The Internet has a fairly long memory and a lot of research on topics like this, and it does not agree that Hillary ever tried such a thing. Ample evidence that GOP politicians, including Trump, tried to claim she did. And late in the primary season a few of her supporters made some sounds like that. But nobody has ever found any shred of evidence her campaign made any accusations, or started any rumors.
Whatever the reason, it wasn't because his characters were "openly maga and a homophobe and a transphobe," because they weren't. Bruce Lee movies and Texas Ranger didn't address those issues at all.
And in spite of his flaws, it's possible that he had some good qualities as well, or at least aspired to them. So maybe those other qualities were what he looked for in the characters he played.
Doesn't seem like he aspired all that hard, since instead of expressing empathy for people who weren't like him, he continued to be a bigot in nearly every aspect. But sure, if you were a white cis straight guy I'm sure he was perfectly kind.
You either die a hero, or you live long enough to become a Faceboot psychosis villain. It's basically the politics version of "Why is everything so cold?"
I think you forget that Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act and put in the policy of “Don’t ask don’t tell” and Obama supported it originally.
Of course they both had a change of heart- was it true change or they saw the direction of the political winds? Who knows?
I don’t know Chuck Norris’s views on LGBT. But if he was a self proclaimed “born again Christian” and a rabid Trump supporter, I can only guess. But I no more expect people who were insulted by what he said (which I personally don’t know) to give him more grace or reverence than I do is a Black man who couldn’t give two shits about a dead racist podcaster.
Other people no more need to “contextualize” homophobia than I feel a need to “contextualize” the racism of a dead podcaster.
DADT was a significant improvement over the status quo of "we ask, you tell, and then you get dishonorably discharged". Considering it evidence of homophobia is revisionism. Did it go far enough? No. Was it a good step towards where we wanted to go? Yes.
> It passed both houses of Congress by large, veto-proof majorities. Support was bipartisan, though about a third of the Democratic caucus in both the House and Senate opposed it. Clinton criticized DOMA as "divisive and unnecessary".
Again he still signed it. It’s like Susan Collins who always has “serious misgivings” about things that her fellow Republicans do and then votes the party line anyway trying to stay in her party’s good graces while at the same time not pissing off her liberal constituents
It was gonna be law either way; signing it removed a political weapon from the folks pushing its passage. Arguing this is something Clinton did to gay people is counterfactual.
That’s a really poor excuse to sign on to something that you disagree with. I would not sign a petition for making the “Confederacy Day” law if I lived in Mississippi just because it would become law anyway. You have to stand for something.
Would you think it was okay if Tim Scott signed such a law just so his fellow Republicans couldn’t hold it against him in the primary? Well actually I wouldn’t be surprised if he did…
> I don’t get to praise Chuck Norris because of his anti-racism stances but then dismiss his stances against non straight people.
Sure, but I think it's fair to praise people when they do good things, and criticize them for the bad that they do. That's true fir Chuck Norris, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama... anyone.
Totally agree, though, that it's bullshit to think that having positive views on some issues wipes away the bad.
My charitable interpretation is that it was political winds, but possibly not in the way you're implying.
I do believe that Obama was 100% cool with gay marriage, but believed it was politically foolhardy to admit that publicly and in policy positions, but was able to advocate for his true feelings once the political climate changed. Still not awesome, but understandable from an electoral perspective.
I'm not really sure about Clinton. I would guess he's personally in favor of gay marriage and gays in the military today, but hard to say what his views might have been in the 90s (as I was a teenager at the time who wasn't all that interested in politics).
Also on supposedly-liberal people doing homophobic things: let's also not forget that California voters banned gay marriage statewide in 2008. 2008! And this was a ballot measure where all voters got a say, not something passed by the legislature.
Half the country didn't vote for Trump. Not quite 2/3rds of the voting eligible people in the country voted to begin with, and not even half of those people voted for Trump.
Less than 1/3rd of eligible voters voted for Trump.
Not all people that voted for Trump consider themselves Republicans, much less MAGA, when MAGA is only 50-60% of Republicans.
So in reality less than 1/6th of the US voting-eligible population is MAGA. Not half.
And that was at the election - roughly 20% of Trump voters now openly profess regret in voting for him, though I don't think we have data breaking that down as self-proclaimed MAGA vs. otherwise. I suspect if you were not self-proclaimed MAGA you're more likely to be open to regret, but I'm sure at least some of them were MAGA.
Unless poll after poll is contacting and registering answers from 100% of people in the country, that's only 35-40% of the people who answered the poll, which is a much, much smaller number.
None of that changes the fact that the statement that half the country is MAGA because half the country voted for Trump is untrue.
Significantly less than half the country voted for Trump. This is objective fact.
Significantly less than 100% of Trump voters identify as MAGA. This is objective fact.
Approving of Trump as President is also not the same thing as being MAGA, though the overlap is quite likely reasonably high at this point.
You can make an argument that there are more MAGA people than I estimated, but the argument I was referring to was basing it all off of voters for the 2024 election. If you want to make a different argument, we can look at it on its merits.
I gave an analogy earlier that if you have 10 friends and asked them where they wanted to eat dinner and six said let’s get Italian and the other 4 said “Let’s kill Ralph and eat him”, you still have a shitty friend group.
If 40% of the country still supports everything that’s going on, that tells you a lot about this country. Especially seeing that because of the 2 Senators per state regardless of population, gerrymandering and to a lesser extent the electoral college, they have outsized influence on the government.
Exactly how can you approve of what Trump is doing and not be MAGA?
A surprising amount of people are single issue voters and will vote for and support someone that supports that single issue. They might not care at all about the entire rest of the issues at all as long as their single issue is fine, and a lot of those single issues, like guns, long predate maga or the tea party.
I'm not saying that makes them good people, I'm just saying I don't think it's the same thing as maga.
2 senators per state isn't really the issue, but the cap on the house is. The senate was built to be population independent, and the house was built specifically to be population dependent, where yes if you had more people you had more power. Then they... voted to cap it, because it was going to give too much power to states with more people. Dumb. EV also tied to the house, so uncapping it unfucks a lot of that, too.
The Senate though also decided the cabinet and the Supreme Court. Thats the major issue - especially the Supreme Court.
To your other point, I’ve met some Bush/Romney type Republicans who hold their nose and voted for Trump because the Democrats did go to far on social issues and I say that as a Black guy.
When I was at BigTech in 2020 I thought all of the videos we had to watch on “micro aggressions”, continue announcements on “ally programs”, “Latinx” instead of Latino/Latina (that every single Latino person I spoke to thought was ridiculous), the “how do we feel” meetings about Floyd, and the kind of liberals I met when I flew out to Seattle and other west coast offices (I worked remotely the entire time) were just weird. Not to mention being chastised if you didn’t put your preferred pronouns under your name.
Part of the problem is we changed the senate selections to votes. Originally state legislature picked their senators. That's an amendment that I think is a mistake and should be reverted.
The different chambers are supposed to represent different interests and instead we've made both halves of congress effectively the same thing.
There's deeper rot with the system besides these things - like the apparent lack of safeguards against the executive branch just... ignoring everything, including sometimes even the supreme court... but I don't think the framer's original intentions for the house and senate are fundamentally incorrect.
How would taking away voting power from the people have been better? Especially now that while the state houses can get super majorities via gerrymandering but Senators have to appeal to a much wider base. There is a reason that you have more crazies in the house than the Senate.
You're looking at how things are now with a situation totally fucked from the things being set up to be totally fucked for decades.
The House and Senate fundamentally do not operate in the way the founders intended them to at the moment. Both are elected based on popular votes within their district/state with the expectation that they are representing their constituent voters, all while population capped. There's a fundamental disconnect between how they are selected, how that power balance lies, and what their intended purpose is.
The House is supposed to represent the people. That's the job. Being answerable to their constituents makes sense. The Senate is supposed to represent the States - including as long-lasting entities that will exist before and after the current constituents. The legislature selected them because they were supposed to be more knowledgeable about the issues pertaining to the state, etc. They were to be tasked with doing the necessary thing and not necessarily the popular thing - people can always vote out the state legislature if the senators truly are hated, but having some insulation from the ever changing whims of the general public was a feature.
A lot of the rhetoric is similar to the rhetoric around the electoral college - preventing humans, which can be very dumb en masse, from doing dumb things. That has obviously not been the case, since unfaithful electors just haven't been a thing in quantities that have mattered, but I would argue that when we have found that things didn't work the way the founders intended, the correct option would generally be to make them work the way the founders intended and then only move away from that if we find that it doesn't work. Instead, we've frequently moved away from those things even when they were working.
Gerrymandering is an issue that doesn't have to exist either - it already doesn't in some states, and there's no reason it couldn't be implemented in all of them in this scenario where we're just wholesale changing how the government works.
You’ll have to forgive me as a Black guy whose still living parents grew up in the segregated South and seeing that four of the southern states still consider “Confederacy Memorial Day” a state holiday and two others combine “Confederacy Day” with MLK day for not trusting the good will of the state governments - especially with gerrymandering.
If enough people in any state are bad actors then no solution under democracy is going to resolve the issue without moving away from a system that invests so much power in the states.
But then if enough people in the overall country are bad actors you're back to square one.
I don't have any proposals on how to fix some people just deciding they want to be shitty people. But all of this discussion involves a significant amount of hand waving solutions into place - discussions on getting them implemented, the likelihood of that happening, etc., are all separate and not anything we've talked about from any of the positions.
I am only arguing that state legislatures can gerrymander districts that give them more votes than the population voted for. But it is really hard to gerrymander an entire state and split it up so two Senators can win of their preferred party.
Would GA have two Democratic Senators with a Republican control state government? On the other hand would Susan Collins be a Senator from Maine?
Given the choice of trusting the people of Mississippi to do the right thing and the electorate of the US to do the right thing. The entire US has been more on the side of the angels than the southern states - yes that’s a very low bar.
It's easier (or as easy) to change gerrymandering as it is to change the senate back to it's intended purpose. If you want to argue that an amendment to make gerrymandering unconstitutional should be a prerequisite to returning to state legislatures selecting senators, I'm fine with that - because it's also a much more likely amendment to pass. A big chunk of Americans dislike gerrymandering. Only a tiny fraction of Americans know or care about the different chambers of Congress being intended to serve very different purposes.
Well he was against gay marriage and against the Boy Scouts of America allowing gay kids.
If I have 10 friends and ask them all where they want to eat for dinner and 6 said let’s go to this nice Italian spot and the other 4 said “let’s kill Ralph and eat him”, that still means I have a shitty friend group.
It's more like 3 say "let's get Italian", 3 say "let's get Mexican", 3 say "I'm not hungry", and 1 says "let's kill Ralph, and eat him seasoned with Italian spices". Then the first 3 say "great idea!".
I'm not american but I see technically nothing wrong with MAGA for me. it doesn't mean you must be transphobe or homophobe etc. but what people do under MAGA is another thing. sometimes it feels like for them it means "run america into the ground" or "get rid of all the best about america". GRABA if you like
Being maga is diametrically opposed to supporting your country, as we've seen in particular this time around, but was also clearly visible in 2016-2020.
Rampant abuse of the legal system to target individuals, despite claiming (without evidence) that that was that the Democrats did against them
Total disregard for the constitution
Threats towards the judiciary
A million other things that I can list - but I'm sure you've heard them all and just don't care, so there's probably not much use in me continuing.
The entire point of MAGA is that they see “their country” as one where uppity negroes like Obama should have known his place, it’s DEI whenever a minority has a position of influence and power yet they keep lowering the standards for both ICE and the DOJ and RFK JR with no medical knowledge is the head of HHS.
America won’t be “great” until minorities, non Christians and non straight people know their role.
To believe in "Make America Great Again" you have to believe that America is not great, and this implies you are ashamed of your country. Shame is built in to MAGA.
Those points are fine, but not the root of what makes MAGA shameful. You can go about having that opinion and take actions towards it without being racist, anti-LGBT, generally hateful, and backing an administration that has been proven time and time again to be deceitful in every facet and tuned to the interest of the wealthiest.
You have a very narrow and rose colored view of what maga is. To us living in the US, maga stands for pedophilia, misogyny, racism, fascism, homophobia, transphobia, corroption and much more.
It absolutely has nothing to do with putting america first, it has everything to do with putting trump first. Im afraid you have made the mistake of listening to a politicians words instead of watching his actions. Every word from his mouth is a lie.
I know he's a liar. He is probably mentally ill and definitely not very bright. But I was not talking about Donald Trump. I was talking about the principle of wanting to make one's country "great."
> To us living in the US maga stands for...
This is not true. The GOP won the popular vote, centrists see some advantages in MAGA, and even some Democrats are against MAGA without going to the extreme of painting them all as pedophiles and corrupt.
Just out of curiosity, could you (or anyone else) give a couple of examples of what you would consider "great role models for real men"? Or "good role models for well-adapted men", if you'd rather use less inflammatory language.
I think Cavill has a fair point - I generally support MeToo, think it was very important, but I can understand how being a fairly big name in Hollywood can result in hesitation around pursuing women. Especially now that he's got a lot of power for a whole franchise, with the Warhammer 40k stuff.
Steve Irwin I don't think what he did was a particularly big deal with the kid.
I don't really like celebrities as role models though. They have to have public personas as a matter of course. I would instead try to point to specific behaviors from real people. I also don't think people have to be perfect. But I do think there are some deal breakers that would mean I would never point my kids towards them as a role model. Racism and homophobia are among those things. I think believing that whole classifications of people are lesser is disqualifying.
Oh I think all of those guys have fair points. I was trying to illustrate how you could make a hero or a villain out of anybody if you cherry pick incidents, decisions or opinions.
Just like the parent comment was trying to do with Chuck Norris. (Which was probably way worse than any of these examples)
Ironically, the very concept of a “real man” is founded on the idea that a man should be defined by stereotypes rather than by sex, which puts manosphere enthusiasts and gender enthusiasts in closer epistemological proximity than either would care to admit.
I meant male role models for men (I'm sure you could find one). Not every man aspires to be the mother of 7 and go to the gym. (Because: remember that gyms are classist by design. [1])
But maybe lets talk about how Amy got called out by The Human Rights Campaign and 185 LGBTQ organizations for her "disturbingly anti-LGBTQ past writings, rhetoric and association with extremist groups." [2]
Or how about when The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights described her record as "fundamentally cruel," arguing she frequently sides with corporations over individuals and shows hostility toward established precedents like the Affordable Care Act.
At least Chuck Norris had no real impact on policy with his bigotry.
Why does a role model for a man have to be a man? Besides, she's an exceptionally good role model even for traditionalist views of what makes a man, by virtue of being so accomplished in her career and still making time for family and health. Her record poses the question: what's your excuse? Men who are all-in on hyperfocus should wither before her.
Sure, there are people that hate her. Her own patron, our Dear Leader, probably hates her when she rules against his interests. All the more reason to respect her.
In this context, a "real man" is probably someone who conforms to the traditional role of a male (physically strong, emotionally restrained, a provider and protector of women, children, and weaker men, etc.).
Of course, "real men" can be just the opposite, depending on who you ask. So, it's really a subjective issue.
I don't think every man should be like that, but I also don't think any of those qualities are bad. In fact, I think they're pretty admirable.
Do you have issues with the fact that some men conform to that type?
Being physically strong is a good thing, and regular resistance training is a huge gap for overall health for quite a lot of people today - men and women.
Being able to provide for someone is an admirable quality, man or woman
Same for being able to protect someone.
I don't think being emotionally restrained is a good thing - and I say this as someone who was raised to be emotionally restrained. I've had to specifically work as an adult to be less emotionally restrained. I think there's a very wide gap between being emotionally restrained and letting emotions rule over you.
Imagine having a lot of people you once admired and looked up to as role models, from actors all the way to even your parents, suddenly all within a decade or so take their masks off and reveal that they are actually villains.
I don’t think this is about nit picking some small detail that causes them to fail a quality/belief checklist. It’s not like finding out your hero picks his nose or doesn’t like chocolate ice cream. When someone goes mask-off as MAGA, they are revealing fundamental core beliefs and values that totally flip the kind of person you might have thought they were.
I have friends and family who I never thought had a hateful, cruel, or belligerent bone in their bodies, suddenly start acting like totally different people, in the span of a few years. This isn’t me holding them to some purity checklist!
It's an object lesson on how certain historical things happened. We go, oh no how could those people have all been inhuman monsters? If only we understood what made them like that.
Agreed. Additionally, when someone says something latently bigoted or hateful, it's easy to just let it slide because we all have our failings and societal progress is slow. Whereas maggotry is about openly embracing those failings, taking on additional types of failings from other people, and then socially validating it all as a purported political movement. But the only real thing tying it together is frustration with the world culminating in lashing out, which is why when they get into power there are no actual constructive policies in any political framework [0]. (apart from lining the preachers' pockets of course, and now apparently a holy war)
nit: I wouldn't call it "mask off" though, as if it's been there the whole time. I'd say it's more like there is tiny a kernel of that (and let's be honest, who doesn't have this in some form or another?), combined with a lack of willpower and critical thinking, that causes them into give in to the siren song of easy answers from mass-personalized propaganda.
[0] ancap and religious fundamentalism are the only frameworks I've been able to find that fit the maggot movement, and they're not particularly constructive.
Fred Rogers was the same kind, thoughtful person in everyday life as he was when he acted on his show. You can watch the congressional tapes of him testifying on increased funding to PBS and also testifying on not making VCRs illegal.
That's a little bit of a false dichotomy, though. I agree that it would be rare, even impossible, to find people who match every quality I imagined they had.
But some of those failings are forgivable, others are not.
Getting genuinely confused about pronouns sometimes: forgivable.
Being a loud, public MAGA homophobe transphobe: not forgivable.
I stopped being a Chuck Norris fan when I learned he was a frequent contributor to WorldNetDaily, that he actively campaigned against gay marriage, and that he advocated for the theory that Obama was not born in America and saying shit like 'Electing Obama will plunge America into a thousand years of darkness.'
Him liking Trump was a symptom of his regressive, homophobic, and racist beliefs.
That isn’t something you can categorically say for sure though. If it hits 125k next month then Bitcoin does go up over the long term. Same if it hits 125k next year.
This can’t be a serious comment. If ww3 starts the respective countries central banks will keep the gold for themselves. You are so naieve if you think any government is going to honour the fact that you have a piece of paper that saya you own some gold in their vault.
It is not like they haven't done lot to collect it off the population in such scenarios during previous crises. My guess is that if WW3 breaks out. For duration your gold will have rather little use. At best you get price set by government. At worst it will be confiscated. And black market will probably be only place to use it.
And post WW3. If there is economy left. It will be while before people lock back on gold.
This argument falls apart when you consider technology though. And even daily essentials. No one would not buy food and water because they can get more in future. They need it now.
The same goes for technology. We all know next year’s iPhone will be better than this year but we still buy them…because we need them now.
I’d argue inflation’s incentives are worse - the constant need to invest/spend so that your money doesn’t lose value. It means money flows into anything and everything like zombie companies, over consumption, property. Those on the poorest end are just trapped because as soon as they get any money it starts depreciating.
> We all know next year’s iPhone will be better than this year but we still buy them
Next year’s iPhone will not only be better, but also (even with the same price tag) cost more, inflation-adjusted. That factors into the decision to buy now.
> I’d argue inflation’s incentives are worse - the constant need to invest/spend so that your money doesn’t lose value.
It is a problem when it is at extreme, like in unstable countries where money can be a liability to unhealthy degree. However, I’d argue it should be a liability to a smaller degree.
What you highlight is the ever-present conflict between personal benefit and societal benefit. Obviously for an individual it is more preferable that the value of their money increases; I would never argue that. However, for society as a whole it is more preferable if the value of money decreases at a stable rate.
Perhaps this is why all major economies settled on the idea that an amount inflation is crucial to have.
I do not buy into the idea that “everyone did it then it must have been a good idea”.
We’ve already seen the negative side of fiat currencies in how they eventually collapse (Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Argentina) and even in more developed countries wages have not kept up with inflation. Money is trending to zero People are trending to destitution.
We saw it recently in the UK - where public sector workers were not given pay rises because the government argued it would fuel inflation. So how does that even make sense.
Let’s continue this discussion when you show me a successful economy with a deflationary currency.
The only reason you can provide examples of failed states with inflationary currencies is because all currencies are inflationary. This is not a coincidence, perhaps because deflation does not correlate with things going well. For some famous examples of deflations, read on The Great Depression in US and Lost Decades in Japan.
A fiat currency is indeed just an accounting unit, but it has some floor against falling to zero, as it can legally extinguish any debt, and is needed to pay taxes.
Even so, sometimes they fall to basically zero. What chance does crypto have when sentiment turns against it?
Generally speaking it has been successful, more so than the gold standard. It's true that sometimes states fail, but that's not something a monetary system can prevent from happening, or insure against.
Sorry to say, but you're deluded. A blockchain is made of "information". Information has no coercive power. A blockchain can't enforce laws. It can't stop illegitimate violence. It can't perform any of the functions of a state. Not even remotely.
Leaving the gold standard has been so successful, as evidenced by the inflation crisis leading to rising cost of living and housing shortages in every western country.
Inflation and a rise in the cost of living are different things. Inflation means an increase in the (nominal) price level, whereas the cost of living is measured in real prices, specifically real wages.
Inflation is an increase in the money supply, which is why it's called inflation - the money supply inflates. I know a lot of government economists like to define it as rising prices because then there is no word for increasing the money supply which is very convenient for them and the governments they work for.
No, it's not just government economists. It's the standard definition in economics. But that's beside the point... the BIG mistake you're making is confusing an increase in nominal prices (inflation, or whatever you want to call it) with an increase in real prices (a rise in the cost of living).
…not in my understanding. The term would seem to originate from one or both of "a pot of honey" and "a cesspit or chamber pot"[1]. Both attract flies. the former attracts bears, while the latter attracts 'filth'; both attributes can be useful. The attractant need not be a decoy to function.
[1] Sidebar: a 'honeydipper' can be either a tool made of spaced circular disks on the end rod for the purpose of obtaining honey from a container, or a scooping tool used remove excrement from a septic system or storage container.
Are you talking from experience with DoorDash or Deliveroo? This has not been my experience with Deliveroo in London, UK. There’s just no way I could get the same food quicker, everyone is on motor/pedal bikes so delivery is usually about 20-30 minutes. Food is always hot on arrival bar the odd item (Nandos chips specifically, always cold).
Also I’m ordering Deliveroo specifically so I can get the time back, that’s the price you’re really paying - I had a long day at work and I want the time to relax and not spend it sourcing and making dinner.
Not my experience in London. In any zone that is not Zone 1-2, or other Deliveroo hot spots, my experience has always been not great with times that do reach also the 45 minutes to 1h for food delivery. We still do it occasionally _because we are lazy_.
However, we did draw some lines as some foods are not enjoyable in case one of those long wait times happens (e.g. pizza, burger, cooked meat dishes, etc).
Zone 2-3 here; Deliveroo is the only service that failed to even turn up, delivered to the wrong address then tried to blame me for "putting a pin in the wrong place" which I did not. Worse service ever.
I am in Spain and the only restaurants that these services propose are in a 5km radius so it is often easier/faster to walk, cycle or take the motorbike to said place. The apps hide all stuff on other sides of the city so I wouldn't be able to order from 50km away anyway.
In the US and none of the food delivery services deliver from some place as far away as 50km. I don’t know why you think that would be necessary in the US. That being said I have never received a food delivery that was cold or that wasn’t delivered in a timely manner.
I was poking fun at the fact that distances in the US tend to be bigger than e.g. in Europe, I figured that the delivery apps don't allow for that much of a range. Since I've read the complaint about cold food frequently, but like you have never received cold food, I figured it must be some US specific thing (but I guess not).
If the restaurant is 30 miles away it's also going to be cold if you pick it up yourself and drive all the way home. And you'll be driving roughly twice as far, assuming a delivery drivers was positioned close to the restaurant.
If you're going to be using an air fryer why bother with delivery then? Just put frozen food in there at that point for 10% of the cost of delivery+tip and you're eating sooner to boot.
French fries often don't travel well from the kitchen to the table. The hamburger/fries/related seems to be a pretty bad target for food delivery. Pizzas can at least be put in a warm oven which I do even if I'm just picking something up myself.
