Lewis2
2mo ago
Unpredictability. Subconsciously, we’re thinking, “Something is off about this person. Is he about to have an inappropriate (and perhaps even violent) reaction to something I say or do?” It’s why the revulsion to mentally retarded children isn’t nearly as extreme. The fact that most mentally retarded people are unusually ugly is probably another, albeit minor, factor, as most people are naturally drawn to beauty and repulsed by ugliness.
Lewis2
2mo ago
Just thinking aloud here… This site is a Reddit clone of sorts. I don’t know if the current codebase would allow users to set up a second “sub” without requiring them to create new accounts, but let’s just say for the sake of argument that it does. From there, don’t you think the biggest obstacle preventing this site from becoming the next Reddit would be the userbase?
Lewis2
2mo ago
I’m not sure about clergy, but I’d wager a supermajority of religious (monks, nuns, deaconesses, and the like) are autistic.
Lewis2
2mo ago
In terms of cantankerous sass, it’s hard to beat St. Lawrence, a third century deacon in Rome. Immediately after the bishop of Rome was executed by order of the emperor, Lawrence was ordered to hand over the church’s treasury. Instead, he spent three days feverishly giving away as much as he could to the poor, then “presented the city's indigent, crippled, blind, and suffering, and declared that these were the true treasures of the Church: ‘Here are the treasures of the church. You see, the church is truly rich, far richer than your emperor!’” This naturally pissed off the authorities, so they decided to roast him alive on a giant gridiron. After he’d been roasting awhile in extreme agony, he told the guards, “Turn me over. I’m done on this side.”
Lewis2
2mo ago
SJWs also call on people to repent of evil and change their ways; they just have a different idea of what constitutes evil. Transphobes, homophobes, xenophobes, racists, sexists, capitalists, Republican voters, gun owners, climate change denialists, etc. are all being asked to “go forth and sin no more” by abandoning their previous beliefs and behaviors and becoming SJWs themselves. By 2020, BLM activists thought the day of reckoning had finally arrived, and they declared, “We are done waiting.” (PDF)
Basically, I think you’re missing that SJW’s tolerance only extends to the in-group, which in some ways is not totally far off from Jesus’ own teachings. “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” vs. “You brood of vipers,” and so forth.
Lewis2
2mo ago
I know this isn’t the main point of your comment, but I’d like to make a practical suggestion. If you find ads that damaging, just mute the TV during commercial breaks. I always do it on the few occasions I watch TV, and I merely find the ads obnoxious, not damaging to my ability to function.
Cheney shot someone. Does that make him more or less red tribe?
More: He used his shotgun to shoot something on a hunting trip.
Less: He (hopefully) missed his real target. (ETA: And shot someone without killing him.)
Lewis2
2mo ago
obviously basketball is a very blue coded sport
So says the Texan. Come to Kentucky or Indiana and say that.
Lewis2
2mo ago
80 year old East German: “Things were better under Communism.”
“Why’s that?”
“Sex was better then.”
Lewis2
2mo ago
Over the past several years, I’ve gotten into the habit of introducing side jokes into serious conversations because I’ve found that it frequently extends the length of time the less-engaged participants are willing to engage in those conversations. Throw in a semi-humorous observation or a lame riff every two minutes, and it keeps things light-hearted enough that the people who don’t particularly like serious conversations will find it tolerable. Yes, it frequently slows down the conversation. Yes, it occasionally derails things entirely. Yes, it’s a bad habit to fall into during serious one-on-one conversations (which I’ve unfortunately done). But it’s saved conversations among my friends on several occasions. (There is one couple who will complain bitterly anytime we have a conversation that is more serious than sports or what people have been up to at work. It’s aggravating, but it’s given me a chance to try different solutions. Humor is the best approach I’ve come up with so far, but I’d love to hear anyone else’s recommendations.)
Lewis2
2mo ago
Not like they do today, they haven’t. Polls show that young women started becoming dramatically more liberal around ten years ago, and only now are the numbers starting to show a return to normal (but who knows if this is a temporary blip or the start of a long-term trend). Googling “women becoming more liberal” will pull up plenty of articles and graphs discussing this phenomenon, though I’m pretty sure it’s been discussed here as well.
Lewis2
2mo ago
Don't you have such tax exemptions for night work, sunday work, overtime work in the US?
No. The night exemption seems especially bizarre to me. Why should income earned at night be any less taxed than income earned during the day?
Lewis2
2mo ago
He exchanged hats with a veteran at a 9/11 memorial event. The White House says he did it as a gesture of unity. I wouldn’t read too much into it.
Lewis2
2mo ago
These houses were frequently built with a small vestibule just inside the front door, between it and the foyer. This vestibule would have either hat and coat hooks and a chest for shoes or a small closet for those items (or sometimes both). Also, these houses were typically built with wood floors throughout, which makes cleaning easier. And back in the day, most of the owners would have had maids to do the cleaning, so they were probably less concerned about making a mess than they would have been otherwise.
Lewis2
2mo ago
It’s hardly new advice to take a good, hard look at your mother-in-law, since that’s what your wife will look like in 30 years. Physical appearance isn’t everything in a relationship, but it isn’t nothing either.
Lewis2
2mo ago
More than two in a sitting is seen as a problem? I can’t tell if I’m in a bubble or if you are. I’m not even slightly buzzed after two drinks, and I only drink a few times per year.
Lewis2
2mo ago
Lewis2
2mo ago
Mass producing marijuana in order to sell it isn’t something your average Joe can manage, but it’s fairly trivial to grow enough for yourself and your family/friends. If you have a spare closet, a couple of lightbulbs, and some potting soil, you’re 90% of the way there, and if it’s all done indoors, it’s pretty much undetectable. Thanks to LEDs, police couldn’t even detect an increase in energy usage if they tried.
Lewis2
2mo ago
It’s not that fair. What if those donors get some amount of joy from helping fund Johnny’s life extension treatments?
If you don’t like the media campaigns, just tune them out. Heaven knows conservatives have had to do it for decades.
Lewis2
2mo ago
Unlikely, as the theological foundations for the Catholic Church’s activism predate Vatican II by at least a decade. In 1952, Pius XII published Exsul Familia Nazarethana, which started off,
The émigré Holy Family of Nazareth, fleeing into Egypt, is the archetype of every refugee family. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, living in exile in Egypt to escape the fury of an evil king, are, for all times and all places, the models and protectors of every migrant, alien and refugee of whatever kind who, whether compelled by fear of persecution or by want, is forced to leave his native land, his beloved parents and relatives, his close friends, and to seek a foreign soil.
The church’s efforts were initially focused on providing priests, churches, seminaries, schools, hospitals, orphanages, etc., for Catholic populations that had already emigrated on their own to new places—all reasonable and positive efforts. However, political activism to encourage increased immigration started almost immediately after World War II, and increased dramatically in the wake of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Pius XII wrote the following to the American bishops on Dec. 24, 1948:
You know indeed how preoccupied we have been and with what anxiety we have followed those who have been forced by revolutions in their own countries, or by unemployment or hunger to leave their homes and live in foreign lands.
The natural law itself, no less than devotion to humanity, urges that ways of migration be opened to these people. For the Creator of the universe made all good things primarily for the good of all. Since land everywhere offers the possibility of supporting a large number of people, the sovereignty of the State, although it must be respected, cannot be exaggerated to the point that access to this land is, for inadequate or unjustified reasons, denied to needy and decent people from other nations, provided of course, that the public wealth, considered very carefully, does not forbid this.
Informed of our intentions, you recently strove for legislation to allow many refugees to enter your land. Through your persistence, a provident law was enacted, a law that we hope will be followed by others of broader scope. In addition, you have, with the aid of chosen men, cared for the emigrants as they left their homes and as they arrived in your land, thus admirably putting into practice the precept of priestly charity: “The priest is to injure no one; he will desire rather to aid all.” (St. Ambrose, “De Officiis ministrorum,” lib. 3, c. IX).
Even if the Catholics’ efforts hadn’t started off this way, it would only have been a matter of time before the Catholic refugee agencies started advocating for near unrestricted immigration, as the trajectory of the various Protestant churches’ refugee agencies demonstrates.
To give just one example, after WWI, the Lutheran churches in America established welfare agencies to provide aid to their coreligionists in Europe and to help resettle a small number of Lutherans in the United States. They did the same again after WWII, then began helping eastern Europeans (again, mostly Lutherans) who were fleeing persecution at the hands of the Soviets. Through the 1970s, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS) shifted to hooking up anti-communist refugees from Cuba and Vietnam with local Lutheran congregations, so the latter could help them find housing, jobs, etc. After the end of the Cold War, many Lutherans kind of forgot that the organization existed, and evaporative cooling meant that die-hard immigration supporters were the only ones still invested enough to keep things running. With little financial support from congregations, they turned to the federal government for funding (made possible thanks to George Bush’s push for the government to partner with religious non-profits), and they used those funds to help bring in Africans, South and Central Americans, Afghanis, and others. In 2019, they hired a Hindu Democratic apparatchik (former Policy Director to First Lady Michelle Obama) as CEO, and earlier this year, with the skinsuiting of the organization complete, they eliminated “Lutheran” from their name and rebranded as “Global Refuge.”
All of which is to say, no matter how reasonable and uncontroversial these organizations’ actions may have been at the start, eventually they were all taken over by activists after their original mission had been accomplished. To prevent that, people need to learn to formally abolish organizations they are involved with once they have completed their original purpose, rather than step down from positions of leadership with the organization still intact.
Lewis2
2mo ago
Interesting. I knew the emperors were powerless, but I didn’t realize abdication was common.
Lewis2
2mo ago
Not quite the same as this, but some friends and I spent a week camping in the Smoky Mountains earlier this summer. The costs for food, gas, campsite reservations, firewood, and supplies came to less than $250 per person.
Lewis2
2mo ago
I guess I don’t consider that formidable. Gary Johnson was polling at around 8% in early September of 2016, but he ended up getting only 3.3% of the vote. By the time he dropped out of the race, Kennedy was polling at a measly 3.9%, and he would almost certainly have gotten an even smaller percentage of the vote if he had stayed in until November. In contrast, Ross Perot garnered 8.4% of the vote.
It’s also hard not to appreciate St. Jerome, who is most famous for his translation of the Bible into Latin, but who was also, as one scholar put it, an “irascible, morbidly sensitive old curmudgeon,” who made frequent acerbic comments to and about his fellow clergymen, including Sts. Ambrose and Augustine.
A quick search pulled up this article, which includes some other gems:
Honestly, he sounds a lot like a Mottizen.
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