Hawaii98
1yr ago
Thank you very much for this! Always happy to learn something new. Particularly enjoying poking through that Finnish study
Hawaii98
1yr ago
Jesus was also preaching under the assumption that the end of the world was right around the corner
What is the basis for this assertion
Hawaii98
1yr ago
Just got back from bible study where we happened to discuss a similar story that makes it obvious Jesus here was yanking the guys chain and having a laugh with his buddies. "All these I have kept" is obviously not true - the dude tried to tell God to His face that he had never told a fib or disrespected his parents. So Jesus tells him "well if you're so perfect, drop everything and come along with me." Jesus is calling his bluff.
"Easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle" is a joke. It's funny. Jesus is pretty clearly saying "rich people tend to be so consumed by their wealth they have no room in their heart for Me."
One of the things we discussed in fellowship this morning was the story of Zacchaeus (https://www.bibleref.com/Luke/19/Luke-chapter-19.html), a rich tax collector who told Jesus he had given away half his possessions to the poor. Jesus told him he was good to go, clear for takeoff. So obviously the camel thing was a joke.
Hawaii98
1yr ago
Double posting but your response seemed to be, frankly, in bad faith. By all means put up a quote from a prominent early 20th century socialist that purports it's a magnetic force for every lugnut, troglodyte, hardheaded, menial laboring, 9 to 5, factory man in England or at least some data on party registration by demography. "But ackshually it was working class" has negative probative value. Better not to have responded at all.
Hawaii98
1yr ago
This is a wonderfully pithy explanation. And what you say applies not just to contemporary Western morality, but to American morality from its founding. America was always a forward-looking country - a new society, a better society, a society that smiled on all men in their individual pursuits of happiness
Please consider this response to consist of the shortest acceptable and most polite way to plainly speak my truth of: 'Demonstrably horseshit. You are wrong. I won't go so far as to accuse you of lying but you are clearly pursuing a different agenda than the people you are so radically misrepresenting'
Hawaii98
1yr ago
You were describing how things 'seemed' - which I pretty much entirely agreed with. It does seem like communism desires milk and honey and racists are all dumb and ugly, etc. But none of that makes for particularly evocative conversation - our entire lives are steeped in it everyday.
Hawaii98
1yr ago
You're probably already familiar with the Orwell quote but for those who might not be, in 1936 George Orwell declared that "socialism draws toward it with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist and feminist in England."
Which would suggest that socialism has not fundamentally changed it's 'magnetic force' over the last century away from manual labor and toward the sandal-wearers, sex-maniacs, and fruit-juice drinkers it continues attracting today.
Hawaii98
1yr ago
If there is anywhere left on planet earth that this conversation can be had, it's probably here. So I'm going to try. Let's take this as four separate assertions as see how they match up to what I will reluctantly call reality:
Communism mainly hates people for things that they can change about themselves (being rich, being capitalists, being landlords, etc.)
The Tsar could change the fact that he was the Tsar, but not the fact that he was born the Tsaritsyn. Communism did not demand his death because he refused to abdicate. He, and his entire family, including his infant children, had to die because of what they could not change about themselves. Namely, being more intelligent, more attractive, or born in any way with unequal (and from communism's perspective, unearned) advantage.
whereas racism hates people for things they can't change about themselves.
This is a 4-year-old's understanding of racism from sesame street in the 90's (the only time I can speak to as it's the only time I watched (growing up)). You are not in any way shape or form describing the modal "racist." The modal racist hates, for example:
-
Being raised in a country founded or dominated by a race other than their own
-
Experiencing discrimination as a child because of their race
-
Repeated negative exposures to particular behaviors exhibited by subgroups of a race
And I won't bother going on because you (the reader) gets my point. "I hate X because they're X" is an invention of Hollywood.
Also, whereas communists claim to fight for an unprecedented better world
A better world for...whom? Only the very highest climbers, the one in ten thousand factory-worker-to-party-boss types, aren't worse off under communism than before. Because communists openly claim to fight for a world in which people like me and my family are murdered, and our homes and properties are given to people without any capacity or experience for proper care of either.
racists have nothing new to promise because the world has seen plenty of racism before.
When was the last time anyone, in any position of any authority in the West, said something like "we'd expect fewer black people to qualify for xyz, that doesn't automatically mean the qualifications are unfair." Truly, I'm curious. Tom Buchannan was portrayed as a pigheaded racist 100 years ago
Hawaii98
1yr ago
Well, Joe Biden and Mike Pence might be the most conventionally qualified VPs ever, so they do not represent the norm.
Neither of them are even close to the "most" - HW Bush immediately comes to mind but there's probably an even better one
You said:
And, of course, a non-boo outgroup approach might consider that taking representation into account when appointing someone to a representative body does not seem to be unreasonable on its face.
I said:
Representation of their constituents political desires.
As in the thing the representative body is supposed to represent is the will of their constituents. It is absolutely unreasonable to pretend that your use of the word representation had anything to do with the stated purpose of a representative body. And your clever attempt to equate the two disparate concepts through wordplay is absolutely an advocation for representative bodies that look like the constituents they represent. Inadvertent or otherwise.
Hawaii98
1yr ago
They are not taking AAVE speaking black grandmas from the poor working class areas.
Although not as qualified, as you said, on paper, our hypothetical Ebonics Granny from the hood has real life experience and the resultant common sense that would bring a refreshing perspective to either the VP or SCOTUS that Kamala and Ketanji just...don't. And I'd almost-not-joking trust her more as president too, because she might be more likely than Kamala to be aware of just how much she didn't know. All I'm saying is let's hear her out
Hawaii98
1yr ago
It's up to the reader whether "Don't fear' is sarcastic and snarky or facetious and lighthearted. I read it as an attempt to soften what is quite obviously a terrible development: that our political spoils system has seemingly transitioned to one openly based on racial and gender politics. It's not new by any means. But there was something comforting about the decorum of it not being blatant.
And whether or not OP started their third sentence off with 'seemingly' or 'perhaps' or didn't doesn't change the established fact that democrats are now routinely promising to offer positions exclusively to black women
Hawaii98
1yr ago
Surely what makes it boo outgroup is the failure to contemplate the possibility that said outgroup might have legitimate reasons for doing what they did.
The comment in no way indicated that Democrats were promising positions to black women for illegitimate reasons. Only that they were doing so routinely.
Not to mention that the claim is a caricature of the outgroup's actual stance, since rather obviously the two black women appointed so far have had all the conventional qualifications for the jobs at issue.
We have wildly, radically different views of what qualifies as 'all the conventional qualifications' for the Vice Presidency and Supreme Court. If you're going to assert that Kamala Harris is as conventionally qualified as Mike Pence, Joe Biden, Dick Cheney, Al Gore then you're going to have to provide evidence and you're not going to find any. Mike and Al were governors with actual governing experience. Joe and Dick had 30+ years each of dc insider experience. Hell before he was VP Dick Cheney was WH Chief of Staff and Secretary of Defense.
If you'd like to put Ketanji '379 days on the Court of Appeals' Brown Jackson's record up against the conventional qualifications of, oh I don't know, having an established judicial record for the senate to be able to examine before confirmation, then feel free to do so, but just asserting it to be so has negative probative value.
And, of course, a non-boo outgroup approach might consider that taking representation into account when appointing someone to a representative body does not seem to be unreasonable on its face.
Representation of their constituents political desires. That's what they're supposed to be, at least. You're (likely inadvertently) advocating to replace that system with a South Africa style quota. Which, if enacted, would mean a great many black women would have to be fired and replaced. Because they are currently hilariously overrepresented at all levels of 'public service' given they are around ~6% of the American population.
Hawaii98
1yr ago
Would the comment:
"Given that the VP slot was promised to a black woman, the open seat on the Supreme Court was promised to a black woman, and now this spot in the senate has been promised to a black woman, there seems to be an established trend that being a black woman is the only relevant qualification to the Democratic Party."
have been low effort boo outgroup?
I'm asking because Barron20204's comment seems less 'boo outgroup' and more pithy and accurate acknowledgement of the established fact that positions of the highest levels are now routinely promised by outgroup to black women.
Hawaii98
1yr ago
Can we stipulate Wikipedia is not a Nazi-aligned source? And then put aside everything else, to look at this list of leaders from Wikipedia of the German Revolution that introduced the "Weimar degeneracy" -
Rosa Luxemburg
Karl Liebknecht
Kurt Eisner
Clara Zetkin
Paul Levi
Franz Mehring
Leo Jogiches
Wilhelm Pieck
Ernst Toller
Erich Mühsam
Richard Müller
Emil Barth
Gustav Landauer
Eugen Leviné
Max Levien
Rudolf Egelhofer
Karl Radek
Johann Knief
Emil Eichhorn
It did not have "at least as many" ethnic Germans involved. In reality only 1/3rd were gentiles.
Hawaii98
1yr ago
This is the fight you and all other Boromirs of your kind are always perplexed by.
I very much enjoyed this and found your argument captivating, but as a Boromir, sometimes the communists are raping the nuns and emptying the prisons and you have to fight. Not taking the ring is the worse choice. But again as a principle and a standard two thumbs up
Hawaii98
1yr ago
You went to a great high school! Unless you meant you happened to read it around that age rather than have it assigned, which would be even cooler
I can't speak much to the movie, having only seen it once or twice and long ago. Having said that though, I've only read the book once or twice and long ago! Funny how some things you remember and some things you don't.
Anyway not to contradict your memory, but as far as I can tell Michener was a great lover of the mystique. He had no love for busybodies and tyrants and their factions. Abner is sometimes the (repressed, nerdy) personification of CS Lewis 'of all tyrannies the worst is the one who cares.' But he's also a man, one little lonely soul, who but for his rock solid faith in the Lord would be adrift like all the rest of us. That's one of the themes of the book - faith as necessary but sometimes dangerous. For example in Michener's narrative the Hawaiians originally left Polynesia because they were fed up with all-powerful Kahunas demanding human sacrifices at will - what they do to celebrate getting to Hawaii I will not spoil for those who haven't read.
One thing I do remember vividly from the movie was Abner force feeding Julie Andrews underripe bananas. It was in the book as well, but the people in charge of the movie really took the opportunity to make it a cinematic moment. Lost in the movie was the reason he was doing it - he was trying to acclimate Jerusha to what life would be like because he was deeply committed to the mission. Not that that justifies force feeding your wife underripe bananas - but that's a whole other layer - Abner didn't even know enough to know they were underripe! He was just clueless, stumbling around, and committed to his faith. The next layer is that when they get to Hawaii - it turns out women are forbidden from eating bananas because they're 'sacred!' So he made her sick (on top of the sea sickness) for months for no reason at all. That's obviously the behavior of a villain.
But Michener wrote Abner as a hero. After all, big swinging dick Captain Hoxworth didn't get the girl, Abner did. More seriously though despite adversity Abner learns to love and lives a full life to a ripe old age, finding fulfillment along the way. Classic hero 'man in the arena' stuff. This has all made me want to reread the book and I suppose I recommend the same to you. Great questions, thank you
Hawaii98
1yr ago
Hawaii is an epic novel by James Michener that was turned into a (pretty good, you're not wrong) movie by cutting out the 80-90% of the story that wasn't about Abner and Jerusha. It covers the island from physical creation to (upon release) modern day following a dozen generations of a dozen families from a dozen origins. Personally I consider it Michener's best even better than The Source.
If you liked the movie Hawaii about the thin slice you're gonna go bugfuck for the whole pie
Thanks for this, appreciate it
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