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Trump attacking Georgia governor Brian Kemp and his wife during rallies and on social media, and Kemp's response to this is a lame "We need to focus on Kamala!" (paraphrased):
https://x.com/BrianKempGA/status/1819851284343832838
The behavior of Republican politicians regarding Trump is absolutely fascinating. Guy is insulting your wife, your governorship, your very character in front of millions, and you're openly announcing that you'll still be voting for him. Exact replay of Ted Cruz falling meekly into line after Trump loudly deemed his wife unfuckable.
At what point would these guys actually draw a line in the sand?
It's hilarious because these Repubs think of themselves as the party of Real Men, but this is absolutely womanly behavior.
Well, maybe not womanly, if Kemp's wife has said she's not voting for Trump even if her husband is, lol.
I think it’s simply the hold Trump has over the base. If he turns on you he takes the base with him. And it’s obvious just looking at the messaging in campaign ads. Every single republican running for office is in some way claiming Trump’s name over their campaign. They absolutely want his endorsement and play up any way they might have helped him. And the base is committed mostly to him and the MAGA movement— they’re after Rinos who won’t do everything possible to help Trump.
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Trump is not just another politician. He is the arbiter of reality. If you are a Republican governor and he says your wife is ugly, then your wife is ugly. In fact, Kemp will probably struggle to find her attractive again – in a way, it's noble for him to still be with her after her stock has taken such a blow.
Kemp isn't MAGA-pilled - the reason why the argument is happening is because he knows (and is unwilling to conceal that he knows) that Trump is just another lying politician, in fact one who lies even more often that average. There certainly are men who would re-evaluate the hotness of their wife or whether black is white based on Trump telling them to, but Kemp isn't one of them.
Kemp (and his ally Raffensperger) are unusual in that they have already seen off Trump-backed primary challenges, so they probably have more freedom to oppose Trump than anyone else in the GOP.
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It seems you are promoting a distorted picture and acting as if never trumpers never didn't do nothing and it is all the bad Trump. Trump is attacking Kemp for not promoting unity and his wife not endorsing Trump after according to Trump benefiting from Trump's endorsement and in private acting much differently. THEN we see Kemp's response. You accept the frame that Trump is the one promoting disunity even though it isn't as clear and you then endorse further disunity as the way for republicans to prove they are men.
I don't know the details of why Kemp's wife wouldn't endorse Trump, but the screenshot it self shows the picture you are trying to paint to be misleading.
Of course the republicans who are a party submisive to big donors, lobbies, and the left aren't that great. Kemp's wife is not manly for not voting for the republican candidate. She might like a greater proportion of women than men, be part of this problem, although we need more details to ascertain what is going on. Women are not manly nor courageous for being more liberal than men and that might be part of what is happening.
Trump isn't really all that great but republicans would be even greater losers for listening to such blatantly bad advice to become disunited to prove "manly" against the meanie Trump. They have a problem of people who hate the right being part of it. And even though Trump himself has some of this problem too, much of the opposition to him has to do with the successful subversion of western center and right by the left. Basically symbolically Trump represents more of an opposition than they are willing to tolerate. This doesn't make supporting Trump to be automatically correct, but it does argue against bad reasons for opposing Trump.
It seems you are promoting that you want republicans to be against their own candidate to prove they are men. This is wrongheaded and if the republicans are a political opposition to you, well it looks like you promote division against your political opposition so they lose. Of course neither republicans, nor outsiders should listen to such claims at minimum. Actually if we want to encourage republicans to be acting in a more bold manner, they should be more aggressive against attempts of subversion.
There is a constant repetition of people willing to offer "advice" to what they see as part of the right that goes that to win elections, to prove you are compassionate, non racist, manly, principled, respectable, true Christian, not a far right extremist, etc, you ought to act in this X,Y, Z self destructive manner. Opposing that and powerful donors, and lobbies promoting what is destructive to their civilization is what right wingers should show some genuine courage towards. Doing what is right even if someone would call you a bad label to try to manipulate you, or there is a possibility of genuine cancel culture. It takes zero courage to be self destructive over irrelevant petty drama and therefore enable the left to dominate politics.
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If you're Brian Kemp, what are you supposed to do? The consequences of a Kamala victory are pretty dire for conservatives. And Trump has the special ability to speak to the rubes without which your whole party falls into irrelevance. So conservatives have to hold their nose and support Trump.
What Kemp is demonstrating is actually manly behavior. Putting the good of the country ahead of your own personal honor is what men do. Dignity culture is the highest expression of manliness. Pursuing vendettas against people who insult you, like some 15th century Italian, shows a childish lack of discipline. Are you a man, or are you Marty McFly?
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Ironically, I think more of them might cowboy up if they actually thought Trump had a permanent movement in place to maintain power over time. Right now Trump is strong enough that you can't control a winning GOP without controlling MAGA, but there's no MAGA bench behind him. Desantis, Rubio, Cruz, Kemp all think that Trump is going to disappear. Maybe in November 2024, maybe in January 2028, maybe at any given moment if the bullet had been aimed a cunt hair to the right or if a glob of Wendy's-induced-cholesterol gets stuck in the wrong tube. And when Trump shuffles off the scene, the Never-Trumpers will not inherit the party. No matter how he goes, Nikki Haley's career is over, she gambled on Trump getting sent to prison and lost. They're all angling to pick up the pieces and unite the party after Trump leaves, Kemp and Cruz think they just need to endure Trump for a few years then they'll be freed.
Pointless obscenity
Sometimes you write a thoughtful essay combining fresh interpretations of classical literature and current events and get crickets, sometimes you use the term cunt hair and spark a vibrant discussion.
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You're literally waging the culture war.
"Cunthair" is bog-standard slang for the smallest perceptible distance on construction sites (and, I've heard, in many other red-tribe blue collar industries), and language policing is one of the classic culture war tactics.
If my guess is correct, you would defend the use of African American Vernacular English, and object to most attempts to suppress it. I think that's a decent policy, and also apply it to Construction Worker Vernacular English.
No, cunt hair would be considered uncouth in most of the core red tribe. Construction workers or drunk guys using it is an indication of poor breeding.
Red Tribe hasn't quite gotten the message about context collapse, so they're perfectly likely to use it in situations where couth is not called for.
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I dunno man. Construction workers are obviously among the most crass in all of America, so there's some bias right away, and even to this day, the word "cunt" is seen as the most genuinely offensive and vulgar and strongest bad word without any contest. "Cunt hair" is doubly obscene because, you know, pubic hair isn't really typical in polite conversation, and it forces the meaning to be physical and sexual rather than merely colloquial. So you really are double layering there. No culture warring necessary. In a forum assuming it's deliberate antagonism is for sure the default.
Not that I think we should be schoolmarming each other over naughty words, but I’m pretty sure that title belongs to “nigger” for most normies.
I’d say “cunt”’s like an inverse Scalabrine (who is closer to LeBron than you are to him) in being closer to “faggot,” “tranny,” or “retard” than it is to “nigger,” maybe even ranking behind them. After all, “cunt”’s featured in a lot of well-memed quotes in Game of Thrones-related subreddits, hard to imagine “nigger” being thrown around so casually and merrily on Reddit. Even for comedians, "nigger" is viewed as an edgy, risky thing to say in a way that "cunt" is not; a certain Seinfeld alumnus experienced this the hard way.
As @The_Nybbler mentioned, “cunt hair” in this context is less offensive as a humorous unit of measurement—not more—much less “doubly” so. It’s not like “dickhead” or “asshole” are twice as obscene as calling someone a “dick” or an “ass,” and those don’t have measurement-specific niche use-cases. Well, not yet at least, perhaps one day they can come to serve as common units of radii.
Plus, the offensiveness of a bald “cunt” without “hair” can be mitigated—or even canceled out—by throwing a “white” in front of it when describing or insulting a woman.
Well, to be clear I think that although the line is obviously never clear-cut, I do distinguish between vulgar bad words and slurs, which I do consider to be in different categories both in meaning and the situations in which they are used. There's a long human history of words that are sexually or scatologically oriented that pop up across cultures pretty regularly (the "vulgar" category). Offensive people-category and behavior/intelligence words do also show up (the more general "slur" category), but their use and deployment seems to often form a parallel path, rather than one that frequently intersects and has interchangeability. Mind you, a foul-mouthed person is more likely to employ more words on both axes, but in more independent situations -- at least it seems that way to me.
Of course in the case of "cunt", there might be a little more crossover due to its frequent use as a gendered insult, but I'd argue the word still has more to do with the personality of a person rather than their identity, when used solo.
When it comes to adaptations, yeah it's pretty variable, and obviously highly contextual, something greatly missing over text. But I'd still say that "asshole" is stronger than "ass", as the vulgar connection is stronger and more direct (referring more explicitly to a "dirty" bodypart), but "dickhead" to me seems about as strong as "dick". "Dickhead" is a little weird because it usually is taken as referring to your head on top of your body as opposed to the glans, and yes there's a humor element too which can be a diminisher. But I don't think adding "white" does anything to the offensiveness at all.
Bad words are funny things, because they are at once extremely flexible and context-dependent, and highly culture-dependent too, but also seem to rhyme quite often across cultures which suggests something deeper at play.
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Eh, I think this is a reddit thing. Lots of people who are at least more normie than a typical motteizean would find 'cunt' incredibly offensive and 'nigger' merely very offensive. These people skew female and would probably not use either term themselves. Like, my grandma wouldn't be happy to hear either word, but she'd get a lot more offended at 'cunt'. Honestly it seems like the normies accept that 'nigger' sometimes gets used non-offensively- mostly by blacks themselves- but that 'cunt' almost never is.
It's not just a Reddit thing, as the comedian examples illustrate.
If I had a Twitter account under my real name and called a black person a "nigger," even if such a black person is on video battering/homiciding someone—for example, sucker-punching an Asian American grandparent on the street—I'd almost certainly get canned from my job within a business week, perhaps the next business day.
Whereas, if I called an woman a “cunt,” I'd probably still be let go, but at lesser probability and immediacy. If I stuck a "white" in front of the "cunt" in calling some chick a "white cunt," my survivorship probability might very well be above 50%. I could probably fend that off.
It's mostly in "nigga" form when it comes to black usage. But as always, Who? Whom? Blacks can also otherwise use terms like "cunt" more freely with lesser or no repercussions. For idpol reasons for several decades now, black men (and women) have more latitude by which to call women bitches, whores, sluts.
For the most part, the only thing blacks have been called out, and on occasion faced repercussions for, in the mainstream is alleged antisemitism.
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"Cunt hair" in this context, while still extremely vulgar, is rather less offensive than "cunt" used to refer to someone.
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Kind of a shame that us Americans have taken a word which is pretty fun and lighthearted form of obscenity in the rest of the Anglosphere and made it like the be all end all of the worst things a person can say.
I’m still salty that I once was banned from /r/askanAmerican for using the word cunt with an Australian who came to ask a question.
I wouldn't say "cunt" is a lighthearted form of obscenity in the UK. It is one of the three words you really can't say on TV (along with "nigger" and "Paki"). Using the term to refer to actual female genitalia or to insult a woman would be shockingly misogynistic. Using it to insult a man in earshot would be fighting words. You wouldn't use it to rib a casual acquaintance the way you might in Oz.
The difference between the British and US contexts is that the word is permitted to insult people who it is okay to offer otherwise-unpardonable insults against, such as the manager of your team's arch-rivals or the Prime Minister. There is no misogynistic connotation when the word is used to insult a man.
I am 50-50 on whether "nigger" will turn out to be acceptable (obivously only in the UK) in this context if the Tories elect a black leader, which is less likely than it was a fortnight ago but still very plausible (Jenrick has overtaken Badenoch as the bookies' favourite, but she is still 9-4 and Cleverly is still in the race).
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Now you know how Cajuns feel about coullion.
The point is words with the same definition can have different valences from culture to culture.
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I was about to say it's common in the military as well, but then again they aren't known for decorum either.
Thing is, this is an anonymous internet forum, so we also have a specific cultural substrate. Ever since september 93 never ended, normalfaggotry has been tolerated on the series of tubes, but it is not the endemic culture. Interference with our ancestral traditions of variable geometry language registers is in fact the uncouth behavior.
When in Rome.
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First time I ever heard the expression was from a Brit.
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Meh. Like feet, cups, tablespoons and teaspoons, it’s something I have around the house.
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The Swedish equivalent and literal translation "fitthår" has seen frequent use at least as long as I've lived and we use the metric system.
Granted, fitta doesn't have exactly the same connotation as cunt. You generally don't call some a fitta and its not a gendered insult, its more of a general expletive, eg. you stub your toe and yell out fitta. Furthermore, its more of a comical extension/version of the expression "det var på håret" (that was a close one, literally "that was on the hair"), "det var på fitthåret".
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It's practically a term of art.
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Eh, I rather like a bit of pointless obscenity as long as it's not pointed at anyone in particular. It's part of what makes this place feel like a social club, rather than a generic forum of smart well-informed people.
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Don't forget Trump implicating "Lyin'" Ted Cruz's father in the JFK assassination.
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I'm beyond expecting Dems to follow the norms of martial-hierarchical honour culture, but I have higher hopes for the modern GOP; as we say round our way, ξιφοδηλήτῳ, θανάτῳ τίσας ᾇπερ ἦρχεν. Maybe Kemp should follow Hanania's (sadly unpursued) advice to DeSantis, and challenge Trump to a fight.
If he was the type to do that, Trump likely wouldn't be picking on him.
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