If you'd be willing, I'm happy to send you my copy of Blackout by Candace Owens or have a watch party for Matt Walsh's documentary "What is a Woman."
Oh they can fuck right off with that, and all the rest too
The thing is, they want to argue with you. The only thing you can do that doesn't play into their hands is ghost them. Or maybe that's just be because I usually wind up doing that regardless.
I unfriended a woman who put up a Facebook after the election saying that now she and her children have a future. But I never really liked her anyway. She got her money the usual way, marrying a doctor and then divorcing him for child support.
My new (possibly crackpot) theory is that Trump's popularity now is that he's the human version of one of those destruction rooms that became a niche urbanite thing in the 2010s. People are really angry and sad because of Covid and downstream effects but their emotions are all displaced because they don't actually remember 2020 at all. They want to smash a table with a baseball bat or break something against a wall and Trump is willing to give them endless tools and targets to do so.
Yes, I continue to struggle with this. I realize my hot flaming hatred is wholly unproductive, but there it is. Your candidate specifically targeted me, my family and my friends, And much worse for so, so many vulnerable people. So fuck right off into the sun.
So right now I'm still there with Rude Pundit's ,a href="https://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2024/11/america-is-floating-island-of-garbage.html">America Is a Floating Island of Garbage.
And seemingly the most utterly annoying snowflakes on planet earth. Whatever else you think about Kamala Harris or HRC they had more stones than than the accumulated Joe Rogan audience put together. A world of shit and abuse and they stayed gracious. These fucking Trumpholes are the angriest and most resentful winners ever.
Here I am not helping. But not doing so vociferously at least.
6: Yeah, could they at least stop driving like unhinged psychopaths now? (I know , not only T voters...)
Fuck 'em in the crocodile tear ducts.
Yeah. Speaking as a 35 year old, it's pretty dispiriting to see that the US is more misogynistic/xenophobic/homo/transphobic than it was 10 years ago.
I'm baffled when that side talks about "unity" as if they somehow think of themselves as desirable people to unify with.
4 is right, I think; life's too short to hang around with people like that.
These people are really interesting to me, and sometimes, when I've got the stomach for it, I'll engage them on their own terms. I'd start here:
Ms. so-and so: You've mentioned that you don't agree with everything Trump has done. Is there anything important he's done that you disagree with?
I'm on team They Can Fuck Right Off. Zero interest in engaging.
Had a conversation with my priest about what the role of the church might be in resisting Trump, because so much of what he is advocating is clearly evil. Like, do we hide undocumented immigrants in our basement or spare rectories.
I hadn't seen the cover art for What Is A Woman? before, and it makes Walsh look like a naive alien, perhaps from an asexually reproducing species, overwhelmed to arrive at our planet abounding in women of all sorts.
I'm definitely not engaging! I'm also not cutting ties, because it's not the deaf kid's fault his parents are ignorant, selfish, stupid, and cruel.
What a dumb shitshow.
If we're going to assume unidirectionaln time, that's probably a safe bet.
17: Yes., your situation here is much more difficult than the abstract level we are mostly responding to. So far I do not have anything similar, but am not looking forward to several interactions with folks in my outer orbit.
At eighteen (or nineteen in Nebraska and Alabama and 21 in Mississippi), what the kids are is their own fault.
This kid is 2, so it's not his fault yet
The thing I find most puzzling is the almost sadistic fascination with liberal "tolerance," plus the self-positioning as someone who loves the sinner and loudly, vociferously hates the sins. It's like they're half expecting a mirror image of "Christian" loving-intolerance from liberals, and half expecting that evil will simply bend before their righteousness in some pleasing way. It's an unstable position and, as E. Messily points out, the instability plays out in just a few comments. I'm not sure engagement is even possible. You're not going to untangle that shit.
This is not quite the same engagement/disengagement quandary but, my bestie was over at a Friendsgiving with a social group she'd been close to before transition, all white straight couples, all SF tech people of the usual mainstream-Democrat sort with a sprinkling of big thoughts about crypto, and table talk turned to postmortem on the election, and suddenly all these people wanted to start debating my friend on women's sports and bathrooms and puberty blockers and the tactical effectiveness of Democratic messaging thereon, none of which my friend had expressed any opinion about whatsoever. It was a crappy experience and left her wondering about the status of the friendships.
In talking her through it, I realized that outside a couple of old friends and eclectic web magazines I've just stopped hanging out with straight people. :/ It wasn't deliberate! I'm sorry, pluralist ideal!
One of the few novel observations on all this I've seen recently: oddly, low-social-trust people seem to trust other overtly low-social-trust people, and Trump definitely personifies that.
27: Trump is a rapist and a criminal? Well, all politicians are terrible. You can trust Trump to be untrustworthy, whereas all the other politicians -- and people -- will try to fool you about their dishonesty.
In my attempt to rebuild an America with a place for everyone, I'm going to leave disgusting stenches in men's restrooms while ignoring women's sports.
You're one of the good ones, Mobes.
Trump being a known liar and crook was a huge positive. Oh he's going to increase tariffs? Nah he doesn't really mean it. Or maybe he does but he's also corrupt so business leaders think they can bribe their way to success.
On the other side, he says he won't ban abortion? The Christian fundies think he's just lying for the moderates.
Kamala once voted for a bill with general medical coverage guidelines for prisoners? She specifically supports transition treatments for gang members!
That said, women's sports are pretty awesome.
"I wish good health for you and your family, but honestly a lot of what you say is utter horseshit and the information sources you rely on are confirmed liars and crazies and evil to boot, and I don't understand how anyone with even half a brain could listen to that garbage, so any conversation between us about these topics would just upset you and make me stupider, so thanks but I'll pass."
Plus maybe "Hail Satan" if the person is being annoying.
Re the OP, the thing that befuddles me is the degree to which folks like this feel entitled to not only HAVE their beliefs, but to have every blessed friend, acquaintance, and stranger they encounter actively *listen to and endorse* those beliefs.
I have been an activist for essentially all of my life. There are many ways in which I work to change public and individual opinion every day. But I have never felt entitled to have every person listen to me, let alone agree.
Because of the end of the day? Any individual person's disagreement is mostly meaningless. This is a country of 330+ million people! We can't even agree on what time the clocks should read! We can and have enacted seismic social change just by getting a critical mass on board!
These people are just bonkers.
Also -- " I used to fall more into the moderate camp until George Floyd" is a HUGE tell.
Watching a police officer kneel on a man for long minutes until he suffocated to death made you conservative? Do you not understand how much of a monster that makes you sound?
(Obviously, she was conservative all along. But it's telling that she thinks that THAT is somehow explanatory.)
A friend-of-a-friend was commenting that "woke-ism" (his word) made him feel oppressed, so I have asked him what woke-ism is (since he seemed to have a clear idea of what that is) and why it made him feel that way. He's a white guy probably around 60 and probably from the Deep South, so I have my guesses, but it will be interesting to see if he answers at all.
34- it seems to me to be a similar attitude to how much they hate being described. Don't call me straight/white/cis/abled/hearing/etc! I'M JUST A NORMAL DEFAULT PERSON
I'm pretty good at navigating conversations where people disagree -- professional risk -- but I just don't feel like it. I don't know why I have to pretend that people calling me the enemy of the state are just good-hearted salt of the earth types, but if I defend myself I'm causing problems. So I don't travel for Thanksgiving, and since no one seems to care, it works out.
She specifically supports transition treatments for gang members!
This pisses me off because transition treatments for gang members are a hug public benefit if it helps to get people out of gangs and on their way toward non-recidivism.
Alternatively, if they stay in the gang after transition then it's a John Waters movie.
I don't think social media engagement of any kind is productive-- outside personal lived experience, alternate realities to mine. In person, I've tried asking people (if there's hope of a decent conversation) about their lives, sometimes asking about how their lived experience affects their politics. But the possibility of real communication is pretty limited, because embedded in there is a bunch of stuff that's false, and often the affected individual doesn't like thinking and isn't good at it. But sometimes people are more willing to listen to simple sentences about ice cores and climate change, or the ease of counting whether foreign-born people are overrepresented in US prisons after a sympathetic conversation about their own lives, the only topic that really matters.
There's a part of me that wants to respond to people like that with
"Yeah, I agree completely, we need to sterilize all deaf people, I mean, we wouldn't want that sort of genetic disorder infecting the body politic! And for sure no insurance should cover anything for them, I mean, if you can't afford to support your family and your children, fuck you, you shouldn't have had a deaf child, etc, etc, etc."
But these conservative pieces of shit are all the same: the only safety net, the only compassion, they ever get behind, is the one that helps them and (in the best case) their family and friends. Like that dirtbag Rob Porter, who got behind LGBTQ rights when his son came out. So there's no point in trying to make these people see reason: it's a hopeless task.
Best thing is to cut then out of one's life completely.
44: not nitpicking, but I think you're talking about Rob Portman, who was a Senator in Ohio.
To quote John Cole, disagreements like this fit his analogy (not mine so permitted) on bipartisanship at the beginning of the Obama administration:
"Imagine trying to negotiate an agreement on dinner plans with your date, and you suggest Italian and she states her preference would be a meal of tire rims and anthrax."
There is no middle ground or compromise between a normal and an insane opinion, there is only, "You are insane and your beliefs have no connection to reality."
Nitpicking a bit, but Portman has a position at the AEI, making him a shitbag and not a dirtbag.
peep, Moby, you're both right. *grin*
lol the Times has an oped today by a couples therapist about the need to see nuance in people across political divides instead of all-or-nothing views of opposing political beliefs. But then she ends with this:
Relational ethical engagement with each other is rooted not in abstract moral principles alone but in a profound respect for the autonomy and depth of others' experiences. I do believe that progressive ideological positions, at least in theory, are better set up to facilitate that kind of discourse, while conservative ideologies often promote submitting to strong men. But refusing to settle into a discourse of splitting is available to us all.
transition treatments for gang members are a huge public benefit if it helps to get people out of gangs
I am pretty sceptical that there are significant numbers of trans gang members out there, and also pretty sceptical that transition would make them suddenly not want to be in a gang any more. It's a medical treatment, not a personality transplant.
the thing that befuddles me is the degree to which folks like this feel entitled to not only HAVE their beliefs, but to have every blessed friend, acquaintance, and stranger they encounter actively *listen to and endorse* those beliefs.
This is the bit that I find least befuddling, to be honest.
Stand by for a typology: there are people (like you, Witt) who desire power in order to cause changes in public policy. Sometimes those are good changes and sometimes they are bad, sometimes they're altruistic and sometimes selfish; sometimes you're seeking power by running for office, sometimes by bribing politicians, sometimes by organising petitions or lawsuits or demonstrations, sometimes by invading other countries, but you're all the same in that one respect: you want power to make something happen, whether that's aid to Ukraine or saving the badgers or cutting your personal income tax payments.
You're befuddled because you think everyone else is like you in this regard, so you're thinking: but you've won! You're going to get your policy preferences executed and I can't stop you! Why aren't you happy?
The answer is: because there are people who desire political power purely as an end in itself, because they like dominating others. This person knows that E doesn't agree with her but her goal is to force E to submit none the less. To put a sign in her shop window saying "Workers of the world, unite!" to use the obvious comparison. She knows perfectly well that E will be listening to her views while grinding her teeth, and that her endorsement will be completely insincere and forced - but that is what makes it so valuable. There's no dominance payoff in getting E to express support for something that E actually does support. It's even a bit disappointing if she does so by talking to E and persuading her that her views are actually correct. The point is to force E to do it.
51:I'd offer a different explanation. Or maybe the same explanation spun a different way.
The core of Trump's support (I contend) comes from people who are profoundly embarrassed by their political and/or personal beliefs. These bigots and idiots don't want to change their beliefs, but also don't want to feel bad about that. Trump's slogan should be "No more shame." You don't have to be embarrassed about anything.
You've done the research. If they can't handle the Truth, that's on them.
It's not just people that they need to dominate. It's reality itself. RFK and fundamentalist Christians are natural allies, and both are victims of a national epidemic of narcissistic personality disorder.
They probably have different views of heroin as a study aide.
52: I don't know about that, to be honest. The person in the OP is saying more or less "I insist that you spend time with me. I will not try to persuade you to stop disagreeing with my beliefs but I insist that you do not voice your disagreement."
If I was ashamed of my beliefs, I simply wouldn't spend time around people who I knew didn't share them, whether they voiced their disagreement or not. If I honestly believed my beliefs were right I would try to convince others of them - as the OP person seems to be doing, or at least making a token effort to do. But saying "I insist you spend time with me and pretend to share my beliefs" is a pure dominance game.
I guess my claim is that I'm going one level deeper and explaining why they need to dominate.
I assume it's a sex thing, but poorly sublimated.
Try using common safe words and see if they don't quit.
I would add to this that it's also an effort to dominate the people who don't engage -- to ascribe disreputable motives to them. If the response is silence, well, silence equals assent.
If Trump opposes gender affirming care, why do I keep hearing about his transition?
ajay: I was unable to read the OP completely, b/c saw red, saw red, SAW RED. I have no such people in my life, b/c in Nov 2016 I sent email to everybody I thought might have been one, letting them know that -if- they hadn't voted for Trump, they should let me know, b/c otherwise, well, I couldn't be friends with Trumpists, white supremacists, misogynists, homophobes, fascists, etc. Uniformly, I got back butthurt letters of outrage: "you're making me an unperson" shit. And so, I sent a reply-all blast email to all these people who'd responded thus, letting them know two things:
(1) if they persisted, I would out them to everybody I knew
(2) hey, here are some other pieces of shit for you to get to know
They shut right up, and quick. So yeah, I think part of it -is- a dominance game: it's "tug that forelock, ignorant serf."
The thing I find irritating about the whole "let's-agree-to-disagree" schtick is that, obviously, that only works about things no one thinks are important. If we have fundamentally incompatible conceptions of right and wrong, not to say reality itself, there's no meaningful sense that we can be friends. People aren't friends with other people they believe are doing significantly evil bad stuff.
So do the let's-be-friends-anyway people just not think any of these issues are actually important? They don't respond well to that implication! Do they not believe that I actually think they're important?
I guess they probably think no issues could possibly be as important as they, the individual person, are.
Somehow the algorithms have been serving me a bunch of red-pill content -- is that even what it's called -- when I have reels on during a long drive. 62 last reminds of of the question that these asshole men ask the hypothetical women they're pretending to not want to date: just what are you bringing to the table?
In that context it's ridiculous, but with respect to someone who wants you to overlook their deplorable values, it seems like fair game. Now the answer might be access to be able to help someone I care about in which case, sure, yes. But even then only if you're pure of heart at the EM level . . .
Just to be clear, I have cut plenty of people out of my personal life over deplorable values.
Also, I was not the one responding to any of the quoted facebook thread. I just witnessed it.
I'm not sure I agree with 62.1. The original "let's agree to disagree" topic is religion, which obviously lots of people think is extremely important, and nonetheless freedom of religion was a great development. Now religion and politics aren't the same and I'm not making an analogy, I just don't think it can be true that you can't agree to disagree about important topics.
The key point is you can't agree to disagree on topics where at least one side is trying to legislate on that topic. You can agree to disagree about whether abortion is wrong, you can't agree to disagree on whether it's legal.
Oh yeah, fuck 'em. I severed ties with every single Republican friend and relative I have. Maybe they'll find their way out of the fever swamp or maybe they won't, but I'm not planning on ever finding out. I spent 50 years or so agreeing to disagree and I suppose I still am since god knows I'm done trying to convince them of anything, but this was the big "pick a side" moment and they did.
|| I've been having a thought about Trump. He's made no secret of his wish that New York Times v. Sullivan be overturned. Would anyone be shocked to learn [I'm just speculating here] that there are 5 votes for the proposition that in 1789 legislators ratifying the Bill of Rights had no idea or intention that they were impairing the common law of defamation with regard to cases between private parties?
All he needs to do is tee it up. There's people talking shit about Trump every day. He can file a complaint and explicitly say the statements were untrue and simple negligence. Whatever the elements are in the particular state for a plaintiff who is not a public figure. It draws a quick motion to dismiss, Trump's lawyers argue that NYT was wrongly decided, and we're off the the races.
Getting rid of NYT is phenomenally valuable to Trump. All of his public figure opponents can spend the next 4 years in court.|>
Julian Sanchez is really, really good on the issue that ajay and I have been discussing.
Quote:
What they want, though they'll never admit it, is the respect of civilized people, which they fuzzily imagined they could extract by main force.
The NY Times is a big boy, though. It can afford lawyers. And truth is a defence against libel so they'll be fine. (Other countries don't have Sullivan and they manage.)
And, presumably, that would also open the way for countersuits against him. Stating that the NY Times is "FAILING" is false, and damages the NYT materially in the eyes of its advertisers and other business contacts, who exist in all 50 states including those with really anti Trump judges and juries.
||
"The reality we are facing is more challenging than ever, but we will overcome the current difficult situation and take a step forward," Lee said on Monday during his latest criminal trial.|>
69 New York Times is just the name of the 1964 Supreme Court case. Trump can pick some no name blogger with no insurance, sue her in the Northern District of Texas, Wichita Falls Division. And get the judge that is currently indulging Elon Musk's persecution fantasies. Media companies could file amicus briefs, and Trump would lose in the district court, with an opinion that says that there's no historical evidence at all for the First Amendment applying to private actions, or to judicial application of the common law -- I mean what even are the first five words of the Constitutional text? -- but, well, stuck with this ahistorical precedent. Reluctantly grants motion to dismiss. Fifth Circuit splits 2-1.
I realize that other countries live without NYT. No doubt. It's the combination of a politically corrupt judiciary, venal jurors, and the ability to forum shop, that makes this so dangerous here. I have a lot more faith in the independence and professionalism of the British judiciary than in ours.
|| And now I get to relive my own version of Alice's Restaurant. I forgot to put the trash out last night, slept in, and didn't hear the trucks this morning. Trash can is very full. The dump is closed, right? |>
Trump would have to be pretty desperate to reinstate a draft that would include overweight out-of-shape 66 year olds.
You still don't want to have to sit on the group W bench
People do have useful media in primitive places that lack press freedoms, such as the UK. But I do think that the UK maintains a sense of norms in a way that I am not confident the US will. The US Supreme Court has already approved legal concepts that in another era would have been considered frivolous.
65: otoh, Elaine was clearly right to be upset that Puddy wasn't trying to save her from hell, even though she didn't believe in it. (In that Seinfeld episode).
I'm pretty sure that the priest wasn't supposed to laugh at them both either.
Watching "The Producers" again. It's still very funny but I think if you made it today the big payoff would have to be that "Springtime for Hitler" is an unexpected and disastrous hit not because everyone in the audience thinks it's a satire but because everyone in the audience is a Nazi.
Finally, a Broadway show that addresses the economic anxiety of the working class.
82 great film that (assuming it's Mel Brooks' 1967 original). Also, lol.
Also: NMM to the Assad regime, reportedly.
I wonder who is the most chinless world leader now.
"NMM to the Assad regime, reportedly."
This would be amazing if confirmed!
The day after No Nut November is bad timing for those who had been waiting.
He's come back from worse. Though he can probably expect a little less help from his friends this time.
If you have help, it's not masturbating.
You can masturbate, and you can bait your master, but you can't masturbate your friend's nose.