PawParole posted:

give it back to whoever lived there before the beaker people. probably neanderthals

Reveilled posted:

"Bloody beaker folk, coming over here, rowing up the tagus estuary from the iberian peninsula in improvised rafts, coming over here with their beakers, their drinking vessels, what's wrong with just cupping up the water in your hands and licking it up like a cat? My name's Paul Nuttall from UKIP, and I say we need to ensure the brightest and best beaker folk stay in the Iberian peninsula and fill it with beakers, instead of coming over here to the UK and teaching us to drink liquid out of cups."

a fatguy baldspot posted:

Antigravitas posted:

To be honest, I'm increasingly of the opinion that we've all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees. I'd even argue that even the trees had been a bad move, and that we should've have never left the oceans.

quote:

The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

Ras Het posted:

Why is it Eastern Sibéria with the biggest range, and not the central parts furthest from the sea?

Vivian Darkbloom posted:

This one has been updated quite a bit

Phlegmish posted:

I'm still surprised that the US quietly went along with nationwide gay marriage, and without a states' revolt. I never could have predicted it even just 15-20 years ago, when it seemed like there were so many creationists and religious freaks generally that it barely looked like a Western country at all.

The interesting and perhaps ironic thing about Trump is that in a way he helped bring the US more into alignment with Europe, in the sense that its 'conservatives' (a word the right would rarely use to describe itself over here) have started resembling the European (far) right more and more. I guess the Tea Party movement sort of bridged the gap between its traditional religious conservatism, and modern-day Trumpism - which is of course still much more economically liberal than anything you'd find in Europe.

Squalid posted:

The United States is really not coming into alignment with Europe. Not on social issues, not on economic issues. The United States is not just Europe but less than.

Phlegmish posted:

The interesting and perhaps ironic thing about Trump is that in a way he helped bring the US more into alignment with Europe, in the sense that its 'conservatives' (a word the right would rarely use to describe itself over here) have started resembling the European (far) right more and more. I guess the Tea Party movement sort of bridged the gap between its traditional religious conservatism, and modern-day Trumpism - which is of course still much more economically liberal than anything you'd find in Europe.

Grape posted:

The US is unquestionably coming in line with Europe on social issues, though your mileage will vary tremendously by state.

Also on what is being defined as Europe, which I'm going to as usual assume means "Western Europe".

Heck even Western Europe isn't flying on all cylinders wrt gay marriage. Switzerland and Italy are still dragging their feet. The latter notoriously toxically macho, and the former the cool as heck place that had at least one canton wait until the 90's to give women suffrage.

A Buttery Pastry posted:

That difference seems to be more down to the degree of centralization of the two. In a US where suffrage was decided on a county-by-county level, some would probably still require you to own land.

SlothfulCobra posted:

I have no goddamn idea what you're talking about. Are you trying to say like Europe has always had racism as the center of conservatism, which had been relatively out of focus for a little while before the tea party came around to remind them all how much they hated blacks? Are you taking the fact that the religious right put all their support into one of the most sinful men in politics into power as some sign that their religious beliefs aren't relevant to their politics? Because they've always been entirely hypocritical on that front.

I do know there was a whole thing where it seemed like far-right parties were in ascendancy across the globe in a bunch of countries at once, but I thought that was just as surprising to Europeans as Americans.

Phlegmish posted:

I really don't think my post was that hard to comprehend, even if you disagree with my assessment. My view of the right in the US used to be that they were mostly gun-toting zealots pushing fundamentalist Christianity wherever they could. Now they still tote guns, but xenophobia/racism and the like seem to be the name of the game, and ethical concerns are increasingly seen as irrelevant, even ridiculous (as has been the case in most of Western Europe for half a century).

Cat Mattress posted:

Because America, home of the Ku Klux Klan and the Jim Crow laws, did not used to be racist and it's something that's just happened there in the early 21st century, probably a European import.

Cat Mattress posted:

Because America, home of the Ku Klux Klan and the Jim Crow laws, did not used to be racist and it's something that's just happened there in the early 21st century, probably a European import.

Phlegmish posted:

I really don't think my post was that hard to comprehend, even if you disagree with my assessment. My view of the right in the US used to be that they were mostly gun-toting zealots pushing fundamentalist Christianity wherever they could. Now they still tote guns, but xenophobia/racism and the like seem to be the name of the game, and ethical concerns are increasingly seen as irrelevant, even ridiculous (as has been the case in most of Western Europe for half a century).

Is that not the case, has my view been warped by the Internet?

Ras Het posted:

I can see what Phleghmish means, in that when I was a kid the image of the American right was seen, through Bush, as "people who hate abortions and love guns", which we mostly found a funny joke in Europe because we contrasted it with our idyllic Social Democratic consensus with vague liberal flavourants, whereas we nowadays see the same racism and xenophobia that motivates our right wing, which isn't funny

Ras Het posted:

I can see what Phleghmish means, in that when I was a kid the image of the American right was seen, through Bush, as "people who hate abortions and love guns", which we mostly found a funny joke in Europe because we contrasted it with our idyllic Social Democratic consensus with vague liberal flavourants, whereas we nowadays see the same racism and xenophobia that motivates our right wing, which isn't funny

Phlegmish posted:

Yeah, this is what I meant. The secularization of American society, in my opinion, is a good thing, but the talking points that are still current are depressingly similar to Europe in a lot of ways.
I was born in 1990 and I vividly remember having discussions with American creationists online as a young teenager. Now, in 2020, it's rare that religion ever even comes up as a subject.

Thanks for the explanation, Xelkelvos. Yeah, both parties are 'big-tent' in that all of the traditional strains are represented, but I also feel that there's been a gradual rhetorical shift over the past twenty years.

Phlegmish posted:

I was born in 1990 and I vividly remember having discussions with American creationists online as a young teenager. Now, in 2020, it's rare that religion ever even comes up as a subject.

SlothfulCobra posted:

We're not more or less secular than we were 20 years ago,

Xelkelvos posted:

A little but only in the sense that you're cutting out other major groups among US conservatives.

There's nominally three large branches of the GOP: The Social Conservatives are basically what you describe above, the Military Conservatives who care about keeping the US as the dominant force of the world via an overwhelming supply of hard power and some soft power, and the Fiscal Conservatives who want to maximize business profits as much as possible by advantageous trade deals, favorable regulations and various incentives (think: big business/corporate types).

Based on these branches, Conservative Americans are influenced to some degree by each but to varying extents but more or less fall into at least one category. In the last decade, more populist and extreme elements have started to become more influential, at least in two of the three branches. The Tea Party is basically a more extreme extension of the Fiscal Conservatives where the previous guard saw at least some benefit of having federal apparatuses do some of the heavy lifting to benefit businesses with what little money they deign to fund them with, the Tea Party would cut out the federal apparatus entirely and let private enterprise sort it out as get the government out of business is worth more than whatever any cost benefit analysis says. The other influenced branch is Social Conservatives where the xenophobia is dialed up even louder without regards on if it steps on the toes of the other conservative philosophies (which it very well does). The desire of authoritarian policies in order to execute them has also dialed up, even if it's in conflict with the anti-government positions of the Libertarian/Tea Party types.

Edit: What's largely changed in the 21st century during and after the Bush era is the rise/revival of a sort of Populist Conservatism which includes the Tea Party and Evangelicals as described above.

Grape posted:

The US is unquestionably coming in line with Europe on social issues, though your mileage will vary tremendously by state.

Also on what is being defined as Europe, which I'm going to as usual assume means "Western Europe".

Heck even Western Europe isn't flying on all cylinders wrt gay marriage. Switzerland and Italy are still dragging their feet. The latter notoriously toxically macho, and the former the cool as heck place that had at least one canton wait until the 90's to give women suffrage.