George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
The things you lean on / are things that don't last
User ID: 107
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2hr ago
Well okay, that's where we have arrived, but my response was prompted not out of a desire to debate but as a response to your application of violence as an equally valid response to Pretti's behavior as to Kirk's behavior, as if the two can be compared meaningfully, which in my view they simply cannot. If your greater view is that rabble rousing influencers (of the type I would also suggest that Kirk was not) can cause harm to society (and avoiding terms like "feminine violence") by their agitation of ill will, fomenting discord, turning brother against brother, shit stirring, etc., then I would tend to agree with you. Loud obnoxious voices are part of the deal in allowing free speech, however. And free speech is the "hallowed thing" that many here do value, if that's what you meant (and maybe it isn't.)
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
17hr ago
You're taking Charlie Kirk and suggesting he was this kind of anti hatter, instead of just a rather plainspoken and direct public speaker. He was known for having open mic conversations at college campuses. I never heard him suggest "something needs to be done" to anyone, and that you have apparently sealed him in this type of box suggests to me that @Mihow in his earlier dismissals of your points as the product of media lies was probably closer to accurate than I suspected.
I don't suspect we're going to make much progress in this discussion, but I will say that I respectfully disagree with your assumptions and conclusions, in particular about Kirk. Fomenting violence is of course not to be encouraged, but then I don't think Kirk did that or intended that--I certainly never had that impression in any case. Maybe he did in videos I've never seen.
I'd agree that bureaucratic and systematic violence (of say Holocaust variety) begins with manipulation of thoughts. But again I think you're reaching in the examples you're using (if it's Kirk you're referencing.)
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
20hr ago
You're now wading into an area where the word violence loses its meaning. What you're calling "feminine violence" is what I'd call rhetoric. It's explicitly not violent by definition. Sure it can be catty, can wound, etc. (if not physically) but it isn't violence. That's a newish, very late 20th century/early 21st century take on the term. I reject that definition of violence wholesale. I mean call it something else.
So then you're just talking about what constitutes what we used to call "fightin' words." And you're suggesting here that a gunshot to the throat is somehow fitting? I think you're really stretching here.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1d ago
You have a reasonable view here, but my original dispute (apart from how we may classify Kirk on some spectrum of shit-stirring or snakeoislmanship) is with your comparison of the Pretti killing to Kirk's murder. I think there is a fundamental difference in the two that makes any comparison specious. Namely that while Pretti was armed, waded on purpose into an escalating situation, and, if the recent video of him kicking the SUV is any indication, was gunning (cough) for a fight. Kirk didn't do any of that. He was--at least verbally--inflammatory, yes, and did not shirk from an (oral) conflict, but did not advocate violence (to my knowledge), and was squarely in the zone of "words can never hurt me" for his critics, one of whom nevertheless shot him dead.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1d ago
I just typed out a lengthy reply then lost it by clumsy typing.
The gist is I think Kirk was, in fact, a good example of the restrained discourse you describe (if not moderate takes.) Candace Owens more neatly fits into the system you describe. And I still wouldn't advocate or nod at her murder.
I also suspect personally that Kirk was motivated by genuine conviction. My previous reply was better, apologies, cynicism vs naïveté, etc.
Edit bc of your edit: Kulak and Kirk are leagues apart.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1d ago
He was destroying the fabric of our society for profit and fame.
Is this your devil's advocacy purposely hyperbolizing or do you believe this? Because it's certainly arguably both wild overstatement (the first part) and very presumptuously ascribing motive. I frankly don't see how your comparison here works. Unless you're trolling, in which case, well played I guess.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1d ago
Liberal conservativism.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1d ago
I definitely rethought some things and eat far less sugar than I used to. I had quit soda drinks (other than the occasional Jack and Coke) years ago but yeah, I think for, say, an obese American living in the heart of Sweetville, a bit more caution with sugar is much needed. I ate an ice cream cone (the kind you buy in a box, for home) recently and I was thinking how laughably, absurdly small it was compared to its equal in the US, where it would be triple the size.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2d ago
I read Lustig's book about two years or so ago and his personal assumptions mingled with science became too much for me to the point where I no longer view him as authoritative. I don't have the book with me but I remember he would often write how specialists in other fields often asked him breathlessly about his statements, which to him suggested he must be on the right track (in his demonization of sugar.) He references so-called"leaky gut" regularly in a very pop-science way. And of course he hawks his own fiber snacks or whatever.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2d ago
I hope you do, it would be interesting!
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3d ago
Looks amazing. The photos, but also the experience.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
"xyz gives some people a hard-on" is just guy talk. I don't see it as "weird(ly) sexualized" in any way, and I'd be surprised if it were a left-coded way of communicating. I'd be more surprised if someone took time to do a study to determine this.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
I generally read past this kind of internet abbreviation unless something in the post is particularly compelling. In this case I looked up the actress first, the acronym later, and didn't see the connection. On reflection, it's a stupider issue than I imagined, and not the kind of thing I typically discuss or care to engage in. That probably sounds arrogant but we all have our lines.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
5d ago
It was a joke and I didn't mean to start a fire here.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
5d ago
With far less catchy lyrics, I might add.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
6d ago
(Cough)
Due to wording, this post reads differently than you probably intended.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
7d ago
It certainly didn't read that way.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
9d ago
🇯🇵
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
9d ago
Interesting take; I know you're in Texas. The last time I was in Mexico was in the 70s.
I still have unpleasant stereotypes of early 2000s drug cartel victims hung from overpasses in my mind just based on readings and media exposure.
Edit: Second sentence is worded sloppily.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
9d ago
Female sexuality is fundamentally stupid and evil in a way that male sexuality simply isn't.
This kind of comment reminds me oddly of feminist arguments that men are evil because they're, well, men. And I suspect that to some degree a statement such as this is borne of years of exposure to precisely such arguments (though I'm speculating.)
I'm more sympathetic to railing against individual women than against the entirety of the dance. At the risk of breaking into parody, you have a choice: Accept the dispassionate world as it is and deal with it as best you can, or complain incessantly against the unfairness of it all.
To some extent the railing against female sexuality in the western world is done by the very people who suggest that the asexual/androgynous model, where we eschew our roles and meet in some vague middle and ignore the elephant of sexual differences in the room, is equally unpalatable and goes against nature, or whatever.
It doesn't have to be one way or the other. We've created the current monsters of dating apps and optimizing romance (or sex, if you prefer). This model will then fail to the degree that it is unsustainable, leaving the bodies of a lot of lonely hearts, newly minted lesbians, or angry incels in its wake. Or it will transmogrify into something worse. I think, however, that as reassuring as it may be to lay it all on women, it is not particularly helpful.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
9d ago
Walk around a sorority house and you’ll find lots of girls who have physiques similar to Brie Larson or Scarlett Johansson
True. Find those same girls ten (or fewer) years later and they will all have physiques similar to pre-semaglutide Melissa McCarthy. The frat guys may or may not have gained beerguts.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
12d ago
Once and it caused stomach upset for some reason. About a clove.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
13d ago
Well, whatever we're doing I look forward to all the photos from 2016. To some of us that feels like yesterday.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
13d ago
You may (or may not) appreciate Walker Percy's The Loss of the Creature.
PDF warning
I don't recall the blatant lies you're referring to, but I have no reason to doubt your sincerity in believing that he was the author to such. I'm going only off what I witnessed of him in the numerous videos I've been exposed to (all before his murder). I never saw him in any context except speaking to college students in various places, from Oxford union to Wherever, America. Until his death, when suddenly all the news coverage was about him, I had little knowledge of Turning Point USA, for example. So my knowledge of him is likely not complete. I'd add that I still don't see him as equivalent to Kulak (or more high profile agitators like Candace Owens, etc.) I'll end by saying that I didn't buy everything Kirk was selling, but I did agree with many of his ideas, so that does add a bias to my perspective. If I despised him as much as many seem to despise him (and often I do think he is just misrepresented) who knows, maybe I'd classify him differently. My public speaker, someone else's dangerous orator or whatever.
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