All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[worstblogever]

I think you're the first person to mention it so everyone is conspicuously quiet on the issue.

But if a poster hasn't talked about any topic, should we come up with an ungenerous interpretation of their motives?

If a poster has, without being prompted, offered a defense of Stephen Miller not being a white nationalist, and then keeps challenging issues of race that take the side that happens to be systematic white supremacy...

They've been talking about the topic of race. And if they're pretending otherwise, they're gaslighting everyone here.

[CSTowle]

This view has not been articulated by anyone here, or anyone they have quoted.

If someone goes after me personally, I am going to point out why that person is in error.

It's not hard for someone to say "Yeah, that's absurd" and move on.

Or in the event I'm wrong on the specifics, they could also say that I'm mistaken on the specifics and point out how.

Instead there seems to be an argument about whether someone is on the right side, rather than whether the comments are correct.

It's an easy thing to point out if something is deliberately misinterpreted.

Determining whether something is "Blown out of proportion" is complicated. Granted, it does allow for easy solutions. If something is stupid and rare, it's politically useful for Democrats to say it won't happen again, because the policy change is so miniscule. After all, the error was blown out of proportion.

Democrats can fight systemic racism without giving people saying stupid things taxpayer money, and without making their work part of a school curriculum.

I suspect that if Democrats picked their battles on CRT better, Republicans will have a hard time disavowing dumb critics.

Fortunately for Republicans, Democrats aren't able to do this.

There's wide agreement that racism is bad.

It's all about the specific solutions. Democrats could pick their fights better on that.

This is a good question.

There's a wide consensus that Republican policies keep prices lower, even if progressives will disagree about the tradeoffs. The costs on regulations does tend to have a disparate impact on the poor.

Republicans generally push for the idea that people should be married before they have kids, which correlates to greater success in life for the next generation.

Republicans have pushed reforms to increase the quality of schools in low-income neighborhoods, and to offer poor families the higher level of school choice close to what is available to upper middle class professionals, rather than having them be limited to the one zoned public school.

While I agree with you that there are legitimate criticisms of CRT and Democrats shouldn't take a page out of Republicans book and be constantly afraid to call out flaws in our thinking or arguments or even politicians as if it were a religious affiliation and we were blaspheming by suggesting we might not be 100% right all of the time, also that specific arguments about why the other side is wrong rather than dismissing everything said by them because they're on the wrong side (at least as we see it) is a better way to go about making our arguments, I would have to disagree with this last point.

To the press (most of the time) they would say this is about giving parents a choice in where they can send their kids to school. If your current school is failing, pick up and find a new (hopefully better) one. In reality it's about draining public schools of funds, killing teachers unions, redistributing wealth to those that don't need it nearly as much as those with kids in underperforming schools (who do you think benefits from a tax voucher, the parents already able to afford tuition and now getting a break or the ones who could never afford tuition to begin with regardless of your "voucher"?), and putting more money into religious (mostly Christian) organizations. It's a win-win-win for everything they care about, and a loss for poor and minority communities. Ultimately it's about undermining public schools in general and perhaps on the fringes (which, as Trump as shown, can become the mainstream quicker than we would like to think) abolishing the idea of publicly funded education or a right to education at all.

[Gray Lensman]

If a poster has, without being prompted, offered a defense of Stephen Miller not being a white nationalist, and then keeps challenging issues of race that take the side that happens to be systematic white supremacy...

They've been talking about the topic of race. And if they're pretending otherwise, they're gaslighting everyone here.

The only person in Trump's administration closer to being an actual Nazi than Kid Jackboot was Sebastian Gorka.

[worstblogever]

The only person in Trump's administration closer to being an actual Nazi than Kid Jackboot was Sebastian Gorka.

Gorka did wear that Nazi medal to the inauguration, after all.

[Kirby101]

There's a wide consensus that Republican policies keep wages lower, even if progressives will say that a living wage is needed.

Republicans generally push for the idea that people should be married before they have kids, which correlates to greater success in life for the next generation. But oppose any means a woman can prevent pregnancy and therefore Red States have higher teen pregnancy

Republicans have pushed reforms to increase the quality of schools in low-income neighborhoods, and to offer poor families the higher level of school choice close to what is available to upper middle class professionals, rather than having them be limited to the one zoned public school. As long as Christian schools get the money, even though studies have shown vouchers and charter schools don'timprove public education.

Corrected it for you.

I also notice Mets never mentions how Republicans refuse to acknowledge any of the actual serious problems that the Democrats are trying to deal with.

We see since Biden was elected that Republicans refuse to work with the Dems in the slightest way. McConnell and McCarthy have flat out promised to make sure Biden and the Democrats fail at everything.

Mets, there is nothing reasonable about your Party.

[shooshoomanjoe]

Fox News is going to be in trouble when Trump finds out

I don't think he'll be upset. Fox is calling him president trump not former president trump.

[AnakinFlair]

What is it about sports games that has people acting up? Especially with Football.
It's sad how football teams are tied to some people's sentiments towards immigrants.

Are you talking about American Football, or European Football? I've seen some crazy things on Instagram from England over the past few days with the matches happening there, but we get those same kinds of things in America as well.

[OopsIdiditagain]

Are you talking about American Football, or European Football? I've seen some crazy things on Instagram from England over the past few days with the matches happening there, but we get those same kinds of things in America as well.

The latter

[JackDaw]

What is it about sports games that has people acting up? Especially with Football.
It's sad how football teams are tied to some people's sentiments towards immigrants.

It (sport) engages the emotions, it’s talked about a lot, and a fair bit of drink is consumed on some sporting occasions.

I think that “cocktail” just reveals existing attitudes rather than causes them…on balance I think sport is a strong unifying force, it brings together people from very different backgrounds and the sane ones (the large majority) gain massively from that.

[Malvolio]

Fox News is going to be in trouble when Trump finds out

Ah, they'll just tell him that their lawyers said that they had to put up that chyron as a disclaimer to cover their asses.

[Tami]

An American Kingdom:
A new and rapidly growing Christian movement is openly political, wants a nation under God’s authority, and is central to Donald Trump’s GOP

FORT WORTH — The pastor was already pacing when he gave the first signal. Then he gave another, and another, until a giant video screen behind him was lit up with an enormous colored map of Fort Worth divided into four quadrants.

Greed, the map read over the west side. Competition, it said over the east side. Rebellion, it said over the north part of the city. Lust, it said over the south.

It was an hour and a half into the 11 a.m. service of a church that represents a rapidly growing kind of Christianity in the United States, one whose goal includes bringing under the authority of a biblical God every facet of life, from schools to city halls to Washington, where the pastor had traveled a month after the Jan. 6 insurrection and filmed himself in front of the U.S. Capitol saying quietly, “Father, we declare America is yours.”

Now he stood in front of the glowing map, a 38-year-old White man in skinny jeans telling a congregation of some 1,500 people what he said the Lord had told him: that Fort Worth was in thrall to four “high-ranking demonic forces.” That all of America was in the grip of “an anti-Christ spirit.” That the Lord had told him that 2021 was going to be the “Year of the Supernatural,” a time when believers would rise up and wage “spiritual warfare” to advance God’s Kingdom, which was one reason for the bright-red T-shirt he was wearing. It bore the name of a church elder who was running for mayor of Fort Worth. And when the pastor cued the band, the candidate, a Guatemalan American businessman, stood along with the rest of the congregation as spotlights flashed on faces that were young and old, rich and poor, White and various shades of Brown — a church that had grown so large since its founding in 2019 that there were now three services every Sunday totaling some 4,500 people, a growing Saturday service in Spanish and plans for expansion to other parts of the country.

The church is called Mercy Culture, and it is part of a growing Christian movement that is nondenominational, openly political and has become an engine of former president Donald Trump’s Republican Party. It includes some of the largest congregations in the nation, housed in the husks of old Baptist churches, former big-box stores and sprawling multimillion-dollar buildings with private security to direct traffic on Sundays. Its most successful leaders are considered apostles and prophets, including some with followings in the hundreds of thousands, publishing empires, TV shows, vast prayer networks, podcasts, spiritual academies, and branding in the form of T-shirts, bumper stickers and even flags. It is a world in which demons are real, miracles are real, and the ultimate mission is not just transforming individual lives but also turning civilization itself into their version of God’s Kingdom: one with two genders, no abortion, a free-market economy, Bible-based education, church-based social programs and laws such as the ones curtailing LGBTQ rights now moving through statehouses around the country.

Even as mainline Protestant and evangelical denominations continue an overall decline in numbers in a changing America, nondenominational congregations have surged from being virtually nonexistent in the 1980s to accounting for roughly 1 in 10 Americans in 2020, according to long-term academic surveys of religious affiliation. Church leaders tend to attribute the growth to the power of an uncompromised Christianity. Experts seeking a more historical understanding point to a relatively recent development called the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR.

:sigh: Religion is a tool, it can be used to guide people's lives, give comfort, and make their lives better. Religion is a weapon, it can be used to justify and/or advocate violence, death, destruction, and war.

Religion is an option, a choice, one you use if you need or what to use it. Religion is not a choice, it is one that you are either raised with, born into, and grew up with; or one that your are pushed into by your community or others.

Religion is dichotomous, it can be good, and it can be dangerous.

It seems like more people are switching from the hoes and plowshares, instead turning them into swords and other weapons. This is likely to get very ugly.

[Tami]

Republican immigration proposal falls flat

A joint immigration proposal by two top Senate Republicans was received with jeers among immigration advocates on both sides of the aisle, but some observers see it as an escape valve if Senate rules don't allow Democrats to push through their version of immigration reform.

GOP Sens. John Cornyn (Texas) and Thom Tillis (N.C.) on Tuesday proposed legislation to offer a path to citizenship for “active participants” in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Dropped as Democrats weigh whether to use the budget reconciliation package to push their own plan, the Senate Republicans’ proposal angered the left for its narrow scope, and the right for its proposed “amnesty.”

[Mister Mets]

It (sport) engages the emotions, it’s talked about a lot, and a fair bit of drink is consumed on some sporting occasions.

I think that “cocktail” just reveals existing attitudes rather than causes them…on balance I think sport is a strong unifying force, it brings together people from very different backgrounds and the sane ones (the large majority) gain massively from that.

It also becomes a proxy for local pride. And then when it comes to the Euro Cup or the World Cup, national pride as well.

Corrected it for you.

I also notice Mets never mentions how Republicans refuse to acknowledge any of the actual serious problems that the Democrats are trying to deal with.

We see since Biden was elected that Republicans refuse to work with the Dems in the slightest way. McConnell and McCarthy have flat out promised to make sure Biden and the Democrats fail at everything.

Mets, there is nothing reasonable about your Party.

I think many Republicans acknowledge the serious problems Democrats are trying to deal with.

We can address specifics if you like.

While I agree with you that there are legitimate criticisms of CRT and Democrats shouldn't take a page out of Republicans book and be constantly afraid to call out flaws in our thinking or arguments or even politicians as if it were a religious affiliation and we were blaspheming by suggesting we might not be 100% right all of the time, also that specific arguments about why the other side is wrong rather than dismissing everything said by them because they're on the wrong side (at least as we see it) is a better way to go about making our arguments, I would have to disagree with this last point.

To the press (most of the time) they would say this is about giving parents a choice in where they can send their kids to school. If your current school is failing, pick up and find a new (hopefully better) one. In reality it's about draining public schools of funds, killing teachers unions, redistributing wealth to those that don't need it nearly as much as those with kids in underperforming schools (who do you think benefits from a tax voucher, the parents already able to afford tuition and now getting a break or the ones who could never afford tuition to begin with regardless of your "voucher"?), and putting more money into religious (mostly Christian) organizations. It's a win-win-win for everything they care about, and a loss for poor and minority communities. Ultimately it's about undermining public schools in general and perhaps on the fringes (which, as Trump as shown, can become the mainstream quicker than we would like to think) abolishing the idea of publicly funded education or a right to education at all.

I do understand the arguments about school choice. Republicans do still think it's better than the alternative, especially for minority communities, who tend to crappy schools in places where the local legislature and teachers unions are progressive.

Most political figures think that whatever they're trying to do is going to make things better, because it's convenient for them to do so, and to accept whatever argument maps onto preexisting beliefs.

Well, no. No one has made the exact bit of sarcasm I used as their entire argument. But please, inform me of the deeper dive into the history of racism in America that Republicans are willing to have taught in our public schools.

Republicans are willing to allow a lot of stuff in public schools.

There are several distinctions about what schools can teach and what schools have to teach. But anything in a curriculum is a school is a red state is something Republicans allow people to teach (this is not to say that Republicans should be the sole arbiters on this.)

[Mister Mets]

If a poster has, without being prompted, offered a defense of Stephen Miller not being a white nationalist, and then keeps challenging issues of race that take the side that happens to be systematic white supremacy...

They've been talking about the topic of race. And if they're pretending otherwise, they're gaslighting everyone here.

"Topic" was much more narrow in this particular discussion. Tendrin was talking about a specific news item in Salon. He was also focused on what conservatives were not talking about.

As for the previous argument, two years ago someone in this public forum suggested that Stephen Miller called for flags to be on half-mast on August 8 2019 as a reference to Hitler.

https://community.cbr.com/showthread...=1#post4500746

I believed at the time it was unlikely. You criticized me for that.

I still believe it is unlikely, and that absurd theories like that hinder criticism of Stephen Miller and his boss at the time.

We've learned more since then about how people who are very online can come to have really weird and ungenerous appearances about the actions of others.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/16/b...?smid=tw-share

[AnakinFlair]

Listening to a report that Texas Democrats are planning to flee the state to prevent the passage of the Republican's voter suppression bill.