Information wants to be like an "earworm"...an annoying and "false" song that you just can't shake. Because then it's not anodyne. It has a personality. It will be remembered, not merely incorporated. In truth it is the purveyor of the information that has this desire, and it seeps into his leavings on the internet. In his many thousands of iterations. And so we are here.
After the third "I'm just SO ANGRY" I had to stop reading. Look, we all get angry, right? It is not a revelation to me that somebody living is feeling angry. Once they told me 3 times they are angry, I realize they are enjoying themselves. And then I leave, because I've lived too long to enjoy that vortex anymore. Have fun though!
You are tone policing. How do you know she didn't "think just a little bit more"? You assert that she didn't think enough because you don't like what she had to say.
Ascribing bad intentions off the bat to someone who wanders into a topic "unprompted" (how do you know? Do you talk to her daily?) is a poisonous attitude. Why are you the judge here? And the trans issue is not a "weird topic." It is highly topical. Many are talking and thinking about it. That just bothers you, apparently.
You're right! I didn't like what she had to say because the thing she said was transphobic.
The "trans issue" itself is not a weird topic. But there are certain ideas that seem to have taken hold ("the MASSIVE risk of fentanyl candy", "the HUGE threat of trans women using the bathroom", etc) that are objectively weird and, in the grand scheme of things, non-issues. For a regular person off the street, I might ascribe having an idea like that to ignorance. For people like Rowling, Adichie, etc I can only attribute it to bad intentions.
So no person of prominence could hold such an opinion and still have good intentions? That's a pattern that I find rather disturbing. "We're so clearly right that anyone who disagrees is obviously either ignorant or evil!" No, you aren't actually that clearly right.
And when I say "no, you aren't that clearly right", I don't just mean you, great_tankard, on the subject of trans issues. I mean just about everybody who ever says that, or even feels that.
I've had my site (https://www.mountainwerks.org) going since 1998, and for sure, I am myself the primary user. But over time, my gosh, there is a lot of content. It started as a log of trips to the mountains. I found religion through trying to pay homage to nature by remembering each "piece" of it. Because an attitude of thankfulness gradually became nature (thanks to going out so danged much).
I wouldn't know any other way to live. Old ideas are often gold.
I don't think the pastors admission is as bad as it sounds at first blush. A religious man is likely to believe that the best "food" is the knowledge of God. That is, if the spirit is fed, and the mind looks to higher things, then order is restored in the organism. That being will begin to act rightly somewhat more often. It will use the food packets to add to an ordered life, and eventually become a source of food packets or other good things.
Viewed with the worst glasses, this motivation can be viewed as "growing the religion," as if its a pyramid scheme with no other motivation than its own growth (ie, cancer). I'd just like to add that it is possible to regard the growth of the religion as a truly high aim.
I'm not saying any one thing is true, only that it is possible that the pastors aim is high and heartfelt.
Where I live, people pulled down AfD signs or defaced them. The unpersoning is not helpful. The ideas won't go away, and the people who think the AfD raises good questions will only feel persecuted (because they are).
The worst part is that the ones who hate the AfD don't know why they do and are unable to counter their arguments.
I see everyone's forgotten the reason the far right are banned in Germany. Remember, Hitler won a democratic election, and (by implication) the popular debate.
He was not. Hitler was appointed Chancellor by the president Hindenburg, it is not some obscure fact and can be googled in 5 seconds. I am confused why people keep insisting on such an obvious lie to be honest. Especially in this topic: Weimar Republic experienced the same degree of polarization and the breakdown of political process as the US is experiencing now. Instead of trying to make a new history it's worth reflecting on what is the next step after the political parties decide that their opposition is not worth any argument and needs to be eliminated.
While this is true, that he was in charge of the party which won more votes than any other in an election is definitely something I count as “winning an election”.
While I am also concerned about the breakdown of political discourse in the USA (and, to a lesser degree, the UK), I don’t think it’s reached the level of late Weimar Republic.
It's fine that you count somebody doing something other than winning an election as winning an election, that's why I asked the original poster what did he mean by that.
And, in the same sense, we do not have the same level of polarization: we don't close the opposition newspapers, only websites/social network accounts, so definitely not the same, we don't ban parties yet (just harass them through selective law enforcement and impede their ability to raise funds) and only one party so far has the enforcers (coincidentally borrowing the name and attributes of the one of KPD from 1920s). Also, economically, we have much lower inflation.
> Hitler was appointed Chancellor by the president Hindenburg
In the same sense that Boris Johnson was appointed PM by Queen Elizabeth II; constitutional systems in which the head of government is appointed by the head of state, based largely on control of Parliament, but sometimes with bounded discretion where there is no clear parliamentary majority, are rather common models.
Had Hitler’s party not won the plurality of seats, or had other parties that could work together in a coalition had more seats, he would not have been appointed chancellor.
Controlling the largest bloc that can work together is winning a parliamentary election; not as total a victory as winning an outright majority, but—in the constitutional and political context in which the Nazis did it—a rather sufficient one.
So much agree. Naussica and Toroto capture the highest expressions of depth and delight. Though Spirited Away speaks to me more and more...there is a tenderness about the human condition in that film, which becomes a call to courage.
Keep in touch with your friend. A lot of times, they are wracking their brains to find a way. The weird thing about stepping away, is that the sacrifice of supposed "needs" turns out to be the sweetest benefit.
> perhaps like some progressives, I am not sure there is as big a difference as we'd like to believe between selling one's spring days to be a cog in any commercial operation and selling participation in sexual gratification.
There is! In the first case, you work with colleagues who may become friends, you learn how to treat people and build stronger relationships. The "cog in [a] commercial operation" quip is an abstraction. Generally, people have relationships with their peers and are not "cogs."
Whereas on the other hand, the sex worker deals with people who treat them badly precisely because they've paid to do that. They even enjoy it. This is a twisted model of human relations, and the sex worker is both the enabler of that awful exchange and has a target on his or her back.
So the progressive "view" of this thing is absolutely insane. It's constructed from a position of privilege where the reality constructed by toying with such ideas need never be encountered.
In some conventional jobs, you have the opportunity to make friends with colleagues and otherwise build relationships. If you've never worked for an enterprise badly suffused with exploitative and adversarial interactions or known anyone who has, then you may want to re-examine the idea of who is constructing their opinions here from a position of privilege. And there is likewise a distribution of conditions under which sex work is done.
Speak to statistical distributions within each if you must (preferably from well-researched statistics including polls of people involved) but what's actually less than sane is the construction of a rigid dichotomy in which the abuse happens over here in this sex-work-bad-place and the positive-human-interaction stuff happens over here in happy-commercial-peer-space.
Sigh. So I'm writing from a position of privilege (I'm often accused of this).
However, if MY attitudes are adopted, then the locus of control returns to the individual. Who will do better in the end: the one who goes home every night feeling that the "enterprise [is] badly suffused with exploitative and adversarial interactions" or the one who takes personal responsibility for each interaction in which he or she is involved?
I know who I think will do better. Who will have a more positive impact on their surrounding environment. This may be unsophisticated.
