coal

 If the GOP can totally shed the old cultural issues it has lost on (like gay marriage) and focus on the new social issues, that I think are much stronger positions, like opposing wokeness and giving kids unregulated hormone therapy, and can move just slightly to the left on economics it will be the dominant party...but idk if that will happen.  It's annoying because the GOP doesn't have to go full DSA, but if voters could believe that there was no chance they would cut social security and medicare and they would stop obsessing over tax cuts that would probably be enough

• The best song he wrote, in my opinion, was Ceremony.  Few recordings survive, and he never settled on the final lyrics.  This version was recorded at Birmingham University, and remastered in 2007.  
  
• My other favorite song was Shadowplay, with Ian on lead vocals.   The Birmingham University version is excellent, although the 2007 remastered Unknown Pleasures (album) version is of considerably higher quality. 

• "Transgender individuals are known to be a population at risk for multiple mental health challenges, as well as negative and dangerous sequelae of maladaptive coping behaviors." 
  
• The point here is that it is medical error to simply assume that the self-reported psychological harms associated with being trans are because you're trans. 
  
• There is almost always something else going on, which goes to the conceptual problems in even delineating those who are actually trans from those who just have a fetish.  
  
• The article additionally references:
  
• Corliss 2008, which describes hormone-seeking behavior of transgender youth who, despite having multiple co-morbidities (depression, anxiety, behavioral health issues and other co-morbidities), conclude by self-diagnosis that they are transgendered without any kind of diagnosis of that sort.
  
• Reisner 2015, which notes that, "[c]ompared with cisgender matched controls, transgender youth had a twofold to threefold increased risk of depression, anxiety disorder, suicidal ideation, suicide attempt, self-harm without lethal intent, and both inpatient and outpatient mental health treatment." 
  
• Olson 2015, which describes the pre-existing psychological baselines of self-identified transgendered youth from the ages of 12-24 years; finding that "More than half of the youth reported having thought about suicide at least once in their lifetime, and nearly a third had made at least one attempt."
  
• Yet, there is no evidence whatsoever that so-called "hormone replacement" therapies, puberty-blocking "therapies," or other such pharmaceutical interventions meaningfully improve anything. 
  
• It's not like any of those findings are new, either.  Since the 1980s-1990s, e.g., articles such as Coates 1990, summarize findings as early as 1954 to 1990 identifying that so-called gender dysphoric disorders almost only occur "in the context of significant family psychopathology." 
  
• Granted, Coates 1990 was published in the context of the DSM-III, although gender-dysphoric disorders were amply recognized along similar diagnostic criteria then as now.   Little has changed, including the complete lack of clinical evidence supporting that so-called hormone or puberty-blocking therapies yield any sort of identifiable benefit.
  

• That means that if you think you're a girl born in a boy's body at age 9, by age 14 there's an 85% chance you're not going to feel the same way.
  
• Specifically, "the large majority (about 85%) of prepubertal children with a childhood diagnosis did not remain GD/gender incongruent in adolescence."  That means that, for about 85% of the so-called "trans kids" who the "gender affirming" types want to pump full of hormones and neuter/castrate as some kind of "therapy," they'll grow out of it by the time they even hit puberty. 
  
• Potentially because, according to Zucker 2012, children conflate the concept of a sexual fetish or paraphyllia with what a gender even is.  Of course, "identity disorder and transvestic fetishism youth [also] had high rates of general behavior problems and poor peer relations." 
  
• See also, Steensma 2011, which finds that childhood gender identity disorders of all kinds tend to revert at some point throughout adolescence, even if such children became aware of gender-nonconforming feelings from a very early age.  
  
• The clinical literature demonstrates that, for example, according to Steensma 2013, there is no clear underlying biological basis for any onset gender identity disorder, and gender identity development depends at least on a complex interplay between biological, environmental and psychological factors including sex-related experiences in adolescence; specifically "males who discover the association between dressing in female clothing and intensely pleasant sexual sensations in early adolescence." Read: it's a fetish. 
  

• One such risk is that any kid that transitions finds themselves in the 85% majority of prepubertal children with a childhood diagnosis of some kind of gender identity disorder, according to Hembree 2017.   Notably, if you decide to transition, you cannot transition back.  Puberty-blocking pharmacological "therapies" and hormone replacement "therapies" are not reversible, as the clinical literature cautions.  
  
•  Further, hormone replacement or suppression "therapies," and sex-reassignment surgeries profoundly increase the risk of both suicidal ideation and behavior.  For example, Dhejne 2011, the largest study on this subject, from Sweden, finds that surgically "[s]ex-reassigned persons also had an increased risk for suicide attempts," and prevalence of psychiatric inpatient care.  It turns out that, according to the data, 10-15 years after surgical reassignment, the suicide rate of those who had undergone sex-reassignment surgery rose to 20 times that of comparable peers. 
  

Um... have you considered that perhaps the economic collapse due to the pandemic that occurred? So.. you know - just a tad of false equivocation. Furthermore - um - you also are presenting the implicit argument that people earning minimum wage (current) is "okay" or at the very least, worth what it takes to upkeep our economy - and even if I do accept your argument that it will "destroy small business" - it's assuming that violating people's ability to not be in poverty is worth the economic sustainability.... and that's just not true. 

An ethical dilemma is precisely that - ethical - it doesn't particularly matter that this will occur-  all it means is that now we have a new problem that we need to counter. Simple.

ASD is DSM-5’s most explicit dimensional category, encompassing DSM-IV’s pervasive developmental disorders (PDDs) involving deficits in social relating: autistic disorder, Asperger’s disorder,Rett’s disorder, childhood disintegrative disorders, and pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS). Construing Asperger’s and PDD-NOS as mild forms of autism,DSM-5 places all these conditions within one category diagnosed using two symptom dimensions derived from DSM-IV’s autistic and Asperger’s dimensions: deficits in social interaction andrepetitive behavior patterns.

Severity levels for each dimension are illustrated in charts and linkedto need for support The backdrop is that these categories were used inconsistently by clinicians, and diagnoseshad remarkably risen (for all autism-related categories, but especially PDD-NOS) from roughly 1 in 2,000 children in the 1970s and 1980s to 1 in 68 or perhaps higher today (Lord & Bishop2015). This occurred as diagnostic criteria were broadened and as these conditions became linkedto provision of public support.

These DSM-5 changes proved highly controversial. One reason was that parents of childrenwith milder Asperger’s—a relatively destigmatized category represented by sympathetic televisioncharacters and purportedly applying to many famous people, from Beethoven to Einstein—fearedthat classifying the disorder with more severe autism would increase stigma.

A greater concernwas that the translation from DSM-IV criteria to DSM-5 criteria was not exact, and the lower endof ASD’s dimensions seemed to set a diagnostic threshold that eliminated many mild DSM-IVAsperger’s cases from ASD diagnosis (e.g., DSM-IV Asperger’s required two social interactionsymptoms and one repetitive behavior symptom, whereas DSM-5 ASD requires three social interaction symptoms and two repetitive behavior symptoms).

Moreover, DSM-5’s dimensionalizationeliminated the PDD-NOS category, which had been heavily used for diagnosing milder conditions. Some studies supported fears that the ASD category would exclude substantial numbers ofchildren previously diagnosed with PDD-NOS (McPartland et al. 2012).

Some observers welcomed what they saw as an overdue correction to overpathologizing normal range eccentricity and social ineptness. However, the overriding concern was that public supportfor special education might be withdrawn from those who would no longer qualify for diagnosis.

DSM-5 tried to address the loss of PDD-NOS by adding a new diagnostic category for milderconditions, social (pragmatic) communication disorder, which allows diagnosis of interpersonalcommunication difficulties without repetitive behaviors.

However, the status of this new categoryin terms of public support remains unclear, and parental concerns have not been assuaged.In a bizarre twist, DSM-5 addressed the threatened loss of special education services with aclause that simply grandfathered in those diagnosed using DSM-IV within ASD: “Note: Individuals with a well-established DSM-IV diagnosis of autistic disorder, Asperger’s disorder, or pervasivedevelopmental disorder not otherwise specified should be given the diagnosis of autism spectrumdisorder.”

This clause has no legal force, but autism organizations are working to ensure thatschool systems abide by it.

Is DSM relevant anymore, with the National Institute of Mental Health’s brain-oriented Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) initiative getting under way (Garvey et al. 2010)? Unfortunately,on the eve of RDoC, DSM-5 presented a conceptually sloppy and unjustifiably expansive revision,exacerbating the false positives problem and playing to RDoC’s appeal.

• a group of rightwing loons tried to attack the capitol
  
• and murder
  
• a whole bunch of members of the government
  
• in an attempt to overthrow democracy.
  

• They that is a far bigger threat
  
• than any islamist one in years. that is a pretty massive magnitude.
  

• The definition / standard for what counts as terrorism is by no means obvious.  You should review some of the academic literature and legal discussion on this subject.  
  
• I specifically noted the conceptual difficulty in distinguishing crime that is terrorism from crime which is not.  In the broadest sense, terrorism includes all violence done for political reasons.  But that definition is inadequate for its over inclusiveness, as I stated above. 
  
• There is great, amply noted difficulty in arriving at any workable definition of terrorism in the relevant legal and academic literature, the world over.  For example:
  
• The UN General Assembly defines terrorism as: 
  
• "Criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstance unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or any other nature that may be invoked to justify them."
  
• The Arab Convention for theSuppression of Terrorism was adoptedby the Council of Arab Ministers of theInterior and the Council of Arab Ministersof Justice in Cairo, Egypt in 1998.  Terrorism was defined in the conventionas:
  
• "Any act or threat of violence, whatever its motives or purposes, that occurs in the advancement ofan individual or collective criminal agenda and seeking to sow panic among people, causing fearby harming them, or placing their lives, liberty or security in danger, or seeking to cause damageto the environment or to public or private installations or property or to occupying or seizing them,or seeking to jeopardize national resources."
  
• UN Security Counsel Resolution 1566 (2004) defines terrorism as: 
  
• "[C]riminal acts, including against civilians, committed with the intent to cause death or seriousbodily injury, or taking of hostages, with the purpose to provoke a state of terror in the generalpublic or in a group of persons or particular persons, intimidate a population or compel agovernment or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act."
  
• Even in the United States, what counts as "terrorism" depends on which section of the US Code you're looking at.
  
• Title 18, Sec. 2331 defines terrorism as “…activities that involve violent… or life-threatening acts… that are a violation of thecriminal laws of the United States or of any State and… appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce acivilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affectthe conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and…(C) occur primarilywithin the territorial jurisdiction of the United States."
  
• But, the Patriot Act defines terrorism as "threatening, conspiring or attempting to hijack airplanes, boats, buses or other vehicles" or "threatening, conspiring or attempting to commit acts of violence on any "protected" persons,such as government officials." 
  
• And the FBI, CIA and NSA each have unique working definitions of what they think terrorism is; with unique methods of applying those standards, and internal practices related to the same. 
  
• And that is to say nothing of the fact that the Department of Commerce, Department of State and Department of the Interior all have their own definitions too; and their own methods of interpreting those definitions, applying them and the like. 
• So, it is by no means obvious what "the definition of terrorism" is, as you claim; and your very generalized definition is unworkable, either from the perspective of international diplomacy or American law enforcement. 
  
• I told you above that there are serious methodological problems involved in how acts of "terrorism" are categorized.  I gave you a specific example of how the expansive scope of what counts for "terrorism" can be manipulated for political reasons, which is after all the primary focus of my thread.  
  
• You have not addressed that, or even tried to engage with it.  Do you understand what I said?  Do you understand how the breadth/scope of what counts for "terrorism" can vary depending on the perspective from which you're looking at events in the world?  
  
• Your claim that a bank robbery or disgruntled employee's ransacking his employer's former office can be "easily distinguished" from terrorism is unavailing, where the very definition of terrorism that you proposed turns on motive and intent rather than outcome.  If either of those acts were committed for political reasons, they're terrorism by definition.   And because intent is something that is very subjective, and does not lend itself to white-and-black type interpretation or categorization; you're not in a position to make the claims you did, about distinguishing either from terrorism as you have defined it. 
  
• Your question of "Why does this confuse you?" is irritating as well.  This is a subject matter you clearly don't understand at the level you think you do. 
  
• Your understanding of January 6, 2021 is profoundly deficient. 
  
• Provide evidence that, as you claim "a group of rightwing loons tried to attack the capitol and murder a whole bunch of members of the government in an attempt to overthrow democracy. They that is a far bigger threat than any islamist one in years. that is a pretty massive magnitude."
  
• And do not assume that just linking a news article is going to cut it. 

• "Right wing terror attacks are actually much more common";
  
• "there have only ever been a handful of terrorist attacks in america by Islamist groups"; or 
  
• "groups like al-Qaida are considerably less threatening that right wing terrorists".
  

1. Right wing groups are domestically based, whereas Islamist groups tend to coordinate internationally.  This means that international communications are far more likely to be intercepted by, among others, the NSA and American law enforcement due to more relaxed restrictions on communications survelance relating to communications with foreign nationals as opposed to among American citizens.  Basically, Islamist terror acts are a LOT more likely to be identified and prevented than anything with a purely domestic origin, which would include so called "far right" extremist attacks.
   
2. The number of attacks deterred is a better measure than number of successful attacks.  And you do not have access to that information (nor do I), beyond what is published by, among others, law enforcement such as the DOJ and FBI.  And nothing the CIA does is ever published, unless something has gone horribly wrong.  So when American intelligence intercepts, for example, an American who tried to sneak into northern Iraq to receive training from ISIS on the expectation that such a person would thereafter return to the United States for terrorist purposes; the only way that ever gets mentioned is if the DOJ indicts that person.  Sometimes, that happens.  Often, it does not.  Usually, that person would disappear to a CIA blacksite, never to be heard from again.  
   
3. The magnitude of attacks' harm, in terms of human and property costs, is relevant to the comparative threat level posed by either right wing extremists or Islamist terror groups.  For example, Islamists tend to favor soft targets inside the United States but coordinate their efforts with groups in, among other places, Pakistan, the horn of Africa, Afghanistan and Northern Iraq.  Their expressly stated goals (as reflected on, for example, ISIS propaganda sites which you can find without difficulty though I will not link them here) are to maximize human casualties to the degree possible.  Right wing extremist groups, to the extent they exist (which is exaggerated in my estimation), literally have not identified maximizing human casualties as a stated goal, ever.  Left wing groups have, in both the United States and Europe, from the 1960s on.  But right wing groups have not.  Their goals tend to be only political in nature; and any "attack" they plan is consistently limited to use of violence as a means to an end as opposed to the end itself.  In this way, to claim that the magnitude of threat posed by any specific attack is the same for right wing extremist groups and islamist groups is completely absurd.  Literally no lucid interpretation of the underlying data (as available on, for example, the DOJ's and FBI's public disclosures relating to the same) entails that conclusion.