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@Kritikal
Elementary school should not exist in the first place.
Okay, you've come totally unraveled and I don't think you're very serious about this topic. Everything else past this point is frothing at the mouth and nonsense in the real world. But this little gem...
This is not fair to children who are not wise enough to understand gender yet, and who will likely go along with anything they are told.
Can you tell me how you came by your religion?
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@Kritikal
Well, in that case I choose not to respect the new identity
That's fine! You're free to do so, and everyone else is free to call you a dick or think you're not a dick, depending on that person's view, right? And you aren't going to complain about it, because just as you're enjoying your freedom, everyone else on this topic is enjoying theirs as well. And any business you might own, people are free to tell others "The guy that owns that is / isn't a bigot, and chooses to respect / disrespect the identities of others even though it has no direct impact on his day to day life. I would / wouldn't do business there," right? Land of the free!
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@Kritikal
I have not advocated for the creation of any laws
Should elementary school children have learning materials that demonstrate acceptance of transgender people as just people, free from stigma?
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@Kritikal
The vast majority of gender identity either stem from abuse or the new culture of 'acceptance'.
Is there data backing up this claim? Also, 'acceptance' is what freedom requires.
As for the latter, it is usually solved very quickly by contradicting the person and explaining why they are whatever gender they were born with.
Can you explain why they are whatever gender they were born with to, let's say, a 9 year old boy who feels more like his feminine classmates than his masculine ones? "You are not what you claim to be, rather you are a member of the male gender BECAUSE _______." I just want to see what the quick explanation is. I think it has something to do with a person's genitals, which honestly, not my business.
This is why the predominance of transgenderism has increased 100 fold in the 21st century, especially in young children.
You don't think this has anything to do with the more wide acceptance of transgenderism in general, that the ratio is likely around the same but because we are on the whole more accepting of transgenderism that more people, including children, are comfortable identifying as such, but rather that there are in fact more transgenders and gay people because of this pronoun issue?
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Ovbiously it does affect the person using the pronouns, but it is not healthy to use the pronouns for them either.
How does it affect YOU, the person who doesn't want to use the pronouns, though? I mean besides you're worried someone thinks you're a dick for not doing something so simple (aka backlash).
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@n8nrgim
Should we then make minors whose maturity exceeds their adult counterparts eligible to purchase guns? That's the solution you're going to get. The answer is always MORE GUNS.
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@n8nrgim
i would like all those 'guns are just tools' people to finally acknowledge the common sense and science
Don't hold your breath. :)
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Doctors also take the hippocratic oath meaning they are not supposed to hurt people, so they probably should not preform a transgender surgery either.
THat's not the hippocratic oath. It's first do no harm. Not don't hurt people. Ever had surgery? They all hurt.
Is the religion true, does it have good values, or does it teach children to mutilate themselves?
All religions claim yes, yes, and some, yes, respectively. Circumcision, for example.
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@n8nrgim
irrefutable logic.
But not actionable.
2A people are just going to say "oh well, it's in the constitution, so buy a gun if you're so scared" or "all it takes to stop an irresponsible adult with a gun is a responsible adult with a gun, so buy a gun you liberal pussy, otherwise the Brits will just march back in here and take over."
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@Kritikal
It is inherently wrong to use pronouns like zee, ziz, tee, and ter. These make you sound ridiculous, and saying words like that will actually discredit you in the public. You most certainly should not be forced to use improper pronouns that you and others think are wrong simply because of fear from backlash.
I don't think "inherently wrong" is the same as "make you sound ridiculous." What happens, effectively, if you use one of these pronouns at someone's request? What's the public reaction if you did it in a Starbucks, for example? I guess I don't understand what the 'backlash' for using them is. Can you explain further, with like specific examples?
he effect of it is having more people who are trans, and as such more people who are going on hormones and even mutilating themselves. This is not good for them, but by using the wrong pronouns it affirms and encourages it.
So pronouns lead to people mutilating themselves and going on hormones. What about the people who genuinely want to pursue their happiness without conforming to birth gender, who then live in the shadows, hide those instincts, then end up in years of therapy, on all sorts of pharmaceuticals, etc., plus all the other effects on lives like depression, suicides, families estranging their own, etc.?
Your reasons here do not seem to be commensurate with the level of ire about it in certain circles, honestly. I still don't see how it affects anyone but the person who's using the pronouns. In my view, those people have to give the rest of us just a little time to get used to using them, that's all.
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Can someone help me understand why I should get worked up about what pronoun someone wants to use to refer to themselves? FOr the life of me, I can't find it, and so much time and energy is dedicated to it apparently.
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@ILikePie5
And McConnell. Don't forget the seats he stole, Gorsuch and Barrett.
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Need a license to catch a fish, but apparently carrying a weapon of war, or a concealed handgun on a subway, no need for any sort of license.
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In Judaism, is prayer "mandatory"? I know the ten commandments, not the 600 + additional laws that apply. As a former Catholic, it was absolutely mandatory for us, like if you didn't do it, you're screwing up your relationship with God.
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@EtrnlVw
First you decide if you can handle accepting God exists. Once you decide God exists it doesn't matter which name man has provided. What you want to look for, is things that resonate with you and knowledge you know you can accept as being true. You don't even need religion to become a Theist. Your soul originated with God not with religion. You're just looking to find your way back to your origins being a blind man, all religions can do for you is offer you information that can get you back in alignment with what you already knew. This is all innate to you, you just have to remove the conditioning that has shielded the truth from your soul since you were born.
I really love this post. It says literally nothing of any use to anyone, but with a confidence that makes it comical. Well done. I'm going to try it.
"Let me tell you what my guiding philosophy is, and it is this: never, in life, ever, no matter what, do anything, to anyone for any reason, at any time or in any place, that provides them with any, I mean even just a scintilla. What I'm trying to say, and let me rephrase because I'm seeing some confused faces out there so I'm going to break it down a little further for you, what I'm saying is that there's a way, and it's not easy, to communicate, to others, the ideas that might or might not be of any import. And in this way, we can decide, each of us, individually and only for ourselves, and it doesn't matter if that decision is well informed or correct or wrong or true or false, which means in some way, it's all of those things, depending on your interpretation. Now that you understand, we can move toward that innate one thing that we all know, or at least suspect, but maybe we don't, what might be out there, for each of us to do. Or have. Or experience. Or feel, listen, it's all very simple, and once you figure it out, as you can see I have, then YOUR hogwash spews can attain a concentration, a purity, if you will, as mine do. Peace and love."
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The one right at the beginning: God getting mad at Adam and Eve for eating the apple he knew they'd eat. Not sure how you get mad at your own plan.
A "loving" and "forgiving" god then condemning all offspring of this union to eternal torture for something he planned for them to do, for all time and all generations. If you're going to get mad at your own plan, I guess that's one thing, but condemning someone's great grandchildren to eternal torture is not loving.
I don't want to run down the rabbit hole of contradictions here, but that's my two.
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@Fruit_Inspector
You have to show proof of vaccination in schools today, and you'll have to do it tomorrow.
Do you have to show a vaccine passport to go into a grocery store right now where you live? I don't. And I live in the tristate. I don't think vaccine passports are going to be required by governments, but by private businesses.
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@Fruit_Inspector
A large dip in cases based on voluntary PCR testing, most being likely done by symptomatic individuals in wealthy countries, does not mean the highly infectious respiratory virus was on its way to eradication.
Ah, okay, so the vaccine doesn't work. I guess the point is mass subjugation of society through mystery 5g injection, right. We can all ignore that the dip coincides almost to the day that vaccines became available, plus three weeks. Carry on.
As far as till when, probably forever, and how, you probably will have to show proof of vaccination in schools, otherwise at some point, there will be people who get sick and die by their own choice and people who take the vaccines and don't. Again, natural selection at work, just much more grim than I'm comfortable with.
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@Fruit_Inspector
If the goal is to eradicate the virus, it seems vaccines are showing to be a somewhat ineffective way to do so.
They're most effective when a vast majority of the population gets them in short order. We didn't do so. It's extremely likely that Covid boosters will be required at least annually in order to minimize the effect. There isn't going to be an 'eradication' of this as there was with polio or small pox, it's too late for that.
But isn't SARS-CoV-2 a highly infectious respiratory virus capable of infecting animals and mutating relatively quickly?
It wasn't mutating relatively quickly. Look at the case trend between January 2021 and September 2021. It was on the way to being eradicated but THEN mutated into strains that were more vaccine resistant because not enough people got the vaccine AND those that didn't get the vaccine chose, in large part, to take no more preventative measures, basically freeloading off the people who did get vaccinated, and the virus used them to reproduce, and boom, Delta variant in September. Omicron in November. By February it's likely there will be another strain.
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@Fruit_Inspector
So if we are susceptible to variants from other countries, what is the end goal of a vaccine mandate in the U.S. to achieve 100% vaccinated rate?
Is the hypothetical other country not at all vaccinated? That seems unlikely. You have to look at the virus as a fire, and susceptible people as logs. The less logs on the fire, the less intense it is, the faster it dies, and the more difficult it is to spread. I'm sure you don't need to have the idea that minimization of death, illness, economic interruption, etc., all the shit that made 2020 blow so hard, is better than doing nothing. The end goal is to protect as many citizens as possible from as much negative impact as possible. What are you getting at?
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@Fruit_Inspector
It won't now. It's not 100%, it's somewhere in the 90's. But a big enough population delayed getting vaccinated for reasons, which afforded the virus the opportunity to reproduce and mutate and become vaccine resistant. If there weren't an argument about wearing masks over who knows what in 2020, the virus would have had less opportunity to spread (REPRODUCE), then vaccines would have come out in 2021, the vaccine would have been the nail in the coffin for the virus by around June of 2021. Instead people made masks an issue, then made vaccines an issue, so they didn't take any action at all to mitigate against the virus, and those people allowed the virus to go on. Delta, Omicron, certainly more going forward to come and now, the virus will ONLY reproduce vaccine resistant strains.
Now, "Normal" is going to end up getting redefined.
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@Greyparrot
I disagree that we should let domestic terrorists vote.
Who defines what qualifies as domestic terror?
That's why you can't regulate it this way. One government might think anyone who traffics in conspiracy theories on the internet represents a direct enough threat to democracy to ban that person from voting. One government might think anyone who is convicted of a domestic terror offense...but one man's domestic terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, right? Plus you'd have to be exceptionally sure that the person actually committed the exact offense of which they were convicted, otherwise you're stripping them of their civil rights without absolute certitude, which is unrealistic. And as Double R said, it's a vanishingly small population, so regulating that seems overblown.
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@Greyparrot
I think the answer is already there in his post: adult citizen of the US. It is the right of EVERY AMERICAN over 18 years old, full stop. It is really not difficult to grasp. There are no other conditions nor should there be.
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I thought we'd moved into the portion of the discussion where we made unjustified assumptions about each other, as the post I responded to included one about me, and I don't think college dropout is necessarily an attack, but you're not wrong.
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@Greyparrot
You speak like someone who has never been abused by the government. Congratulations on your privilege.
And you speak like some college dropout who blames the government for all his problems.
BTW, the government has perpetuated more "gun violence" than all private Americans collectively.
RIght, because everyone knows most people referring to gun violence are talking about military engagements.
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@Double_R
This is why you are unserious to talk to
That, and not the part where this guy says voting is more harmful to America at large than gun violence? I guess spoiled for choice. :)
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Define very bad effects.
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@Greyparrot
-->@thett3He faces three years in prison, and his career is over. As far as I'm concerned he will pay what he owes.I don't agree.
You don't agree that this is an appropriate punishment?
There's no logical reason to expect the usual people won't erect a temple in his honor after his sentence is up.
Who are these people?
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@thett3
What a refreshingly honest and self aware reply, thanks! That's how dialogues are opened, understanding that you can disagree with someone without them being your mortal enemy worthy of revulsion. I'm not in any way far left, I'd be left leaning myself. I don't have the same reaction you do to whiteness stuff, and I'm a working class white guy myself. We all have different experiences.
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@thett3
I'm inferring from your posts you're a conservative type, and I have a real hard time with people asking for accountability from politicians over something that has no direct impact on anyone but this guy, when there appears to me no demand for the same accountability on their own team. Maybe you're different, maybe you think Gossar should be kicked out of COngress, for example, so if I'm assuming incorrectly I apologize, but conservatives haven't exactly been the party of accountability for a loooong time. Matt Gaetz for example is accused of some pretty gross stuff, people have resigned for less, and yes I know they're accusations, but politicians on both sides resigned for less because of accountability.
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@Polytheist-Witch
I...totally agree with this post, and honestly, I'm a bit beside myself.
You win, universe! :)
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@thett3
He faces three years in prison, and his career is over. As far as I'm concerned he will pay what he owes
Completely agree with at least this part! :)
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@Tradesecret
I'd just look up some of his debates on youtube, I don't have one particularly. He was also a big Calam Cosmo go, however you spell it. Same sort of thing.
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@Greyparrot
The public.
Your question is seriously not "Why are guns more regulated than voting," is it? I can't walk into a store and mass vote 25 people to death.
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@Greyparrot
. You and DoubleR advocate for remove the cooling down period for voting and with the same breath lament the amount of people responding and voting due to "anger politics"
What do you mean "cooling down period for voting"? I'm not familiar with that phrase. And I never lamented anyone voting for any reason at all. You want to vote over anger? Go ahead! Uh oh, you voted angry and now you regret it? well, be an adult and learn the lesson not to do it next time, or don't, it's your right.
We have a right to own a firearm too but we sensibly know that removing the cooldown periods to buy one to prevent people from making long lasting snap decisions in anger would be foolish and socially irresponsible. A convenient vote in anger is even more catastrophic because the government has much more power to take life than any one individual and the impacts can last beyond any one individual's life for generations.
You probably don't mean what you're actually saying here, because one person's vote in a country of 300M people is in no way more catastrophic than one person with a gun firing out of a Las Vegas hotel window. I get what you're saying I think, that people should endeavor to educate themselves on what they're voting for. They don't. Furthermore it's unconstitutional, unAmerican and undemocratic to require them to do so. The right is very, very, very simple. You can vote for a person because they have the same middle name, or because you like their take on foreign policy, the vote counts the same, should do, and should always. Perhaps we've lost the plot a little. And frankly equating the right to vote with the right to bear arms seems quite a false equivalence to me, as in general conservative people seem to believe any legislation to control firearms at all is basically the first step toward England taking over the country. Different topic.
If you are flippant with people opting out of Democracy, I find it equally weird that you do not think it fundamentally weakens it.
How would someone taking their right to vote and deciding not to exercise it fundamentally weaken democracy? Specifically. Was I weakening democracy by not voting?
What exactly are you advocating for? What is the problem (I thought it was people not participating in voting and you definitely cited lobbyists as at least a part of the problem) you're trying to elucidate here? Is it voter participation? Is it voter awareness of issues?
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Your insistence throughout this thread conflating dissatisfaction with corruption in DC as THE reason instead of A reason makes me think you are here to troll and not participate in good faith. I've been trying to ignore it up to now but you seem to be fixated and biased, and that's a shame.
I wasn't the one who brought up lobbyists as to why 100M americans don't vote. Or corruption in general.
It's actually a new tradition especially with technology to make voting easier than shopping for a beer. With that convenience comes real consequences.
Every American has the RIGHT to vote. It should be convenient as buying a beer. There's no argument against it unless you don't want people to vote. If you don't want it to be convenient, then I guess it's a little weird to criticize 100M people who didn't vote, but if you want voter participation, 2020 is a practical example that convenience makes for more voter participation. More votes cast than in any other election and not close.
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@PGA2.0
I'm so sorry to hear that, man, that's really rough. Hang in there, I know words like that sound trite at times like this. I know you find comfort in your faith, sincerely, I hope it helps.
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@Tradesecret
As I recall it's pretty big for William Lane Craig among others.
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@Greyparrot
And that's the problem. When people need a convenient reason to vote, it lessens the actual importance of the vote.
So are we totally dropping lobbyists as the problem for 100M Americans, as the reason they choose not to vote?
And are you saying voting SHOULD be difficult to do, this way votes are somehow weightier than...other votes? Let's say you live above a polling station, and I live 40 miles from one. We both vote. Is my vote more "important" than yours? I'm just trying to understand what you're even arguing at this point.
I didn't need a "convenient reason" to vote. I needed voting to be more accessible in order exercise my right as an American.
And the 100 million who don't vote every year is testament to currently how little so many people care about the importance of Democracy or election results.
Couldn't it also be a testament to how difficult it can be to vote in certain places? Do you think mail in voting, widespread, automatically getting a ballot, do you think that would reduce the 100M number?
I value quality over quantity. Is that wrong? I'd rather have voters who care enough about voting to make an effort instead of excuses.
It's not wrong, it's just unAmerican and antidemocratic. One person, one vote. Very simple.
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@Greyparrot
Essentially, what would the circumstances have to be that you would endure the hardship of a line waiting similar to paying for groceries?
Convenient. That's all it took. It's not that I didn't think my vote counted, which are two different things.
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@Greyparrot
I already told you I didn't vote until 2019. I voted for both Senators I wanted to in 2020. The reason i didn't do so before was because I didn't want to go stand in line.
Don't lose the thread: is there some research somewhere that show a plurality of eligible voters choose not to vote because lobbyists? You're not going to address how 100M AMericans don't necessarily "choose" not to vote?
No?
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@Greyparrot
Don't lose the thread: is there some research somewhere that show a plurality of eligible voters choose not to vote because lobbyists? You're not going to address how 100M AMericans don't necessarily "choose" not to vote?
If you want to make the "votes don't count" argument, I'd say the Supreme Court is a better practical example at the moment. Alito, Roberts, Kavanaugh, Barret and Gorsuch are all appointed by Presidents who lost the popular vote. There are only nine judges.
And for my money it's the Senate Majority leader. It's a problem, but I also happen to think that 2 senators per state is not the right way to go. There are more people in my county than there are in either Dakota.
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@Greyparrot
The reason I registered to vote was because there was a referendum on the ballot that I cared very deeply about, and I wanted to vote on. State elections I always used the "what a pain in the neck" excuse. As it happens we had an election this year for which they mailed out ballots, and I voted using that method.
Don't lose the thread: is there some research somewhere that show a plurality of eligible voters choose not to vote because lobbyists? You're not going to address how 100M AMericans don't necessarily "choose" not to vote? I can tell you I legitimately chose not to vote over convenience, but not everyone is in that boat. It's not a red herring for anything to do with lobbyists. No one I've ever talked to said "All those damn lobbyists" is the reason they don't vote. Are you intimating that lobbyists are for some reason concerned with who votes, and not in fact who's in office that they can influence? To a true lobbyist the party doesn't matter, it's your agenda, and there are lobbyists on both sides.
ETA: "CHoose not to vote" is different from "My vote didn't count" which is different from "I voted for a losing candidate." I thought you said originally that 100M Americans choose not to vote then at least implied it had something to do with lobbyists. While the ends might actually have something to do with lobbyists, lobbyists seems like a very small reason that someone who DIDN'T VOTE "chose" not to vote. You asked about research, I thought you had a poll or something that said "among the top five reasons people choose not to vote? Lobbyists is number three." Sounds like we're on a different path.
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@Greyparrot
Have you really not done any research at all regarding the 100 million Americans that choose to not vote?What are your uninformed opinions on the matter if so?I'd really like to hear your detailed arguments as to how accessibility is the major concern for those 100 millions Americans as well since you seem to be fixated on that point.
No, I've done literally no research on 100M Americans "choosing" not to vote. I have a job, I don't have time for research to satisfy whatever level of expertise you think I should have in order to comment on it. I can tell you as someone who didn't vote until two years ago (after 20+ years of being eligible to do so), the biggest reason I never did had nothing to do with lobbyists, it had to do with the electoral college. THe population of my state always votes the way I would, so if we're not on a straight popular vote system, why would I go stand in line to vote? And I'm not alone, plenty of cynical people I know didn't vote until the 2020 election for the same reason. No one ever said "lobbyists". More people were like "I can do it by mail, why wouldn't I."
Accessibility is the best excuse not to vote. "I can't get to the polls easily." "I have to work and can't afford time off to go do it." "It's a hassle, it takes hours." Is there some research you've done that shows "lobbyists" are a common answer among people who don't vote? I put 'choose' in quotation marks because it's not always a choice. If you don't have a car, and you live in a rural area, for example. If you take ANY measure to make it easier for all eligible voters to vote, for those who can register to do so, then you reduce the reasons not to vote.
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@Greyparrot
Making voting accessible isn't the reason people distrust the system. It's not the reason they choose to not vote.
And you believe that people choose not to vote because of lobbyists? That, in your view, is the main issue? Not just for you, I know that's your position, but you imagine that's the widespread lack of faith in democracy?
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@Greyparrot
How do you handle a person who sees what the lobbyists are doing in DC and gives up in despair? Is forcing him to vote really the answer?
I don't know, I didn't propose mandatory voting. You sort of did:
If this was the case, voting should be mandatory instead of optional to include the people that are sure their vote does not matter.
If you're not in favor of making voting as accessible as possible, then I don't know how you'd make voting mandatory. That's all I'm saying. Maybe I misread your mandatory voting post? If you don't like lobbyists, which clearly you don't and clearly we can agree on that, propose a way to eliminate their influence.
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@Greyparrot
Wouldn't all of that be part of making voting mandatory? It certainly reduces the absent voter by making voting more accessible. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough.
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An argument used often by Christian apologists, which does not in any way advance the ball on "MGB = Bible Character."
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@Greyparrot
Is that to say you think that we should get rid of districts for national elections, automatically register all citizens when they turn 18, and take a hard look at voter restriction laws so that more people can vote, maybe even move to a remote voting or all mail in option?
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@Greyparrot
Starting to get the feeling you're not really into any actual discussion, and just want to complain.
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