Another thing: liberals, in general, are suspicious about government action. It's somewhat surprising, then, that Democrats aren't, since they're definitely liberals. However, unlike socialists, Democrats don't really talk about the shared duties and obligations that citizens living in a single state have to each other. Rather, they talk about a shared belief in the role of government to improve people's lives. I suspect this has something to do a utilitarian influence too.

Christians lean right because of how the doctrines of Christianity are used. The new testament after the death of Christ is basically a series of letters from people living as a persecuted religious minority in Rome. Instead of Christians being sensible and reading this as a contextual set of works, fundamentalism does the opposite, it extends them to the realm of pure, unwavering truth. So the context of fundamentalism is 100% a narrative about being an oppressed minority in a secular world who literally wants to kill them.

Except, Christians aren't a minority, and are not persecuted. The doctrine clashes with reality, and reality loses out. So Christian fundamentalists have to literally invent spooks to be terrified of, literally conspiracy theory ideas about how the government and world works. They invent a parallel world with evil men seeking to destroy them. They literally cannot parse politics in any other way.

This has been taken advantage of by right-wing business figures. They try endlessly hard to turn the Democrats into the Romans. So you get an onslaught of the religious right having convulsions about literally ****ing nothing, because they need that antagonism for their fundamentalist beliefs to make sense.

Or something like that. I'm making them sound too studious, because most are morons. But you get the point.

See: Left Behind series, God's Not Dead series.

Especially God's Not Dead 2. Watch that and try rationalizing that there are people who take the narrative of that film seriously.

It's a *truly* representative film.

Since you won't actually watch it, let me relay the plot. Grace is a high school teacher in Missouri at a school named after Martin Luther King Jr. During class, she's speaking about Ghandi, and a student asks her if Jesus had a doctrine of nonviolence as well. She answers yes and gives a quote from Jesus about nonviolence. She's then sued by an ACLU stand-in, by some guy who wants to prove God is dead or something, idk it's not really clear. They hold a trial, prove that liberals are biased against Christianity, prove MLKJr learned nonviolence from Christ, then prove the existence of God in court. It's pretty funny to watch their serious courtroom drama setting with Christian book group tier rhetoric. The judge rules in their favor.

The only thing missing is the courtroom standing up and clapping as the innocent verdict is handed down.

The pastors of all churches are simultaneously ordered by some vague government authority to hand over transcripts of all of their preachings, presumably because the U.S. government is now spying on Christian churches. The pastor refuses and is sent to jail.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1004742470700322816

Having dril for president is funny. Trump all time funniest president, for sure.

(Protestant) Christianity is incredibly diverse in America, and so is evangelicalism. Many evangelicals are not fundamentalists and there are fundamentals who aren't evangelicals. Fundamentalism really comes in in the 20th century, when developments in the natural science challenged some of the core ideas that religious faith depends on. For example, in order to believe in the incarnation, you have to believe that God created the world. Why? Because if God didn't create the world and nature is self-sustaining and doesn't need God to exist, then miracles are much more difficult to explain. If there are no miracles, it's impossible for God to intervene in history, which means the incarnation can't happen (along with various other things that are necessary for faith). The fundamentalist denies the naturalistic worldview, because it makes their faith impossible. He says that the Bible is a more authoritative source than science, and that when the two conflict, the Bible's account is preferable. That's really what fundamentalism is generally about. It's a rejection of modernity when modern develops bring about things that make religious beliefs impossible.

The stuff about oppression doesn't really fit in with the literalist hermeneutics of fundamentalists. That's not really key to American Christianity, never mind to evangelicalism or fundamentalism. The identity stuff comes in because Christians have been overreacting as they've watched over the course of the second half of the twentieth century as society has become less and less influenced by Christianity.

Oops, didn't mean to hit post.

I don't think Christianity is all THAT diverse, and while there is some variance what I'm pointing to exists in large numbers in America, so adjust the message.

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Lawmaker-Disturbed-That-FCC-Made-up-DDOS-Lied-to-Press-141963

I'm amazed it's news that a corporation-controlled federal agency would lie baldfaced.

I guess they could've just... not published it?

But then you wouldn't know about it. So I think that's why it's news. :p

So I wondered what happened when Some News quit playing, turns out Cracked laid off a bunch of employees so now our boy Cody Johnston is doing these videos freelance.

I'm developing a new appreciation for how detrimental it can be for a person to be openly antagonistic to the media as a whole. (See Elon Musk, but also Hillary Clinton.)

Nathan Fielder is the best lol

[quote=Suzanna Danuta Walters]Suzanna Danuta Walters, a professor of sociology and director of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Northeastern University, is the editor of the gender studies journal Signs.

[...]

The world has little place for feminist anger. Women are supposed to support, not condemn, offer succor not dismissal. We’re supposed to feel more empathy for your fear of being called a harasser than we are for the women harassed. We are told he’s with us and #NotHim. But, truly, if he were with us, wouldn’t this all have ended a long time ago? If he really were with us, wouldn’t he reckon that one good way to change structural violence and inequity would be to refuse the power that comes with it?

So men, if you really are #WithUs and would like us to not hate you for all the millennia of woe you have produced and benefited from, start with this: Lean out so we can actually just stand up without being beaten down. Pledge to vote for feminist women only. Don’t run for office. Don’t be in charge of anything. Step away from the power. We got this. And please know that your crocodile tears won’t be wiped away by us anymore. We have every right to hate you. You have done us wrong. #BecausePatriarchy. It is long past time to play hard for Team Feminism. And win.
[/quote]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-cant-we-hate-men/2018/06/08/f1a3a8e0-6451-11e8-a69c-b944de66d9e7_story.html?utm_term=.287e78203602

tl;dr: feminists can win the oppression olympics by default, and all they have to do is show off how angry their sense of entitlement makes them.

Are you a feminist, RJ?

I felt bad about what I wrote while I was swimming this evening

I do think feminism is necessary! And of course I'm feminist (adj). I'm just not militantly feminist (n.) to the point that I think that men should voluntarily abstain from running for public office.

The snark in my post came from the observation that feminism is probably not the most important issue in politics, to the exclusion of all other issues and any men who run for public office to champion those issues.

nice try ****lord. Men should voluntarily abstain from running for public office because women want to be in charge of the concentration camp.

let's definitely not talking about getting out of the concentration camp

You're reading/posting this while saying you have to suffer Chomsky? Yikes.

I guess different strokes for different folks.

I don't get it

You didn't want to suffer my post?

At the risk of explaining / spoiling a joke, if I am to understand Eversor's post: if I don't go along with this nutty professor who is saying that men should refrain from running for public office in order to advance the goals of feminism, then I am guilty of being a creep on par with Aziz Ansari.

Man, now that's a savage criticism. Quillette must really suck.

Also, the reason I typically have a hard time listening to Chomsky is that because his thinking has such a broad sweep, it's hard for me to know what the scope of what he plans to talk about will be, along with the fact that a.) he is smart, and b.) he talks slowly.

The result? Basically I am being mind-raped by somebody who is smarter than me and doing a good job at making me feel guilty about stuff I normally don't care about, motivating me to futilely attempt to resist his advances, which can only result in frustration.

What really sucks is paragraphs written in point 36 type.

It was more of a swing at Aziz Ansari than anything else.

oh look, a white person telling black men they shouldn't run for office.

The second episode of this podcast is the best thing I've come across recently about men, women, sex and violence: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/manifesto/id1378418322?mt=2

I think you'd like it, RJ.

It's stunning to me that Democrats are able to uphold the myth (that is, that people still by and large seem to believe it) that there is an alignment of interests amongst the groups that make up their coalition when everyday things like this are empirical evidence that suggests the exact opposite.

If anybody is asking, this is topical for the Trump thread because Donald Trump is a rapist.

Gotcha.

And while we're on the topic of competing definitions of feminism.

This was worded better before.


I think what's stunning is the assumption that a power-hungry person from an historically marginalized group is automatically a Democrat, but not as stunning as the fact that it's probably correct.

Thanks, I'll definitely give it a listen! Especially since it has been endorsed by random-internet-user named IgnoranceIsStrength as "...the best hour and sixteen minutes I’ve spent in a long long time."

I miss MLKJr

speaking of power hungry people from historically marginalized groups?

On the Trump-as-Hitler discussion: https://twitter.com/AliceAvizandum/status/1004912047191097344

Whenever someone expresses that sort of "government is the only locus of power" bull****, they need to be force fed articles like these:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/06/how-to-make-everyone-in-your-vicinity-secretly-fear-and-despise-you

The genuinely terrifying level of psychopathic social control that goes on in firms today is astonishing:



Creating a culture of fear, compliance, and bullying. Anyone who's ever read about this stuff knows this kind of environment instantly breeds cliques, workplace conflicts, bullying and all sorts of toxic, unproductive behavior.



No ****.



Look at all those man hours dumped into manipulating a social control scheme which produces Soviet level paranoia.



You can force honesty from people without berating them. Instilling a culture of honesty requires work, but anyone can do it, and it's really simple. When I worked in a group home I used this strategy to get the residents to be more honest, and it worked surprisingly well. You ready to hear it? Okay: be kinder, more thankful and less punishing towards people who are honest, and be more severe and punishing on people who lie. In this formula, the former is the more important.

Some bad **** happens, but you're honest? That's fine. I appreciate the honesty, and now we'll work to solve it. That's all you need to do. Getting mad about honesty discourages it, being kind and appreciative encourages it.

It's what's known as a "reward system"; it's advanced stuff they teach you in "Psychology 101".



Every decision ever is made emotionally. If there's one meme I think is most toxic to a person's well-being, it's that rationality should supercede emotion. Working on emotional wellbeing is the most important part of productivity for me personally.

Now, going on to the book:



Like all bull**** self-help, they take boilerplate 101 advice and work it in, so it sounds nice, then they throw in toxic bull****. Reminds me of this great Tweet by Existential Comics: https://twitter.com/existentialcoms/status/1000443678723260416?lang=en

Followed up by some sort of weird botched maybe set theory analysis of corporate hierachy? I really don't know:



I guess it does actually make more sense than the Jordan Peterson diagrams he refers to:





Where do people come up with these freeform idea paths which have no intrinsic relation outside of some analogy internal to themselves? Corporate America is incapable of writing decent prose or communicating ideas well. I suppose, to do the latter, you must have ideas worth communicating.

Moving on:



lol. my mom tried to give me this speech once when they were cutting me off from a service. which is fine, they don't owe it to me. but i felt insulted by that speech. just say you're doing it for the selfish reason you're doing it. i can handle your selfishness, but don't pretend you're doing me a favor. that's insulting to my intelligence.



Christ, this is so unbearably toxic. They do realize that running a hedge fund from 2008-2018 is the easiest job in the ****ing world right? This toxic behavior doesn't make them superior, because they aren't, it's literally impossible to have lost on Wall Street when the government is pumping money into it.



Wow, moral relativism, so deep. I guess since rape feels good for the rapist, it's kinda sensible to rape, so working to turn off your empathy receptors is good!



And the jokes write themselves. If Adam Scott was actually talented, he would just write a biography of Dalio.

I don't know if the use of "believable" over "right" was an intended self-own or not, but in either case it's a hilarious term to use.



And here we have a prime example of why Reason™ and Rationality® are dangerous catchphrases. All people all of the time are pretty much always doing things irrationally and unreasonably, in the literal sense of those terms, we don't put conscious thought into most of our actions. Anyone who proclaims to be more rational is just saying "I think my **** smells better".



TL;DR nobody has the right to question my authority. Or, maybe I should add a correction:



Well, moving on..



Er, what?



???????

Oh, so you only apply the principle selectively to bully people when you disagree with them, but then appeal to higher needs when you're confronted with a challenge to your own views? Human, all too human. It's almost as if "universal principles" are some of the most deceptive baloney humans ever tried to concoct.



By a better idea.



Holy ****ing **** man. This guy is literally a Stalin type personality. Like no ****ing joke.



Maybe because he's a psychopath who's worked his whole career to dehumanize and abuse people.



Well, one of those words is accurate.



"Good fit" is an interesting choice of words. I would use maybe "psychopathic", "crazy", "downtrodden", "abuse-tolerant", "self-loathing", but I'm not their PR man.



This is the most accurate analysis of their business model I've heard yet. Mathematicians do the theoretical work, the computer scientists set up a server, then everyone else gets distracted so their inability to cope with statistical reasoning doesn't effect decision making.

Just like the "put your wet phone in a bag of rice" trick. The rice doesn't do anything, but the false belief it does keeps people from ****ing with their phones and frying the device while it dries.

This entire article is such an indictment of hedge fund myth woo woo than anything else. This **** needs to be burned to the ground so the real economy can matter again. Delete the stock tickers, delete CNBC, delete the hedge funds, delete the billionaires. Let's build and code some stuff.



I would probably thrive here, because there's no way I could not resist calling such a homework assignment a stupid ****ing waste of time and instead work on a project which mattered. Granted I've only limited experience in working in firms, but in my experience, telling a stupid manager in a polite way "**** off I'm doing **** to make the place work" makes them **** off and leave you alone to do **** to make the place work.



Because billionaires are detached morons whose reading taste is a peculiar set of unimportant bull****. Maybe Warren Buffet's reading list is worth regarding, and Bill Gates has some okay recommendations when he's not being a neoliberal saint, but if you unironically read a book because Mark Cuban suggested it then I suggest your leased Mercedes is a waste of money and the people you manage think you're a huge ******* (no, trust me, they do).

Though the fact Bill Gates recommended this trash makes me downgrade his ability to estimate reading material to "below average".



God just killed a kitten, and I just earned a nickel.



That would be a challenge, though, a true exercise in rhetoric, to prove the existence of something which doesn't exist.



An author after my own heart.



This is complete evidence that everything this guy says is freeform bull****. He doesn't even know what he knows, he's just making **** up.



There's a nice insight in here. It's that managers essentially do nothing. Why else would they experiment? If you have an actual task to accomplish, then you don't experiment, you discover a method and stick to it. You can only experiment if what you're doing is so unimportant to production that you can just **** around.

It all makes sense. Managers, for the most part, spend their time at their jobs inventing reasons for their own existence, and using these fictions to harass employees.

Though I don't see how this can arrive where it isn't already. Being berated at a job site is nothing new for most Americans. I guess maybe this will just give license to be harsher and blame the victims for the attack.



He's wrong about the last thing here. It should teach us that guillotines are an acceptable and preferred method of response.

Yeah, I'm telling you, the treatment of illegals is criminal and ICE are literally ****ing scum. This is fascistic in nature, we should not call it by other words.

People need to understand that the Holocaust began with forced migration, the separation of people into classes based on race. This is happening in America today.

Also, really, read a bit in Eichmann in Jerusalem. The description of who he was and his progression in the SS will destroy the intentionalist myth right out.

Nathan J Robinson is the best writer today, this guy's articles are always on point.