The Glade 4.0

How much does no opinion at all cost? That seems like it might be worth something!

Hey, hush you. I'm in negotiations here!

Although, you do bring up an excellent point...

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In time, this too shall pass.

Well, I can't stop you from not having an opinion.

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That's because I already copyrighted it. It's a $5 royalty to not have an opinion. I will accept PayPal.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

It's entirely irrelevant on how many occasions one strategy or other has been used; what's relevant is the effectiveness. Yes, social persuasion is more effective. I don't know why you're offering that as a counter when that's what I was saying in the first place.

Slavery, and the civil war, is not one of these issues because it was not actually a social issue, primarily at least. It was primarily a demand to change the economic structure, fundamentally and abruptly, for social reasons, and major turmoil of some sort was unaovidable. Socially, it was the start of a 100 year process ending in the Voting Rights Act. You can add that to women's rights as one of persuasion that was highly successful. The only problem has been the failure of both movements to end when they were obsolete.

In other cases, the fact is that those changes have had problems because they were imposed abruptly. Abortion is a perfect example - it's an endless shitshow because it was abruptly imposed without any conversation.

The problem, in the case of abortion, and trans issues, is that the Ledt decided on its preferred solution and got the court to impose it sans conversation. In both cases, it directly affected third parties, not just the "rights" of those allegedly affected. In the case of gay marriage, it was just about marriage until the court decision, then it became about suing bakeries.

The fundamental problem is that the left confuses progress on social issues with its own vision of where social issues ought to go, then tries to impose it. When it becomes clear later that the real goal isn't just "rights" for minorities but the ability to impose views forcibly - allow trans people to use whatever bathroom without even a diagnosis, allow gay peopl to sue bakeries, allow women to slaughter babies well after viability, or else sue for child support entirely at their own option - then there's backlash.

Most of what the left, the "progressives" view as progress, isn't. It's an attempt to impose, by force, change on groups it doesn't like by groups it does, and dressing this up with spurious arguments about protecting "minorities".

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The amount of resentment you seem to harbor, DE, is really amazing. By any measure, you're a successful guy in a successful country, but you're so pissed off about smug liberals being smug on TV that you're willing to support and doggedly justify/defend a man that you yourself have admitted is unqualified to be President and CINC. I just don't get it.

The political machine offered 2 choices for candidates that stood a snowball's chance of winning the election and the media machine's outright collusion for the anointed democratic nominee against her socialist opponent and favoritism for a liberal agenda overwhelmed their desire to remain neutral.

What the hell! I don't know how anyone can't be pissed unless they're a shill or freakishly ignorant.

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In time, this too shall pass.

First, I don't think Trump actually believe global warming is a hoax perpetuated by the Chinese. Yet that's something Trump said. By not believing it, am I letting others form my opinions for me?

Second, "guilt by association is a fallacy" is only true when one is trying to use someone's associations in order to prove a statement or argument they made true or false. It absolutely does not apply here. Is one not allowed to infer negative things about Obama due to his association with Bill Ayers or Reverend Wright?

Further, I don't see how, "Trump doesn't really care about gay marriage, but will sign anti-gay measures that cross his desk in order to build political capital" is a huge improvement. If a liberal President decided to treat, say, gun control measures this way the right would be screaming about literal treason.

Gay marriage, abortion, and anything concerning the LBGTQ community are hot button issues for liberals, and in NO WAY do they equate to rights outlined in the US Constitution.

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"If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me." - Alice R. Longworth

"Good? Bad? I'm the guy with the gun." - Ash Williams

What evidence are you using to come to that conclusion? You can believe anything you want, X, it's a free country that way. If your source of evidence does't come from what he says or does, how did you arrive at your conclusion?


Same as before, it's all about the evidence you use to form your conclusion. If it's not something said or done by the person in question, then you tell me how you arrived at the conclusion. If, in the absence of Trump's actions supplying the evidence of guilt you turn to the acts of his associates for that evidence, then yeah, that's exactly "guilt by association" when deciding he's guilty of something.


For some, gay marriage has become a litmus test, I understand that. If that's the basis of your opinion I'm incapable of offering alternative conclusions because the man absolutely came out saying he thought marriage as an institution required the parties involved to be male and female.

However, I'd say people are more complex than using a litmus test on a controversial issue to determine their position on something allows. I don't think that feeling that life begins at conception means someone hates women, and feeling marriage is between a man and woman doesn't mean someone hates gays. Yeah, I am fully aware that there are tons of folks spinning narratives to the contrary. That's why I said you're letting others form your opinions for you.

When you don't listen to what someone says (as you've proudly declared) and you ignore direct evidence, and instead, insist on using indirect evidence to form an opinion, you're letting the folks supplying the indirect evidence form your opinion. I'm sure they appreciate that.

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In time, this too shall pass.

I didn't say anything about "liberals on TV" in the post you seem to be responding to, so I have no idea what you're talking about beyond an obvious attempt to play the "DE is being resentful, therefore I can make the conversation about him rather than the issue we were ostensibly discussing."

The reason you don't get it is because you don't recognize what's going on here. Let me help you out - when (for example) Xeq talks about "anti gay measures", the fact is that it is not a given that some measure is "anti gay" because Xeq thinks it is. It isn't even "anti gay" if gay people think it is. The same applies to anti- (insert favorite leftist cause here). "Anti gay" has zero credibility coming from Xeq because what's "anti gay" to him is informed by his personal hostility towards religion. What's "racist" means nothing coming from, say, Van Jones because of his obvious hostility on racial issues.

What the left - including both those here AND the larger left in this country - is failing to get is that the question-begging is done. You do not get to simply slap a label on something as hateful and then have the conversation continue from there. You have to demonstrate that it is, to the satisfaction of (at the least) a typical center right person - according to them, not your assurances that they would agree and an assumption that anyone else is "far right".

So what you perceive as resentment is me trying to get across to you why you're not only out of the white house, but not in control of either house of Congress or most states - people are tired of that bullshit, especially when its used to dismiss the issues they think are important. But I'm not saying that in any expectation that it will change your mind. Oh no. I;m saying it because I know it gets people like TR, and Xeq, and Farsky (not specifically them, but people like them) spun up, and keeps ignorant celebrities screaming nonsense at angry crowds of fat women.

Because people see this nonsense and realize, for all Trump's faults, these people were OK with an angry middle school vice principle who thought her vagina mattered for the Presidency and was willing to have an armed confrontation over Russia. This nonsense - this condescension and rage from people from people who are really just armchair quarterbacking - just makes the Left look ever more ridiculous.

By all means though, keep it up. I look forward the the results in 2018. I'm sure screaming about nazis will give you a majority.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I wish it was limited to being labeled as "far right". More like "white supremacist", "alt-right", "racist", "neo-nazi", "hellspawn sucking the wanker of the anti-christ Trump".

OK, I made that last one up. I was on a roll

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In time, this too shall pass.

I don't know; screaming about Muslims, immigrants, and socialists got the Republicans a Congressional majority and the Presidency. Maybe the reverse will work for the Dems.

Two things.

So first of all

I give RD enough credit that he's not only capable but amenable to holding rational discussions, and this sort of thing doesn't help.

Second

Most of the people with a firsthand concern for Nazis are either dead or senile, so I wouldn't bet the farm on it.

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The problem is that "don't discriminate against (minority group)" is purely a moral argument at heart. Practically speaking, pretty much every protected class we have functions as a very, very useful and easily identifiable statistical indicator. The left's reaction towards Trump is so negative because he represents an extreme right shift in this area - according to him, it's OK to use race and religion as statistical indicators and discriminate based on them. As recently as six months ago, even the Republican Party disavowed this concept. Now, the new narrative is, "well, liberals are going to have to get used to the fact that this kind of discrimination is OK now." To be sure, Trump has only targeted foreigners for discrimination and not citizens, but since all the arguments against discrimination are moral ones to begin with, that distinction doesn't mean much. You can't claim it's morally wrong to be racist against citizens but not morally wrong to be racist against foreigners. Political boundaries are implemented for practical reasons, not moral ones.

According to you, "You're a bigot if you support/don't support this" is not a credible argument. However, we have tons of policies and laws in place today where that is basically the only argument supporting their existence. I mean, today over 33% of all violent crimes in the US are committed by approximately 2% of the population - black males between the ages of 18 and 34. Practically speaking, we should be racial and gender profiling the absolute **** out of them. We only refrain from doing so for moral reasons - it's "not fair" to the members of that population who aren't criminals for us to simply assume they are and treat them as such. Well, Trump just banned literally everyone from the Middle East from entering the country - even lawful permanent residents. Practically speaking, that's a very good idea, as the Middle East is a giant dumpster fire in general. But it has the exact same moral baggage as racial profiling - not everyone from the Middle East is the criminal, and simply assuming they are for practical reasons is no more morally correct than it is to do it to black people here.

This trend does not bode well for any minority group here, and the smaller your numbers the worse it is for you.

Well, you're basically right that I am assuming guilt by association in the sense that you're using it. What I don't get is how you imply this to be a bad thing. If I introduce Charles Manson to you as my idol and role model, you're going to have a (very justified) negative opinion about everything I say after that.

I'm about as terrified of Trump as a non-American can be, xeq, and yet I'm going to show you where you lost me early in that long post.



If I thought Trump were the slightest bit interested in using statistical indicators, that would be a major point in his favor, whether it was with regard to religion, race, or anything else.

The "politically correct" would have you believe it's wrong to gather certain information. They would have you believe that if facts appear bigoted, one must discard them and condemn them.

There's no such thing as bigoted information. There's no such thing as racist facts. There's no such thing as evil statistics. Reality does not conform to our narrow human views of ethics or morality. All information, if accurate, contributes to our understanding of and mastery of our condition.

This isn't to say statistics can't be misinterpreted, or even intentionally misused. It's difficult for anyone even without biases or ill intent to identify causal relationships within statistical correlation. The complexity involved is astounding. But if it turned out that those of African descent were significantly more prone to violence (note that statistics do NOT appear to support this), then that is something we should know, and use in our decision making process.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

The political machine itself is an illusion offering a false dilemma.

It's your choice to believe in that illusion and to accept the validity of the false dilemma.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

That being said, the EO in context looks to be about stopping immigration from nations where proper vetting is going to be almost impossible due to recent and/or current instabilitiy. Iran is the exception but the government considers them a main exporter of proxy terrorism - for several administrations.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Meanwhile I'm just teaching more and more people how to shoot and be safe about it, then how to do it well.

People who likely vote in opposite ways than I do. I figure the more self-responsibility they become comfortable with they might start recognizing it as a good thing in wider circles.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

It's not wrong to gather the information, and obviously the information itself is not bigoted. What is wrong is to make blanket policy discriminating against an entire race or religion based on that information. Basically, one decides that since X race or religion is a minority group, it's simply not worth the effort to examine them as individuals since there's so few of them, and so an "easy" blanket indicator like skin color will be used for that group instead.

Do you support banks or insurance companies being permitted to redline entire communities? That's a great historical example of something done for purely financial reasons that is banned today and seen as horribly racist. However, if you think about it, it's pretty illogical to call banks or insurance companies racist, they're sociopathic corporations that only exist to make shareholder profit. If they were doing that one can assume they had a good reason for doing so.

So it's not wrong to gather the information, it's not wrong to have the information, it's just wrong to act on it.

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Grenade 3 Sports Drink. It's fire in the hole.. Your hole!

By doing that, you yourself will have given me evidence to form a conclusion about your beliefs. That's not how guilt by association works.

Think back to the run-up to the election when Hillary was being attacked for having been the lawyer of a rapist who was exonerated. That argument was used in an effort to ascribe guilt to Hillary, even though defending those accused of a crime is a lawyers job. There was no culpability at all for her defending the guy. Now, had she said she felt the rapist was a role model, then the accusations against her would have evidence.

That's guilt by association.



List of countries in the middle east:
Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Yemen

List of the 7 countries that are on the **** list:
Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya (Africa, by the way), Somalia (also Africa), Sudan (and once again, Africa) and Yemen

So, about 165 million people in the middle east can't travel to the US, 220 million all together, out of a total of 466 million in all of the middle east and those 3 African nations.

No, that's not literally everyone. Limiting it to just Middle East (population 411 million) , there are 165 million that can't travel here temporarily.

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In time, this too shall pass.

That's where they lose me. I'm more inclined to believe it's wrong not to.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Well, yes. If we don't use this standard, we might as well scrap the Civil Rights Act and allow all discrimination, because determining whether or not someone is doing it for a practical reason or if they're doing it because they just hate (minority group) requires mind reading.



Well, if that's not guilt by association, then Trump choosing Pence as his VP and choosing DeVos as Secretary of Education also gives me evidence to form a conclusion about his beliefs. So your original point about how me assuming Trump would be hostile towards gay rights due to his VP/Cabinet picks constitutes guilt by association doesn't really apply.