Meme & Quote Thread
- Thread starter sturg33
- Start date
Julio3000
<B>A Chip Off the Old Rock</B>
You’re pretty enamored of this one, this being, like, the third time you’ve referenced it, including as justification for why AOC is “the dumbest person in Congress.”
I’ll say that the original factual mistake she got called on is a howler. On the other hand, her point, while subjective, is not necessarily wrong. Proposals of new social spending are greeted with cries of “but how will we pay for it?” in contrast to proposals of military spending, which are barely discussed at all. But the factual error IS jarring. It reminds me of when Nikki Haley, who was then a Tea Party darling and the newly elected governor of South Carolina, kept saying, in support of drug-testing welfare recipients, that 40% (or 50, I don’t remember) of applicants to jobs at the Savannah River Site failed drug tests. The truth was that SRS didn’t drug-test applicants, only prospective hires, and that something like .01 of them tested dirty. It was just a bonkers fabrication that she repeated many times until called on its factual inaccuracy, at which point she said that she had been given some bad information but that her underlying point was correct (which, let’s be real, it wasn’t). Do you care to speculate on her intelligence?
Finally, I guess I should point out that you have a habit—which seems to be a libertarian tic—of posting fake Founding Father quotes. When I’ve called you on this in the past, your answer has been that you like the quote and you think it’s correct, so who cares if the attribution is factually accurate? I consider that the misatrribution confers moral and intellectual authority on the words that would not otherwise exist, but your POV is that the moral rectitude of the words is more important then the factual accuracy of its attribution. How is this any different from what AOC said, in substance?
sturg33
I
It's an example of why she has no understanding of simple math and thus my opinion of her intelligence.
Sure. The Space Force is estimated to cost about $2.5B a year, and AOC's proposal is estimated to be around $4T year, or you know - 1600X more money. And more than doubles our current spending which already runs 25% deficits... we should ask how we pay for everything... but I think it's fair to put a bit more scrutiny on those $40T initiatives, don't you?
I think the larger problem here is when AOC went on a twitter rant about how unfair it is that people are fact checking her.
No. It wouldn't surprise me if she wasn't intentionally lying.
Well, for one - I'm not making up numbers to support my own virtue signaling. I'm posting a thought that I fundamentally agree with, regardless who said it.
For two, it's a little insulting for AOC to lecture me about her being more "moral" than I am because she believes in programs that I don't. I don't think it's moral to confiscate things from people simply because they are rich. I don't think it's moral to run up bills on future generations who have no say in these issues. I don't think it's moral to misrepresent facts in order to manipulate a very manipulable public. I don't think it's moral for her to say we can pay for all this by doing nothing other than taxing ultra-rich people. It's not true. It's not possible. She either knows that and is lying to us, or she doesn't know it, which... you know - dumb.
To say I'm not moral for asking her to be honest about the realities of the cost of her proposals is ludicrous. And anytime someone calls her out on it she plays the victim-card.
(This is not even going into the "morality" of wanting the state to control so much production which - at best - completely strips away individual liberty and at worst - results in the deaths of millions)
sturg33
I
The Gillette ad doesn't upset me. It makes me laugh that this is the new woke thing to do... Sell ads pretending to care about something to people pretending to hate capitalism.
The premise of the ad is very flawed. It's a premise that intimates that men are broken and need fixing... That being a ****ty person is our natural state.
It'd be like making an ad towards black people and showing a bunch of clips of black people committing crimes and then the ad is saying "c'mon black people, be better"
I'd imagine that wouldn't go over too well.
50PoundHead
Hessmania Forever
Watching the ad, I'm really trying to understand all the furor. Growing up in the 1950s and 1960s was a really odd time, because there was rampant sexism and racism, but we (as men) were also taught to stand up for the downtrodden, lend a helping hand when called upon, and show some measure of empathy. Of course, in private much of that veneer was stripped away. But perhaps the gigantic difference (and it is a gigantic difference) is that the perpetrators of bad behavior weren't called to account. There was a lot of head-shaking and tut-tutting, but seldom consequences for male misbehavior.
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
I also think there is much to admire and worthy of preservation about traditional American notions of masculinity. Including the qualities of taciturnity, understatement and stoicism. I found this recent defense of stoicism worthy of a careful read.
https://areomagazine.com/2019/01/15...an-ever-a-response-to-the-new-apa-guidelines/
And I will make a cross-cultural comparison as someone who has travelled a bit and worked with people of different nationalities. Americans (men and women) on average are both more competitive and more collaborative than most people of other nationalities. It is an odd and seemingly contradictory combination. But it works and is a great strength of Americans. Competitiveness can be a problem in certain forms. But I don't see it as one of the problems of American masculinity.
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50PoundHead
Hessmania Forever
I think it's a question of boundaries. I grew up rural and the school was small enough that I was in a lot of activities including sports. I was a terrible basketball player, but I still got on the team (my 1.6 points-per-game really didn't make much of an impression, but I did earn the Mr. Hustle award). I really believe one of the problems as population has migrated to the urban/suburban centers is that a lot of kids don't get the advantage I had of participating in a wide range of extracurricular activities, where one can learn to compete/perform, but to do so in a variety of environments with different rules and expectations. My Mr. Hustle award didn't help me a lot when in the class play (when I played an African-American student in "Up the Down Staircase"--so much for my political career). Kids seem to be forced to specialize these days and schools are so big that only a thin slice of students get to be on teams, in plays, in musical groups, etc. I think that's central to a lot of the overstatement that's going on.
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
Kids lives have become over-regimented. Parents' fault for the most part. But you'll be pleased to know that my youngest son is following in your footsteps as the Mr. Small Talent Big Hustle on his high school's JV basketball team. He goes to a small public school in the burbs so there is room for a player like him on the team. As a matter of fact 22 kids tried out for basketball this year and they kept all 22. 12 for the varsity and 10 for the JV. And it really is a great experience for all these kids.
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cajunrevenge
Well-known member
It pissed me off for the exact reasons Sturg explained. If they made this kind of ad for any group other than men or white people that group would be pissed too.
Theres very few times I will go out of my way not to buy something but Gillette can go **** themselves. They dont need my toxic money.
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
Btw, in speaking up on behalf of some traditional notions of American masculinity, I don't mean to minimize the issues that arise with respect to sexual harassment. Women have had to put up with too much for too long. It is not a partisan issue, or at least should not be. We have seen that it was a problem in the Bernie Sanders campaign. And I'll link below an article about a top aide to Mayor de Blasio having to resign for harassing women on his staff.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/...t-kevin-obrien.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/...t-kevin-obrien.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes
50PoundHead
Hessmania Forever
I think this is a very big problem. Everything is so organized now. As a kid, we'd play pick-up baseball, softball, basketball, football and if there weren't enough players for a regulation game, we would make up our own rules and enforce them without having a bunch of helicopter parents hanging around telling us "No, you have to have 9 players on a team in baseball." I think having parents around sticking their noses in when it really isn't warranted really prevents kids from growing up. A lot of folks wonder why so many millenials are "boomerang kids," but it shouldn't be a mystery. They haven't developed executive functioning skills because their parents have been buttinskys all their lives.
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
Both my former and current wife are helicopter parents. I have tried to compensate by being an extreme anti-helicopter parent. It causes some contention. But for the most part it has seemed to work out. My kids have learned to push back against the helicoptering and I side with them whenever I think I can get away with it. I do however enforce the 3 am curfew during the summer.
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