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Noun Verber posted:What country are you from? Anyone who's in Somethingawful's typical age range and from the USA grew up in an age where every trip to school could end with a mass shooting. The vast majority of gen Y/millennials don't give a poo poo about the threat of a shooting any more than they care about the threat of rain. This isn't true at all. Even if all of the school shootings happened in (eg) the state of Colorado I don't think Colorado children would "not give a poo poo" about it happening.
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Nov 22, 2015 15:49
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Smudgie Buggler posted:Er, the First Amendment only protects against interference with the free exercise of religion. It doesn't guarantee you won't be discriminated against for belonging to a particular religion. Not according to established precedent: quote:The "establishment of religion" clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion to another . . . in the words of Jefferson, the [First Amendment] clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of separation between church and State' . . . That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.
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Nov 22, 2015 16:11
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:There's a couple things I haven't seen mentioned here - the fervent tone of right-wingers in the U.S. has a lot to do with the fact that whites are becoming a minority population. Settler states under demographic pressure like that typically go extra crazy and use increasingly unparliamentarian tricks until they completely lose power (one way or another) - or the race war is successful. That's why simultaneously right-wingers are going nuts about immigration, BLM, and Muslims. A saner entrenched ethnic elite might try to bring one group into the fold to keep oppressing the other two, but I think people today are too educated to fall for that kind of trick. The thing about "Bringing a group into the fold" is that you need a few characteristics, namely: 1. There can't be large amounts of migration of that group at the current time. 2. This group must have some degree of social influence and power. Take the Irish, for example. Their largest period of discrimination is during the 19th Century, when they had a large influx of migrants and relatively low amounts of power (partially because lots of them were recent immigrants). By the 20th Century, you had a vastly reduced amount of migrants, and a solidification of the Irish in middle class power structures (5/6 of police officers in New York City were Irish around the turn of the 20th Century, for example). With these criteria in mind, consider the groups that people typically chicken little about being assimilated - Hispanics, Muslims, and (rarely) African-Americans. While some Hispanics do have some social influence, the vast majority are extremely low class. In addition, the vast majority of Hispanics in the US have Mexican ancestry, which is the largest immigration group at the moment. They're basically the exact worst option to pick for assimilation.* African-Americans by contrast don't have the immigration issues, but are the most poo poo upon minority other than maybe Native Americans. Muslims actually check both boxes well, which is why historically they were Republican reliables. But, then 9/11 happened. *The exception being if you created a rift between "Mexicans" and "Mexican-Americans". Such a rift did exist historically (the first border wall was created in a Mexican-American majority town to keep out the cheaper immigrants) but has mostly disappeared because of  assholes.
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Nov 23, 2015 03:57
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Helsing posted:Even if Trump losses the damage might already be done. Especially if the Republicans retain control of so many state legislatures and governorships. The Democrats might continue to hold the presidnecy but will that matter if the GOP has the House of Representatives, is competitive in the senate, and controls most state governments? Yes.
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Nov 25, 2015 17:23
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Helsing posted:Supreme Court nominees still require the Democrats to have a presence in the senate, and if the GOP controls state governments then they can employ all kinds of dirty tricks to suppress voter turnout. No, all it requires is for the Republican Supreme Court justices to die first.
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Nov 25, 2015 18:04
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Helsing posted:What happens when the Republican controlled Senate Judiciary Committee decides to indefinitely filibuster the Democratic President's nominee for the Supreme Court? Then at worst, no SCOTUS decisions are made. If more than one Republican Justice dies, then the Democrats get control back.
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Nov 25, 2015 20:32
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Most religious denominations are explicitly anti-authoritarian. Like, that's the whole gimmick behind Protestantism.
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Nov 27, 2015 03:30
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khwarezm posted:There's nothing intrinsically anti-authoritarian in Protestantism, its just that they generally rejects Catholicism as too deviant from the true authority of the bible. And other Protestants when they get too uppity. By its very nature, there is very little inherent to Protestantism. Its decentralized nature is one of those few components.
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Nov 27, 2015 06:38
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Your Dunkle Sans posted:You're aware this already exists, right? Yes, it exists for a subset of the far less popular Islamic denomination. Sunnis don't give a poo poo.
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Nov 27, 2015 17:16
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Tei posted:Its always a good practice to ignore what people SAY and pay attention to what people DO: 
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Nov 27, 2015 17:50
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Western Culture is pretty bad though, full of racists and colonialists.
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Nov 27, 2015 19:04
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Tei posted:Do you really think that? I think is pretty great. What happened to "You are not your culture"?
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Nov 27, 2015 19:15
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Tei posted:If you say that western culture is stupid, I will not feel like you insulted me. But I will give you reasons why I think you are wrong. I guess that big pickup truck is compensating for something. -Not an insult on someone, apparently
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Nov 27, 2015 19:30
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Effectronica posted:Even less fortunately, it tends to be a sort of poisonous religion along the lines of Christian fundamentalism. Take a guess what type of households many atheists come from.
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Nov 28, 2015 21:03
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Average Bear posted:To clarify, I didn't know religious arbitration was common in America. Hmm, I wonder if there's a reason for that.
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Nov 28, 2015 22:44
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Tei posted:Unlike you, I think Sharia Law has not place anywhere in the world. You should tell those people that are opposing refugees.
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Nov 28, 2015 22:52
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Average Bear posted:Are you telling me it isn't or I'm Not Left Enough? No, I'm saying there's a deliberate trend towards highlighting the negative actions/aspects of Muslims and other minorities while suppressing similar aspects from more favored groups. Eg, the whole "can white people be terrorists" thing. A white guy crashed his plane into a government building & no one called it terrorism.
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Nov 28, 2015 22:57
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rudatron posted:This has been true historically, but part of the problem is that insular groups are adapting to this strategy. Part of that adaption is the creation of exclusive religious schools, gated communities, etc that create a closed loop of control. The best example is evangelical christians, but it's not exclusive to them. Uh, that's been a thing for over a hundred years with the Catholic school programs.
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Nov 29, 2015 02:45
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rudatron posted:Have you read the Prester John threads here on SA? It's a very different world, a lot more extreme. Can you prove that? Specific examples, comparing what Prestor John said with historical notes about the Catholic system of yesteryear. Tei posted:This seems to exist in USA, Israel and Argentina. For whatever reason, these 3 countries work less like a country and more like a federation of individuals. But is not true anywhere else in the world. I'll let the Basques know that they're officially Spanish and/or French now.
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Nov 29, 2015 15:34
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Cat Mattress posted:I don't know exactly what Tei meant by "a federation of individuals", so I'm not sure how Basque citizenship is a valid counterpoint. Presumably that people don't conform to the "national ethnicity" or whatever that traditional nation-states try to band around.
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Nov 29, 2015 16:30
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Tei posted:Eeek... this comment is gay. A stunning output from Western Culture.
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Nov 29, 2015 17:37
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RACHET posted:He's gay so let's throw him off a building and then stone him to death after his legs are broken. More proof that the people who claim "culture doesn't matter" become whiny babies once you actually criticize their culture.
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Nov 29, 2015 21:30
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RACHET posted:
But that's an integral part of Western culture!
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Nov 29, 2015 21:45
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Manic X posted:
Yeah we should talk to white culture about dealing with that.
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Nov 29, 2015 23:50
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The Insect Court posted:
You're stretching the definition of religious, instead of realizing the truth: Someone can be an atheist and still superstitious. We see this in America with conspiracy theorists or anti-vaxxers.
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Dec 3, 2015 05:16
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Morroque posted:I suppose this is the best place as ever to ask what might be a deceptively stupid question: why exactly is it that ISIS is so hated in the first place? Like, the actual reason as far as political motivations go? So much of what I am hearing about how terrible ISIS is supposed to be is coming from people with no actual link to the region and don't have much to go off of aside from Islamophobia. It's just taken for granted that ISIS is so bad and so terrible, but I feel like I must've missed the reason why, especially when ISIS is compared to other groups like Boko Haram or even Assad. Setting aside all of the horrible individual actions they've done, they're opposed to all of the major powers in the region (maybe not Saudi but definitely Iran, Russia by way of Assad, and the US by way of Iraq) and they're just crazy enough to not realize that this is suicidal in the long term.
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Dec 3, 2015 06:23
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Helsing posted:Eh, I can't entirely agree with you on that one. Most traditional religions, whether it's Catholicism, Anglicanism, Calvinism, Orthodox Judaism, Hinduism, Shia or Sunni Islam, etc. have some pretty serious issues with patriarchal attitudes, mistrust of outsiders, and subordination of individual interests to the preservation of the culture or group. I don't have much interest in defending or protecting those attitudes. I wouldn't dismiss any culture outright but I also think that we in the west can sometimes forget just how awful things were in the very recent past (and how awful they continue to be in many places in the west where religion still dominates public life). If you look at Catholicism in Quebec or Ireland, or Mormonism in Utah, or Baptism in many towns in the South, then it's pretty clear that there are some really awful cultural values on display. For that matter, there's lots of problems with Islam. We don't need to shy away from admitting this. I think the issue here is that those negative characteristics are being conflated with religious culture, when there's not really any evidence that a non-religious culture wouldn't also have those beliefs. We don't have any evidence because apparently every culture on earth is either religious or "secretly religious" (i.e., China). In theory though, there's no reason why xenophobia (for example) wouldn't exist within a non-religious society because it often comes from economic factors that are independent of religion. Same with subordination of individual interests (which ironically was the big Commie Atheist thing in the 20th Century).
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Dec 4, 2015 15:08
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Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:Isn't modern Japan extremely secular? It's sexist and xenophobic as hell. Or is it also somehow under the "secretly religious" umbrella because blah blah Shinto blah? Exactly, it's a "No True Atheism" cop-out. You could probably do the same with New Atheists as a subset in the US because they're culturally very similar to Evangelical Christianity (because lots of them are from those households).
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Dec 4, 2015 15:49
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54.4 crowns posted:
"Politically correct", more or less.
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Dec 7, 2015 05:39
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Black Bones posted:Aren't most Muslims in the USA African-Americans citizens anyways, as opposed to Middle Eastern visitors? I don't know, something I heard somewhere. Most converts are, but what I'm seeing is about 30% each of Arab, Black, and South Asian.
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Dec 7, 2015 23:55
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Mr. Gibbycrumbles posted:As a non-American I am watching all this with some amusement. You're asking the forum of chronic alcoholics and cynics whether you should be pessimistic?
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Dec 8, 2015 19:36
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Helsing posted:
Assuming the last 25 years is "modern memory", the Democrats have nominated a candidate 6 times, and have won 4 out of those 6 times (maybe 5 depending on Gore). So that's not exactly the most scathing indictment you can give, even assuming it's true.
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Dec 8, 2015 19:56
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Helsing posted:And yet the Democratic party is in crisis and most of it's followers seem to have trouble even acknowledging that fact. The party's probably got a firm hold on the White House in 2016, but even that isn't guaranteed, and it's position almost everywhere else is incredibly tenuous. Which State legislatures that the Democrats control do they look tenuous in?
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Dec 8, 2015 20:03
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That doesn't really answer my question though. At best, all you've shown is that the Democrats had a coalition that was much weaker than it appeared to be, which everyone & their mother knows by now. What is also known is that Democrats have the reputation of being "spineless". This is partially due to them having a coalition that's not very strong. You'll notice that in the past 4 years or so, there's been a lot stronger coordination within the party. This isn't accidental.
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Dec 8, 2015 20:40
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Panzeh posted:The bad things about islam are pretty much the same bad things in christianity and judaism. And the funny thing is that there's a clear rhetorical double standard between Islam and those two, even if it involves otherwise hated people. Like, in the Freeper thread when those people act like monsters you'll see people say something to the effect of "those aren't real Christians!" even though they're performing exactly in line with some of the religious teachings of Christianity (yes, the Old Testament is part of your religious teachings or else you would have chucked it away already). Take that same sort of person, but make them Muslim. Now the response becomes "you can't say they're not a real Muslim, they're following the teachings of their religion!"
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Dec 11, 2015 01:52
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Average Bear posted:Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Religious conservatism is a minority in the west. Under what standard? The one where a Christian party rules in Germany, or the one where we just had a mass shooting at an abortion clinic in the US?
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Dec 11, 2015 01:58
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Average Bear posted:The "Christian" part of that party is vestigial. Most Christians aren't shooting up abortion clinics. As opposed to most Muslims, which
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Dec 11, 2015 02:01
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Average Bear posted:Live under oppressive cultural standards enforced by the religious elite. Gonna take a guess and say most Muslims don't support ISIS.
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Dec 11, 2015 02:09
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Average Bear posted:Agreed. Most Saudi Arabians probably aren't too happy about their government either. Yeah, most Germans probably aren't either.
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Dec 11, 2015 02:10
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Average Bear posted:Almost as though the people enforcing their terrible religious convictions on others are the people I'm criticizing. Then why did you say "Most Christians aren't shooting up abortion clinics"? I'll even remind you of the conversation: quote:You: Religious conservatism is a minority in the west.
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Dec 11, 2015 02:13
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