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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Trumpton
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
It was inevitable (how has it taken so long?). But, we've definitely reached the point where we need a Hell thread for the new President of the United States.
Just for starters, we have a President who has decided to gag science. He's the EPA to remove facts about climate change, and a total media blackout on the EPA and USDA and a suspension of new work. Obviously he's of the opinion that the American public don't need to know how well their tax-dollars are being spent on world leading science on how we are impacting our environment, what that will mean for our food and water supplies and what we can do about it.
The clock in the town square, never slow, never fast is telling the time. Time to say enough is enough? Before things get so bad that even Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew could put out the fire.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
I think we need a board entirely dedicated to the insanity that is the White House today. His anti-science approach is damaging, but will mean that science will have to find other ways to get funding and published.
But it is a dark day for science. And Trump is a low life that pond slime would wipe of its shoes.
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Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
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Callan
Shipmate
# 525
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Posted
I think David Tennant needs to rock into DC, find a Trump aide and whisper...
..."don't you think he looks tired?"...
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How easy it would be to live in England, if only one did not love her. - G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 9757 | From: Citizen of the World | Registered: Jun 2001
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molopata
The Ship's jack
# 9933
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Posted
I'm beginning to see what the fuckarse admires in Putin.
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... The Respectable
Posts: 1718 | From: the abode of my w@ndering mind | Registered: Aug 2005
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
Well, you could try and again, better, and remember that there's a preview post button from which you can check the operability of your links...
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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Og, King of Bashan
Ship's giant Amorite
# 9562
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Posted
I have a friend from law school who works for the National Parks Service's renewable energy program. No dismissal slip yet, but at the rate we are going, I think she has concluded that it may be coming any day. She was particularly sensitive when his people asked for the list of people who had worked on climate change issues, as she would have been on that list.
I appreciated whoever went rogue at the Badlands. I suspect they didn't have 199K twitter followers at the beginning of business on the 24th- almost Yellowstone or Yosemite numbers there.
The one thing I keep telling myself is that the first week is going to be a tsunami, and the blows should slow down some time next month.
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"I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?" ― Walker Percy
Posts: 3259 | From: Denver, Colorado, USA | Registered: May 2005
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Ian Climacus
Liturgical Slattern
# 944
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Posted
We had our conservative government slash funding and jobs from our peak scientific organisation. They only invented WiFi so not as if they do anthing useful.
Did George W do similar things?
Perhaps at a lesser level, but I seem to recall [could be wrong], he took a stick to certain agencies.
What are Trump and others actually so afraid of? Is it simply "climate change" that makes science overall suspicious, and environmentalism particular terrible? Would they prefer research in the hands of private enterprise only? I struggle to get in the mindset.
The media blackout is shocking, but not unexpected. But such things seem to work. Sorry to take it back here, it's all I know, but we are no longer told about "on water" matters [refugees arriving by boat or towed back to Indonesia] so "the problem doesn't exist".
Posts: 7800 | From: On the border | Registered: Jul 2001
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
No more "pussy grabber" to refer to this quarrelsome, disordered liar. It insults both cats and genitalia.
No president turnip's nickname should be president hairball, because he's always barfing hairballs full of lying crap, bile and mucous up, and that thing on his head, what is it? Yes, it is a hairball.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Stercus Tauri
Shipmate
# 16668
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Posted
Robert Burns wrote a familiar poem that could have been addressed to Donald Fart. The last verse goes:
O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
He got close: it was addressed, as the title says, "To a louse".
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Thay haif said. Quhat say thay, Lat thame say (George Keith, 5th Earl Marischal)
Posts: 905 | From: On the traditional lands of the Six Nations. | Registered: Sep 2011
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Wesley J
Silly Shipmate
# 6075
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ian Climacus:
[...] What are Trump and others actually so afraid of? [...] I struggle to get in the mindset.
Now that is one excellent observation! What is the fear that all this is based on? Thanks for this.
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Be it as it may: Wesley J will stay. --- Euthanasia, that sounds good. An alpine neutral neighbourhood. Then back to Britain, all dressed in wood. Things were gonna get worse. (John Cooper Clarke)
Posts: 7354 | From: The Isles of Silly | Registered: May 2004
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Ariston
Insane Unicorn
# 10894
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Posted
"Give him a chance, he's the president" they said.
"He doesn't mean it. He'll grow to the office" they said.
"You lost, get over it" they said.
"You have to take him seriously, not literally" they said.
"It's a victory for life, and end to Roe" they said.
Fuck.
You.
This week has been a real "where the fuck do we even start?" at school, and it's only Wednesday. Maybe its' because I have so many friends who are artists, scientists, humanities scholars, public defenders, educators, and general do-gooders, but it's been hard to find someone who doesn't feel their jobs and livelihoods are threatened by Cheetohitler's edicts.
Like, the guy comes to power promising to restore jobs, and first thing he does is start cutting 'em. Figure that one out.
So, here's the one that's currently bugging me: threats to the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. The CRD investigates and prosecutes civil rights cases on behalf of the United States. This includes, among other things, allegations of vote suppression and irregularities.
You know. Actual, state-sponsored vote manipulation. We're having this YUUUUUUGE investigation into MILLIONS voting ILLEGALLY, and we're strangling the office in charge of investigating Very Serious voting issues.
Ditto the Office on Violence Against Women. Axed.
Ditto the Environment and Natural Resources Division. Up in smoke.
Ditto the agencies that fund 40% of legal aid services here in South Texas, helping the working class find jobs, dignity, and justice. Oh, right, they're not the all-important white working class. Screw them. Deport those drug dealers and rapists back to Mexico! Or El Salvador, wherever that is.
I'd like to say that I'm not going to have to worry about running out of work when I get out of school, the way Cheetohitler's going—they'll be enough civil rights abuses to go around—but I'm more than a little worried about there still being a functioning independent court system left to sue the bastards in.
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“Therefore, let it be explained that nowhere are the proprieties quite so strictly enforced as in men’s colleges that invite young women guests, especially over-night visitors in the fraternity houses.” Emily Post, 1937.
Posts: 6849 | From: The People's Republic of Balcones | Registered: Jan 2006
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Wesley J
Silly Shipmate
# 6075
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Posted
Oh, and: Time to read 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' again, isn't it...
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Be it as it may: Wesley J will stay. --- Euthanasia, that sounds good. An alpine neutral neighbourhood. Then back to Britain, all dressed in wood. Things were gonna get worse. (John Cooper Clarke)
Posts: 7354 | From: The Isles of Silly | Registered: May 2004
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Wesley J:
Oh, and: Time to read 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' again, isn't it...
It's become a bestseller again here in the States. Can't imagine why.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
Various:
--Ditto the first part of Ariston's recent post, and much of the rest of it.
--Re 1984: Hopefully, things won't turn out like Starhawk's The Fifth Sacred Thing, or The Handmaid's Tale. (Note: I've only read Starhawk's book, but heard a lot about the others.)
![[Paranoid]](graemlins/paranoid.gif)
--Re what they (Trump et al) are scared of:
Not being able to get wildly richer. They make money from the things that are currently causing/worsening climate change. Afraid of not being in power. Trump probably sees himself as the "strong man" type of leader, given his admiration for Putin and historical examples.
I confess my somewhat rusty fundamentalist end-time feelers are a bit activated, and wondering if someone is trying to kick-start the Book of Revelation. Some people identify Gog and Magog as Russia and China...Not saying it's true, just that the thought occurred.
Does anyone happen to know if Dr. Norman Vincent Peale (whose church little Donald attended) believed in end-times prophecies? I can try to verify that later. I'd always thought of him in terms of his "power of positive thinking". But, during the campaign, there was a clip where he was fiery and nasty.
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
We don't need the Revelation to St.John to tell us that the climate change deniers are going to get us all killed if the North Koreans don't do it first.
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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MaryLouise
Shipmate
# 18697
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Posted
I took George Orwell's 1984 down from the bookshelf this weekend but it is too prescient and chilling to read right now.
This, especially:
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.”
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“As regards plots I find real life no help at all. Real life seems to have no plots.”
-- Ivy Compton-Burnett
Posts: 646 | From: Cape Town | Registered: Nov 2016
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Wesley J:
quote:
Originally posted by Ian Climacus:
[...] What are Trump and others actually so afraid of? [...] I struggle to get in the mindset.
Now that is one excellent observation! What is the fear that all this is based on? Thanks for this.
I suspect, from some recent stuff I have heard (which may or may not be true), it is because he has investments in oil and gas companies. So he wants them to have a free reign, and not be bothered by pesky "you are destroying the world and going to kill us all" people.
Clearly he doesn't care about the next generation. Another reason I feel really sorry for his son.
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Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
This whole "America first" thing is going to have wider impacts on the UN agencies and other countries. Quite what May is going to come away with except a white piece of paper to wave as she gets off the plane, I have no idea.
If you haven't seen it this Bad Lipreading video of the inauguration might cheer you up a bit.
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arse
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Well, you could try and again, better, and remember that there's a preview post button from which you can check the operability of your links...
I had a phone call I had to deal with during that post that stopped me seeing it at once, and when I did see it, I found the links worked, despite the oddity with the display. But I went through the process correctly, as far as I could see. All of them were done the same way.
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
Elsewhere, someone has seized on the sales of "1984" as to do with Orwell's attack on the liberal elites and political correctness being recognised by the Trumpistas.
This is an otherwise intelligent person with a background in proper laboratory based science.
![[brick wall]](graemlins/brick_wall.gif)
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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Anselmina
Ship's barmaid
# 3032
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Posted
While we're sharing references in literature that remind us of these interesting present times, I shared W H Auden's 'Epitaph of a Tyrant' on facebook a few days ago, as something that kept going through my head, as I was watching the inauguration.
Here's the full text but the lines that kept banging about my brain-case were these:
When he laughed, respectable Senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.
I can almost believe that Trump would not be too worried if these words could literally be applied to his term in office.
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Irish dogs needing homes! http://www.dogactionwelfaregroup.ie/ Greyhounds and Lurchers are shipped over to England for rehoming too!
Posts: 10002 | From: Scotland the Brave | Registered: Jul 2002
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
{Tangent}
Penny--
Tried to PM this to you, but your mailbox is full.
I know the problem with the first link. There's a space and a % in it, IIRC, and the UBB software can't handle those.
Go to http://www.tinyurl.com . Fill in the blanks, and it will give you an alias URL. Either it will assign it, or you can give it whatever name you like. I usually do the latter, and make it clear that it's related to the topic. E.g., "WikiAboutUBB".
I didn't see a problem in the 2nd link, but tinyurl should take care of that, too.
Good luck! Oh, and the first couple of times you use it, paste the new URL in on the UBB thread in Styx *first*, so you can see what it looks like.
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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Hiro's Leap
Shipmate
# 12470
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
Elsewhere, someone has seized on the sales of "1984" as to do with Orwell's attack on the liberal elites and political correctness being recognised by the Trumpistas.
This is an otherwise intelligent person with a background in proper laboratory based science.
They might not be wrong. Conservatives love Orwell - sure, he was a hard-line socialist, but he called out his own team for cooing over totalitarian Communist regimes, and he made himself pretty unpopular for it.
Posts: 3418 | From: UK, OK | Registered: Mar 2007
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Dave W.
Shipmate
# 8765
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
Elsewhere, someone has seized on the sales of "1984" as to do with Orwell's attack on the liberal elites and political correctness being recognised by the Trumpistas.
This is an otherwise intelligent person with a background in proper laboratory based science.
They might not be wrong. Conservatives love Orwell - sure, he was a hard-line socialist, but he called out his own team for cooing over totalitarian Communist regimes, and he made himself pretty unpopular for it.
So the theory is that Trump supporters are now all rushing to read a 70-year-old book by a British anti-fascist author? Makes perfect sense, except for three things: the foreigner, the anti-fascism, and the reading.
Posts: 2059 | From: the hub of the solar system | Registered: Nov 2004
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
This is a Washington Post link, but it is important. The concept discussed is the dead cat.
How do you change the discussion at the vestry meeting? Throw a dead cat onto the table, and everybody forgets what you were originally talking about. Much of this foofaraw has not (and may never be) turned into action. The PG in Chief can sign orders, but the funding for walls and deportations has to be voted on by Congress, which holds the purse strings.
But while we are distracted by the showy reality-TV stuff, the real damage is being done. Gagging scientists, gutting the safety net.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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Uncle Pete
Loyaute me lie
# 10422
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Posted
I would like to point out that our former prime minister, Stephen Harper (Trump-Lite) tried to gag the government scientific community and enacted many Muslim fearing laws. Many of these laws were overturned by our Supreme Court, and the first thing, almost, that the current government did was to ungag the scientific community.
There are some laws that have remained in place from the previous government which I see as the fact that the current rot poisons life for all. Trumpton is in for a rough ride (as are we)
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Even more so than I was before
Posts: 20466 | From: No longer where I was | Registered: Sep 2005
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Hiro's Leap
Shipmate
# 12470
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
So the theory is that Trump supporters are now all rushing to read a 70-year-old book by a British anti-fascist author? Makes perfect sense, except for three things: the foreigner, the anti-fascism, and the reading.
I've come across loads of conservative posters who reference 1984. It isn't anti-fascist, it's anti-totalitarian, and many on the right identify the left-wing as authoritarians with an inglorious history of supporting totalitarian regimes.
Have you read the original preface to Animal Farm? Orwell's criticisms of the left precisely mirror the right's at the moment. For instance...
quote:
At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.
At this moment what is demanded by the prevailing orthodoxy is an uncritical admiration of Soviet Russia. Everyone knows this, nearly everyone acts on it. Any serious criticism of the Soviet régime, any disclosure of facts which the Soviet government would prefer to keep hidden, is next door to unprintable.
[...]
The servility with which the greater part of the English intelligentsia have swallowed and repeated Russian propaganda from 1941 onwards would be quite astounding if it were not that they have behaved similarly on several earlier occasions.
[..]
Stalin is sacrosanct and certain aspects of his policy must not be seriously discussed.
[...]
You could, indeed, publish anti-Russian books, but to do so was to make sure of being ignored or misrepresented by nearly me whole of the highbrow press. Both publicly and privately you were warned that it was ‘not done’. What you said might possibly be true, but it was ‘inopportune’
Replace 'not done' with 'problematic' and this looks very much like the right's complaints about political correctness. You might not agree, but it's not a stretch to see why they like Orwell.
[ 26. January 2017, 14:20: Message edited by: Hiro's Leap ]
Posts: 3418 | From: UK, OK | Registered: Mar 2007
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
Makes perfect sense, except for three things: the foreigner, the anti-fascism, and the reading.
You've forgotten something important. There are always alternatives
Who knows where Orwell was born? All the birth records could have been faked, and he was American. Believing all the evidence about where someone was born ... that's just not the way right thinking people do things.
Animal Farm was "clearly anti-Communist", therefore Orwell was an anti-Communist author. So, that's OK then.
Animal Farm was an animated movie. Someone could produce a picture story version of 1984 for the American public.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
Tangent/
GK, thanks, mail now cleared out.
Will copy your post somewhere useful.
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
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irish_lord99
Shipmate
# 16250
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ian Climacus:
Did George W do similar things?
Perhaps at a lesser level, but I seem to recall [could be wrong], he took a stick to certain agencies.
Never thought I'd say it, but this new guy makes W. look fuckin' awesome.
All presidents slash funding one way or another. I recall the Clinton military cuts, for example.
Of course, each in turn diverted funding elsewhere... Iraq war, Affordable Care Act, etc.
Trumps diversions of funding seem concerned with kicking all the brown people out of the country and not letting others in.
What really worries me is all the people who instigated and profited off of the destruction of the American middle class, who seem to have found a place in his cabinet.
Also, it's going to be interesting to hear all of these conservatives explain the explosion of the national debt in four years.
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"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." - Mark Twain
Posts: 1169 | From: Maine, US | Registered: Feb 2011
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.:
So the theory is that Trump supporters are now all rushing to read a 70-year-old book by a British anti-fascist author? Makes perfect sense, except for three things: the foreigner, the anti-fascism, and the reading.
I've come across loads of conservative posters who reference 1984. It isn't anti-fascist, it's anti-totalitarian, and many on the right identify the left-wing as authoritarians with an inglorious history of supporting totalitarian regimes.
Have you read the original preface to Animal Farm? Orwell's criticisms of the left precisely mirror the right's at the moment. For instance...
quote:
At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.
At this moment what is demanded by the prevailing orthodoxy is an uncritical admiration of Soviet Russia. Everyone knows this, nearly everyone acts on it. Any serious criticism of the Soviet régime, any disclosure of facts which the Soviet government would prefer to keep hidden, is next door to unprintable.
[...]
The servility with which the greater part of the English intelligentsia have swallowed and repeated Russian propaganda from 1941 onwards would be quite astounding if it were not that they have behaved similarly on several earlier occasions.
[..]
Stalin is sacrosanct and certain aspects of his policy must not be seriously discussed.
[...]
You could, indeed, publish anti-Russian books, but to do so was to make sure of being ignored or misrepresented by nearly me whole of the highbrow press. Both publicly and privately you were warned that it was ‘not done’. What you said might possibly be true, but it was ‘inopportune’
Replace 'not done' with 'problematic' and this looks very much like the right's complaints about political correctness. You might not agree, but it's not a stretch to see why they like Orwell.
Yeah, but I doubt me an that be particular to the Left. It's always more obvious where it's our opinions that are frowned upon, so naturally those on the Right will see it in the Left and "PC", but you will find the same issues with, for example, Being an atheist in some parts of the US, Being a vegetarian , or, indeed, from personal experience in the Hunt Sabs, not being a vegetarian.
Folk tend to be blind to the stigmatisation of views as unacceptable, because, well, they're unacceptable.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Hiro's Leap
Shipmate
# 12470
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Yeah, but I doubt me an that be particular to the Left. It's always more obvious where it's our opinions that are frowned upon, so naturally those on the Right will see it in the Left and "PC"
Hey Karl,
I'm not trying to get into a debate about whether the right's justified or not, just pointing out reasons why they like Orwell.
To be fair, Penny S and Dave W are probably right: a sudden surge in sales at this point is more likely to be from Democrats. But Penny's friend(?) claiming that conservatives are buying the book IME isn't as insane as it might sound.
Posts: 3418 | From: UK, OK | Registered: Mar 2007
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
I know this is Hell, but I wasn't trying to start an argument either. I was observing an interesting phenomenon.
Most of my lefty friends think that the BBC is biased towards the Tories. The Daily Heil on the other hand complains it's full of lefties and is biased towards the Left generally.
I conclude from this it's probably pretty balanced and unbiased in reality ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
Point is we more easily see when we think we're being silenced. Or even interpret mere disagreement as censure. I've had people tell me they "aren't allowed" to say what they think, but what they mean is that if they say racist things, people point out that those things are racist.
I suspect Orwell's target was subtly different - people knowing (or suspecting) what Stalin's USSR was getting like, but being unwilling to admit it, and getting defensive if anyone else did, as it threatened the self-deception.
[ 26. January 2017, 15:51: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by irish_lord99:
Also, it's going to be interesting to hear all of these conservatives explain the explosion of the national debt in four years.
Same as they always do, they'll blame someone else.
There is a well established pattern, at least over the last few decades.
Republican President = massive increase in national debt and increase in abortion rates.
Democrat President = reduction in national debt (or, much slower increase) and decrease in abortion rates.
And, people still seem to buy the whole argument that the Republicans are the party for a strong economy, small government and pro-life. People are dumb.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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mr cheesy
Shipmate
# 3330
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
I know this is Hell, but I wasn't trying to start an argument either. I was observing an interesting phenomenon.
Most of my lefty friends think that the BBC is biased towards the Tories. The Daily Heil on the other hand complains it's full of lefties and is biased towards the Left generally.
I conclude from this it's probably pretty balanced and unbiased in reality
Or one might conclude that they spend a lot of effort to ensure that their programmes are quote unquote "balanced" even if this means bringing out Nigel Cabbage at every opportunity.
quote:
Point is we more easily see when we think we're being silenced. Or even interpret mere disagreement as censure. I've had people tell me they "aren't allowed" to say what they think, but what they mean is that if they say racist things, people point out that those things are racist.
Things are a lot more complicated than that in the media. There is a lot more going on than the overtly racist stuff.
quote:
I suspect Orwell's target was subtly different - people knowing (or suspecting) what Stalin's USSR was getting like, but being unwilling to admit it, and getting defensive if anyone else did, as it threatened the self-deception.
Orwell was against the political extremes in both directions. Interestingly, it has taken a political escalation of one extreme to realise that the other extends all the way around the back to meet them. There is very little difference today between the neo-Nazis and the Stalinists.
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arse
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
Some Christians.
The majority see more than one issue, and many feel that Trump's policies spell death for many.
Do read those other links. With an open mind.
Or search yourself.
The effects of rising sealevels, already happening, on low lying regions such as Bangladesh.
The effect of the abandonment of the Affordable Care Act on people who were receiving treatment they can no longer afford.
The effect of withdrawal of funding from NGOs serving women in third world countries, with special attention to female genital mutilation, fistula, prolapse, pregnancy in girls with hips not yet mature enough to bear babies, tropical diseases, HIV transmitted by partners who refuse to use condoms...
The effect of US evangelists urging African countries to introduce capital punishment for gays.
And, the biggie, the effects of abandoning work to limit climate change, which could wipe out life as we know it on this planet, which is the only one we have been given. Not just us, but much of the other life.
Why do we go on?
We aren't just concerned about his misogyny, his racism, his abuse of the disabled, the bereaved, anyone he sees as losers, his groping and leching, and sheer failure to look anything like someone who exhibits the gifts of the Spirit, his sheer and complete nastiness. He could be all that, without threatening everyone's lives, if he applied his intelligence, such as it is, to more than ticking the only box that that narrow group of some Christians are concerned with.
[ 26. January 2017, 18:04: Message edited by: Penny S ]
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
Ah! Now I understand. To save the unborn, they are willing to send every other institution, the nation itself, to the wall. Good to know!
In the meantime Crooked Don was on TV last night and was startlingly egotistical. Even more than before.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
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Posted
Funny, when Jesus defined what saved the saved, he never mentioned foetuses. Or gays. Or anything to do with sex at all.
Matthew 25:31-46
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
Another side to it
That's not another side. That's fucking delusional. I don't know any other way to put it. If US Christians genuinely felt that quote:
Obama wants to force Christian churches and schools to accept the most radical and most recent version of gender ideology
then they so lack the education and appreciation of the separation of church and state that I'd be frankly surprised if they could find their arse with both hands.
quote:
Can you understand how terrified mothers and fathers are at the prospect that those in power want to actively prevent them from passing their beliefs on to their own children?
I'm sure Clinton was coming for their guns and setting up concentration camps too.
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Christian bakers are under attack. Christian photographers. Christian pastors. Real people are losing real businesses that they had labored for years to build.
Because actual people decided they didn't want to do business with a bigot? Suck it up, snowflake.
To someone who's desperate to cling on to their privilege, giving equal rights to others looks like losing. And that's pretty much where we are. It's not about a Christian's rights. It's about denying other people theirs.
Let's just build a northern wall, and we can quietly drop in a complete embargo on sea and air travel. Sorry for all you normal USAns, but once you broadcast the all clear, we can get things moving again.
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
quote:
Obama wants to force Christian churches and schools to accept the most radical and most recent version of gender ideology
then they so lack the education and appreciation of the separation of church and state that I'd be frankly surprised if they could find their arse with both hands.
Hmm. What about the "and schools" in there?
Here is an article describing the application of Title IX to a Catholic school because a different Catholic school received federal subsidies for providing lunches to poor kids.
The Obama administration stated that Title IX included treating trans kids exactly like the gender they said they were (so trans girls must be allowed to change in the girls locker room, and so on). This may have been a legal overreach, but it was the policy of his government.
Surely I have to interpret that as saying that the government can force a Catholic school to treat a trans girl as a girl, and that the Catholic school is not allowed to hold the opinion that the trans girl is really a boy?
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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Doc Tor
Deepest Red
# 9748
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Posted
I'm sorry. I didn't realise that "school" meant on one hand "public school run by Christian charity with federal funds" and "place where we can trample on the Church/State divide" on the other.
As you were.
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Forward the New Republic
Posts: 9131 | From: Ultima Thule | Registered: Jul 2005
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
Another side to it
"All us poor Christians being persecuted, because we are not allowed to force our beliefs on others. Oh poor us, how will we cope."
Kindly stick this right up you fat and privileged arsehole. It makes me ashamed to call myself Christian.
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Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
I'm sorry. I didn't realise that "school" meant on one hand "public school run by Christian charity with federal funds" and "place where we can trample on the Church/State divide" on the other.
The point was that the acceptance of a small federal subsidy for a lunch programme in a different school in the diocese was sufficient to contaminate the funding for all schools in the diocese and make them subject to title IX.
It's not entirely obvious to me that that would be true, or that there should be any church/state divide trampling going on if the government provides lunches for poor kids in private schools.
If the government handed each poor child a packed lunch as he left his home in the morning, you wouldn't be complaining that it violated the church/state divide if some of those lunches were consumed in private church schools. But achieving the same result in a more efficient manner by handing out the food in schools is a violation. I don't think that needs to be true.
Posts: 5026 | From: USA | Registered: Feb 2013
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