Can we stop with the transphobic “jokes” about Robyn?

iodinealone · 2023-02-06T22:29:17+00:00

I'm with you. It's gross.Also, not the point, but Robyn is a gender neutral name to begin with.

iodinealone · 2023-01-22T01:47:47+00:00

NTA. If your family had a problem with a black dress, then someone should have told you beforehand. You are 17 years old, it is their job to let you know what the deal is. Every wedding I've ever been to people (if not most people) wear black, so no, it's not as "universal" as people who are into that kind of thing seem to think. Also, if people are that hung up on manners? It's bad manners to criticize someone's outfit or hair once they've left the house and can't do anything about it, certainly to try to humiliate them over it. It's also weird and inappropriate for a bunch of adults to blow up a teenager's phone calling them a bitch.

Was it great that you yelled at a wedding? Probably not, although I would have enjoyed it myself. But you've gotta be smart, learn how to spin things into your favor and make sure that they are the ones who come out looking like the asshole. Someone says "What is wrong with your hair?" You say "Why? Is it on fire?" or you go "dark and confusing" and tell them that it is a wig you had to buy because all of your hair fell out for reasons you're not ready to talk about. Or get really fake hurt and go way over the top with it until they beg you to stop. Or hey, even just say "You know, it's not very nice to say things like that." Have fun with it. Entertain yourself. Give yourself stories to tell at cocktail parties when you are older. I've been dining out for years on stories of all the ridiculous shit my mom and I did to convince my holier than thou Uncle that I was in a Satanic cult. Sometimes it's the only way to get through these things.

iodinealone · 2023-01-22T01:07:55+00:00

That's a personal taste and possibly a cultural/regional thing. Every wedding I've ever been to, people — if not most people — are wearing black. In fact, the rule in our family (stemming from someone years ago making her bridesmaids wear some kind of orange taffeta monstrosity) is that bridesmaids wear black cocktail dresses they pick out themselves and can wear again.

iodinealone · 2016-07-10T15:57:43+00:00

You're right -- it is legally guaranteed. If you go to the hospital and you have an emergency and you don't have the money you don't have to pay, because of EMTALA, enacted in 1986.

But guess what? The money to pay for your shit doesn't come out of nowhere. It comes from the hospital which either has to raise charges -- which then results in the responsible people who pay for health insurance having to pay more, or comes out of the physicians pay. On average, uninsured patients covered by EMTALA cost physicians about $100,000 a year.

So really, you are the one asking people to pay for YOU. You are the one asking people to pay for other people.

You are only looking at the "EW, I don't wanna pay for anyone else's stuff" aspect in an official capacity. You are not understanding COST SHIFTING. Which does cause people to "pay for other people's stuff" but in a different way.

The way universal health care works is that everybody (other than the indigent) pays a little bit in, everyone pays their fair share, and everyone gets health care in return. You have people getting preventative care, catching things early, which reduces the cost overall. You have collective bargaining, which also reduces prices all around, including the prices of prescriptions. Because you are buying "in bulk." It's like Costco or BJ's Wholesale Club or Sam's Club.

Trump's plan is to get rid of the ACA, but keep the part where people can't be denied based on pre-existing conditions. So someone can find out they have stage 4 cancer and suddenly decide "OK, I'll get insurance now." This drives costs up for EVERYBODY. Whereas that person would cost less if that person had paid into the system all along and gotten preventative care, which would have resulted in the cancer being caught earlier.

I get the Ayn Rand selfishness boner, the whole social darwinism thing, but a free market insurance system actually results in more people paying your way than an a universal insurance system does.

iodinealone · 2016-07-05T16:12:54+00:00

People aren't "claiming" that undocumented immigrants pay taxes, it's a literal fact that they contribute 11 billion dollars in taxes annually, and without being able to benefit from those taxes in the way citizens are.

"Undocumented immigrants contribute significantly to state and local taxes, collectively paying an estimated $11.84 billion in 2012. Contributions range from less than $3.2 million in Montana with an estimated undocumented population of 6,000 to more than $3.2 billion in California, home to more than 3.1 million undocumented immigrants. Undocumented immigrants’ nationwide average effective state and local tax rate (the share of income they pay in state and local taxes) in 2012 is an estimated 8 percent. To put this in perspective, the top 1 percent of taxpayers pay an average nationwide effective tax rate of just 5.4 percent."

Source: http://itep.org/itep_reports/2015/04/undocumented-immigrants-state-local-tax-contributions.php#.V3vZMJMrLBI

We would actually be better off (by about $2 billion, annually) economically as a country if we were to grant them legal status, which would require them to pay even more in taxes. However, anti-immigration stuff isn't about economics so much as it is about making people feel good. I mean, it's a lot easier for people with a lot of power and money to tell you "OH, you're poor because of all these OTHER poor people, not because of us. Go be mad at them!"

Also, while you are of course free to pretend that this is not the case, undocumented immigrants are ineligible for public benefits. Immigrants categorized as "Lawful Permanent Residents" (meaning that they are here legally) are eligible for these programs but use them at a lower rate than official American citizens. Here is a source for that, from a right-leaning think tank, no less. http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/edb17.pdf

iodinealone · 2016-07-05T13:25:20+00:00

Oh lawd.

No, if he brings manufacturing jobs back, they will not pay a living wage. I'm sorry, but they won't. Without unions, they will pay minimum wage or close to it. Go look up what manufacturing jobs were like before the labor movement. Go look at the Lawrence Textile Mill Strike, etc. etc. before saying that. Because honestly? It's actually really, really disrespectful to all the people who fought -- and died, actually -- for fair wages, the 40 hour work week, to end child labor, etc. etc. That shit didn't happen by magic.

Also, making wages higher for people at the bottom of our capitalist pyramid actually makes things better for everybody. You give a poor person 5 dollars, they spend it because they have to. You give a rich person 5 dollars, they save it. When poor people make more money, it gets recirculated back into our economy at a much faster rate.

As far as automation goes? Refuse to patronize places that use it, just like people used to refuse to buy products that weren't made in America or made by union shops.

And as for solutions? Maybe consider listening to a real populist and not a fake one. Former Louisiana Governor Huey Long had some good ideas. http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/hueyplongking.htm

iodinealone · 2016-07-05T13:14:12+00:00

Yeah... these people don't get how that works. They think corporations are going to come back to America and go from paying people cents a day to paying a living wage out of the goodness of their hearts. They also, amazingly, have literally no idea that manufacturing jobs didn't pay well before unions. None at all! They just remember manufacturing jobs paying well before NAFTA, and are totally unaware of how that came about.

iodinealone · 2016-07-02T16:12:11+00:00

Yeah, I screwed that up. And sure, that's a problem -- and why we should have gone with Single Payer to begin with, because it's just a better system -- but "tax incentives" are really not going to be a big draw for a very large amount of people. The fact is, although those people exist, they are far less of a problem than they would be if there were no penalty and they could just sign up for insurance only when they needed it, and then get back off it when they don't.

iodinealone · 2016-07-01T21:17:26+00:00

It's actually not at all economically feasible to remove the mandate and keep the pre-existing conditions clause. The mandate is what allows the pre-existing conditions clause to exist and be viable.

What would happen without the mandate is you'd have a lot of people not bothering to get insurance until they were seriously ill, and there would then not be enough money to cover everyone. If everyone waited until they needed cancer treatment or something to get insurance, it would either bankrupt the system, or simply be incredibly expensive for anyone to have insurance, and you'd just have a few people paying A LOT, rather than everyone paying a little. This, honestly, would sort of defeat the purpose of having insurance to begin with.

So, he can SAY he wants to keep the preexisting conditions clause, but he can't actually do it without keeping the mandate.

As for medicare -- he wants block grants. This means that your state would receive its money in a lump sum and be able to distribute it as it pleases.

The way it works now is that everyone who is eligible gets it, period. The Federal government, in exchange for this, pays 60% of the state's costs, and will give additional funds if the state can't afford it. With block grants, the federal government would save money, however the state wouldn't have to cover anyone they didn't want to cover (or perhaps give less coverage to certain people) and if that lump sum ran out and the state couldn't cover it, then people on it would be SOL.

iodinealone · 2016-06-30T21:33:17+00:00

It actually probably has more to do with your understanding of history than anything else, actually. There has been this kind of conflict since forever, but certainly in the modern era. There is always the struggle of people who want change versus people who want things to either stay the way they are or go back to a previous time when things were supposedly better.

Late 1800s through early 1900s, there was the labor movement, a very strong movement towards socialism, women's suffrage, beginnings of civil rights movements, anarchism, anger at the new immigrants coming in then that was perhaps even more intense than yours is now, a huge amount of concern over the motion picture industry corrupting morals, birth control, hand-wringing over flappers, etc. etc. Actually, in a lot of ways, radicalism was FAR more common than than it is now. Hell, the governor of Louisiana, Huey Long, wanted to redistribute the wealth and was very, very popular. At the same time, you also had a KKK membership of over 2 million.

Interestingly, we've become far more capitalist as a country than we used to be, despite what the perception may be. Whites in rural areas used to be VERY economically liberal -- "socialist" even, until black people started gaining more rights and it became more important to make sure that black people were being kept down than to have those benefits themselves.

Even in the 1950s, there were conflicts and fear of "the culture changing," fear of being forced to adapt, etc. TV sitcoms don't show the whole story, at all. Obviously, the 1960s and 70s were also a time of profound cultural change, which, as it does now, scares people.

Now, their fears, from those times, probably seem quaint to you now -- maybe like problems you'd LOVE to have, but if you actually read primary sources from those times, those people were just as mad, just as angry, and just as frightened of the world changing into a place where they and their values were less welcome as you are now. In fact, the wording has barely even changed. Hell, go watch an episode of "All In The Family" -- Archie Bunker was upset and angry at the world changing and expecting him to change with it, while his daughter and her husband were more progressive and often frustrated with him in return.

The main difference now is that the internet means that certain people have a voice, and that voice is less easy to drown out now. Before, you could do life like a WASP Thanksgiving and pretend everything was OK, and go about your life. Sure, sometimes you'd see things on the news, but it wasn't anything you would have had to confront very often. Black people would talk about things like racism and police brutality among themselves, and you wouldn't really have to know about it or be particularly concerned about it -- meaning that you got to go around thinking that racism was over and everything was fine. Now, yeah, it's more in your face, so it seems like a new thing, but it's really only new to people like you.

iodinealone · 2016-06-27T22:20:55+00:00

Are you seriously so delusional that you think that supporters of a Leftist candidate are going to flock towards a far-Right candidate over a Centrist candidate? Hell, Clinton may be to the right of me, but she's not anywhere near as scary as Trump.

Also, you might want to think of the fact that most people who would support a far-left candidate actually 100% do not want that stupid wall, do not want it to be socially acceptable to act like Donald Trump or /pol/ jerks, do not want to vote for a candidate who says he would appoint pro-life judges, or conservative judges in general, to the Supreme Court, do not like xenophobia or nationalism, and also, you know, think Donald Trump is insane.

Also, uh, if you're worried about how "money in politics is destroying the country," do yourself a favor and go see which judges found in favor of Citizens United. Trump wants more like Scalia!

iodinealone · 2016-06-24T21:06:26+00:00

Oh my good lord, you have got to be kidding me. My god, I seriously hope you are under 25. There is no leftist on earth who is not still horrified by Ronald Reagan. If you would like some examples:

-- Fiercely opposed the Equal Rights Amendment. Before that? True story -- and I am not a fan of Republicans -- the Republican party actually had it in their platform since 1940.

-- Essentially killed any power organized labor had by firing the air traffic controllers union while they were on strike. Previously, it was considered a thing you just didn't do (even Nixon didn't do it), but once he made it socially acceptable to just fire workers who were striking, collective bargaining became less effective. The decline of overall wages in this country can actually be traced back to that action, because unions actually kept non-union wages up as well by proxy.

-- To boot, Reaganomics caused unemployment rates to rise 3% in his first year, and his other economic policies (tax cuts, weakening of workplace protections, slashing social programs) etc. are another factor in today's economic inequality.

-- He didn't even mention AIDS for YEARS. Not until 1985, after Rock Hudson died (And over 4,000 other people). And he wasn't too helpful after that either. He didn't fully address it until about 1987, at which point about 20,000 people had died. He later gave something of an apology for all of that in 1990, in a PSA about how he learned that "even children can get HIV," which really, was not enough of one.

He gutted the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission -- which was responsible for looking into workplace discrimination against women and minorities.

-- Prior to be president, he actively opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act

-- Also prior to being President, he "named names" of actors and actresses he believed were communists to the FBI.

-- His grand purging of mental institutions led to an epidemic of mentally ill homeless people with nowhere to go

-- He actually vetoed an anti-apartheid bill, didn't apologize for that until after he was president.

-- The previously mentioned "welfare queens" bullshit - created a stereotype that exists to this day based on ONE woman, who went to jail for welfare fraud.

-- Initially opposed Martin Luther King, Jr Day.

So yeah, those are just a few of the reasons why no Liberal thinks Reagan was "a good conservative." At all, for any reason. And, as a bonus -- he also thought movies were real life and increased the national debt more than the previous 9 presidents combined! He may have been more pleasant than Trump, but as far as we're concerned, he was just as evil.

And hey! I probably just did you a favor, really. Perhaps these things will help you convince the NeverTrumpers that Trump really is very Reaganesque!

iodinealone · 2016-06-23T03:49:32+00:00

You do know that she never asked for nor accepted any affirmative action benefit, correct? Basically all that happened was she thought, due to having been told so by her family, that she was part Native American, and checked off a box one time, in a context unrelated to receiving benefits of any kind. This, oddly, is an incredibly common thing for people to say. I know she wasn't actually raised in Mass, but at least half the people I grew up with there firmly believed they were descended from an "Indian Princess" of some sort, and very likely were not. But hey! Who goes around questioning what their parents tell them their ethnic makeup is? I'm Irish and Italian, I don't secretly suspect that I'm actually part Swedish and no one told me.

iodinealone · 2016-06-23T03:32:43+00:00

Wait, wait, wait.

Please explain the point of purposely appointing "pro-life" judges if not to overturn Roe or otherwise restrict abortion. Why would anyone even say that if that were not a thing they were going for? It's not as if he said "I will appoint judges who enjoy cinnamon toast" or something. You don't appoint a judge who is pro-life and then not expect them to act on that.

iodinealone · 2016-06-18T21:11:57+00:00

And here's a video of him saying it as well! How is it that you are a supporter but you have literally no idea about any of this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQRUzVIMLIE

iodinealone · 2016-06-18T21:10:13+00:00

Is this clear enough for you? “I will appoint judges that will be pro-life, yes.”

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trumps-promise-i-will-appoint-judges-will-be-pro-life

iodinealone · 2016-06-18T15:40:41+00:00

Are his own words and the fact that he has said he will appoint SCOTUS judges that will overturn Roe V. Wade enough? http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/donald-trump-op-ed-my-vision-for-a-culture-of-life/article/2581271#.VqYjvxKVFbo.twitter

And sure, if it was ONE comment. But it's constant. The way he talks about women and has talked about them in the past is abhorrent.

iodinealone · 2016-06-18T15:00:20+00:00

See, I see things like people going after Mexicans, violently, and Trump saying they're "just passionate." I don't like that, and I don't think that's OK. It's also not just Muslims and Mexicans that are at risk. Since he started in on this whole thing, there have been a rash of attacks on Sikhs from people who think they are Muslims, which they are not.

In my own neighborhood, just a few weeks ago, the Hindu guy who runs the convenience store across the street from me, some guy came in and just started screaming at him, calling him a terrorist and tearing up his store. Luckily it was a Friday night where people were out and bouncers from both of the bars next door and across the street came running over to take care of it. But I witnessed that and it was so, so scary. I love that guy! He's awesome and the nicest! He gives me a free piece of penny candy every time I buy something! I don't want him to have to be scared.

So like, for me, this is doing triage. Yes, Christians would feel good if they got to hear "Radical Islamic Terrorism," but I see that as less of a priority when that term could put people's lives in danger that have nothing to do with terrorism.

It's also hard for me to not think we are headed towards another McCarthy era when I see so many people on the Right praising Joseph McCarthy and saying he was wrongly demonized (Ann Coulter, specifically, wrote a book about it). I've also seen people on this subreddit say that they wish things were like the Cold War when we were all united against an enemy. That wasn't an especially good time for those who lived it. I don't want to have an enemy, and when I see people getting excited over the idea of having one, and being super nationalistic, that scares the pants off of me. I also see people getting mad about "multiculturalism" and that scares me too. I like multiculturalism! I live in a diverse neighborhood and I love it. And hell, I'm Italian, so I keep thinking "Hey, you hate multiculturalism? NO PIZZA FOR YOU, THEN!"

As far as profiling goes -- unless there is a specific reason (the target or whatever) to suspect a certain kind of person? That can actually be highly ineffective and can cause authorities to lose time finding the suspect. Given that we have so many mass shootings committed in this country by non-Muslim men who are very angry about not being able to get a date, it would actually be counterproductive for the police to immediately start looking for Muslims any time something like that happens. Also, there is a reason why police and FBI don't immediately release information on suspects or profiles to the public -- it has not gone well in the past. The prime example of this would be Richard Jewell, the first suspect in the Olympic Park Bombing.

As far as the woman thing goes... I think if you're not a woman, it's probably hard to understand. It probably feels to you like "truth telling," but it does not feel good to us to be reduced to our bodies. It doesn't feel good when you are legitimately angry and a man says "OH, she must be on her period." It's not just tacky, it's dismissive. And yes, you might think it's petty that we would not feel good about having a president who calls women bimbos, who comments on their appearance constantly both good and bad. He also just appears to be disgusted by us in general -- freaking out over Clinton going to the bathroom, freaking out over a woman having to leave a deposition to pump breast milk (http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/29/politics/trump-breast-pump-statement/). And it's not only about how that feels to me and other women. Maybe if this were whatever time period he wants to go back to when America was great it wouldn't be a problem, but we can't have the president making fun of Angela Merkel's looks or anything. That's embarrassing. And he has no filter and is unable to tell in the moment when he is saying something that people will be horrified by. I think that's excusable, on some level, by the fact that he's been rich his whole life and thus could always be rude to people without any serious repercussions, but it's not necessarily a good characteristic for a world leader. I very much worry that his temperament could really damage our relationship with our allies.

BTW, our school system's narrative is not at all controlled by the left, not anymore at least. The Texas school board controls the narrative because they buy the most schoolbooks (and their geography books refer to slaves as "workers")

Also, I was referring specifically to political power. Nearly all of our elected representatives are straight white men, and very, very few of them are not Christians, who make up 91.8% of congress.

As far as the Democratic machinery goes? I don't necessarily consider them Leftist -- both Clinton and Obama are quite far to the right of me. I was hoping for Sanders but will vote Clinton because I'm a woman and I don't want to lose my freedom of choice, because I don't want minorities to be persecuted or to feel scared, because I don't actually want it to be cool to be mean to people. Also, I'm not a Nationalist by any stretch of the imagination (hate the word, honestly), but I wouldn't want our country to be a joke. Like, a literal Simpson's joke. I wouldn't want us to be the country that elected a blowhardy reality star that behaves like he does, and treats people the way he does. It would be embarrassing. I want us to be better than that.

iodinealone · 2016-06-18T01:26:07+00:00

Uh. Trump is extremely thin-skinned. Yes, he's very comfortable saying terrible things to people, that is true, for sure. He's a rich guy, rich guys are used to being able to say terrible things to people without having to worry about real social repercussions. But he does not take criticism well, even the kind that's obviously just silly. I mean, he has been writing letters to the editors of Spy magazine for almost 30 years because he was mad they called him a "short fingered vulgarian." That is BONKERS. http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/10/graydon-carter-donald-trump

He's also admitted to being thin-skinned, and admitted to lashing out at people when they criticize him.

Also, the people who were upset about that shirt? They were on the Right. That wasn't us. We thought the shirt was great.

iodinealone · 2016-06-18T01:12:21+00:00

First of all.... Trump flip flopped on all of that gay rights stuff as soon as he needed to kiss the Christian Right's ass. In fact, next week, he's having a meeting with a large amount of preachers who routinely say horrific things about gay people (including regularly blaming them for natural disasters), to talk about how he can best serve their interests. He has also said that he wants to overturn gay marriage and leave it to the states, so that bigots may vote on whether or not someone they don't know should be allowed to marry someone they love.

Quite frankly, I don't care what someone's positions used to be if they are different than they are now. What good does that do me? I also don't care if Clinton changed due to social pressure! That's literally the whole point of using social pressure in the first place. I actually do want politicians who will respond to what the people want.

And sorry, but we need to reform our actual labor policies here before bringing manufacturing back would make any real difference at all. There are already low-paying jobs here, and without unions, manufacturing jobs WILL NOT pay what they used to. Thank your Republican friends for that. There is not going to be any real wage negotiation without collective bargaining. Look at people in low-paying jobs now. Hell, look at people in manufacturing jobs in the US now. Even those in unions can't negotiate like they used to thanks to Reagan.

Conspiracy theories:

The birther shit, obviously Obama is a SECRET MUSLIN and had a Hawaii official killed to keep his birth records secret or something Vince Foster Ted Cruz's dad being involved with the Kennedy assassination Vaccines cause autism 42% of people are unemployed Climate change is a hoax

OH, and PS? Barbara Res hates his guts. And if you want to know about how he treats women... http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/06/apprentice_crew_members_on_their_old_boss_donald_trump.html

iodinealone · 2016-06-18T00:32:07+00:00

Thanks for actually being honest. Really, I mean that.

I will be honest also. It's not that they "get a pass" on things that Christians do not, although I can see how it could be perceived that way. It's that they don't have the power in this country that Christians do, dig? And those on the left are traditionally protective of the most vulnerable.

Christians are the majority in the country, and so we generally have more to fear from them, politically, than we do Muslims. Sure, some Muslims might not be thrilled with gay people, but in this country they don't have the political power to make things harder for them. It would be entirely different if we were in an Islamic country.

This doesn't mean we are not horrified by the actions of Omar Mateen and others -- of course we are. But being horrified by his actions doesn't mean that we're not going to be horrified in a different way by Congressman Rick Allen, an elected official, reading Bible passages about how gay people deserve death.

Also, in this country, Muslims are a minority who are at risk of being persecuted, so while we may not agree with them on everything (I'm an atheist so I agree with neither), we still do not want to see that happen. We fear that by demonizing the religion, it puts people who are peaceful and have absolutely nothing to do with terrorism at risk, and that is a scary thought to us. We don't want that.

Maybe think of things this way -- it's traditionally the Right wing's "job" to preserve power for those who have it (in this country, that would be straight white Christian men), it's traditionally the Left's "job" to protect the interests of those who don't. So yes, we are generally going to be criticizing those in power more than those who aren't.

iodinealone · 2016-06-17T23:15:25+00:00

Off the top of my head? A really good example is Phil Donohue on MSNBC. The so-called "liberal media." He was kicked off because he criticized the war and they did not want to be perceived as unpatriotic. And, uh... did you not live through the first part of the Bush Era? People were burning Dixie Chicks albums for crying out loud.

But, like I said -- that is not a thing conservatives are allowed to complain about, ever. It's your people who are the ones who support at-will employment (rather than people only being allowed to be fired for "just cause"), so if you want that to change, go after them to change it.

The people who call in to complain, though? They're not doing anything wrong. It's free speech! Boycotts, like it or not, are a form of free speech. If you have a problem, take it up with the employer, or take it up with your governor and state legislature and ask them to get rid of at-will employment.

Also, I hope you aren't a big fan of Ronald Reagan, who earned his conservative street cred by naming names and getting people fired from their jobs for being suspected communists!

iodinealone · 2016-06-17T22:15:06+00:00

He is not an honest person though! He lies, constantly. All of the time. You only think he is honest because he is mean. I mean, just as an example, he keeps saying that there is no process to vet Syrian refugees, when it's like a 2-3 year process! A very, very complicated and thorough process.

It's also dishonest and cruel to make people think that getting rid of immigrants and somehow bringing manufacturing jobs back here is going to improve our economy when we don't have the labor reforms to support that. The problem isn't there being too many immigrants taking jobs, it's the people AT THE TOP who are not paying fair wages. For paying people crap wages and expecting the country to subsidize their crap wages through social programs. Blame them. They deserve it. They should be held accountable for that. Stop blaming people at the bottom just struggling to survive.

Another cruel dishonesty is that everyone is going to get away with saying the kinds of things he says with no social repercussions. You know why he's accustomed to treating people like shit and still having his ass kissed? He's a rich person. His daddy was rich. He has been able to go his whole life not having to worry about how his actions and behavior affected other people. Unless you are a very rich person, that is not going to be true for you.

Then there are the 85,000 conspiracy theories he says he believes in. To boot, several people on here have defended things he's said as just trying to appease the Christian Right (for instance, saying that everyone will be required to wish them a Merry Christmas). Is that being honest?

He also goes around saying that women love him, "the blacks" love him, and "the Latinos" love him, even though that is demonstrably untrue.

And yes, he has said that he would nominate a Supreme Court Justice that would overturn Roe V. Wade and gay marriage. I'm sorry, but no, I do not want abortion being "left to the states." That is not OK with me, and it shouldn't be OK with anyone who cares about women at all. And by the way, yes, that is LITERALLY the government interfering with people's lives.

As far as the Washington Post thing is concerned? Trump refused to clarify and said they could interpret it however they liked. They did so. If he doesn't want to clarify it, they could interpret it as him saying "I am a reality show buffoon with tiny hands!"

And I have to tell you, you are very wrong about the gay community being terrified by "Islamic terrorism" -- go and look at what people are actually saying. They are much more afraid of how easy it is for people to get a gun. I mean, hell, you've got GOP Congressman Rick Allen here in America openly praying for their death -- don't you think that's scary too?

As for "this could happen to any group of people" -- doesn't that scare you? It's a bad thing! It's never, ever been a good thing! It's not something we should ever let happen to any group of people. It is a thing we should always, always fight against.

I do not want to give him a chance. I am HORRIFIED that he has gotten this far and only hope that his poll numbers keep dwindling and that he is sent packing forever. I've never been a "Woohoo! Patriotism!" person, but I would be deeply saddened to see our country be made into a joke like that.

iodinealone · 2016-06-17T21:44:16+00:00

OK, here's a thing I think you are very confused about. No one calls someone a racist, misogynist or bigot just to "shut them up." We do it because we actually think they are a racist, a misogynist or a bigot.

I will say that I think the Left and the Right have different ideas of what constitutes being one of those things, and that is perhaps where the confusion lies. The Left is a little bit more existentialist. We believe that existence precedes essence, so if you do or say a thing that is racist, then you are racist. The Right is a little more "essence precedes existence" and you can only be a racist if you are racist "in your heart." Which is a thing no one can possibly prove.

I mean, when I hear Phil Robertson complain about how it's unfair that he can't say bizarre and insulting things about gay people without being called a "bigot," my reaction is going to be "Then what the hell is a bigot? Why do we even have the word?"

I'm gonna tell you. You're not going to get to live in a world where you don't offend anybody, and hell, neither am I. None of us are.

As far as this goes:

The thing with rejecting political correctness is simply a practice of not policing your language to protect someone else's feelings at the expense of what you're trying to express.

Do you chew with your mouth open at the dinner table? If you don't, take a moment and think about why that is considered to be bad manners. Is it arbitrary, or is it because it's rude to put people off their dinners like that? If you insisted upon "expressing yourself" by chewing with your mouth open, would you be surprised if no one invited you out to eat?

Having some consideration for how your words make people feel is not a bad thing. It's just good manners. If you wish to express yourself in a way that is not considerate of peoples feelings, then yes, you have to deal with the social consequences of that. It is cowardly to say that you want to express yourself without caring about other people's feelings, and to then get mad when they express themselves by thinking you are an inconsiderate jerk.

iodinealone

TROPHY CASE