretations of what Jesus accomplished on the cross. The common view is simple atonement, but in keeping with the larger Biblical narrative Jesus is also described as a conquering King who was mighty enough to redeem men from the hold of sin. The cross, while atoning, also served to demonstrate God's infinite power and love.
Human sacrifice was banned by the God of the Bible.
Jesus is God, not a mere man.
Also, what do you think God meant? "Do not murder people/needlessly throw away their lives in vile pagan rituals" or "I will arbitrarily limit myself from accomplishing what I seek to accomplish, the redemption of humanity, because that interpretation of my words is the one that will make some smug guy on the internet thousands of years later sound right"?
Anyone can do what you're doing: take the words of a religious text and twist them to mean things the original author never had in mind. The fact that it is grammatically possible to so twist words does not in itself discredit anything whatsoever. It merely reflects limitations of human communication. Otherwise, anyone could do the same to Hindu texts and thereby discredit Hinduism.
Jesus was not sacrificed he was crucified.
So they tried to seize Him, but no one laid a hand of Him, because His hour had not yet come.
(John 7:30)
"Put back your sword," Jesus said to him. "For all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Are you not aware that I can call on My Father, and He will at once put at My disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen this way?
(Matthew 26:52-54)
So Pilate said to him, "Do You refuse to speak to me? Do You not know that I have authority to release You and authority to crucify You?" Jesus answered, "You would have no authority over Me if it were not given to you from above.
(John 19:10-11)
Yup, sounds rather voluntary to me.
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@Harikrish
(In response to post #6)
There's two main categories of things to look for in a religion:
1. Theology
2. Cosmology
Broadly defined, theology is the "core message" of a religion that distinguishes it from other belief systems. "Worship Vishnu" as opposed to "Worship Zeus" does not count as such. Rather, that would count as a cosmological (again, broadly defined) detail. Cosmology entails the name and physical description of deity, the history of what that deity did, and so on. It entails a description of a Universe rife with supernatural elements.
Christianity has a truly excellent theology, universal in scope, answering the most important questions in life.
For example: "I've done some really crummy things in life, or at least had really bad and inexcusable thoughts. People in general think I'm a good guy but I don't feel like that's really the case. Assuming a moral Universe, is there some kind of cosmic consequence for my underlying bad nature?"
Indian religions (and to be clear, there is no unity in these either) assume rather that "Life is inherently full of suffering" and (in Hinduism) bad karma is the reason. This begs the question, of course: If we were originally of a pure divine essence, did that pure divine essence commit sin?
In addition, "Life has more suffering than not" is a generalization which obviously isn't always true. And yet the universal instinct of Indian religion is to find "liberation" from existence regardless of its conditions.
In Christianity, though the effects of individual sin may not be observable in life, it still exists in the larger sense, though perhaps invisible in the material world. This lends some credence as to why somebody needs God even if they're living a fabulously awesome life on earth.
Another thing: Hinduism, however good its theology, has an insanely impractical cosmology. Like for example "The eight armed blue guy slew the demon, carved out his entrails to form the Himalayan mountain range". Not an actual Hindu idea but it's often something as zany as this, something thoroughly incompatible with our modern scientific understanding of the world.
How do you answer to this?
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So, just so I understand the situation: you resigned your Mod post, and then outright quit the community you've been a very active part of for 5-7 years, on account of one joking comment that some people took offense to?
What bullcrap. THIS is what's wrong with contemporary society. We live under a blanket, intent on suffocating us with greater prejudice than the Mosaic Law. Anything that there's a digital record of, whether written during an immature or crazy phase in one's life, or in a moment of provocation not indicative of regular behavior, or a comment made in a moment of poor judgment, will be used by a judgmental mob of equally problematic people to define the totality of one's being and his (perceived) rightful standing within a given space.
Come back this instant, tell the haters you're not going anywhere, and leave it at that. Every time somebody like you capitulates, that reinforces this toxic mob-think, the idea that it's okay to arbitrarily hold some people up to a standard that most people couldn't hope to pass.
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Bsh1 made a new thread asking user feedback like once every other week. It was actually a little annoying. But the mods held themselves to a degree of accountability that you'd be hard-pressed to find anywhere else.
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