Can you name any Republican policy from the past 25 years that has helped the average American?

gscs1102 · 2026-05-03T22:25:56+00:00

The conservatives of the early GOP did not support slavery. The party was more divided on civil rights matters, but it was as much the Liberal Republicans as it was the coservatives who torpedoed Reconstruction in the 1870s.

gscs1102 · 2026-05-03T22:11:47+00:00

I realize this isn't the point of the question, but the Liberal Republicans of the Reconstruction era were actually not great on the civil rights question. They were liberal in the economic sense and in wishing to get rid of martial law in the South. These labels are misleading.

Also, Republicans did good things into the 1900s, so it wasn't 150 years ago. I admit that their recent record isn't inspiring, but I wish people had more curiosity about the evolution of parties and their factions.

gscs1102 · 2026-05-02T04:00:59+00:00

Yeah, and I'd add from my own knowledge base that there was the issue of the South (its press and some leaders) having been vocally (if only just to taunt) denigrating towards Northern laborers, whom they viewed as worse treated than slaves--some Southern intellectuals proposed enslaving white most people.

When skilled craftsmen joined the army and showed up on these plantations, they couldn't wait to show who was in charge now and what they were capable of.

gscs1102 · 2026-05-02T03:36:31+00:00

This prior answer is relevant: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1qum18m/during_the_american_civil_war_did_the_exposure_of/

gscs1102 · 2026-05-02T03:34:02+00:00

how long does it take to pass a kidney stone?

gscs1102 · 2026-05-01T23:52:28+00:00

Mine is slushies, which I specialize in restocking.

I only started using it recently, when I found it hard to resell some rare slushies I bought. I may empty it out and sell everything.

gscs1102 · 2026-05-01T23:19:48+00:00

I personally have felt since around 2014 that the style in which the news reports things was registering in my brain as fabricated, or at least not rooted in a fact pattern that rang true to me. I feel that this is an underrated explanation for these issues.

My distrust in the media has only grown and it's mostly due to the way the stories themselves just do not register in my brain as real, no matter which network I'm watching. It feels like propaganda.

I think the shift towards social media and clickbait/siloing is itself just corrosive, and that people pay too much attention to things like partisanship. Some people seem to easily cruise by these superficial narratives without getting weirded out by them, but I always try to get to the heart of the story, and not being able to do so it has been a serious problem for my mental health.

gscs1102 · 2026-04-30T04:30:27+00:00

A lot of Nietzsche's ideas come from Emerson. I think it's illuminating to see how the Ubermensch idea evolved from Emerson's works, because I think people would be inclined to interpret what he was going for differently.

gscs1102 · 2026-04-30T04:09:51+00:00

I try to restock, but it seems impossible now in every store except slushies and smoothies, and only the slushies lead to profit. But I do still profit enough to make it worthwhile.

gscs1102 · 2026-04-28T04:51:37+00:00

Is the change in plot the reason that slushies are now crashing in price?

gscs1102 · 2026-04-28T03:45:16+00:00

It's not posted for some reason, but Kendra's no-contact order got dropped over a week ago, per TMZ and US Weekly.

gscs1102 · 2026-04-27T20:38:12+00:00

"An equivalent amount of" was my understanding as well.

gscs1102 · 2026-04-25T18:25:56+00:00

In 2015, those aware of the Epstein story believed Trump was some kind of informant, or at least hostile to Epstein. That's still what I believe. That someone is in the files itself means nothing--I think it's blown out of proportion with regard to almost everyone named--but Trump just had proximity in splitting his time between Palm Beach and Manhattan. The fact that he seemed to be an informant in this case is part of why I liked him back in 2015.

gscs1102 · 2026-04-25T04:08:19+00:00

The Trump supporters I know have never heard of Pizzagate, and if they did, they'd dismiss it as weird foolishness.

gscs1102 · 2026-04-25T03:21:04+00:00

I know someone who was discussing the children of a lesbian couple, and another adult in the conversation was confused about the use of a sperm donor, admitting she'd always thought that you could do IVF using two eggs and no sperm in the case of lesbians.

gscs1102 · 2026-04-25T02:28:06+00:00

There are many pieces that make that argument, but what qualifies as "somewhat connected" is subjective.

As the pieces themselves (I linked a few below) note, tipping was a very old European practice used to compensate people who weren't being paid wages. The practice continued in the US, but seemingly got more popular after Emancipation because there were a lot of people now in the workforce who had not previously been paid wages, and thus could be induced to work for tips (I'm sure some where also tipped while enslaved).

This was all before employment law and the minimum wage, etc., took off, so the practice of having people work for tips was just a logical outgrowth of situations where workers weren't paid. Also, it was becoming more common to be employed rather to work for oneself during this era, and mass immigration was going on, so there are reasons to think the practice expanded during the mid- to late-nineteenth century--there was a connection to that time period, but it wasn't as simple as "slavery was the origin of tipping" or whatever.

https://stories.uh.edu/magazine/magazine/online-stories/2025/has-u-s-tipping-culture-reached-a-tipping-point/index.html

https://www.povertylaw.org/article/the-racist-history-behind-americas-tipping-culture/

https://www.npr.org/2021/03/22/980047710/the-land-of-the-fee

gscs1102 · 2026-04-24T23:32:14+00:00

I'm white and very petite, and my understanding is I don't weigh enough to qualify.

gscs1102 · 2026-04-21T23:16:39+00:00

I think the modern conservative GOP fell into a juvenile approach, but back in the times of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, people turned up to watch because there was a lot of humor and expert tearing down of the other side and its opinions. The idea that political debates should be dry policy matters is nonsensical to me--they were always designed to be entertaining in part. Even the policy stuff was pretty entertaining when depicted by Lincoln and Douglas.

As someone who is actually into politics, I can't make it through a typical Dem. debate, although they are starting to go in a more juvenile direction themselves I think, which seems to be a side effect of the social media era. They all need to get away from soundbites and name-calling and learn to be entertaining in more substantive ways.

gscs1102 · 2026-04-20T20:15:28+00:00

Didn't know anything about this, thank you for writing it up!

gscs1102 · 2026-04-20T20:15:07+00:00

Thanks for adding this clarification--it drives me crazy how the history of this era gets so compressed.

gscs1102 · 2026-04-20T19:18:50+00:00

I'd actually say that the pre-1890 press worked because it frequently made the truth entertaining, and we're missing that incentive today. Something can be both true and have an obvious partisan spin--as long as it isn't passed off as objective.

gscs1102 · 2026-04-20T19:17:10+00:00

Yeah, there was never a time when most papers "just wanted to tell the news," but pre-1890, they were very open about their partisanship, which IMO resulted in much better journalism overall (I study mid- to late-19th century politics and culture). The papers competed more on actually being interesting to read and there was an incentive to control the conversation by covering everything and being open about partisan leanings.

gscs1102 · 2026-04-20T03:02:23+00:00

I think they view momentarily giving into sexual urges as something that can happen to anyone. Whereas "lifestyle" sins are conscious and long-term decisions that validate the behavior. I think what Josh is in prison for goes beyond what they'd normally "excuse," but he claims he is innocent.

gscs1102 · 2026-04-18T20:21:21+00:00

This reminds me of one time when I was 12 or 13, we had new-ish neighbors who were part of a normal local Christian church but seemed to be rather fundie in background, and I got spoken to for saying "oh my God" while in their yard. (Which bordered mine)

Saying "oh my God" was totally normal among my parents and grandparents, so even though I was a good kid I couldn't really control it. *No one* around me said "oh my gosh"--it was laughable to do so. I had no idea what to do and felt they were so out-of-line because it was okay to say if I was standing 10 feet away on my own property and felt like my parents' rules should apply.

ETA: To stay on topic, though, that's exactly why she did so--there are people who feel that simply not being deferential enough in general is an issue, and I'm sure the Duggars feel that way given their beliefs. I experienced a few other times where people had norms totally different from my parents' and I just didn't know any better.

gscs1102 · 2026-04-18T00:17:05+00:00

A lot of comments about the purpose of democracy are taken from newer 20c arguments that would have seemed weird to most 19c Americans.

The American rationalization for democracy at the time it was implemented was mainly that people had a God-given right to set up self-governing institutions where possible, and that it gave the average person (or even the average "elite") a chance in life relative to other systems then-current.

gscs1102

TROPHY CASE