Ichor
15d ago
I think the point is that Thatcher was an impressive woman, worthy of running regardless of what you think of her politics or sensibilities.
Vance?
Yes, people like Vance. I'm guessing you don't? I'm struggling to parse your criticism other than a vague hand gesture towards his previous career.
You're missing the point
I think I'm missing your point... are you suggesting that we can't criticise politicians or are you saying that you can't criticise the Dems for consistently running poor candidates since Obama?
[Kamala] had a 50% chance of becoming president yesterday
Isn't this pretty much true for every US election ever?
Ichor
4mo ago
If it were really a plot to disenfranchise young people, it would be the least effective way of doing it I could think of.
In order to drink, drive or leave the country anyone 18 or over must have a form of ID which is also valid for voting in an election.
I don’t have much faith in the tories’s competence but I think claiming this to be a serious attempt at gerrymandering is really unfair on them.
Ichor
7mo ago
Are we not missing the kind of Occam’s razor of reasons here.
Black people are more ethnocentric in their politics because under any other system they consistently come out bottom.
Lots of ethnicities have been aggrieved by discrimination and colonialism but have generally gotten on-board with a racially pluralistic form of politics because they don’t consistently come out on bottom, so the situation isn’t bad for them.
No population is ever going to just admit their worse, therefore there must be a more nefarious reason and the simple solution to that reason is for your population to govern.
This is not to say that the legacy of discrimination does not help justify that lack of trust and resulting governing reason, but it is far from the sole cause.
Ichor
8mo ago
Would dosage not vary significantly between genders based on their relative average sizes?
Ichor
8mo ago
Mary Harrington, feminist reactionary extraordinaire, claims the current gender paradigm views women as defective men, which is similar to your comparison to the disabled.
The male ideal is universal, and as women have biological impediments towards that ideal (periods, pregnancy, lower physical strength), women should be given accommodations to achieve that ideal (lower expectations at certain times of the month; pregnancy should not hinder career prospects; systems in place to guarantee women’s safety in potentially dangerous situations).
What I find an odd cultural quirk however is that men are in many ways seen as defective women. The desire to subordinate aggressive, domineering, or high energy men a la toxic masculinity being one such example. The emphasis on a female model of learning within school that requires being still and listening for long periods of time and the subsequent reprimands or potential medication for boys that can’t live up to that standard.
I’ll bite the bullet on this one!
If the government’s requests were limited to an open request or series of requests in full view of the public, then I’d have no issue.
However, if a wide reaching collection of disparate government agencies funnelled their requests in secret through a formal task force set up by the intelligence agencies in partnership with former intelligence agency officials now working at the social media firms and then denied that any such actions were being taken, I would be against it.
In other words, it’s not necessarily the request but the manner in which the requests were processed; the latter being too open to the abuses that we now know unfolded.
Having said that, there’s a principled difference between the kind of speech you’re referring to here and the kind of speech that is under question: yours is not political; whilst theirs is.
The government were specifically requesting that speech critical of them should be removed or deprioritised by the algorithm.
We’re talking speech critical of the government’s response to COVID; speech critical of how elections were handled; speech promoting true information that is harmful to the government bureaucracy’s favoured candidate.
Even speech promoting vaccine hesitancy should be viewed as political in this context given the government’s heavy handed advocacy, and often enforcement, of it.
So yes, there possibly are exceptions where the government can request that 1st amendment protected speech is better managed by private institutions that host that speech. However, they should not be setting up formal, secret networks to monitor speech in general, due to the potential for abuse, and should not be requesting political speech, critical of the government or promoting candidates or policies contrary to the government’s own, in particular.
No... I didn't... But I do now - so thank you for explaining.
Whilst I agree that there are superficial criticisms of all candidates, the difference is that Thatcher and Vance have ameliorating qualities to them whilst it's hard to parse what positive qualities Biden and Harris have when it comes to their candidacy.
Thatcher was intelligent, articulate, charismatic and had a penchant for leadership. Vance is intelligent and articulate; I wouldn't say he's particularly charismatic but he does come across as overwhelmingly normal and down-to-earth which has a charm to it, even if you wouldn't call it charisma.
This seems to be the difference that people are gesturing towards: whilst you can come up with superficial criticisms for all candidates, Biden* and Kamala seem fairly unique in their lack of positive qualities.
*2020 Biden.
No, I would say they are bad candidates. Why would you say they're not bad candidates? What positive qualities could you name? Are they great orators? Especially charasmatic? Wonkish? Great leaders? I'm really struggling to see what your argument would be here.
Yes to Biden v. Trump in 2020 and then I was too young back during Obama v. McCain to make a call there.
However, I imagine they were close.
Campaigns spend millions trying to secure the vote of a slither of the electorate. Given how few people the campaign is actually fought over, it kind'a means that all elections are close.
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