Sandbox (4)

Sometimes very active discussions about peripheral issues overwhelm a thread, so this is a permanent home for those conversations.

I’ve opened a new “Sandbox” thread as a post as the new “ignore commenter” plug-in only works on threads started as posts.

6,260 thoughts on “Sandbox (4)

  1. Flint: Again, my point was that we are too intimately embedded in our cultures to see anything to speak up about in the first place.

    Yes I got that, but we are talking about topics that are on the table right now, are we not? Women’s right to vote was clearly visible when the suffragettes marched through the streets and so are LGBTI+ rights now.

    Flint: I’d characterize it being more about power versus those who threaten that power.

    No, what happens in your country is going on in other places as well. In a long-established democracy a lot of power is with the voters and the way the extremist right and fascists mobilize that power is through an appeal to nationalism, traditional values, ressentiment and good ol’ racism (“closing the boarders”). By scapegoating unpopular, vulnerable minorities they lure people into allowing them to erode civil rights and neutralize counterforces: journalists, the legal system, universities and artists. This is the classic approach and it is playing out right now.

    Oh, and I am not that short, longshins.

  2. Corneel:

    (“closing the boarders”)

    Haha. Where is Bill, anyway? Did he finally realize that trying to defend the worst president in US history is futile?

  3. I was going to cite a sketch about “apart-height” that I had thought was the Two Ronnies (since Barker often derided Corbett’s short stature), but was in fact The Goodies (with Bill Oddie as the victim), and let’s just say it has not aged well.

  4. keiths,

    Haha. Where is Bill, anyway? Did he finally realize that trying to defend the worst president in US history is futile?

    What was futile was getting you and others to support your claims and not revert to special pleading and projecting.

  5. keiths:
    More later, but I think it’s amusing that Bill is projecting his projection onto us.

    Whenever Trump accuses anyone of doing anything, you can be sure that’s what he’s doing. Never fails.

  6. colewd,

    What was futile was getting you and others to support your claims and not revert to special pleading and projecting.

    Heh. As opposed to yourself, supporting claims of propaganda-not-lies by saying “it’s propaganda not lies”.

    I miss the days when people voted for a guy but could still call them out once in a while. Meantime, 5th Avenue littered with dead guys…

  7. colewd:

    What was futile was getting you and others to support your claims and not revert to special pleading and projecting.

    Add ‘special pleading’ to the list of terms Bill doesn’t understand. At this point, I think he just looks for terms that he senses are negative and applies them to us indiscriminately, despite the fact that he doesn’t know what they actually mean.

    ETA:

    Revised homework list:

    oxymoron
    badger
    border
    boarder
    burden of proof
    ad hominem
    spoiler alert
    independent voter
    objective
    candidate
    vague statistic
    pseudo
    hypocrisy
    lazy label
    special pleading

  8. Is there a vaccine for STD?
    I know there is one bullet proof 100 % but I doubt people like Bill Gates would like to invest in it…

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