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Intel&Sebastian posted:Character built by hardship, while real, is vastly overrated and never teased out to the logical conclusion: That the person saying it to you most of the time has had next to zero actual hardship...so where the gently caress did their character come from? If this character is such an important thing why the gently caress is it that a bunch of rich fucks who grew up in embarrassing riches lecturing me? edit: evidently a Santorum quote kicked this off and not the Gladwell book, so sorry about that side of the post pangstrom fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Nov 1, 2013 |
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Nov 1, 2013 20:02
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Nah, I appreciate it. It's definitely not just the silver spoon set who do it, there are plenty of people who endured genuine hardship who through some miracle of social physics did not gain the particular "character" trait that makes you remember what it's like to be in hardship or recognize what causes it. It's almost as if hardship isn't like in the movies where it transforms you into a flawless human being.
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Nov 1, 2013 20:09
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Reminder that John Stossel is deaf in one ear because a wrestler slapped him twice. Should've slapped him again for good measure.
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Nov 1, 2013 20:35
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:To add to this, I think it was considerably less insane to be "libertarian" 10-20 years ago than it is now. This very forum had a highly vocal libertarian contingent when I joined, and generally speaking, the arguments were as you describe: it was more about focusing on being socially laissez-faire and cutting back on government programs to varying degrees (some were far more extreme about this than others). Even the Tea-Party had its initial extremely brief moment where they pretended that was the idea. This was before they were immediately coopted by Republicans, who themselves promptly opened the floodgates to the racist idiocy you saw from 2008 onward. That's not to say it wasn't a stupid movement in the first place, but there *were* people who didn't think their motivations were necessarily rooted in complete and utter selfishness, and I would argue that perspective was true to a greater degree than it is today. I think there was still an ignorance there, but it was more the ignorance of not really extrapolating to "Oh that's why we need public schools" moreso than "DOWN WITH GOVERNMENT," which is a very simple, moronic sort of ignorance.
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Nov 1, 2013 21:50
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I remember when the Tea Party first popped up and I was really hoping they were just going to be libertarians. I have way more respect for libertarians than social conservatives.
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Nov 1, 2013 22:39
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I like libertarians because they have no personal issues with minority groups but they still support economic policies that gently caress them as much as possible. Wait, no, that's why I dislike libertarians.
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Nov 2, 2013 00:56
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nyquil hangover posted:I remember when the Tea Party first popped up and I was really hoping they were just going to be libertarians. I have way more respect for libertarians than social conservatives. Those are Libertarians. You just never joined the cult and learned it's secret doctrines.
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Nov 2, 2013 01:13
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mr. mephistopheles posted:I like libertarians because they have no personal issues with minority groups but they still support economic policies that gently caress them as much as possible. Those programs aren't designed to gently caress minorities, and if they do its their fault anyway. - Every Libertarian.
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Nov 2, 2013 01:15
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nyquil hangover posted:I remember when the Tea Party first popped up and I was really hoping they were just going to be libertarians. I have way more respect for libertarians than social conservatives. Good news, they are totally libertarian.
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Nov 2, 2013 01:17
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Intel&Sebastian posted:He started to go off about how targeted killings are something that happen in Pakistan but not in America. It sounded like Michael Moore and another guest started to explain to him that the difference isn't their religion or their particular brand of radicalism, it's WHERE THEY loving LIVE. If we all of a sudden found ourselves in a country that was as hard to police as theirs, and in exactly the same dire straits infrastructure-wise, I wouldn't think twice to bet that we'd have roaming bands of assholes imposing their worldview by way of the gun. This exact thing happened in post-Katrina New Orleans.
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Nov 2, 2013 01:29
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Nah, there are plenty of Tea Partiers who devote time to hating on gay people and Muslims and other "social causes." The House's Tea Party Caucus is chaired by Michelle Bachmann, and few Republicans "advocate social causes" as much as her. Near as I can tell, the biggest running theme among the Tea Party is a refocusing of the "gently caress you" pillar of the Republican Party platform from wars to non-Republicans back home.
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Nov 2, 2013 01:34
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Tatum Girlparts posted:Good news, they are totally libertarian. Except for the part where they want federal bans on abortion and gay marriage and support drug laws. I mean libertarians are terrible, but the tea party is special kind of terrible.
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Nov 2, 2013 01:35
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The Ape of Naples posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrX9Ca7LSyQ What an arrogant doofus. "  Heh, I'm gonna confront this obviously high strung, steroid juiced, cokehead wrestler about the obvious fakeness of his profession." This is one of the most deserved smacks I've seen, sort of like when some idiot gets gored by a bull that he's intentionally harassing. Sure, professional wrestling is fake, but that doesn't mean it's a job without risks of injury, years of training, and a dedication that any other form of performance entertainment requires of participants. Eat poo poo, Stossel you wormy shithead.
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Nov 2, 2013 01:46
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Dr Christmas posted:Nah, there are plenty of Tea Partiers who devote time to hating on gay people and Muslims and other "social causes." The House's Tea Party Caucus is chaired by Michelle Bachmann, and few Republicans "advocate social causes" as much as her. Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher are Libertarians.
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Nov 2, 2013 01:48
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Shlomo Palestein posted:This very forum had a highly vocal libertarian contingent when I joined, and generally speaking, the arguments were as you describe: it was more about focusing on being socially laissez-faire and cutting back on government programs to varying degrees (some were far more extreme about this than others). Even the Tea-Party had its initial extremely brief moment where they pretended that was the idea. This was before they were immediately coopted by Republicans, who themselves promptly opened the floodgates to the racist idiocy you saw from 2008 onward. My experience with libertarianism is that it was very heavily coopted by people that support plutocracy. When I joined the party a long while ago the libertarians I knew were actually supporters of the social safety net and what not. The idea was that there was some point where the government was as small as it could be where people were free as possible. Going smaller had a net loss of freedom because control would shift toward the wealthy or strongmen that bullied everybody weaker than they were. More government past that point led to a loss of freedom as it overstepped its reach. There was a realization that you NEEDED government to protect the weak from the strong. Just taking your hands off and letting the chips fall where they may led to a small few controlling the rest. This was bad and not freedom at all. Generally speaking, libertarians were also cool with things like consumer protection laws, taxes to fund infrastructure, and so forth. Private roads were considered an insane idea and the idea was that the government should step in only when necessary. You know, in situations like insurance companies switching from being a provider of a service to money vacuums that served to shove money upward and do nothing else. They were ALL also rabidly anti-monopoly. What happened with the banking system in recent years would have been considered intolerable and insane. The financial industry became a powerful behemoth that has done nothing but cause problems, impoverish millions, and destroy their lives. It's fraud and theft on a grand scale. Unfortunately, contemporary libertarianism got corrupted somewhere along the way. "The government should be as small as possible but must still exist in the places where there are problems" shifted toward "the government should not exist." I can't pin down exactly when it happened but I can tell you this idea of "the government can do absolutely nothing right and must be destroyed" wasn't mainstream libertarian opinion when I signed up.
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Nov 2, 2013 01:50
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Joementum posted:By the way, Cato is still listing Hong Kong as the freest nation (see page 8) with Singapore in the #2 spot, followed by New Zealand and Switzerland. Venezuela is the least free. Singapore, a country where chewing gum is illegal and vandalism gets you corporal punishment. Free indeed!
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Nov 2, 2013 01:52
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mr. mephistopheles posted:I like libertarians because they have no personal issues with minority groups but they still support economic policies that gently caress them as much as possible. Didn't one of Ron Paul's newsletters once describe blacks as good criminals because they were "fleet of foot"?
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Nov 2, 2013 02:09
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Crasscrab posted:What an arrogant doofus. " Apparently this is the kind of thing Stossel sees as a pressing issue of our time when there isn't a black socialist dictator in the white house.
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Nov 2, 2013 02:13
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Libertarians are, for the most part, just future Republicans who, because they're young and in college (or young post-collegiate professionals) and are still benefiting from smoking pot and premarital sex--what's fun is right. Because of this, they're very serious about civil liberties (not that that will stop them from, say, defending Pinochet and his ilk). But as most of them get older and get married and have kids, and (depending on their luck) acquire property and equity, they lose sight of their younger days and start moralizing about sex and drugs to their children and worrying about poor people ruining their property values, and eventually transform into standard issue Republicans. I'm not saying that's all of them. Certainly there are hardcore libertarians who remain that way throughout their lives, but most self-described are anti-government paranoids who pick and choose what civil liberties actually matter, and piss on all the rest. The hardcore devil-may-care anarcho-capitalist who is 100 percent for civil liberties and 100 percent for the free market is exceedingly rare.
Love Rat fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Nov 2, 2013 |
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Nov 2, 2013 02:42
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Love Rat posted:Libertarians are, for the most part, just future Republicans who, because they're young and in college (or young post-collegiate professionals) are still benefiting from smoking pot and premarital sex--what's fun is right. Because of this, they're very serious about civil liberties (not that that will stop them from, say, defending Pinochet and his ilk). But as most of them get older and get married and have kids, and (depending on their luck) acquire property and equity, they lose sight of their younger days and start moralizing about sex and drugs to their children and worrying about poor people ruining their property values, and eventually transform into standard issue Republicans. I'm not saying that's all of them. Certainly there are hardcore libertarians who remain that way throughout their lives, but most self-described are anti-government paranoids who pick and choose what civil liberties actually matter, and piss on all the rest. The hardcore devil-may-care anarcho-capitalist who is 100 percent for civil liberties and 100 percent for the free market is exceedingly rare. A lot of juvenile libertarians actually turn into socialists. For certain types of libertarian it's easier to make the jump from libertarian to socialist than it is to just become a bog-standard Republican -- if you're already thinking about politics in economic terms, you're approaching politics from the same basic framework as a socialist, just from the opposite perspective. So all it takes is a perspective shift, and . . .
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Nov 2, 2013 02:45
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:A lot of juvenile libertarians actually turn into socialists. For certain types of libertarian it's easier to make the jump from libertarian to socialist than it is to just become a bog-standard Republican -- if you're already thinking about politics in economic terms, you're approaching politics from the same basic framework as a socialist, just from the opposite perspective. So all it takes is a perspective shift, and . . . I have seen this happen quite a bit actually, so I agree this happens. I think the more utopian libertarians can definitely find themselves jumping to other utopian ideologies like socialism or anarchism. But I think a lot of your less strident libertarians are just conservatives who are still enjoying the fruits of youth.
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Nov 2, 2013 02:49
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I think my shift from juvenile libertarianism to left-wing politics began when it clicked in my head that private entities are just as capable of abusing power as governments.
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Nov 2, 2013 03:11
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I have to say this somewhere: when I'm reading news about the recent LAX shooting of a TSA agent, I'm thinking Jesus Christ this guy is an Alex Jones fan isn't he.
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Nov 2, 2013 03:11
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ToxicSlurpee posted:My experience with libertarianism is that it was very heavily coopted by people that support plutocracy. When I joined the party a long while ago the libertarians I knew were actually supporters of the social safety net and what not. The idea was that there was some point where the government was as small as it could be where people were free as possible. Going smaller had a net loss of freedom because control would shift toward the wealthy or strongmen that bullied everybody weaker than they were. More government past that point led to a loss of freedom as it overstepped its reach. There was a realization that you NEEDED government to protect the weak from the strong. Just taking your hands off and letting the chips fall where they may led to a small few controlling the rest. This was bad and not freedom at all. Your version of libertarianism sounds exactly like standard milquetoast liberalism.
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Nov 2, 2013 03:13
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nyquil hangover posted:I remember when the Tea Party first popped up and I was really hoping they were just going to be libertarians. I have way more respect for libertarians than social conservatives. When the Tea Party originally began, it was a group trying to support Ron Paul, and it was against the current two party system. I seem to recall their orignal points were. -Less gov't spending -Lower taxes -Less involvement of corporations/special interest groups in government. ..Of course Obama gets elected..and within a few weeks the original movement was hijacked by the establishment GOP/Koch Brothers.
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Nov 2, 2013 03:14
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Flesh Forge posted:I have to say this somewhere: when I'm reading news about the recent LAX shooting of a TSA agent, I'm thinking Jesus Christ this guy is an Alex Jones fan isn't he. Most likely. quote:According to ConspiracyWiki, an Internet site devoted to conspiracy theories, the doctrine was primarily limited to militant anti–government and radical fundamentalist Christian groups until the early 1990s, but has since been embraced by some left-wing groups. Uh... No, it hasn't.
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Nov 2, 2013 03:25
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Crasscrab posted:What an arrogant doofus. " I find wrestling mildly entertaining. Entertaining enough to read about how it goes down. It's pretty drat impressive what they do. None of those fights/exchanges are prescripted. They decide the general outline/who's going to win a match, but after that the wrestlers have to make it all up on the spot infront of thousands of people. You know all those times that the wrestlers "hug" each other or have their faces close by? Their telling each other what they're doing next and have to carry that out with enough skill to be believable. All while being body slammed into the ground and poo poo. Pretty drat cool.
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Nov 2, 2013 03:26
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Well, I guess we can call 60 Minutes part of the right wing media now...quote:In what Washington Post's Karen DeYoung describes as an "explosive report" on CBS' 60 Minutes on Sunday, the venerable TV news magazine offered "a harrowing account of the extremist attack that killed four Americans" at the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya last year.
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Nov 2, 2013 03:26
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Crasscrab posted:(dumb thing NBC said) I picked that particular link out of the pile just to show context and possibly could have vetted it a little better. Oops. Also, Alex Jones et al. have been all over that story like stink on poo poo: http://www.infowars.com/will-lax-shooting-be-exploited-to-arm-tsa-agents/ http://www.infowars.com/lax-shooting-get-ready-for-more-anti-second-amendment-propaganda/ Apparently the Gubment is going to use the shooting to justify taking ARE GUNS and giving them to evil TSA agents? I think? e: oh god the comments are nuts, both in quantity (many times more than usual for one of their articles) and in quality:  yeah I am totally glad a guy that made me empty my pockets at the airport one time got loving murdered gently caress that guy Flesh Forge fucked around with this message at 03:45 on Nov 2, 2013 |
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Nov 2, 2013 03:40
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I'm over at my father's (listens to Limbaugh/Beck/O'Reilly every day) house, and he literally flipped out on me for suggesting that both parties are playing games with the american public. "QUIT DEFENDING HIM[OBAMA]!, HIS GOAL WAS FOR THIS TO FAIL, AND FOR IT TO GET TO THE POINT WHERE WE'RE IN A SINGLE PAYER". This was all during a broadcast of "Hannity" which featured a "GREAT  FOCUS GROUP", which features a bunch of lunatics yelling over each other.Hannity literally had a comment about how LIBERALS should listen to average AMERICANS. He also kept hammering away about how Obama LIED about all of this.there was no debate, nor willingness to hear the other side on the issue. I think this is a major problem in this country right now. gently caress you Fox News. FuzzySkinner fucked around with this message at 04:50 on Nov 2, 2013 |
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Nov 2, 2013 03:41
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It's like, if they just keep wishing hard enough, their reality will become real. A good third of this country is people who are completely incapable of accepting reality, and should probably get therapy/deprogramming. And there's a huge, profitable media industry dedicated to keeping them sick.
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Nov 2, 2013 04:44
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FuzzySkinner posted:When the Tea Party originally began, it was a group trying to support Ron Paul, and it was against the current two party system. I seem to recall their orignal points were. None of this is true. It's the myth the Tea Party tells to explain its split with the Republican establishment. The Tea Party was AstroTurf from the get go and promoted in direct response to Obama's election.
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Nov 2, 2013 04:48
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In the beginning there was Rick Santelli. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQQfzXQ6UjA
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Nov 2, 2013 05:03
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PeterWeller posted:None of this is true. It's the myth the Tea Party tells to explain its split with the Republican establishment. The Tea Party was AstroTurf from the get go and promoted in direct response to Obama's election. It was astroturfed but the lie managed to get a significant number of followers. Not the supermajority groundswell upheaval they wanted but still, you'd be surprised how many Tea Party supporters there actually are. Not nearly as many as Glenn Beck wants you to believe but that's really the double-edged sword the Tea Party is wielding. They're numerous enough to actually be relevant but not numerous enough to actually accomplish much. They claim to speak for a majority of Americans and desperately want America to conform to their vision. The biggest problem is that a majority of Americans think the Tea Party is insane.
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Nov 2, 2013 06:50
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Flesh Forge posted:I picked that particular link out of the pile just to show context and possibly could have vetted it a little better. Oops. Also, Alex Jones et al. have been all over that story like stink on poo poo:  MKUltra brought up. I love when nutjobs bring that up. A failed program that only taught the CIA that LSD is loving cool as hell.But of course every bad thing in the world is a false flag operation by the government.
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Nov 2, 2013 06:56
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beatlegs posted:In the beginning there was Rick Santelli. All these years later and it's stil infuriating how people couldn't see that this was blatant faux-outrage set up to gently caress whatever democratic candidate rolled into office after eight years of nightmarishly bad republican governance. The only loving thing that would have been different was the name he whined out when he did his stupid little gesture and blathered "ARR U LISTENIN". If this were a just world Rick Santelli would be whipped nude through the main street of every major city in America.
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Nov 2, 2013 07:19
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PeterWeller posted:None of this is true. It's the myth the Tea Party tells to explain its split with the Republican establishment. The Tea Party was AstroTurf from the get go and promoted in direct response to Obama's election. This. Before there was the Tea Party there was FreedomWorks, a conservative political group. You're right about the Koch brothers being involved, seeing as how they were the primary funders of the group. FreedomWorks helped to set down the framework for a movement like the Tea Party to get started.
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Nov 2, 2013 07:38
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Chachi posted:All these years later and it's stil infuriating how people couldn't see that this was blatant faux-outrage set up to gently caress whatever democratic candidate rolled into office after eight years of nightmarishly bad republican governance. The Tea Party, at least initially, was a deliberate attempt to re-brand the GOP after Dubya destroyed it. It quickly morphed into an ugly monster, but in the beginning it was an obvious attempt by the GOP and conservative media to plant into the public consciousness the idea that Bush was so ancient history! and look at these jingling keys over here! there is this new groundswell of "traditional values" a-comin' over that hill! why you could almost swear it was the GOP of old!
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Nov 2, 2013 09:01
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beatlegs posted:The Tea Party, at least initially, was a deliberate attempt to re-brand the GOP after Dubya destroyed it. It quickly morphed into an ugly monster, but in the beginning it was an obvious attempt by the GOP and conservative media to plant into the public consciousness the idea that Bush was so ancient history! and look at these jingling keys over here! there is this new groundswell of "traditional values" a-comin' over that hill! why you could almost swear it was the GOP of old! I don't feel like it was ever an attempt to appeal to old school Republicans. It seemed more like a way to appeal to the middle class by choosing a target that a lot of people have a negative view of, taxes, and hitching all of their corporate subsidy, tax reduction bullshit to that support, but then it got co-opted into this fetishistic burn the government to the ground insanity.
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Nov 2, 2013 09:24
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beatlegs posted:In the beginning there was Rick Santelli.
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