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1st AD posted:After that I had to explain what the literary device "allegory" was and how it is used by authors. This woman was an evangelical Christian Well there's your problem right there. Biblical literalism came about because some people for whatever reason are unable to wrap their heads around the concept of metaphor.
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Jan 5, 2013 11:19
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Rockopolis posted:I thought this was one of those 'euphemism treadmill' things, though; doesn't benefits have a similar negative connotation in the UK? Like Welfare in the US? Not in my personal experience, no. The vast majority of people in the UK support what we call the "Welfare State" and the word welfare is not really used in any other context. Social Security is a benefit of living in a welfare state. drat, I can't imagine living in a country where "welfare" is a dirty word. 
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Jan 5, 2013 11:25
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Rockopolis posted:I thought this was one of those 'euphemism treadmill' things, though; doesn't benefits have a similar negative connotation in the UK? Like Welfare in the US? Or is it that unspoke 'unearned' before benefits that I'm hearing? If "welfare" isn't a poisoned term now, it will be in five years' time. e: the whole "scroungers" thing is a very right-wind media inspired tale, for the record.
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Jan 5, 2013 12:15
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Social security is really just unemployment insurance. It's similar to car insurance, in that the government mandates that you get it when you get employment. It's dissimilar in that you can (or could, things have changed) get it even before having held a job, with the assumption that you'll "pay it off", as it were, later in life when employed. This all might mean some small percentage of people end up taking more money out of it than contributing, but that's worth it for practical and ofcourse ethical reasons. Not to mention that it's a way to both individually insure anyone against hardship, as well as collectively insure the country against the effects of unemployment and the poverty that usually accompanies it. In pure brutal practical terms, it's simply cheaper to pay the lumpenproletariat off then to deal with the crime that would otherwise inevitably ensue. In those term, even for those taking out more than they put in, stuff like social security ends up being a net benefit to society. Not to mention that whole Bismarckian realpolitik of bribing off a communist revolution. Orange Devil fucked around with this message at 15:42 on Jan 5, 2013 |
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Jan 5, 2013 15:39
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Orange Devil posted:Not to mention that it's a way to both individually insure anyone against hardship, as well as collectively insure the country against the effects of unemployment and the poverty that usually accompanies it. In pure brutal practical terms, it's simply cheaper to pay the lumpenproletariat off then to deal with the crime that would otherwise inevitably ensue. In those term, even for those taking out more than they put in, stuff like social security ends up being a net benefit to society. Not to mention that whole Bismarckian realpolitik of bribing off a communist revolution. This is the part that most conservatives don't seem to realize. For practical reasons, assuring people don't go into destitution whenever the have a medical condition or lose their jobs actually makes society safer, more stable, and from those two things, more efficient. There's plenty of evidence in history that huge swathes of poverty-stricken citizens do not contribute to a society's health. Creating a social safety net is a practical necessity for any group that wants to continue ruling. The idea that basic protections fro the working class is somehow a socialist hell is insane, and totally at odds with history. Or I guess the US could do what Britain did, and ship off it poor and downtrodden to another continent.
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Jan 5, 2013 15:55
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Then, is there a way to sell that idea of having a plague-infested underclass festering underfoot being a bad thing? Or would that be seen as  terrorism
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Jan 5, 2013 16:03
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Cordyceps Headache posted:This is the part that most conservatives don't seem to realize. For practical reasons, assuring people don't go into destitution whenever the have a medical condition or lose their jobs actually makes society safer, more stable, and from those two things, more efficient. There's plenty of evidence in history that huge swathes of poverty-stricken citizens do not contribute to a society's health. Creating a social safety net is a practical necessity for any group that wants to continue ruling. The idea that basic protections fro the working class is somehow a socialist hell is insane, and totally at odds with history. You fail to realize one thing: FYGM. If I don't directly benefit from it, I don't want anybody to have it.
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Jan 5, 2013 16:15
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Phone posted:You fail to realize one thing: FYGM. If I don't directly benefit from it, I don't want anybody to have it. Yeah, but it's also terminally short-sighted. If I was rich, I'd be willing to give up a tiny percentage of my wealth as insurance that the Jacobins won't guillotine my rear end when a Robespierre figure work the masses into a frothing mob out for my blood.
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Jan 5, 2013 18:14
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Phone posted:You fail to realize one thing: FYGM. If I don't directly benefit from it, I don't want anybody to have it. How about "no amount of money can save you from a horrible disease." Wouldn't that be good enough?
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Jan 5, 2013 18:16
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Cordyceps Headache posted:Yeah, but it's also terminally short-sighted. If I was rich, I'd be willing to give up a tiny percentage of my wealth as insurance that the Jacobins won't guillotine my rear end when a Robespierre figure work the masses into a frothing mob out for my blood. Modern society is all about being hilariously short-sighted. See every corporation that has decided to screw over any sort of longterm planning in favor of hitting record earning for this fiscal year.
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Jan 5, 2013 18:20
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Azuth0667 posted:How about "no amount of money can save you from a horrible disease." Wouldn't that be good enough? Unfortunately there's no cure for being a miser.
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Jan 5, 2013 18:27
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As far as the Social Security discussion, how come we never hear much about simply raising the cap? I'm not even sure why there is a cap, come to think of it.
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Jan 5, 2013 18:34
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Phone posted:Unfortunately there's no cure for being a miser. Well, there is, but where are we going to find three ghosts and a kid with a limp at _this_ time of night, Brain? BiggerBoat posted:As far as the Social Security discussion, how come we never hear much about simply raising the cap? I'm not even sure why there is a cap, come to think of it. Caaaause it would be immensely popular with people and actually save social security easily, while hurting the rich? Therefore, the Republicans would never allow it?
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Jan 5, 2013 18:55
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eggsovereasy posted:The best part of Levin is how angry he gets all the time, I love his shrill yelling. I listened to him again on the way home from practice two nights ago. He was going on about the Republicans in power again. He had tacked on Mitch McConnell to his list of "Republicans who I won't talk to." The guy comes from so far right that he's almost swung around and coming from the left again. Actually, scratch that. If he actually has any influence at all over voters, maybe that's his plan. Since at this point, the only Republicans who he seems to like are Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin, the only thing I can figure is that maybe Levin is a deep cover Democratic operative. A sleeper agent since the days of Reagan, who somehow predicted the party's downfall decades ahead of time and is now trying to bring the the GOP down from the inside by sowing discontent among the party's most faithful, farthest right voting constituency. Walter fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Jan 5, 2013 |
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Jan 5, 2013 19:13
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800peepee51doodoo posted:It's kind of amazing that you've bought into conservative framing of the word "entitlements" in a post about not buying into conservative framing. Social security is an entitlement; those that receive it are legally entitled to it. The framing here is that conservatives have poisoned the word by attaching it to a common vernacular usage. When we think of someone as "entitled" in a negative way, we are really thinking that they are falsely entitled, that they do not deserve what it is they think they deserve. We just leave out the "falsely" part as inferred. However, those that receive government benefits do deserve them and so they are aptly described as entitled. Entitlement has a negative political connotation because the right has specifically strived to make it so. Kind of late but you basically just said what I said in a longer, angrier manner and accused me of buying into conservative framing when I wasn't so I'm  now. I said, sure, in a more normal world (i.e. one where right-wingers don't define the dialogue), we could conceivably call them "entitlements." But since right-wingers do define the dialogue, we can't, because that's what they're using to make social services sound bad. Thus, we shouldn't use the term "entitlements." I don't understand how that disagrees with your post, or why you're mad at me for saying what you said with less words. 
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Jan 5, 2013 20:46
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Lightning Knight posted:Kind of late but you basically just said what I said in a longer, angrier manner and accused me of buying into conservative framing when I wasn't so I'm You could it Patriot Services and the right wing media would define patriots as people who refuse to pay taxes.
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Jan 5, 2013 20:59
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karthun posted:You could it Patriot Services and the right wing media would define patriots as people who refuse to pay taxes. Just in case anyone thinks they won't, this is a political faction who did this:  Seriously - any time conservatives claim they looooove our troops, flash that image. They only 'support our troops' when it's politically expedient. The rest of the time they tell them to go gently caress themselves. More proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq7xWY8T8nw Spacedad fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Jan 5, 2013 |
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Jan 5, 2013 21:33
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Can I get the full story on the purple heart thing? Its about trashing Kerry's military record, yeah? I was 15 when the 2004 election was around, so I wasn't really following stuff then. Also, don't forget that its always just "ARE TROOPS". Veterans can go gently caress themselves all day erry day, even when its election season.
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Jan 5, 2013 21:37
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Business Gorillas posted:Can I get the full story on the purple heart thing? Its about trashing Kerry's military record, yeah? I was 15 when the 2004 election was around, so I wasn't really following stuff then. Karl Rove (and his underlings) and a group of paid of liars (who later of course fully admitted to lying) called the "swift boat veterens for truth" basically attacked Kerry over his war record, trying to make him look like he got his purple hearts wrongly through lazy half-assed service. They were doing this because they knew that it would look bad for a purple heart vet to go up against a national guard "Rich Man's Son" draft-dodger like George W (who hardly even showed up for national guard service) on the subject of war experience. Unsurprisingly, George W turned out to be one of our worst presidents, and who dodged responsibility for his poor leadership in the presidency the way he dodged his air force national guard service by taking the most vacation time of any president in history. (879 vacation days.) That's almost 2.5 years worth of days when he was doing gently caress all. Spacedad fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Jan 6, 2013 |
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Jan 5, 2013 21:45
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Also remember this poo poo from the primary debates when people talk about Republicans supporting the troops.
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Jan 5, 2013 21:51
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Business Gorillas posted:Can I get the full story on the purple heart thing? Its about trashing Kerry's military record, yeah? I was 15 when the 2004 election was around, so I wasn't really following stuff then. John Kerry was awarded the silver star, the bronze star, and three purple hearts in Vietnam. The Republican noise machine declared him an injury faking combat-dodger so that their chicken-hawk candidate wouldn't get railed on national defense issues.
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Jan 5, 2013 21:52
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I don't think presidents ever really take time off, they're always on call. But that looks pretty bad.
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Jan 5, 2013 21:53
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Spacedad posted:Karl Rove (and his underlings) and a group of paid of liars (who later of course fully admitted to lying) called the "swift boat veterens for truth" basically attacked Kerry over his war record, trying to make him look like he got his purple hearts wrongly through lazy half-assed service. They were doing this because they knew that it would look bad for a purple heart vet to go up against a national guard "Rich Man's Son" draft-dodger like George W (who hardly even showed up for national guard service) on the subject of war experience. Oh but you know he was never REALLY on vacation because they have cell phones and secure satellite uplinks at the Crawford ranch! *trashes Obama for every dinner out with his wife* The Swiftboat thing wouldn't have been half so infuriating if George Junior wasn't such an obvious piece of poo poo and if it hadn't worked so well (to this day half or more of all right wingers you run into will swear that Kerry's service records and decorations were all falsified etc.). Kerry and his campaign fell into it because, in my view, they didn't have the courage to run against the decision to invade Iraq, which was still a year or so away from becoming unpopular in the national consensus. It was gratifying to watch the GOP smear machine flail uselessly trying the same type of tricks against Obama and get owned so badly by his campaign, twice.
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Jan 5, 2013 21:56
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The Oldest Man posted:John Kerry was awarded the silver star, the bronze star, and three purple hearts in Vietnam. The Republican noise machine declared him an injury faking combat-dodger so that their chicken-hawk candidate wouldn't get railed on national defense issues. Even if we were to grant the Swift Boat idiots their bullshit argument about Kerry faking injury for a Purple Heart, how do they explain his Bronze and Silver Star? A Silver Star is just a couple of steps down the food chain from a Medal of Honor, and it's not something that you can fake. Kerry was a genuine war-hero, and the bastards dragged his name through the mud.
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Jan 5, 2013 22:38
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Zeroisanumber posted:Even if we were to grant the Swift Boat idiots their bullshit argument about Kerry faking injury for a Purple Heart, how do they explain his Bronze and Silver Star? A Silver Star is just a couple of steps down the food chain from a Medal of Honor, and it's not something that you can fake. Kerry was a genuine war-hero, and the bastards dragged his name through the mud. Didn't he get his purple heart (well one of them anyway) from the same incident that he received his Silver Star from and that was what the Swift Boat fuckers where disputing? It's been a while since I've been able to read up on it as that poo poo still pisses me off but I could have sworn that was what those fuckers did. The purple heart band-aids that those fat fucks wore at the convention was just a way to bond over the fact that they were totally fine with saying a way hero was lying just because politically he was a part of the wrong team.
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Jan 5, 2013 22:47
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BiggerBoat posted:As far as the Social Security discussion, how come we never hear much about simply raising the cap? I'm not even sure why there is a cap, come to think of it. Or you know, indexing it to inflation, since that appears to be such a popular idea for social security benefits. But no, can't do that because
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Jan 5, 2013 23:35
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Zwabu posted:The Swiftboat thing wouldn't have been half so infuriating if George Junior wasn't such an obvious piece of poo poo and if it hadn't worked so well (to this day half or more of all right wingers you run into will swear that Kerry's service records and decorations were all falsified etc.). Kerry and his campaign fell into it because, in my view, they didn't have the courage to run against the decision to invade Iraq, which was still a year or so away from becoming unpopular in the national consensus. The Iraq War became an obvious clusterfuck in early 2004 before the conventions. The insurgency really broke out with high-profile events in Fallujah, the massacre of contractors and the rise of the Mahdi Militia. It still amazes me he managed to get re-elected, if anything entrenched the current neo-con regome it was the propaganda success in getting the American people to vote for him a second time.
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Jan 6, 2013 00:20
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In the long term however, the swift boat thing has come back to bite republicans in the rear end because people (except for idiot right wingers) realize now just how false the swift boating was - in large part due to the swift boaters admitting they were lying, and apologizing. "Swift boating" is now an actual term now in the dictionary, and refers to organized false attacks on a political candidate made quicker and louder than can be deftly refuted. Republicans lied so reprehensibly there was a dictionary word created for this particular kind of lie. People also have not forgotten this fact. It's getting exponentially more difficult for republicans to lie and get away with it these days - and election results show it. Lying only solidifies a shrinking base of unthinking crazies and paranoids - it's now drastically alienating the party in the national elections. Stuff like Romney's "Jeep" smear was intended to be his swift boating of Obama - instead it backfired royally. Even the Benghazi nonsense is backfiring on the GOP and its media sycophants - especially with their pedantic nonsense claiming Hillary faked a concussion to get out of investigations. Spacedad fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Jan 6, 2013 |
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Jan 6, 2013 00:38
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Dr Christmas posted:Also remember this poo poo from the primary debates when people talk about Republicans supporting the troops. And the scurrilous attacks on Tammy Duckworth and Max Cleland.
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Jan 6, 2013 00:38
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Sean Archer posted:The Iraq War became an obvious clusterfuck in early 2004 before the conventions. The problem is that it wasn't really a consensus in the U.S. that invading was wrong until after the election, which really came when the country decided "WMD was bullshit" and not from those other events. Going into the election you had a strong polarization where Democrats and liberals were strongly against the war but the right was still clinging to the neocons despite all kind of cracks in the facade and lots of doubt. The WMD tipping point was post election, else Kerry would likely have campaigned on a much stronger anti-Iraq message. Bush really lucked out in the timing of the way that sentiment on the Iraq war developed, and the fact that Katrina came after the election.
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Jan 6, 2013 00:57
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Spacedad posted:"Swift boating" is now an actual term now in the dictionary, and refers to organized false attacks on a political candidate made quicker and louder than can be deftly refuted. With the proliferation of the internet, is such a thing even possible anymore? There's thousands of blogs and fact-checking websites out there now and Google has become a mainstay of American life.
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Jan 6, 2013 01:00
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Business Gorillas posted:With the proliferation of the internet, is such a thing even possible anymore? There's thousands of blogs and fact-checking websites out there now and Google has become a mainstay of American life. It doesn't matter how much fact-checking is available if nobody cares to read it. That and there's plenty of anti-factual stuff out there too, since the internet makes that easy as well.
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Jan 6, 2013 01:02
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Business Gorillas posted:With the proliferation of the internet, is such a thing even possible anymore? There's thousands of blogs and fact-checking websites out there now and Google has become a mainstay of American life. Yeah, things have gotten exponentially faster in fact-checking since 2004. Part of it was after stuff like that, there became a need to create such swift fact-checking. It's much more difficult to get away with lying nowadays - there's simply too much media readily available online to counter lies. This is an age where if a politician says something iffy, you can hop on your iphone/ipad/android/whatever and immediately find out that it's a load of bunk. Not only that, but you can immediately share it with your friends that it's a load of bunk. The internet has its problems and creates its own insular communities of nutjobs too, but it appears to (at least in the US) be somewhat filling the void of investigative journalism that regular newspapers and TV/radio news (whose format, at least in the US, has been crushed into sound bite noise-u-tainment) used to fill. Wikileaks is probably the #1 example of this. Spacedad fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Jan 6, 2013 |
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Jan 6, 2013 01:03
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Business Gorillas posted:With the proliferation of the internet, is such a thing even possible anymore? There's thousands of blogs and fact-checking websites out there now and Google has become a mainstay of American life. Thus the shift to "their facts" and "our facts". Poison the well so you can muddle the truth and lie with near impunity. Also, the people those sorts of tactics are targeted toward aren't usually so plugged in as many of us are. And for those that are, see point 1. If it isn't on Fox, it's a liberal lie.
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Jan 6, 2013 01:10
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Zwabu posted:The problem is that it wasn't really a consensus in the U.S. that invading was wrong until after the election, which really came when the country decided "WMD was bullshit" and not from those other events. Going into the election you had a strong polarization where Democrats and liberals were strongly against the war but the right was still clinging to the neocons despite all kind of cracks in the facade and lots of doubt. The WMD tipping point was post election, else Kerry would likely have campaigned on a much stronger anti-Iraq message. I honestly think that Democrats lucked out in retrospect. If Kerry had been president from 2005-2009, then the worst of Iraq, Afghanistan, and the financial collapse would all have happened on their watch. Obama would never have gotten in, and would probably be busily making himself a power in the Senate, and we'd probably be looking at the 2nd term of President McCain.
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Jan 6, 2013 01:12
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Seems to me the right will just come up with their own right wing version of "fact checkers". If they haven't already. Just claim that Snopes and Politifact are liberally biased get Breitbart's outfit to do "fail and balanced" fact checking.
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Jan 6, 2013 01:44
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Zeroisanumber posted:I honestly think that Democrats lucked out in retrospect. If Kerry had been president from 2005-2009, then the worst of Iraq, Afghanistan, and the financial collapse would all have happened on their watch. Obama would never have gotten in, and would probably be busily making himself a power in the Senate, and we'd probably be looking at the 2nd term of President McCain. This is a pretty good point. To be fair though, I don't think we'd have the crotchety old man McCain we have now, that disgusting campaign, and Sarah Palin if McCain had a pretty comfortable election season for him. We'd probably have something closer to the guy who was somewhat tolerable.
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Jan 6, 2013 01:45
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BiggerBoat posted:Seems to me the right will just come up with their own right wing version of "fact checkers". If they haven't already. Just claim that Snopes and Politifact are liberally biased get Breitbart's outfit to do "fail and balanced" fact checking. They did. Those 'fact checkers' aren't taken seriously by anyone outside of crazy right winger circles. Because quite frankly, they help the GOP lose elections and lose them hard, by deluding everyone involved with false information. Case in point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vJCHqc2CSU Even part of the GOP is turning on these charlatans. To me it's a little like what happens in a secret agent movie where the villain's henchman turns out to be an incompetent that can't nab the hero, and so the villian says 'you have failed me for the last time' and feeds them to their pet pirahna rats or something. Spacedad fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Jan 6, 2013 |
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Jan 6, 2013 01:51
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Sick_Boy posted:I am not sure if this is the right thread for what I'm posting, since I'm not convinced this can be described as "Right-wing" unless we use the same definition of the term that includes Alex Jones. In 2008 I did a sort of running commentary on a strange, strange conspiracy film called "The Empire of the City"- the thread is in the LF Goldmine, but the pictures are gone so it probably won't be too funny. I thought it was an aberration- the product of a collection of harmless wackos. I was aware of truthers and the like, but I couldn't fathom that there's a whole industry for this stuff. Now I find it fascinating, in a strange way. No, you are not. It's pretty fascinating stuff. quote:Here's a nice example of what I mean: Good question. I found a Thing a few months back: http://vigilantcitizen.com/category/musicbusiness/ ED: Just noticed Christianmingle.com in the ad next to it, hehhehe. SnakePlissken fucked around with this message at 02:30 on Jan 6, 2013 |
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Jan 6, 2013 02:11
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I never saw Dean Chambers's face before, and I never realized how much of a fat radioactive baby he was.
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Jan 6, 2013 02:53
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